
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/13598175.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, No_Archive
      Warnings_Apply, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      Gen, M/M
  Fandom:
      Metal_Gear
  Relationship:
      Liquid_Snake/Psycho_Mantis, Liquid_Snake/Ocelot, Liquid_Snake/Original
      Character(s), Ocelot_&_Psycho_Mantis, Ocelot/Psycho_Mantis, EVA_&_Psycho
      Mantis, Quiet/Sniper_Wolf, Ocelot/Solidus_Snake, Liquid_Snake_&_Venom
      Snake
  Character:
      Liquid_Snake, Psycho_Mantis, Sniper_Wolf, Ocelot_(Metal_Gear), Original
      Characters, Diamond_Dogs_Soldiers, Venom_Snake_(Metal_Gear), EVA_(Metal
      Gear), Quiet_(Metal_Gear), Decoy_Octopus, Solidus_Snake, Vulcan_Raven
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Canon_Divergence, tags_added_gradually, Ficlets,
      Art, Fanart, aesthetic_edits, Memes, Requests, individual_warnings/
      ratings_at_beginning_of_each_ficlet, reupload, Meta, Post-Traumatic
      Stress_Disorder_-_PTSD, Night_Terrors, Cuddling_&_Snuggling, Comics, D/s,
      Sex_Toys, Belly_Bulging, Overstimulation, questionably-accurate
      depictions_of_armed_combat, historically_accurate_ethnic_conflicts,
      Psychotic_break, implied_Lima_Syndrome, decomposing_corpse, dubcon,
      Unhealthy_Relationships, Infidelity, sex_dungeon_weekend_getaway,
      Masturbation, Feeding, Crying, softboy_emo_teen_Mantis_cavorting_with
      Ocelot_at_the_KGB, First_Aid, Angst, Fluff, Depression, Russian
      diminutives, Crossdressing, Goats
  Series:
      Part 4 of White_Diamond
  Stats:
      Published: 2018-02-07 Updated: 2018-03-30 Chapters: 41/? Words: 67121
****** Miscellany ******
by PunishedPyotr
Summary
     Assorted things (ficlets, art, etc.) belonging in continuity with
     Wherever I Go, I'll Make It Home et al. No end in sight, for now.
Notes
See the end of the work for notes
***** Doxxing/revival memes *****
Chapter Summary
     LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
     THE MOMENT YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR
Chapter Notes
     (aireyv sent me these pls no bully -pp)
  

(h/t Dacryphilia)

(h/t Brambora)
 
(h/t Brambora again)
***** Konejšení *****
Chapter Summary
     "Ever since leaving Outer Heaven, the only times Mantis was ever
     affectionate like this was when Liquid was trying to calm down after
     a nightmare[.]"
     General Audiences - mentions of past Rape/Non-Con
     W/C 1,53
Chapter Notes
     Title credit goes to Brambora, because I do not speak Czech.
                            1996, Northern Africa.
Liquid woke up screaming.
Mantis jolted awake next to him, and immediately reached down for him - Liquid
had been sleeping on the floor of the Jeep, with Mantis at Liquid’s insistence
taking up the backseat — Liquid freaked, slapping Mantis’ hand away and jumping
up, clambering over the front seat, and faceplanting off the side of the car.
“Eli,” Mantis said, sitting up and leaning over the side of the Jeep.
“Get away from m—-“
“Eli.”
Liquid started at Mantis’ voice, then propped himself up, blinking rapidly and
looking around. “Where…? What?” He swallowed hard, and leaned forward, resting
his forehead against the ground, eyes shut tight. “A d-dream…”
“Come here, Eli.”
Liquid didn’t move other than the barely-visible trembling of his shoulders.
“Eli, come here,” Mantis said again, as gently as possible.
He hesitated for another few moments, then got up and climbed back into the
Jeep, sitting next to Mantis. Mantis carefully brushed sand off his face, and
Liquid flinched at the first touch. He was staring at Mantis with eyes wide,
pupils dilated, sweating slightly and breathing so quickly that he was going to
pass out soon if he didn’t calm down.
Mantis ran his hand back over Liquid’s hair, and he leaned into his palm, still
unblinking. Mantis shifted his hand down a little to cup the side of his jaw,
and where his hand rested against Liquid’s neck he could feel his heart beating
hard and too fast.
“Just a dream,” Mantis said.
Liquid nodded.
“Deep breaths, Eli.”
Liquid nodded again, trying to force his lungs back under his control, timing
his breathing against the sound of Mantis’ breath hissing through his gas mask.
It helped a little. So did Mantis softly rubbing his thumb over his cheekbone,
perhaps moreso. And when Liquid’s mind had finally stopped trying to tear
itself apart under the weight of unwanted memories - although he was still
distressed and jittery - Mantis pulled him towards himself, letting him lean
into his chest, and rested his arms on his shoulders.
“Better?” Mantis said.
“…a bit…” Liquid mumbled, closing his eyes. He was focusing on the sound of
Mantis’ heart beating, still trying to ground himself. “We’re- we’re in the
Sahara right now, yes? Not in Al-Dibdibah…”
“Yes, the Sahara,” Mantis said, “you are not too cold, are you?”
“I’m fine…”
“Did you get enough sleep already? I doubt you will be able to get back to
sleep tonight without my help.”
Liquid thought about it for a bit, but couldn’t come to a definite conclusion.
Mantis sighed. He could probably take that as a no.
“Do you want to go back to sleep?” Mantis said.
He shook his head, and pulled Mantis closer, tucking his head under his chin.
Mantis rubbed his back. “I don’t want to have another nightmare.”
“I can make sure you don’t.”
“You told me that was difficult… it’s only driving tomorrow, anyway, it doesn’t
really matter.”
“Are you sure?”
“Mm. You can go back to sleep if you want to.”
Despite the calm conversation, Mantis could still sense Liquid’s mind twisting
nervously, a wild animal caught in a trap, a restrained and injured beast. And
despite what he said, what Liquid really wanted (or at least what he really
would have liked) was to just stay up in Mantis’ arms, not having to leave off
on the attention anytime soon.
That was fine. Mantis didn’t need any more sleep than he’d already gotten at
this point.
“How can I sleep when you are still upset?” Mantis said, settling into the
backseat, Liquid easily following the move. “I think I will just hold you until
you have calmed down.”
“Hn.”
Mantis went back to stroking his hair. “We are thousands upon thousands of
miles away from any of that,” he murmured. “You survived, life went on… I will
never let anything like it happen to you again, Eli.”
“I know you won’t,” Liquid said.
“And the only way you will ever see any of your captors again is in dreams. I
made sure of that.”
Liquid half-sat up. “Oh?”
“They are all dead.”
Liquid stared at him incredulously for a moment, then Mantis pulled him back to
himself, threading his fingers through his hair again. “I realize it would have
been better if you could have done it yourself, but this was not long after
your father recovered you and you were not in a physical or mental state for
it… and I simply could not stand it anymore. …I am sorry.”
“I see,” Liquid said at length. “Even the nice one?”
“He was first and quickest; I simply stopped his heart. No pain, minimal fear.”
“And everyone else?”
“The appropriate amount of violence.” He nudged Liquid’s ear with the filter of
his gas mask. “One I turned completely inside-out, while forcing all the others
to watch,” he whispered. “It was very gory.”
Liquid’s fingers - already curled loosely - flexed for a second. “Did he
scream?”
“He tried.”
“And the- the others — were they afraid?”
“More afraid than any of them had ever been in their worthless lives. But if I
could have made them suffer more, I would have… there was no way I could have,
in one afternoon, paid them back even a fraction of how much they made you
suffer. How badly they hurt you…”
“How they broke me,” Liquid muttered.
Mantis didn’t want to bring up how technically it was Revolver Ocelot who had
struck that final blow to Liquid’s psyche, the one that would have killed him
if Venom hadn’t come and taken him back to Mother Base a few hours later.
Liquid only ever thought a little about Ocelot nowadays, and Mantis only
helplessly hoped that Liquid would eventually forget about him if they didn’t
discuss what had happened between the two.
“…I’m glad they’re dead,” Liquid said after a while. By now he had largely
calmed down, his breathing and heartrate more or less back to normal, and he
wasn’t shaking anymore, although his thoughts were a little fuzzy and Mantis
knew him well enough to know that his current docility was mostly just a sign
that his nightmare had left him emotionally exhausted. “I mean, I would have
preferred to take revenge personally - although, obviously, you could have
helped if you… if you wanted to — but…”
“But even now it would be… difficult for you to handle meeting those who did
that to you, face to face,” Mantis finished his sentence for him.
“…yes…”
Silence fell, apart from the faint hum of wind slipping over sand dunes.
Mantis nuzzled Liquid. “I killed them in your place not only because of my own
impatience, but also because if they were given any more time they would have
disbanded and scattered, or moved camps. It would be difficult to find them
again, but we can both agree that they should not have been allowed to live…”
“Mm.”
He frowned slightly behind his mask. Of course Liquid had to wonder why Mantis
hadn’t told him about this until now… “It was not because I thought you were
incapable of it,” Mantis said, almost hesitantly, “I was impatient… I couldn’t
resist your desire for vengeance… and Eli, it was the closest I could come to
protecting you. Not to say that you necessarily need protection, but—“
“No, I understand,” Liquid said, “I was lucky to make it out of there alive
and… physically intact, mostly.”
“You… were in a fragile state, but that did not mean I thought of you as too
fragile to handle it on your own. Just, at that time…”
“Mantis,” Liquid said, shifting his weight closer against him, “you’re just
trying to justify yourself to yourself now, not me.”
“…”
“Nevermind. It doesn’t matter if it was you or I that did it, they paid for
everything they put me through and I— I… I-I shouldn’t even be thinking about
it anymore. It’s just a waste of time and energy.”
“You have a point,” Mantis said.
“Right,” Liquid said, “so from now on, I just won’t think about it.”
Because that had worked so well back at Outer Heaven. Mantis kept his thoughts
to himself, though. “And if you have more night terrors?”
Liquid was fully aware that it was more of a ‘when’ question than an ‘if’ one,
but nonetheless he said, “If I have any more dreams about it, I’ll just brush
them off when I wake up. It’s nothing worth panicking over.”
“Hm, so, I suppose, you won’t be wanting me to be so affectionate like this to
calm you down anymore,” Mantis said, curling a lock of hair between his
fingers, “you’ll be wanting to just handle that yourself."
Liquid blinked, then tilted his head to look up at Mantis (still with his head
pressed against his shoulder). “No,” he whined. “I like this.”
“Hmm…”
“I-It’ll be easier to brush off the nightmares if you-“
“I get it, Eli,” Mantis said, gently pushing his head back down. “I don’t mind
cuddling.”
“Mantis, don’t use the word ‘cuddling’, it’s just… emasculating…”
“Would you prefer snuggling?”
“Agh, that’s worse!”
“Snuggling and petting your hair…”
“Oh my god. Shut up. Ten more minutes and then we’re driving out of here.”
“Fine, fine…”
***** Piece by Piece (Omake) *****
Chapter Notes
     Originally posted in the ending author's notes of Piece by Piece, but
     the link has since been removed.



