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For all the former FOXHOUND operatives at his beck and call, the amount of photographic evidence Liquid has on the other one is slim. What little he’s got is a meagre collection of dossier headshots, blurry security cam screengrabs, and partial profiles in the background of group photos. Spotting his face in a crowd gives him a momentary shiver down his spine; he distantly remembers someone from his childhood laughing and asking, “Goose walked over your grave?”, but he can’t remember who. In a way, it’s no different than it would be to happen upon a picture of himself in the stack. Seeing oneself in a picture one doesn’t remember being taken is always like seeing a ghost. In comparison, this is easier to parse: after the initial shock of recognition, there’s none of the anger at being caught unawares.
The clock ticks on, approaching the true middle of the night, now, but the makeshift room Liquid converted into an office goes undisturbed. His thoughts are disjointed, his body shifting unsteadily from side to side with the exhaustion of a day spent at the war table, trying to avoid getting drawn into Ocelot’s inscrutable verbal games. Liquid is the soldier of the 21st century: he can survive for days in the desert without food, speak more languages than the average UN official, and withstand interrogation conditions that make Gitmo seem like a stay at the Hilton, but it’s been a long day. It’s been a long campaign, and it’s still hardly started. He brushes a thumb across one of the scans of the other one’s fingerprints. His mind wanders, and makes the decision to indulge himself while he can. If there’s anything he’s learned over the decades between leaving Motherbase and bunkering down in this particular hideaway, it’s that reality continually disappoints.
Not for the first time, he considers a world in which things could work out better than they inevitably will. After a battle befitting men of their calibre, Snake—listening to tape after tape of people referring to the man by the mononym has rubbed off on Liquid—would look at Liquid with recognition and admiration in equal measure. He would fall to his knees and salute, and Liquid wouldn’t be able to stop a smile from spreading across his face. Liquid sets an elbow on the desk, lets his eyes drift shut and his other hand roam over his thighs. Little would be beyond their grasp. Give them a few years, and they could rule a stolen country. An empire in the jungle, off-grid, out-of-time. They have a face that belongs on currency; he can give their father that much. Troops would part before them as they inspected the ranks together, pacing in perfect rhythm, seeming to the soldiers as demigods made flesh.
No one has ever understood Liquid; it’s not an observation out of self-pity, just truth. There has never before been any of their kind on earth. A miracle of technology, flawed in its realization. The hubris of science writ large in every athletic ripple of tendons. It enrages him, even now, to think of his doom. Written in code before he was even born. The greatest miscalculation of those behind Les Enfants Terribles was that even test tube curiosities will refuse to settle for inferiority when created in the image of mankind’s most impressive specimen. To accept defeat is out of their nature. The frustration settles under his skin, needling at him, and he returns to the fantasy: they’d spar in the near-dark, trying to anticipate each other with perfect knowledge of their body’s rhythms, of every weak point programmed into their flesh.
Of course, he has the advantage of not having wasted several years drinking himself to death: when Liquid inevitably seized the advantage, he’d study his twin, his imperfect mirror, sprawled under him with uniform half-undone. Liquid would observe the patchwork of scars that mar his body and read the story they tell, an archive of Snake’s past battles, medals testifying his survival. If their heads were shaved, these would be the only identifiers of their difference. He would hold Snake down, pin his wrists above his head on the hard earth of the training ground—they’re both used to it, wouldn’t know what to do with luxury—and drag his own fingernails down the other’s skin. Whatever intimacy Liquid extended him would carry the threat of violence, the risk of becoming another scar. There’s no other way for men like them. Tenderness is a mask.
Liquid’s hands are as cold as the freezing air around them, and he winces as he sneaks one underneath the waistband of his pants. His other hand thumbs for what might be the hundredth time through the stack of printed surveillance photos and transcripts of leaked Codec calls. SOLID SNAKE: and MASTER MILLER: switch out in script form, studded throughout with blocks of ███████. Data and redaction, alternating like binary code. Miller’s fate has already been decided; Ocelot leaves in the morning. Part of Liquid regrets not being able to carry out the hit himself, but Ocelot insisted. Liquid strokes himself through his combat briefs, slow and hard enough to feel as much discomfort as pleasure.
In that other life, Snake would groan beneath him, a few locks of dark hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. For a moment, at least, genetic superiority would fall by the wayside; no longer would they be the servants of smaller powers, to be used and then tossed to shore. They would come together to equal something greater than the sum of parentage and engineering. Snake would belong to him, and Liquid would know Snake as if he were looking out from behind his eyes.
Between his thighs Snake would thrash, lost in the feeling, putting the strength of his well-toned form on full display. Liquid would hang on nonetheless, riding him into the ground, his hips pushing against Snake’s ass with the cumulative force of years of hatred. Snake would bite his lip red and shiny from spit and sweat. Liquid’s spent countless nights like this, jerking himself raw and cursing his brother’s name. If Snake could just see past his blind loyalty to a government that betrayed him from the start, if he could realize where he belongs—the world would never be the same. No fortress would be safe, no battlefield intact.
Liquid bites into his own arm to muffle a grunt. It leaves a imprint of his teeth. There are guards patrolling at all hours around the base; Genome Soldiers, too, must live out their purpose. The troop is made up of their lesser brothers, in a sense. It wouldn’t do for one them to burst in on him here, like this, desperately fisting his cock with a hand braced on his desk for support. A full-page copy of Snake’s original ID photo from the Green Berets stares up at him: Snake’s eyes are even and unclouded, the face a decade younger and fifty years less ragged. He wears his dogtags like commendations, but his mouth is already pulled into a thin line. Never a true patriot, just a dog of war. In the fantasy, Liquid would slap him across that perfect face, open-palmed, and then backhand him on the way back. Snake would take it like a man, though his skin would glow with the rush of blood to the skin. He’d choke out Liquid’s name like a prayer, and it would be enough to send Liquid over the edge, coming on top of Snake, finally in his proper place.
It is enough to wrack Liquid’s body with a shudder: he spurts into his fist and coughs out a sound somewhere between moan and cry.
He squeezes his eyes shut until he sees bursts of light behind his eyes and then opens them, slowly, to take in the dimly lit room. Peering up at the clock, he sees that he’s got three hours to sleep before the final infiltration drills begin. In a week’s time, he’ll be on Shadow Moses, and if his soldier’s intuition, they won’t be there long before they’re joined by an unexpected visitor. There will be time to reckon with Snake. He can only hope it’ll be half as satisfying as he’s imagined.