Metal Gear Solid Fan Fiction ❯ Friction ❯ Friction ( Chapter 1 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Author's Notes: Kojima is my god. I would never claim to own Metal Gear, and in fact don't. This is just my addled mind trying to write an interlude between MGS2 and MGS4 that would satisfy my sick desire to see Otacon and Snake madly in love.
Spoilers: MGS1 and previous. I'm playing MGS4 now and getting lots of fantastic ideas for future fics. This is set well before the start of MGS4, probably just after MGS2 or between 2 and 1. Up to you.
Warnings: Not for small children, those under 18, or you religious/social conservative types (god bless y'all!). Contains bisexual implications and homosexual situations.
Oh, and this is officially a gift fic for firefly99, borne from her request for a HalxDave fic with physics in it. There's no reference to Feynman or Planck, I admit... I did my best, be gentle!
Enjoy!

Friction

A force that tends to oppose the relative motion of two surfaces in contact.

Hal rubbed his hands together, trying to force the chill from his fingers. It was always like this: his mind on fire, electrons crackling along nerve endings, but his fingers colder than ice.
The glowing screen was the only source of light in the dark room and it reflected the fruits of the evening against his glasses. It was beautiful and it was debugged and the feeling of creating something sung through his veins. The urge to cackle 'it's alive, alive!!' in demonic-scientist fashion ran through his mind.
This energy, this power... Hal mused - it must be a shadow of what women felt like after giving birth.
The beautiful little app sat in front of him, ready, waiting to do its creator's bidding. He felt like a god. He'd created life. In a way. In a geek-like way.

After 6 hours of nonstop coding, his right foot was asleep, his fingers frozen, and his blood thick and pooling in his calves. Euphoria aside, he was 99% sure he'd feed a clot to his brain as soon as he stood up.
Which he was going to have to do soon... That Red Bull was working its way surely and steadily through his system.
He reached for his headphones, cutting off the hyper-fast beat of British techno and re-introducing his ears to the deafening silence.

"You've been busy today." The gravelly voice of a half-awake Snake cut through the air, making him jump, startling him out of his post-coding haze. "Sorry."
"No, no, that's okay. If the clot doesn't get me, then at least the heart attack will." A small sarcastic smirk drew across his face.
"So what you got there? A new toy?" Snake gestured at the screen with his lit cigarette, a small new point of light in the room.
"Sort of. More a tool than a toy... It's designed to fit on top of the nano machine's control system, give them a way of reacting to your natural reactive senses - your fight or flight response." Snake was intrigued, but also a little concerned and his face displayed it plainly.
"Reacting? On their own?" Number one, he didn't want government agents using him as their super-pawn, directing and controlling him with the implanted nanomachines. Number two, after fighting to prevent Metal Gear proliferation for so long, Snake was what you could call a little more than concerned about any machines reacting on their own.
He trusted human instincts, not machine. More pointedly, he trusted his and Hal's instincts.
Hal could sense the trepidation in Snake's voice, so he tried his best to explain, to sell his new app to a reluctant client, as it were.
"They won't be making their own decisions, they'll be acting in a framework, in a set of rules I've given them. For instance, you're focusing on a target in one direction, and you subtly pick up on a rustle behind you. Before you can think about what to do, the nano machines add a well-needed dose of adrenaline to your bloodstream." Snake sucked long on the cigarette, trying to digest it, trying to make up his mind whether he was really for it... "OR say that you're in CQC and - god forbid - you are outnumbered or think the fight could last longer than you really want it to. Those little machines monitor the lactic acid on your muscles and scrub it off when it accumulates, giving you stamina beyond anything humanly possible."
Snake tapped the ashes into Hal's empty Red Bull can thoughtfully.
"I have to admit, I do like the sound of that. They're not making the decision, they're reacting to data and levels you've already told them to monitor." He drew a deep drag. "What else can they do?" Hal grinned brightly.
"I thought you'd never ask." This was the crowning subroutine in his program. It would take Snake from deadly super solider to unholy übermensch. The thought of all those muscles moving in quick synchrony... Hal shook his head with a smirk. Bad brain. Bad, bad, brain.
But it was too late, the image stuck, a vague picture of tanned skin dancing with sweat over sinewy musculature.
He swallowed heavily and managed to meet Snake's expectant eyes, albeit with a deep blush.
"This is going to knock your socks off. I was doing some reading on lactic acid, chemical ways of negating it, manual means of removing it - letting your cardiovascular and renal systems do the work... Anyway..." He fidgeted under Snake's penetrating stare, plain even in the black room. Did he like being referred to as a system of ligaments, veins, organs? Did he appreciate the bald enthusiasm with which Hal tackled this project? Had either of them taken for granted that Snake was still DAVE, was still a human being?
"Sorry. I'm just really excited. I think..." Hal cleared his throat nervously. "It doesn't matter what I think. It matters what YOU think. We can scrap it if you don't think-"
"Hal." Snake's - Dave's - gravelly voice cut through Hal's irritating vacillations and the smoke in his lungs. "Just tell me. We can decide after I know what it even is." He offered him a rare, encouraging smile.
The scientist took a deep breath and began again.
"What I found, are the lovely little receptors that connect the nervous system to the muscular system. AChrs. Acetylcholine Receptors. The spark plugs that keep our engines ticking away. They are controlled by two primary chemicals. The first, as you've probably guessed: acetylcholine." Snake gave a brief chuckle at Hal's comically raised eyebrow and the bit of sarcastic tone shading his voice. "And the second, always a favorite: nicotine."
The aforementioned smoke found itself caught in Snake's esophagus as he began laugh-coughing.
"So what's the prescription, Doctor? Smoke two packs and call me in the morning?"
"You wish... Really, if we tell the nanomachines to pump more nicotine to these AChr membranes and then unload sodium and calcium ions into the open and waiting pores... You can significantly boost the speed at which your muscles react." Snake's eyebrows shot up. "That's right." He counted off on his fingers. "More adrenaline to sharpen your senses, less lactic acid so you can keep moving, and AChrs running muscles at full throttle. You'll be the Energizer bunny." Snake's face broke into a calculating grin.
"Forget the bunny, I'll be goddamn Superman."
Hal's chest constricted tightly, warmly at the reaction. He liked it. He liked it! A brilliant smile curled around his features. Dave liked it and trusted him enough to implement the program. He was excited rather than revolted by Hal's ideas of enhancing those evil nanobugs.
He LIKED it.
"What are we waiting for?" Hal patted the couch next to the computer workstation invitingly and Snake sat down, reclining onto the cushions. Yes, he trusted Hal's judgment and he would put his life into his hands any day. Come to think of it... Many days he did.
Even so, there was a tiny thread of trepidation running through Snake's mind at the thought of being a bit of a guinea pig. The thought - quickly squashed - that this was the same man who had given life to REX.
No, NOT the same man. Not anymore.