***** Triptych *****
Chapter Summary
     An unnecessarily dramatic aesthetic edit. Don't ask me for image
     creds, I don't have them anymore :(
***** Too Much *****
Chapter Summary
     Liquid bites off a little more than he can chew.
     Explicit - very brief reference to past Rape/Non-Con, No Archive
     Warnings Apply otherwise
     W/C 5,086
Chapter Notes
     Yes this is the infamous giant dildo ficlet, so sue me
See the end of the chapter for more notes
                         200X, FOXHOUND headquarters.
“I said no touching.”
Liquid whined loudly, trying very unsuccessfully to yank his hands away from
where Mantis had his wrists psychically pinned to the side of the bed, managing
only to awkwardly jerk his elbows around.
“Behave yourself, Eli. You have already lost your privilege to a nice soft
bed.”
“O-Oh, I don’t mind the floor,” Liquid crowed, but the effect was kind of
ruined by his blushing and heavy breathing and very conspicuous, twitching
erection.
The reason why it was so conspicuous was because Liquid currently had his legs
spread almost as far as he could get him (and mind, he was a flexible man),
doing his damned best to tempt Mantis into doing something a little more
intimate than just teasing him and holding him on the edge of orgasm with just
his hands, and no penetration — and Liquid was really starting to get
frustrated about that point. Especially since Mantis would absolutely not allow
him to just do that himself. That was against the rules.
Liquid both loved and really, really fucking hated having rules.
“One of these days I really should start punishing you for complaining,” Mantis
said, rocking back on his heels. He was crouching in front of Liquid, and
hadn’t actually touched him for at least five minutes, although according to
his jumbled, mushy thoughts, it felt like hours to Liquid.
“Come on, M-Mantis.”
In a very impressive wriggle, Liquid stretched himself out, clamping his legs
around Mantis’ waist and hooking his ankles together, and drew Mantis towards
himself before he could really react.
“Come onnn,” he said, the second word trailing into another whine, “come on,
Mantis, p-please—“ He rocked his hips, grinding his ass feverishly against
Mantis’ crotch, and Mantis’ stomach turned.
“You stop that right now, Eli, or delay will turn into denial.”
Liquid let his chin drop to his chest, sighing in defeat and relaxing enough to
let Mantis move back again, out of his leg-range this time. And then after a
few seconds, Liquid looked back up at him and bit his lip, whimpering.
Please, Mantis, he thought, just once. I won’t ever ask for it again if you do
it justonce.
“That is a lie,” Mantis said dryly.
“W-Why do you keep saying ‘no’?!” Liquid burst out, and twisted against his
psychic restraints, hissing. “What’s so wr-wrong with it, Mantis, why c-can’t
you just fuck me already? Please, Mantis, I want y-you so b-badly…!!”
Mantis didn’t respond, just gave him an extremely unimpressed look.
“Fuck me, Mantis!!” Liquid shouted, kicking his legs petulantly, “just do it a-
already! Please, I w-want to feel you— f-fuck me until I can’t w-walk anymore—-
come on, come on, please, Mantis, M-Mantis please just stick it in me already—“
God. He was literally throwing a tantrum over this. It was, despite the subject
matter, unbelievably childish.
“—I want you, I n-need you to fuck me, Mantis, I need t-to feel your long hot
throbbing cock i-inside me, and I need to feel your s-seed inside me, Mantis,
please, just take me already, just claim me, come on, M-Mantis, you said I’m
yours s-so mark your fucking territory already, Mantis, just pin me down and-“
His filthy tirade continued for a while, and Mantis listened to him rant and
plead with no change in expression, and eventually Liquid ran out of steam and
sagged against the bed, panting and mewling.
“Got that out of your system, Eli?”
“…y…yes…”
Mantis leaned forward, kneeling over Liquid with the filter of his gas mask
about an inch away from his downturned face. “You ought to be ashamed of
yourself. That was embarrassing just to watch.”
“Mmn…”
“You know this room is not soundproofed.”
“Oh… oh, s-shit, I didn’t w-wake anyone, d-did I—?”
“Hm. No.” Mantis sat back again. “Still…”
“P-Please, Mantis… please… i-isn’t there something I c-could do to get y-you to
d-do it?” He bit his lip again for a second. “There h-has to be s-something,
right? Y-You know, Mantis, I th-think that railing me u-until I can hardly b-
breathe would be a good p-punishment for something or other… n-no?”
Mantis rolled his eyes. “Not when you would treat it more like a reward.”
“Nnngh…”
He let Liquid stew in his frustration for another couple minutes, then leaned
over him again, gently running his hand up the inside of his thigh. Time to
bring the game to an end for tonight. “Although, Eli…”
“A-Ahh…!”
“If you want to be filled that much,” Mantis whispered in his ear, curling his
fingers around his dick and starting to softly pump it, “then I suppose
sometime this week I could take you to that sex shop I frequent and let you
pick out a toy.”
“Ah- ghn— r-really…? -—khh, oh, M-Mantis…”
“Mhm.”
“I-I’ll hold you t-t-to th-that, Mantis… mmnh… g-god, Mantis, please—“
“Close?”
“Yes… y-yes, please, Mantis…”
Mantis nuzzled him. “Go ahead.”
                               A few days later.
“I’m through with paperwork for the afternoon,” Liquid announced, flopping down
on the break room couch next to Mantis.
“…you have not even looked at a third of it.”
“I said I’m through, what part of that didn’t you get, Mantis?”
“Our illustrious leader,” Wolf snarked from behind the couch.
Liquid rolled his eyes, then elbowed Mantis. “Clearly your schedule is free
today,” he said, indicating Mantis’ book with his chin. “Why don’t we just go
into town for a bit and get that shopping we discussed done?”
“Fine by me,” Mantis said, snapping his book shut, “but as soon as we get back,
you are finishing your paperwork, boss.”
“Tch. Fine.”
“Headed into town?” Wolf said, “mind if I tag along? I am running low on
diazepam…”
“Er…” Liquid glanced at Mantis, his face going a little red. I’d really rather
she didn’t…, he thought.
It won’t pose a problem, Mantis told him, we can just drop her off at that
shady pharmacy and go about our business, and pick her up again when we are
done.
She’ll see what we bought…
Please. Everything is discreetly packaged.
“Of course, Wolf,” Liquid said, glancing over the back of the couch. “No
problem.”
                             About an hour later.
Wolf was dropped off at the shady pharmacy and the car was parked far away
enough from the sex shop that it wouldn’t be associated with it (not that the
car itself was easily associated with FOXHOUND in the first place). Liquid and
Mantis stood in front of the shop’s blacked-out doors.
It finally occured to Liquid to wonder just why the hell Mantis was a regular
at this place.
“It’s where I buy my clothes,” Mantis said.
Liquid opened his mouth to reply, but couldn’t really think of anything to say
other than That explains so bloody much. He shut it again.
Mantis scoffed and, when Liquid hesitated on following him, having never been
in any kind of establishment like this before in his life, grabbed Liquid’s
hand and dragged him in behind him.
“Er- er, wait, Mantis, maybe I should just wait outside,” Liquid started.
“No one will even notice we are here,” Mantis said, “the SEP field, remember?”
“Oh…”
The bell of the door chimed as they walked in, and while the cashier turned to
greet them, she didn’t manage to say anything, her eyes sliding off of both
Liquid and Mantis before she turned back to the customer at the register
without comment. Liquid let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.
He definitely should have expected that. He was sure that the type of person
who went to or worked at this type of place was not the type of person Mantis
would tolerate interacting with very well.
“Yes, yes, very perceptive of you, Eli. Come, over here. Let’s get this over
with.”
Liquid tried not to stare around the place as Mantis brought him towards the
back of it, but it was difficult. There were plenty of things he expected,
sure, dozens of different types of lube and condoms, and lingerie of all sorts
of sizes and styles, and there were of course things like nylon rope, chains,
whips of varying degrees of how painful they looked, and even stereotypical
fuzzy pink handcuffs. Liquid was pretty sure he spotted a leather harness
exactly like Mantis’ in with the BDSM gear. There were also a whole lot of
things that Liquid didn’t even know what the hell they were or how they were
used.
Mantis tilted his head back and cackled. “You’re embarrassed.”
“What?” Liquid said, suddenly noticing how hot his cheeks were, “no I’m not.”
“Do not lie to me.”
“—well I’ve never been in any place like this before. It’s so… so… indecent.”
“Eli, you have probably had more kinky sex in your life than everyone else in
the building combined.” Mantis paused for a moment, then said, “of course, I
have no interest in actually verifying that assumption, but still…”
“There’s… there’s only, what, four customers in here besides us…?”
“Six, plus the cashier, the manager, and the poor sap on cleaning and stocking
today. But they do not matter. …here we are.”
The back wall of the store was, upon closer inspection, stocked floor-to-
ceiling with an obscene (pun intended) amount of vibrators, fleshlights, and
dildos, all neatly lined up on shelves for display. Liquid blinked, trying to
figure out how exactly to respond to this assault on his retinas.
“I really must be rubbing off on you,” Mantis muttered.
“Why does… what… w-what’s stopping people from just using their hands?” Liquid
said faintly.
“Just find one you like, Eli.”
Liquid frowned. “Er… I know, Mantis, how about you just surprise me—“
“No,” Mantis said flatly. “If you don’t want to pick something out, then the
whole arrangement is off and you have officially forfeited your right to
complain about a lack of penetration.”
Dammit. Fine. Liquid put his hands in front of his mouth, taking a deep breath
through his nose - and regretting it immediately, he couldn’t place what
exactly it was but this place smelled weird - and let his eyes trawl over the
wall of sex toys.
They eventually fixed on what had to be longest, thickest, largest dildo in the
entire goddamn county.
Liquid stared at it, mostly in horror. This… only exists for novelty purposes,
right? he thought.
“No,” Mantis said, “Eli, you would not believe what kind of things the human
body is capable of… accommodating.”
“So that… thing… can actually…?”
“…I would not recommend it.”
Liquid turned to him. “Eh?”
Mantis shrugged. “Something of that size is not really a good idea for someone
like you, who has only-“
“Is that a challenge?”
“…Eli.”
He pointed at the monstrously large silicon… well, he wasn’t exactly sure it
was supposed to be a penis, per se, but whatever. “I- I want that one, Mantis.”
Mantis stared at him in disbelief for a moment, then sighed, shaking his head.
“Idiot. …but if you insist.”
“Ah… r-right. Right, of course, glad that’s settled, then.” He suddenly found
himself unable to look at anything besides his boots. He shoved his hands deep
into his pockets and turned around. “I’ll let you handle the actual purchase,
Mantis, I’ll just wait outside for you to be done.”
“Fine, fine… there are some other things I also need to get here…”
Granted, it was a cooler day outside than the ambient temperature of the store,
but Liquid still felt like his face was on fire as he swept out the door, not
daring to even attempt eye contact with the cashier, who couldn’t directly look
at him anyway.
And on the way back to the base, even Liquid knew that Wolf had absolutely
noticed that he was still mortified by whatever he and Mantis had done while
she was haggling with the sketchy pharmacist. Mantis didn’t share with him
whether or not she had connected it to the large, unmarked shopping bag he had
made Liquid carry. Quite frankly, Liquid was fine not knowing.
                              The following week.
Honestly, Liquid really did enjoy being the FOXHOUND commander, not in the
least part because all the other members of FOXHOUND liked him and more or less
respected him as their leader. But for his part he would probably - well,
definitely - enjoy this whole arrangement a whole lot more if the Army brass
didn’t apparently find cutting FOXHOUND’s budget to be entertaining or stress-
relieving or something.
And probably the worst part about that was, although Liquid had actually gotten
quite good at frantically scrambling to balance FOXHOUND’s books again after
yet another budget cut, it always involved a hell of a lot of paperwork.
Paperwork was hell.
Worst of all was that Liquid couldn’t even concentrate on it right now if he
wanted to.
He folded his arms on his desk, leaning his forehead against them, and groaned,
shifting his weight in his chair awkwardly. About an hour ago Mantis had pulled
Liquid away from his work (actually, at that point Liquid had been sidetracked
by a rubber band ball, a good indicator that he really did need a break from
all these spreadsheets) and shoved him into the showers, told him to clean
himself “very thoroughly”, and then after that he had… well…
Well, the end result of it was that the inside of Liquid’s underwear was
uncomfortably slick with lube, and there was a thick, heavy buttplug shoved up
Liquid’s arse that had very nearly rendered him unable to walk at all, let
alone normally. (He couldn’t walk normally like this, actually. Mantis had
escorted him back to his office, and Liquid had trouble keeping up with him
considering his current bowlegged stagger.)
So Mantis had done this to Liquid and then told him to get back to work, and
promised a reward if he could focus enough to make any headway on the
rebudgeting issue. It was hard, dammit, especially considering how hot and
sweaty this made Liquid’s whole body feel. He didn’t quitehave an erection, not
since Mantis dumped him in his office anyway, but his dick was definitely on
standby here, and he was undoubtedly aroused. His heart was beating faster than
it should have considering he was just sitting in a chair - and he could feel
every beat of his heart throbbing around the plug - his breathing was shivery,
his hands shook, and every so often his thighs would twitch.
He’d probably just die of humiliation if someone happened to come in his office
tonight. Which, horribly enough, turned him on even more.
God. Mantis said that he’d developed all these weird kinks as coping
mechanisms, but surely a line had to be drawn somewhere. Liquid wasn’t even
sure what part of all this had lead to the whole ‘just try to concentrate on
your work when it feels like someone’s fucking boot is lodged firmly in your
asshole’ thing; Mantis had explained, sort of, Liquid had been distracted at
the time, but he had mentioned preparation and while Liquid knew that that made
the actual, proper penetration much easier and less painful, he’d always
associated the process with getting fingered. This was new.
After all, the first and only person to actually fuck him consensually and
therefore give enough of a damn to actually stretch him a little bit before
jamming a hard cock in there had been Ocelot. And Ocelot never used toys or
props - the most he had ever used were scarves or belts, whatever was handy, to
tie Liquid’s limbs, well, when he was able to grab them and keep them still
long enough to do that, anyway. (He also had an odd penchant for giving Liquid
eye infections, so back at Outer Heaven it wasn’t uncommon for him to wear a
medical eyepatch. It had actually wrecked his vision in that eye, though Liquid
stubbornly refused to wear his prescribed reading glasses.)
Speaking of Ocelot, Liquid recalled him once saying that it was just as
effective to torture someone using pleasure as opposed to pain — perhaps even
more effective, considering the average soldier was used to resisting pain, but
he couldn’t think of any government or organization that trained their
personnel to hold up against sex.
It is starting to get late…, came Mantis’ voice into Liquid’s head. He was
probably only chiming in because Liquid’s thoughts had started to wander
towards Ocelot, but nonetheless Liquid was stupidly relieved to hear him.
oh god Mantis please I can’t stand this anymore
Already?
please Mantis please please please, he thought, rocking back and forth on his
chair, white-knuckling the edge of the desk and biting his lip. He was finding
that buttplugs weren’t exactly great things to try and fuck yourself with, not
really stationary enough…
Very well, Eli, if you arethatdesperate… meet me in our room.
Liquid swallowed hard. That’s practically on the other side of the base!
Two hallways over, Eli. Not the same thing.
I can’t walk!!
Youcanwalk, it is just difficult.
…I have a better idea, Mantis! How aboutyoucomehere, and bend me over my desk
and-
Eli.
Well, what if someone sees me?! Liquid thought, whining out loud.
Wherever Mantis was right now (Liquid’s private quarters? naturally, Mantis
shared them…), Liquid was sure he was chuckling dryly to himself. I seem to
recall FOXHOUND initially hiring you as a stealth operative…
Fine. Fine fine fine, goddammit, if Mantis was going to challenge him like this
than Liquid was going to rise to it. He stood up and- winced. That damned plug
was heavy and it did not play nice with Liquid’s legs being this close
together.
Crouch-walking helped significantly, although by the time he made it to his
quarters (two minutes at the most, counting the slight delay from when he heard
someone walking down the adjacent hallway and nearly had a heart attack) he was
panting hard, and only had the wherewithal to slam the door, lock it, and slide
down the back of it, collapsing on the floor while moaning pathetically. He had
to spread his legs and tilt his pelvis up in order to get at least passingly
comfortable, which was a really, really lewd position, presenting himself,
really, but…
Fuck. Mantis wasn’t even in here already. He should have seen that one coming.
Where the hell are you??
Keep your pants on, Eli, I will be with you in a minute.
Liquid growled, tilting his head back against the door and closing his eyes.
Mantis couldn’t do this to him, that was just… that was just rude. Spitefully,
and knowing full well he would pay for it soon, he palmed the front of his
pants, massaging his crotch and feeling his cock strain against the fabric,
fully hard again in almost seconds. He didn’t dare unzip or even slip his
fingers under his belt, but god did it feel good to just rub himself like this.
Even better when he shifted his weight against the floor, his breath catching
as he felt the plug nudge against his prostate…
The lock clicked. Liquid’s eyes snapped open.
“Move,” Mantis said on the other side of the door, “let me in.”
“Er…” Liquid awkwardly scooted himself out of the way, just enough for Mantis
to open the door and slip in, which, considering how thin he was, wasn’t very
far. Mantis closed and locked the door again, looking down at Liquid with
crossed arms.
“Couldn’t stand the anticipation, hmm?”
“Mantis… ah, Mantis, please, I… I…”
Mantis pressed his foot against Liquid’s erection and put just enough weight on
it that Liquid cried out, his hands clenching and toes curling in his boots.
“You know the rules, Eli.”
“F-F-Fuck…! M-Mantis…!!”
He relented. “We will deal with this later. For now…”
Liquid had to get Mantis’ help in stripping down to just his collar, which was
just as well, because Mantis’ hands always seemed to linger warmly whenever he
undressed Liquid. Liquid, kneeling on the floor, hooked his fingers into
Mantis’ harness and pulled him close, kissing his neck as Mantis reached down
and… Liquid sighed in relief, melting against Mantis as that stupid buttplug
was pulled out.
“How close are you to sorting out FOXHOUND’s little financial problem?” Mantis
murmured, tracing his finger around the outside of Liquid’s gaping hole, making
him twitch and shiver.
“A-Ah… I… c-couldn’t focus…”
“Hm.”
With his hands on his hips, Mantis pulled Liquid up to stand on his knees, and
Liquid, somehow picking up that maybe he should, glanced behind him.
…oh, god. He had forgotten how fucking massive that thing was.
“You’re having second thoughts,” Mantis said gently, “you can call it off if
you want to, Eli.”
Liquid shook his head. “I-I can do this,” he said.
“You do not have to prove anything to me.”
“I w-want this, Mantis. I-If you won’t fuck m-me, then I want th-this.”
“I am not going to fuck you.”
“I, I, I know, Mantis, I know, y-you won’t, you don’t w-want to… you d-don’t
want… me…”
“I do not want to hurt or demean you,” Mantis corrected, then ran his fingers
back through his hair. “Now hush, Eli.”
Mantis used his psychokinesis to uncap a bottle of lube, coat the dildo very
generously, and position it under Liquid, the tip of it just prodding his
asshole, all without letting go of him. Liquid hid his face against Mantis’
neck, trying very hard to quell his nervousness at the size of that thing.
“Shh. Just relax.”
Liquid took a few deep breaths, then nodded against Mantis. Right, no need to
be anxious about this. Whatever the worse-case scenario was here, he’d more
than likely had worse (hell, he’d already had some pretty bad anal trauma in
his lifetime, not that he wanted to think about it), and besides, there was no
way Mantis was going to let anything bad happen to him. (Although granted, it
was much less the prospect of injury he was worried about so much as the
potential shame of having to get any injuries incurred treated…)
“I am not about to let you get injured,” Mantis said, moving the hand in his
hair back down to his hip. “Your body has been prepared for this, I used plenty
of lubricant, I will make sure you go slow… all you need to do, Eli, is relax.”
He pushed down on his hips slightly. “Don’t tense up.”
Liquid swallowed hard, then followed Mantis’ movement, lowering himself down on
the dildo — he forced himself to keep his muscles relaxed and loose as the head
of it pushed into him, stretching him-
Ah.
Ahh, god.
“Oh my—- f-fuck— Mantis, i-it’s so big…”
“Very observant of you,” Mantis said, still pressing down on his hips.
“Ghh… ggk, Mantis, oh god—“
He managed to make it down past the first swell, and Mantis eased up on him,
letting him hold himself there, legs trembling, gulping down air. He only had a
couple inches of the thing in him for now, but already it was more than he’d
ever had, already filling him almost to what felt like bursting.
“O-Ohhh, g-— Mantis, this i-is… this is g-going to split me in h-half… it w-
will, I swear…”
“You are fine,” Mantis said, nuzzling him.
He ignored Liquid’s mumbled, pleading complaints as he pushed down on his hips
again, and Liquid continued sliding himself down, letting the dildo impale him,
every curve and ridge, deeper and deeper, and he wasn’t even halfway on it yet
and already it was further inside him than he’d even known was possible.
“Mantis… Mantis… it’s s-so big, Mantis, it’s so d-deep inside me, I s-swear I
can feel it in m-my chest, Mantis, god, I-I’ve never b-been so f-full before,
Mantis…”
“Shh, shh.”
“Ahh… ha… Mantis, M-Mantis, I— gnnh… Mantis…”
Mantis rubbed his lower back, and Liquid moaned against him, his grip on
Mantis’ harness tightening. It almost burned, the way it stretched his asshole
so tightly. It almost hurt.
“Mantis, p-please… Mantis, I, ahh, Mantis— mmn—-“
“Eli, relax.”
“Ah, oh, ohh god, Mantis, M-Mantis I- I’m— nn, Mantis, o-oh no, I’m g-g-going
t-to—“
He couldn’t stop his climax from cutting through him, and it was only
intensified as his whole body tensed up and that huge, huge fucking dildo
prevented his ass from actually, well, closing. He screamed against Mantis’
shoulder, jerking and twitching, unintentionally dropping another few inches
down the toy as he orgasmed.
He drew back slightly (not that moving in any direction except down and,
hypothetically, up was very easy), panting, and licked his lips frenetically.
Then he caught Mantis’ glance down, followed his gaze, and swallowed hard.
“I-I’m sorry, M-Mantis,” he stammered, “I d-didn’t get p-permission to… ah… a-
and… and I g-got it on y-you, I got you d-dirty, I’m n-not supposed to… to…”
Mantis laughed softly, threading one hand through Liquid’s hair again. “Calm
down, Eli.” He wiped the semen up off his chest with his other hand, and
brought it up to Liquid’s lips. Liquid obediently took his fingers into his
mouth, sucking on them and cleaning them with his tongue — he’d never liked the
taste of semen, never could like it, but he loved loved loved Mantis ‘forcing’
him to do things like that.
“Good boy,” Mantis cooed, withdrawing his fingers. “But you know the rules.”
Liquid nodded, still breathing hard, legs still shaking, hyperaware of the
dildo still halfway up his ass.
Mantis watched him shiver uncomfortably for a few moments, considering Liquid’s
punishment, or more likely pretending to consider something he’d already
decided on, then he put his palms flat on Liquid’s thighs and said, “we are
going to keep going right through your refractory period.”
“R…really?”
“Mhm.”
“Th-that’s… ah… i-it might be t-too much for me, M-Mantis,” Liquid said.
“Oh?”
“I… ah, no, I-I meant… w-well I might g-get a little bit o-overwhelmed but,
ahh… nn…”
“You are taking this slow, remember?” Mantis murmured, the filter of his gas
mask at his ear. “Now just relax, Eli… relax.”
There were plenty of guys who got pretty numb after orgasm, but Liquid wasn’t
one of them; he was one of the ones that got oversensitive almost to the point
of pain if someone kept toying with his body after he was spent. Mantis pushed
down on his thighs, coaxing him to keep easing himself down, down, all the way
to the base of it, and by that point Liquid could barely think, let alone talk,
just cling to Mantis and moan pitifully in overstimulation, his eyes rolling
back in his head, biting his tongue until he tasted blood.
“Oh,” Mantis said abruptly, “I did not know that could actually happen.”
Liquid somehow managed to pull himself together enough to follow Mantis’ gaze
to his stomach, where there was a noticeable bulge from the dildo. His eyes
widened.
“Is— is that- Mantis, i-is that bad— is it s-supposed to do th-that—?”
“You are fine,” Mantis said, “it just looks… strange.” He held his hand over
the bulge for a moment, then ran it over it gently. “Hmm…”
“Ah- a-ahh— that feels… w-weird, Mantis…” Liquid’s tired dick twitched back to
life the more Mantis rubbed at where the dildo had pushed Liquid’s organs out
of its damn way. Fuck, that thing really was in there deep… “Ghhn…”
He flexed his abs, pushing it back, and that only seemed to force the thing
further up into him and he hissed. Mantis kept stroking the stretched skin of
his stomach - Liquid was used to that, actually, since Mantis had a noted
tendency of obsessing over that upside-down-V-shaped scar Ocelot had given him
years ago. “Hush, Eli.”
“M-Mantis…”
“Don’t fight it.”
Liquid sagged against him again, whimpering, finally surrendering to the huge,
pleasurable intrusion fully. He pressed exhausted kisses against Mantis’
shoulder, mewling against his skin as the hand on his stomach trailed down,
palming his cock, and Liquid very nearly orgasmed again just at that.
“Look at this,” Mantis whispered into his ear, moving his other hand back
around to press his fingers into the muscle of Liquid’s ass. “Look at yourself,
Eli.”
He struggled to focus his eyes between his legs. He couldn’t see much besides
Mantis’ hand, his own throbbing dick, and his straining thighs.
“You took the whole thing, Eli. Good boy.”
Liquid was too far gone to know if the vague push-pull he felt at his hips now
was Mantis’ psychokinesis, or Mantis was just moving his hands a little and
Liquid was following the move without thinking, but either way his pelvis
rolled, and the dildo shifted inside him (or rather, the dildo stayed still
while Liquid’s body shifted around it), and Liquid yowled like a fucking whore.
“Good boy,” Mantis said again, nuzzling him, still running his fingers over his
cock, still making him rock his hips and fuck himself with the toy.
It was intense.
His head was light, the whole world was spinning, and he could barely breathe,
just clutch at Mantis and pant at the stretching and pressure and movement and
fullness. Eyes shut tight, blood roaring in his ears, all he could think about
was his own desperation.
“Almost at your limit…?” Mantis asked rhetorically.
Liquid nodded weakly anyway, shuddering.
A few quick pumps of the hand on his cock. “Go ahead, Eli,” Mantis said softly,
“you have my permission.”
“Mnn… M-Mantis…!!”
Liquid just about passed into unconsciousness as he orgasmed for the second
time in maybe half an hour. He mostly came to the conclusion that he had
fainted because he didn’t quite remember what happened immediately after that -
just a vague sensation of something very long sliding out, and feeling empty,
and the comforting touch of leather-gloved hands around his waist — next thing
he knew, he was in bed, tucked under a blanket, with Mantis curled up next to
him, playing with his hair and humming some tune Liquid had never heard before
although it sounded familiar somehow.
“That really was too much for you, Eli,” Mantis said, brushing a dried-sweat-
sticky curl of hair off his cheek. “I am surprised you never wanted to stop.”
“It was… good…”
“Shh. You don’t need to talk.”
He grabbed Mantis around the middle and pulled him close, nuzzling his neck,
then kissing his jaw. I love you…
“Mm. I know.”
Let’s do that again sometime.
Mantis sighed. “I will hang onto that thing, then.”
Thank you…
Chapter End Notes
     Fixed the line I ended up casually retconning anyway. Consistency!
***** Final Will and Testament of a Man Without a Name *****
Chapter Summary
     The short leadership of Doom Kangaroo, and the violent death of
     Punching Crab.
     Mature - Graphic Depictions Of Violence
     W/C 4,400
                            1995, Sagaing, Myanmar.
Liquid yawned for approximately the thirtieth time since they’d gotten in the
armored van and started heading towards the mission area — Outer Heaven had
been training and supplying ethnic insurgents in a local village for the past
several weeks, and were now providing soldiers in a final push against State
authorities before the whole contract was up. A through S rank, unit two was
sent, but dammit, Liquid was tired.
“You know,” ribbed Razor Turkey, “you’d probably have a lot more energy if you
didn’t sneak off to Commander Ocelot’s quarters every other night.”
“That’s probably true,” Liquid said, leaning back in the hard, narrow seat with
his arms behind his head, kicking one ankle up onto his opposite knee,
“actually, it is nice to have a little break from all the wild sex once in a
while.”
“Not that Turkey would know, eh?” Punching Crab said.
“Not a chance.”
“Not fair!” Razor Turkey protested, “c’mon, who do you think I am?”
“A kissless virgin,” Wolf stage-whispered from a few seats over. Next to her,
the unit’s other sniper, Drowsy Quoll, put a hand over her mouth and giggled.
“That’s not true!” Razor Turkey yelled, “it isn’t!”
“Shut up,” Doom Kangaroo said, “get serious, all of you. We’re on our way to-”
“Oh, lighten up,” Punching Crab said, “it’s all in good fun. Besides, Turkey -
there’s nothing wrong with being a virgin!”
“Because you get laid so often!” Razor Turkey said.
Doom Kangaroo shook his head. “I swear…”
“They’re always like this,” Brittle Mockingbird said, “you really should just
let them at it.”
“It’d just be nice,” Doom Kangaroo said with gritted teeth, “if either of them-
if any of you would actually respect me as the team leader.”
“We respect you, Kangaroo,” Liquid piped up immediately.
“Yes,” Wolf said, “of course we do.”
“But you’re not exactly Flaming Buffalo.”
“Don’t feel bad, Kangaroo, she was a tough act to follow.”
Doom Kangaroo rolled his eyes at most of the unit members nodding in agreement
at that. “Nevermind. Liquid, you’re sure you’re in good condition for this?”
“You mean he’s sure he won’t nod off in the middle of the battle?” Mellow Zebra
snickered.
Liquid leaned his head to the side, popping his neck. “I’m perfectly fine,” he
said, “it’s just that being on a plane tends to put me a bit to sleep, that’s
all.”
“…weren’t you in the SAS?” Violet Rabbit said.
“I mean when I’m not the one flying the plane.”
“That’s fair,” Brittle Mockingbird said.
Meanwhile, Razor Turkey and Punching Crab were still arguing. The two men in
their immediate neighboring seats, Sly Ibex and Mad Tapir, looked even more
tired than Liquid felt.
“Why do they fight so much?” Drowsy Quoll finally asked.
“A woman,” said the medic going along on this op, Frost Beetle, shaking his
head. “Which one was it again…?”
“Gull… Desert Gull,” said Mellow Zebra.
“She’s the one in the base development unit, right?” said Violet Rabbit, “with
the really big-“
“The big tits, yeah, that’s her!” said Razor Turkey abruptly.
“She likes me way better than him, though,” Punching Crab said.
“She doesn’t like you at all!”
“Nah, she’s just playing hard to get. Women, you know?”
Everyone else glanced at Wolf, Drowsy Quoll, and Fever Tree Frog. They all
shook their heads.
“I think you’ve been outvoted, Crab,” Liquid said.
“Pfft.”
“I heard she was just playing the two of you off each other anyway,” Doom
Kangaroo said, “so there’s really no point in arguing about it, is there?”
“She’s going to have to pick sooner or later…” Sly Ibex muttered.
“If I were her,” said Mad Tapir, “I’d go for someone else entirely.”
“That is a fair point, actually,” Punching Crab said, “well, the first one,
anyway.”
“She’d pick me,” Razor Turkey said, “clearly.”
“No, me!”
“Ha! Man, I hope you get killed by one of those State guys.”
“You’d solve a lot of my problems if you got blown up yourself, you know. You
oughta give it a try!”
They both laughed. Doom Kangaroo groaned and put his face in his hands.
The whole back compartment of the van rattled around as it practically bounced
over a bump in the road. Fever Tree Frog knocked on the partition between the
back and the driver. “Hey, watch it up there!”
“Not my fault these roads are shit!” the driver, Acid Raccoon, called back.
“She almost drove into a rice field,” Creeping Buzzard, their support liaison,
laughed from the passenger seat.
“I did not!!”
“Are we there yet?” Brittle Mockingbird asked.
“Almost…!”
“Not really,” Creeping Buzzard said.
It was another hour before they reached the village, and although it passed
without incident they were all glad to finally arrive and start setting up for
the offensive. Similarly, the Outer Heaven personnel already there were
relieved to be relieved - it was mostly support and intel staff who handled
training and supply orders, so even though they did have a combat unit with
them (E through C rank, unit four, so quite frankly not too much better than
the support and intel folks on their own) they were still slightly on edge at
the prospect of an all-out firefight taking place with them in the thick of it.
“We’ll try not to let the fighting get near the village,” Doom Kangaroo was
assuring one of the NSCN people, “this is an offensive push, the direction of
combat should be headed away from it. Once the dust settles, all you’ll need to
do is hold the line until negotiations start, which at this point you should be
capable of.”
“Just make sure y’all remember the use the environment to your advantage,”
advised Biting Tree Frog, who had been in the village since the start of the
whole assignment and was very glad to be going back to Mother Base today.
“You’ll have some of locals with you, listen to them.”
“Of course,” said Doom Kangaroo, then tried to get back to talking with the
NSCN guys.
Liquid happened across Wolf explaining her different types of ammo to Drowsy
Quoll.
“When I am out on an assassination assignment,” she said, “I like to use
mercury bullets instead of conventional ones.”
“How are they any different?” Drowsy Quoll asked.
“They poison the body. With them, a direct shot is unnecessary - a simple flesh
wound will quickly prove fatal… in about twelve to forty-eight hours.”
“And here I thought you could take all the direct shots you want, Wolf,” Liquid
said.
She rolled her eyes. “Of course I can,” she said, “but if I simply wound the
target, then everyone around them will be so distracted trying to get them
medical attention that there is very little risk of anyone firing at me.”
“And I guess no one ever thinks to test for mercury in their bloodstream?”
Drowsy Quoll asked.
“Oh, it’s already too late by that point.”
“She just likes to be dramatic about the whole thing,” Liquid told Drowsy
Quoll. Suddenly someone bumped into his right shoulder from behind, and he
jumped.
“Watch your blind spot, Liquid,” Frost Beetle said, passing by.
“It’s not a blind spot,” Liquid called after him, annoyed.
Wolf gave him a marginally unimpressed look. “With how often you get infections
in that eye, I am genuinely surprised you can still see out of it.”
“I hear Agama said that if you come in because you got cum in your eye one more
time,” Drowsy Quoll said innocently, “then she’s going to shoot Commander
Ocelot herself.”
“Christ, is that what passes for gossip around here these days?” Liquid
snorted. “Nevermind, we have things to be setting up.” It was none of Drowsy
Quoll’s goddamn business… or Shadow Agama’s, either, for that matter.
According to intel, the State troops would be here in four hours. The plan was
to cut them off at the mountain pass, splitting their own unit into several
small groups and accompanying the local militia to ambush the State soldiers
there, using a pincer strategy. Minimal casualties, hopefully. And there was a
definite drawback in that their vehicles could only get them so far into the
mountains, and they’d have to walk after a certain distance. The Outer Heaven
soldiers wouldn’t break a sweat over this, but it remained to be seen how well
the locals would fare with the heavy weaponry and equipment. (Of course, they
were used to carting around farming tools, so smart money was on them doing
fine.)
“You know,” Wolf said to Liquid as Doom Kangaroo argued with Frost Beetle, who
had gotten sidetracked by a couple sick and injured villagers - healthcare in
this region was very poor, this particular village had no doctor at all — “I
can’t help but feel a little sympathetic towards their struggle for ethnic
sovereignty. I think we are genuinely in the right here, fighting for the Nagas
instead of for the government.”
“Your opinion as a Kurd?” Liquid said. She shrugged and tilted her head in
acknowledgement. “You know we’re not supposed to get emotionally involved,
we’re technically only here because they’re paying us.”
“I know. Rules, and all that.” She smirked at him and started loading her
rifle. “Of course, I do not think that you of all people have much ground to be
criticizing me about following Outer Heaven convention.”
“Sleeping with other members of Outer Heaven is perfectly allowed,” Liquid said
indignantly.
“Yes, but with your superior…?”
“I hadn’t joined yet when we started our relationship.”
“And at the very least, there ought to be a rule against cheating…”
Liquid shook his head irritably. “I don’t care what everyone else seems to
think, I’m not cheating on Ocelot,” he said, “Mantis and I are only friends. He
just happens to have some… boundaries issues.”
“Hm. I did not say anything about Mantis, Liquid.”
“Oh, please. Who else could you have been referring to?”
“Alright, alright, everyone over here,” Doom Kangaroo yelled. “Come on, this is
important. Time to earn your goddamn meal ticket!”
He had a map of the surrounding area (mostly of the mountain pass) that had
been drawn by one of the intel guys, and had a couple places on the sides of
the pass marked. “Wolf, Quoll,” he said, pointing to the one furthest from
where the State troops would be passing through, “your sniping positions are
right here. It’s a good view and it’s a pretty long ledge, so you can move a
significant distance without losing your elevation.”
“Okay,” Drowsy Quoll said.
“You two watch each other’s backs up there. Quiet will hold me personally
accountable if anything happens to our snipers…”
“Dibs on Kangaroo’s diamond when Quiet executes him,” piped up Violet Rabbit.
“Shut up. Rabbit, you, Tapir, and Ibex will be over here. Fever, Raccoon, and
Zebra - over here.”
“Ah, sweet,” Mellow Zebra said, “don’t you worry about a thing, ladies, I’ll
take good care of you.”
“Ten bucks says one of us saves his life in the first five minutes,” Fever Tree
Frog said to Acid Raccoon. She laughed.
“Turkey, Crab, Liquid — right here. You’ll be closest to where we’ll have to
leave the vehicles, so make sure the State troops don’t get past that line.
We’re going to need those trucks.”
“Roger that,” Razor Turkey said brightly.
“I’ll make sure they don’t goof off, Kangaroo,” Liquid snarked.
“And we’ll make sure,” said Punching Crab, “that Saladin’s precious son doesn’t
harm a hair on his pretty head.” Liquid rolled his eyes.
“Whatever,” said Kangaroo, “just do your jobs. Mockingbird, you’re with Beetle
and I.”
“You two had better take good care of Mockingbird,” said Razor Turkey, “don’t
want to explain to his mama why her kid barely out of diapers was shot to death
in Burma.”
“That’s not funny,” Brittle Mockingbird muttered, “my mother died in the civil
war.”
“Which one? You’re African, just saying ‘the civil war’ doesn’t narrow it down
much.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“If necessary,” Doom Kangaroo said loudly, talking over Brittle Mockingbird and
Razor Turkey, “Mockingbird will join up with Fever’s group and I’ll escort
Beetle to any wounded combatants.”
“Don’t hesitate to call in over radio if you need me,” Frost Beetle said. “You
have nothing to prove here. We have no greater cause than the cold, hard cash
the Naga people are paying us - so try not to die for it.”
                               Four hours later.
“Gonna be a while before we see anything, huh,” said Punching Crab, “since
we’re at the end of the pass and all.”
“Most likely,” said Liquid, looking over their little bit of natural cover with
his binoculars. “I suspect we’ll get at least a couple people slipping past the
others, though.”
“Yeah,” Razor Turkey said, “didn’t intel say that we’re way outnumbered…?”
“We have the tactical advantage,” Punching Crab said dismissively.
“Just stay on your toes,” Liquid warned. “Ah, I think I can see live fire at
the mouth of the pass now. Right on time.”
All they could really do was listen to radio chatter as they waited to see if
the combat would progress to their firing range. The first two groups of E
through C rank combatants had to fall back, citing minor injuries, which sent
Frost Beetle and Doom Kangaroo more towards the front line. There was an
explosion, which, after a smattering of Nagamese communication, one of the
local militiamen excitedly confirmed that that had been a State vehicle they’d
just blown up.
“They brought a convoy into the pass?” Razor Turkey said. “They’re gonna get
bottlenecked!”
“They must not know the area as well as we do,” Punching Crab said, “or at
least, as well as the villagers do. As I said: the tactical advantage goes to
us.”
“Tatmadaw Kyee troops are headed up the pass on horses,” came over the radio
from one of the NSCN commanders.
“Groups at the end of the pass - you got that?” came from Doom Kangaroo.
“Understood,” Liquid said into the radio.
“Acknowledged,” crackled Tapir’s voice.
“We will pick them off as they pass by,” sounded Wolf.
As Liquid watched through the binoculars, a few of the approaching cavalry were
shot right off their horses - which, riderless, passed harmlessly by Liquid and
his comrades a few short minutes later.
“Do you think they eat horse around here?” Punching Crab wondered out loud.
                             Twenty minutes later.
“Liquid! Your right! Your right, dammit!!”
“What?!”
“You really are half-blind in that eye,” Razor Turkey said, shoving him to the
side, “just cover the left. I’ll handle this.”
“More guys coming!” Punching Crab yelled, peering over the cover. “Jesus, I
know they knew there was a rebellion brewing out here, but I swear they sent
half their army!”
“We’re doing fine,” Liquid said, quickly reloading his rifle, internally
seething about the ‘half-blind’ comment. “Besides, this is fun.”
“You’re a fuckin’ sociopath, Liquid.”
“Hey, maybe that’s what Commander Ocelot sees in him!” Razor Turkey laughed,
firing from around the rock formation.
“I thought the saying was oppositesattract,” Punching Crab said.
“Really? I guess that explains why an ugly son of a bitch like yourself is
going after Gull.”
“If that’s the case, then I guess you really do have a better chance with her
after all!”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Liquid shouted, “you could at least try to engage the
enemy while you’re busy running your mouths!”
A grenade arced gracefully over the rock they were using for cover.
Half a second later, an explosion.
Punching Crab was gone.
Razor Turkey stood there, right next to where Punching Crab had been, covered
in blood and gore with his mouth wide open. It wasn’t until Liquid’s ears had
stopped ringing that he realized that Razor Turkey was not screaming. In fact,
he wasn’t doing anything. Would have definitely been shot in the head by now if
it hadn’t been for the rock separating them and the State troops.
“Turkey!” Liquid yelled, “snap out of it!”
Razor Turkey just stared at what was left of Punching Crab.
“Come on, you’ve seen shit like this before!! Pull yourself together!”
“Crab, Turkey, Liquid! We saw the explosion, what’s your status?” came over the
radio.
“Crab’s dead, Kangaroo,” Liquid replied. “He got practically vaporized. It
looks like a meat-packing plant back here.”
“Damn! Any other injuries to report?”
“Minor shrapnel wounds on my end,” Liquid said, impatiently wiping blood out of
his eyes (felt like a cut on his forehead) with his sleeve, “nothing serious.
Turkey! What about—“
Razor Turkey just… gaped, and slowly put his hands to his chest, then pulled
them away, goggling at the blood on them.
“…I can’t tell, he won’t respond to me. Maybe his hearing was affected? He was
a lot closer to it than I was. Hey, Turkey! Oi!!”
“Crab,” Razor Turkey whispered.
“Anyway, he’s covered in blood and I don’t know how much of it is Crab’s.
Sending Beetle over here might be a good idea.”
“Beetle’s working on Raccoon. She’s not-“
“I suspect she has a spinal injury,” Frost Beetle’s voice cut across, “we can’t
move her out of here except on a stretcher, and I can’t just leave her myself,
not until she’s stabilized. Turkey’s just going to have to make do with
whatever first aid Liquid can provide.”
“With fucking what?” Liquid snapped into the radio receiver. “I can rub some
dirt on him if that’ll help.”
“Fall back,” Kangaroo ordered, “you two retreat to the vehicles. Hold your
position there.”
“Understood. Come on, Turkey. …Turkey!”
He reached out and pushed Razor Turkey by the shoulder, hard, snarling. Razor
Turkey barely reacted, taking a few steps away from Liquid but his eyes were
still fixed on his hands. Liquid growled.
“I’m going to miss out on the rest of the battle because of you. Come on,
Turkey, the fighting should be over soon anyway and we’ve a convoy to defend.”
They left the scattered flesh and fragmented bone that had once been Punching
Crab and headed back to the vehicles - or, rather, Liquid just barely coaxed
Razor Turkey into following him quietly, usually by physically grabbing his
sleeve and dragging him along behind him. With Wolf and Drowsy Quoll providing
cover fire, they left the pass largely without incident, with Liquid only
having to turn around and return fire a handful of times.
Liquid dumped the still-obviously-shell-shocked Razor Turkey in a Humvee and
grabbed a rocket launcher, climbing to the top of the Humvee and setting up,
just in case any State troops actually managed to get far enough to be a
tangible threat to their transportation. He had the hatch open so that Razor
Turkey, staring off into space down below, could hypothetically hand him more
ammo if he needed it.
“Crab’s dead,” Liquid heard Razor Turkey mutter to himself down there.
“Yes,” Liquid said, “yes he is.”
“I’m… I’m covered in his blood… his… his flesh…”
“Yes you are.”
“He’s- oh my god he’s all over me, oh my god—“
“If you’re feeling so talkative all of a sudden,” Liquid drawled, “can you tell
me if you’re wounded or not? Or better yet, take care of it yourself. I can’t
tell at a glance and I have no interest in examining you.”
“He’s all over me, he’s all over me, Crab’s all over me…”
“Get a grip, Turkey! This isn’t the first time, and as long as you stay with
Outer Heaven, it won’t be the last.”
A thin whine came up from the interior of the Humvee, and Liquid, after
checking the fighting in the pass with his binoculars, glanced down. “-—bloody
fucking hell!!”
Razor Turkey was clawing at himself, frantically scratching at every bit of
skin available and tearing at his uniform, trying desperately to scrape
Punching Crab’s blood off his body with his nails. “Get him off me,” he
whispered harshly, eyes wide, “get him off me, get him off me, get him off me…”
“Stop that, you’re going to wound yourself!!”
“Get him off me get him off me get him off me get him off me—“
“Beetle!” Liquid yelled over the radio, “Turkey’s losing it!”
“What?”
“Should I knock him out?”
“What- you don’t have tranquilizer rounds there, do you?”
“I was thinking more of a chokehold until he loses consciousness,” Liquid said,
glancing at the pass again. There was still fighting going on, and it might
very well come this way, he didn’t want to waste his opportunity and fail his
assignment just because he had to babysit a man having some kind of psychotic
break.
“Don’t do that,” Frost Beetle said, “just restrain him so he can’t hurt
himself.”
Irritably wiping blood off his face again, Liquid jumped down into the Humvee
and quickly CQCed Razor Turkey into submission and handcuffed him — not that he
put up much of a fight, hell, Liquid wasn’t entirely sure that Razor Turkey
even knew he was there, he just kept up his thousand-yard stare and his rapid,
breathless whimperings of “He’s all over me get him off me get him off of me
his blood’s all over me get it off get it off get it off-“
Liquid left Razor Turkey immobilized and climbed back on top of the Humvee,
waiting at the ready with the rocket launcher. He only got one shot off on a
straggler on a horse (it was, admittedly, very much overkill) before the
announcement came over the radio that the State was calling for a ceasefire and
was willing to start negotiations as soon as convenient, and would fall back to
the other side of the mountains in the meantime. In other words, they had
surrendered.
A huge cheer echoed around the mountain pass from the locals, and maybe some of
the E through C rank soldiers who had spent the past few weeks with them, and
possibly Wolf too. Liquid leaned over the Humvee’s hatch and looked down at
Razor Turkey, who was lying on the floor.
“Did you hear that, Turkey?” Liquid said, “we won.”
Razor Turkey just started screaming.
                                  That night.
“Did you happen to catch what kind of meat this is?” Liquid asked Wolf, taking
another bite.
“Smoked,” she replied.
“I meant what kind of animal.”
“You don’t know that, and you still put it in your mouth…? You really do take
after your father.”
The Outer Heaven members who hadn’t already left (the combat units, Frost
Beetle, and a handful of support personnel) had to be in Mandalay by 1300
tomorrow, but in the meantime tonight the villagers had insisted they join in
on a celebration of the ceasefire. There were bonfires, dancing, music, and of
course food, which was the primary reason why most of the soldiers participated
- although some of them were joining in on the dancing, looked like Brittle
Mockingbird was getting along with this one village girl his age really well -
but not all of them. Punching Crab was the only casualty on Outer Heaven’s end,
although Acid Raccoon was laid up somewhere and word hadn’t really gotten out
about her condition yet. Razor Turkey was nowhere to be seen, Doom Kangaroo had
gone off somewhere with some of the locals a while ago, and Frost Beetle was
busy with wounded.
“Nevermind,” Liquid said. “Where did Kangaroo go, anyway?”
“He went to help collect bodies,” Drowsy Quoll, who was sitting on Wolf’s other
side, said.
“The village priest insisted that they be buried as soon as possible,” Wolf
said, “is that just a Christian thing, or…?”
“Not really,” Drowsy Quoll said, “I think he just wants to ensure they won’t
rot in the pass.”
“Either way, Kangaroo’s going to need a shovel to get Crab’s body,” Liquid
said. “He was all in pieces after that grenade.”
“Speaking of grenades,” Frost Beetle said loudly, sitting down heavily on
Liquid’s other side, “you said you had shrapnel wounds, Liquid.” He gave him a
critical look. “I can see blood on your forehead.”
“Hm?” Liquid wiped it away again. “It’s dry already, the bleeding stopped a
while ago. I’m fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“Well, my left arm still hurts a little, but other than that…”
Liquid rolled his eyes and kept eating as Frost Beetle grabbed his left arm and
rolled up his (admittedly slightly torn) sleeve. There was one wound that was
still oozing blood just a little bit, and had an obvious although small chunk
of shrapnel in it.
“Why didn’t you come see me about it as soon as we got back to the village?”
Frost Beetle snapped, “the metal needs to be removed, the wound cleaned,
irrigated, and bandaged—“
“You were busy,” Liquid said with a shrug, “we can deal with it after you eat,
another forty-five minutes won’t cause any more harm.”
“Thirty minutes,” Frost Beetle grumbled, taking some anishi himself, “and then
I’ll see you in the temporary hospital.”
“How is Raccoon?” Wolf asked.
“Stable. I felt alright leaving her in the care of those villagers I’ve been
sort of training medically. They picked everything up pretty quick.”
“So, she’ll recover?” Drowsy Quoll said. Frost Beetle nodded. “How’s Turkey?”
“I had to sedate him. Hopefully he’ll feel a bit better when he wakes up. Oh,”
he added, chewing thoughtfully, “he was actually completely physically
unharmed. Crab’s body must have shielded him from the blast.”
“Probably wasn’t intentional,” Liquid said, “it all happened too fast. Just a
case of wrong place, right time.”
“You should count yourself lucky you only had minor wounds, Liquid,” Frost
Beetle said, “I swear, they’d better not get infected… you might have delayed
treatment, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be on the receiving end of one of
Mantis’ tantrums if there are any complications…”
“I’ll be fine,” Liquid said.
There was a kind of pause while they all ate and drank and gazed vaguely into
the fire.
Finally, Drowsy Quoll said, “do you think Kangaroo will wait until we get back
to Mother Base to tell Gull about Crab, or will he have the Boss tell her, or
will no one break the news personally to her at all…?”
“Who knows,” Wolf said. “This is the first time we have lost someone in our
unit since Kangaroo took command, is it not?”
“It is,” Liquid said.
“I wonder how well he will take it…”
***** Diamond Dogs *****
***** Gabir *****
Chapter Summary
     “'It’s likely he would have died without you, and for that I thank
     you.'”
     Mature - Rape/Non-Con
     W/C 2,040
Chapter Notes
     If Kojima can do it, then so can I
     (our boy!!!!! -pp)
                             199X, Southern Iraq.
The young Iraqi placed a small plate of dry, indeterminate food in the middle
of the floor of Liquid’s cell. Liquid glared at it, then at him.
“I’m not eating that,” he said flatly.
“You should,” the young man said, not making eye contact. (He was the only one
in the camp who actually used the masculine ‘you’ when talking to Liquid.)
“You… haven’t eaten in several days.”
“Of course I haven’t. I’m starving myself, haven’t you noticed?” He turned his
head deliberately, squaring his shoulders. “If death is the only way I can get
out of this hellhole, so be it.”
“But you- you can’t.”
“I can and I will.”
“No, I mean, you can’t. I’m sure you can’t. You say you will but you could
never let yourself.”
Liquid glanced at the young man, surprised. He was still staring determinedly
at the ground, as though afraid to look into Liquid’s eyes. “Excuse me?”
“If you didn’t have such a strong… will to live, then you would have died
already, just like the others. I don’t think you can let yourself give up.” He
glanced up at Liquid, but looked away again almost immediately. It was almost
like he was… flustered, Liquid supposed? “A-And you… I think you do have
something to live for, pilot. You have people you want to get back to.”
Liquid narrowed his eyes slightly, waiting for him to go on.
“I- I hear you calling out in your sleep sometimes,” the Iraqi went on
nervously. “I think one of the names is Man- Mant… Mantez? And father and
mother, it’s how you say mom and dad in English, isn’t it?”
Liquid snorted.
“So… please eat, pilot.”
There was a long pause. Liquid refused to move a muscle, barely breathing, his
gaze fixed disinterestedly off to the side while the young Iraqi stood stiffly
in front of him.
Suddenly the young man started, and fumbled at his belt, and for a hot second
Liquid thought he was going to take out his gun and force Liquid to eat - of
course it made sense, didn’t it, as the insurgents’ last hostage it was in
their best interests to keep him alive, no matter how badly that worked out for
everyone in the camp — but instead he unclipped his canteen from his belt and
half-crouched, holding it out to Liquid, eyes wide.
“Y-You must be really dehydrated,” he said, “they, my comrades, I mean, we
don’t give you enough water. I don’t think… I don’t think it’s right, pilot.
Please drink.”
Liquid hesitated, but took the canteen from him and, after a long while just
staring at either it or the young man, took a sip. God the water felt good
against his parched tongue.
“…why are you so nice to me?” he asked in a much softer voice than he’d
intended.
The young Iraqi opened his mouth to answer, but he didn’t have one.
                               Some time later.
Liquid slowly started to come back to his senses, but he wished he didn’t. His
hands were tied together behind his back, his shirt sticking unpleasantly to
his skin with sweat and grime, and his pants were shoved down around his ankles
- weakly he pressed his legs together, for as little dignity as that would
salvage. Just moving that much hurt. Just breathing hurt.
At least he was alone for the moment. The only traces of other men in the room
were those smeared on Liquid’s face and dripping out of his asshole, mixed with
blood. He spat on the ground next to him, but it didn’t do much to remove the
overwhelmingly bitter, salty taste in his mouth.
He still felt kind of detached from what had just happened. That was fine. He’d
lost track of how many times he’d gone through it, so it was just as well if he
could no longer bring himself to react to it.
There was some scuffling outside the door to the room he was tied up in.
The door slammed open, and that nice insurgent who was only around Mantis’ age
was bodily shoved in with a panicked expression on his face. Then the door shut
behind him. Liquid’s heart sunk.
“Th-this wasn’t my idea,” the young man blurted out, looking anywhere in the
room besides Liquid. “I never wanted to see you like this, pilot, I’m sorry—“
“They threw you in here with me?” Liquid said dryly.
“I, I’m, I’m sorry, it was just - you weren’t the only one who noticed I was t-
trying to be kind to you- that I feel sorry for you—- they said I was being
indulgent and traitorous and,” he pressed his back against the door, still
refusing to look at Liquid, “I think they want me to- to prove myself, or
something. Or maybe they just want to torment me for my soft heart. I don’t
know.” He swallowed hard. “There’s a reason why I never joined in in this… this
brutality, pilot.”
Liquid laughed hoarsely. “Oh? And what reason is that?”
The young Iraqi very briefly glanced at him, then looked away again. “I just…
I… ah…”
“No, I get it,” Liquid said, laughing again, although it was more bitter than
hollow now. “You’re so nice to me all the time, but saying you feel sorry for
me is only an excuse. If you really felt any sympathy for me, you’d help me
escape, at least try to stop your comrades from raping me every few days.” He
laughed some more, and it was starting to border on hysterical. “You don’t care
about what they’re doing to me. You only won’t join in with them because you’re
a coward.”
“I’m-“ the young man said, trying to flatten himself against the door, eyes
wide and fixed on Liquid now, “I am a coward, but—“
“But what? I don’t even think that’s the whole reason. No, nevermind, I don’t
think that’s it at all. It’s quite brave to show humanity to your hostage, I
think. You never join in on the fun for a different reason.”
“I—?”
Liquid kept laughing uncontrollably, painfully, unable to stop himself, and he
tilted dangerously, falling on his side and hitting the side of his head
against the ground. “You’re so kind to me. You harbor some kind of feelings for
me, isn’t that right?” He half-lifted his head, then let it drop against the
ground again, then again. “You want to take advantage of me, that’s all! But
you’ve some twisted sense of romance that demands privacy, don’t you? You won’t
join in on the gang-rape because it won’t do anything for you if I’ve already
got a cock in both holes and there’s another half-dozen men pawing at me at the
same time. You want me all to yourself.”
“…”
“And you want me to offer myself to you, too, isn’t that right? I’m too weak
and exhausted to prevent anyone from doing anything to me. If all you wanted
was privacy then you could have had me anytime you wanted, but instead you’re
nice to me. You want me to like you.” He giggled dizzily. “You must have read
about Stockholm syndrome somewhere and it must have turned you on like hell.”
Liquid shut his eyes. He couldn’t stand looking at the young Iraqi anymore.
“This must be just what you were waiting for. …very well.”
He rolled with difficulty onto his back and, turning his head so he was facing
away from the doorway where the young man still stood shock-still (although
Liquid’s eyes were still closed anyway), he spread his legs, shifting his hips
slightly, presenting his bloody, ravaged ass.
“Go ahead,” he said hoarsely, a sick grin on his face, “I can’t stop you. And
perhaps you’ll have the decency to be halfway gentle with me.”
There was a long silence in which neither of them moved, except for the ragged
rise and fall of Liquid’s chest. Then Liquid heard the young Iraqi walk up to
him and, from the sound of it, kneel next to him.
Despite what he had just said, Liquid’s chest tightened and his stomach turned
as he heard the distinct shuffling of fabric that meant the young man was doing
something with his belt. Liquid couldn’t help but tense when he felt the collar
of his shirt get grabbed, and pulled, Liquid half-sitting up painfully with it,
but he didn’t resist. He just kept his head turned away, his eyes closed, and
his thighs parted, hoping to get this over with quickly.
There was the click of a pocketknife extending, and Liquid thought, Of course,
because if there was anyone in this camp who would mercy-kill him, it would be
the ‘nice’ one.
Then he felt the rope at his wrists being cut away.
He didn’t dare move, or even breathe, for a few moments, then he opened his
eyes and looked back at the young Iraqi man, his eyes wide and expression
blank. The man had put his knife down and had pulled out a rag or handkerchief
of some sort, and was wetting it with his canteen.
“I thought,” the Iraqi mumbled, eyes fixed determinedly on his makeshift
washcloth, “that you might appreciate being cleaned.”
Liquid didn’t know what to think. Slowly, carefully, he adjusted his position
so it was less humiliating and marginally more comfortable, and he rubbed
feeling back into the scraped-raw, bleeding skin of his wrists. “If that’s what
you want,” he said eventually, his mouth dry.
“I-I don’t want anything from you, pilot.”
God help him, Liquid was mostly just confused.
The young man scooted closer and, when Liquid didn’t do anything besides stare
at him, carefully cleaned Liquid’s face, then his neck, and his arms, and paid
extra attention to his wrists - Liquid didn’t stop him from removing his shirt
so he could wipe down his chest and back and sides, too. Neither of them said
anything, except for when the young man had washed everything above Liquid’s
waist to the best of his abilities considering the circumstances, and -
suddenly, as though shaken out of a trance - sheepishly asked if Liquid would
rather do this himself.
Liquid just shook his head.
It was almost unsettling, how gentle the man was, and Liquid kept expecting the
other shoe to drop, the young insurgent to flip him over onto his stomach and
nail him into next week. It never came, though. Not even after he gave Liquid
his canteen so he could rinse his mouth out and get some much-needed hydration.
“I just,” the boy said abruptly as he wrung the washcloth out, “I just don’t
understand h-how my comrades can do… can do this to you and still call
themselves men. You might be our enemy, pilot, but you’re still a human being…
you’re still a creation of God…”
Liquid didn’t correct him on either of those points.
“…I know they only want to break your will, but… at this point, I- I don’t
think it’ll happen it all. You’re too spirited. You’re— you’re… unconquerable,
pilot. And I don’t think I’m the only one that knows that, either. I think-
that the others, they just enjoy humiliating and violating you. …but I don’t
understand it myself.”
He helped Liquid put his clothes back on with an expression that clearly stated
‘I’m sorry I can’t get you any clean clothing’.
“I don’t want to understand it,” he said quietly.
“…what do you want me to say?” Liquid said.
“H-Huh?”
“Do you want me to thank you? to forgive you? to absolve you of never lifting a
hand to save me? Do you want me to say I love you? …or do you want me to call
you a coward and tell you I hate you more than anyone or anything in the
world?”
“I…”
The boy helped Liquid stand.
“Or,” Liquid said, not quite looking at him, “do you simply want me to remember
you for the rest of my miserable life?”
“That… yes. I suppose that’s… all I really want.”
Liquid laughed again, just once, very softly, as they started walking back to
Liquid’s normal cell.
“I think I can manage that.”
***** Gabir (Initial concept) *****
Chapter Summary
     So I mentioned in the comments section of "Gabir" (the original, now-
     deleted one) that it was actually a rewrite of a different scrap I
     had for a separate project. Now, if you follow me on tumblr and have
     been for a while, you might remember that I used to post about this
     huge MGS fic I was planning out, the working title of which was #MGS
     Offscreen (link removed). It got stuck in development hell for a
     while and eventually abandoned a while ago because so many of the
     ideas for that fic (that is, my headcanons/fantheories) were already
     being folded into and expanded upon in other fics. In particular,
     this series!
     Gabir's character was a direct reference to an extremely similar - in
     fact, the same, to be honest - character in #MGS Offscreen, although
     nothing involving him was ever posted.
     Until now.
     Mature - Rape/Non-Con, Graphic Depictions of Violence
     W/C 1,539 + 389 + 1,494
Chapter Notes
     (double update today because it's valentine's day!!!!)
     Linebreaks indicate that these were originally written as three
     different ficlets. Note that #MGS Offscreen was intended to be
     entirely canon-compliant, so a lot of the details aren't going to
     line up with Make It Home et al.
I wonder what the rationale here is, Liquid thought, glancing around the camp.
He wasn’t the only merc hired for this job, which wasn’t unusual at all, but it
was kind of strange for someone to hire not only a bunch of independent dogs of
war, but also get contracts with at least two actual mercenary companies, one
of which was the PF formerly known as Diamond Dogs, Outer Heaven.
Liquid was pretty sure, in fact, that the other soldier sitting next to him at
the campfire right now was a member of Outer Heaven. Hard to tell exactly what
was on the patch on his shoulder in this light, of course, but he was… familiar
somehow, and that was the explanation Liquid’s brain supplied.
He was awfully young though. Not like the other guys who’d been surprised to
see what kind of man “that hijacking brat Eli” had grown up to be. (“We thought
you got napalmed!”)
“You look like someone I used to… know, a few years ago,” the merc said
randomly.
“Oh?” said Liquid, sipping his tea.
“…can I tell you something?”
“What?” Liquid was sort of glad that the man couldn’t see him rolling his eyes
in the firelight (not that he was looking at Liquid anyway, just staring into
the flames with his hands clasped and elbows resting on his knees).
“Seeing you here, now… makes me think I really am being haunted.”
“Haunted.”
“Yes, I… a few years ago, during- and after the Gulf War, I was sort of… caught
up, with a bunch of insurgents who refused to accept that the war had ended.
The group I was with, we’d dug in our heels at an abandoned village, and kept
hostages so that no one would be willing to bomb us.” The Outer Heaven soldier
glanced around to make sure that no one else was lounging about close enough to
overhear their conversation, then continued in a slightly lower voice, “there
was one prisoner I remember in particular because he was only, I think, a year
or two older than me, at the most. A British pilot…”
Liquid put the tea down next to him. Couldn’t drink it with the foul taste that
had sprung up in his mouth, or the nausea that passed over him as he realized
who this man was.
“He was… spirited, and they- we found it hard to break him. He didn’t respond
to torture or anything, and he was always, always yelling and screaming and he
injured more than a few of us during escape attempts or just because he was
angry. He - wasn’t treated well at all. Actually,” he said with a strange,
humorless laugh, “he was broken, eventually. It was- it was drugs and rape that
did it, in the end. Mostly the rape, I think. I-“ he checked himself, shifted
his weight uncomfortably, then continued: “I never touched him, I’ll swear on
anything you’d like me to. I didn’t. But…
“I remember this one time - I always felt bad, about the hostages, but for him
especially, since we were close in age and all the other hostages were years
older; it was easy for me to think of the both of us as being the children, the
most innocent of our respective groups. So I was always kind to him, or I tried
to be, at least…” He sighed. “And my countrymen, they accused me of being
indulgent and traitorous. They wanted me to… to prove myself, I suppose, or
maybe they just wanted to torment me for my soft heart. They made me go alone
into the room where he had just been raped by several men-
“I still… I can still see it when I close my eyes,” he said, covering his face
with one hand. “It was terrible. To see someone like that… I saw the state he
was in and I had to ask myself, how could my comrades do this and still call
themselves men? How could they not see that, even if the pilot was our enemy,
he was still a human being, a creation of God… I didn’t understand then how
they could do this evil thing, and I don’t understand it now, either. I-I get
that, for the sanity of everyone else in the camp, they were trying to break
his will, but they… seemed to enjoy violating and humiliating him.
“They threw me in there with him, and the pilot said to me- he said that he’d
always assumed that the reason why I was so nice to him was because I wanted to
take advantage of him, but never joined in the gang-rape because I was either a
coward or… or had some twisted sense of romance that demanded privacy. That was
what he assumed, and now that we were alone and he was already bound and naked
and too broken and exhausted to fight back, he thought… I… he…”
He took a very long breath. “The pilot turned his face away from me and said,
‘Go ahead.’ Those were his words. ‘Go ahead, I can’t stop you, and perhaps
you’ll have the decency to be halfway gentle with me.’”
There was a pause. Liquid stared into the fire. He remembered saying that, but
it was strange, almost like a dream, or rather, like someone else had said it
and the memory of it didn’t really belong in his head. Iraq really seemed like
it had been another world sometimes.
Eventually, the merc went on: “His assumption about me was wrong. I promise
you, I never touched him. After he said that, I simply cleaned him, as gently
as I could, because he was wounded, you see - and then I took him back to his
cell. I still remember how confused he seemed when I did that. I think about it
a lot, actually. About how a man can be so mistreated that even basic human
dignity becomes confusing to him.”
There was another pause, much longer this time. A dog barked somewhere.
“And then the Devil came to our camp.”
“The Devil?” Liquid spoke at last.
“It was sudden. A bombing campaign - I suppose being carried out because we’d
had so many of our hostages die that the only one left was the pilot, and he
was on death’s door anyway. But it wasn’t the bombing that killed, no, it was -
something else. It was the Devil, sweeping through the camp with a sniper rifle
that no one could have been using from a roof no one could have been on. I was
the only survivor.”
“And the pilot?” Liquid said.
“Dead, of course. How couldn’t he be…? Even if the Devil had left him alone, he
was dying - just the fact that he had held on for so long was incredible
enough.”
Liquid laughed suddenly, so loud and bitter a sound that it made not only the
man sitting next to him glance over in surprise, but also some other
mercenaries standing further away. “The Devil came to your camp!” Liquid said,
standing up and brushing dust off his pasts, “you really think it was the
Devil?”
“Everyone but me, dead in less than three minutes,” the man explained, alarmed,
“but as I was riding away I heard the moans of the damned-“
Liquid grabbed him by the collar and jerked him to his feet, his face only an
inch away from his. “You put me through Hell,” he spat, “is it any fucking
wonder I became the Devil?”
The mercenary’s eyes widened to the point where they were in danger of falling
out of their sockets. “You-“ he started.
“Me,” Liquid said, dropping him. He landed on his ass, and Liquid had to
suppress the urge to kick him. “I thought I recognized you, you son of a
bitch.”
The soldier put a hand to his face with a despairing moan. “I thought… I
thought you had died…”
“Plenty of people think that, but they’ve yet to be right.”
“H-How…?”
Liquid squatted in front of him, twisting a fist into his hair to force the man
to look him in the face. “Didn’t you say it yourself?” he said, his voice only
barely above a whisper, “Everyone but you, dead in less than three minutes…
except, of course, for the moans of the damned. I only crippled the men who
brutalized me, not killedthem. That would have been merciful. Those bastards
baked to death in the unforgiving sun.”
“You… you spared me.”
Liquid frowned. “Yes,” he said at length, “I did.” He let go of him, and the
man quickly looked away. Liquid stood back up. “Don’t think I buy any of that
shit about how you felt bad for me,” he said coldly, “if you’d had any
convictions you would have stopped your comrades. I was right back then: you
are a coward.” He turned away, collecting his tea, which was kept warm by the
fire although he still couldn’t stomach drinking it. “Your kindness meant
nothing. I left you alive only because you were my warning to the world.”
“I- a-a warning?”
“That I was not andwillnot be broken.”
===============================================================================
“Hey, Kudu,” said Jade Tree Frog.
“Is he bothering you?” said Scowling Wallaby.
“Wh- who?” said Night Kudu, the former Iraqi insurgent.
“You know,” said Scowling Wallaby, jerking his head over towards the embers of
the previous night’s fire, “blondie over there.”
“Looked like you two got into a bit of a tiff last night,” Jade Tree Frog said.
Night Kudu glanced at where Scowling Wallaby had indicated; Liquid was calmly
cleaning his gun. From this distance, he looked cool and professional, neither
the shell of a man he had been in the prison camp nor the feral, unpredictable
animal he had been the night before. Night Kudu shook his head. “No, there
wasn’t an issue.”
Jade Tree Frog raised an eyebrow. “You’re sure about that?” Scowling Wallaby
said flatly.
“Yes.”
“Because we saw him pushing you around. And you let him.”
Night Kudu shook his head again. “He was just angry.”
“You know, if you want us to settle the matter with him, we’d be more than
willing to,” Jade Tree Frog said, “you’re still new, so maybe you don’t know
this, but we look after our own at Outer Heaven. And we especially don’t let
some upstart stray rough up our soldiers.”
“Especially if said upstart stray is that brat Eli,” Scowling Wallaby added,
rolling his eyes. “We knew him when he was twelve years old and throwing
Molotov cocktails at the Boss, Kudu. He doesn’t intimidate us.”
“No, really, it’s fine,” Night Kudu insisted.
“Right,” Liquid said, suddenly appearing behind Scowling Wallaby and Jade Tree
Frog, stepping between them and putting one hand on each of their shoulders.
The two soldiers’ backs stiffened. “There was no argument between us. What’s
his name- Kudu and I just happened to have met before.” He made very pointed
eye contact with Night Kudu. “And nothing in particular happenedthen, either,
did it, Kudu?”
“No, nothing,” Night Kudu agreed quickly.
Liquid smiled joylessly, and it occurred to Night Kudu that the wildness in his
eyes had never left. “Good,” he said, then patted Jade Tree Frog and Scowling
Wallaby’s shoulders, stepping back neatly. “But, just remember, Kudu: the sun
is more forgiving thanIam.” He left.
“What did he mean by that?” Jade Tree Frog said, staring after Liquid.
Night Kudu swallowed hard. “Nothing,” he said again, “it’s nothing.”
===============================================================================
Night Kudu woke up with a start. He… wasn’t where he was supposed to be. Looked
like he was in a vacant butcher’s shop. His hands were tied at the wrists and
the rope was looped over a meat hook above his head, but since he could still
feel his fingers he reasoned that he hadn’t been like that for very long.
There was a tall, emaciated bald man wearing a gas mask standing in front of
him.
“Um… hello,” Night Kudu said, for lack of anything better to say.
“You remember the pilot,” the gas-mask-wearing man said flatly.
There was no need to ask what pilot he was referring to. Night Kudu felt the
blood drain from his face. “Who are you?”
“My name is Mantis.”
That name…, Night Kudu thought, sounds familiar.
“I’m sure you’ve heard it before,” Mantis said, “while guarding the pilot’s
cell…?”
Oh. “He called for you in his sleep,” Night Kudu said.
“I know. My only regret… is that I could not do anything while he was
imprisoned.”
Night Kudu glanced up at the meat hook. The tips of his fingers were starting
to tingle painfully. “What- what do you intend to do now? The pilot, he… he let
me go.”
“I know, he did,” Mantis said, “because you were his warning to the world.”
“That he was not and will not be broken,” Night Kudu murmured almost
reflexively. Liquid Snake’s words from that night had been echoing in his head
ever since.
“Well, Kudu, you will be my warning to the world.” And suddenly he was very
close. “That anyone who dares to even touch my Eli will pay, and pay dearly.”
“I-I never touched him,” Night Kudu stammered, and his head snapped painfully
to the side as if he had been struck. Mantis’ arms didn’t move. Who is this
guy? Night Kudu thought, feeling a bit of what he presumed to be blood
trickling out of his nose, the pilot’s brother? his lover?
“I am not his lover, he is merely important to me,” Mantis said, sounding
disgusted, almost as if he had read Night Kudu’s mind. “I did read your mind,
you idiot, I am the world’s most powerful psychic.”
Night Kudu swallowed hard. “Then you should know- I never, never touched him,
not even when he offered himself to me- I didn’t—“
Again it was like he’d been punched, only this time it was in the stomach and
all the air was forced out of his lungs. “You knew what was going on was
unforgivable, but you were too cowardly to even speak up. That makes you
complicit in my eyes - your negligenceis your guilt, and I can feel your guilt,
Kudu.”
Night Kudu scrambled for breath. There was no point in asking what Mantis was
going to do to him. No point in asking for mercy, either.
Maybe he deserved this.
…
It was… unusual. One of his men had been abducted, so naturally as soon as the
intel team had been able to come up with a general location, Venom had set out
to go bring him back. But… there was no one here. No enemy soldiers, no other
prisoners, no one and nothing.
He was almost starting to wonder if the intel team’s information was inaccurate
or outdated when his attention was caught by a low, dolorous buzzing coming
from inside an abandoned butcher’s shop.
“Think he might be in there, Boss?” came Ocelot’s voice over the radio.
“I don’t know,” Venom responded. It smelled like death in the front room, sweet
and cloying and thick and wet. “If he is, then I doubt he’s still alive.” He
continued to the back, pistol out.
Venom only knew it was him because of the discolored Diamond Dogs patch on one
sleeve.
Night Kudu was strung up from a meat hook, split open from neck to navel, his
ribs wrenched wide like bony fingers reaching out from his chest. His lungs,
heart, stomach, and other organs and offal sagged from the gaping wound,
dripping lazily down to the blood-covered floor. A bit of rotten spleen had
stopped up the drain. Everything was covered in flies, and maggots, moving
constantly over every inch of Night Kudu’s moldering corpse, a shifting,
amorphous mass of black and white.
“Looks like he’s been dead for a few days already,” Venom said into the radio,
holding back a cough from the stench.
“He must have been killed right after he was abducted, then,” Ocelot said,
“pretty showy way to do it, too. Reminds me of a blood eagle.”
“Blood eagle?”
“It’s a ritualized execution method, originating in Norway, although historians
are pretty divided on whether or not it was ever actually used or if it just
existed in skaldic poetry. You cut into the victim’s back, severing the ribs
from the vertebral column, and pull the lungs out through the gap, which causes
the ribs to be forced away from the body. It looks almost like a pair of wings,
which is where it gets the name from-“
Venom wondered why he even bothered asking.
He looked around the room, pulling his scarf up over his mouth and nose. There
was only one set of footprints dried into the blood on the floor, and he
couldn’t see anything around that Night Kudu’s killer could have used to pry
open his ribcage like that, so he supposed that they had taken their tools with
them.
“Think it was a solo job, Boss?” Ocelot said.
“From the looks of things. That would explain why there weren’t any enemies
around…”
“I’ll send some men to recover the body.” They were definitely going to need
hazmat suits for this op…
“Ocelot, do you think this was the work of someone who had something against
Kudu in particular?”
“Hmm. I don’t know, he was a pretty unassuming guy. I’ll check into his
background, see if that clears anything up.”
…
Ocelot was leafing through papers and thinking they should really get on that
whole moving more of their records to a computer system thing when Jeering
Serval walked into his office and saluted.
“Commander Ocelot,” she said, “there’s a rumor going around the base that Kudu
was murdered by a serial killer who’s targeting Diamond Dogs. Is that true,
sir?”
Ocelot stared at her. The guys sent to recover Night Kudu’s body had only just
left. He knew rumors spread fast, but this was ridiculous.
“I doubt it,” he said, looking back to the papers he’d dug up on Night Kudu -
his personal background as he gave it when he first joined, something like a
résumé. “I think it’s more likely that this was personally motivated.”
“But Kudu was such a nice guy, sir, who’d want to kill him for personal
reasons? Plus, the way he was killed was so… grisly…”
“Mm.” He’d known that Night Kudu was Iraqi originally, but hadn’t remembered
that he had been part of one of those scattered groups of insurgents who had
persisted after the Gulf War by refusing to release coalition hostages. Now,
that situation sounded familiar… “I need to make a phone call. In the meantime,
Serval, don’t spread that ridiculous rumor about a serial killer around. If
Kudu died because of an issue that could affect the rest of Outer Heaven, the
Boss will address it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mantis’ cell phone rang. Encrypted number, as usual. He picked it up.
“Bogomol.”
“Stop calling me, Ocelot.”
“It’s not like I’m calling for pleasure. I’ll cut straight to the point. That
hostage camp Eli was held in last year - there was one soldier he let escape.”
“Yes, I know.”
“And he worked for us. Past tense.”
“What is your point?”
He heard Ocelot sigh over the line. “Assuming he wasn’t indiscriminately killed
just for being one of us, that’s the only thing I can find that would give
someone, somewhere a reason to murder him. I thought you might know something
about it.”
“Well, it wasn’t Eli. He has been in Iran for the past week.”
“Hmm.” There was short pause. “And where were you?”
“…”
“…listen, Bogomol. I realize you have an overprotective streak when it comes to
Eli, but-“
“Overprotective? I only did what was appropriate,” Mantis snapped.
“You certainly did a number on him. I’d compliment your handiwork if it hadn’t
been on someone who reported to me.”
“It is not as though I enjoyed it.”
“It’s not as though you regret it, either. You know, Bogomol, most people
wouldn’t be able to get away with abducting, torturing, and killing a Diamond
Dog…”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No,” Ocelot said, and Mantis could almost hear the frown. “It’d be a waste of
personnel to try to take you to task for this. I’d just advise you to keep your
protectiveness in check in the future… if only because I’m sure Eli would be
insulted if he heard about this.”
 
