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Snake and Eva lay together on his uncomfortable mattress, Snake on his back and Eva half on top of him. She pressed her face up to his neck and inhaled.
“Is Ocelot here?” she asked.
A grin briefly ghosted Snake’s face. “Why? You miss him?”
Eva laughed softly. “No. That’s not why I’m asking.” She nuzzled in closer. “You smell like him.”
Snake chuckled. “Do I? Whenever you’re here, he says I smell like you.”
“Oh? Let me guess.” Eva propped herself up on her elbows to look Snake in the eye, sneered, squinted, and said, “Motorcycle gasoline.”
They laughed, although it wasn’t really funny. They had both learned to do that in this line of work - to laugh at memories that should have broken them.
Eva traced her hands along his body. Earlier, well - they had rushed things. It had been a long time, or at least it felt that way. They had burned through the rush of going for so long without each other, of finally knowing first-hand that the other was still alive. Now, for the moment, there was this - a slow-burning warmth between them, gentle and intimate.
Snake’s body was covered in fresh bruises and scrapes. His work. Eva knew it well enough by now. Her fingertips traced over the bruises from that man’s hands, over darkened flesh and a series of little wounds where he must have caught Snake with one of his spurs. Her hand drew back from a knife wound on Snake’s chest.
“He cut you,” she said.
Snake chuckled again, rough and warm. “He tried to shoot me.”
“The two of you have something different.” Speaking honestly about her feelings was still difficult for Eva. She was trying to learn. “Different than what you have with me. I think it makes me jealous.”
Snake took her hand in his and held it still. He smiled - not his old grin, but the sad, bitter smile that had slowly started to replace it. “Why?” he asked. “You want to shoot me too?”
Eva pulled her hand free, and he let her. “Do you like it - that he hurts you? Do you like being hurt?” She had never liked it, not once, although she’d grown good at faking.
Snake’s blue eye went distant. For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer.
“It’s… familiar,” he said, finally. “And it makes me feel something.”
And there it was again, in the pit of her stomach - that sick feeling that might be jealousy. She knew better than to ask, but she asked anyway. “Do I make you feel something too?”
Snake pushed a hand through her hair and pulled her close and kissed her, and it was answer enough, but he spoke again anyway. “You make me feel something, too,” he said. “Something different than what I feel with him.”
He watched her face for a moment with his one eye, until something he found there satisfied him and he reached for his cigar. He left an arm around her while he smoked it. The feeling that might be jealousy lessened, but it didn’t go away.
“You smell like her,” Adamska said, nostrils flaring. “Motorcycle gasoline. It stinks.”
“Funny,” John said, with a hint of his old grin. “When she’s here, she says the same thing about you.”
“Bitch,” Adamska muttered. John chuckled again, louder this time, and Adamska could only bear so much laughter at his own expense, even from him. “What?”
“Nothing,” John said, shaking his head. “I just never expected to see you getting jealous.”
“I’m not jealous of-” A word bad enough wouldn’t come to his mind. “-of her.” John wouldn’t be convinced - Adamska hadn’t even convinced himself.
“You knew about her,” John said, after a long silence. “From the beginning. You said it didn’t bother you.”
Because there had never been another option. Because John wouldn’t end things with her. Because in their line of work, monogamy would be ridiculous. Because it was John, and Adamska would take from the man whatever scraps he could get, however proud he pretended to be.
Adamska scowled, because anger was more mature than pouting like a child, and turned away to hide his face. John’s touch on his cheek made him flinch, but it was utterly lacking in violence.
John had touched him like that before, or tried to. Adamska hadn’t known what to do with it then. He still didn’t, now.
“Do you want me to be gentle with you, instead?” John asked, only half-teasing. “The way I am with her?”
Adamska didn’t want John to be gentle. They needed the violence - both of them needed it. It was something they both understood, something Adamska couldn’t bear to lose. But still. Was that what she got that he didn’t? John, gentle. It wasn’t what Adamska had ever wanted, before, but to imagine it was dizzying.
Adamska forced John’s hand away. “Fuck you,” he said, snarling, and John grinned and muttered something under his breath and reached for one of his cigars.
Soon, tobacco smoke had drowned out the gasoline stink. John lay back, wincing as he moved. It made Adamska feel a little better to see John in pain and to know that he had done it, to know that the marks would still be there when he had gone. A little better, but not entirely.
It was Eva’s idea that they should share - really share, and not simply take turns.
She suggested it to Adamska first. He reacted with an immediate, blustering negativity, nearly calling her a pervert until he realized what a grave tactical error that would be; Eva knew exactly what kind of man he was, had seen his handiwork written on John’s body, again and again. She knew him. Only John knew him better.
Adamska didn’t want Eva to look at him with anything like lust. He wouldn’t get anything out of this. Eva said that it was for John, but Adamska was sure it was for her. He didn’t like being used.
But Eva was nothing if not stubborn, and she went to John instead. And John liked the idea, and when he came to Adamska and asked him - asked - Adamska couldn’t say no. It was share or leave John to her, anyway. As bad as he was at sharing, Adamska was worse at giving ground.
Adamska didn’t know how to share. Eva didn’t either. Together, they would try to learn, for John.
-
Adamska had seen women come apart before - had been responsible for it himself - but only under torture. He had never seen one come apart like this, with pleasure on her face and in her voice instead of pain. Had never seen that kind of voluntary openness, that absolute surrender, on anyone else but John.
It was beautiful and strange. Sacred and grotesque at the same time. Like hearing some truth he wasn’t supposed to know, except that she’d offered it to him herself.
Adamska stared. Finally, she noticed. She met his eyes, and her knowing grin made him feel young and foolish. But he didn’t turn away.
Eva had seen men open themselves that way before, many times - but only to her, and usually because she had been using them. She’d had the safe emotional distance of a liar, a puppeteer holding the strings, and the preoccupation of staying in character. The only exception had been John.
She had never seen anything like this, so mutually, brutally honest, and she had never seen it between two men. Had never seen a man like Ocelot lay down his defenses. Hadn’t realized, until now, how thick those defenses had been.
It hurt him, and somehow it hurt her to watch, but Eva couldn’t look away.
She stared. Eventually, Ocelot noticed. When he met her eyes, his expression unguarded and his pupils dilated, he didn’t flush or look away. He was too far gone. She hadn’t known the man had such complete surrender in him. Hadn’t understood, until now, that the pain was mutual, a give-and-take. His own way at grasping for truth.
Adamska had resolved not to touch her, to recoil from every brush of skin on skin. Physically, she repulsed him.
But that resolve fell away quickly once they were together. It hardly seemed to matter, with John between them, with the three of them lost together.
Together, the three of them built something different than either of them had with John. Gentler and more tender than what John had with Adamska. More raw than what he had with Eva.
Adamska learned more than either of them. Through Eva, he came to understand what to do with John’s gentleness. But Eva learned, too - understood something more about love, and what it could look like, and the different ways that she could feel it.
And maybe John learned something, too, but if he did he never spoke of it to either of them.
Eva wondered later if their closeness was what had pulled the Patriots apart.
They certainly had ideological differences, but differences like that could be compromised with and overcome. The closeness that she and Ocelot had with Snake was something else again. He trusted them. It was a gap that none of the others could ever hope to bridge.
When Ocelot spoke of the Patriots, he meant only the three of them. And when Zero listened, Eva was sure that he could hear it.