So instead, he took an extra long drag, mushed the remaining stub out in the ashtray, and tried to think calming thoughts as he laid his head onto the couch back and stared at the ceiling.
Hal was turned back to the computer, fingers hammering away on the keys, pushing his changes wirelessly into the nanobots. It was a very strange feeling knowing that machines were communicating within your own body. Communicating back to a monstrous glowing box attached to a keyboard that took its marching orders from the dancing fingers of the lord of the geeks.
Snake dared a glance at said geek lord, slowing his breathing. The phosphorescent code and progress bar shone onto the angled lenses of Hal's glasses, painting his face with an unreadable facade.
The more he stared, the more he realized that the focus Hal brought to his work did not allow for errors. Hal would not make a silly mistake, Snake's limbs would NOT just start bouncing around with a mind of their own. He would not try to swallow his own tongue, he would not lose control of his bodily functions, he would NOT end up a quivering, drooling mass on the floor...

No. No, the room spun lightly in his nervousness, but he was still on the couch. Breathing a little more rapidly now, but none the worse for wear. Oddly, he could feel the overwhelming quiet of the room get a little louder, the clacking of the keys a little sharper...
"Hal?"
"Mmm?" Even his voice sounded... crisper? Was it the effects of the adrenaline running through his blood at the constructed sense of danger?
"I can hear... Really clearly." The keys stopped clacking, Hal turning to scrutinize Snake's face.
"Are you feeling okay otherwise?"
"Yeah. It's just... different. I feel like - like I'm in combat." Indeed, his heart was racing in his chest. Snake was breathing through his mouth in shallow gulps. He felt like he'd run a short sprint - just enough to get his blood moving, but not nearly enough to tire him out.