***** Normal. *****
Chapter Summary
     Liquid submits to his punishment.
     Explicit - dubcon
     W/C 1,591
                         200X, FOXHOUND headquarters.
When Mantis hooked a finger into the lead of Liquid’s collar and yanked him
forward so that the tip of his nose was almost touching his gas mask’s filter,
Liquid only sucked in a quick breath and stayed silent.
“I told you,” Mantis hissed, “to stay away from him.”
Liquid didn’t say anything.
Mantis let go of his collar, letting Liquid fall back on his heels. After a
tense moment, Mantis broke eye contact first.
“You idiot.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Liquid said. His voice was curiously devoid of emotion -
his mind was full of it, but all in conflict. Shame, regret, nervousness…
stubborn defiance and indignation, too.
“Bed,” Mantis said with the same tone of voice one might use to command a
poorly-behaved dog, still averting his eyes. “Now, Eli.”
Liquid didn’t protest. For now, anyway.
He sat on his and Mantis’ shared bed and remained silent, and barely moved
except when Mantis glared at him, as Mantis irritably stripped him. He was
looking evenly at Mantis. But it wouldn’t last.
Sometime around when he was naked (except for the collar) and pinned to the
mattress with no room for argument, Liquid started to get uncomfortable. He
knew he was being punished, obviously, he knew he would be punished when he’d
gone to Ocelot - but he’d been in one of his damned moods and he hadn’t stopped
to consider the potential consequences, and now that it was happening he was
starting to break out in a cold sweat.
It was mostly the fact that Mantis wasn’t talking right now, or even letting
him hear his thoughts. The complete silence, apart from breathing, coming from
his lover made Liquid anxious.
“Mantis…” Liquid started as Mantis ran his hands down over his body, not with
his usual almost teasing gentleness, but not roughly, either. “Mantis…?”
He winced as one of Mantis’ hands reached his groin - he was still a little
oversensitive - and tried to twist his body away from the probing fingers, but
Mantis wasn’t about to let him go anywhere.
Ordinarily Mantis would have sternly said “Sit still” or “Do not move” or
something along those lines as he reaffirmed the psychokinesis keeping Liquid
held against the bed. But not tonight. He stayed silent, his eyes narrowed and
cold, his anger obvious in every movement.
“Er…”
It wasn’t until Liquid was painfully erect (not that that took too long) that
he started to crack.
“M-Mantis, say something. Don’t do this to me.”
Mantis’ eyes flicked up to his for a second, then away again. He was still
angry. His hand worked over Liquid’s cock but it was dry and chafing, no lube
and Mantis not doing anything to spread pre-seminal fluid around…
Liquid shifted his hips as much as he could with how he was restrained. “P-
Please.”
Nothing.
“Mantis, s-say something. Talk to m-me, please, I w-want to hear your voice.”
He wasn’t getting out of this that easily.
Liquid whined. “You don’t h-have to do it out loud. Please, I know y-you’re mad
at me — I know you have a-a right to be m-mad at me—- a-ahgk! Mantis, th-that
hurt!”
Not even a smug “It was supposed to.”
Liquid chewed on his lower lip, struggling between accepting his punishment
like a man or giving into the apprehension fluttering in his belly and asking
Mantis to stop. Oh, Mantis would stop if he asked him to, of course he would,
but he’d still be angry at him and hell, he might be angrier at him for
cuckolding him and then refusing to cooperate with being reminded of his place.
Of who he belonged with. Belonged to.
But damn it, Liquid didn’t have to like this. He didn’t like this.
And maybe Mantis was thinking that he wasn’t squirming enough, because Mantis
leaned over him, reducing the space between their bodies to a matter of inches.
He must have purposefully positioned his head so that the lamplight would glint
off of the lens of his gas mask just right, so that Liquid couldn’t actually
see his eyes - the only real indicator of Mantis’ feelings towards Liquid right
now was the intentionally horrible handjob still being forced on him.
With Mantis so close, Liquid found himself feeling oddly claustrophobic.
“Mantis, I-I just— Mantis- please, slow d-down a little, at least… nnh… Mantis,
g-god… ow…”
A scrape of nails. Liquid’s whole body stiffened.
“Ow, fuck, M-Mantis—-“
Mantis leaned a little closer, still deathly silent, the arm that wasn’t
currently half-mangling Liquid’s dick braced across his clavicles. It would
only take a slight movement for him to cut off Liquid’s air.
It was more about the threat than the actual act of choking, Liquid knew that.
Still, he pre-emptively took a deep breath, and held it - and Mantis didn’t
move, and Liquid didn’t dare release it and take another until he’d started to
go a little light-headed.
“Mantis… Mantis, p-please…”
God, he was mad at him. He really was.
Between the silence, and the manhandling, and the fact Mantis was right on top
of him and he couldn’t fucking move, Liquid, loathe as he was to admit it,
started to freak out a little.
“M-Mantis, Mantis, please, Mantis, oh g-god—“
His heart was hammering faster than it should have been right now. It was
getting hard to breathe, even though Mantis’ arm was still resting where it
wouldn’t interfere with his airway. Again he tried to wriggle out from under
Mantis, but he wasn’t any more successful this time.
Liquid felt excruciatingly, humiliatingly aware of how sore his jaw still was,
and the salty, bitter taste in the back of his throat.
“I-I’m sorry,” he choked out.
Mantis’ hand stilled. He waited.
“I am so sorry,” Liquid went on, his voice tight, “I w-wasn’t thinking, really,
I wasn’t, I know I’ve got n-no self-control, Mantis, I’m s-sorry, it was just a
stupid impulse- I w-won’t do it again, really, I won’t, o-or I’ll try not to,
anyway— I’ll t-try to behave myself—-“
“Will you?” Mantis finally said.
Liquid just about cried in relief. He nodded. “I-I’ll work on my impulse
control, r-really, I will, I s-swear… I didn’t m-mean to… Mantis, I’m s-sorry.
I am, I’m sorry, I-I love you, not him—!”
“Do you?” Mantis murmured. His hand started moving again, but this time he
brushed his fingers over the head, starting to spread the slickness around a
little. Liquid shuddered. “You seem a little too easily tempted to make that
claim, Eli.”
“You know h-how I feel about you, Mantis, p-please don’t do this to me. Don’t
try to c-confuse me like this. I love y-you, that’s all, I just… I… f-fuck,
Mantis…”
“Do you really think you can talk your away out of this?”
“I’m sorry,” Liquid repeated, “I’m s-sorry.” He could feel tears pricking his
eyes, and he hated it.
Liquid felt sure he was on the verge of completely losing it and flying into an
outright violent panic, but thankfully Mantis picked up on that. He drew back
enough to give Liquid a little space to breathe, the hand not on his cock
moving harmlessly down to his chest, and the hand on his cock stroking gently
now, with obvious intent to pleasure.
“You know the rules, Eli,” Mantis said, but his voice was warm and patient now
instead of icy. “You know why I gave you these rules.”
“Ah… ah, o-oh, god… yes, Mantis, I-I know…”
“You know there’s only one rule that is actually important.”
“Y-Yes… don’t get involved w-with Ocelot, yes, I- nnh— I know, M-Mantis, I’m
sorry, i-it’s… difficult…”
“He can’t have you, Eli.”
“I, I know - I’m sorry, Mantis, I’m sorry—“
“You belong to me.”
“Yes, ahhh, yes, M-Mantis… I’m yours… please, p-please, oh god…”
Mantis’ hand started to move faster again, but it felt better this time since
it was the goodkind of friction now. Liquid rocked his hips against him,
moaning softly.
“Close?” Mantis murmured, leaning too near again and nudging Liquid’s ear with
the filter of his gas mask, affectionately.
“M-Mhmn…!”
Liquid had learned long ago that it was entirely possible for an orgasm to be
at least partially fear-induced. Whenever he fucked up this badly, he was
reminded of that lesson.
But his relief was unspeakable as Mantis wiped his hand off and whispered in
Liquid’s ear: “Enough then, Eli. I will always give you another second chance
as long as you end the night with me…” He always did that. Forgave him. Somehow
Liquid always expected he wouldn’t.
He was more scared of Mantis leaving him than anything else.
It took Liquid longer than it should have to get his breathing and heartrate
under control, and he wasn’t sure if lying in Mantis’ lap and letting him pet
his hair helped, or just made him feel more jittery. Maybe it didn’t really
matter. The point was that Mantis wasn’t furious with him anymore - he’d doled
out Liquid’s punishment, and Liquid had promised to at least try not to give
into the temptation to fool around with Ocelot behind Mantis’ back in the
future, and now things could go back to normal.
Normal. Where Liquid and Ocelot were nothing else besides commander and
subordinate, and the fact that they had been lovers back in ’94-’95 was
completely irrelevant. Mantis was the only one Liquid wanted or needed.
“Yes, Eli,” Mantis murmured, brushing hair away from his face. “That is exactly
right.”
“I… I love you, Mantis…”
“I know. Good boy.”
***** Character portraits *****
 
(Liquid per the end of Wherever I Go, I'll Make It Home; Liquid at Outer
Heaven) (Mantis at Outer Heaven)

(Liquid and Wolf at Outer Heaven)

