Work Text:
Miller can smell the rich scent of gun oil and liquor, masked by sour smoke and leather polish - even without his sight, he knows it's Ocelot pacing a trail in front of him with all the carefulness of a predator on the hunt. His spurs bounce off the floor with each step and Miller can count how long it takes him to walk the length of the room by the number of clink clink clinks there are before they pause for a moment and he turns heel.
And Miller can also tell, by the ugly sound of metal on metal, that this is the interrogation room. Actually, it wouldn't take a genius to notice that - there's no place on earth Ocelot could store a hogtied and blindfolded Miller without facing the full brunt force of the Diamond Dogs' anger. Even if you toss aside the treachery that comes with kidnapping Mother Base's dear Commander, there's always been more men inclined to trust Miller than his Russian counterpart on a coin toss.
"You're a double- triple crosser. And no one wants to trust what they can't watch." Is what he had said when Ocelot made the long-drawn and never-serious complaint that no one seemed to like him. He doesn't care much for popularity, it was simply a conversation filler when the whiskey ran dry and the smoke was beginning to clear up.
"That's very rich coming from you"
The spurs come to an abrupt spot and Miller can hear every single bullet that Ocelot wears strapped across his chest collide with a soft shuffle against his vest, nearly entirely drowned out by the clicking of his guns and boots.
"Done pacing a storm over there?" Curiously enough, he's not gagged, though there's the dry taste of fabric lingering on his tongue and parching it out so he must've been some time in the close past. Even more noticeable is the way his arm aches the same ache it did when he got all those mandatory vaccines during his first recruitment to the JSDF. "I don't think I've done anything to anger you recently, unless the sweep about your laxness on that inglorious Emmerich really wounded your pride that harshly. But is that enough to deserve being drugged, dragged, and bound to a metal chair in your... office?"
The guns click again and Miller knows Ocelot is spinning them like the smug little bastard he is.
"How much do you know about the Colt Single Action Army?" His voice is rough and if he's not sober, then he's doing a piss poor job of hiding it.
"Ah, the best gun ever made," Miller muses, trying to mock Ocelot's faux southern drawl, "I don't need a lecture on the make and manufacture of an out-of-date pea-shooter."
"I used to favor them-" Ocelot stabs on like the dig wasn't there- "I still do, but unfortunately, they're impractical here. Boss asked me to trade them out for something more modern , but I still keep my set in my desk, for good time's sake." Miller knows this because he's seen Ocelot field strip and clean them a hundred times despite the fact that he's never seen him take his Colt Actions outside of his office, not even down to the tentative shooting range they've set up since foundation.
"It's nice for the small talk, but I don't think the ropes were necessary to have a conversation about your choice of guns." Miller tugs at the bounds on his remaining arm and the threads dig harshly into sallowing skin. "You could've always asked nicely, I wouldn't turn you down if you brought me a bottle of bourbon from Snake's office."
Ocelot doesn't speak but Miller can hear his throat click, or perhaps it's his gun - at some point or another, the man simply becomes his weapons. Miller has seen him shoot and (though loathe as he is to admit it) he's incredible with just about anything in his hands, but revolvers work like an extension of his body. His Colts don't see action as much as they must've in the good ol' days Ocelot so laments but he's sure that the delicate sound is that of his SAA spinning slowly.
The gaudy spurs on his boots click five times and then there's the heavy warmth of one of Ocelot’s hands laying itself on Miller's skewed shoulders, the weight thrown even further off balance. The smell of gun oil only heightens from the proximity and Miller feels if not mildly dizzy from it.
"There used to be a rumor that went around," Ocelot's mustache tickles his cheek as he speaks, "back when I was torturing POWs in the middle east. They said a lot of horrible things behind my back, most deserved, I'll give them credit."
Miller hums, he's bored and annoyed, and his back is starting to ache from the position his arm is being held in.
" 'Shalashaska once lined six prisoners up in a row, took a revolver with only one bullet greased into the chamber, and he walked up and down that holding room and shot at every single one of them until an unlucky bastard got to bite a bullet' as one of them goes. Another story was practically the same, except I spared the life of one man with an empty chamber and took the lives of five others. Funny, isn't it?"
Miller had heard something like that being spread around by the lower recruits. Not said to him directly nor purposefully in his proximity - Badger and Cassowary had ducked their heads and shot into form when Miller shuffled by, clearly ashamed to be caught spreading rumors about their superior. He never questioned whether or not it was true because that hardly mattered.
"Russian roulette. Cruel." Miller’s tone is decidedly bitter and he's still trying to will his tongue to unstick from the roof of his mouth.
"When in Rome." Ocelot muses, and then he's drawing back from his position practically in Miller's lap to give him space. The Commander has the sudden found freedom to breathe clearly again. "Are you a gambler, Miller?"
"Not particularly, was never very good at it. Besides, I can't keep a poker face up to save my life."
"I'll find you'll change your mind soon." It's almost suddenly much colder in the interrogation room, and if Miller had put up with anything lesser than what made him half the man he is now, he would've shown it. "I trust you know what stakes we're here to gamble."