He was focusing on the small blinking light on the dark TV across the room, trying to control his breathing, trying to control the impact of the input from his now quite crisp vision.
Trying to will away this exhilarating feeling the nanobots were producing.
Hal in turn, was focusing on him, leaning across the back of his chair, mouth slightly agape despite himself. He had been on missions before, but there was never time to appreciate the soldier, the man. Christ, he LIVED with him, but there was never an external driver that had produced a fight/flight response in Snake in 'normal' life. It was a dirge of pure mundanity outside of the mission. He knew Snake was muscled, knew he was physically capable of tearing big things resembling phone books in half... He had clandestinely studied the curve of his shoulders while he scrubbed the dishes - but... But never like this - not since Shadow Moses. Never panting, never sweating. Never gripping the arms of the sofa for dear life. The image burned itself onto Hal's retinas.
He failed miserably in keeping his lower jaw from hanging open, from his tongue dancing out to lick his own upper lip nervously.
Snake turned his head from the entrancing TV light at the most inopportune moment.

"Hal, as much as this really gets the blood pumping, what say you stop gawking and shut these suckers off?" Hal's jaw snapped shut, embarrassed, and turned back to the keys.

It was a bit disquieting to have your racing heartbeat abruptly stop. For a fraction of a second, Snake held his breath, waiting for it to resume.
He exhaled sharply as he felt it regain its normal rhythm. Relief replacing adrenaline coursed through his veins.
"That was one hell of a ride, Hal." The scientist turned his bashful head away from the monitor, towards Snake. The light from the screen effectively hid his eyes, masking the emotion he was sure was leaking through transparently.
"I-I can tweak it if you'd like. It may be a bit much-"
"Don't touch it. The more the better, especially at the appropriate time." Hal was quiet in thought, contemplating. For all the world, looking as though he were simply staring off into space.
Not as though he were letting his eyes dance across Snake's chest, exploring the sleek curves that filled out the grey t-shirt. Mentally testing the limits of what might be qualified as an 'appropriate time'.

"God, I feel like a jog." Snake bounced up, oblivious, endorphins still running strong. "Don't wait up," he joked, grabbing his jacket, slipping on sneakers, and exiting to the 1 am street, painting the dark alley with his beaming energy.
Hal stood up from his computer chair and stretched. A quiet sigh of relief passed his lips - no clot tonight.
But now all the energy, all the power had been stolen from him. Oh god, to be left in Snake's wake... Lonely and painful, right through his chest.
He shuffled off to his room, in search of the standard sleeping pills and doujinshi.

********************

The moon painted the landscape outside in bright monotone shades. It was 2:24 am and the whole world slept. All except for Snake, who was still jogging in his sneakers, startling the odd stray cat. Breath pushed out from his nostrils into the crisp air in long streams of fog, obscuring the white-washed world.
Blood pumping, feet slapping pavement. His muscles were still singing. Snake had found out exactly 57 minutes ago that the little nanobots were accidentally still switched on with Hal's new program. A brief jog was 25 minutes, it was NOT an hour and a half.
But here he was, hair still tousled from sleep, muscles bunching in and out and not complaining one bit.
The adrenaline that was part of the new package brought out its good friend endorphins, who in turn invited testosterone and acetylcholine. The four were having a veritable chemical freakfest in his bloodstream. The streetlight in front of him, solitary patch of color in a grey world, turned red.
Snake jogged in place as a lone car sped through the intersection. It gave him time to contemplate the utterly amazing feeling running through his brain. He was never vain, due in part to his humbling and unique genetic heritage, but he glanced over at his reflection in a storefront window, admiring his bouncing form.
God - all those muscles, that chiseled chin... Why was it that he never got laid? His reflection smirked back at him, condescendingly.
Right, the mission, the life of secrets, the living on the edge of society, the looking behind your back at every turn. ...As he caught himself doing now...

All those women who he imagined frequenting clubs were really operatives working for the Patriots, just waiting for the right opportunity to drug him, kidnap him, dissect him, kill him. Right. Still... It was a shame to let all those lean good looks go to waste.
The light turned green and Snake's mood visibly soured as he crossed the street, vaguely plotting a path back to the apartment and to needed nicotine.
Self-pitying thoughts began to bleed through his mind. He couldn't simply go 'out'. The risk of discovery, detainment, death... The cost/benefits simply did not add up.
He could never settle down, that much was obvious. He'd never really wanted to, but the fact he couldn't made the prospect that much more tantalizing.
How could he ever start or maintain a relationship? It was absolutely impossible. The trust involved, the secrecy. Philanthropy moved its base of operations from one city to the next when the paranoia mounted to a near-intolerable level. What relationship could possibly cope?
...And then there was FOXDIE. The cherry on top of the goddamn sundae. The prospect of imminent death weighed heavily on his mind and while he was successful at pushing the fear away most of the time, there were moments... like when out jogging at 2:30 am... when the fear absolutely crippled him.
The prospect of an eternity of blackness. He just wasn't ready to accept it, wasn't ready to go calmly into that good night. There were still mission goals unaccomplished. There were still many things he wanted to do... So many simple, mundane, human things.
The next crosswalk trapped him with another red stoplight. There were no cars, but Snake paid the absent street no mind, stopping his feet briefly on the concrete.
So many things... Simple things. Vacations to the beach. Christmas with family. Family. Mind blowing sex on lazy Sunday afternoons. Having a place to call home.
His chest constricted painfully, eyes burning. God, it wasn't fair!
The light changed green and saved him the intensely personal humiliation of tears gathering in his eyes.
Snake did not fucking cry. Over vacations? Over not being part of the rat race?
He chastised himself and ran flat out, lungs burning, the entire way to the apartment. No more goddamn jogging.
He was just emotionally vulnerable from all the chemicals - that's what it was.
It certainly wasn't that the yearning in his chest had any validity.