(Gabir, h/t blackorb)
***** Fanart *****
Chapter Summary
     Fanart for chapter six of Wherever I Go, I'll Make It Home, drawn by
     FoxLoaf!
Chapter Notes
     As I mentioned elsewhere, FoxLoaf is no longer talking to me for
     reasons unknown. But I had prior (tacit) permission to post this, so
     I'm having PP reupload it anyway.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Chapter End Notes
     @FoxLoaf:
***** Wanting, Wanting, Wanting *****
Chapter Summary
     Mantis says the wrong thing and Liquid has a moment.
     Mature - implied Rape/Non-Con(?)
     W/C 911
                         200X, FOXHOUND headquarters.
“Why do you make me choose between making you happy and keeping you safe?”
Mantis whispered, staring down at Liquid from where he was sitting on his
stomach, pinning him to the floor.
“I don’t,” Liquid said simply.
“You do. The second I try to institute some rules for your own good, you fuss
about me being ‘paranoid’ and ‘controlling’, and give me no choice but to dress
them up in this stupid sex game.”
Liquid scoffed and rolled his eyes.
Mantis narrowed his own. “And if I leave you to your own devices, you only get
hurt. I cannot stand that, Eli.”
“What do you want from me, Mantis? I don’t actually need you to protect me or
take care of me, I’m a grown man-“
“-who makes horrible decisions as a matter of routine…”
“If you had your way, I’d be locked in a padded room somewhere and only you
would have the key,” Liquid said with a strange smile.
“Have you forgotten, Eli? For your sake, I would do anything.”
Liquid’s strange smile widened. “You just want me for yourself,” he said
hoarsely.
Unsettled by the dark turn in Liquid’s thoughts, Mantis pulled back - or tried
to, Liquid caught him by the wrists, forcing Mantis to stay kneeling over him.
“Eli, what—“
“Wouldn’t that be good, Mantis? I’d be safe. No one could touch me, except for
you. Oh, but,” he murmured, pressing one knee squarely between Mantis’ legs,
pushing him forward so that Mantis’ wide eyes were mere inches away from his
own, “wouldn’t that be nice, Mantis, to have me all to yourself, to use at your
convenience any time you like…”
“Eli,” Mantis started, somewhat nervous at this behavior, “I don’t-“
“Shh. You don’t have to deny it, Mantis, I don’t mind. You can hold me
prisoner, tie me up if you like, do whatever you want to me but you want so
badly for me to be safe and sound that I know you’d never hurt me… you’d be
gentle with me…”
He started rubbing his knee up against Mantis’ crotch. Mantis drew in a sharp
breath, gritting his teeth behind his mask, trying unsuccessfully to pull back
again.
“Yes… chain me to a wall and make all my decisions for me… I wouldn’t have to
worry about a thing, all I would have to care about is pleasing you. What a
nice idea, Mantis. I rather like it."
Liquid kept rubbing his leg against Mantis. Mantis’ whole body was tensed and
he could feel a cold sweat almost on the point of breaking. “Eli, stop it,” he
choked out.
“Isn’t it what you want, Mantis? Isn’t that exactly how you want me? Completely
dependant and powerless? Unable to resist you, and only you?” He shifted
underneath Mantis, craning his neck up and whispering in his ear: “You want to
rape me.”
“Eli, no—“
Liquid let his head fall back to the floor and let go of Mantis’ wrists —
Mantis was standing in half a second, panting, stumbling back from Liquid, who
was still lying on the floor and had started laughing feverishly.
“Don’t say things like that, Eli.”
“Oh, but you’d be gentle!” Liquid tittered, “you wouldn’t hurt me. And you
wouldn’t let anyone who could hurt me anywhere near me.”
“You are completely misinterpreting everything I’ve said and done,” Mantis
said, clenching and unclenching his hands frenetically, trying to will away the
burning under his skin where Liquid’s body had come into contact with his. “I
do not want you like that.”
“But it’s such an attractive prospect.”
“I do not want anyone to use you, Eli! You- you deserve better than-”
“I don’t deserve anything better than what I’ve already got,” Liquid said, his
delirious giggling finally dying down, as he turned his head away from Mantis
and stared at the wall. His expression was neutral but Mantis could easily
sense the self-loathing, despair, and resignation writhing inside him.
Mantis took a deep breath. He really didn’t like it when Liquid got in one of
these moods.
“It is late, Eli,” he said, his voice deliberately calm and gentle, “let’s go
to bed.”
“Mm.”
Mantis was already settled on the mattress for a few interminable minutes by
the time Liquid bothered to get up off the floor and join him. Mantis sighed in
relief, rubbing a thumb over Liquid’s cheekbone.
“I do not want to restrict you in any way, Eli,” he said, “what restrictions I
do place on you are out of necessity.”
“Or for fun,” Liquid said.
“Or for playing along with your silly kinks, yes,” Mantis said. “But I do not
want to cage you. I would much rather be able to trust your judgement and not
have to worry about you getting yourself into trouble.”
“You’ll never trust my judgement.”
“I… just do not want to see any more harm befall you, Eli. That is all. You
have been through enough.”
Liquid sighed and leaned against Mantis, resting his head on his shoulder. “And
how possessive you are…?”
“Just because I am quick to remind you that you are mine does not mean that I
want you as some kind of slave, Eli.”
“Mmn… I kind of do like the idea of you forcing yourself on me, Mantis, I’m not
going to lie…”
“You worry me.”
“I know.” He pressed a kiss against his neck. “But you can’t rape the willing,
Mantis.”
***** Enough *****
Chapter Summary
     Liquid finally gets exactly what he wants.
     Direct follow-up to "Wanting, Wanting, Wanting".
     Explicit - mentions of past Rape/Non-Con, consensual simulated Rape/
     Non-Con
     W/C 12,811 (I know, I'm sorry)
                    200X, FOXHOUND headquarters. Wednesday.
“I got us some time off,” Liquid said brightly. “Four-day weekend. We can leave
tomorrow afternoon.”
Mantis blinked at him. “How did you manage that?”
“Commandership has its benefits… and I’ve got all my work sorted, for once.
Plus I agreed to give gratuitous holidays to the other members of FOXHOUND at
some point as well, so this isn’t just favoritism here…”
“I will make arrangements, then.”
Liquid didn’t often think about the fact that Mantis still had a shitload of
money in various bank accounts from his days as a psychic spy, but it was times
like this that he was grateful for it.
Thursday afternoon they appropriated a car and left. Mantis insisted on
driving, which Liquid thought was odd at first but shrugged and kicked back in
the passenger seat, humming along to the radio. No one had to know that Mantis
had never gotten a license and probably about 90% of his operating the vehicle
was done via his psychic powers. If it worked, it worked.
Unsurprisingly, Liquid found himself nodding off after about an hour on the
road, and when he woke up again sometime after nightfall, just passing the
scattered outskirts of a small town, he had no idea where they were.
“That was my intention,” Mantis said, “but fortunately you falling asleep saved
me the trouble of blindfolding you.”
“Ah,” Liquid said. He could feel a little shiver of nervous excitement and
anticipation run up his spine at the prospect of Mantis not wanting him to know
exactly where they were.
They pulled up in front of a small, old-fashioned house with an overgrown yard
(although the rest of it looked decently maintained) that was, as far as Liquid
could tell, several miles from any other kind of civilization. Before Mantis
had actually shut off the engine Liquid was opening his door and jumping out -
Mantis stopped him with a sharp psychic tug at his collar.
“Patience, Eli,” he said.
Liquid didn’t bother with words. He just whined at him.
But he cooperated with Mantis escorting him into the house (and making him
carry the singular suitcase they had brought). The interior of it was extremely
plain and largely unfurnished, except for necessities, and the bedroom that
Liquid dropped the suitcase off in was tiny, completely dominated by the queen-
sized bed shoved up against the wall. It looked comfortable, though, if a bit
sterile from the fact that no one had obviously slept in it for at least
several months.
“Where did you find this place?” Liquid said.
“It actually is not too hard to find isolated rental properties,” Mantis said,
“but come. You haven’t seen the best part.”
There was a trace of sarcasm in the way Mantis said “best part”, but why became
obvious when Liquid actually saw it: it was the part of the house that Liquid
had initially assumed was a garage, since it was attached but stuck out as if
tacked on later, and instead of being a garage it was… some kind of large
bathroom. Tiled from floor to ceiling inclusive, with a drain in the middle and
hose-showerhead attached to the wall with no indication of curtains, it
resembled a gigantic shower, and Liquid hazarded a guess from the steel loop
embedded halfway up the wall and the bolted-closed exterior door that this had
once been a room designed to wash animals. Large dogs, Liquid supposed.
Anything bigger would probably just have been hosed down outside. And judging
by the presence of a clearly somewhat newer toilet, sink, and wall-length
mirror next to the sink, at some point the room had been half-heartedly
remodeled as an actual bathroom.
He turned back around to face Mantis, and he was now holding a length of rope
with clips on either end that Liquid didn’t really question when exactly he had
grabbed it.
“Would it ruin the whole set-up,” Mantis said dryly, “if I asked you if you
would be needing pillows or blankets in here?”
“It’s plenty warm already,” Liquid smiled, his throat tight.
Liquid was summarily stripped down to just his collar, which was attached to
the rope and therefore the wall. There was enough slack that he could easily
reach both the sink and toilet, but not enough that he could make it to the
door leading to the rest of the house. Mantis closed the door behind him,
anyway, leaving Liquid naked and leashed to the wall to ‘settle in’ for the
weekend. (It didn’t really matter that the door was shut, though - it probably
would have if Liquid hypothetically needed to call out to Mantis for some
reason, but if Liquid wanted something all he had to do was direct his thoughts
towards him. Not that he intended on doing that.)
His whole body felt like it was tingling, and the cool tile against his bare
skin was pleasantly unsettling as he laid on the floor, stretching out and
carefully watching himself in the mirror. He couldn’t help but think of the way
he’d looked when he’d first been recovered from Iraq, thin and pale and wounded
- but he looked very different now.
Really, the only distinct physical reminder of what had happened was the
upside-down-V-shaped scar on his stomach.
Liquid didn’t have a definite way to tell the passage of time in here, so he
wasn’t really sure how long it was later that Mantis came in again, but
nonetheless he grinned at him and stood on his knees in front of him, looking
up almost pleadingly, biting his lip.
“Eli, you have the oddest kinks,” Mantis said.
“Yet you still play along with them,” Liquid retorted, resting his hands
against Mantis’ thighs and leaning forward to press his lips against his—
Mantis stepped back. Liquid started to fall forward, but recovered his balance
before he had to catch himself.
“Not right now, Eli,” Mantis said evenly, then sat in front of him, tucking his
legs up under him. Liquid followed the move, sitting down as well, although he
intentionally displayed himself a bit more than he really needed to. “We have
all weekend.”
“We don’t have to ease into anything.”
“I am more comfortable doing so,” Mantis said, reaching towards him, and Liquid
shrugged and acquiesced. Mantis really was doing him a huge favor here and he
didn’t want to push it.
Mantis gave him a handjob, with his usual gentle murmurings that might have
qualified as dirty talk coming from someone else, and Liquid was predictably
driven over the edge when Mantis pressed the filter of his gas mask against his
ear and whispered, “Spill your seed for me, Eli.”
Afterwards Mantis curiously asked him why that was always all it took to make
him climax.
“Ah…” Liquid said, catching his breath. He hadn’t really thought about it
before, but now that he did he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of Mantis ordering
him to orgasm being a psychological crutch for him to actually achieve orgasm.
He didn’t need him to do that, right? There had been plenty of occasions when
he’d finished before Mantis gave him permission to do so. “It… you only say it
when I’m already close, Mantis, and it’s ridiculously hot when you do, so…”
“So it just gives you that little extra push you need? …I see.”
It wasn’t until a few minutes after Mantis had left and closed the door again
that Liquid realized how used he’d gotten to Mantis taking him to bed when they
were done, if they hadn’t been in bed already (which to be honest, they usually
weren’t). Nodding off on the floor after sex was something he’d done countless
times before, of course - but years ago — he knew that Mantis scrupulously held
to his own rule about showering Liquid with affection when the tension had
drained, but, well, this wasn’t over. This was supposed to last for the next
few days, until Monday afternoon.
Technically sleeping on the floor was a part of it, and Liquid tried to
convince himself that he really didn’t mind but to be honest, he felt he’d been
a little spoiled. Almost spitefully he curled up, listening to the soft clink
of the clip on the rope against the hook on the wall as he moved, and closed
his eyes.
                                    Friday.
The bolted-shut external door had a small window on it, which hadn’t been much
help to Liquid earlier, but when he woke up again he could see the vague
lightening of the sky that not only proved it was just before dawn but also
indicated to him that the part of the house he was in faced east. He filed that
information away out of habit, mostly. It wasn’t until the sun was just
starting to be visible over the horizon when Mantis walked in the room again.
“Good morning,” Liquid purred, rolling over on his back and staring up at
Mantis.
“Not too uncomfortable sleeping on the floor, were you?”
“I can’t complain. Now, when are you going to fuck me silly?”
Mantis rolled his eyes. “Patience, Eli.”
Liquid sat up, and scooted closer to Mantis, looking up at him pleadingly like
he had the night before. “At least let me suck your cock.”
“…Eli.”
“Come on,” Liquid whined, “please, Mantis, I want you to use me—-“
Mantis huffed and fisted Liquid’s hair, tilting his head back. Liquid swallowed
hard, with difficulty.
“Eli,” he said, “calm down. Suppose I want you to be desperate?”
Liquid moved closer, pressing his groin flush against Mantis’ leg and bucking
his hips slightly. “You tease,” he gasped.
“…all I’m doing is just standing here.”
Well, yes, but he was also pulling Liquid’s hair and letting him hump his leg.
Still, Liquid was getting impatient and frustrated - he didn’t even know where
his clothes were and he actually had a leash hooked into his collar, how could
his baseline state of existence this weekend not be perpetually horny and ready
to get taken advantage of any time Mantis walked in the room?
But it seemed Mantis really did want to feed his desperation, and not long
after that he left again without really touching Liquid. Liquid groaned loudly
as Mantis closed the door behind him, then flopped onto the floor. At least the
tile felt good against his heated skin.
He caught his own eye in the mirror again. He looked a little pathetic now -
flushed and wide-eyed, with tangled hair - and he sat up again and looked up at
where his leash was attached to the wall. It was a simple clip on both ends,
there was nothing preventing Liquid was unlatching it from either the wall or
his collar… except, of course, for the fact that he wanted to play this game,
badly. Besides, this whole thing had been his idea, anyway.
Granted, the silence was a little off-putting.
And this wasn’t the first time he’d been chained in an isolated room, exposed
and helpless, anxiously waiting for someone to come in and use his body like a
toy.
Liquid chased the thought away despite the fact that he knew that that was why
this whole thing turned him on so badly, and laid back down, staring up at the
ceiling. This was very different. He was waiting for a specific person to come
back in and use his body like a toy, a specific person that he loved and
trusted implacably. Not even with Ocelot would he be this comfortable indulging
in his… riskier fantasies like this.
With nothing to do, Liquid waited about five minutes (felt like hours, though)
before spitting on his hand, reaching down, and roughly pumping his own cock,
biting the knuckles of his other hand out of habit.
It was partly boredom, mostly frustration, and absolutely a way to lure Mantis
back into the room — masturbation was against the rules, after all. Just as
Liquid thought he would, Mantis reappeared - and it was very likely on purpose
that Mantis showed up right as Liquid was about to hit the point of no return.
Liquid would have liked to spitefully finish despite Mantis’ presence, but as
soon as Mantis laid eyes on him Liquid found his arms psychically pinned to his
sides.
“H-Hello there,” Liquid said breathlessly, wiggling his hips a little,
hopelessly hard dick sticking straight up in the hair.
“You’re a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?” Mantis said.
“Would it be- would it b-be pushing my l-luck to ask permission to finish, r-
right now?” He squirmed. “I-I’m already really very c-close…”
Mantis only needed a single glance to tell Liquid that yes, it would be pushing
his luck.
Liquid wilted under Mantis’ annoyed glare, and after a while, so did his
erection. He whimpered. Out of all the punishments Mantis ever gave him,
blueballing was what he considered the cruelest.
“You quite literally brought this one upon yourself, Eli.”
“I… I-I know…”
Mantis let him use his hands again, and he pushed himself up to a sitting
position, his face burning. He should have known that was exactly how that was
going to end - but at least he’d succeeded in getting Mantis to come back and
talk to him. Denied sex, he still thrived on attention.
Mantis crouched down in front of him and took his face in his hands. “If you
behave, I will reward you,” he said.
“With what?”
“You’ll see… if you behave.”
He stayed with Liquid for a while longer, then left again. Liquid wondered what
he was doing in the other part of the house - reading, maybe? Certainly he
didn’t have anything important to do. Liquid knew full well that the neglect
was part of the game, of course. But still.
Eventually Mantis came back, just when Liquid was starting to feel very
restless and jittery. He stood in the doorway while Liquid pulled his leash
taut, whining against the collar constricting his throat, trying to get as
close to Mantis as possible but still falling a few feet short.
Mantis closed the distance in one stride. “Kneel,” he ordered, threading his
fingers through Liquid’s hair.
Liquid obeyed, stepping back a little at the same time, letting the rope go
slack.
“Good boy.”
“Are you still trying to frustrate me?” Liquid asked, as Mantis sat down next
to him and moved his hand to Liquid’s back. He shivered at the touch, still
feeling terribly oversensitive from his earlier denial.
“I could if you want me to.”
“You know what I want.”
He took in a sharp breath as he felt Mantis’ hand slip down to his ass, and
noticed belatedly that, from the feel of it, Mantis wasn’t wearing gloves and
had actually filed his nails. Liquid swallowed, his heart beating a little
faster — this had only happened once before…
“This?” Mantis murmured, pulling Liquid’s face towards his with his other hand.
Liquid nodded slowly, eyes wide. “Yes,” he breathed.
Mantis’ hand on his butt disappeared and after half a second Liquid (who was
practically holding Mantis’ eyes in tunnel vision) felt two fingers softly
touch his bottom lip and he remembered Oh right, Mantis likes lubrication.
“Mhm. Get them nice and wet, Eli.”
Liquid wasted no time, taking Mantis’ fingers into his mouth and sucking on
them as lewdly as he could, moaning deep in his throat and twisting his body so
he was facing Mantis, grabbing his hips and pulling him close, still pressing
his tongue against the intruding digits. Mantis spread his fingers a little,
opening Liquid’s mouth, and Liquid let out a long, obscene groan, forcing his
tongue into the space between Mantis’ fingers and hardly noticing the lines of
saliva running down his chin.
“How enthusiastic,” Mantis commented, drawing his hand away after only about
half a minute, then briefly glanced down. “…very enthusiastic.”
Liquid felt he couldn’t be blamed for getting hard again at that.
He was glad his back was turned to the mirror right now - he wasn’t entirely
sure he would have liked to see himself like this, naked and vulnerable,
helplessly panting in the arms of a man who was still fully clothed himself.
Liquid doubted he’d actually get to see Mantis nude at all this weekend,
either. He had a delicate power imbalance to maintain, didn’t he?
“Oh, hush.”
Liquid whimpered as Mantis pushed the first finger up into him, his grip on
Mantis tightening. He could almost hear Mantis’ mind buzzing about how he
needed to be careful, that fingering Liquid could all too easily turn into
having to stop everything and talk him down off a flashback…
“M-Mantis,” Liquid whispered, shifting his weight against his hand, “don’t s-
stop, no matter what. Just k-keep going. Keep g-going even if I ask you to
stop.”
“Eli,” Mantis said, “don’t ask me to do that.”
“P-Please… Mantis, I d-don’t want to ruin th-this, just- keep going—“ He took a
deep breath. “M-More, please.”
For once he could be as loud as he wanted without Mantis shushing him, as
Mantis inserted the second finger. He rocked his hips against Mantis, making
some undignified high-pitched sound when Mantis found his prostate.
“O-Oh my god, M-Mantis—!!”
“Give me a minute to figure this out,” Mantis muttered.
In Liquid’s opinion he didn’t have muchtofigure out. It already felt damned
good. He easily gave into the temptation to rut up against Mantis’ stomach,
whining, pushing back against his fingers. He wanted Mantis’ almost hesitant
clumsy massaging to escalate, push against that spot harder, make him see
stars.
Mantis obliged.
Later when Mantis was wiping Liquid’s semen off the both of them with a
washcloth, Liquid nuzzled him exhaustedly, whispering his thanks against his
skin.
“I am just glad you managed to keep it together the whole time,” Mantis said at
length, “I did not want to be put in the position of… deciding whether or not
to keep going while you panicked.”
“I would want you to,” Liquid said, kissing his jaw. “I don’t ever want to
stop, not until we’re both thoroughly spent, Mantis.”
“Mm.” Liquid knew that Mantis knew that Ocelot had always ignored any
flashbacks Liquid might have in the middle of sex, and would later claim
innocence, saying he hadn’t noticed. Liquid was never sure whether or not to
believe him on that point (he knew Mantis certainly didn’t), but either way
he’d grown to enjoy, in some strange way, the frantic relief of simultaneously
coming down off both an orgasm and a panic attack. “I just think…”
“If I want it, what’s the problem?”
“I… I am concerned about the reasons why you want certain things, Eli.”
Liquid grabbed his leash and gave it sharp pull, eliciting a loud clank from
where it was hooked to the wall. “You indulge me anyway,” he said pointedly.
“You might as well not pick and choose.”
“…”
Again Mantis left, but at least Liquid, in his post-orgasmic state, was
significantly less on edge and before long he had fallen asleep.
He woke up again to the smell of steak.
He sat up quickly, and waited not-so-patiently for a few minutes - his mouth
watering, realizing only now that he hadn’t actually eaten all day and it was
already rather late in the afternoon, judging by the window.
Liquid jumped up when Mantis opened the door, holding a hot plate of food, but
after several long moments Liquid realized that Mantis wasn’t going to actually
pass the threshold of the room until he sat back down, so he did.
“I told you, Eli,” Mantis said, placing the plate on the floor in front of
Liquid and sitting cross-legged across from it, “patience.”
So Liquid waited very patiently for Mantis to tell him he could eat, staring
down at the plate with its large, juicy (half-raw, to be honest) steak and
coarsely mashed skin-still-on potatoes with butter. He hadn’t been aware that
Mantis could cook, nor that he had gone to town to buy food for the weekend -
must have done that earlier today, perhaps while Liquid was sleeping.
“Cooking is an important life skill,” Mantis said, imperiously cutting the
steak into small pieces while Liquid tried to make sure the drool stayed in his
mouth. “Even if I don’t often do it for myself…”
“So when you were buying this,” Liquid said, licking his lips, “did you happen
to mention to anyone that you were getting it for a naked man tied up in your
bathroom?”
“Why would I feel the need to tell anyone that?” Mantis said disdainfully, then
speared one of the pieces of steak with the fork. “Open.”
Liquid’s face went red as Mantis fed him his dinner, bite by bite. God, this
was humiliating, but he was hungry and… honestly… it was kind of a turn-on, as
much as he would have liked not to admit it… he tried to ease his embarrassment
by doing his best to powerbottom his way through the meal, making overly-
intense eye contact with Mantis and letting his lips pointedly linger on the
fork every time it was put in his mouth, chewing slowly, swallowing
conspicuously.
Sadly, Mantis was completely unaffected by his seductive displays.
And Liquid finished off the potatoes trying rather unsuccessfully to hide an
erection with his hands.
“Cute,” Mantis said dryly, gathering up the plate and utensils and standing up.
“I will be right back.”
“How long is ‘right’?” Liquid asked as Mantis left. He didn’t reply but he also
didn’t close the door, so Liquid assumed not too long, and got up and took a
long drink from the sink after flicking his ponytail out of the way.
“Better?” Mantis said from the doorway as Liquid wiped his mouth with the back
of his hand.
“Mhm.” Liquid turned towards him, beaming. “I’m ready for dessert.”
“…I can’t believe you just said that out loud. You have no shame, Eli.”
Liquid knelt expectantly on the floor, licking his lips again. Mantis sighed
and stood in front of him.
“Fine, if you insist. …but I am not going to parrot your horrible line about
‘dessert’ back at you.”
“That’s fair,” Liquid said, quickly undoing Mantis’ pants. Mantis’ hands found
their way to Liquid’s hair and tugged nervously as Liquid drew his dick out,
shifting his weight on his knees. “No need to be anxious, Mantis…”
“Hn.”
He mouthed Mantis’ limp cock, looking up at him carefully, sure that Mantis
could feel his devotion. Again Mantis’ fingers tightened against his scalp.
Just like how Liquid remembered it from last time, Mantis’ dick jerked to life
and reached a state of what had to be almost achingly hard before much time had
passed at all. Liquid found it a little funny, actually, a little odd. Almost
unnatural. Almost like Mantis had to use his psychic powers somehow to get
aroused.
Mantis didn’t deny it, so Liquid just went ahead and assumed it might very well
be impossible to Mantis to have gotten erect if Liquid weren’t already. Again
Mantis didn’t deny it.
Liquid didn’t complain, though. He was enamored with the salty taste of Mantis’
skin and the way his breath rasped unevenly through his gas mask.
“Mmmm…”
“E-… Eli…”
“Mmm, nm…” Liquid pulled his mouth off and looked up at him again, using his
hands now. “D-Do you like this, Mantis?”
“Ah— yes,” Mantis said, startled, “you are doing a good job, Eli.”
The words went straight to Liquid’s dick. He busied himself again, sucking
Mantis’ cock, humming and moaning against it - forcing it down past his gag
reflex, choking on it, his vision going unfocused as Mantis’ hips twitched,
apparently unintentionally.
“Oh… Eli…”
I love this, Liquid thought dazedly, I love you.
Mantis didn’t even comment as Liquid palmed his own dick, jerking himself off
as he swallowed around Mantis, hitting his own climax a few short seconds after
the salty, bitter flavor of semen exploded in his mouth.
Liquid pulled back, gasping, a string of thick saliva hanging between his lips
and Mantis’ still-fitfully-hard wet cock for a moment before he licked his lips
and swallowed hard, shivering.
“Th-thank you,” he coughed.
Mantis took half a step back and crumpled to the floor, breathing hard. Liquid
crawled forward and pulled him close, nuzzling him and nipping at his earlobe,
his mouth and lips still tasting and smelling of Mantis.
“Was that to your liking, Mantis?” he murmured, carefully tucking Mantis’ dick
back in his pants and fastening him back up.
“Y… yes, Eli,” Mantis said, petting his hair, “good boy.”
“Are you alright?”
“Of course. Tired, perhaps.” He shifted in Liquid’s arms. “Too tired to deal
the matter of you touching yourself right in front of me…”
“Ah.” Liquid smirked against his neck. “I’ll pay for that later, won’t I?”
“Pervert…”
After Mantis had left again (Liquid knew what he’d being doing now, going
straight to sleep on that nice big bed), Liquid rinsed his mouth out in the
sink. As much as it delighted him to bring the notoriously asexual Mantis to
orgasm, he really did hate the taste of semen.
While Mantis was sleeping he wanked again, because at this point he might as
well, partly to the memory of what had transpired so far and partly to his own
fevered speculations of how Mantis might punish him for jacking off. He went to
sleep without bothering to clean himself up.
                                   Saturday.
He woke up to dried semen from the night before being cleaned off his stomach
by a damp washcloth wielded by an irritated Mantis.
“Um,” Liquid said, stretching awkwardly under him - his back was kind of
starting to ache from sleeping on a hard floor — “Good morning, Mantis!”
“Good morning, misbehaver.”
“What do you want me to do today?” He hooked his arms around Mantis’ neck and
leaned up to him, breathing over his ear: “Anything you want, Mantis, anything
at all. I’ll take it and beg for more.”
“Let go of me.”
Liquid released him, uncertain now if Mantis’ annoyance was being exaggerated
for the sake of play, or if Mantis was genuinely mad at him.
Mantis sighed, shook his head. “Of course it’s exaggerated, Eli. Do you think I
genuinely care about whether or not you touch yourself without my permission? I
have more important things to concern myself with.”
“Oh.” He frowned. “Well now, I’ve just ruined the mood, haven’t I?”
“You have.”
There was an awkward pause.
Then Mantis said flatly, “I really do not care about ‘the mood’, Eli.”
“Well, I do,” Liquid whined. “Call me some dirty names and berate me for
wanking—“ he bucked his hips up against Mantis. “Please?”
“Ugh. Fine.” He pressed the filter of his gas mask against Liquid’s ear.
“Whore,” he breathed.
Liquid shivered.
“Are you so addicted to orgasms, Eli, that you are willing to debase yourself
that much just for a mediocre one? How pathetic of you.”
“Yes,” Liquid gasped, “y-yes, I am…”
“So driven by hormonal impulses… you barely deserve to be called human, Eli.
Rather, you are some entirely different species of slut.”
“Yes, I’m s-sorry, Mantis… please, p-punish me.”
“But how should I do it?” Mantis said, sitting up. “I am open for suggestions.”
“Er,” Liquid said, blinking. He was never able to come up with any good
suggestions - any time he tried, Mantis would dismiss it with “You would think
of that as a reward.”
Mantis narrowed his eyes at him. “Nothing? You can certainly come up with ideas
when you are fantasizing.”
“Ah… well…”
“Hm.”
It was then that Liquid noticed the bottle of lube Mantis had brought with him,
and his heart shot up to his throat. Holy shit, was about to get an ironic
punishment? He’d only been dreaming about that since… well… since the rules had
been instituted, which really wasn’t too long ago, now that he thought about
it. But he’d been dreaming about Mantis fucking him for-fucking-ever.
“Do not get ahead of yourself, Eli,” Mantis said, but nonetheless he pushed
Liquid’s legs apart and popped the cap off the lube.
Liquid squirmed in anticipation, and Mantis, after a second of considering his
options, pulled on his hip, turning him onto his side. Liquid went completely
still.
From here he had a really, really good view of himself and Mantis in that
mirror by the sink.
He covered his face with his hands almost instinctually. They hadn’t really
done anything yet, and already it was unbearably embarrassing to see himself
splayed and needy like this.
“…I should have thought to do this sooner,” Mantis said. “Put your hands down,
Eli.”
“No.”
“I did not ask you if you wanted to. I told you to.”
Hesitantly Liquid lowered his hands, looking anywhere but the mirror. Almost
like a reward for cooperating, he felt Mantis’ slick fingers between his
asscheeks.
“D-Don’t waste time with preparation, Mantis,” Liquid said, staring
determinedly at the wall, “just s-stick it in me. I can’t wait a-any longer,
please.”
Mantis didn’t say or do anything for a moment, and Liquid mumbled “Please”
again, then his whole body spasmed as Mantis roughly pushed him open with two
fingers and he felt the head of Mantis’ cock pressing against - and slightly in
- his asshole.
“O-Oh-!”
“This will hurt a little,” Mantis said quietly, “but you asked for it.”
“Y-Yes, yes, I did! Please, M-Mantis…!” Lying on his side with one leg pushed
up wasn’t exactly a great position for pushing back and forcing himself on
Mantis’ dick, but he tried anyway. “M-M-More, p-please!!”
Mantis slowly pushed in, his breath hitching while Liquid moaned loudly (and
triumphantly). Oh god, he’d been waiting for this for so long, not just
waiting, either, no, working for it, actively trying for ages to convince
Mantis to give him a good dicking. Mantis had always refused, saying ridiculous
things about how it was demeaning or degrading or he himself was too likely to
lose concentration and hurt Liquid or whatever, but evidently this weekend was
extreme enough that Mantis was finally relaxing a bit about it.
“Come onnn,” Liquid whimpered, shutting his eyes and scrabbling against the
tile floor, “d-don’t just sit there, Mantis, f-fuck me— give m-me a good, h-
hard pounding—-“
“I am letting you adjust,” Mantis said. “It will not hurt as much that way.”
“N-No, just go—“ His asshole was already burning at being stretched, anyway, he
wanted Mantis to just fucking tear him open.
“Eli,” Mantis said.
“Please—-!!“
“Look at yourself in the mirror, Eli.”
“Nn…!”
Liquid almost refused to follow those instructions until a sharp tug at his
collar kind of forced him to. He cracked open an eye and his breath caught in
his throat at what he saw; it was even more mortifying than just being on
display. Sure, he was in the same incredibly exposed position, but somehow his
arousal was just a touch more obvious - furiously blushing face, red swollen
dick dripping pre-seminal fluid, chest rising and falling raggedly - and he was
at a decent enough angle to actually see where Mantis’ cock disappeared into
his body.
“O-Oh my god,” he panted. “Oh my g-god, Mantis.”
“You are going to watch me fuck you,” Mantis said firmly, rolling his hips ever
so slightly, and Liquid could see the way his legs trembled as he did that. “Do
not look away.”
“Oh… o-oh… M-M-Mantis, oh…”
Mantis started fucking him, really fucking him, and between that and his wide-
eyed staring at their reflection moving in the mirror, Liquid was absolutely
positive that he wouldn’t last long.
“Not until I say you can, Eli,” Mantis said breathlessly.
“Oh— but- a-ah, Mantis, g-god, this is— th-this is—- ah, mmn, ghkkh, Mantis, g-
god—!”
“Hold back until I give my permission.”
“I c-can’t,” Liquid stammered, “I-I can’t, please, th-this is too g-good,
Mantis, oh, I l-love it… I love y-you, Mantis, god I love you… please, h-
harder!”
Unbelievably, Mantis actually responded to his plea, driving himself into
Liquid a little harder, panting harshly. Liquid bit his lip, groaning - he knew
he shouldn’t make any more physical demands on Mantis, the guy was as fragile
as spun glass and already giving it his all, and besides, this was more than
good enough. Liquid didn’t give a shit about how good this sex was objectively
(he wasn’t sure that uneven, could-stand-to-be-deeper thrusts and no real
touching outside of the weak grip on his thigh was all that great objectively),
he almost felt like he was high off the fact that it was Mantis doing this to
him. Mantis. He thought this day would never come!
His victorious elation was obvious even in the mirror, and it was either
tainted or purified by the absolutely shameless stupefied-by-pleasure
expression Liquid wore. He wasn’t sure which. The humiliation of seeing that
look on his face made his heart and his cock throb.
“God, Mantis, I-I’m so close, please, I c-can’t hold back, p-please, I n-need
to-“
“Hush, Eli…”
“Oh, I-I can’t, Mantis, a-ahh… it, it almost h-hurts, Mantis, please, I’m s-
so—“
He couldn’t finish his sentence. He orgasmed hard and loud, except it was…
different from normal, in a way he couldn’t really describe because it left him
totally dazed and overwhelmed, staring at the mirror and watching Mantis
continue to rail his limp, shaking body, and after a while he realized that he
hadn’t actually ejaculated and was still hard and he could actually feel
another orgasm building low in his stomach.
“H-H-Holy… Mantis, wh-what…?” he mumbled, swallowing hard.
“I think that was…” Mantis panted, “ah… a prostate orgasm, Eli. They’re…
different…”
“Oh…”
He kept rocking his hips, eyes fixed on the mirror - specifically where his and
Mantis’ bodies joined together. In a weirdly detached way he noted it was kind
of gross. Mostly he just felt out of his mind with arousal, like an animal in
heat, and the incoherent noises spilling out of his mouth certainly attested to
that.
Sometime after he had another two prostate orgasms right in a row, he heard the
rasp of Mantis’ breathing change, and felt him start to pull out, and he
clenched, whining loudly.
“F-Finish inside me, M-Mantis,” he demanded, breathing hard, his nails digging
into his palms. “Fill m-me up. I want t-to feel it — I want to f-feel your seed
deep i-inside me, Mantis.”
“E-Eli…”
“Claim me,” Liquid whispered harshly, licking his lips.
Either that was all it took to convince Mantis or Mantis was too close to the
edge to really protest, because he didn’t finish pulling out before he
ejaculated inside of Liquid, who screamed and arched his back at the feeling.
Then he did finish pulling out, and Liquid just felt so empty and he could feel
something trickling down his leg, which the mirror confirmed to be a bit of
Mantis’ semen.
He writhed, rolling onto his back, animalistically upset at the idea of losing
any of Mantis’ seed to gravity.
“Mantis,” he gasped, raising his hips. “M-Mantis, please. I c-can’t stand this
a-anymore. I’m— I-I’m going to go insane, Mantis, p-please just—-!”
“Fine, fine,” Mantis said tiredly, leaning over him. He nuzzled his face, the
fingertips of one hand brushing over his horribly neglected cock.
Fuck, it was teasing. Liquid growled ferally. But he didn’t have to worry,
really, a few moments later he climaxed and- wow, that was a lot of semen.
“…i-is that… n-normal, Mantis?”
“…apparently,” Mantis said with a shrug.
Liquid stared at himself in the mirror. He looked as raw as he felt - he looked
like he’d been ridden hard and hung out to dry, which, he supposed, he just
had. Flushed, panting, trembling, erection fading, an absolute mess of bodily
fluids.
How embarrassing.
“I am exhausted,” Mantis said, hanging his head and rubbing the back of his
neck.
“Er… yes. I’m not surprised,” Liquid said, sitting up somewhat painfully. His
ass felt a little… tender. “I am as well.”
“…I am going to go take a nap. Is that alright?”
“Of course it is. I think I’ll do the same thing.”
But of course it was very different for the two of them. Mantis went back to a
nice bed, and Liquid laid down on the tile floor, out of the reflective range
of the mirror, still sticky and filthy with semen. He could wash himself off,
he knew that (Mantis had actually left the washcloth from earlier in here,
sitting on the edge of the sink) but… decided not to. Somehow it seemed more
appropriate to wait until everything had dried and he was all crusty and nasty
and Mantis had to clean him off himself. He would.
Besides, the feeling of Mantis’ semen in his ass was exactly as exciting as
Liquid had always imagined it would be. He was in his refractory period so he
couldn’t get it up or anything, but still he idly fingered himself for a while,
biting his lip and congratulating himself on finally getting Mantis to mark his
territory, before pulling out his semen-sticky fingers, staring at them for a
moment, and resisting the frankly disgusting impulse to put them in his mouth
and instead wiping them on his stomach. Then he dozed off as well.
Several hours of sleep was the first casualty of that weekend.
Liquid woke up with a scream caught in his throat, and his immediate impression
upon waking up - collared, leashed to the wall, naked, alone in a practically
empty room, feeling just-fucked and with semen all over him - sent him
completely over the edge. He came to his senses only a few minutes later in a
jolt of confusion, finding himself standing outside among the weeds.
He glanced behind him, putting a hand to his neck. Seemed as though he’d simply
unclipped the rope from his collar, and had torn the bolts from the exterior
door of his room (with his bare hands, judging by the way his nails were
cracked and bleeding). And now he was blinking in the early afternoon sunlight,
uncomfortably aware of how unnecessarily fast his heart was beating.
Great. And he’d been worried earlier about his PTSD ruining his and Mantis’
nice little sex-dungeon-getaway weekend off. He’d been right, apparently.
Jittery and confused, for some reason it didn’t occur to Liquid to just walk
back into the bathroom through the door right next to him, and instead he
circled around to the front of the house, where, in a fit of headache-induced
distraction, he ended up crawling under the car and hiding there instead of
returning inside. It was a decision that made perfect sense to him at the time.
He didn’t realize he’d spaced out completely until the front door slamming open
startled him back to the world of the living. He heard rapid footsteps and a
second later saw Mantis’ boots next to the car. He could hear him panting.
“Eli?” Mantis said anxiously.
“Mn?”
“What are you doing out here?”
“…” He didn’t know how to answer that. He didn’t know what the answer to that
even was.
He heard Mantis take a deep breath, almost felt him probing his mind. “Do you
want to come back inside?” he said gently.
“…with you?” Liquid mumbled.
“Of course.” He saw him kneel down beside the car. “Come here, Eli.”
Liquid hesitated for a little while, then, mentally shaking himself, crawled
out from under the car, and Mantis helped him stand up. He felt a little
faraway from the proceedings.
“You are filthy,” Mantis tutted softly. “Let’s go get you cleaned up.”
So Liquid was returned to the bathroom, although if Mantis was planning on re-
attaching the leash he hadn’t done so yet. Instead Mantis closed the exterior
door and turned on the shower, the showerhead detaching itself from its hook
and floating unobtrusively in the air.
“How is the water temperature?” Mantis said after a moment, a psychic hand at
Liquid’s wrist pulling his hand into the stream of water as Mantis picked up
the washcloth from off the sink. He looked at it in such a way that Liquid
imagined he was frowning behind his mask.
“It’s fine,” Liquid said, although it was a bit cold for his liking.
The shower knob squeaked as it turned slightly, and the water started to warm.
Mantis carefully unlatched Liquid’s collar and set it aside - somehow it felt a
little strange to Liquid to not have anything on his neck, like he really was
naked now - and excused himself for a minute, leaving Liquid to sit there and
soak, dried semen and dirt being rinsed off his body.
Mantis returned quickly, soap, shampoo, and a fresh washcloth in hand, and sat
down next to Liquid, hovering about an inch off the floor so he wouldn’t get
too wet. He undid Liquid’s ponytail, letting his hair fall down around his face
and get more efficiently soaked through by the shower-water.
“How are you feeling?” he murmured.
“…disappointed,” Liquid said at length. “I didn’t want to ruin this weekend.”
“Shh. You didn’t ruin anything.” He soaped up the washcloth and starting
rubbing down Liquid’s skin, getting whatever hadn’t been rinsed away already.
“I will admit I was hoping this would not happen, but only because I don’t like
to see you distressed.”
“Nn.”
Mantis was intoxicatingly gentle as he cleaned Liquid’s body, carefully and
thoroughly, going so far as to coax Liquid into spreading his legs so he could
clean his crotch and ass. Liquid found himself, for some reason, absolutely
convinced that Mantis was about to flip him over on his stomach and nail him
into next week any moment now. Mantis didn’t comment, and also didn’t do that.
When he was done with Liquid’s body he moved around behind him and washed his
hair; Liquid closed his eyes and tilted his head back slightly at Mantis’
fingers working against his scalp. It felt good. At this point he could hardly
remember the last vestiges of his nightmare, only the feeling of being
terrified, which in and of itself was rapidly leaving his system.
Mantis rinsed the last bit of soap off him and the shower turned off and
returned to the wall. There was a momentary blast of heat, like standing in
front of an open oven, and Liquid was dried instantaneously, his hair fluffing
up slightly.
“…thank you,” Liquid said, putting his collar back on. “I needed that.”
“Mm. Stay put.” Mantis gathered the soap, shampoo, and washcloth, and left
again, but returned only a minute later with a hairbrush and sat down behind
Liquid once more and started combing his hair.
Liquid went slightly pink. Ordinarily he was a pretty big fan of having his
hair played with, but… really…?
“What?” Mantis said.
“Er… nothing.” Under different circumstances he would have thought that Mantis
washing and preening him would be more of a power thing - since as much as
Mantis wouldn’t admit it, he was into the power thing - but right now Liquid
was reading nothing but affection and concern from his every movement.
Mantis pulled his hair back into his usual ponytail.
“Just because I had a… moment,” Liquid said, “doesn’t mean that this weekend
has to end early, no?”
“Eli…”
“Because I want to keep going. I- I like this, Mantis. I know it’s a little
close to the edge for your tastes, but I like this.”
“…”
He took Mantis silently re-clipping the leash onto his collar’s lead and then
leaving the room, closing the door behind him, as his answer. Liquid grinned.
It was only a few minutes before Mantis returned again, this time with a
sandwich. He let Liquid eat it by himself like a normal person, and afterwards
Liquid convinced him to let him suck his dick again, this time without the lame
line about dessert. Which wasn’t particularly applicable when it came to lunch,
anyway.
After Mantis left again, Liquid, with really nothing better to do, spent some
time picking at his splintered nails and making them bleed again, but Mantis
ended up putting a stop to that, returning to the bathroom and bandaging his
fingers, telling him very sternly that his wounds had been too minor for either
of them to really concern themselves with, but if he continued to exacerbate
them then the whole weekend really would be called off and they would just go
back to the FOXHOUND headquarters early. There was also an implicit “and no sex
for a week” threat, so Liquid was doubly sure to behave himself.
On three separate occasions before dinner, Mantis wandered back into the
bathroom and started touching Liquid all over, whispering to him and stroking
his dick, but left before he’d gotten off, and only laughed when Liquid growled
at his retreating back. Liquid was tempted to relieve his tension himself, but
decided to play along and didn’t… although by the time dinner came around he
was so wound up he could barely stand to exist, the cool tile of the bathroom
floor torturous against his sensitive skin no matter how he sat, laid, or even
stood.
“Please,” he whined as Mantis put down the plate and bowl and sat across from
him.
“Patience, Eli,” Mantis said, “food first.”
“You hypocrite,” Liquid said as Mantis wound the spaghetti around the fork.
“You have no right to nag me about eating when you practically never do it
yourself.”
“I do not need to as often as you do,” Mantis said, raising the fork. “Open.”
Liquid flushed angrily, but followed Mantis’ instructions. Yourweightbegs to
differ, Mantis, he thought.
“Oh, hush. That isn’t relevant right now.”
Again Liquid tried to take control of the dinner service by eating as
seductively as possible, and again Mantis responded only with impassivity.
Liquid kind of wondered if he was just really bad at this (it certainly seemed
possible), but then, Mantis had never shown any kind of reaction to any kind of
erotic display Liquid had ever put on in an attempt to entice him. Well, any
reaction other disgusted irritation or condescending amusement, anyway.
Besides, strawberries with cream was supposedto be the cliché ’seductive
eating’ food, right? Meaning that it was easy to do? So Liquid supposed that
Mantis’ lack of being affected at all was entirely on him.
“There,” Mantis said as Liquid deliberately licked a last bit of cream off his
lips. “Now you cannot justify another stupid line about dessert.”
“Let’s just be direct, then,” Liquid said, and gestured to his erection. Mantis
rolled his eyes.
Whatever Liquid had been expecting, it wasn’t really to end up standing on
spread knees in front of the damned mirror again, and Mantis pulling on his
ponytail to force him to keep his gaze fixed on the mirror when he carefully
entered him from behind. Liquid could hardly believe his luck at getting fucked
again, though, especially with Mantis’ face pressed against his neck, his
panting loud enough through his gas mask that it might have drowned out
Liquid’s moans if Liquid had been showing even a little restraint… which he
wasn’t. He was loud.
“Such- shameful sounds, Eli—“ Mantis gasped, reaching around to stroke Liquid’s
cock. Liquid bit his lip and groaned.
He was really glad his eyes rolling back in his head gave him a good excuse not
to focus on that stupid, dazed, whorish expression on his face in the mirror.
Liquid finished first this time (likely because he was already hopelessly
aroused going into it) and by the time Mantis followed, he was writhing and
whimpering in overstimulation, his hands as tight as vices on Mantis’ wrists,
clutching him just to hang onto something. Finally Mantis pulled out and Liquid
sunk to the floor, gasping for breath, the cold hard tile almost painful
against his raw and heated skin.
“Th-that was amazing,” he wheezed.
“Are you sure you do not need a blanket?” Mantis asked breathlessly, fixing his
pants.
“Mmm, yes… I’m good, Mantis…”
Nonetheless a moment after Mantis left he tossed a towel at Liquid before
closing the door. Liquid wiped himself off, and, after an internal debate about
how much it would ruin the mood, laid it on the floor sticky side down and
curled up on it. Felt so much better than just the bare tile.
He absent-mindedly stripped the bandages off his fingers and left them balled
up next to the towel before going to sleep.
Sometime in the middle of the night he woke up to Mantis standing about two
feet away from him. Liquid quickly sat up.
“Ready for anything you want, Mantis,” he said, smiling, shifting his weight
from side to side in anticipation. “Please, go ahead. Every part of my body is
yours to use as you please.”
“I only came in here to throw away those bandages you left on the floor,”
Mantis said.
“Oh. Ah.”
Now that Liquid thought about it, this would definitely be more fun with
someone whose sex drive didn’t essentially amount to a chore list assigned by
his lover.
“Bored?” Mantis said dryly.
Liquid stood on his knees, scooting forward and grasping Mantis around his
hips. “I want you,” he breathed, then pressed a kiss to his stomach.
Mantis sighed and gave in to Liquid, like he always did in the end. Liquid got
a good rough face-fucking, although Mantis didn’t do a damn thing about
Liquid’s boner, leaving as soon as he was finished with nothing more than a
“good boy, Eli” and an affectionate pet on the head.
Not wanted to be saddled with blue balls for the fourth time in twenty-four
hours, Liquid just went ahead and took care of himself before he went to sleep
again.
                                    Sunday.
The next morning Liquid learned about the wonderful world of vibrating prostate
toys.
Liquid was, somewhat understandably, a little uncertain at first.
“Are you sure—“
“It is perfectly safe, Eli,” Mantis said, “and supposedly it feels good, too.
Also, this is a remote-controlled model, so I do not even have to be in the
room with you in order to torment you.”
“…fun.”
“Relax. I only intend on using this until lunch. I suspect you will have had
more than had your fill by then…”
Still, spending all morning on something new and, as far as Liquid was
concerned, extremely unusual was a bit daunting, considering Liquid’s current
slightly nervous mental state. He clung to Mantis a touch too desperately as he
shivered when Mantis slipped the toy in his Liquid’s ass. It was a little
strange, somewhat less intrusive than anything else he’d previously had up
there but still more than enough to have his undivided attention.
“Just this once I am going to give you permission to touch yourself,” Mantis
murmured against his ear, “but I expect you to let the toy bring you to
completion each time, not your hands.”
“Y-Yes, Mantis,” Liquid mewled.
He wasn’t mildly prescient like Mantis was, but nonetheless he saw an unfair
amount of orgasm delay in his near future.
Mantis turned on the toy before he left the room, apparently just for the
amusement of watching Liquid jump about a foot in the air the fucking intense
vibrations.
“B-Bloody hell, Mantis—-“
“That is only the lowest setting,” Mantis said.
“I-It— w-wh-what?? The l-lowest-?”
Mantis laughed and patted Liquid’s cheek. “I will be sure to keep it on this
setting,” he said.
He left Liquid alone to try and adjust to the (admittedly mild, Liquid just
wasn’t accustomed to it) rumbling of the toy. He was so dazed by it that it
took him about ten minutes to remember that Mantis had given him permission to
touch himself, but for once he was forced to be gentle - teasing, almost! -
with himself, since his usual uncaring jerks overwhelmed him when combined with
the vibrations of the toy.
“M-My god,” he muttered to himself, biting the knuckles of his other hand, the
leash clinking as he leaned back against the wall.
Every time he was teetering on the edge of climax, the toy would abruptly turn
off and Liquid would have to chew on his tongue and dig his fingers into his
leg to remind himself what Mantis said. It wouldn’t be until his arousal was
just starting to subside that the vibrating would start up again and he’d end
up hopelessly palming his cock and grinding against the floor once more. And
every time he thought he was getting used to it, that it was starting to get
just a little boring and maybe he was even starting to go kind of numb, the
vibrations would (very briefly) intensify, the toy evidently clicking up a
setting for half a second, just enough to shock Liquid.
You said you’d keep it on the lowest setting! Liquid internally yelled at
Mantis.
It is on the lowest setting, came Mantis’ falsely innocent reply.
It wasn’t two seconds ago!!
My finger must have slipped.
After edging for what Liquid was certain was several hours, Mantis finally
allowed Liquid to orgasm. He slumped over, exhausted and overwhelmed, absent-
mindedly continuing to rub his raw, softening dick with his fingertips as the
stupid toy kept going. Liquid felt like his very bones were shaking.
“Ghh…”
He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and had to look away again
quickly, he looked so pathetic.
Liquid was half-unconscious and reduced to low, incoherent moaning and making
very small circles with his hips, unable to bring himself to do anything about
his returning erection (how many times had it been again? He was fairly certain
he’d climaxed at least half a dozen times already, and he was shooting blanks
by now), when the toy switched off again and the room door opened. Blearily he
looked up at Mantis.
“Enough…?” Mantis asked, crouching next to him.
Liquid nodded weakly.
He let out a long breath, sprawling out on the floor as Mantis carefully tugged
the toy out of him, then grabbed Mantis around the shoulders, dragging him down
so he could kiss his forehead without having to crane his neck up so much.
“Th-that was good, though,” he whispered dizzily, “that f-felt very good.”
“Do you want me to take care of this?” Mantis said, placing his hand over
Liquid’s cock. Liquid shuddered, and nodded again, panting in Mantis’ ear.
At this point the gentle familiarity of one of Mantis’ somewhat dispassionate
handjobs was even more of a turn-on than the way he murmured to Liquid while he
did it, telling him to relax, to not squirm so much, that he belonged to him,
that his libido was out of control and he was lucky he had Mantis to keep him
in check, and Mantis was lucky to have Liquid in general. It only took a few
minutes for Liquid to orgasm again, moaning Mantis’ name.
Afterwards he forgot about lunch entirely and couldn’t help but fall asleep at
Mantis’ feet.
He woke up alone in the middle of the afternoon. He was kind of hungry, but
mostly lonely. Mentally he attempted to catalogue all the orgasms he’d had so
far, but he’d lost track at some point and gave up on that quickly, instead
lying on his back, kicking his legs up against the wall, and staring blankly at
the ceiling.
About 45 minutes later, judging by the movement of the stream of light from the
window, Mantis arrived with dinner, a bowl of soup. Smelled like vegetables.
“Hi,” Liquid said, tilting his head back to look at him upside-down.
“Starting to tire of all this?” Mantis said, sitting cross-legged on the floor.
“Just waiting for you to come back,” Liquid said, sitting up, then opened his
mouth expectantly, his cheeks pre-emptively turning slightly red. Mantis rolled
his eyes and fed him his dinner. Liquid didn’t try to take control this time.
When that was done he got a drawn-out, very teasing handjob, with lots and lots
of touching the rest of his body as opposed to just his dick, and Mantis made
him watch the whole thing in the mirror. The image of himself, naked and
melting in Mantis’ arms, cock twitching and nipples stiff and red, leash
attached to his collar and a stupid, stupid blushing, almost tearful and
drooling expression on his face, he was sure he was going to remember for the
rest of his life… however long that was.
“I do like watching your mind turn to mush, Eli,” Mantis mused, rolling one
nipple between his fingers. “It’s… adorable.”
“Mnngh— M-Mantis…”
“And the way you stutter when you are excited…”
“Nhh…”
“And how willing you are to submit to me.”
“I— I love y-you, Mantis…”
“Shh. I know.”
It seemed that the more times Liquid ejaculated, the more tired he got
afterwards. Not that he didn’t typically feel a little sleepy and out of it
immediately after orgasm or anything, but it was certainly getting to be more
pronounced. Mantis only chuckled at his incoherent, exhausted mumbling.
“Get some rest,” he said, “I have a surprise for you tonight.”
Liquid didn’t need telling twice.
He thought he was going to have a heart attack when he found out that the
surprise was that comically oversized dildo from two or so months ago.
“That- that thing again??”
“You told me to hang onto it,” Mantis said mildly.
“Er- well, yes, but—“
“Do you want it or not?”
Liquid cringed. “…yes…” he admitted.
Liquid knew he’d just bought a one-way ticket to overstimulation even when
Mantis was still carefully preparing him with his fingers, gently reminding him
that he’d already taken the thing down to the base before and had nothing to
worry about, all he had to do was relax.
It did take a while for Mantis to help Liquid ease his way down the thing,
although it was significantly easier than Liquid remembered it being the last
time, and either way by the time he hit the bottom of it was he was sure he was
just going todie because it filled and stretched him so thoroughly.
“Oh, stop being so dramatic,” Mantis said.
“R-Really, Mantis, if I m-move at all i-it really i-i-is going to sp-split me
in two, M-Mantis, really, it will—“
“It will not, now stop complaining.” He rubbed a hand over the bulge on
Liquid’s stomach where the dildo had displaced his organs, and Liquid
shuddered, gasping. “You are perfectly fine.”
“Oh, g-god, Mantis, I swear I c-can feel it in my ch-chest-!”
“It only goes up to here,” Mantis said, still rubbing the bulge. “Now…” he
moved around behind Liquid and picked up the pair of handcuffs that Liquid had
previously noticed but not really acknowledged, having been too focused on that
damn dildo. He pulled Liquid’s wrists together and neatly handcuffed them
behind his back.
“Uh,” Liquid said, tugging slightly. “Wh-why do I need to b-be handcuffed,
Mantis?”
“So you cannot pull yourself off of that thing.”
“I… er…??”
And Mantis left the room. Leaving Liquid kneeling there, impaled on the largest
sex toy he’d ever seen, breathlessly aroused, arms secured behind his back and
no real way of getting out of this situation on his own even if he wanted to.
Holy shit.
Liquid was almost afraid to move for quite some time, but eventually he rolled
his hips, experimentally, and wasn’t sure if he regretted it or not as it felt
like his insides were being rearranged by the toy. It was overpowering, and he
couldn’t stop himself from whimpering and mewling despite being the only one in
the room. (Although perhaps that was a better reason to whimper and mewl.)
He rocked his hips slowly, fucking himself with the toy, frequently having to
stop just to pant and try to focus on something else, the sweat beading on his
skin or the cool biting metal of the handcuffs or the coarse towel under his
knees or the soft clanking of the leash against the hook on the wall. He felt
half out of his mind, and breathing was difficult — god he was so turned on
right now. So aroused by his goddamned helplessness.
After four or five times his self-fornication tipped him over the edge to a
prostate orgasm, he stopped counting. The sun had gone down by the time he was
simply too far gone to even move anymore, just sag where he was kneeling and
concentrate on breathing and staying conscious. Mantis returned soon after
Liquid’s surrender.
“Had enough?” he said, slipping his fingers under Liquid’s jaw and tilting his
head up to look at him.
Liquid just moaned low in his throat. This was even worse than that vibrator.
Mantis nuzzled him, uncuffing his hands, then used his psychokinesis to lie
Liquid down. Liquid half-heartedly bucked his hips, pretty much just on tired
instinct, when Mantis started pulling that stupid dildo out - Mantis placed a
hand on his thigh, gently telling him to sit still until he was done.
Last time Liquid had used this toy (okay, last time Mantis had used it on him),
he had basically fainted when he climaxed, but this time he could more
appreciate how stretched and loose and empty he felt now that the dildo was
gone - like something was missing, like something was wrong now that he no
longer had something in his ass pushing his body to its logical limits. He
rolled his hips again, hands weakly grasping the towel beneath him.
“Mantis,” he breathed, almost light-headed with arousal, “p…please…”
He felt Mantis’ fingers run around the outside of his hole, then easily slip in
just a bit, rubbing his walls. He made a little choked sound. God, he was
gaping.
“M-Mantis, look at me… you’ve r-ruined me…”
“…?“
“Y-You’ve completely wrecked my arse, Mantis, look a-at that, it’s all st-
stretched out and ruined…”
“Eli,” Mantis started, withdrawing his fingers.
“Keep going,” Liquid whined. He turned his head to the side, pressing his cheek
against the cool tile. “K-Keep going.”
Mantis’ fingers slipped back in, and at the same time Liquid gasped as he felt
a soft touch on his aching dick.
“You’ve r-ruined me,” he repeated dazedly. “I c-can’t… Mantis, I-I can’t…”
“Shh,” Mantis said, “your body will return to normal within a few minutes.”
What Mantis said didn’t quite register with Liquid; between the haze of
pleasure and feeling of being too stretched out and loosened to even clench
around Mantis’ fingers properly, and the previous overstimulation and
exhaustion, and just the general ‘deliberately playing too close to the edge’
mood of the whole weekend… Liquid was inconsolable. He rocked his hips against
Mantis and clutched at the towel he was lying on, but his breath kept catching,
his eyes shut tight.
Right as he passed the point of no return the first tears spilled over. He
ejaculated with a chest-heaving sob.
Liquid couldn’t stop himself, crying and gasping almost hysterically, suddenly
finding the energy to scramble away from Mantis, not wanting to be touched —
tears streamed down his cheeks as he sat up, his body aching, ineffectually
wiping at his face, absolutely humiliated by his own pitiful behavior. But he
just couldn’t stop himself.
“Eli,” Mantis said, “it’s alright.”
Liquid shook his head.
“Hush, hush,” Mantis said, holding out a hand. He waited patiently for Liquid
to cough, rub his eyes again, then lean into Mantis’ touch, nuzzling his palm.
“Everything is alright, Eli,” he said, softly wiping away his tears. “Nothing
to weep about.”
“…my head h-hurts,” Liquid mumbled hoarsely.
“Mm. Come here. …good boy.”
Liquid let Mantis pull him into his lap and keep wiping his tears, sometimes
brushing his fingers through his hair… by degrees he calmed down, although he
still felt awful and jittery and every time he opened his mouth to say
something in his defense he would find that he hadn’t succeeded in pulling
himself together as well as he thought he had and all that would come out was
an incoherent stammer and a choked sob.
Mantis unclipped the leash from his collar. “Shh, Eli. Deep breaths.”
“Mnn… Mantis…”
He very carefully, and very gently, cleaned Liquid’s body of sweat and semen
and lube, then murmured, “Can you stand?”
Liquid nodded - although, upon standing, he felt kind of bowlegged and weak-
kneed, but that certainly wasn’t the only reason why he clung to Mantis now.
Mantis escorted him to the bedroom and deposited him on the bed — and Liquid,
naturally, knew that the whole thing was over now. Especially when Mantis laid
down next to him and snuggled up close, letting Liquid hold him too tightly
around the middle, and ran his fingers through his hair, murmuring “Hush now,
there… good boy, Eli… good, there you go, everything is alright” to him every
time his chest hitched and a few more tears slipped out.
He was satisfied.
                                    Monday.
“Mantis… I know I threw my toothbrush in with the rest of luggage, where did
you put it…?”
“The bathroom attached to this room,” Mantis said, brushing a few strands of
hair out of Liquid’s face (he’d just sat up and had horrible bedhead that he
couldn’t quite bring himself to care about considering it had just been the
first time since Wednesday night that he’d slept on something soft). “On the
sink.”
“Mm. Thank you.”
The bathroom attached to the bedroom was evidently designed by someone who took
the ‘closet’ part of ‘water closet’ a little too literally, but Liquid didn’t
mind cramped spaces and he returned to bed within ten minutes, feeling much
better with a clean mouth and combed hair. (Although, at some point he really
should put on clothes.)
“I was worried you might still be… on edge,” Mantis said. “You can be so hard
to read sometimes…”
“Oh, no,” Liquid said, drawing him close and nuzzling him, then kissing his
neck, “last night was very cathartic, I thought.”
“I see.”
Liquid grabbed a meagre handful of Mantis’ butt and squeezed affectionately,
kissing his jaw now, and Mantis sighed. “You will never be sated for long, will
you?”
“With you around…? Mm, no. One last time before we pack up?” (The clock on the
wall said 11:36, so Liquid had slept in quite a while.)
“I… I’m not sure, Eli…”
Liquid drew back a little, with an exaggerated pout on his face. “Oh, come on.
We’re on a bed now, not a hard floor, and I’m not attached to a wall. I promise
I won’t cry this time.”
“…”
“…fine, fine, if you don’t want—“
“No,” Mantis said, “it is alright, Eli. If you want me that badly.”
Liquid perked up.
“Just…” Mantis started unlatching the straps of his gas mask. Liquid blinked in
surprise; now that he thought about it, the rental property was more than three
miles away from literally anyone else, but he hadn’t been expecting this at
all… “I think we should do it… properly this time.”
“Oh,” Liquid breathed.
Mantis had let Liquid see his face only on a handful of occasions, and only
before they had parted ways for the KGB and the SAS respectively. He hadn’t
seen it once in all these years since then - Liquid had just chalked it up to
being one more thing that had changed about Mantis after that whole serial
killer incident, his vague insecurity about his appearance turning into
outright hatred. Even now he seemed uncomfortable to have his face showing,
even though he had to know that Liquid didn’t find him repulsive, not at all.
Maybe he had at first, when he was kid, but right now he honestly felt…
unspeakably blessed to look upon him.
He took Mantis’ face in his hands. “I love you,” he said.
“I know,” Mantis replied, not really looking at Liquid’s face, uneven patches
of blush spreading across his face. Liquid kissed him on the lips, smiling to
himself.
He’d never done that before.
And maybe the rings of stitches felt a little weird against his own lips, but
Liquid couldn’t recall ever being happier.
At least, that is, until he started pawing at Mantis’ clothing, and Mantis
actually let him undress him. Liquid had certainly had plenty of opportunities
to feel up Mantis (at least for a little while, until Mantis got annoyed and
told him to stop), but never his bare skin. That he’d never seen at all. Wasn’t
really too different from how he expected it, though - visible ribs and
prominent spine and sharp-as-knives hipbones, pale skin with scattered burn
scars on his lower back and legs, and a long Y-shaped scar down his front that
was faded and stretched-looking, clearly a childhood scar not unlike the ones
on his face. And of course Liquid had seen his dick before. Recently. But
still.
“Would it be ridiculous of me,” Liquid said, running his hands up over Mantis’
sides, “to call you beautiful?”
“Yes,” Mantis said firmly, drawing in on himself awkwardly, like he was trying
to cover his exposure.
Liquid caught his hands and pulled them away from his body, pushing Mantis back
on the bed and kissing him again, this time working his tongue into his mouth.
It was actually kind of funny, with the way Liquid was used to Mantis
dominating him, how uncertain and clumsy Mantis seemed now, how almost… shy he
seemed. Vulnerable.
Mantis cleared his throat. “The only other times someone has seen me nude have
been for medical reasons,” he said, cheeks pink, still not quite looking Liquid
in the eye.
“It’d be nice if I could say the same thing,” Liquid quipped, straddling
Mantis. He leaned forward to kiss him deeply again, then moved down his body,
kissing his jaw and neck, shifting himself backwards to get at his bony
shoulders and jutting clavicles, licking and sucking on his flesh — “No
hickies,” Mantis ordered nervously.
“Of course, Mantis,” Liquid murmured against his skin. “Anything you desire.”
He continued, and smirked as Mantis turned his head to the side, clearly biting
the inside of his cheek, his arms reaching up reflexively to scrabble
frenetically at Liquid’s shoulders.
“By the way,” Liquid said, “don’t use your psychic powers to give yourself an
erection, however you were doing it.”
“…hm?”
“I want to get you hard myself,” he said, moving back again so he was sitting
on (okay, mostly kneeling over, he didn’t want to put his full weight on
Mantis) Mantis’ thighs, leaving Mantis’ hands to clutch the sheets of the bed.
Mantis watched warily as Liquid brushed his hands down Mantis’ stomach, over
his hips, and his shallow chest seized briefly with Liquid reached his cock and
balls.
“Alright,” he said in a quiet voice, leaning his head back. “Go ahead.”
“Mmmm.”
It took a little longer to give Mantis an erection than ‘usual’, and even then
Liquid was having a difficult time getting it more than half-hard, but at least
he heard the way Mantis’ breathing got deeper and more ragged. That was
different, of course, since it wasn’t being amplified by the filter of his gas
mask, but still perfectly noticeable as far as Liquid was concerned, and he
kind of suspected that the sound of Mantis’ heavy breathing on its own would
probably be enough to give he himself an erection.
Not that he didn’t kind of already have one from stripping Mantis down to
nothing, but it was an interesting idea nonetheless.
“Oh, hush,” Mantis said, resting one forearm over his eyes, “don’t think things
like that, Eli.”
“What’s the problem?” Liquid said innocently, playing with Mantis’ foreskin.
“Gh…”
Liquid was thinking about how he really didn’t need to prepare himself,
probably, not this morning anyway, and while Mantis didn’t argue with him on
that point he still pointedly tapped Liquid on the side of the head with a
floating bottle of lube.
“Ahh, thank you,” Liquid said, grabbing it and immediately slicking Mantis’
cock - he couldn’t wait any longer, dammit - and Mantis’ whole body sort of
jerked.
“That’s- cold!”
“Er… yes?” Liquid said. He supposed that Mantis hadn’t put it directly on his
dick either time he’d already fucked him this weekend, just smeared more than
enough of it around Liquid’s ass and let him deal with the wet chill. “It won’t
be for long, Mantis.”
“…ah…”
Liquid recapped the lube, tossed it in the general direction of the suitcase,
and repositioned himself over Mantis, biting his lip for a second before
lowering himself down on him, groaning as he felt Mantis’ cock sink into his
ass (it kind of burned) - and especially as he felt Mantis grab at his hips.
“O-Oh, god, Mantis— I love you…”
“Eli…”
What Liquid really wanted to do was bounce up and down on Mantis’ dick until he
couldn’t breathe anymore, but okay fine his whole body (his asshole in
particular) was still sore from all his exertions the past few days and he
elected to take it slow, with shallow, languid thrusts — nice and gentle and
sweet, just how Mantis apparently liked it. He almost seemed to be getting into
it, taking Liquid’s hands and kissing his cracked nails as he rode him.
It was… really good.
Especially leaning down and french-kissing Mantis while he rolled his hips
against his. That was really good.
Liquid actually managed to draw it out for quite a long time, but eventually
Mantis finished inside him and Liquid, practically high on the feeling of
Mantis’ semen in his ass once more, starting babbling incoherently, begging for
Mantis to tell him to cum — Mantis grabbed him around the head, pulled him
down, and whispered against his lips: “Go on, Eli. Spill your seed. Do it for
me.”
He moaned loudly into Mantis’ mouth as he did.
“Good boy, Eli,” Mantis murmured almost absent-mindedly as they caught their
breath, “good boy…” Liquid pulled himself off of Mantis, kissing him again -
but softly this time instead of trying to shove his tongue down his throat.
“You should go shower,” Mantis said, wiping sweat off his face tiredly.
“You can if you like,” Liquid dismissed him, “I’m going to get dressed and
enjoy the way you claimed me.”
Mantis rolled his eyes but he didn’t argue. By the time he got out of the
shower, Liquid had taken it upon himself to make breakfast for both of them
despite it already being past noon. While Liquid had never claimed to be a good
cook, really the omelettes came out at least halfway decent, if the burned
parts were ignored - and thankfully Mantis kept his mask off, for now at least,
and ate with Liquid, which Liquid couldn’t exactly remember the last time that
had happened.
Of course, he only ate maybe a third of his omelette, but it was the thought
that counted, right?
He let Liquid kiss him one last time, and then ignored his grumbling as he put
back on his mask. After Liquid had re-packed the suitcase and thrown it in the
back of the car, Mantis sat down in the passenger seat and said, “You drive. I
want a nap.”
“I don’t know where we are,” Liquid said, but took the keys and got behind the
wheel anyway.
“Just head West until you recognize something.”
And so they finally headed back to the FOXHOUND headquarters, with Mantis
curled up fast asleep in the passenger seat, and Liquid still getting a bit of
a thrill from the sticky slickness in his underwear every time he shifted his
weight.
                                  That night.
Liquid was just exiting the showers, half-dressed and toweling off his hair,
when he ran into Ocelot in the hallway. Ocelot raised an eyebrow at him.
“I heard you’ve had quite the spring in your step all afternoon, boss.”
“Ah, yes,” Liquid said, grinning at him. “I’ve just had the greatest weekend of
my life.”
“Mm. Finally got a good dicking from Mantis, have you?”
Liquid flushed at how bluntly Ocelot put it, but shrugged anyway, smirking
knowingly.
“That’s good,” Ocelot said, “I thought he might do that if I got under his skin
enough.”
“…wait. Is that why you kept antagonizing him during the-?”
Ocelot shrugged this time. “I knew you weren’t being satisfied. It was the
least I could do.”
“Oh. Well.”
Impulsively he grabbed Ocelot by the collar and kissed his mouth.
“Thank you,” he breathed.
And then he left quickly, leaving just the lingering scent of his fussily
expensive shampoo. Ocelot stood there for a while longer, touched his lips
ponderingly, and wondered exactly how badly Mantis was going to blow up at
Liquid for kissing Ocelot.
Not that it was any of his business.
***** Memes *****
Chapter Summary
     Who's ready for a big fat useless update? :^) dw, PP will be posting
     actual fic later, as promised.
     (i'm more or less holding off on memes for things i haven't
     reuploaded yet but uhhh i'm not gonna be too concerned about spoilers
     cus most of you read this series befroe it got taken down in the
     first place..!! -pp)

(h/t Brambora)

(h/t Brambora)

(h/t Brambora)

(h/t Brambora)

(created for As_You_Say, which Make It Home was the spiritual successor to)

(h/t blackorb)

(h/t Brambora)

(h/t Brambora)
 
(h/t Brambora)

(h/t Brambora)

(h/t Brambora)

(based on a comment blackorb made)