The revolver spins rapidly - Ocelot showing off to a blind crowd of one - and then with a mechanical click, the barrel slides out of place. Miller can hear the clatter of one, two, five bullets spilling to the ground before Ocelot's wrist cracks slightly and the barrel returns to where it's meant to rest.
"I'll let you decide whether or not you want to keep the blindfold on."
Miller bites his tongue. If Ocelot wants him to play this dumb little murder-suicide game then so be it. What could even be the reason? Senseless violence? Sadistic pleasure? Maybe he's just bored of how quiet things have been lately - the sight of a Commander shot dead with the beautiful length of a silver bullet caving into his skull is what Mother Base needs to spark some action.
"You first or me?" He asks when Miller stays stubbornly silent. Ocelot sighs, the bottom of his boots clang almost obnoxiously on the floor and in a second there's a leather-covered hand gripping his chin. "Gritting your teeth won't prolong the gamble, Miller. I’ll ask again, you first or me?”
"You're sick. You're a sick bastard" Miller chokes it out and the mild calmness he had been grasping at earlier falls away. "They'll kill you for this if you don't kill yourself first."
"Answer the question." He says it to the sly cadence of someone who's strung up a perfect bit of bait, and god does Miller jump for it, claws out and teeth bared.
"You, dammit! You first. I'm not a psychopath, I'm hardly suicidal. You shoot yourself first," Miller struggles to grasp his bonds again, though this time the movements are much more frantic . He can't see himself nor can he see the expression on Ocelot's face, but he knows he looks like a struggling cockroach caught beneath a boot.
"If that's how you want it to be." Ocelot withdraws, leaving Miller to gasp in something clean, something that doesn’t reek of excess booze and leather polish. "I'll let you listen to the spin so you know that I'm not cheating."
And he does, though it hardly matters to Miller. All is silent except for Miller's panting and the room practically echoes with every indulgent click of the barrel spinning around and around until it finally stops with a finality that has sweat beading on Miller's forehead. Ocelot cocks the piston. There is no safety except for an empty chamber.
Miller holds his breath and waits for the click of a trigger and the unstoppable, kinetic force of a bullet to rip through Ocelot's brain and splatter gray matter all over the wall and him. But the gun clicks empty.
He sighs - for all he's worth, he relaxes. He doesn’t know why there’s relief or where it came from.
Ocelot chooses to laugh at him, he does, it's childish and cruel. The game isn't over after you fire one blank.
"Your turn. Hold your breath, Miller. You can pretend you're at a slot machine if that's easier for you." He almost listens to Ocelot's advice but the distant memory of the beautiful, flashing lights of the gambling districts in Costa Rica can't stop the way his chest tightens so painfully he's sure his ribs will burst.
The thin muzzle of the Colt digs into where his hair has matted to his temples with sweat, shoving its way into his skin like Ocelot is trying to impale him with the end rather than shoot. Miller doesn't dare struggle now, not with the imminent threat of a brutal death at the hands of his reaper comrade. He opts to just bite down and close his already blind eyes.
"If you were to bet one to six at a poker table," Ocelot begins and Miller practically teethes through the bottom of his lip, "would you cheat? Or are you always the honest man that Mother Base has come to know?"
He won't dignify him with an answer, partially because the only sound his strained throat can bring into the world is a strangled "Just pull the trigger, Ocelot."
And he does. The Colt clicks and Miller prays to a god he never once paid piety to before. Even back in Afghanistan, he had never feared for his life this desperately. Because they had wanted to keep him alive - even between the beatings and the amputations and the rapes, he had wanted to keep living because they had wanted to keep him alive.
His torturers were never so brutal as to lie to him
Ocelot is different, in every way Miller can count. He's a walking facade of structured lies, so deeply rooted that Miller would never have the chance to weed them out and untangle them in his lifetime. He's fooling every single person he knows and he’s fooling them well. Miller understands that, and he never feared it.
Now he knows that truth intimately, and it towers over him with a hideous terror that turns Miller's stomach.
"Pray that you become a lucky man tonight, Miller."
"Pray that Snake doesn't throw you into the goddamned ocean after this."
"Famous last words." Ocelot just laughs, almost breathlessly.
The barrel slides into place with a definitive and smart click, quiet in the dim but roaring in Miller's ears. His blood is rushing to his head as if that can cushion a blast to the skull. Miller can at least find the lasting dignity to hold his breath, so as to not give Ocelot the benefit of it being his last.
Where there should be a bang and a tremor, it’s instead almost stranglingly quiet. The trigger bumps back into position with empty recoil. There is no bullet, and he is alive, gasping down air like he’s been drowned.
The first thing Miller notices when the initial shock is gone is the light flooding his clouded eyes, the blindfold falling away. The second is the cold metal bashing into the side of his forehead until he bleeds warm and red, staining his hair dark. Ocelot bludgeons him with the butt of his gun again, so hard that the world turns fuzzy and his ears ring but he's alive and that's all he could've asked for.
"You were right," Ocelot drawls, bitingly. The world comes into focus for Miller again, pairs of two collide into one and there he sees Ocelot, jamming the rounded barrel out of his Colt with a grimace. Miller watches, head hung low and brain pounding from the adrenaline rush, as he tilts the gun up and no singular bullet joins its brothers on the floor. "Your poker face isn't very good."