********************

Hal had learned to sleep with one eye open. The omnipresent paranoia that Snake exuded taught him by osmosis that danger was around every corner.
It's one thing to know this fact while you are wide awake, and another entirely to feel it in your bones, even while asleep.
Hal was jolted awake as Snake's panting body hastily opened the apartment door. His heart rate instantly shot up, sitting up in bed, holding his breath, hand reacting without thought. It was soundlessly reaching for the snub-nosed semiautomatic Snake insisted he kept in his nightstand drawer.
His eyes trained on the door, opened in a two inch crack. Someone was breathing heavily in the hallway, slumped against the wall.
Somewhere in the back of his hazy mind, he remembered Snake leaving to jog right before he'd downed a pair of pink sleeping pills and pathetically pleasured himself.
Hal's icy hands pulled the drawer open silently, the breath he'd been holding easing out his nose as the tip of his fingers brushed against the cold metal.
It was Snake, it had to be Snake.
Hal summoned up his courage, aided by the gun at his fingers, and cleared his throat. In immediate response, the heavy breathing stopped. Crushing silence echoed through the room. His heart threatened to burst through his chest with fear. If it was Snake, why didn't he say anything?!
He picked up the gun, careful not to knock it against the sides of the drawer as he pulled it into his lap, eyes still wide open and locked on the crack in the door, blurry without his glasses. He stopped breathing, waiting for a sound reassuring him everything was indeed okay.
His probing ears heard a small noise from the hallway. A shuffling of feet, a small sniffle.
It didn't sound like an intruder. It didn't sound like heavily-armed paramilitaries.
"Snake? Is that you?" His voiced cracked in fear, unsure where the bravery to speak had come from.
More shuffling, more sniffling.
"Yeah, it's me, Hal. Sorry I woke you up." Instant relief flooded through him, his grip on the Glock relaxed.
"God, you scared me. I didn't realize it was you." In his mind he thought: you have no idea how close you came to getting a chest full of jacketed rounds...
Hal turned back to the drawer. He checked to ensure the safety was on, and placed the gun back gingerly. He began to lay back down, draw the sheets around him, but his ears picked that same sound out of the air. Sniffling.
It must have been cold outside. Snake's nanobots would fight off something as frail as the common cold, but that did not mean that his nose was immune to frigid temperatures. Hal lay down, shrugging off the nagging worry.
The sniffles started again.
And then soft cursing.
Why hadn't Snake moved from the hallway? Taken his shoes off, turned on the TV, gotten a beer, gone to bed, any of the above?
"Snake?"
"Hmm?"
"Are you alright?" Silence. The soft sound of breath moving through a clogged nasal passage.
"Hal, I've been jogging... and I've been thinking... just a dead end..." Snake took a deep breath and Hal could hear his head lean back against the wall, the unmistakable soft thump of skull on drywall being cushioned by curly hair. "There's... a lot of depressing thoughts that can go through your head." Hal's curiosity was piqued and his concern shot off the scale. This was highly un-Snake-like. "What have you been thinking about?" He tried a mild, open-ended question, kept the tone of his voice in check.
"Just... I don't know, immature things. Like..." He fought to try and get the words out in the best manner possible. "Like regrets, like 'what-if's... I don't know." His speech was halted and it was plain that it took Snake a great deal of effort to speak.
"Regrets? Well, you've got company there. I think everyone has at least one moment in their life they wish they could do-over." He yawned, but managed to stifle the sound. "I know I've got at least two dozen."
"No... Not moments you wish you could re-live... More like events... lives that are not possible." Hal sat up in bed, straining to listen to the sad voice of the soldier wafting through the door.
"Sn- Dave, why don't you at least come in from the hallway?" There was only momentary hesitation to his suggestion. Snake picked himself up off the vinyl floor, pushed Hal's door open gently. He stood in the door frame, now unsure, clasping his arms in an insecure fashion.
"Come on in, don't worry. MY room, at least, isn't booby-trapped." Dave chuckled softly and walked over to the far end of the bed, perching uncomfortably. Half a minute passed in silence as both men surveyed available tactics in their heads. What to say? How to say it? Snake broke the tension first.
"I know, I know it's worthless. I just can't help but think: what if? What if there was no need for Philanthropy? What if there was nothing to fight, nothing to run from?" He shook his head, staring solidly at the floor. "What if there was just a normal life?"
"The 9 to 5? The white collar job, the suburban life? The 2.3 kids?" Hal sighed deeply, running his hand through his hair. "Those are poisonous thoughts, Dave. The grass is always greener, you know that." He caught himself. "No, I'm sorry - YOU don't know that. You've never had the chance to know that. ...Trust me. You get on the other side and you yearn for the opposite, for some sort of adventure. You'd kill for it. ...And then it kills you."
Snake's replying voice was ever so small.
"It can't be that bad... You're just saying that so-" The silence was thick and uncomfortable. "What about the suburban life? What about the 2.3 kids? The picket fence, the wife that makes you meatloaf on Wednesdays, every single Wednesday? Is it so wrong to wonder what it would be like?" Hal's brows crinkled as he studied the man in front of him. His back was hunched, drawn into himself. Eyes studiously locked on the floor. The moon through the slats in the window caught the top of his hair, brushing it with silver. His hands were being unconsciously wrung, gathered in his lap.