(h/t Brambora)
***** Рокси Харт и Вэлма Келли *****
Chapter Summary
     ROXIE
     Forget it, it’ll never work.
     VELMA
     Why not?
     ROXIE
     ‘Cuz I hate you.
     VELMA
     There’s only one business in the world that’s no problem at all.
     General Audiences - No Archive Warnings Apply
     W/C 1,809
                          1990, Moscow, the Lubyanka.
It was rare that Ocelot put in proper appearances at the KGB - he was too busy,
really - but when he heard that they had gotten ahold of a psychic from
somewhere over (what used to be) the Berlin Wall, well, this he had to see.
All things considered, he wasn’t too surprised to see a tall, skinny teenager
with a lot of wavy bright red hair and a bug-eyed gas mask. Who seemed oddly
relieved to see him.
“Bogomol, huh,” Ocelot said.
The kid nodded, somewhat hesitantly. Almost shyly. Was he shy…?
“Got tired of being called rebenok?”
“Eli called me Tretij for a long time, like it was my given name,” he said in a
(seemingly naturally) quiet voice, “but then he found out what it actually
meant, and felt rather silly about it, so we came up with a new name.”
“That being Bogomol,” Ocelot guessed.
“Mantis, actually,” Bogomol said, saying the word in lightly accented English,
“but I thought it made sense to change it to Russian since I came back to the
USSR.”
Ocelot nodded slightly. “And I suppose you walked right up to me because I’m
the first person you’ve seen since coming here that you actually recognize.”
Bogomol fidgeted. “Not the first one,” he said, his already small voice getting
even smaller.
Ocelot didn’t find out what he meant for another few hours, when a researcher
who had evidently been visiting that morning was found in a toilet stall,
drooling and insensible - his mind completely gone, reduced to the level of a
newborn baby or a dumb animal.
“He was from the Leningrad University of Parapsychology,” Ocelot said without
preamble, leaning against the doorway to the tiny, bare office they had given
Bogomol.
Bogomol shrunk in on himself. “Yes,” he whispered. “He recognized me. He was
going to say something.”
“Send you back?” He stepped in, shut the door behind him so they wouldn’t be
overheard.
“I don’t want to go back.”
Ocelot raised his eyebrows. Quite the will on him after all… the natural result
of aging, or a lasting side-effect of parasitizing headstrong little Eli back
in ’84 (and who knew how long onwards)? That remained to be seen. “I’m not
about to fault you on your reasoning, but you can’t go around attacking
comrades like that.”
“No one will know it was me,” Bogomol said, “as far as anyone knows, I’m only
telepathic and I don’t have any other powers. I could never do something like
that.”
There was a pause. Bogomol looked at Ocelot expectantly.
“I won’t tell a soul,” Ocelot said at length.
“I don’t like you, you know,” Bogomol said, almost as if he were replying, if
only what he said fit in at all with what Ocelot said. “I can’t read your mind
at all, I’ve never been able to. There are a lot of people like that here, with
those funny implants - but you, I think it’s just the way you are naturally. I
can’t trust you.”
“What’s trust have to do with anything?”
Again, a pause.
“I’ll keep my mouth shut about your other powers, and what you did to
Nauchenko,” Ocelot said again.
“…thank you.”
Ocelot scrutinized him. Bogomol kept his gas mask pointed towards his lap, his
hands twisting frenetically in it.
“What’s Eli up to?”
Bogomol looked up. Seems the subject of Eli caught his attention.
“I heard a rumor that some kid matching his description managed to weasel his
way into the SAS - any merit to it?”
“I think so,” Bogomol said, “that was his plan.”
“You two still in touch?”
Bogomol looked at his lap again. “We planned on it,” he said. “To write to each
other, I mean.”
“Trouble getting letters out?”
He nodded.
Ocelot sighed. “I’ve got some friends-of-a-friend in the SAS. I can get an open
channel for both of you, so to speak - the censors won’t bother with your
letters, coming or going, once I’m done.”
“…? You can do that?”
Ocelot spread his arms and shrugged. “I’ve been in the KGB since it was
founded,” he said, “I can do anything.”
Again there was a brief pause, this time as Bogomol apparently did the math in
his head. “Wait, that would mean you started here when you were-“
“Ten? Yes. Nine, actually, my birthday hadn’t passed yet. But no younger than
you when you were following Skull Face around… at least according to your
records.”
Bogomol didn’t reply. Ocelot more than suspected the age on his records
(fifteen) was a complete assumption, of course. He’d taken a peek at them and
he hadn’t missed the way Bogomol’s birthday was conveniently the same as the
twins’.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” Bogomol said abruptly, and although his
voice was as neutral as ever, his suspicion was obvious in every restless,
anxious movement of his little body in his chair.
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me,” Ocelot said, “this is an arrangement of
convenience.”
“I don’t want to owe-“
Ocelot held up a finger for silence. “I don’t make a habit of holding debt from
children,” he stated. “I would simply prefer it if you stay in the KGB, at
least until this burning house of a nation finally collapses in on itself. To
that end I’ll try to make you as comfortable here as possible.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t like loose ends, which is what you’ve been for the past six
years. And with you at the KGB, I more or less know where you are and what
you’re doing at all times.”
“I see,” Bogomol said. If he was put off at all, then he didn’t show it. It
seemed he was content to accept Ocelot’s good graces, despite his mistrust and
Ocelot’s reasons for offering his hand.
What Ocelot didn’t tell him, partially because he assumed Bogomol would figure
it out on his own, was that he wasn’t the only loose end being caught hold of
here. By putting him in contact with Eli, Ocelot would bring under at least
partial observation one of the biggest loose ends as far as he was concerned -
the frequently AWOL product of Les Enfants Terribles. News of him had been
scarce ever since he was found alive in America following the collapse of the
Kingdom of the Flies, and while he could certainly have an eye kept on him in
the SAS, it wouldn’t be by Ocelot. Why, Ocelot would be almost out of the loop!
So it was only natural, really, that he should tie up that loose end with the
one that had been practically dumped at his feet.
To that end he increased the frequency of his visits to the KGB, although
usually it mostly meant using his office in the Lubyanka to work on reports and
paperwork for his other positions with other organizations. Bogomol, who still
professed to dislike him, would always drop by and chat, simply because he was
a nervous boy who couldn’t communicate with his coworkers and Ocelot was the
only one here he already sort of knew.
Not very long after their initial reunion (if it could really be called that,
it wasn’t like Ocelot had had any direct interaction with the boy back in ’84
outside of occasionally seeing him out of the corner of his eye), Bogomol edged
into Ocelot’s office, twisting a sheet of paper in his hands, and carefully
closed the door behind him.
“Problem?” Ocelot said without looking up from his own papers.
“…can you tell me what this says?”
Ocelot looked up. It was a perfectly normal communiqué that Bogomol was holding
out to him.
“Can’t you read it yourself?”
“…”
Ocelot sat back in his chair with a huff. “You can’t read,” he said.
“I can,” Bogomol said, snatching the paper back and pressing it to his chest,
almost defensively, “some words.”
“Really.”
“But I haven’t seen some of these words before, so I don’t know what they say.”
Ocelot gave him an even look, twirling his pen in one hand, then pulled out a
blank sheet of paper. Very carefully he wrote down Богомол, then spun the paper
around and slid it across the desk towards Bogomol. “Can you read this?”
“That’s my name,” Bogomol said, peering at it.
Ocelot took the paper back and simply wrote down Б. He showed it to Bogomol
again. “What letter is this?”
“…it’s the first one in-“
“What letter is it, Bogomol?”
He stared at the paper for another few seconds, then looked away, shifting his
weight uncomfortably.
“I see what your problem is, then,” Ocelot said, scrunching up the paper he’d
just been writing on and tossing it into the trashcan by his desk. “Your idea
of ‘reading’ is that you associate certain shapes - or how certain combinations
of letters look - with certain words, when what reading actually is is
associating certain shapes - that is, the letters themselves - with certain
sounds.”
“That sounds like what Eli said when he was teaching me the English alphabet,”
Bogomol said, staring at the floor.
“Ah, so you know that much? Good, that should make it easier to learn
Cyrillic.”
There was a long pause.
“You’re not sure you can learn it on your own, are you?” Ocelot said dryly.
Bogomol shook his head.
“Fine, I’ll teach you. In the meantime, run your correspondences here through
me. I’ve got more clearance than even Kryuchkov, so you won’t get in trouble
for it.”
So it went. As far as everyone else in the KGB was concerned, Ocelot and
Bogomol were friends - and popular opinion was that Ocelot was a kind of father
figure for Bogomol. Bogomol never spoke up against the rumors although they
irritated him, and Ocelot considered them not worth his time — they were
useful, even, covering for the fact that he was coddling Bogomol just to keep
him in line. Not that he had to do much. Just teach him to read and write
Russian, keep the letters between him and Eli flowing smoothly, and meddle on
his behalf when other researchers from Leningradsky Universitet Parapsykology
came sniffing around, wondering just how much Bogomol really did match the
description of the Third Child who had gone missing after a plane crash six
years ago.
Completely different kid entirely, was the conclusion they came away with after
Ocelot’s timely intervention. Nothing this one has that hasn’t already been
researched to death.And so Bogomol was left entirely in peace, as long as he
was careful to only read minds in front of everyone else - which, naturally, he
was.
If Bogomol was ever scared of how much he owed Ocelot, Ocelot couldn’t tell
with the rest of his perpetual skittish fear of the world at large.
***** Рокси Харт и Вэлма Келли 2 *****
Chapter Summary
     Bogomol has a terrible nightmare.
     Teen And Up Audiences - implied Underage
     W/C 4,540
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                             January 1991, Moscow.
When Bogomol failed to show up to work for several days in a row, somehow it
seemed only natural that Ocelot would be dispatched to check up on him and make
sure he hadn’t fled back to the West or something. Ocelot internally grumbled,
scoffed, and rolled his eyes when asked to do it, but externally set off
without a single hint of a complaint - after all, a troubling amount of KGB
agents and employees were under the impression that Ocelot and Bogomol had some
kind of father-son relationship, when in reality their so-called “friendship”
was only one of convenience; Bogomol disliked and distrusted Ocelot, but
tolerated him and was willing to take advantage of his apparent kindness, and
Ocelot… really just felt bad for the kid, but wasn’t one to let feelings get in
the way of his work. (Romantic proclivities notwithstanding.)
The block of flats where Bogomol lived was like every other Soviet block of
flats in the sense that it really lived up the word block. Dirty and austere,
brutally cutting into the space around it, and Ocelot quickly found the
apartment number given to him, disinterestedly noting as he walked by that all
of the apartments seemed to be identical to one another. He knocked on the
door.
No answer.
Ocelot heaved a sigh. He was hoping he wouldn’t have to go hunt down whoever
was running this damn khrushchyovka so he could get a spare key for Bogomol’s
apartment. Somehow he doubted just leaving a note on the door would end up
being to anyone’s satisfaction…
Conveniently, he was interrupted by a middle-aged woman in a kerchief exiting
the neighboring apartment right then.
“Excuse me,” he said, politely, “do you know the boy who lives in this
apartment at all?”
“The boy?” said the woman, “with all that hair, and how thin he is, I thought
that was a girl.”
“So you have seen him.”
“Oh, yes. Typically I leave for work in the morning at the same time he does.
Not much of a talker, no matter how hard I try to start a conversation…”
Ocelot wasn’t surprised on two counts; Bogomol was indeed not much of a talker,
and he more than suspected this lady mostly tried to start conversations about
the gas mask. “Have you seen him in the past few days?”
“Oh, oh, no. But I’m sure he’s still here, just sick I think, maybe. I
certainly heard noises from his apartment a few nights ago, and I haven’t seen
him since, so I don’t think he’s left.”
“Noises…? What sort?”
“Shouting of some kind. Thought he might have been startled by a rat. We do
have rat problems around here, you know.”
“I see,” Ocelot said, “thank you.” He tipped his hat to her and, as soon as she
had bundled herself off, knocked on the door again.
“Bogomol,” he said loudly, “your nice neighbor tells me you’re in there. Come
open the door. I only want to talk.”
He waited patiently. It paid off when the door unlocked with a click and
slightly creaked open as though pushed by a wind - Bogomol wasn’t standing
behind it, but it still meant he was in there somewhere.
Ocelot stepped inside and closed the door behind him, taking off his heavy
coat, hat, and scarf, and squinting. It was dark in here, and smelled… strange.
After giving his eyes a second to adjust, Ocelot realized what it was: the
whole apartment was, floor to ceiling, haphazardly blanketed every centimeter
in squares of lead foil that fit the wall so closely that even the fixtures
were perfectly overlaid. Ocelot was sure that this wasn’t healthy.
Even aside from the lead foil, Ocelot realized as he picked through the small
flat, vaguely searching for its resident and leaving cowboy-boot-shaped
depressions in the foil on the floor, it would still have been an odd place to
live. Almost no furniture, but scattered around in careless piles were random
knick-knacks, disassembled electronics, and books, most of which had only been
un-banned relatively recently. Ocelot suspected that Bogomol had acquired most
of these things off the black market, largely out of boredom and not knowing
what else to do with his salary.
“Bogomol?” Ocelot said at length, breaking the eerie silence of the apartment.
“What do you want?” came from what Ocelot supposed was the bedroom. At least,
when Ocelot looked through the doorway, it had a bed in it, and on that bed a
lanky teenaged boy miserably curled up with his back to the door.
“I was sent to check up on you,” Ocelot said, “since you suddenly disappeared.”
“…”
“How about it, Bogomol?”
Bogomol still didn’t respond.
Alright. Fine. Kid was clearly depressed about something. Could be trouble in
and of itself, even without getting into what Bogomol might or might not do as
a result of his bad mood.
Ocelot walked up next to the bed and looked down at Bogomol, who had his face
pressed partly against the mattress, the rest of it covered by his hair. His
nails were chewed and ragged and bleeding and now that Ocelot was standing
closer he could see that he wasn’t wearing his gas mask - mostly because said
gas mask was lying on the floor next to Ocelot’s boot. (That must be what the
lead foil was for: an apartment-wide substitute for the gas mask, so he could
take it off once in a while, probably to eat or drink, or just for physical
comfort’s sake.)
“What happened?” Ocelot said flatly.
“I had a dream,” Bogomol muttered. “A bad one.”
“Did you now. When?”
“…what day is it…?”
“It’s already Friday, were you aware of that?”
“No… I thought it was Sunday.”
Ocelot blinked. “Have you been lying in bed for six days?”
“…have I?”
He shifted, peering up at Ocelot through his hair. Ocelot met his eyes easily,
but was a little surprised by them - pale blue, sleepy, and eyelashes probably
as ridiculous as Ocelot’s - they burned with an intensity that chased away any
remaining doubts Ocelot might have had about how much will Bogomol possessed.
“If it’s Friday, then,” Bogomol said, “Eli’s letter should come in tomorrow.”
“Have you been lying in bed for six days?” Ocelot said again.
“…yes. But I moved myself sometimes. I’m fine.”
“Sit up.”
Bogomol followed Ocelot’s flat order without protest, but very much with the
air that he didn’t really care what he did one way or the other and only did as
Ocelot said because it didn’t matter to him at all. His hair fell away from his
face as he did, and while he a damn sight prettier than, say, Skull Face,
Ocelot still had to bite back a startled expression. It was a shame, really. He
would have been a cute kid if his face weren’t so mangled, his cheeks so
sunken, and purple bags under his eyes so large - he had an attractively
angular face with perfect skin apart from his scars, a smattering of freckles,
and full, plush lips despite the rings of stitches in them.
“You’re staring,” Bogomol said. He didn’t sound particularly offended or
accusatory, but he certainly didn’t sound flattered or comfortable, either.
“Nevermind,” Ocelot said, “show me your arm.”
Obediently Bogomol raised one arm, tugging his sleeve back. An oval-shaped area
of skin up at his shoulder was flushed red, and there was a swollen, open sore
on his elbow. Ocelot sighed.
“Bedsores, Bogomol? Really?”
“…”
He dragged a hand down his face. This was just great. And not in the least
because if this idiot child’s bedsores got infected, it would end up coming
down on Ocelot’s head one way or the other…
“Get undressed,” he said, “I’m sure you’ve got bandages and disinfectant
somewhere in this dump…”
Ocelot found an old first aid kit in the remains of an even older television,
although upon opening it he found that - while there were plenty of bandages
that were apparently still fine - the bottle of disinfectant gel had dried up
and gotten useless with time. Ah well, the bottle of water shoved in the kit
(didn’t look like it belonged to it originally) was still sealed, and water
didn’t go bad - and the proper way to disinfect any open sore was mostly
irrigating it and putting a bandage on.
He found some soap in the kitchen, and at the same time a bottle of vodka that
he suspected had been left by the previous owner, at least judging by the dust
on it. He kept it in mind for later, and returned to Bogomol’s room.
Bogomol appeared to be completely naked, but he was clutching his bedsheet to
his chest, so that only his thin arms and bony shoulders were really exposed.
He was watching Ocelot carefully, and Ocelot only looked at him impassively in
turn. “Go on,” he said, “I know the ones on your arm won’t be the only sores
you have.”
Hesitantly Bogomol stepped off the bed, still clutching the sheet to himself
and keeping his eyes fixed on Ocelot, and shifted the sheet slightly, still
keeping himself covered but unveiling a strip of pale flesh - protruding ribs,
a sharp hip, one long leg. He had red spots on his side and ankle, an open sore
on his knee, and an even larger one on the side of his hip.
“And your other side?” Ocelot said, raising an eyebrow.
“Just this one,” Bogomol said quietly.
“I see. Want to step into the bathroom for this?”
“No.”
Didn’t matter to Ocelot. He sat on the bed next to where Bogomol was standing,
took his gloves off so they wouldn’t get wet, and opened the bottle of water.
The bedsores that amounted to little more than persistent redness, cooler to
the touch than the rest of his skin, were simply cleaned with soap and water -
Ocelot was careful not to press too much, and patted instead of rubbed, lest he
exacerbate the issue and have to deal with it later. The ones where the skin
was broken he rinsed with the water and left the soap out of it entirely.
Bogomol winced slightly as he did. Yeah, it probably did hurt. Ocelot really
just couldn’t find it in him to care. Nor could he find it in him to care about
the way Bogomol abruptly broke his heretofore overly-intense staring at Ocelot
when Ocelot had him lift up his leg and plant his foot on the bed so Ocelot
could deal with the sore on his knee. He just looked deliberately at the wall
now, hands tightening on the bedsheet that still carefully concealed the rest
of his body.
As Ocelot was bandaging the now-clean sores, Bogomol spoke, with exactly the
same ‘clearly uncomfortable but not actually rejecting Ocelot’ air as before:
“Your hands are lingering.”
“Are they?” Ocelot said, unruffled.
“…I can take over from here.”
Ocelot stood. “Come meet me in the kitchen when you’re through, then.”
By the time Bogomol had finished bandaging himself and had gotten dressed again
and joined Ocelot, Ocelot was already waiting with the bottle of vodka and two
glasses, sitting in the only chair at the tiny old table in the middle of the
kitchen. While Bogomol stood warily in the doorway - in mostly summer clothing,
for God’s sake it was the middle of winter, and why did he even own thigh-high
stockings? - Ocelot opened the bottle, poured some into the both glasses, then,
picked up one of them and gestured grandiosely towards Bogomol. “Alright,
Bogomol. Come tell me about that dream you had.”
Bogomol came and sat across from Ocelot, hovering in an invisible chair, taking
the other glass of vodka in his hands out of, in all likelihood, politeness,
although he didn’t drink from it… yet. He nodded. Ocelot noticed that he had
bandaged the tips of his fingers, too.
“It was about Eli.”
Ocelot waited for him to go on. When he didn’t, he prompted, “What about him?”
“I don’t know. He was… his squadron got shot down over the Middle East
somewhere. It was scary.”
“Sounds like your typical nightmare to me,” Ocelot said, taking a sip of vodka.
Bogomol scrunched in a little on himself, his hands tightening around his
glass. “I don’t know,” he said again.
There was another pause. Ocelot gave a long breath out through his nose.
“Take your drink, Bogomol,” he said, gesturing.
Bogomol unprotestingly tipped back the entire glass of vodka in one breath, and
if it burned his throat at all he gave no outward indication of it.
“Now, do you think,” Ocelot said, refilling Bogomol’s glass, “that your dream
might have been caused by your psychic link with him? I assume it’s still
intact in one way or another.”
Bogomol nodded, frowning, eyes cast down to the table.
“So as far as you’re concerned, you could have been dreaming about something
that had already happened, was going to happen shortly, or was even happing at
that very moment.”
He nodded again, then drank his vodka the same way as before. Ocelot didn’t
bother refilling his glass this time, figuring that at this rate he was going
to poison himself without paying attention.
Instead he sat back in his chair, watching Bogomol closely. “I was under the
impression that your powers only worked within in a certain range. Three miles,
wasn’t it?”
Nod.
“Iraq is over two thousand miles from here.”
“I think some things aren’t affected by distance,” Bogomol said.
Ocelot twitched his moustache. “But are you certain of that? Has anything like
this ever happened before?”
Bogomol shook his head. “Ever since we met— when we parted ways when he turned
eighteen, that was the first time we were ever more than three miles apart.”
“So… there’s no real reason to say it was anything other than an ordinary
nightmare. It’s only natural that you’d be worried about his safety now that
you’re so far apart, and it’s perfectly normal to dream about terrible things
happening to someone you’re worried about. That doesn’t mean they’ll come true,
even if you are psychic.”
Bogomol nodded uncertainly, his eyes flicking up to Ocelot before looking back
down at the empty glass in his hands again. Ocelot took another sip of vodka.
“But what if that isn’t it?” Bogomol said, “what if I did have my dream because
of our bond? What if Eli’s…”
“…dead?”
He shook his head emphatically. “No,” he said, in a much more firm voice than
Ocelot had ever heard him use, “I’d know if he were dead.”
“You’re certain of that?”
“I’m certain. No matter how far apart we are, either of us would know the
instant the other dies and our link breaks. …it would hurt.”
Ocelot didn’t refute that, but although Bogomol’s logic was sound
(surprisingly, considering Bogomol’s attempts at logic could usually be
described as harebrained at best), there was no proof that that was really how
it worked. It was more likely he had convinced himself of that a long time ago,
to ease his fears about something happening to either one of them while they
were apart - he could assure himself that Eli was still alive as long as he
never felt an inexplicable pain of having their bond broken, and that if he
should die then his death wouldn’t go unnoticed.
“So he’s certainly still alive, then,” Ocelot said, “what are you so worried
about?”
“If his plane went down - he could be hurt, or crippled, or maimed. He could be
in a coma. Or what if he wasn’t recovered? He could be lost in the Iraqi
desert—“
“I think Eli would have no trouble surviving on his own. He would find his way
back to civilization handily.”
“—or taken prisoner. What if he’s been taken prisoner??”
“Then I don’t think the Iraqi insurgents would kill him or injure him too
badly; a coalition hostage would be more valuable alive than dead and they
wouldn’t want to take risks.” Another sip. “And the war won’t last forever, you
know.”
“I’m just…”
“It’s alright to be worried,” Ocelot sighed, “but not to the point of lying in
bed until sores develop over a dream.”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence as Ocelot sipped his drink while
Bogomol kept staring blankly at his empty glass.
This was never going to go anywhere unless Ocelot extended another pointless
favor. Internally rolling his eyes, he said, “Tell you what. I’ll get in touch
with my contacts in the SAS and… enquire after Eli’s health.” Bogomol looked up
at him. “I should have an answer by tomorrow.”
“…thank you, Ocelot.”
“It’s no trouble.” Or, at least, not much trouble, and certainly less than the
trouble Bogomol would give him if he carried on like this. “Now stop worrying
about him unless you actually have something to worry about.”
Bogomol nodded.
For the sake of the illusion of friendship, Ocelot stayed to finish off his
glass of vodka, ignoring Bogomol, who was still sitting with his bandaged hands
clutching the empty glass and a drawn expression.
Ocelot was almost on the point of getting up and leaving when Bogomol abruptly
burst into tears.
“What are you crying for?” Ocelot said, taken aback.
“I’m- I’m scared,” Bogomol stammered, ineffectually wiping his face, “I’m
scared something bad happened to Eli. I’m scared I’ll never see him again.”
“…Bogomol—“
“I never should have left him,” Bogomol said, losing his balance and catching
himself against the table, still crying pathetically. “I should have said no
when he… I shouldn’t have left him, I know he’d be okay if I were still there
but I’m not and I don’t know if he is—“
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Ocelot said.
“But what if he’s not?”
He stood up unsteadily, and walked around the table, behind Ocelot, and leaned
against the counter, grabbing some paper towels and wiping his face with them,
sniffling, undersized chest hitching.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said, and Ocelot noticed a slight slur in his
voice, “I wish he were here. He’s my whole world, Ocelot. I don’t know what I’m
doing here. I’m lost. I need Eli.”
“You’re panicking over nothing.”
“I need Eli,” he repeated, “I need him. I’m scared.”
“…you’re drunk.”
Bogomol dissolved into completely insensible sobbing, and when he moved back
from the counter - to do what Ocelot didn’t know - he tripped over his own feet
and fell backwards, and Ocelot had to catch him. The boy was light as hell and
he didn’t seem to notice he’d crumpled into Ocelot’s arms, he just kept crying
inconsolably.
Ocelot was very good at making people cry. Not so much at making them stop.
Especially if they were intoxicated. (Had Bogomol never drank before? Ocelot
had thought that he might be sixteen, but he’s also Russian, however at this
point, it seemed extremely likely…)
“That’s enough,” Ocelot said firmly, standing him up — except Bogomol had gone
pretty much completely limp and any attempt Ocelot made to let go of him would
have ended with him on the floor. Ocelot sighed. Jesus Christ. “Stop crying,
Bogomol, it won’t help anything and it’ll just dehydrate you.”
Saying that didn’t seem to help much. Not too surprising, actually. Ocelot
tried a different tactic.
“Eli’s perfectly fine,” he said, patting Bogomol’s shoulder awkwardly, “you’ll
see tomorrow.”
Bogomol shook his head, with incoherent mumble that Ocelot assumed translated
to, “You don’t know that.”
“Even if something did happen,” Ocelot said, “you’re probably right that you’d
know if he were dead. This is Eli we’re talking about, Bogomol. As long as he’s
still technically alive, he’ll pull through. If he’s stranded, he’ll find his
way back; if he’s been hurt, he’ll heal; if he’s been captured, he’ll escape
somehow, or at least survive until he can be recovered. He’ll be fine.”
Bogomol started to calm down as Ocelot spoke, just a little. He was still a
mess of tears and snot and he kept hiccoughing as he tried to get ahold of
himself, and he was still uncomfortably scrunched up against Ocelot’s body, but
he was starting to regain his sort-of composure.
“And that’s assuming something even did happen,” Ocelot continued, “right now,
the only ‘proof’ you have of that is a dream that you might have simply had
because you were already worried. In all likelihood, nothing has happened at
all, and tomorrow you can write to him and tell him all about this silly
episode.”
“H-He’ll say I’m being r-ridiculous,” Bogomol slurred, wiping his face again.
“You are being ridiculous. But it’s perfectly understandable, in your case. It
has been a long time since you’ve seen him.”
Bogomol twisted himself around, staring up at Ocelot with big wet baby blue
eyes. “Am I ever g-going to see him again?”
“Yes,” Ocelot said immediately.
“…are you sure?”
“Of course I am,” Ocelot said, “if you two ever find the opportunity to arrange
a meeting, I’d be glad to facilitate.”
Bogomol didn’t say anything, just nodded absently.
Then he threw his arms around Ocelot’s neck and pressed himself close. It was
so unexpected that it actually took Ocelot - of all people - about two seconds
to register the hug. He went as still as possible.
This was… uncomfortable.
“You shouldn’t be so nice to me,” Bogomol mumbled, and Ocelot could feel his
lips moving, hot and dry, against the skin of his neck. “I don’t like you, you
know.”
“I know.”
“Do you ever worry about Eli, too? …do you care at all about him?”
“He was a tough kid,” Ocelot said, intentionally not answering the second
question, “somehow I don’t think joining the SAS would soften him any.”
“He’s probably… perfectly fine…”
“Yes, Bogomol. He probably is.”
It was another minute or so before Ocelot observed the change in Bogomol’s
breathing: he’d fallen asleep, still latched onto Ocelot’s shoulders. Ocelot
let out a breath of relief. From there it was an easy matter to pick Bogomol up
- he really was very light - and carry him back to the bedroom, and tuck him
into bed. He carefully brushed Bogomol’s hair back from where it was sticking
to his scarred, freckled face, then grabbed his gas mask and placed it on the
bed next to him and, after a moment’s consideration, pulled his notebook out of
his pocket. He wrote a quick note reminding Bogomol to come into work tomorrow
even if he still felt bad (“Even you can’t stay in Kryuchkov’s good graces
forever…”), tore it out of the book, and placed it next to his gas mask. Then
he returned to the kitchen.
He wiped off, and cleaned, his neck where Bogomol’s face had been pressed with
the same attitude and care as when he’d disinfected Bogomol’s bedsores — like
Bogomol’s tears or mucus, or somehow the touch of his lips, could potentially
infect him, and Ocelot had to avoid that for the simple reason that it would be
inconvenient if he didn’t, and if it hadn’t mattered either way then he would
have been glad on some deep, petty level to let the infection run its course.
And then he left. Bogomol murmured something in his sleep as Ocelot passed his
bedroom door. Ocelot didn’t even turn to look.
                           The next day. Afternoon.
As usual Bogomol slunk into Ocelot’s office. But from what Ocelot could see of
his eyes behind the tinted lenses of his gas mask the bags under his eyes were
darker than usual, and his eyes seemed to be bloodshot. Plus he was moving with
a kind of pained caution, eyes tight and steps carefully soft.
Ocelot almost laughed. He was hungover, wasn’t he?
“Eli’s letter didn’t come in,” Bogomol said in a slightly hoarse voice.
“I know,” Ocelot said, sitting back in his chair and putting on an
appropriately somber expression. “I’m afraid I have some bad news, Bogomol.”
Bogomol went completely stiff. His eyes snapped up to Ocelot’s, then twitched
around the room, like he was looking for some way out other than the door
behind him.
Ocelot didn’t have time to be anything other than blunt. “Looks like your dream
meant something after all. Last week, Eli got shot down over Kuwait. His whole
squadron is MIA.”
Bogomol stared at him blankly for a long while. Slowly he turned his head away,
and scratched behind his ear, like he was turning over Ocelot’s words in his
head, syllable by syllable.
“He’s… MIA?”
“Yes.”
“…will he ever come back?”
“Don’t know what kind of recovery options we’re looking at here - I’ll admit I
don’t know much about how much the SAS cares to recover soldiers taken prisoner
in the field. I imagine they don’t bother for reconnaissance missions, but I
don’t think that was what this was.”
Bogomol waited.
“There were a few bodies found at the wreckage site,” Ocelot went on at length,
“a couple SAS soldiers, a couple insurgents. Eli wasn’t positively identified.”
“So… he’s alive. And…” Bogomol was silent for a long time. “…either he’s been
taken prisoner, or he escaped and is somewhere in the desert…?”
“Either way,” Ocelot said pointedly, “he’ll be fine.”
“…right.”
“The war won’t last forever.”
“Right.”
“And Eli’s very hardy.”
“Right, right.”
After all the drunken sobbing yesterday, Ocelot was almost surprised at how
calm Bogomol was being about this. Of course, there was no telling how much
he’d break down once he was back in his apartment, alone, with his mask off.
But that was none of Ocelot’s business.
“Ocelot, can you…” Bogomol started hesitantly.
Ocelot raised an eyebrow. “…make sure you’re updated on the situation? Of
course. I’ll put you directly in touch in with one of my SAS contacts, he’ll
keep you posted.”
“Thank you.”
Ocelot waited for Bogomol to say something else, but when he didn’t, he assumed
the conversation was over and turned back his paperwork. After a few moments,
he glanced up again. Bogomol was still standing skittishly in front of Ocelot’s
desk.
“Is there something else?” Ocelot said evenly.
“Um… about last night…”
He raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“Why don’t I remember most of it?”
“…you were drunk. That tends to happen.”
Bogomol stared at his feet, scratched behind his ear again.
“What happened?” he asked without looking up.
“You cried for a while and then you fell asleep on me,” Ocelot said, looking
down at his paperwork again, “so I put you to bed and let myself out.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Oh.”
Another long pause. Ocelot glanced up again and only just caught Bogomol
scrutinizing him before he looked away quickly, fidgeting. “I’ll… be going
then,” he said, “please get me in touch with the SAS man as soon as… as soon as
you can…”
“Mm. And last night?”
“I thought maybe… nevermind.”
Bogomol shifted his weight uncomfortably, then turned his back and left without
another word - almost fumbling with the doorknob, hesitating on the doorway.
Ocelot watched him for a moment or two, then went back to his paperwork.
“You’re not my type, anyway,” he muttered.
Chapter End Notes
     The bedsores scene was originally going to have Ocelot cleaning them
     with vodka, but I insist on having accurate first aid in my fics...
     so I asked my nurse mother how to properly clean a bedsore, and cut
     the vodka... (sigh)
***** Extra art *****
Chapter Summary
     Rape warning on two of these images and you may or may not already
     know which ones (´・ω・`)

(Draw-the-OT3 meme for As_You_Say, which is, again, a honorary part of White
Diamond)
 
 
  
(based on comment left by blackorb/hingabee)
 
(based on comments left by several individuals who felt the need to refer to
Ocelot in this series as "nasty")
 
   

(Razor Turkey, "Final Will and Testament of a Man Without a Name")

(Brittle Mockingbird and Naga girl, "Final Will and Testament of a Man Without
a Name")

(EVA, May Your Past Be the Sound of Your Feet Upon the Ground chapter five)
***** Extra art 2 *****
Chapter Summary

     KGB EDITION

 
 
  
   
  
 
***** Рокси Харт и Вэлма Келли 3 *****
Chapter Summary
     The end of an era; Ocelot and Bogomol exchange contact information.
     General Audiences - No Archive Warnings Apply
     W/C 721
                     November 1991, Moscow, the Lubyanka.
Bogomol was sitting on Ocelot’s desk as the latter packed up his office -
Ocelot certainly had more to pack than Bogomol, who had kept his office
unnaturally sparse the whole time he was employed here, did, especially
considering the amount of intel files he had to rescue from the shredder.
“What are you going to do now that the KGB is dissolving?” Bogomol asked.
“Same thing I always do,” Ocelot replied, “this changes nothing.”
“You don’t think the GRU is going anywhere?”
“I doubt it. And that’s just what I’ve been doing in Russia - you know I have
plenty of other positions elsewhere. What are you going to do, Bogomol?”
“…I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”
“Hm.”
Bogomol glanced away, frowning under his mask. “Will the SAS man still keep in
touch with me if I’m not your colleague anymore?”
“There’s no reason for him not to,” Ocelot said, “at least, I won’t bother
telling him to cut you off. Although at this point… it’s been ten months,
Bogomol—”
“Don’t say it.”
Ocelot shrugged. “Have you ever considered going back to America?”
“Going back to America…?” Bogomol blinked. “Why would I do that?”
“Easy to find work.”
“You mean easy to keep track of me.”
Ocelot tilted his head in acknowledgement. “Just so you know,” he said, “it’d
be the simplest thing in the world to get you a job with the CIA.”
“You work for the CIA, don’t you?”
“On occasion. I’ve been more comfortable spending time with other organizations
ever since I shot the director.”
Bogomol didn’t say anything.
“The NSA is an option, too,” Ocelot said, raising an eyebrow.
Bogomol shook his head. “I don’t want to be your colleague anymore,” he said,
“I want to see if I can find Eli on my own, if the SAS won’t do anything.”
“Oh?”
“Does… does the FBI deal with terrorists?”
“Sometimes.”
“What’s the likelihood of a terrorist having any kind of connection to the
group that’s still keeping hostages now that the war’s over?”
“It’s not impossible.”
Good enough for Bogomol. He decided to go back to America and join the FBI.
Ocelot seemed to pick up on his decision just from the way the conversation
dwindled, and let it pass without comment. He closed up the box he had been
filing papers into.
“Well, somehow I don’t doubt we’ll cross paths again,” he said, “but I don’t
think it’ll be for quite a while.”
“That’s for the best,” Bogomol said.
“Most likely.”
There was a pregnant pause. Bogomol looked away from Ocelot again. “You’ve been
so kind to me all this time.”
“You already know about my ulterior motives,” Ocelot said dryly.
“Yes, but…”
“Listen, we’d better exchange contact information.” He pulled out a piece of
paper, tore it in half, and wrote something down on one half of the paper
before handing it and a pen to Bogomol.
Bogomol looked down at the paper. He was marginally surprised that there was
only one phone number on it - in fact, it was the only thing on it.
“Call me if you ever need help with anything,” Ocelot said, and gestured to the
blank sheet of paper. “And just in case I ever need to get in touch with you
directly…”
Bogomol hesitated, then, figuring that this was just a quicker way of giving
Ocelot something he could have certainly gotten on his own any time he liked,
wrote down his own contact information and handed it back to Ocelot, who gave
it an unamused look. Even though Bogomol was excellent at reading, his
handwriting and spelling were still roughly on par with that of a fourth-
grader’s…
“I’ll see you around, then,” Ocelot said, standing up.
“…right.”
Bogomol almost entirely forgot about Ocelot again after moving back to America,
and even lost the scrap of paper with his phone number on it sometime in ’93.
He never noticed. The first time he’d thought about Ocelot in years was when he
got a call from him saying that Eli had been recovered from Iraq and was at
Mother Base, would you like to come visit him? He dropped everything and came
at once.
And even though he’d never liked Ocelot, it wasn’t until then that he was given
reason to.
***** Emergency Fundraiser (Comic) *****
Chapter Summary
     "Wolf sighed. 'What am I supposed to do about the door? It is
     completely wrecked, and I would rather Liquid not find out about
     that…'
     "'He’s going to find out no matter what you do,' Ocelot said, re-
     holstering his gun. 'The money for a replacement door will come out
     of our budget anyway - unless you want to hold a fundraiser carwash.'
     "'…'
     “'Wolf?'
     “'That is not a bad idea…'
     “'Wolf, I wasn’t being serious.'
     “'No, it could work,' Wolf said, 'we could make enough money for it
     in two hours if I wear a bikini and bend over frequently.'
     “‘"We"? I’m not going to participate in this.'
     “'Well… Octopus could put on one of his female disguises, and also
     wear a bikini and bend over frequently…'”



***** الكلبة *****
Chapter Summary
     Liquid can usually ignore a cretin trying to get on his nerves, but
     some things... well, some things just set him off.
     Teen And Up Audiences - implied reference to past Rape/Non-Con
     W/C 1,217
                              1994, Mother Base.
“So that’s the famous Liquid Snake.”
Liquid glanced over disinterestedly. Huh. Looked like a new guy.
“Hey, don’t try to start anything with him,” Mad Tapir said to the new guy,
“he’s in the same combat unit as me.”
The new guy scoffed. “A through S rank isn’t that much better than B rank.”
“Well, maybe so, but Liquid is—“
Mad Tapir didn’t finish his sentence; the new guy just walked right up to
Liquid, proffered a hand, and said, “The name’s Coarse Albatross. I’m in the B
rank third group. Hi.”
Liquid shook his hand. “Judging by the conversation I just overheard you
having,” he drawled, “I don’t particularly need to introduce myself.”
“Oh, haha. No. I’ve only been here a few days but I’ve already heard all about
you. You’re quite the talk around here, apparently.”
“Hm. I doubt you’ve heard everything.”
Coarse Albatross snorted. “Really? Okay, I heard that you were one of the
rescued child soldiers, but you ran off after a few months, and ten years later
Saladin had to bail your ass out of some prison camp in the Middle East.”
Liquid frowned at him. “Generally accurate so far, I suppose.”
“I also heard that you’re Saladin’s son—“
“Yes, so?”
“-and you’re sleeping with Commander Ocelot. And may or may not be cheating on
him with a member of the intel unit.”
Liquid rolled his eyes, waving a hand irritably. “I’m not cheating on Ocelot,”
he said, “Mantis and I are close, but we’re not that kind of close.”
“My god, so it’s true? You’re boning Commander Ocelot??”
He crossed his arms, even more annoyed now. “What does it matter to you if I’m-
“
“No wonder you’re in an A through S rank unit!!”
“Excuse me…?”
Coarse Albatross tilted his head back, and laughed heartily. “Man, I thought it
was just nepotism, but you really fucked your way to the top, too? Got put in
the most prestigious unit just because of who you’re related to - and because
you seduced a commander!”
Liquid narrowed his eyes. He admittedly wasn’t very good at keeping things from
getting under his skin, but Coarse Albatross was clearly just an idiot. “If
they were going for prestigious,” he said dryly, “then I think they would have
gone with A through S rank unit one, not unit two.”
“Pfft… that would have been too obvious, I guess. Gotta keep things a little
bit on the down-low, right? Still doesn’t change the fact that you got to where
you are by getting on all fours and biting the pillow. Face it, you’re Ocelot’s
bitch.”
Liquid felt like Mother Base had just ground to an abrupt halt. “Pardon?” he
said, eyes wide, “say that again?”
“You heard me. You’re Ocelot’s bi-“
Crack.
The next thing Coarse Albatross, or hell, Liquid, knew, Liquid had slugged
Coarse Albatross across the jaw, knocking him to the ground, where Liquid
pinned him down and continued punching him wordlessly, eyes still wide, pupils
dilated, and breathing harshly though his nose like a angry bull. By the third
blow his face was covered in blood. Mad Tapir, who had passively watched the
entire conversation, dragged his hands down his face and yelled at a passing
soldier to go get someone, Venom, Quiet, Ocelot, anyone. He himself decided -
somewhat wisely - to not intervene lest he get attacked by Liquid, too.
Although he did try shouting at Liquid, telling him to lay off before he did
any real damage. Liquid didn’t even notice he was being spoken to.
Less than a full minute passed before the soldier Mad Tapir had sent returned,
with Ocelot in tow. Ocelot, who had an I’m-not-angry-with-you-just-disappointed
expression, calmly walked up behind Liquid and grabbed his arm just as he was
drawing it back to punch Coarse Albatross again, and wrenched it behind
Liquid’s shoulder, twisting it painfully.
At least that got Liquid’s attention. He cried out, although he sounded much
more startled than pained.
“Hmm,” Ocelot frowned as he pulled Liquid up off of Coarse Albatross, still
twisting his arm. “Now, isn’t this a familiar situation…?”
Liquid grit his teeth and didn’t say anything. On the plus side, having been
yanked back to his senses he felt marginally less homicidal now, which Ocelot
picked up on and released his arm.
Ocelot put his hands on his hips and looked between Liquid and Coarse
Albatross, who had only just sat up and was ineffectually trying to mop blood
off his face with his sleeve. “What started this?”
Coarse Albatross snarled. “I didn’t do anyth-“
“Albatross was antagonizing Liquid, sir,” Mad Tapir said.
“I was not! I was just- having a conversation—“
“He was saying that Liquid was only put in an A through S rank combat unit
because he’s Saladin’s son and your lover.”
“Hm.” Ocelot glanced at Liquid, wholly unimpressed.
Liquid’s hands clenched and unclenched. “He called me a bitch,” he said a voice
low enough for only Ocelot to hear.
Ocelot’s expression changed slightly, in a somewhat inscrutable way. “Well,” he
said sternly, “whatever the cause of the altercation, it’s still generally
frowned upon here to get into fistfights with your fellow soldiers.”
“To be fair, sir,” Mad Tapir said, “Albatross didn’t really fight back at any
point. He just laid there and took it.”
Albatross spat a clot of blood out, evidently embarrassed at that.
“In that case,” Ocelot said, “I suppose only Liquid will be facing disciplinary
action.”
“…yes, sir,” Liquid said.
Ocelot scrutinized him for a second while Mad Tapir helped Coarse Albatross up.
He put a hand on Liquid’s shoulder and spoke quietly into his ear: “I’ll decide
what to do with you later - kitchen duty seems likely. For now go to my
quarters and cool off.”
Liquid nodded. Both he and Ocelot walked off in opposite directions, Ocelot
without a second glance and Liquid glaring over his shoulder at Coarse
Albatross.
“Get yourself to the medical platform before you bleed on anything else,”
Ocelot told Coarse Albatross in passing.
There was a brief pause. Coarse Albatross tried to wipe his face with his
sleeve again.
“I tried to warn you,” Mad Tapir said at length, “Liquid’s combat ranking is
A++ and only two points short of S-rank — same as Saladin in his prime.”
“Oh.”
“It’s odd, though… usually he doesn’t pay much attention to the rumors about
him. He doesn’t even care when people refer to him as Commander Ocelot’s
boytoy. I guess he just doesn’t like being called a ‘bitch’…”
“I’ll, uh, keep that in mind. And try to avoid him in the future.”
Meanwhile, across the base on the command platform, Liquid was curled up on
Ocelot’s bed, trying to sate his frustrated, nervous rage with an attempt at a
nap.
What are you doing in there? came Mantis’ irritated voice into his head.
You missed all the fun, Liquid thought, some new recruit called me a bitch and
the next thing I remember Ocelot is pulling me off of him and my fists are
covered in blood.
Fun indeed. If you want to nap, Eli, I’d suggest
someplaceotherthanOcelot’squarters. Do you want me to come to you?
Liquid rolled over. “Leave me alone,” he mumbled out loud.
…as you wish, then.
***** Outer Heaven (Comic) *****
Chapter Summary
     Okay this is old and largely has nothing to do with this AU per se
     BUT
     Context was an old tumblr post about how Raven and Ocelot were at
     Outer Heaven (i.e., the Galzburg FOB) but were off-base during
     Operation Intrude N313, further followed by "they were only getting
     groceries".
***** Tie Your Mother Down *****
Chapter Summary
     Ocelot meets up with an old colleague to have a very important
     conversation about her son.
     Teen And Up Audiences - discussion of Rape/Non-Con, brief reference
     to Underage
     W/C 1,762
                          October 1994, outside Seoul
“How is he, how is he??”
“I just sat down, EVA, no need to pester me with questions so soon.”
EVA frowned at him. “You call me out of the blue a month ago to tell me Eli’s
finally been recovered from Iraq, and then you stop returning my calls.”
“Yes, well,” Ocelot said, rubbing the back of his neck, “I’ve been busy.”
“So - how is he? What’s going on over there? Is he still at Outer Heaven?”
“Yes, he is,” Ocelot said, “he’s been recovering from his wounds and gaining
weight back nicely. As far as psychological recovery goes, that’s a bit more of
a toss-up — but freedom suits him well. And it does seem to help that I had
Mantis brought to Mother Base.”
EVA blinked. “Who’s Mantis?”
“Hm? I’m sure you met him a few years ago. Red hair, gas mask, hung around with
Eli, probably floating?”
“Oh,” EVA said, “his quiet friend. Yes, I remember him - Eli called him Tretij
back then, thought it was odd at the time.”
“Ah, Liquid hasn’t learned Russian in the intervening eight or nine years,
either. Anyway, from the looks of things they’re going to both join up with
Outer Heaven once he’s deemed fit to do so… not that Liquid’s told me yet, but
I can tell he’s thinking about it. Mantis is already a temporary staff member,
but he’ll stay if Liquid does.”
“Well, it’s good that they’re still close,” EVA said, “and good that Mantis is
there at all. Eli’s been in captivity for nearly four years, a little bit of
socialization now is going to be good for him.”
“Mm.”
“Is he getting along with V?”
“They haven’t talked too much so far. I know V is more than willing to give him
another chance, although I’m having a hard time reading Liquid’s feelings about
V.”
“Conflicted, or just not thinking about it for now?”
“Hard to say. I think it’ll work out, though. Certainly none of Liquid’s
animosity towards John is carrying over to V anymore, now that he knows they’re
separate people.”
“That’s good,” EVA said.
There was a lull in conversation. It was a nice day today, a bit chilly but
pleasantly overcast, decent weather for two people starting to get up there in
years to sit on a bench together and watch passing traffic. Of course, EVA was
clearly mostly itching to ask what exactly had happened to Liquid in that POW
camp, but didn’t quite know how to phrase the question.
Ocelot glanced at her. “He wasn’t too badly injured,” he said, “there’s going
to be some scarring, but he’s got all his body parts still.”
EVA let out a sigh of relief. “Maybe it’s because he inexplicably looks like
Miller so much, but I was half-convinced that he was going to come back missing
a limb or two.”
“He’s a tough kid. Durable.”
“How did the extraction go?”
“Ah… the extraction itself went off without a hitch. Prior to it…”
He trailed off. EVA understood. It was the flaw in the plan from the very
beginning, the unavoidable risk: torture. No way around it. EVA had sent Ocelot
to find Liquid under the excuse of being an interrogator-for-hire, the feared
Shalashaska out of a job and looking for work now that the Soviet Union was
gone, and they had both known that in order to maintain his cover when he
finally located Liquid he would more than likely have to torture him. To break
him.
“He’ll probably never forgive you,” EVA said quietly.
There was another long pause.
“You’re going to find out sooner or later,” Ocelot said, “so I might as well
tell you now before you can get the wrong impression from someone else.”
“Huh?”
“Liquid and I… well, to be blunt, we’re sleeping together.”
EVA blinked.
“What?”
“Liquid and I are sleeping together.”
There was a very brief pause, then EVA flung one arm over Ocelot’s shoulders
and leaned close - to any passerby they would have simply looked like a generic
albeit white middle-aged couple, but Ocelot could feel the muzzle of her pistol
pressing against his ribs.
“You,” she said in a tone of voice that non-Russian speakers would assume
belonged in a perfectly pleasant, affectionate even, conversation, “are 28
years older than him. And he just got out of a goddamned prison camp.”
“I am aware of this,” Ocelot said dryly.
“Why in the hell would you think that’s a good idea? After spending the last
three years around people who did nothing but torture him, starve him, and keep
him locked up, there is absolutely no way he’s emotionally stable enough for a
relationship.”
Ocelot carefully weighed his words. “It isn’t exactly a relationship,” he said,
“I’m looking after him, but the sex is entirely separate from the rest of-“
“You shouldn’t be having sex with him!” The gun against his ribs pressed
harder.
“It wasn’t my idea.”
“…what?”
“It wasn’t. He came to me. It’s his way of coping with what happened.” He took
a deep breath. “Common in rape survivors, actually.”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause. EVA was completely taken aback for a few
moments, and then Ocelot felt her finger shift, abandoning trigger discipline
and curling threateningly.
“They- they raped him.”
“Yes. It’s… unfortunate.”
“And you slept with him.”
“Yes.”
“ADAM, you— he doesn’t need this, ADAM! For God’s sake, maybe I could look past
the age gap since he’s an adult already, but this?! He needs time to recover!
Ending up in your bed is not a healthy part of the recovery process!!”
“What was I supposed to, EVA?”
“Send him back to the medical platform! Tell him no!”
Ocelot twitched his moustache. “Do you know what kind of message that would
send? I’ve heard him muttering to himself - I know how he feels. He’s half-
convinced that, because of what happened, he’s been defiled and he’s lost all
chance of ever being viewed as desirable by anyone. And from the looks of
things, his self-esteem was in the gutter even before he joined the SAS.”
“What’s your point?” EVA said through gritted teeth.
“My point is that if I sent him away - if I ever send him away - he’ll take
that as confirmation that he’s too broken to find pleasure with anyone. I don’t
want to do that to him.”
“That doesn’t mean you should take advantage of him. Christ, he should be
talking to a counselor about that, not- not having sex with someone almost
thirty years older than him.” She narrowed her eyes. “And don’t pretend you
aren’t getting anything out of this.”
Ocelot shrugged.
“At least tell me you’re thinking of him as his own person in all this, not
just a replacement goldfish for Big Boss.”
“He’s his own person as far as I’m concerned,” Ocelot said. EVA frowned. She
knew how easy it was for Ocelot to lie, and she knew if she called him out he’d
just reply “Well, you told me to tell you…”
“And- oh god, ADAM, I hate to even consider this, but back in ’84—”
Ocelot gave her an affronted look, the first time he’d shown any real emotion
on his face since the start of the conversation. “EVA, I know he’s always
looked very much like his father, but I am not a hebephile. I suppose I can’t
say for sure if he’d had any kind of crush on me back then, but as far as I’m
concerned the attraction here only started with him as an adult.”
Almost a full minute passed before EVA reholstered her gun and scooted away on
the bench, glaring at Ocelot. Ocelot let out a long breath.
“It’s probably mostly attention that he wants, not sex per se,” EVA said, “I’m
sure the insurgents largely left him alone when they weren’t… abusing him.
That’s pretty standard.”
“You’re probably right,” Ocelot said.
“So, next time he comes to you, try to convince him that he doesn’t need to
have sex with someone to get their attention. I guess convincing him that his
self-worth isn’t - or at least it shouldn’t be - measured by how much people
want to bed him is going to be a lot more difficult…”
“Mm.”
“I don’t approve of any of this, okay? Just so you know. I want you to end your
little relationship with him as soon as you can, ADAM. I just… I realize you’re
not wrong… it might be a bad idea to just cut him off. But this isn’t a healthy
coping mechanism and if you want to help him you should be helping him come up
with better ways to cope or just getting him to talk to a counselor. I know you
have those at Outer Heaven. Just… stop enabling this, alright?”
“Well, I do want to help him,” Ocelot said, gesticulating.
EVA knew Ocelot better than to not press. “So you’ll get him to stop asking for
sex and give himself time to recover?”
“I’ll try to get him to talk to one of the counsellors,” Ocelot said, “no
promises, though. Unsurprisingly, he isn’t exactly up front about the whole
gang-rape thing.”
“And…?”
“And I can’t tell you what will happen with our relationship, EVA, I’m sorry.”
She looked at him like she was right about to pull out her gun again.
“But I won’t initiate anything. If he wants sex so badly, I’ll give it to him,
but apart from that I won’t touch him. Is that satisfactory?”
EVA’s frown deepened. There was an unspoken implication hanging in the air, the
elephant in the room of Ocelot’s preternatural skills at manipulating people.
EVA had to wonder if Ocelot had groomed Liquid somehow, if he was intentionally
taking advantage of him, if he himself were the one subtly convincing Liquid it
wasn’t a horrible idea to jump into a sexual relationship after what he’d just
been through. But by the same token, EVA knew, or at least thought she knew,
that certain people were pretty off-limits when it came to Ocelot’s
manipulations, and since Big Boss was one of them, well, maybe Ocelot afforded
the same courtesy to his sons. Maybe he was genuinely fond of Liquid, or at
least fond enough of him to not manipulate him as long as it wasn’t for
anything work-related.
“…I guess it’s a start,” she said at length. “Just… be careful. Don’t hurt him
any worse than he’s already been hurt.”
“I’m always careful.”
***** Matryoshka *****
Chapter Summary
     It's missing its center.
     General Audiences - No Archive Warnings Apply
     W/C 1,087
Chapter Notes
     Just wrote this because it was severely underdiscussed in Make It
     Home. Could probably write a hell of a lot more on this subject,
     though... we'll see...
                              1994, Mother Base.
So there was no chance of him ever going back to normal.
Liquid’s influence had been supplanted. When he first met Mantis, the boy had
no will or personality of his own, just whatever he leeched off of someone else
- when he latched onto young Eli, there hadn’t been anyone with more thirst for
revenge than Eli and besides, Ocelot said ‘the Third Child’ bonded better with
kids than adults because something something brain chemistry— it hadn’t been
too long after that that they had entirely left that part of the world, that
war zone where every other person had someone or something they needed to pay
back, and after that they had lived in almost complete isolation in America for
a long time.
So it was only natural that, when Mantis had started developing his own
personality, it would be based off of Liquid’s. Specifically, it had been based
off of what Liquid now realized he’d only been subconsciously projecting onto
him: the parts of himself he didn’t like, the weak, soft, and vulnerable parts,
the parts of him that were scared. So Mantis had grown up to be perpetually
skittish and nervous, uncertain about everything and always turning to Liquid
for reassurance and protection. He never said much and he always hid behind
Liquid’s back, even when he’d hit a growth spurt and ended up several
centimeters taller than him.
…maybe this was Liquid’s fault.
“Hm?”
“Er… nothing, Mantis.”
It hadn’t occured to him, back when he left America to return to England and
join the SAS, that it might not have been the …kindest thing to do, to just
leave Mantis like that. Of course he’d thought it would all work out perfectly
fine and when they’d finally managed to get letters to one another that had
just reinforced that impression, but…
The serial killer incident had nothing to do with him whatsoever. He hadn’t
been there. It probably would have still happened even if he had. It was
completely out of his control, and out of Mantis’ control, too.
So it was completely and utterly ridiculous that he felt like, on some level,
Mantis’ abrupt change in personality was punishing him for abandoning him when
he turned 18.
“Eli…”
Liquid blinked. “I…” he started, scooting away from Mantis, “sorry. Didn’t mean
to— well…”
“I’m not sure what to say,” Mantis said. “I have been trying to act more like
my old self around you.”
“Oh. You have?”
“Yes. I… am not very good at it, but I try to keep my temper in check and my
derisive comments to a minimum.”
“…I see.”
Mantis fell silent, pulling his legs up to himself and glowering at the floor.
He was, evidently, frustrated and upset that Liquid was drawing such a clear
mental distinction between ‘old Mantis’ and ‘new Mantis’, and might have kind
of preferred the old Mantis at least a little bit…
Funnily enough, the way he withdrew into himself like this reminded Liquid more
of the old Mantis than anything else he had done ever since coming to Mother
Base. The old him was still in there somewhere.
“Eli, you shouldn’t think about this like that,” Mantis mumbled.
“Like what?”
“Like I am some kind of matryoshka and you can find what I used to be like if
you pull off enough shells. That person… that child… is gone forever, Eli.”
Now Liquid was the one who wasn’t sure what to say.
Mantis sighed, unfolding and giving Liquid an even look. “I know this upsets
you.”
“No, it’s-“
“Hush, I can see it in your mind. It… I do not mind if you are upset, it is
only fair. To return from captivity only to find the person closest to you
completely different from how you remember…”
Liquid didn’t respond for a while, instead pensively scraping patterns into the
dirt and grime on the floor with his nails. Finally, he said, “I can get used
to it.”
“…Eli…”
“What do you want me to say?” he demanded, looking up at Mantis. “Do you want
me to just tell you to- to just leave, that I don’t like you anymore, that I
can’t stand way you-“
He cut himself off. He was expecting Mantis to interrupt him, but he didn’t,
just stared at him, his eyes troubled.
“…sorry,” Liquid muttered eventually.
“I wish it had not happened,” Mantis said.
Liquid blinked. “Really?”
“Mhm.”
“But I thought you would have liked, well, not being so passive and anxious all
the time anymore. I would have thought you’d see this as a positive change in
your life.”
Mantis shrugged helplessly. “It is nice to find myself more capable of being
assertive,” he said, “and my worldview has changed very little - it’s only that
I get angry at things now, instead of frightened. But… it seems I have lost… I
lost my… I don’t know, Eli. It didn’t use to be so difficult for me to admit I…
I care for you. I think, somehow, I was happier with you back then. I am not
sure I am psychologically capable of feeling that happy anymore.”
“…”
“And when I do something to upset you, it is often hard for me to feel anything
other than some kind of petty vindication. I get mad at you too easily. I worry
I…”
“It’s fine, Mantis,” Liquid said, “I’m sure I changed, too.”
“Not the way I have.”
“No… but, I’d rather be with you the way you are now than not have you at all.”
He paused. “I shouldn’t even be letting this bother me in the first place.”
Mantis slowly nodded.
Liquid stood - well, half-stooped, there wasn’t much vertical space here - and
wiped the salt off his pants. Again he didn’t know what to say. He supposed he
felt marginally better now that they’d cleared the air about the whole serial-
killer-personality-absorption thing, but Liquid still didn’t know what to think
about the fact that someone else had even been capable of ripping away the
personality Liquid had essentially given Mantis as an adolescent. Plus, and
while he was sure he would get used to - and maybe even learn to like - this
new, cold, possessive and hostile Mantis, he hadn’t yet.
And it was uncomfortable.
“We still have the shared memories of everything we went through together,
Eli,” Mantis said.
“I know,” Liquid said, “but nowadays, the two of us have been through a lot
more on our own.”
***** Tie Your Mother Down 2 *****
Chapter Summary
     EVA drops by Mother Base for very important reasons which totally
     don't have anything to do with her son.
     Teen And Up Audiences - discussion of Rape/Non-Con
     W/C 2,940
Chapter Notes
     (omg the original author's note about how aireyv should have uploaded
     this before chapter 5 of feetground... i.... i feel into the same
     trap......... -pp)
                          December 1994, Mother Base
“Have you ever thought about asking for a codename change?”
“Huh? Nah, I think ‘Mellow Zebra’ fits me pretty well. Why? You don’t like ‘Sly
Ibex’?”
“No, I like my codename just fine. It’s just- well, the option’s there, isn’t
it?”
“Is this about that guy who just joined A through S rank unit three? The guy
who set a world record during the Barcelona Olympics and then got caught doping
and joined some French terrorist group before he ended up here?”
“Yeah, him — I heard the name Commander Ocelot picked out for him-“
“These names are randomly selected, don’t kid yourself.”
“Hey, it was Swift Cheetah, he did it on purpose this time.”
“Man! If he was going to put two seconds of thought into any of these
codenames, he should have called me Dashing Zebra. Or Handsome Zebra.”
“That sounds stupid. Anyway, he requested a different codename, and you’ll
never guess what it is.”
“What?”
“Running Man.”
“No way.”
“I swear.”
“Oh my god. He asked to change Swift Cheetah to Running Man, and meanwhile
Coward Duck over in A through S one is completely fine with his name?”
“I guess if you’re already in a unit with ‘Machinegun Kid’ and freaking
‘Shotmaker’…”
“But those are cool names. Hey, Liquid! You’re going to wear a hole in the
floor at this rate!”
“Huh?” Liquid looked up with a start, stopping his pacing in his tracks.
“What’s eating you, kid?” Sly Ibex said from where he was sitting on a bed
across from Mellow Zebra.
“Er. Nothing. Just thinking.”
“He forgot to snap at me for calling him ‘kid’,” Sly Ibex muttered, “he must
really be preoccupied about something.”
“Oh, is it about EVA coming today?” Mellow Zebra said.
Liquid didn’t want to answer him.
“What’s she got to do with anything?” Sly Ibex said.
“I heard from someone on the intel team that EVA is actually Liquid’s mom.”
“Really?” He turned back to Liquid. “Is that true??”
“Yes,” Liquid said grudgingly, “but I haven’t seen her since I was thirteen.”
Mellow Zebra checked his watch. “She should be getting here any minute now.
Liquid, you should go see her.”
“…”
“Go on! I mean, for God’s sake, she’s your mom. You have to at least go say
hi.”
“Fine,” Liquid grumbled, sweeping out of the room, more so he wouldn’t be
pestered about it than anything else.
“So anyway,” he heard Sly Ibex say behind him, “what I really want to know is
why that guy in A through S three insisted his name be changed to Red Blaster.
We wear green.”
“Isn’t he colorblind? I heard he’s red-green colorblind.”
“That actually explains it…”
Although Liquid did head in the general direction of the command platform,
which was where anyone coming into Mother Base who wasn’t a member of Outer
Heaven would land upon coming in, he purposefully dawdled, walking over the
bridge between the command platform and the combat platform instead of taking
one of the Jeeps. He even declined a ride when someone who did take one of the
Jeeps drove past him.
Liquid had been, to put it mildly, surprised when Ocelot told him that EVA was
going to be dropping by, even though he’d assured him (when the panic had
probably settled in on his features) that her reason for coming had very little
to do with him: ever since, what did he say again, 1985 or ’86? ’87? EVA had
been periodically working with Outer Heaven a handful of times a year…
definitely not a member or employee, sometimes best described as an independent
subcontractor, usually just referred as a “contact”, “ally”, or “someone we’re
coordinating on this with”. The last time she’d worked with Outer Heaven on
anything had been about four months before Liquid had come here again.
Of course Liquid knew EVA. What he had just said about not seeing her since he
was thirteen was true, though. Additionally, it wasn’t until that age that he
had even met her in the first place - he’d had a series of awkward encounters
with her throughout the fall and winter of that year, where she’d try to step
up as his mother and he’d just be bitter, resentful, purposefully abrasive and
mostly just uncomfortable. Then she’d just stopped showing up one day and by
his fourteenth birthday, Liquid had entirely given up on the possibility of
ever seeing or hearing from her again and (although he wouldn’t admit it, and
Mantis was the only one who ever knew) he felt just a little bit… abandoned. He
even regretted all the times he’d lashed out at her about how she wasn’t even
his real mother, she was just a surrogate and his real mother was in Japan,
probably had no idea what had been done with her egg cells, and didn’t matter
anyway because Liquid was a fucking clone.
And… now she was showing up at Outer Heaven and he was, yes, kind of obliged to
go say hi, at the very least. Maybe he’d get lucky and she wouldn’t recognize
him now that he was older and had shorter hair.
“In need of moral support?” Mantis said dryly as Liquid was starting to
approach the command platform.
“Nn.”
“I’m afraid I cannot forewarn you of what she will say or do when she sees
you,” he said, falling into step beside Liquid. “It seems she got those
accursed cybernetic implants sometime between now and when we last saw her.”
“Lovely.”
At least now he could discount Mantis saying things like I actually really like
her, Eli or She’s just doing her best or She really does care about you, Eli,
maybe you shouldn’t be so mean to her. He’d done that back then, but not only
was he incredibly sarcastic and foul-tempered now, but he also had an automatic
dislike of anyone who went to any lengths to conceal their thoughts from him.
Part of the reason why he hated Ocelot.
“A small part, at this point,” Mantis said, his voice cool.
“We’re not going to have this conversation right now, Mantis,” Liquid growled.
“I know, I know…”
It was easy to spot EVA when they got within visual range of the landing pad.
After all, while there were women with long blonde hair around on Mother Base,
Outer Heaven rules required that hair over a certain length needed to be kept
tied back or pinned up (or in some cases, tucked under a scarf) for safety
reasons… and EVA, being not a part of Outer Heaven, evidently didn’t need to
follow those rules.
She must have caught Venom’s glance over at Liquid and Mantis approaching,
because she turned around and, after a second of squinting at them in the
bright sunlight, broke into a huge grin. Liquid was actually a bit surprised at
how little she’d changed over the past nine years - more lines on her face
perhaps, and thinner than he remembered her - but she looked almost like only
months had passed since the last time she’d saw him instead of close to a
decade. Or, at least, everything but her smile said that.
“Eli,” she said warmly, “V told me you joined up!”
“Ah… hello.”
“Hello,” Mantis echoed, standing pointedly behind Liquid.
So, he’d filled the minimum obligation, could he go now-?
“V,” EVA said, turning to Venom, “do you mind if I borrow him for a minute? I
haven’t seen him in forever and I’d like to have a word somewhere private.”
Venom just shrugged his consent.
Damn.
EVA grabbed Liquid’s wrist before he could really decide to just make a run for
it, said “You can come too if you like” to Mantis, and dragged him off in the
direction of the command offices. Liquid threw a wide-eyed ‘Please, please
Father for the love of God call her off’ look over his shoulder at Venom, who
only blinked in apparent confusion at Liquid’s obvious distress.
EVA commandeered Ocelot’s office (why Ocelot’s office of all places??) and
closed the door behind them, then whirled around to face Liquid and Mantis,
back pressed against the door. Mantis gave her a suspicious look. Liquid
wondered how much she already knew.
“So,” she said, smiling again, “nine years is a long time, isn’t it?”
“…”
“…”
“……”
EVA sighed. “I’m just trying to catch up with you, Eli. How have you been
doing?”
Liquid still refused to say anything, so she turned her attention to Mantis
instead.
“How have youbeen doing?” she said, “I got updates on Eli every so often, and I
knew you didn’t accompany him to England but I never heard about what you did
do. What have you been up to these past few years?”
“I have no desire to talk to you,” Mantis said flatly.
EVA blinked, then frowned. That’s right, the last time she had seen Mantis he
had still been entirely nonverbal and his literal entire personality could
probably be summed up with ‘curious, a little shy, might be friendly once you
get past that?’. She looked at Eli again, her face serious this time.
“Ocelot told me about what happened in the POW camp.”
Liquid stiffened. “He did? …how much?”
“Everything. What the Iraqis did to you…”
“…oh.” If she was singling out the Iraqis, that probably meant that Ocelot
hadn’t told her what he’d done, but still… Mantis glanced at him, then glared
at EVA. Yeah. She shouldn’t have brought it up.
“Look, Eli, I’m sorry. I wish we could have gotten there sooner.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Liquid said calmly. It was really strange, actually, how
calm he felt right now.
You’re mildly dissociating, Mantis informed him mentally.
Oh, okay.
“It’s just good that you’re here now,” EVA went on, “and I want to know how
you’ve been doing. Have you been settling in well? Avoiding making any
enemies?”
“Everything’s fine,” Liquid said.
“Is it true you’re sleeping with Ocelot?”
The question was posed so casually, yet so randomly, that it took Liquid
several seconds to process it while Mantis stared at EVA in surprise.
“What?” Liquid said blankly.
“Ocelot told me—“
“Why did he tell you.”
“So that I wouldn’t find out from someone else who might ‘give me the wrong
impression’,” she said, then shifted her weight to one hip, crossing her arms
sternly. “But it’s already too late. Eli, I don’t approve.”
Mantis’ demeanor instantly changed. Dimly Liquid realized that the most
comfortable course of action now would be to jump out the window, then
remembered that Ocelot’s office didn’t have a window.
“You have no idea how bad it really is,” Mantis told EVA, “they are constantly
going at it and Ocelot has a penchant for giving him eye infections. He had one
just last week.”
“What?” EVA said, flabbergasted, “eye infections.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Liquid said, covering his face with his hands.
“Evidently Ocelot has an oculolinctus kink,” Mantis said, his voice dripping
with disgust.
“Oh my g- Eli, you let him do that to you?!”
“I’m not having this conversation,” Liquid said firmly. “I’m not talking about
my sex life with my mother. No. It’s not happening.”
“You called me your mother,” EVA said in shock.
“Erk.”
“No, nevermind, don’t change the subject,” she said, waving her hand and
frowning severely, “look, Eli, I don’t care about the details of your sex life
and quite frankly I don’t want to know. What I’m more concerned about is the
fact that you thought it was a good idea to jump into a relationship with a
known sexual sadist 28 years your senior only weeks after V dragged your
bleeding broken body out of a prison camp!!”
“Well, it sounds bad when you put it like that,” Liquid started.
“I nearly shot Ocelot when he told me about it!”
“You should have,” Mantis said.
“The only reason why I didn’t was because he told me that you were the one who
initiated, Eli,” EVA said. “So, is that true? Was the whole thing your idea?”
“Yes, of course it was, obviously,” Liquid said at the exact same time Mantis
said, “No, Ocelot groomed him.”
“Mantis, that’s enough,” Liquid said, holding his head in his hands again.
“He got to him while he was still emotionally fragile after everything that
happened,” Mantis snarled, “he took advantage of his denial about being raped.”
“Mantis!!”
“Both of you calm down,” EVA said, in such a mom voice that they both shut up.
“Mantis - I’m not saying that you’re wrong, because I know Ocelot is certainly
capable of something like that, but I want to hear Eli’s side of the story,
too.”
“He does not exactly have an objective view of the situation,” Mantis said
dryly.
“Oh, because you do?” Liquid snapped, “you never liked Ocelot, and you’re
possessive, controlling, paranoid, and you have no sense of boundaries or
privacy-—“
“This discussion isn’t going to go anywhere if you two keep snapping at each
other!” EVA said.
“Where is this discussion even supposed to go?!”
“Eli,” EVA said, “I think you should break up with Ocelot.”
“Absolutely,” Mantis seconded.
“What?” Liquid said, “no. Why?”
“I’d rather believe that he didn’t groom you and isn’t intentionally taking
advantage of you, but that still doesn’t make it a healthy relationship,” EVA
said firmly. “It was a bad idea to get involved with him like that, you should
have given yourself more time to recover after everything you went through.”
“It’s fine,” Liquid said, “really, it doesn’t matter—“
“And he’s almost three decades older than you.”
“I’m an adult!”
“And he’s your commanding officer!”
“It’s not like that comes up during sex!!”
“You should break it off with him,” Mantis said, “see? Even your mother
agrees.”
Liquid sputtered. “I-It’s my life, my body, I can make my own decisions-!”
“Mantis, we’re never going to get anywhere pushing him on the defensive like
this,” EVA muttered.
“I know,” Mantis sighed, “I have been trying to convince him to call it off
since day one and-“
“Convince me?! All you do is yell at me and pick fights with Ocelot!!”
“-I should have known that having someone back me up on this would not help,
Venom has already expressed his concern several times to no avail.”
“That explains why he’s being so defensive,” EVA said.
“I am not being defensive!!”
“Eli, we’re not trying to force you to do anything,” EVA said gently, “we’re
just concerned.”
“Well it’s none of your concern!”
“Yes it is,” Mantis said, “it is only natural to be concerned when someone you
care for is-“
“What is this, a bloody intervention? You’re here to sit me down and talk me
out of my addiction to Ocelot’s cock?!” He threw his arms up angrily. “I don’t
want to have this talk!! I’m leaving!”
He shoved past EVA, opened the door with more force than necessary, and stalked
out of Ocelot’s office, slamming the door behind him so hard a poster on the
wall slipped off and fluttered to the floor.
“That went well,” Mantis said after several moments of silence. EVA scrubbed a
hand over her face.
“Perfect,” she said, “the first time I’ve seen him at all since he was
thirteen, and he ends up shouting at me.”
“He will come around, at least on some level,” Mantis assured her, “at least,
with Venom and I he realizes that our objections to his ‘relationship’ with
Ocelot come from a place of genuine concern for him. He does not like it when
anyone points out that it is unhealthy, but he eventually calms down and comes
to think of the criticism as being a misguided attempt at kindness as long as
it is from someone he likes.”
“Well… that’s good,” EVA said, “at least he won’t get it into his head that
we’re just trying to ruin his fun… or whatever it is he sees in Ocelot.”
“…”
“Although, V just mentioned to me that he doesn’t really mind Eli sleeping with
Ocelot, only that he thinks it’s a little strange.”
“He tries to be the unbiased party,” Mantis said, rolling his eyes. “He still
thinks that sooner or later Liquid is going to have second thoughts about
Ocelot and come to his father for advice, and Venom is already planning on
advising him to end their relationship.”
“Honestly, he probably has the best idea out of all of us,” EVA said, “the only
trouble is that Eli is so stubborn…”
“…any second thoughts he might have will just result in him doubling down on
the whole arrangement. Yes. I know.”
They both sighed.
“I already tried to get Ocelot to call it off from his end,” EVA said as they
exited the office - Liquid was nowhere to be seen - “but since Eli is
apparently the one who initiates every time, well… Ocelot says he just can’t
say no to him.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” Mantis said acidly, “why would he say no to an offer he
manipulated into being given in the first place?”
“I’m almost afraid to ask why you’re so uncharitable towards Ocelot.”
“…I cannot read his mind. Naturally I will assume the worst.”
“You shouldn’t be able to read my mind, either,” EVA said, “yet we seem to be
getting along pretty well.”
“Yes, well,” Mantis said, “evidently we have some things in common…”
           Meanwhile, in the men’s barracks on the combat platform.
“Wow,” Sly Ibex said as Liquid threw himself facedown on his bed and screamed
into a pillow, “that bad, huh?”
***** Zebras Are Reactionaries *****
Chapter Summary
     Just because it's a fake vacation doesn't mean you can't have some
     real fun.
     Explicit - No Archive Warnings Apply
     W/C 4,689
Chapter Notes
     (Just to be clear, the title here is taken from the Simon and
     Garfunkel song "At the Zoo"... I'm not sure how popular it is, it
     seems pretty obscure, so I thought I'd say so...)
     I wrote this for probably my biggest fan, PsychoHayseed! Taking place
     between chapters four and five of May Your Past Be the Sound of Your
     Feet Upon the Ground. (I don't remember if this was a request or if I
     just thought you'd like it... either way, I didn't know if you wanted
     fluff or smut, so I just did both.)
See the end of the chapter for more notes
                   September 2004, Georgia. The Zoo Atlanta.
The first thing that happens upon walking into the Zoo ATL is the smell of
flamingos hitting you like a sack of bricks.
Of course, with his gas mask, Mantis couldn’t smell a damn thing and with his
SEP field, none of the other zoogoers noticed Liquid making a face at the
stench. Of course, his reaction was pretty exaggerated - a lifetime on
battlefields, bad smells won’t bother one anymore - but any attempt to amuse
Mantis with it fell completely flat and after a moment Liquid just opened the
map and started looking for the reptile house, figuring they should just go
straight there.
“Must we?” Mantis said dryly.
“What? I’ve seen most of the animals here in the wild plenty of times, so I
figure I might as well go look at something cute.”
“Hm… well, I do not really have an opinion on the matter… just remember, Eli,
that we are only here to establish an-“
“—alibi, yes, I know, but as I’ve said — there’s no reason we can’t enjoy
ourselves with this!” He shoved the map in his pocket and threw an arm around
Mantis’ shoulders, grinning. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a proper
vacation, hasn’t it? …come to think of it, I’m not entirely sure we ever have…”
“Weekends off don’t count?”
Liquid gave him a sly look, and didn’t answer. “Come on,” he said, “the reptile
house is near the back, we can see the other animals on the way there anyway.”
“Don’t forget to take pictures, it would defeat the whole point if you did…”
“Of course!” He held up the camera. “Now, come on, Mantis!!”
The Zoo Atlanta was, in terms of square footage, a very small zoo - it fit all
the animals in via extremely efficient mapping that forced guests to meander
and walk in circles even if they were trying to head straight for something.
Somewhere around the monkeys Mantis’ attention was caught by something in the
bushes, which he stopped to pick up and show to Liquid: a tiny, bright green
praying mantis perched calmly on his finger.
“Very nice,” Liquid said, leaning forward to examine it, then looked up at him.
“And I’m sure it was minding its own business before you came along.”
“…I like it.”
“You can’t keep it, Mantis, you can carry it around if you like but I expect
you to put it back in its bush when we’re about to leave.”
Mantis got embarrassed and defensive. “I didn’t ask to—“
“I don’t want to have to compete with an insect for your attention,” Liquid
said, then pressed a quick kiss to Mantis’ cheek before he could stop him. “But
you’re cute when you’re excited.”
“…”
They continued on their way to the reptile house, now with Mantis’ ridealong
new friend. His fascination - and, quite frankly, enamorment - with bugs,
particularly mantids, was a trait of his that had been consistent ever since he
first decided he liked them, back when he was eleven or so; Liquid had never
been terribly interested but he’d always found it pretty endearing, the way
Mantis’ eyes lit up when he was able to coax one of them into his hands. To
that end he’d whipped out the camera when Mantis wasn’t paying attention and
actually managed to get a pretty good shot of him with the praying mantis on
his hand visible before he noticed and got annoyed.
“What?” he said innocently, still holding up the camera, “I told you, it’s
adorable.”
“Eli…”
“It is! Let me keep the picture, I thought it came out rather well,” he added,
checking the digital display. The shot wasn’t centered very well, so either
Liquid would have to crop it… with a pair of scissors, if necessary… or call it
‘artistic’. But it was cute, as far as he was concerned. Mantis rolled his
eyes.
“Very well, but I will be taking some pictures of my own later tonight.”
It took Liquid a second to catch Mantis’ drift but he grinned when he did.
And if Liquid was amused by Mantis carrying around the praying mantis, he had
nothing on how Mantis felt when they got to the reptile house and Liquid found
the zoo’s black mamba — it was love at first sight. He actually gasped out loud
when he saw it - practically squeed - and immediately took up residence in
front of its tank, camera out, and when the black mamba got curious enough to
slither up to the glass and flick its tongue out at him, he mimicked the
gesture.
“Sometimes I can hardly believe you are a grown man, Eli,” Mantis said dryly.
“I’m not the one walking around with a bug in my hand,” Liquid said, turning
around to look at him, then pointed at the black mamba. “Look at it, Mantis,
isn’t it just precious? It looks like it has a smile on its little face.”
Mantis didn’t respond outside of rolling his eyes - affectionately, though,
affectionately. It was true that one couldn’t help getting attached to animals
they’d named themselves after at some point, and truthfully Mantis couldn’t
suppress the little twinge of nostalgia either. Liquid had already had the
White Mamba name stripped from him by the time Mantis met him, but still… the
world had been a different place back then. Whether or not it really was less
complicated Mantis didn’t know or care, but for him it had been
straightforward. No need to worry about— Mantis shook himself. Fake vacation or
not, he wasn’t about to ruin it by brooding over his and Liquid’s tangled
relationship with Ocelot.
Instead he said, “You know, Eli, there was a certain amount of irony in you
taking the name of the mamba back then.”
“Is that so?” Liquid said, having gone back to taking pictures. “Because it is
so cute? That’s hardly the first thing one would say when they think about a
child soldier…”
“No, no, you were a cute child.”
“Mantis…”
“I only meant that mambas are generally shy creatures. You, on the other hand…”
“I know they tend to be shy,” Liquid said, “but - well, I suppose it’s just
like the fact that not everyone is going to appreciate how adorable these
snakes are — but not a lot of people know that mambas would rather flee than
fight. They’re so venomous that their reputation precedes them, and so they’re
cast as aggressive even though they’re not.”
“You, meanwhile, were actually aggressive,” Mantis said. Then he paused,
cocking his head in thought. “Come to think of it…”
“Hm?”
“Back when we were children, and I was developing my own personality… it was
based off of yours, everyone knows that. The parts of you that you didn’t want
to accept, you simply projected onto me — so I was fearful, and uncertain… and
shy.”
“…”
“Isn’t that interesting?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Liquid said flippantly. Mantis
snorted. He knew he had a point, it was only logical. Young Liquid was nervous
around people, especially new people, so he simply dumped that entire
personality trait on young Mantis after years of compensating for it precisely
by being so aggressive even when he didn’t need to. Whether or not that helped
him overcome it was an entirely different matter.
Liquid had changed more since then than he’d ever bring himself to admit; in
some respects he’d changed almost as much as Mantis had. His occasional bouts
of depression hadn’t started getting bad until he was in his mid-teens, and now
that Mantis thought about it, it had been around that time that he’d started
having serious problems with his impulse control, hyperactivity, and insomnia.
Mantis had always just thought of all that as being part of typical pubescent
mood swings, but… did everyone go through those like that…? He knew he hadn’t,
but that was probably understandable… he made a mental note to compare Liquid’s
teenage years to the rest of FOXHOUND’s memories of their own when they got
back to headquarters.
“Mantis? You seem preoccupied by something.”
“What…?”
Liquid raised his eyebrows at him, then looked down at the praying mantis still
sitting on Mantis’ hand. “Your new friend is going to fly away is you don’t pay
enough attention to it, I’m sure.”
“Oh.” He also looked down at it. “Only if it’s male, Eli. The females usually
cannot, they tend to be too large.”
They stayed at the zoo until closing, then Mantis - admittedly reluctantly -
put the praying mantis back in the bush he found it in and after a quick stop
at the gift shop to get something for Wolf, they headed back to the hotel. With
nothing else to do for the evening, Liquid took a shower and then, as soon as
he was out - not bothering with anything more than a towel - immediately
grabbed Mantis, flopped onto the bed, and kissed his neck, wanting him to make
good on his idle threat from earlier.
“Are you sure, Eli…? We could go watch a movie or something…”
“You’re just being evasive, Mantis. And besides, I don’t feel like going out
anymore today, staying at the hotel is fine by me… as long as it’s with you…”
“Hmm…”
Well, if Liquid wanted it so badly… perhaps Mantis should see if he couldn’t
get him in over his head…?
Liquid had been the one to tell Mantis to throw some ‘for fun’ things in his
suitcase, and while Mantis had obliged him he hadn’t said at the time what he
was bringing, so the rope was… a little bit of a surprise, but not exactly an
unwelcome one. Mantis was fond of bondage for reasons Liquid never did really
understand — he knew at least part of it was that he liked how it looked,
purely from an aesthetic point of view, and as such he was particularly
fascinated by the intricate knotwork of shibari. Although, he didn’t do it too
often because he felt it would be “overplayed” if he did, so it ended up being
some kind of special treat that, honestly, Liquid could go either way on so he
suspected the person being treated here was Mantis even if the man wouldn’t
admit to it.
The point was that Liquid was now naked and bound pretty thoroughly, kneeling
on the bed (Liquid figured this was for the sake of his knees - so he might be
in for the long haul tonight) more or less immobilized, back forced to arch
somewhat uncomfortably, legs spread; Mantis had put a loop of rope around
Liquid’s neck just above his collar, and it pulleyed around his elbows and
attached to the rope around his legs (his calves were strapped to their
respective thighs) in such a way that Liquid technically had the freedom of
movement to press his legs together or curl in on himself to take the tension
off his spine, but if he did either of those things then the opposite ends of
the rope around his neck would pull and he would choke. After a little bit of
supervised experimenting Liquid confirmed that pulling his knees apart and/or
arching his back again would take the pressure back off.
“Very inventive,” he murmured, his mouth dry already.
“Mm.”
“Are you… going to fuck me like this?”
“Perhaps,” Mantis said, leaning towards him with one knee on the bed in front
of him, and taking his jaw in one hand. “If you behave.”
“Oh, I will, Mantis—“
The fact that Mantis had also brought along that little remote-control
vibrating prostate toy was much less of a surprise but also, again, not an
unwelcome one. And then the camera, which Liquid had been expecting — still,
his face burned when Mantis turned it on him, and he squirmed even though he
knew Mantis was going to delete every trace of these pictures by the next
morning. He was in a humiliating enough position to begin with - so helpless
and exposed - hard proof of it, even though it was temporary, was downright
mortifying. Almost too much for him, really, and then Mantis went and pulled
out the bottle of lube and worked in the toy… and turned it on… and let Liquid
get hopelessly worked up before taking another round of pictures. Because being
tied up, exposed, helpless, and embarrassed, wasn’t enough if it didn’t come
along with a dripping erection and an obvious sex toy sticking out of his
asshole.
Liquid was so glad that these pictures were all going to get deleted.
“If it were not for the ‘vacation’ photos, Eli,” Mantis said, “I would
definitely keep some of these pictures. I think they’re coming out rather
well.”
“Y-You… have such an i-interesting definition of ‘rather well’, Mantis…”
Just for that comment Mantis clicked the toy up another setting - and they
hadn’t even started on the lowest one, although granted Liquid had eventually
gotten used to vibrators and was no longer so easily overwhelmed by them. At
least, as long as Mantis didn’t set them on the most intense settings, which he
did only sparingly.
Still, the rumbling against his prostate did make Liquid bite his lip and
writhe, his legs jerking together on instinct — he went a little lightheaded
before he remembered that he was supposed to keep them spread. Damn, it was so
hard to concentrate on Mantis’ instructions like this…
“Say, Eli, are you hungry?”
“H-Huh…?”
Mantis leaned towards him again, jaw in hand again. He slipped his thumb into
the corner of Liquid’s mouth, and Liquid sucked on it obediently. “I was just
thinking about getting some takeout. What are you in the mood for?”
Food was kind of the last thing on his mind right now… did Mantis mean for
afterward? Or, oh god, he didn’t mean he was going to call some delivery right
now, just so he could answer the door with Liquid still on the bed like this?
Liquid’s eyes flicked over to the room entrance. He probably wouldn’t be
visible from the doorway, but he wasn’t sure, and just the thought was making
his heart race dangerously.
Mantis patted his cheek. “Oh, relax, I won’t do that to you.”
“Th-then what… what are you-?”
“There are a few carry-out restaurants within walking distance of this hotel,”
Mantis said, slowly enough that Liquid could actually focus on what he was
saying despite the… well, everything. “I thought I’d go get you some dinner.”
“And…” Liquid tensed as it clicked in his brain. “A-And just leave me h-here,
like th-this?? A-Alone??”
“It’s not the first time we have done it that way, Eli.”
“B-But you’ve never e-entirely left the building b-before! Before you’ve o-only
gone to the next r-room, or a few rooms o-over… l-leaving the whole building,
M-Mantis, I… I’m not s-sure about this…” He trailed off. Mantis ran his hand
back through his still-wet hair.
“You will do fine,” he cooed.
“B-But… what if I n-need you…??”
“I won’t be going any further than a half-mile or so, I will still be able to
hear you and if you do need me, I will be able to return within minutes.”
“O-Oh… I s-suppose that’s…” Liquid squirmed again, his back seizing as shivers
ran up his spine. “I-If you want to, Mantis… I’ll just w-wait for you to c-come
back.”
“Will you?” He leaned a little closer. “You’ll behave yourself while I’m gone?
won’t make too much noise?”
“Y-Yes… I mean, n-no, I won’t make t-too much noise.”
“Won’t try to worm your way out of your binds?”
“No, M-Mantis.”
“Or tip yourself over so you can rub yourself against the mattress?”
“N-No, Mantis, I w-won’t.”
“And,” Mantis said, threading his fingers back through his hair again, “if you
do need me… you will tell me as much, won’t you? You will notify me if it hurts
or is too much instead of just trying to suffer through it.”
“Yes, Mantis, I-I will… I will…”
“Good boy.” Mantis nuzzled him, then stood up, slipping the vibrator’s remote
into his pocket. “I will be back shortly, then.”
“Y-Yes, Mantis,” Liquid said, then gasped as Mantis clicked up the setting
again before leaving the room. Oh shit, he was pretty sure this was the highest
setting—- the door lock, and the chain lock, both engaged behind Mantis. The
‘do not disturb’ sign that had been lying on the buffet was missing now, so
that was likely hanging on the doorknob. No one would come bother Liquid in
this state.
Which was good, because Liquid was bothered enough on his own. With the toy on
such a high setting, he was rapidly losing what little composure he’d had. He
wanted so, so badly to grind up against something, give himself a little
friction - it didn’t matter if it was rubbing his aching, neglected cock
against anything other than thin air, or grinding his ass down against
something to push the toy harder against his prostate, really make him see
stars. (He tried his heel, but ended up choking himself.) Liquid was left
bucking his hips ineffectually, periodically cutting off his own air as his
limbs shook.
He did his best to stifle his moans. He could hear people moving around in the
hallway right outside the door.
Mantis, meanwhile, despite telling Liquid the onus of saying if and when he’d
had enough was on him, kept an eye on Liquid’s thoughts as he walked towards
the restaurant. (For maximum torment, and since Liquid hadn’t given his
opinion, he’d picked the furthest one of all the ones he’d been considering.)
So far so good. He was rapidly getting dazed with pleasure and excitement, a
little bit on the overwhelmed side, but as of right now he was really enjoying
himself and didn’t want to stop. Nothing to worry about.
Mantis really didn’t want to admit he got a bit of a thrill from having this
much power over Liquid.
He liked to tell himself that he only enjoyed it because Liquid did, but
truthfully he couldn’t quite believe that. Past actions that he kind of
regretted - times he’d wondered if he’d gone too far - arguments he’d cared
more about winning than sparing Liquid’s feelings — maybe, Mantis thought, he
shouldn’t trust himself in a relationship like this. Even if Liquid trusted him
wholly and felt confident letting Mantis push him around like this… maybe
Mantis wasn’t being careful enough. Maybe he was a little wary of himself and
his own tendencies…
But no, Liquid was fine. He was enjoying himself, even if, truth be told, it
had taken him a little while to warm up to the whole orgasm delay/denial thing
Mantis admittedly liked doing to him. Making him beg for permission to finish…
maybe the first few times it had been a little dubious, but in the brief time
between the start of their relationship and when Ocelot came in like a wrecking
ball, taking a completely dispassionate role in the sex had been starting to
drive Mantis nuts. He had to throw in something for himself, too. In some ways,
the dumb ‘follow my rules or face punishment’ sex game had been a welcome
relief.
mantis mantis oh god i can hearpeoplewalking around outside the door oh god
It’s a hotel, Eli, Mantis told him, equal parts condescending and comforting,
they do that.
no no no i mean people are walking right past the door and theystopand i think
they just stand there and they just stand there for a while before they start
walking again mantis i think they’re trying tolistento me
Are you being quiet?
yes yes i’m trying to anyway mantis i really am i swear
Then there’s nothing to worry about, Mantis assured him.
Mantis didn’t doubt that Liquid really was trying to follow his order to keep
his voice down, but he also didn’t doubt he was failing miserably at it. With
the toy on its highest setting, it was little wonder that Liquid was half-
overstimulated already… just to confirm, Mantis found and glanced in the mind
of one of the people passing through the hallway that Liquid complained about.
…yes, they could definitely hear Liquid, or rather, they could hear stifled
moaning coming from a room with a ‘do not disturb’ sign. They stopped and
listened for a moment, wondering if the voice from the room belonged to someone
injured or otherwise having a serious problem, but then came to the conclusion
that it was sexual and decided to mind their own business. Good.
He considered advising Liquid to try sounding less like a murder victim, but
decided against it. Better to let him think no one was noticing anything,
Liquid might get really turned on by exhibitionism and public humiliation in
theory but the closer it came to being an actual possibility, the more he
freaked out. Mantis didn’t want him to freak out.
Mantis had just entered the restaurant when he noticed Liquid really starting
to get overwhelmed - he was about to reach out to him himself when Liquid gave
in.
mantis please it’s too much
Do you want to go down a setting?
yes please it hurts i don’t want it this much please
Another upside to being psychic: Mantis didn’t have to reach into his pocket
and fiddle with the remote in order to lower the intensity of the vibrations on
Liquid’s toy. Instead he just folded his arms and pretended to consider the
menu before getting in line. (Not that anyone was really paying attention to
him anyway, it just made him feel better…)
Is that better, Eli?
much better yes thank you i just need to catch my breath i’m fine mantis thank
you
Catch his breath indeed. His thought process was shot. Not long after that,
before Mantis had even gotten his food, he heard Liquid’s thoughts blank out
completely as he finally managed to tip over the edge to a rather protracted
prostate orgasm. Of course Mantis kept the vibrations going right through his
orgasm, and afterwards, too, when Liquid was starting to feel extra sensitive —
not as much as he would with a proper climax, but sensitive nonetheless. Mantis
had just collected Liquid’s dinner and left the restaurant when Liquid
complained again.
too much please mantis just a bit lower i can’t take this
Certainly.
thank you that’s better mantis thank you god it hurt, my body hurts
The exchange repeated itself several more times on Mantis’ way back to the
hotel. He was still a few minutes out when Liquid, desperate and almost
hysterical, clumsily reached out to Mantis again.
mantis PLEASE god this is too much i NEED to finish
Eli, there isn’t much I can do if I am not there right now.
it hurts mantis it hurts it’s too much, too much
You’re just overwhelmed…
god… yes yes mantis i’m overwhelmed oh god everything is too much i want this
to be over with i need to finish i need to be done with this please mantis
Do you want to stop?
Liquid blanked again.
Eli? Mantis prodded.
mantis mantis mantis… god this is too much. enough. enough. enough enough
ENOUGH please
Do you want to stop, Eli? Are you asking to stop?
no no no i don’t want to stop i just
Then what, Eli?
less
Mantis rolled his eyes. You’re already on the lowest setting, Eli, he told him,
but I will be back in a just a few minutes. I will take care of you when I get
back, but you need to decide if-
no don’t make me decide mantis i can’t think please it hurts i’m tired…
—to decide if you want to stop now and rest before I get back and figure out
what to do with you, or if you want to endure your overstimulation for another
few minutes.
Just some inarticulate scribblings of thought, incoherent and entirely
unhelpful. Mantis mentally prodded him again.
What do you want, Eli?
stop, Liquid finally thought.
Mantis turned off the vibrator. Liquid’s thoughts didn’t get any less jumbled
for about a full minute, and then Mantis practically heard him melting against
the bedspread, not even caring that the relaxation of his spine was pulling the
rope around his neck a touch too tight. Not quite tight enough to deprive him
of too much oxygen, though, at least from what Mantis could tell… he was just
going to be very light-headed by the time Mantis got back.
Liquid was indeed extremely light-headed when Mantis came back — enough that he
didn’t quite realize that the chain lock undoing itself was actually Mantis’
doing until the man himself actually walked in the room. He placed a white
styrofoam takeout container on the buffet and walked over to the bedside;
Liquid gazed at him with unfocused eyes. He’d managed to lie on his back
without killing himself, but his chest was heaving shallowly and his whole body
ached, and his dick was still sticking straight up in the air, throbbing in
protest for its neglect. And despite the vibrations having stopped a couple
minutes ago, his ass was throbbing too and he kind of felt like his bones were
still shaking…
“Are you alright?” Mantis said, reaching down and brushing a few strands of
hair out of Liquid’s eyes.
“Mantis…” Liquid swallowed hard, painful and difficult against the rope, and
licked his lips. “P-Please… I n-need… your cock…”
Mantis sighed, rolling his eyes. “Yes, I take it you are perfectly fine.”
“Fuck m-me…”
“Eli, if I tried that you would only pass out on me,” Mantis said, waving his
hand a little. Liquid’s bondage came partially undone, giving him back his
airway and entirely releasing the tension on his spine, although his legs and
wrists were still lashed together. He tiredly shifted from side to side as
Mantis sat on the bed between his legs. “Hold still,” he murmured.
Liquid bit back a cry as Mantis tugged the toy out— and immediately slipped in
two of his fingers, rubbing against his abused prostate with intoxicating
gentleness, making Liquid’s hips jerk. “F-Fuck, Mantis— p-p-please!! P-Please,
Mantis, I n-need to- I-I need— M-Mantis, l-let me f-finish, please, f-fuck…!!”
He must have sounded sufficiently desperate, because Mantis’ other hand wrapped
around his erection and within a few pumps, Liquid hit a really, really intense
climax that he was pretty sure he’d fainted for a few seconds afterwards over.
At least, the next thing he remembered he wasn’t tied up anymore, but with his
psychic powers Mantis didn’t need more than a few seconds to undo even the most
intricate of knots — hell, maybe Liquid had just been too dazed to notice it,
even if he was still technically conscious.
Although he wasn’t sure if he qualified as technically conscious right now.
“Just rest a minute,” Mantis said softly, petting Liquid’s hair - looking down
at him, somehow Liquid had ended up lying with his head in Mantis’ lap even
though he honestly didn’t remember how he got here. “You can have your dinner
whenever you feel up to it.”
“Okay,” Liquid mumbled sleepily, blinking slowly. Dimly he realized that the
parts of his skin where the rope had been felt really raw, but he was too out
of it to care right now. “What’d you get me…?”
“Sushi. I thought it would be best if I got something that did not matter if it
got cold.”
“Oh… I see… well, I like sushi…”
“I know, Eli,” Mantis said, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear. “That’s
why I got it.”
“I… like you, Mantis, I love you…”
“I know. You can be so ridiculous in the ways you want to express that
sometimes… but you did behave yourself, very well. Good job, Eli.”
“Ah… thank you, Mantis…”
“Good boy,” Mantis murmured, “my good boy, Eli.”
Chapter End Notes
     Can you tell the Zoo Atlanta is one of my favorite haunts? ; )
***** Fanart 2 *****
Chapter Summary
     Several lovely pieces of fanart drawn by My FUCKIGN GI>RLFREIONGD
     hingabee!
Chapter Notes
     In order: 90s Mantis - Quiet and Wolf - Liquid at the camp - Liquid
     and Gabir
***** Рокси Харт и Вэлма Келли 4 *****
Chapter Summary
     He's afraid.
     Teen And Up Audiences - No Archive Warnings Apply
     W/C 2,502
Chapter Notes
     Anon request.
                              March 1991, Moscow.
Ocelot was right, the war couldn’t last forever.
The Gulf War ended on the 28th of February with the expulsion of Iraq from
Kuwait and the restoration of the Kuwaiti monarchy, just over a full month
after Eli was taken prisoner. POWs from both sides of the conflict began to be
returned to their respective home countries. Bogomol took to constantly
pestering the SAS man that Ocelot had put him in contact with, asking every day
- sometimes several times a day - if Eli had been returned yet. And every time
it was an uncomfortable “No, he hasn’t,” followed by an assurance that these
things were almost never done at all once so he’d probably be in England with
the next wave of POWs released. Bogomol did his best to remain optimistic.
And then the news finally came in: The group that had been holding Eli’s
squadron in particular prisoner just so happened to be, as misfortune would
have it, a group of extremists who didn’t want to answer to the Iraqi
government and certainly not to any coalition treaties or demands. They took
their set of hostages and holed up in some… somewhere. No one had any clue
where, if it was even in Iraq or if they’d stayed on Kuwaiti soil or what…
Of course, they knew this because this group - not the only group like this in
existence, but this group - sent a list of demands. The SAS man didn’t share
those demands with Bogomol and Bogomol didn’t care to look in his mind for what
they were; all that mattered was that along with their demands they sent
photographs of their prisoners, to prove they had them. Bogomol didn’t need
anyone to positively identify Eli for him. He knew the second the SAS man
showed him the photo.
He was, despite assurances that the hostages would be treated well since they
were of more use as human shields alive than dead, covered in bruises and had
been clearly unable to bring himself to look at whoever was holding the camera.
Saying it was an emotional blow to Bogomol was an understatement. He managed to
keep himself from screaming or fainting or bursting into tears in front of the
SAS man, but as soon as he got back to his apartment he fell apart completely.
And this time there was no Ocelot to ply him with vodka and hold him as he
cried — which he told himself was probably for the better but it didn’t help.
And the next day Bogomol went back to work and tried to act as though nothing
had happened. That was what he thought Eli would do in his situation: carry on.
The war didn’t last forever but it was only a matter of time until the
straggling insurgents were smoked out… right? And that would be done without
killing the hostages, right? Even if Eli was hurt badly - even if he came back
without his limbs and face and it was like a real-life version of Johnny Got
His Gun, as long as Bogomol could have Eli’s mind back alright he would be
happy again. Even if he had to exhaustively take care of Eli for the rest of
his life… he’d do it. He’d gladly do it.
All he had to do now was wait. Because he sure as hell didn’t even know where
to start when it came to trying to mount a rescue himself.
Bogomol tried to carry on but the quality of his work suffered. His job was
simple - for him, at least, even though it was literally impossible and often
incomprehensible for normal people — his role at the KGB was to read the minds
of certain people slated for interrogation and, ideally, save the state the
trouble of having to bribe or beat the information they wanted out of them.
Cybernetic ’psychic shielding’ implants did exist, but were hardly widespread.
Usually the hunt for information stopped with Bogomol.
But he couldn’t concentrate. The natural impulse of any mind being invaded was
to resist; ordinarily this posed no problem whatsoever for Bogomol, even the
most strong-willed of suspects he could overpower with minimal effort. But with
all the emotional and mental strain he was under, worrying about Eli, a
prisoner, all alone in an unknown location somewhere in the Middle East, being
starved and beaten and tortured… Bogomol’s ability faltered. Or rather, he
faltered. Quite frankly he was despondent. Any amount of resistance would cause
him to simply give up, no matter how easy it would be to surmount it, and
quietly withdraw into himself.
Bogomol’s immediate superiors were starting to think that this wasn’t just a
temporary slump when Ocelot showed his face at the KGB again.
“I heard what happened,” Ocelot said, leaning against the doorway to Bogomol’s
office.
There was no need to ask what he was referring to, even though Bogomol couldn’t
read Ocelot’s mind. Bogomol didn’t even stir from where he was slumped over his
desk with his head buried in his arms.
“I also heard,” Ocelot continued, stepping into his office and courteously
closing the door behind him, “that your distress over this is causing your job
performance to suffer.”
“I don’t care,” Bogomol muttered.
“You should.”
“Why?” Bogomol finally lifted his head. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.
I’m never going to see Eli again, what’s the point in-“
“Is that a fact?” Ocelot interrupted.
“Huh?”
“You told me a while ago that the two of you would be able to sense somehow
when the other died. Is Eli dead?”
“…n…no…”
Ocelot gave him a hard look. “Then what’s all the fuss about?”
Bogomol couldn’t figure out how to respond to that. He just sank into his
chair, shrinking in on himself.
“I’m scared,” he whispered.
“You always are,” Ocelot snorted. “That’s no excuse, Bogomol. If nothing else,
won’t you consider how inconvenient you’re making things for me?”
“…?”
“It doesn’t matter what type of interrogation it is, you don’t just give up on
it,” Ocelot said, “you know that they only give you the hard cases, don’t you?
So if you fail, they fall directly to me. And I’m too busy for this, Bogomol. I
have enough on my plate as it is.”
“…sorry,” Bogomol said meekly.
Ocelot relaxed slightly. “Stressing out over everything isn’t going to help
anyone, least of all Eli,” he said, “if you continue to pull things like this,
you’ll eventually lose your job here - may have to leave the Soviet Union
entirely. You don’t want that, do you?”
“I… no. No, I don’t…” Leaving the Soviet Union would mean leaving Ocelot, which
wasn’t a bad prospect in and of itself since Bogomol didn’t particularly like
him or his company, but without Eli around… well, Bogomol just wasn’t sure he’d
be able to make it on his own. Maybe he would someday, but he was certain he
couldn’t right now…
“Then do your job,” Ocelot said flatly.
“Okay.”
As much as being scolded by Ocelot stung, Bogomol knew he had a point. It had
also helped slightly when Ocelot sighed and told him it was commendable that he
at least put forth the effort of actually showing up at the Lubyanka every day,
so if he could bring himself to do that then surely he could handle simple
information retrieval. Bogomol just nodded.
The next day Bogomol was faced with, once again, someone whose mind he needed
to flush of relevant information. He was told, as always, what sort of thing he
needed to be looking for, and let into the room where the subject was
handcuffed. Another KGB agent - never Ocelot, interestingly enough - watched
from behind a two-way mirror (so as not to distract Bogomol) to take notes and
make sure everything went smoothly (since the entire KGB, except Ocelot, was
under the impression that Bogomol was only telepathic; if the subject got
violent then Bogomol would have no way to defend himself without revealing that
he had otherabilities, so he had to rely on whoever was behind the glass for
safety), and the whole thing was being recorded.
Bogomol started off simple: “Your real name is Derek Hicks, not Leon Seleznyov;
you were born in Missouri, not Dnipropetrovsk… you… you work for the CIA… and…”
He hit a snag.
“And…”
His next task was to find out what state secrets this now-confirmed spy already
knew, and of those which he had already passed on to the American government,
but the man was fighting Bogomol with all his might, concentrating as hard as
possible on pushing Bogomol out of his mind. Again, normally this wouldn’t be a
problem but Bogomol was already stressed out and probably should have slept the
night before even though he didn’t and he just got so frustrated.
“Stop resisting me,” he hissed, tugging at his own hair, “stop it!”
“Like hell I’m gonna let you in my mind,” the man grunted, “freak.”
“Don’t— don’t call me that!”
“But it’s what you are,” the man said, “come on, no normal person can do what
you do. You’re a freak of nature, plain and simple.”
“Stop that!”
“The universe’s mistake!”
“Shut up!!”
“You shouldn’t even exist!”
“Shut up!!”
By the time the agent behind the two-way glass realized he should do something,
it was already too late. By the time he threw open the door to the
interrogation room, the spy was slumped over, blood dripping from his nose,
unmoving, and Bogomol was standing in front of him, fists clenched.
The agent ran over and checked the spy’s pulse. “What the hell?” he said after
a moment, slowly turning to Bogomol. “He’s… dead?”
“…”
Bogomol simply left the Lubyanka and went back to his apartment, and locked the
door behind him. He sat on his bed, took off his mask, and stared blankly at
the wall. And that was all he did until, after evening had fallen, there was a
now-familiar knock on his door.
The brief break in his protective lead barrier did allow a few outside thoughts
to push their way into his mind, but Ocelot entered his apartment and closed
the door behind him quick enough that they faded away again without Bogomol
ever brining himself to care. Ocelot stood in the doorway to his room, arms
crossed, face hard and deeply unimpressed.
“Do you have any idea how much I had to run around all afternoon cleaning up
your mess?” he said dryly.
“It’s fine,” Bogomol said faintly.
“It is now, but you came very close to the University coming after you again,
Bogomol.”
Bogomol stiffened, and finally glanced at Ocelot. The second most terrifying
thing after Eli’s death was the researchers from the Leningrad University of
Parapsychology coming sniffing around again and finding out that not only was
Bogomol not simply telepathic, but he was also the missing research subject
from seven years ago. It had only been Ocelot’s intervention that had driven
them away last time…
“I’m sorry,” he said, eyes wide, “I was just… I was frustrated. He was yelling
at me, I couldn’t take it.”
“Lucky for you I was still in town,” Ocelot said, giving him a sharp look, “you
blew a blood vessel in his brain — I managed to convince everyone that while it
was tangentially your fault, what really happened was that he strained so hard
resisting your mind probe that he gave himself an aneurism. But if it happens
again…”
“…it’ll be too much of a coincidence,” Bogomol said, staring down at his lap,
“I understand, Ocelot. I… I really didn’t mean to…”
“Intentions don’t matter, Bogomol. Don’t do it again.”
“…I’ll try…”
Ocelot frowned. “Bogomol, look at me,” he said.
Bogomol looked away before he changed his mind and hesitantly raised his face
towards Ocelot. Ocelot jerked his head. It took Bogomol a moment to interpret
the gesture, but then he understood, and stood up, walking over to Ocelot.
“You’re playing a dangerous game,” Ocelot said, his voice softer now.
“…”
“I’m not always around. Surely you’ve noticed this by now,” he said, putting
his hands on Bogomol’s shoulders. “I do my utmost to keep you safe and
comfortable at the KGB, but I can’t be there 24/7. I expect you to be able to
look after yourself.”
“I can,” Bogomol protested weakly.
“Can you?” Ocelot replied, adjusting the neck of Bogomol’s turtleneck sweater -
he hadn’t changed since he got back to his apartment — “I don’t like loose
ends, Bogomol. I can keep an eye on you just as easily at the University as I
can in the KGB. I haven’t simply handed you over to them out of the kindness of
my heart.”
“Or because you like having a psychic in your pocket…”
“Don’t put words in my mouth. I told you, I don’t make a habit of holding debts
from children. But if you slip through the cracks, Bogomol… if you make
yourself any more trouble than you’re worth than you already are… as far as I’m
concerned, you’d be better off dead.”
Bogomol suddenly realized that, with Ocelot’s fingers still on his neck, it
would be very, very easy for him to choke him.
Moreover, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to bring himself to resist. He might just
have let himself die.
His thoughts on that must have been written all over his hideous face - maybe
it was the way his eyes flicked down to Ocelot’s hand - because Ocelot raised
an eyebrow.
Gloved fingers slipped up to just under Bogomol’s jaw. “Your heart’s beating so
fast,” Ocelot observed.
“Yes,” Bogomol whispered.
“You’re afraid.”
“Yes.”
“You should be, Bogomolechik.”
By time time Bogomol fully processed the use of the diminutive (and went bright
red), Ocelot had already dropped his hand and taken a step back.
“I’ll be in town until the end of the week,” he said flatly, “and then I’m
going back to Outer Heaven. You only have until then to use me as a shield for
any mistakes caused by your stress-related dysfunction. As such, Bogomol, I’d
suggest you get your act together as soon as possible.”
Bogomol nodded, realizing only now that he’d stopped breathing at some point.
He tried to inhale as silently as possible, but somehow he knew Ocelot had
noticed long before he had anyway.
“Eli will be recovered. Rest assured that people are looking for him, and I
don’t mean just the British government and their allies. There’s a lot of
ground to cover between Iraq and Kuwait, but the desert is hardly infinite.”
“I know,” Bogomol said. “He’ll… he’ll be fine.”
“Just leave this to the people who actually know what they’re doing.”
“…okay.”
Ocelot left after that, barely sticking around for pleasantries. Bogomol didn’t
try to stop him. Once Ocelot was gone, he simply sat down on his bed again, and
stared at the wall again.
And fell apart again.
***** Tie Your Mother Down (Omake) *****