"Family." Hal understood. God, he understood better than he wanted to. In a whisper he breathed her name, closing his eyes against the memories. 'Emma' It had been only her, and now it was only the man in front of him, sitting nervously on his bed, divulging an impossible vulnerability.
"Don't get me wrong, I'm not yearning for rugrats. I'm just..." A great sigh rumbled through his chest, and he brought his head to rest in his hands, propped up by the sheer geometry of his forearms on his knees. "A house - a normal life. Stability."
"Normalcy." Hal had never seen him like this. He was broken, utterly, curled into himself. But he knew the pain Dave was feeling now, the longing, the emptiness borne from drifting for so long. How many nights had he drempt of a small cozy house, a lover's warmth lingering on white sheets, the smell of cookies baking in the oven... "Domesticity. Intimacy. Co-dependency." He let the forbidden words hang in the silvery 3 am air. Snake turned his head in his hands, away. His ribs quivered slightly under his shirt. Barely, just barely. Hal's heart constricted in his chest watching the heartbreaking scene in front of him, wetness drawn to his own eyes.
How much must this be hurting him? To know he'd never have a normal life, a wife and the promised grinning kids to cradle in his arms? To be nothing more than an experiment, a machine to his creators, given this cursed life. He stretched his hand out and laid it gently on Dave's bent head, on his curly hair, as if to say 'I know, I'm here with you in this wretched life'.
Dave stilled instantly under his hand, caught as if in a spotlight, his breath trapped in his lungs. The comfort was unexpected and he didn't know how to process it, much less how to respond. A piece of his brain was screaming, enraged. Ordering him to remove Hal's hand NOW - to escape the room, to forget this embarrassment had ever happened. HOW could he be so weak??
The other part, the one that had momentarily shut down, was frightened by the hand on his head, the contact, unsure how to process it.
Frightened by the warms tears that ran down his own face.
"Your hand is fucking cold." He masked either reaction behind callous humor. Hal retracted his hand instantly, becoming wide awake and aware that he had touched Snake's head. That he had let his hand linger. Was he insane?!
"I-I'm sorry..."
"Are your hands always that cold?"
"I-I guess so?" Hal stumbled over his words, unsure what to say.
Slowly, so slowly, Dave picked his head up from his hands and turned towards Hal. One bent window slat spilled moonbeams across his cheek, light glistening in the marked wet trails. Hal's breath caught painfully in his throat to see such a bare display of his turmoil. Tears were painted like rain on his skin.
"You know that's not healthy. Give me your hand." Dave was unaware of how the light caught his face, nonchalant only because he thought his shame was safely hidden in the dark room.
Hal picked his hand off the comforter, offering it unsteadily. Two warm hands wrapped around it, the skin soft and calloused in different places. Soft palms, calloused fingertips. The heat permeated his skin and, not thinking, he brought his other up to Dave's grip, ready to drink the warmth in, to bask in it. "Jesus. You're like an ice cube." He placed Hal's hands together, rubbing them with his own, trying to generate some type of heat.
Hal's voice had disappeared, enthralled with the feeling of Dave's warm hands on his own, with the naked tears on his face, with their proximity in the dark room. His heart beat faster, his breath shallow and quick.
The nanobots, awakened and confused by Dave's tumultuous emotions, teased his medial amygdala and spilled vasopressin into his veins. Intimacy. Hal's hands were so frail, so cold, compared to his own. His face was easy to read even in the dark. His jaw slack, his shoulders tense, his eyes piercing.
Dave was surprised, caught off guard by the reaction. Desire was plastered all over Hal's face, his parted lips, his eyes dilated further than needed in the dark room. He didn't stop rubbing his hands. He could feel them finely trembling.
It was as if an electric spark of pure shock ran along his nerves at the recognition. Hal?? It didn't make sense...
But in the next heartbeat, his quick mind put all the scattered pieces together. Stability.
Normalcy. Domesticity. Co-dependency.
Hal was all of these things. He represented the sane, stable half of Philanthropy. He may not have cooked Wednesday meatloaf, he may not have been able to provide that white picket fence, and he may not have looked stunning in heels... But he was, in so many ways, home. Family. He was his confidant. Their souls were open to one another, their pain the same. And now he was cold and shaking, and mere feet separated them. No more regrets, no more hesitation. Dave set his jaw, set down Hal's hands, and set both his hands on the bed, trapping Hal's torso between.
The quiet air in the room was whisked swiftly, audibly, into Hal's lungs. Was this happening? The soldier leaned in slowly, like a predator, carefully studying his prey, lest it run away. The disbelief created little panicked breaths which ran through Hal's mouth. His mind was on fire.
Dave... Dave approached slowly, and Hal's eyes, filled with stark need, closed to hide the blatancy of it. His lips hung open, waiting.
An inch from contact, Dave paused. He had never been able to study Hal from this distance, and rarely ever without his glasses. It was the face he'd know for years, made precious and beautiful with the flush that danced over his cheeks, with the mutual pain and need.
Hal opened his eyes, nervous with delay. His breath stopped, eyes captured by the reflected desire in Dave's own.
In that instant, he captured Hal's lips, searing the moment into their minds with the raw intimacy of their open eyes. The kiss overwhelmed Hal and his eyelids closed, cold hands reaching up to bury themselves wantonly in Dave's dark curls.
The contact, the touch, wrested a desperate moan from Dave's throat. Human touch. It was such a basic need and he had been left starving for so long. The fingers in his hair - it was so personal - his heart quivered in painful bliss. Dave moved his mouth from those warm lips to Hal's exposed throat. He was like a hungry animal, covering as much skin with his lips as he could, sucking and drawing his tongue along the fierce vascular outlines in Hal's neck. Hal clutched his hair tighter, gasping as the pleasure from his neck ran through his chest, numbing his fingertips.
"Dave... Oh my god-" He quickly covered his lips again, probing into Hal's soft warm mouth with his needy tongue. Hal couldn't breathe, and he didn't care. He pulled himself down onto the bed, lying flat, begging Dave to place his body over his.
The blissful sensation of being pressed bodily into soft sheets soon followed. There was something so raw and sensually enthralling about weight pressing him down into the bed. Dave was so warm and the crush against his chest was centering. There was nothing but Dave's body, his raw power, the lips that swarmed his face, the fingers that gently stroked his throat. In between short gulps of air, Hal began to moan.
"Otacon..." Dave whispered it into his hair before placing wet feverish kisses all along the curve of his ear. His skin was salty and warm, perfect. The fingers of one of his hands found themselves probing the cotton of Hal's shirt, seeking the hem, seeking bare skin. He was rewarded with another gasp as he gently traced the contours of the scientist's stomach. Hal had to break their kiss as the muscles in his abdomen tightened, his diaphragm pulsing with the touch, his breathing rough and ragged. He pulled back and Dave simply stared at the beautiful man beneath him, his fingers drawing lazy circles around his navel, careful to draw the curves wide, to touch as much skin as possible. Hal's mouth was open, gasping. His eyes were drawn back into his head, overwhelming pleasure written across his face. Dave stopped for a moment, laying his palm flat on his stomach, willing Hal to look at him. He wanted to see through into him, into his mind, into his desire.
Hal's silver-green irises glowed in the low light, eyelids fluttering, pupils locking back onto the man pressing him into the bed. Snake just stared at him, their eyes cemented, a connection forged. It was electric, it was solidifying. Dave's mouth curled in a soft smile, their gaze was so simple but so powerful. It said, 'yes, I'm here, this is real'.
Co-workers, soldiers, friends, lovers... It all fit together perfectly and Snake gently traced an arc over his forehead, trailing along the line where hair met porcelain skin. His gaze dropped to those plump lips and his eyes, contemplative and serene, clouded over with lust. Hal caught the subtle change, Dave's nostrils flaring with the quick intake of breath. Hal had just managed to steady his breath, his heart... The soldier placed a needy kiss on his throat, sucking wetly on his Adam's apple. Hal's fingers were rapidly numbing again, blood moving from his arms and his head into his groin, pulling it insistently against the body above him. He moaned and Dave could feel the vibration through his throat, into his lips. His fingers, still on Hal's stomach, began a soft, tenuous walk down to his navel, down into the downy hair that trailed away into his sweatpants. As lovely as it was to suck on his throat, it wasn't enough connection, and Dave again tore his lips away from the delicious skin to stare into Hal's eyes. His brows rose slightly, in question as his fingers quested along the puckered cloth hem.
"Please..." Hal's response was whispered, strangled. His voice was painted with need. Dave swallowed around his own excitement, eyes locked on Hal's as his fingers pushed their way under the fabric, dancing down warm skin to find his ready and begging erection. "...yes..." Hal's eyes glazed, but they held onto the blue irises above him with naked need. He brought his own cold hands down from their iron grip on Dave's arms, down across his cotton shirt, gripping it tightly as Dave's warm fingers coiled around his need. He shivered, panting, as he was firmly brought to the edge of pleasure with sure, strong strokes. It was all too much, the blood racing through his body, the friction and the lust warming him from the inside out. He could feel his brain buzzing, his eyes closing automatically, his arms shaking as he came close...
No... In between gasps he managed a "...no...", shaking his head to clear his thought. His fingers were still gripped on the tight grey shirt adorning Dave's chest. Wordlessly, he asked with his eyes, fingers reaching to the buckle on Dave's belt, apologizing for his negligence.
But Dave's grip only tightened and he teased his thumb over Hal's leaking head.
"No... not yet...", he chastised him and resumed his previous pace, stroking and coiling his fingers, extracting excruciating pleasure from his body, determined to watch the scientist topple over the edge in precise, unclouded, beautiful detail. Hal begged with his eyes, but it was futile... He bit his lip as the pleasure built inside every nerve ending in his body, surging, boiling, and exploding out his mouth in a strangled cry.