***** Memes 2 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

(h/t hingabee)


(left in a comment on sour_times, but it deserves to be here too)
Chapter End Notes
     Except for the first one and the one accredited to hingabee,
     everything in this chapter is h/t Brambora.
     (posting these now so that th next meme update won't be totaly
     overloaded because boy oh boy do i have a lot of ocelmantis memes
     ready to go when r&v5 drops -pp)
***** Tie Your Mother Down (Omake) 2 *****


***** Tie Your Mother Down (Omake) 3 *****




***** Рокси Харт и Вэлма Келли 5 *****
Chapter Summary
     They say that life is tit for tat/And that's the way I live/So I
     deserve a lot of tat/For what I've got to give
     Explicit - Rape/Non-Con, Underage
     W/C 3,922
Chapter Notes
     Aiiiight, the moment everyone's been waiting for AND HOW. This was
     originally requested by some anon, the basic outline was suggested by
     Brambora, and Dacryphilia helpfully gave me the name Kuznetsov.
     Shout-out to Phase7, who was present in the_discord_server when we
     were discussing this, and was like "Noooo Ocelot wouldn't do thaaat
     that's out-of-character :(" which meant I had to find a way around
     it. ;D
                          1991, Moscow, the Lubyanka.
Bogomol hadn’t had a reason to worry when his immediate superior, Kuznetsov,
called him to his office, even when he told him to close the door behind him.
He was a little concerned, but mostly confused, when his “Yes, comrade?” was
met with a request/order for him to come around to Kuznetsov’s side of the
desk, which definitely wasn’t normal… but, Kuznetsov was one of many people
here who had ‘psychic shielding’ cybernetic implants, so Bogomol was completely
in the dark on his intentions. He wasn’t very good at reading body language,
after all.
“Does this mask ever come off?” Kuznetsov said, brushing his fingers against
the filter. Bogomol leaned back away from him, just far enough to be not be
touched anymore.
“No, comrade.”
“Really? Never?”
“…only when I’m at my flat.”
“Oh, I see. That changes my plans slightly.” He reached around and grabbed a
handful of Bogomol’s ass.
“?!” Bogomol was more startled than anything else, but was prevented from
stepping back in alarm…
“I was going to ask you to get under my desk and suck me off,” said Kuznetsov,
“but since you won’t take off your mask, I can accommodate.”
“No,” Bogomol said awkwardly.
Kuznetsov stared at him. “What?”
“No… no thank you, comrade?” Bogomol honestly had no idea how he was supposed
to react to being sexually harassed and he just wished Kuznetsov would take his
hand off his butt.
“…I don’t think you really understand what I’m getting at here, kid,” Kuznetsov
said. “I would have thought you’d been with us long enough to figure out that
you definitely want to find favor with the people who outrank you. I’m offering
you the chance to become my favorite.”
“I’m doing fine on my own,” Bogomol said.
“…or with ADAM, at any rate. Then, let me rephrase that: If you refuse… well,
let’s just say that you’ll find staying in my good graces a lot more difficult
all of a sudden. Kryuchkov likes you - likes your unique abilities - so I won’t
go so far as to say you’ll find yourself out of a job… but this will start to
become a rather unpleasant work environment for you.”
“I’d still rather not,” Bogomol said, then added, “comrade,” to try and defuse
the situation a bit.
Kuznetsov’s hand squeezed, and Bogomol jumped a little. He didn’t like the look
on his face… “Well, too bad,” he said.
“Huh?”
“I was giving you a choice in the matter here, but since you chose to say ‘no’
I’m afraid I’ll have to take that choice away.”
“I don’t think that’s how it wo- aah!”
Kuznetsov had abruptly spun Bogomol around and pushed him face-first against
his desk - Bogomol just barely caught himself with his hands, and wondered what
the hell he was supposed to do now. Fighting back wasn’t a very attractive
prospect… Kuznetsov was about as tall as he was, but three or four times wider
both in the shoulders and the waist. Bogomol would only get injured. And using
his psychic powers, while tempting, was off the table — if he simply escaped,
the Kuznetsov would be a witness and would definitely out him as being more
than telepathic. If he killed Kuznetsov then people would figure out that
Bogomol wasn’t only telepathic anyway… especially considering that spy he’d
killed a while back, right after Eli had been reported MIA. Bogomol couldn’t
rely on Ocelot to cover it up again, he’d already said that Bogomol was on his
own if he ever did that again.
So, Bogomol realized as he felt Kuznetsov pull down his pants and underwear
just far enough to give him access, it was either this or the University. And
if he went to the University… he’d never be able to leave. They knew how to
keep him from escaping — and no one would come for him. Ocelot wouldn’t care,
it was as convenient for him having Bogomol in the University as at the KGB,
and Eli was languishing somewhere in the Middle East… there was no one else who
even might have tried.
Better to just not struggle, and endure.
Bogomol said nothing as he felt Kuznetsov grip his cheeks, the sound of a
zipper then something warm and hard press against his backside. Kuznetsov swore
under his breath.
“You’re so goddamn tiny,” he said, “I’ll never get it in like this. Hang on a
moment.”
“Okay,” Bogomol said in a small voice.
Kuznetsov moved behind him and a moment later, Bogomol felt something
significantly smaller - oh, his finger - press up against his anus and then
into— it burned, it was uncomfortably intrusive and Bogomol did not like this.
He tried to squirm away but Kuznetsov pushed him harder against his desk, sure
to leave bruises on his hips.
“The least you can do is sit still,” Kuznetsov said right in his ear.
“I don’t want this,” Bogomol said in an unsteady voice.
“Then pretend to.”
Kuznetsov moved his finger inside Bogomol and again Bogomol squirmed, his legs
twitching at the sensation. If only he could just ignore it… maybe if he
concentrated on something else? He fixed his eyes on the papers on Kuznetsov’s
desk, papers he himself doubtlessly didn’t have the security clearance for, but
couldn’t focus on the words as Kuznetsov added another finger.
“I’ll get you all nice and stretched out,” he said in a falsely affectionate
voice, “and then we can have some fun.”
“Please… stop…”
Fingers wound into his hair and smashed his face against the desk with a loud
thunk of plastic-on-wood. Bogomol was almost glad he didn’t have a nose - it
could have been broken like that. As it stood his gas mask protected his face
from the brunt of the force, but… it still hurt…
Maybe going limp would help…? Wasn’t that the thing to do… to relax…
Maybe if his heart would stop beating so fast.
The doorknob clicked. Bogomol tensed, his eyes wide. Kuznetsov briefly paused.
The door opened. “Kuznetsov, if you’ve taken any issue with something Bogomol
did, then— oh.”
Oh god. Ocelot. Why Ocelot, of all people? Of all the people who could possibly
walk in on this and see Bogomol like this — why Ocelot?!
Bogomol barely dared to peek up at him, a difficult feat with Kuznetsov still
shoving his face against the desk. Ocelot’s expression was perfectly
inscrutable. He didn’t say anything for a moment, then Kuznetsov dared to
speak.
“Do we have a problem, ADAM?”
“This is a hell of a thing to walk in on, Kuznetsov,” Ocelot said, starting to
twirl the pen he had been holding when he walked in.
“Yet you haven’t walked back out. Hmm… I wonder if there’s any merit to the
rumors about you and him…”
Rumors? Bogomol wondered. Didn’t everyone just think he and Ocelot had a
father/son relationship?
“His little ass is sucking my fingers in so greedily, I have to admit I have my
doubts that he’s a virgin… I thought for sure he was.”
Bogomol tried to pull away while Kuznetsov was talking, but was just pressed
harder against the desk. It was getting harder and harder to breathe evenly
between the assault and the fact that Ocelot was watching. He held his breath
instead.
“I have no problem with sharing, though,” Kuznetsov said to Ocelot, “in fact,
if you want to get over here and have a go right now, that’s fine by me. We can
team up on him. I’m sure he can take it.”
Ocelot’s expression remained inscrutable. Bogomol tried to give him as much of
a pleading look as possible with the desk in the way, his fingers tightening
against the wood and paper.
His heart skipped several beats as Ocelot stepped forward, his twirling pen
stilling.
“Kuznetsov,” he said calmly, “do you know what this is?”
“A pen?” Kuznetsov said, then blinked. “Oh goddammit. A pen-camera. I hate
you.”
“Mmm. I’ll deal with you later. Get out, you idiot.”
Kuznetsov pulled his fingers out of Bogomol so fast that he actually made an
undignified little squeak of pain, then rapidly walked out of his office, face
pale, closing the door behind him. Ocelot put his camera-pen back in his pocket
as Bogomol’s knees gave out, falling to the floor as he gasped for breath
shakily.
Ocelot gave him a moment to pull his pants back up with trembling hands before
circling around the desk to stand a respectful few feet away. “Are you
alright?”
“I’m… I’m fine, Ocelot.”
“Are you sure? Generally people find this kind of thing rather traumatizing.”
“I don’t want… I don’t want to talk about it right now. You- you took
pictures?”
Ocelot shrugged. “Kuznetsov irritates me, I’ve been trying to get some good
blackmail on him for ages. I’m not surprised it came to this, this is the same
man who’s gone through two dozen secretaries in the past three years… of
course, thus far it’s all been women. I suppose you just looked vulnerable to
him.”
Bogomol blinked up at him, then stood. “You knew…?”
“Well, frankly, when I heard he’d summoned you to his office I thought he only
finally found out that you were routing all your communications through me last
year, when I was still teaching you how to read. Figured you might get in
trouble for it, and didn’t want the hassle… I wasn’t expecting this.”
“Oh.”
He adjusted his clothing for a moment, shifting his weight uncomfortably, then
glanced back up at Ocelot. “You’re going to use what he did to me as
blackmail?”
“‘Blackmail’ implies I intend to simply hold this over his head,” Ocelot said
with disdain, “I intend to ruin him completely. You are over the age of
consent, but homosexuality is illegal in this country.”
“It is?”
“Why do you think people here actually believe I’m straight? Notwithstanding
the rumors about us, but no one has - or ever will have - any proof I’m not.
Unlike Kuznetsov, who actually is…”
“Oh,” Bogomol said again, staring at his shoes. “But… I’d be implicated, too…”
“Ah, no. Considering your age and personality alone, it wouldn’t be hard to
characterize this as a violent rape, so you can’t be prosecuted as a victim.
Even besides that, my eyewitness testimony ends the whole debate before it even
begins. …but that’s a moot point. I don’t see the reason for getting the courts
involved, Kuznetsov will take care of himself by the time I’m through with
him.”
“…I see.”
Ocelot frowned for a moment, then stepped forward and placed his hand on
Bogomol’s shoulder. “Are you absolutely certain you’re alright, Bogomol?”
“…”
“Go home early today,” he said, patting his shoulder, “I’ll make up some excuse
for you and handle the Kuznetsov situation.”
“…o-okay.”
“I’ll come check up on you later. Keep your door locked until then.”
                                    Later.
Ocelot had, in all honesty, intended to leave Russia again at around noon to
return to Mother Base, but this morning’s attempted rape (well, interrupted
rape, there had been penetration involved) had thrown a wrench into that plan.
Ocelot cancelled his flight then called back and told Venom he need to stick
around Moscow for a little longer in order to “protect his investment” and
Venom said he understood and that they were doing fine without him. Ocelot only
sort of doubted it. Most of the administrative stuff that Miller had handled
back before he ditched them - things that Venom wouldn’t know what to do with
if you gave him an instruction manual and that Ocelot was far too busy to
handle himself - was now the domain of the base development unit, especially
considering Mother Base itself was no longer expanding or adding platforms.
Still… Ocelot wasn’t a huge fan of leaving people to their own devices for too
long…
He traced the familiar route through the khrushchyovka to Bogomol’s apartment,
then knocked on the door, then, when he received no answer, said loudly, “It’s
me, Bogomol, let me in.”
Passing the threshold he dimly reflected that he still didn’t think lead
wallpaper was very healthy.
Ocelot had been to Bogomol’s apartment so many times that at some point he’d
started stocking it with vodka himself, although Bogomol didn’t drink unless
Ocelot imposed a glass on him - which he usually didn’t do unless he needed a
quick way to get him to shut up and go to sleep, since two glasses consistently
knocked him out. Bogomol hovered at the doorway to the kitchen (literally -
safe in his apartment, he was free to use all his powers and take off his mask,
too, which he had) as Ocelot poured himself a glass of vodka.
“Do you want some too?” he said, sitting down at the table and putting his feet
up on it. Bogomol didn’t comment on that. Just shook his head. Ocelot took a
sip, then set down his glass. “Now, Bogomol…”
“I’m fine, Ocelot,” Bogomol said, glancing away and frenetically running his
fingers under the hem of his shorts. Again Ocelot had to wonder why Bogomol
even owned thigh-high stockings…
“Are you really?”
Bogomol nodded. “I— I was scared,” he said, still not looking at Ocelot, “but
only because it reminded me of… of the research installation, back in
Czechoslovakia, when I was a child…”
“Oh? Something like that’s happened to you before…”
“It was normal back then. I got used to it. But I never liked it.”
Ocelot frowned to himself. At the age Bogomol had been, he wouldn’t have had a
good grasp of the difference between sexual abuse and routine if invasive
medical examinations - to him, either one would be uncomfortable, unwanted, and
violating. Quite frankly Ocelot didn’t trust Bogomol to have an accurate
assessment of it even in retrospect - he didn’t seem to remember most of his
life before the Phantom Pain Incident very clearly — Ocelot decided to look
into that facility’s records whenever he had the time, see if any of the
researchers had ever been reported by their colleagues for behaving
inappropriately with the child subjects.
“I… I’m glad you showed up, Ocelot.”
“Mm.”
“You keep… doing this.” He let his feet touch the ground. “Saving me.”
“We’ve been over this, Bogomol,” Ocelot said, picking up his glass of vodka
again and swishing it around disinterestedly, “I’m being kind to you in order
to keep my observance of you running smoothly. We don’t have to like each
other.”
“I know. I know I don’t, anyway.”
Bogomol started walking towards Ocelot, and Ocelot let his feet hit the floor
with a jangle of spurs as he noted the too-deliberate sway of his hips. Oh
dear. Oh, dear.
He knew exactly where this was going.
Ocelot didn’t move a muscle as Bogomol cautiously straddled his lap, still
refusing to make eye contact. “I,” he said hesitantly, “owe you so much. I
don’t want to be in your debt.”
“…”
“Let me… make it all up to you. Wipe the slate clean. Start over.”
He closed his eyes and started leaning towards Ocelot. No. No. Christ. What the
hell did this idiot child think he was doing? He thought he could get out from
under the shadow of owing Ocelot his life and his freedom by performing sexual
favors?Like Ocelot was supposed to be interested inhis skinny underaged
neurotic ass?
But still Ocelot didn’t move as Bogomol kissed him, rather shyly. He’d thought
before that they looked soft - they were soft, although it was hard to tell
with the scrape of nylon wire still embedded in his skin after God knew how
many years. When Bogomol opened his mouth against Ocelot’s, Ocelot went so far
as to copy the move.
This was… probably a holdover from Volgin. Ocelot already knew (perhaps better
than Bogomol did) that his personality, habits, and opinions were a
conglomeration of traits from people he’d established a psychic link to at some
time or another. Eli’s influence was obvious, of course, and it made sense that
it was strongest; however, during their reading/writing lessons Ocelot had not
infrequently seen shades of Skull Face and it wasn’t uncommon for Bogomol to,
when he was feeling particularly not like talking at the moment, use hand
gestures directly out of Venom’s playbook. In all likelihood he still had in
him somewhere a vestige of his very brief connection with that kid Shabani.
Of course, Volgin was the type to demand sexual favors as repayment of debts,
not offer them. But Bogomol seemed to think that was how the world worked and
understood his place as far as Ocelot went. This kiss was a submissive one.
Ocelot waited until Bogomol broke it, taking an uneven breath as he did, then
wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Ocelot surreptitiously licked his
lips. Did Bogomol seriously put on flavored chapstick for this…?
“You can do whatever you want with me,” Bogomol said quietly, “my body is yours
to use as you please… for tonight.”
“You have no idea what you’re offering,” Ocelot breathed.
“I know about your torture fetish, Ocelot. …all I ask is that I still be able
to walk in the morning.” He put his hands over Ocelot’s, leading them up his
legs to his hips. “Anything else… I’ll do what you want and I won’t resist, I
promise. I’ll even pretend to enjoy it if you like that.”
Idiot.
There was only one thing Ocelot could do in this situation.
He stood up abruptly, pushing a rather startled Bogomol onto his back on the
kitchen table - knocking over his vodka glass in the process, but neither of
them paid any attention to that - positioned himself between his legs, and
stared down at him. Bogomol almost cowered under his gaze, tensing and staring
up at Ocelot with wide eyes and parted lips.
“You think this is what I want from you?” Ocelot said.
“Isn’t it…?”
Ocelot leaned closer. “Perhaps it’s just what you want, Bogomolechik.”
Bogomol flushed a little at the reminder of his age. “No,” he whispered, “I
don’t. I’m— not the type to get crushes on old people… or anyone, really… but
especially not you.”
“If that’s how you want to think of yourself.”
“Really, I don’t—- a-ah—“ He cut himself off as Ocelot slid one hand down to
his crotch, groping him through the fabric of his shorts. His legs jerked,
pressing together against Ocelot’s hips.
“What do you expect me to do with you, Bogomolechik? Were you afraid to offer
yourself to me…?”
Bogomol’s hands scrabbled against the table, then closed into fists as Ocelot
kept fondling him. His shallow chest started rising and falling rapidly as
Ocelot started to feel a certain stiffness against his palm.
“…or were you, perhaps, excited?”
“Ah… I… I just want… aah…”
Ocelot let him devolve into gasping out little sounds, shuddering against the
friction. There question here, of course, was How far is too far? Ocelot was
already going further than he’d particularly expected to ever go with this
project… it hadn’t occured to him that Bogomol would come onto him like that,
even if it was because he felt so indebted and only wanted a way out.
Or maybe not ‘only’. He was a teenage boy, after all.
“Oh… ah, Ocelot—“
The tent in Bogomol’s shorts grew ever larger and more noticeable, and Bogomol
blushed all the way up to his ears, almost as red as his hair. He clapped a
hand over his mouth when he let out a little yelp at Ocelot shifting his hand
down to massage his balls before pressing hard against his perineum. Bogomol
let out a choked noise, his hips bucking.
“Ah— agh- ghh— Ocelot… aahhh-“
Bogomol was rocking his hips against Ocelot’s hand, and Ocelot was marginally
glad that he hadn’t lost his touch (ha) when it came to handjobs - even if he
wasn’t exactly used to there being a cloth barrier. Still, it wasn’t like
massaging someone’s crotch was difficult to do, especially when the person in
question was getting increasingly enthusiastic, overwhelmed even, losing his
self-control entirely.
“Ocelot- Ocelot— oh, this is… ohh, ah- Ocel-— ah!“
He tipped his head back and made a high-pitched moan.
“O-Ocelot- I’m gonna—!”
Ocelot stopped. Drew back. Stepped away.
It took a few moments of heated panting for Bogomol to lift his head and stare
at Ocelot in frustrated confusion.
“You’re a child, Bogomolechik,” Ocelot said flatly. “I don’t hold debts from
children.”
“Wh…?” Bogomol shrunk back against the table, biting his tongue. The fact that
Ocelot was just abandoning him to his arousal finally sunk in with him, leaving
him probably the most mortified and humiliated Ocelot had ever seen a single
person.
Ocelot turned around, waving one hand. “Finish yourself off if you want. I’ll
be seeing you around if you ever forgive me for this.”
He left the apartment, locking the door before he closed it. Bogomol sat on the
kitchen table, bewildered and wishing desperately to simply vanish from
existence at that moment… he looked down.
He had no idea what to do with his erection.
                     A few weeks afterwards. The Lubyanka.
“Bogomol,” Ocelot said without looking up from his paperwork. “It’s been a
while. Of course, your avoiding me is understandable, but I knew you’d come
around.”
Bogomol didn’t respond for a moment, then said, “Kuznetsov… did he quit, or get
fired? No one seems to know for sure.”
“Does it matter? Either way he’s gone.”
“His body was pulled out of the Moskva River last night.”
“As I said, he’s gone.”
There was a long pause. Ocelot eventually looked up. Bogomol was still standing
at the halfway point between Ocelot’s desk and his office door.
“Something else to say to me, Bogomol?”
“I…” Bogomol glanced off to the side deliberately. “I get it now, I think.”
“Do you?”
“You were… teaching me a lesson. About… about debt.”
“About offering your body as payment for debt,” Ocelot said boredly, going back
to his paperwork. “Even aside from the fact that trying that on someone who has
no interest in it will only make a fool out of you — should you encounter
someone who does claim to accept sexual favors as payment, someone like that
will never release you from your debt. You’ll owe them forever. They’ll always
have another excuse to get you on your knees under their desk until the day
they die.”
“…you have experience with this,” Bogomol said, and it wasn’t a question or a
guess. But Ocelot had already figured out he had certain holdovers from Volgin.
“Take my lesson to heart, Bogomol.”
“…I will…” he folded his arms, more hugging himself, really. “I’ve never been
so… humiliated… I won’t ever do that again.”
“Good.”
“…thank you,” Bogomol mumbled, then quickly retreated from Ocelot’s office and
closed the door.
Ocelot sighed, putting down his pen and rubbing his eyes. Hell of a way to
teach something, but it’d be permanently burned into Bogomol’s mind now — no
need to worry about him attempting this with anyone else. And his willingness
to show his gas mask in Ocelot’s office again meant that no, he hadn’t gone too
far. Hadn’t accidentally broken him with that dose of shame.
Hadn’t lost control over his own self.
He stood, gathering his things and checking the clock. If he left now he could
be back to Mother Base before midnight.
***** Understandable, Understandable *****
Chapter Summary
      
     Explicit - Underage
     W/C 987
Chapter Notes
     Based off of a comment hingabee left on the original Miscellany.
     Takes place during "Рокси Харт и Вэлма Келли 5".
Ocelot turned around, waving one hand. “Finish yourself off if you want. I’ll
be seeing you around if you ever forgive me for this.”
He left the apartment, locking the door before he closed it. Bogomol sat on the
kitchen table, bewildered and wishing desperately to simply vanish from
existence at that moment… he looked down.
He had no idea what to do with his erection.
God.
Bogomol had never had an orgasm before in his life but he was (rather
unintentionally) familiar with the concept and was able to tell that he’d been
seconds away from one when Ocelot suddenly stopped. He felt so incredibly wound
up, felt like just leaving his arousal to die down like he was sure it would
eventually would be incredibly painful somehow… and he felt so unbearably
embarrassed, so ashamed…
He slid off the kitchen table, wincing, and awkwardly staggered over to his
bedroom, where he locked the door - even though he was entirely alone in his
apartment - and flopped onto his bed, gasping at the rub of fabric against his
dick. Hands shaking, he quickly undid his pants and then just gave up on them
entirely, slipping them and his underwear off and leaving them on the floor.
(He hardly noticed he was still wearing his shirt and his stockings. It didn’t
matter.)
Looking at his naked cock just made him feel worse - hard and flushed red,
visibly throbbing, dripping clear, slick fluid… Ocelot did this to him, he’d
let Ocelot do this to him, he’d initiated it, and then Ocelot had just stopped,
and left him like this…
Hesitantly Bogomol touched a fingertip to the head - it felt hot, and sent a
little jolt up through his body - then stroked his fingers down the side like
he’d seen Eli do a couple years ago when he hadn’t known he was watching. It
felt good, but… not as good as when Ocelot was doing it.
He laid on his back, staring up at the lead-covered ceiling. He couldn’t
believe he’d done that — that he’d thought that would work. He still owed
Ocelot every bit, didn’t he? And got saddled with this erection to take care
of, too. Bogomol laid his unoccupied arm over his face, like that could do
anything to abate his humiliation. With his other hand he unsteadily rubbed his
dick, quick jerks, chafing a little—
Bogomol needed… comfort. He felt so unbalanced, so bewildered and lost and
disgraced and here he was degrading himself still, maybe not as badly as when
he’d sat in Ocelot’s lap and kissed him but he needed this - needed something.
Moreover, he couldn’t seem to get himself over the edge like this, just
touching himself while trying to ignore the fact that he was touching himself.
He couldn’t ignore that and he couldn’t ignore anything that had just happened.
What was wrong with him?
Giving up on his hand and wiping it off on his blanket, he rolled over, biting
his tongue at the marginally satisfying amount of friction he got from grinding
against the mattress. What a disturbing situation he’d gotten himself into -
ever since coming back to the Soviet Union, his only anchors in a sea of
uncertainty were Ocelot and Eli. But Ocelot was only there for his own selfish
reasons and Eli… Eli was…
He pressed his face against the sheets. Eli was gone. Eli was stuck in some
unknown place in the Middle East being starved and beaten and tortured and
Bogomol was worried sick, so sick that he could barely bring himself to
acknowledge how badly he was really was suffering without him. He missed him
and agonized over his fate and more than anything he was just desperate for any
kind of comfort and reassurance and…
Bogomol made a desperate grab for the drawer of his bedside table.
Back when the SAS man had first told Bogomol that Eli wasn’t coming back
anytime soon, he’d handed Bogomol the photo that the Iraqi insurgents had sent
to prove they had him hostage, and then when Bogomol had been unwilling to give
it back, simply let him keep it. It was the only photo Bogomol owned of him —
all the other ones he’d managed to lose somewhere in the process of returning
to the USSR. By now enough weeks had passed that it was starting to wear from
Bogomol taking it out every night just to force himself to look at it.
It was hard to look at. Bogomol could barely keep his eyes focused on it.
Everything about it was gut-wrenching; Eli’s downturned eyes, his frown, the
bags under his eyes and his sunken cheeks, the smear of blood at the edge of
his lip, the bruises on his neck, his shoulders, his jaw, his too-sharp
clavicles, the shadow of dirt on his skin, the way his arms were behind his
back like he’d been bound-—
The next thing Bogomol knew his bedsheets were damp with sweat and sticky with
semen, he was panting tiredly, and Eli’s photo was half-crushed in his hand.
Oh, god.
He could never tell Eli about this.
None of it. Not what Ocelot had done, not what he’d done - not even the
circumstances behind any of it, his and Ocelot’s unusual relationship and
Bogomol’s desperation for some happy memory. Eli could never know. If… when he
ever saw Eli again he wouldn’t say a word about any of this.
Wouldn’t be able to bear doing so.
Feeling sick to his stomach, Bogomol sat up, kneeling on his bed, and returned
the photo to his bedside drawer. He needed to shower, change his bedspread,
clean up the spilled vodka in the kitchen… then he could sleep and maybe, just
maybe, when he woke up and went to the Lubyanka tomorrow all of this would seem
so far away.
What a day.
***** Skirt Meta (Collab) *****
Chapter Summary
     hingabee: mantis just gives liquid payback for all the times he made
     fun of him wearing a skirt (and for the time he dressed as carrie for
     halloween), also mantis simply thinks liquid looks nice in lingerie
     and such (hes just a weirdo like that), and we know liquids into
     humilation which makes the mantis revenge extra fun :P ... sadly it
     escalates when liquid insists on mantis ALSO wearing pretty lacy
     lingerie
     Me: One of us needs to draw this........
     [...]
     hingabee: (mantis realises he likes the pretty underwear though. not
     necessarily in a sexy way but. like he does w his bdsm bondage shit.
     so he ends up wearing some of it alot much to liquids distress)
     Me: It feels comfortable, what other reason would he need
Chapter Notes
     The first picture was drawn by hingabee (obviously), then I did a
     followup
 
 
 