Dave watched it all, keenly drinking in the utter abandonment running through the writhing body beneath him. Hal was split open, his normal facade dropped, his heart, soul, exposed. It brought tears again to Dave's eyes and he collapsed onto Hal's quivering torso, grabbing handfuls of sheets to bunch around their combined form. Burying his head in the crook of Hal's neck, shedding cleansing tears all over his cotton sheets.
"David?" Hal could feel his sadness, his longing pour loudly from his mouth. He was more than happy to absorb all his hurt, all his loneliness. If only...
He closed his eyes to the dark room. He would take away all his fear, all his painful isolation. He rubbed his newly warm fingers along Dave's spine, under his shirt, soothing whispers into his soft hair.
"Ssh, ssh... Dave..." Little kisses along his hairline. "Dave... Time is- it's a continuum. It's constantly moving forward. There is no past. There is no future. There is... Only THIS. Only now." He teased existential phrases around in his head, rubbing his fingers against Snake's warm back. Philosophizing in his afterglow. More than anything, he wanted peace to envelope the man above him.
His long fingers traced against the outline of Dave's jeans. He desperately wanted to reciprocate. He wanted that friction back, that warmth, that hyper connection of skin on skin. He was drunk on it, craving more than just a taste.
Slowly, Dave's sobs abated and he adjusted his head against Hal's neck, adjusted his weight off his body, onto the narrow twin mattress. The scientist took this opportunity to trail his cooling fingers around the sensitive curve of ribs, around to his stomach, tracing patterns in his short, soft, hair. A pleading look crossed his face and anxious tongue licked across his hips. Emboldened with the hormones in his blood and desperate to bask in their shared body heat, he voiced his nervous need into the silvery air.
"Let me taste you, please..." The fingers coiled underneath his belt buckle, unfastening it without waiting for a response. He received a sharp gasp and Dave's eyes lidded as his fingertips brushed against his skin. Even now, the soldier's flesh was molten metal against Hal's fingers. His heart, beating feverishly, was not enough to keep him warm. It could only be Dave, it could only be the friction between their bodies.
He crushed their chests together, fingers toying in stiff, curly hair, lips desperate to taste any and all parts of this magnificent man. Their mouths met, heat flowing between them, particles dancing.
They were animal, voracious kisses and when their lips finally parted, Hal used his same warm lips to draw gentle lines across his stomach.
It was Dave's turn to gasp and he did so, unable to suppress it. The one warm spot on Hal was his mouth and he used it now, open, to suck and lick across each defined and quivering abdominal muscle. The nanomachines flowed viciously through his bloodstream, pulling oxygen into his body and scrubbing the defiling lactic acid away. His nerves were wide awake, his skin on fire. Each cell Hal caressed was screaming in pleasure.
And still, still, his head dipped lower. It was pleasure, painfully concentrated and magnified through his body. His heart beat uncontrollably.
And then he felt... He felt Hal's lips hesitate. Dave's breath caught, knowing all too well what had halted his warm descent.
Silence, tense in the air. He knew he was being inspected, knew precisely why. But he didn't know what the outcome would be.
Hesitantly, the scientist's thin fingers brushed down to where his lips had stopped, caressing a fine line over and over. The fine white line that had healed where the blade of a K-Bar had pierced his flesh during the Zanzibarland Disturbance. A line that... that connected to a long pink welt. A welt burned into his skin by a hot barrel, mishandled during the Gulf War.
Under that, white circles of puffy flesh... Singed flesh from...
Hal's smooth fingers stopped. These circles held no mystery for him.
"Dave..." His warm breath coursed over the mottled flesh, well healed since Shadow Moses. "Dave, I'm, I'm so sor-" Hal's voice caught in his throat, the result of his cowardice from all those years ago staring him in the face. "I'm sorry..." His lips painted the words onto Dave's skin, hot breath melting into the wounds from his captivity and torture at the hands of Ocelot. Above him, a long breath was released, tension and pain floating away into the moonlit air above them.
It was okay, it was alright, and everything would be alright from now on. Dave tried to force his mouth to form those words - the best he could do was place his hand on top of Hal's bowed head, fingers caressing his hair.
It would be alright.
They would make it so.

Hal's tongue traced long lines of heat over the old scars, trying his best to smooth the skin, make it perfect again. He sucked at the unblemished skin, marking it pink and red to match and claiming the breath from Dave's lungs. His heart sped up, warm from the feeling of connection, from the deep intimacy of the moment.
The scientist's tongue continued to dance, lower, lower, until his nose was buried in short, stiff hair. The raw scent of the soldier drove him mad and he couldn't continue teasing himself or Snake any longer. He kissed down the erect flesh, a silent prelude, a request, a warning.
Whatever thoughts were manically bouncing inside Dave's mind were obliterated as Hal's deft hands stroked him, his hot mouth suddenly enveloping his throbbing flesh. There was only feeling, sensation, burning up through his veins, from his groin to his chest, escaping out his mouth in loud gasps.
The bedsheets around him were not spared, his fists balling in them to keep from doing... anything else. God, he didn't know, couldn't think, couldn't focus... And just that fact was fucking wonderful.
Hal had never done anything like this before, but there was no nervousness or self-consciousness to his movements. He knew this would drive Dave insane, knew there was no point in worrying. His tongue rode over every vein, every ridge in his flesh, sucking, drawing him deep into his mouth, his hands now kneading his thighs, making love to his sweaty skin with his palms.
Dave's gasps gradually gave way to moans, strangled, dying in his throat. Hal pulled back and ran the tip of his tongue over his head, underneath, applying pressure to delicate and hyper sensitive areas... It was enough to pull a half scream from the stoic soldier... His eyes rolled back in his head as the peak of pleasure hit him. It was so primal, augmented with the tightening of his heart in the immediate knowledge that now - NOW - he had someone to share Christmases with, someone to defile lazy Sunday afternoons with, someone to love him...
His whole body tightened, his fingers trembling, gripping the sheets with wild emotion.

As Hal slowly climbed back up his body, he found more than just Dave's fingers were trembling. His whole body shook as light tears trailed down his cheeks, down paths barely dry from before...
"Dave? Are you okay?" He wrapped his arms around the crumbling figure, his nose caressing his wet cheeks, trying to solve whatever pain had sprung anew.
"Yeah, I'm okay..." Dave opened his eyes at worried green-grey orbs mere inches away, pouring all the love and hope he could into his stare. "I am okay. I-" He couldn't form his mouth into the powerful words he wanted to convey how he felt. Words wouldn't work. Words were weak, limited.
Their mouths met, converting mere vocal communication into direct skin-on-skin contact.
Nothing needed to be said.

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