***** Lesbiguns (Collab) *****
Chapter Summary
     Sketch of mine lined/colored by my_friend (also_on_tumblr)! Title was
     her idea.
***** I Love You, Mr. President *****
Chapter Summary
     "[M]aybe this evening they would be dining together or something, but
     wouldn’t that be no different from what Ocelot was doing at this very
     moment, visiting useful acquaintances just to make sure his snares
     around them hadn’t been untangled in his absence?
     Or, maybe Ocelot really did like Solidus."
     Explicit - No Archive Warnings Apply
     W/C 2,448
Chapter Notes
     Two separate requests I got (from Mutru and an anonymous commenter)
     on chapter nine of the original May Your Past Be the Sound of Your
     Feet Upon the Ground. They both wanted to see Solidus and Ocelot's
     night out. Or night in, rather. Kind of hard to go on a real date
     when the Secret Service would have to follow you around.
     Shoutout to Corpsefluid for giving me a few clues on how to actually
     write Ocelsolidus. Particularly the "Ocelot is ageless" thing.
                        October 2004, Washington, D.C.
“Oh, and Ocelot,” Solidus had said as they were walking out, “as long as you’re
in town tonight…”
“Of course, sir,” Ocelot had responded, smiling blandly.
…
It was late when Ocelot arrived back at the White House after spending the day
schmoozing with his useful idiots. Already dark, in fact, but… not too late for
dinner.
President Sears was, allegedly, a childless widower; Solidus ate by himself in
the West Wing study/dining room, unless he was obliged to invite staff or
visiting dignitaries. When Ocelot was in town - rare - and available - sadly,
rarer - he joined him. The meal always started with the barest pleasantries and
progressed to silence after that, but towards the end they typically started to
lose interest in whatever the White House chefs had cooked up that night and
began to talk for real.
Mostly just in-person reports from Ocelot, honestly. The kind of thing he
normally told him over the phone — there wasn’t much he considered so secure
that he had to make a trip out to Washington, D.C. just to tell Solidus. (He
usually left Solidus in the dark about that kind of thing.) For Solidus’ part
this was his chance to hold Ocelot a captive audience for one of his unceasing
ideological monologues that could carry on for so long they made Liquid look
like Psycho Mantis circa 1984. It used to be that Ocelot would never so much as
he hint that he only half-listening and filtering out unimportant important
information before he could even consciously acknowledge it… but he’d figured
out long ago that Solidus was the willfully oblivious sort who not only didn’t
notice Ocelot ignoring him but also wouldn’t have noticed if Ocelot had shown
open contempt for his ideas.
Which wasn’t to say he did. Solidus had a good head on his shoulders, more or
less. There was a reason why Ocelot endeared himself to him so throughly. But
the man was too idealistic, not practical enough - almost naïve in some
respects - and stubborn (and patient - for comparison, Liquid was too stubborn
for his own good as well, but at least with him Ocelot could wear him down with
his own restlessness) and it wasn’t uncommon for Solidus to be so… so petulant
that Ocelot couldn’t have forgotten that he was, technically, only in his
twenties if he wanted to. (That, and the fact that he’d never, ever had
anything that even vaguely resembled an ordinary childhood. Ocelot had very
intimate experience with the fact that someone who never got the chance to be a
child would inevitably find themselves acting like one in adulthood.)
“Do you ever think about what happens after you die, Ocelot?”
“Hm?” The question was posed randomly enough for Ocelot to actually notice and
process it. “Not in particular, sir. I suppose I believe that the ‘soul’
continues on after death, but only in the abstract.”
Solidus shook his head. “I’m not surprised you haven’t thought about it much.”
“What do you mean?”
“…nothing. Only that it seems to me that there’d be little reason to ponder
what comes after death, for you.” He stared down at his mostly-eaten food
instead of at Ocelot. “Since there’d be little reason to ponder death at all.”
“I do lead a rather dangerous life, sir. That’s been true for about as long as
I’ve been alive.” Give or take. Being literally born on a battlefield probably
meant that he could drop the ‘about’, but very very few people actually knew
about that, and Solidus wasn’t one of them.
Solidus shook his head. “That isn’t what I was referring to,” he said. “It’s
only that… from my perspective, Ocelot, you don’t age.”
Ocelot opened his mouth to reply, but decided against it and closed it again.
Let Solidus continue on his own if he wanted to.
He did. “We first met in 1989… fifteen years ago now. I was thirteen.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“But for all intents and purposes, I was in my late twenties. My official birth
records say I was born in 1962, so that was roughly accurate.” He pushed a bit
of his dinner around with his fork, a moody gesture that reminded Ocelot
strongly of Big Boss in his fouler tempers. “Since then… I’ve aged rapidly. I
ought to be only in my forties, yet I look like - and my body feels like - I’m
in my late fifties or early sixties. Infancy, childhood, adolescence - even my
middle age passed me by in the blink of an eye.”
“You could hardly take the presidency if the public knew your true age, sir.”
“I know that. Still… I don’t know if you know, since you weren’t around, but
saying that I age at twice the rate of a normal human is only half-true. I age
at roughly that rate now — when I was much younger, I aged much faster,
especially physically. My first memories take place, from what I found out
later, less than a year after I was born. And I recall looking at myself in the
mirror and seeing the face and body of a roughly six-year-old child. About two
years later I went through puberty in a matter of months. Once my body hit
physical adulthood, aging slowed again… it was almost normal for quite a while.
Almost. By the time the Liberian Civil War had ended I already had crows-feet
and gray hairs… and just look at me now. Stress is the excuse they give, but
the truth is obvious.”
Ocelot had known, but he tilted his head noncommittally anyway, giving Solidus
a sympathetic look that he only briefly glanced up at before glowering at his
plate again.
“You, on the other hand,” he said after a moment’s pause, “look exactly the
same as you did when I met you again six years ago. And even then, you aren’t
very different from you looked in 1989… you dress differently, your voice is
rougher, and your hair is longer… that’s about it.”
“I’m sure I’ve gained a few wrinkles myself since 1989,” Ocelot said evenly.
Solidus shook his head. “You don’t age,” he said again, “it’s like you found
the fountain of youth several decades too late.”
Ocelot snorted. “I age at the same rate as everyone else on the planet, sir.
Except, of course, for you.” And people with progeria or other developmental
and/or pituitary disorders. But bringing that up now might burst Solidus’
bubble and that would be a bit of a dick move. Or an unnecessary dick move, at
any rate.
“That’s the problem,” Solidus said. “I’ve been denied what you have - what
everyone has. My mind’s never been quite in keeping with my appearance, and my
body’s been deteriorating steadily since the nineties. My life span is capped;
I’m not supposed to know this, but I should reach my limit sometime during my
second term. My administration will end due to my death, because my health’s
been scheduled to fail me.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“…”
Ocelot frowned. It wasn’t new information to him, but he’d never told Solidus
about it — didn’t want to, quite frankly. No need to stress him out over a
situation he had no control over; better to let him figure out his lifespan was
capped when and only when the cap was in sight. (Although, it sort of was by
now — the election was mere weeks away, so Solidus’ second term was set to
start just next year.) Someone must have let that slip during one of his
secret-to-the-public Presidential meetings with the Patriots…
“…you don’t have to worry about that,” Solidus said.
“No one lives forever, sir.”
“No… but you made it to forty, and past it. I won’t even see 35.”
“…”
Ocelot had turned sixty this year. Solidus, less than half his age, looked as
old as he already and would unavoidably die in the next few years.
So, of course Ocelot would seem, to Solidus, like a fucking immortal.
“If it makes you feel any better, sir,” Ocelot said with a sigh, “I was against
accelerated aging from the start.”
“Oh. Were you?”
“It seemed like a waste.”
It wasn’t a lie, not really. Just a recontextualization; Ocelot had been
against accelerating aging, for the twins and for Solidus. But as far as the
twins went by the time he’d even heard about it it was already too late and Dr.
Clark had already gone through with it - and Ocelot decided then that, should
he ever be involved in any way with either of them, he wouldn’t mention it
until definitive symptoms started to appear — four years later when Solidus was
being created, Ocelot’s tangential “participation” in Les Enfants Terribles had
dwindled and he hadn’t raised any objections to screwing with Solidus’
telomeres, even though he knew that wouldn’t just hit the boy like a truck in
his late thirties/early forties like it would with his brothers. It wasn’t even
that Ocelot was so uninvolved that Dr. Clark wouldn’t listen to him; he simply
hadn’t cared enough to do anything besides privately mutter about it.
Solidus didn’t need to know that.
“Yes,” Solidus said at length, his voice almost uncharacteristically soft,
“what a waste.”
…
Ocelot represented, to Solidus, a lot of things that he couldn’t have. As he’d
just explained over dinner, part it was the fact that Ocelot seemed to him like
an ageless eternal being whose death he would never live to see — but for the
most part, Ocelot represented freedom. Both in the abstract - Ocelot was,
himself, a free man, free to act and do as he pleased and saw fit, at least as
far as Solidus knew — and in the literal - with Ocelot by his side, Solidus
could eventually rid himself of the Patriots who controlled his life.
And Ocelot was also, to him, something he could have when his father didn’t.
“How long did you fantasize about this?”
“Sir, I’ve already told you a hundred times.”
“How long, Ocelot?”
“…since I was twenty, sir.”
It was surreal to think about Ocelot as a young man. If photos existed, Solidus
had never seen them - never asked — he didn’t want to know. When he wondered
what it must have been like in 1964 when Ocelot and Big Boss had first met,
Solidus always imagined Ocelot the way he’d been in 1989.
Ocelot had, as far as Solidus knew (or was concerned), never told Big Boss
about the way he felt. So it followed that he’d never slept with him - he’d
admitted as much before. Never even kissed him.
So it was Solidus who got to feel Ocelot’s moustache brush against this own the
half-moment before their lips met and he pushed Ocelot back against the bed,
tongue invasive. His mouth tasted like wine.
“Sir,” Ocelot breathed when Solidus finally drew back again, breaking the kiss.
“Am I a good enough replacement, Ocelot?”
“As good as the original, sir.”
Solidus’ hands moved to Ocelot’s neck. Ocelot didn’t even put up token
resistance.
“Better, sir,” he gasped.
“Of course,” Solidus said, then kissed him again. “I actually bother with you,
unlike my father.”
“Of course.”
Solidus would have been at least mildly interested in knowing which of them had
the bigger issues here.
Ocelot was in really good shape for how old he was, and despite everything the
Patriots had taken from Solidus, his strength and stamina had yet to be one of
them. So it was mostly only sweaty old man sex if you bothered to look at their
white or gray hair and lined faces.
Solidus had flipped him onto his stomach and bent him over the side of the bed
— Ocelot had repeatedly said that he didn’t like Solidus looking at his face
while fucking him. (Sometimes Solidus wondered if that was just a shallow way
to hide indifference. Ocelot could be so cold and distant… sometimes Solidus
wondered if he wasn’t more attached to his brothers, simply because they came
first.) (But no, Solidus was so much more like Big Boss than Liquid or Solid
could ever hope to be. He was the perfect clone. Wasn’t he?)
In spite of that - or rather because of that - Solidus liked to grab Ocelot by
the jaw, wrenching his head to the side so that he could kiss him while he
drove into his ass, Ocelot’s hands kneading at the luxury cotton sheets,
tearing them with his nails.
“I told you,” Ocelot hissed through clenched teeth, “to be gentle— I have that
flight back to headquarters tomorrow morning, you really think I want to- sit
down like this-? Ah!”
“I’m sure you can handle it.”
“I certainly won’t like it, sir.”
Another rough thrust. “Something to remember me by.”
Ocelot muttered something about how many hours it took to fly from D.C. to
North Dakota. Solidus quickly shut him up with another kiss.
“When will you be back in Washington again?” he murmured over his ear.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“You’ve complicated things lately, you know that, don’t you?”
Ocelot just made a breathy little sound, pushing back against Solidus.
Solidus huffed. Ocelot probably didn’t care that he complicated things. Solidus
would have to be delusional to think that Ocelot actually cared about his plans
once they stopped aligning perfectly with his own agenda. He knew full well
that Solidus intended to get rid of FOXHOUND, and then went and did this
anyway…
Better not to complicate things further. Solidus could be a flexible man when
he needed to be.
But it was still annoying.
Afterwards Ocelot had to shower and return to Ft. McNair. He did kiss Solidus
goodbye, but then he was gone. Solidus could count the numbers of times Ocelot
had stayed ’til morning on one hand, and if he was just counting times since
he’d been sworn in then all Solidus would have to show would be a closed fist.
(They could both give excuses about aides that might get suspicious, but they
both knew that his and Ocelot’s relationship was an open secret among White
House staff and a good chunk of the media. Solidus wasn’t even sure that there
was much Patriot intervention to conceal their hand-picked specially-raised
President’s propensity for members of the same sex, or a particular member of
the same sex anyway — staffers, at least, might have just been trying to be
respectful on their own.)
The President’s Bedroom smelled like sex and Solidus wished that once, just
once, Ocelot would stay.
***** Father & Son *****
Chapter Summary
     It's not time to make a change/Just sit down, take it slowly/You're
     still young, that's your fault/There's so much you have to go through
     General Audiences - No Archive Warnings Apply
     W/C 3,026
                              1994, Afghanistan.
Liquid really had no choice but to follow the rules of Outer Heaven to his
utmost ability. Trouble with him was extra troublesome — no one (or at least no
one who’d been there longer than a week and a half) doubted that his combat
ability was good enough that he deserved to be in an A- through S-rank unit on
his own merits, but, well… the Boss did consider Liquid his son, even if he was
still kinda getting used to that. And he was sleeping with the Boss’ second-in-
command. In other words, he was extremely close to the two highest-ranking
people in Outer Heaven, so the automatic assumption everyone made was that he
could get away with anything.
That was the opposite of true. Venom and Ocelot (mostly Venom) were very
particular about treating their soldiers fairly. So if Liquid fucked up, got in
a fight, showed up late, whatever - he would be disciplined just like anyone
else. Almost like anyone else. He inevitably got very visible, borderline
‘public shaming’ punishment assignments like working in the kitchens, cleaning
vehicles, or shoveling shit on the animal conservation platform, presumably to
prove to everyone else that he was, in fact, not getting away with anything.
Just once Liquid wished they’d stick him in the brig for an hour or two to cool
off and call that good.
And even then, once that was over he still had to deal with Ocelot giving him
an obnoxious lecture and Venom being disappointed with him… which was what hurt
the most. Sure, it didn’t take long for Liquid to get back into his good graces
and for Venom to forget about whatever incident entirely, but in the interim
not only did Liquid feel terrible but even DD seemed to shake his head at him
as he trotted by.
(At least if Liquid was in trouble because he got into a fight, Quiet would
give him thumbs-ups behind Venom’s back.)
Today had been about two days after one of those fights and Liquid swore that
it wasn’t his fault, sure he was aggressive and had a hair-trigger temper but
that was true of like 80% of people on Mother Base, Liquid didn’t start fights
- the other guy started it, Liquid was just defending himself and it wasn’t his
fault he was capable of kicking the other guy’s ass and proceeded to do exactly
that. They had to wire his jaw shut. But it was his own damn fault, Liquid
hadn’t been looking for trouble and he’d even given the guy due warning about
breaking his face a good thirty seconds before the first blow was thrown.
Today Liquid was out on a sortie with Venom. It was pretty rare that Venom
actually took anyone as his battle buddy that wasn’t Quiet (as far as humans
went). Liquid, still feeling sore about the recent discipline, was eager to
make it up and prove that he wasn’t a disappointment — even if, unlike Big
Boss, Venom could draw a clear line between “I’m disappointed in your behavior,
you can do better” and “You are a disappointment, you’re not good enough.” So
there they were: driving between regional militia outposts in the Afghan desert
in one of Outer Heaven’s Jeeps, Liquid behind the wheel, Venom in the passenger
seat, a tranquilized goat in the back. They hadn’t had any trouble so far,
really; the countryside was really quite peaceful since the Najibullah regime
collapsed (or so Liquid heard), with all the fighting presently taking place in
major cities.
“So,” Venom said, eventually breaking the awkward silence. “That fight you had
with Static Hippo the other day…”
Liquid’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. Did Venom seriously invite
him on the sortie just to lecture him away from prying eyes? He should have
known it was something like that. “Look, I’m sorry, alright?” he said, “I
really wasn’t intending to-“
“No, I know he started it.”
“But I shouldn’t have escalated it. I know. I got angry. I’ll- I’ll work on
that, I promise. I know you’re disappointed with me, but—“
“I’m not disappointed,” Venom said, “I’m worried.”
“…?”
Venom sighed. “This has been happening a lot. You’re getting picked on, aren’t
you?”
“I… I can handle myself, Father.”
“Your idea of ‘handling yourself’ is sending men to the medical platform every
other week.”
“…”
“Eli, if there’s a problem, you really should come get me. Or Ocelot, or Quiet.
Someone.”
“That’ll just make things worse,” Liquid muttered, frenetically picking at a
peeling bit of the steering wheel cover. “Evidently my reputation amounts to
either ‘daddy’s favorite’ or ‘Commander Ocelot’s boytoy’ or both, depending on
who you ask. A lot of people think I don’t belong here, or don’t belong in my
combat unit - that I just shagged my way in, or else it’s nepotism. Either that
or they expect me to be some kind of spoilt bully who kissed up to the top dogs
in order to get away with more power than I ought to have… they’re just waiting
for me to run and come hide behind you or Ocelot. It’d prove them right.”
“…oh. I see.”
“It is a problem,” Liquid admitted. “But if you did anything to actually
address it, Father, then… well…”
“If anyone else were getting picked on, Eli, I’d try to intervene in that case,
too. It’s not just you. This isn’t even the first time this has happened.”
Liquid wasn’t surprised. People could get testy cooped up in the middle of the
ocean for weeks at a time - it really was just happenstance that he was the
target du jour for now and the foreseeable future. “I just need to figure out
how to improve my reputation, that’s all. Surely sooner or later everyone’s
going to realize I… I do deserve to be here. …don’t I?”
Venom gave an affirmative grunt. Liquid half-smiled faintly for half a moment,
but he knew Venom wasn’t done.
“Do you think getting into fights will improve your reputation?”
“I don’t try to get into fights. I don’t start them.”
“No, you just finish them. Eli, you know how to deflect someone without
escalating. You’re capable of defending yourself without actually injuring the
other party.”
“…”
“We can practice it, if you want,” Venom offered.
“…it’s alright. I’ll do better in the future, Father.”
It fell back to silence for a short while.
The radio beeped. Liquid hid a sigh — Mantis, being on the intel team and close
with Liquid, was usually the one who ran support when Liquid was out on solo or
semi-solo missions, and right now was no exception. “Father, are you getting a
call right now…?”
Venom shook his head.
Great. Just for him specifically. Liquid had three guesses what the call was
about and the first two didn’t count.
He picked it up anyway. “Just a thought, Eli,” Mantis said conspiratorially,
“but if you are concerned about your reputation, you could instantly fix half
of it just by breaking up with O-“
Liquid hung up with a huff.
“…you know he’s worried about you, too,” Venom said at length.
“I don’t need him being worried about me. Especially since he chooses to
express that by nagging me and constantly disrespecting my privacy, I wish he’d
stop. But he doesn’t listen to me anymore…”
There was another long pause. Liquid vaguely wondered where exactly the next
outpost was, not that they were really expecting to see anyone at it, since
militia forces would be concentrated in Kandahar, which was quite a ways from
here.
“Did I ever tell you about ranking missions?” Venom said.
“What?” Liquid said, snapping out of his slight desert-induced lull.
“It’s a way of judging how well you did on a mission you just went on, I do it
all the time. Although I think it was Kaz who originally came up with it…”
“I don’t follow.”
Venom pulled out his phantom cigar and thoughtfully took a puff. “You give
yourself a ranking after you’ve left the hot zone,” he said, “the ranks are S,
A, B, C, D, and E.”
“I take it ’S’ is the best and ‘E’ is the worst.”
“Exactly. An S-rank mission means that you completed your primary objective,
most or all of your secondary objectives, your stealth was perfect, you did it
quickly, and you didn’t kill anyone. E-rank means that you got out of there
with your life, and that’s about it.”
“Sounds logical. But how do you differentiate between, say, a B-rank and a C-
rank mission?”
“A points system,” Venom said. “Take away points if you cause a caution or an
alert, or kill someone, or get injured, or if your buddy gets injured or your
vehicle gets destroyed. Gain them back by rescuing children, prisoners, or
animals, or scavenging useful items from hostile installations. That kind of
thing.”
“…so is there a certain number that goes along with these, and do you start out
with a certain amount of points…?”
“Oh, it’s arbitrary.”
“I suppose the whole idea is that you know how well you did…”
Venom nodded. “I’ve had D- and E-rank missions before,” he said. “Everyone has.
Everyone makes mistakes, and considering how easily they can cost you your life
in the field… when it happens, as long as you make it back alive then
everyone’s proud of you.”
“…”
“When I rescued you from Iraq,” Venom said, “that was an S-rank mission.”
“Oh, it was…? I don’t really remember it very well.”
“Hm… you were out of it. But the insurgents had holes in their security, I’m
positive that if you were in better shape you would have been able to escape
yourself. Still, I was in and out in less than fifteen minutes, and no one
noticed me at all.”
“I see.”
“But just between you and me,” Venom said, “as long as I got you back to Mother
Base alive, I would have considered that an S-rank.”
Okay. Liquid couldn’t help but be kind of happy, hearing Venom say that. “Just
out of curiosity,” he said, “when you picked me up from Masa Village ten years
ago… were you doing this ranking stuff back then?”
Venom nodded. “That was an A-rank,” he said, “it generally went well, but since
I had to confront you instead of just sneaking up on you and tranquillizing
you, it wasn’t exactly ‘perfect stealth’.”
“Well… tranquillizing me wouldn’t have worked anyway.”
“I remember.”
Better than Liquid did, apparently— come to think of it, Venom had tried to
shoot him with his tranquilizer pistol during the fight, and it hadn’t exactly
done, well, anything.
“The Kingdom of the Flies thing, though…” Venom said, “when that was over, I
gave myself an E-rank, even though we’d technically fulfilled our objective,
and with minimal casualties on all sides. Overall, if I remember correctly,
that was a B-rank mission… the ‘E’ was just for myself.”
“Why?”
“Because I was so disappointed in myself for failing to save you.”
Liquid opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again, unable to think of
something to say.
Venom finally glanced at him instead of just staring blankly at the desert in
front of him. “I’ve been meaning to ask…” he said, “how did you escape? When
you didn’t shoot me, I thought for sure you’d shot yourself - even if you
didn’t do that, then the napalm would have taken you out — and even without
that, you were already starting to show symptoms of the vocal cord parasite.”
“Erm…”
“But you’re completely fine… when I brought you back to Outer Heaven, I
specifically had the medical staff check you for the parasite. But you’re clean
- it wasn’t just neutralized. It’s completely gone. How did that happen?”
“Mantis,” Liquid said.
“?”
“He removed it. Don’t ask me how. It felt weird, that’s all I could really
process at the time. But he stopped me from shooting myself, got rid of the
parasite, and took me off the island before the napalm dropped — you can’t
imagine what it’s like to fly without aircraft, Father. Even parachuting
doesn’t come close. Just doing that… really, it’s why I joined the SAS when I
was about to turn eighteen. I wanted to fly again.”
“He had no will of his own back then… he clearly does now, did that start to
develop by that point?”
“I don’t know,” Liquid said with a shrug. “I don’t think he knows, either, or
at least he never told me. It could have been that I simply didn’t want to die
deep down, and he was acting on that… or saving me like that could have been
one of his first acts under his own power… I don’t know. Certainly I know that
after that incident I’ve never again been able to consider suicide a serious
option, no matter what I try. It’s like I’ve got a mental block.”
“…you’ve tried to kill yourself?”
“Er.”
“Were you considering suicide before the Kingdom of the Flies?”
“…er… let’s change the subject.”
“Eli…”
“Look, it doesn’t matter, alright?! It was a long time ago. And anyone would
try to put themselves out of their own misery after being trapped in a prison
camp for over a year with no hope of escape! But I just… I just couldn’t. Then
it all worked out in the end anyway, so who cares? Let’s talk about something
else.”
“…”
They ended up not talking at all. Eventually they came across the over outpost,
which Venom checked with his binoculars before mumbling that it was only
staffed with one soldier - who ran out in front as the Jeep approached,
pointing a carbine at them and, when Liquid didn’t slow down, opened fire.
Liquid and Venom just ducked.
Whump.
“…Eli,” Venom said, “you just ran him over.”
“Yes?”
“…you get a higher ranking for doing things non-lethally, remember?”
“Oh. Right.”
The radio beeped again; it must have been a call for both of them this time,
because Venom picked it up immediately, for both of them. “He might still be
alive,” Mantis said, “you could just back up and check.”
“Good point,” Liquid said. He threw the Jeep into reverse.
The car bounced as he accidentally backed over the guy.
“…well, he’s certainly dead now,” Liquid said as Venom frowned and Mantis’
barely-restrained cackling sounded in their earpieces. “No need to worry about
that.”
“You’re supposed to look behind when you’re backing up… who taught you how to
drive?”
“…I… sort of taught myself…”
“…”
“…”
“….”
Liquid sheepishly put the Jeep back in drive and kept going.
 Later. Back on Mother Base. Relatively secluded area on the combat platform.
“How did the sortie with Saladin go, anyway?” Wolf said.
“Just fine,” Liquid said, “didn’t run into any trouble. I still don’t really
get the goat thing.”
“Me neither. Endangered or otherwise at-risk animals I understand, but goats
and sheep that wandered away from their flocks… that is somewhat strange.”
“I suppose his thought process is that they’d just be picked off by some
predator without their shepherds… I don’t know. Anyway, other than that it was
just, well…” he trailed off, and shrugged.
“Still getting used to him being your father?”
“It did happen sort of suddenly… say, Quiet and my father… they’re sort of an
item, aren’t they?”
Wolf nodded. “They aren’t married, though. …she did actually tell me once that
she would like it if Saladin proposed, but he does not seem to realize that
that is an option.”
Liquid didn’t question Quiet ‘telling’ Wolf something - it hadn’t been long
after he got here that he found out that sometime after he left, Quiet had
taken to communicating via sign language, and most people on Base could
understand her by now. Made it convenient for people who sustained injuries
that temporarily or permanently affected their hearing, and also that one deaf
guy in the base development unit whose hearing aids were constantly on the
fritz.
He kicked back, letting his legs swing over the edge of the platform. “Well, if
she’s with my father like that… I hope she doesn’t get it into her head that
she’s supposed to be some kind of mother figure to me now.”
“What would be wrong with that?”
“Wolf, I was twelve years old and just starting puberty when I met her. I was
just like all the other boys on Base - I had my sexual awakening over her, do
you honestly think that wouldn’t be awkward?”
She sighed. “No, I know what you mean,” she said, “I am in the same boat.”
There was a brief pause. Then they both blinked, frowned, and fully processed
what the other had said.
“Hang on, what?” Liquid said, “you had a crush on Quiet?”
“Wait, I thought you were gay…”
Mantis walked up behind them; Liquid glanced at him over his shoulder. “Oh,
hello. You look grouchy. …er than usual.”
“Wasn’t your shift supposed to have ended an hour ago?” Wolf said.
Mantis sat down next to Liquid with a huff. “Ocelot kept making me rewrite the
report on Eli’s outing with Venom,” he growled. “How annoying… they hardly did
anything besides ‘father-son bonding’, but apparently that is not an acceptable
summary of a mission.”
“We did get some goats,” Liquid said. Mantis just rolled his eyes.
“And the Jeep came back with blood on both bumpers and the undercarriage,” Wolf
said. “Was that a goat?”
“No,” Mantis said.
“Mantis tricked me into backing over a militiaman,” Liquid said.
“I did not. He had already run him over. He was probably already dead.”
“You told me to back up and check to see if he wasn’t still alive!”
“I never said that you didn’t have to look where you were going.”
“And then you started giggling.”
“I did not!”
Wolf watched them bicker with an expression of knowing amusement, then turned
back to looking out over the ocean. The animal conservation platform was just
visible in the distance.
…yeah, the goat thing was kind of weird.
***** Character portraits 2 *****

(Liquid per May Your Past Be the Sound of Your Feet Upon the Ground, pre-
empting chapter 56 or so, don't @ me)


***** We Hang Our Bonnets Out of Town *****
Chapter Summary
     Mantis receives a very important phone call.
     Coincident with chapters two and three of Wherever I Go, I'll Make It
     Home.
     Teen And Up Audiences - mentions of Rape/Non-Con
     W/C 3,780
Chapter Notes
     Oh, this was another popular one...
                           September 1994, Morocco.
                       12:00 in the morning local time.
Mantis’ alarm clock went off.
He didn’t even crack open his eyes before psychokinetically flinging it off the
bedside table to smash against the opposite lead-foil-covered wall. He had no
regard for hotel property. It wasn’t like he couldn’t afford to cover damages.
Blearily Mantis sat up, rubbing his eyes. He didn’t often sleep - in fact,
tried to avoid it - but exhaustion built up over weeks and eventually he had to
get a few hours’ rest. Tonight hadn’t been so bad, actually. Normally when he
slept he dreamed, terrible dreams, where terrible things happened to Eli. He
told himself that his dreams weren’t part of his psychic bond, his subconscious
was only conjuring revolting details about Eli’s imprisonment just because he
was worried.
Or, at least, he used to. When accidentally parasitizing a serial killer a
little over a year ago, he’d gotten a nice healthy dose of pessimism shoved
down his throat to take root in his chest. He no longer believed his psychic
bond with Eli could do much over such a distance - no longer was sure it was
even intact after all this time. Dreams were dreams, nothing more. He told
himself not to care.
He told himself Eli had died alone some years back. He was wrong when he
thought he’d feel it if that happened. He didn’t feel anything.
With that depressing thought to start the day, Mantis got up, throwing the
bedcovers aside and plodding to the bathroom. Since he rarely slept and had the
world’s most ridiculous metabolism, he hardly had need of a hotel, but getting
a nice suite was a good excuse to burn money he didn’t otherwise know what to
do with, and wallpapering the room (floor and ceiling included) with lead foil
gave him a place to take off his mask, so he could eat, shower, and take phone
calls in peace. (Talking on the phone was difficult with a gas mask. When not
in the makeshift shielding of his hotel room, he had a pager to communicate via
e-mail.)
He brushed his teeth with his back to the mirror; he couldn’t stand looking at
his own face and he knew if he looked in the mirror for longer than ten seconds
then he’d only end up shattering it (didn’t matter) and feeling even worse than
he already did (best to avoid). Midnight… the sun wouldn’t even rise for six
hours. He had nothing lined up today anyway - his last job he’d completed and
confirmed payment the previous afternoon. Mantis never bothered actively
seeking out clients, didn’t need to, so now it was just a matter of waiting for
someone else to call him wanting a psychic spy. And Mantis had enough money in
various bank accounts in several different countries for him to travel and stay
in four- and five-star hotels for years without getting a single cent of income
before he had to cut back… (It also helped that he didn’t pay taxes.)
Hm.
His cell phone was ringing.
Must have been a caller from a different time zone, that was typical. The phone
flew to his hand as he spit toothpaste into the sink. Private number… that too
was typical. Sighing, not particularly in the mood for pleasantries but seeing
no point in driving a customer off, he picked up the call.
“Returning client, or is this a referral?”
“You’ve really picked up some unsavory jobs since you left the FBI, haven’t
you, Bogomol?”
Mantis dropped his toothbrush, his eyes going wide. What. Ocelot? After all
this time?!
“Wh- how-??”
“You gave me your contact information when you left the KGB - or did you really
forget?”
He had, actually, but, “I have changed my number since then.”
“And you honestly think it would have been difficult to track down your new
one? Tell me, Bogomol, how many psychic spies do you think there are?”
“…” Not very many. Mantis practically had a monopoly. Part of the reason why he
made so damn much. “Don’t call me ‘Bogomol’. That life is far behind me.”
“Is it? I’ve certainly heard quite a few interesting stories about what
happened after you returned to America. Tell me,Mantis, how did that schoolbus
full of children sound when it hit the Potomac?”
“…!!”
“You thought I’d just let you go traipsing off to the FBI if I didn’t have the
capability of finding out what happened to you or what you did before the
cover-ups happened… shame your new personality didn’t make you any less naïve.”
“Shut up. I have no desire to speak to you.”
“Not yet you don’t.”
“What do you mean ‘not yet’? Why are you calling me?!”
There was a slight shifting of fabric - presumably Ocelot moving his phone from
one shoulder to the other. “Big news from the Middle East,” he said, “V’s
recently done a prisoner extraction mission in southern Iraq. Resounding
success, I might add.”
“And what does this have to do with- oh. Wait— do you have- information now??”
Mantis suddenly felt more excited now than he’d felt in years. He could have
jumped out of his own skin if he were capable. “The prisoner, did they know
where Eli is?!”
“Even better,” Ocelot said, “the prisoner was Eli.”
“He has— he has been recovered!”
A slightly condescending chuckle. “Yes,” he said, “as of 12 hours ago, he’s
free from the Iraqi insurgents and healing up on Mother Base. He was half-
starved and severely dehydrated when he got here, and he did need quite a few
stitches, but his body’s intact and he’s reportedly coherent.”
“He’s… alive… Eli’s alive…!”
Mantis’ legs gave out and he fell to his knees, wiping his eyes with the arm
not holding his phone. Oh god. He’d given up on him, how could he? He should
have known that Eli’s will to live was so much stronger, so much brighter than
anyone who might seek to extinguish him.
“Are you crying?” Ocelot said over the phone. “Pull yourself together. There’s
more to it.”
“W-What? No, of course I am not crying.” He just had something in his eyes,
that was all. Maybe all the lead exposure was irritating them. “What else is
there? I can’t believe he is alive, how did you find him?"
“One question at a time, Mantis. I called because, well… he’s been calling out
for you in his sleep.”
“Oh. He has?” Amidst the joy and unspeakable relief at hearing that Eli was
safe, Mantis felt a stab of something like guilt, shame, intense self-hatred
for not being there when this surely wasn’t the first time Eli had called for
him.
“Yes. So, I broached the idea with V, and… he gave his permission for me to
invite you to come to Mother Base, at least for a visit.”
Mantis’ mouth was very dry. “I can… come see Eli?” he said, his voice
unintentionally small.
“Yes,” Ocelot said, and it was unsettlingly easy to imagine a kind, almost
affectionate smile on Ocelot’s face when he said that. “You can afford to
charter a private flight, can’t you…? So I’ll give you twelve hours to get to
Victoria, Seychelles. I’ll send someone to pick you up from there.”
“Of- of course! I’ll be there.”
“I’ll tell Liquid you’re coming when he wakes up. I’ll see you then.”
“Yes!!”
Ocelot hung up. Mantis stared blankly at the phone for half a minute, then
pinched himself - hard - to make sure he wasn’t dreaming after all.
No.
Eli was alive. He was safe. He was…
He was home.
                Mother Base, Seychelles waters. Late afternoon.
Mantis jumped out of the helicopter before Pequod had even landed, or even
gotten close enough to the platform to really warrant disembarkment… for people
who couldn’t float like Mantis could. Immediately he beelined for Eli Liquid,
who was leaning on a nearby railing, watching the helicopter with wide eyes and
a slightly nervous expression.
His first impulse was, despite everything, to throw his arms around him and
break down sobbing at their reunion and everything he’d gone through. But
Liquid’s whole body stiffened in a terrified jerk as soon as Mantis had his
arms up, and Mantis stopped cold with his hands an inch away from his
shoulders.
       please don’t touch me
Mantis swallowed hard. “What are you doing out here?” he said, scrambling, “you
can barely stand.”
Liquid gave him a weak, uncertain smile. His chapped lips twitched as he did.
“It’s nice to see you again, too, Mantis.”
“We will talk later, Eli,” Mantis said, spotting someone with a lot of medical
knowledge walking briskly towards them. “For now I am simply glad you are still
alive and intact. Go, back to bed with you.”
Mantis could sense the impending protest but the medical staffer caught up and
ushered Liquid away. Liquid threw a faltering glance over his shoulder as he
reluctantly let himself be led back to the medical platform, and Mantis didn’t
follow.
Instead he turned to Venom, who had watched the whole exchange impassively.
Strangely after ten years Mantis still felt a faint little tug of their former
connection, but looking in his mind now he saw clarity and, well, a definitive
explanation as to why there were two Big Bosses, something Mantis’d never
really been able to wrap his head around until now. “Your mind is much less
jumbled now than it was when I last saw you ten years ago,” he said without
thinking.
“Hm.”
He shook his head. That was beside the point. “You are vaguely wondering if Eli
will stick around once he has healed. I will tell you now that he has not
thought about it much and won’t come to a decision for a while yet - but should
he choose to stay, I request that you add me to your ranks as well. I’m sure I
can prove very useful to you.”
“You have no intention of leaving him,” Venom said.
Mantis crossed his arms. He heard Venom thinking how young he was. “No,” Mantis
said, “none. Look at what happened because I left him once.” Venom didn’t even
know all that had happened - just what Ocelot had told him. The medical team
kept details private unless ordered otherwise, and Venom felt he didn’t need to
know any more specifics. “Never again.”
Venom frowned slightly. “I’ll think about it,” he said after a moment.
“…thank you.”
…
No one else in the room seemed to notice Mantis when he walked in and settled
in next to Liquid, seeming to sit on an invisible chair.
…
It was still too soon after being held prisoner; Liquid barely had the stamina
to sustain a conversation, let alone an emotionally charged one like the kind
Mantis had… sort of forced on him just now. Mantis would have liked to think
that Liquid’s insistence that he leave Ocelot alone after what he did was born
out of exhaustion and just not wanting to deal with all that right now — but he
knew it wasn’t. He knew Ocelot had gotten his claws in him. Knew that full
well.
But with everything between him and Ocelot, Mantis also knew full well that he
simply wouldn’t be capable of giving Ocelot what he deserved for raping Liquid
without Liquid’s approval. His order, even. He couldn’t do it without a way to
distance it from his past with Ocelot entirely.
Liquid was tired after they talked, so Mantis stayed just long enough for him
to drift off again and then left as quietly as he could. Ocelot was waiting for
him right outside the door.
“Don’t,” Mantis snarled before Ocelot could say anything, stalking past him.
“You’re so uncharitable.”
“I saw in Eli’s mind what you did. You are sick, Ocelot. You disgust me.”
“Do you now? You know I only did that to save him. Liquid knows that, too.”
“You did not.” He kept walking. Why, oh, why did Ocelot feel the need to keep
following him? Staying on Mother Base was all well and good as long as he could
be on a different platform from this rapist entirely. “That is only your
excuse. You did that for your own selfish reasons.”
“And what makes you say that?”
“I know you. Unfortunately.”
“Ah, I see… I have a track record in your mind. A history of taking advantage
for my own advantage.”
Mantis whirled around, fists clenched. “What happened in Moscow has nothing to
do with this!!”
“When did I say anything about Moscow?” Ocelot said with a slightly smug grin.
Mantis jerked his head away, feeling like the bottom of his stomach had just
dropped. “I could look past this if you had only done it for his sake,” he
hissed, “but I know you did not. You are a predator, Ocelot, and Eli was
vulnerable. It is as simple as that.”
“Speaking as former prey, then…?”
“I hate you.”
Ocelot sighed. “And here I thought you’d almost liked me.”
“I have never liked you! Even back in the KGB!”
“Actions speak louder than words, Bogomolechik.”
Mantis’ whole body twitched in anger.
Ocelot rolled his eyes. “I knew the serial killer incident had made you a good
deal more cynical, but here I was hoping it wouldn’t change the way you viewed
the people you were, in one way or another, close to… ah well. It doesn’t
matter what your opinion is of me. You do still care about Liquid, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. Enough that I would enjoy killing you for what you did to
him!”
“…right. Well, having you around should help him mentally recover from
everything that happened to him in Iraq. So long as you control your temper…”
Ocelot’s gaze shifted to somewhere over Mantis’ shoulder. “Afternoon, Boss.”
Agh. Venom was standing right behind him; he hadn’t even noticed him walk up,
he’d been too focused on his fury towards Ocelot. He jumped when Venom put a
hand on his shoulder, although the touch was friendly. “What’s going on here?”
he said.
Ocelot waved a hand. “Mantis is upset because of what I had to do in order to
find Liquid’s location.”
“Oh.” Venom glanced at Mantis, who stayed deliberately silent. “I know it’s
unfortunate, and it’s alright for you to be upset right now, but I’m sure you
agree it’s much better for Eli to be out of the prison camp, even if he did
have go through some torture in order to do it. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
Mantis just gritted his teeth. This was infuriating, and he felt so helpless -
he couldn’t bring himself to out Ocelot, not when Liquid didn’t want people to
know what had happened to him…
Venom let go of him, oblivious to the real reason behind Mantis’ anger. “Since
Ocelot already knew you, I just asked him where you should be assigned.”
“Is that so.”
“You’ll be on the intel team,” Ocelot said evenly, “unlike the KGB or the FBI,
we’ll be able to make full use of you here without fear of discovery, even if
it does end up being only a temporary arrangement after all.”
“Hn. Wait a— aren’t you in charge of the intel unit?!”
“Yes,” Venom said. “You’ll be reporting directly to him.”
“What?!”
Ocelot shrugged. “I know the scope of your abilities, and how volatile you can
be. But yes, this does mean you are expected to show me some respect.”
“You-— respect?!” Mantis said shrilly.
“I suppose you can shit-talk me to your little heart’s desire behind my back
when you’re off-shift,” Ocelot said dryly, “but otherwise, I am your commanding
officer. And I’m not about to give you as many second chances as I did back at
the KGB. Behave yourself, Mantis, or else you’ll be ousted from Mother Base and
God knows when you’ll be able to see Liquid after that.”
Venom blinked. “You don’t need to be so hostile, Ocelot,” he said, then glanced
at Mantis again. “You don’t have to stay on Mother Base to be with Eli. You can
go back to your normal job if you want, and once Eli is well enough to travel
then he can meet up with you in Victoria to visit. He could do this even if he
decides to stay, plenty of personnel have families who live there.”
Like hell Mantis was going to leave Liquid alone here with Ocelot! “No,” he
said firmly, “I will stay here. I can work under Ocelot.”
Venom smiled faintly at him — thinking this was the first sign of the abating
of Mantis’ supposed ‘lashing out’ against Ocelot for lack of anyone else to
blame for Liquid’s imprisonment.
“If that’s settled then,” Ocelot said, “follow me, Mantis.”
Mantis did so reluctantly and with a sour taste in his mouth. I’m doing this
for Eli, he told himself. Retribution against Ocelot could wait until Liquid
felt up to it; in the meantime, Mantis had to endure being his subordinate and
pretending he didn’t know what happened simply so that he could stay with
Liquid. If nothing else, if he was around Ocelot a lot then he might have a
good chance of preventing Ocelot from preying on Liquid again…
“Once you’re settled in and know how to do your job, I’ll be largely leaving
you alone,” Ocelot said, “I have no interest in antagonizing you.”
“Nn.”
“Articulate as ever.” In the last ten years additional bridges had been built
so that one no longer had to go to the central command platform in order to get
anywhere on foot or by car. The intel platform, conveniently enough, neighbored
the medical platform, so Ocelot was leading Mantis straight there. They walked
and Mantis presumed it was so that they could talk alone. “For your
information, Mantis…”
“More excuses?” Mantis said with as much disdain as he could possibly
communicate.
“I had to break him. That was the only way to do it.”
“It was not,” Mantis snapped, “there had to have been another way!!”
“Playing to pre-existing trauma is the fastest, most reliable way to shut
someone down,” Ocelot said, not at all rising to Mantis’ anger, “and I was
being very careful to not injure him physically too badly. His body was already
at its limit.”
“So I suppose that’s why you practically eviscerated him, then?” Mantis said
with a snarl.
“It looked worse than it actually was, Mantis, that was the idea. Give him a
nasty-looking wound so that the Iraqis would take me seriously when I told them
not to touch him for a while. If they’d tried to take advantage of his new
broken state before the Boss got there…”
“No,” Mantis said, putting his hands over his ears and digging his fingers into
his hair, “stop it. Shut up. I don’t want to hear this.”
“I was only doing my best to save his life. You don’t have to like it.”
“I don’t! You didn’t save his life, you ruined it!!”
“It was already ruined. But now he’s in a place where he can pull himself back
together.”
“Shut up — that is just a convenient side effect that covers for what you have
done.” Rather like keeping Mantis out of the clutches of the University— no,
no. Mantis pushed the thought away. Even with his store-bought cynicism he
still found himself unable to rationalize that entire period of his life, for
good or for bad. Better to not think of it at all.
“I didn’t enjoy doing it, you know,” Ocelot said, still as damnably calm as
ever.
“I do not believe that for a second.”
Ocelot shrugged, dropping that entire avenue of conversation completely. Feh.
Took him this long to realize that there was nothing he could say to trick
Mantis into thinking he had done ‘the right thing’… he’d hurt Liquid, that was
all Mantis cared about. He used finding his location as an excuse to do it,
that was all.
Mantis didn’t exactly get the full tour of the intel platform, because Ocelot
knew he didn’t need it, and he was marginally grateful for that - really he
didn’t want to spend anymore time around Ocelot, and figured with Liquid still
asleep there wouldn’t be too much risk of Ocelot going and bothering him, so no
need to keep an eye on the man. Really all that happened was that Ocelot showed
him the intel unit barracks and introduced him to a couple unit members who
were hanging out there, then showed him radio room alpha, which was a Faraday
cage for emergencies.
“Just close the door behind you and it’ll have the same effect as your lead
foil, only without the health risk. Feel free to do as you like in there, the
only stipulation is that you have to clear out if someone else needs it.”
“Hn.”
“…and if you won’t make any effort to get along with me, I would still
encourage you to at least try to tolerate your teammates. It’ll make your stay
here that much more pleasant for all of us.”
“I have no quarrel with them, Ocelot, only you.”
“I’m sure they’ll get on your nerves eventually.” He glanced at the clock in
the radio room. “It’ll be the evening shift soon… your training starts on the
day shift tomorrow, 0800 hours. Meet me in my office then.”
“…”
Ocelot left radio room alpha, waving. “Stay out of trouble in the meantime.”
“Only if you do,” Mantis muttered sourly. Ocelot either didn’t hear him or,
more likely, deliberately ignored him. He huffed.
Great. Just great.
Only yesterday he had thought that Liquid was dead and he had to move on,
figure his life out all by himself, make his own way… and yes, he’d been
miserable and completely incapable of finding any real direction, but he’d been
working on it, hadn’t he? And now everything had been turned upside-down. He
couldn’t deny how happy he was that Liquid was alive… safe… even accepted him
back to his side, but… Ocelot…? The fact that he was subordinate to him once
again was just adding insult to injury.
But it was the only way to stay with Liquid. So he’d do it. For Eli.
Glancing around radio room alpha and frowning behind his mask, he reached out
and brushed the wall with the tip of his fingers. Hard, smooth metal like every
other wall on Mother Base, but very cool compared to the salt-tinged heat
outside. Well, Mantis…, he thought to himself.
…welcome home.
End Notes
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