Revolver Ocelot is not a man known for his patience.

An excellent marksman, torturer, and spy; to the soldiers he is the man who issues orders around Mother Base when Big Boss isn't around.

To the recruits he is 'Yes, Sir!' or simply the man who will make them eat their own livers if they do not perform to expectation.

Since he has woken up from his coma, Venom has gotten to know his old comrade as a man with a fondness for his own voice, given to recording long-winded and mind-numbing speeches on cassette tapes that, unbeknownst to the Russian, Venom habitually overplays with music without a care for their previous contents.

Ocelot is a walking lexicon with a downright uncanny amount of trivial and apparently completely random knowledge, possessed of an eccentric sense of fashion, and a weird fetish for horse-related gadgets.

And while good Intel may be the basis that allows for successful infiltration work, it also happens to be the area that personally suits him least out of all the other fields.

Venom is a man of action.

He appreciates the hard work of the team that supports him in the field, but it is one thing to be handed the mission details in a file for study during the ten hour flight to the mainland, or to listen to Kaz' voice grow rougher with every hour spent on the comm; and another entirely to suffer through an in-depth debriefing with Shalashaska.

It is the true meaning of torture and, unlike that fortunate commander, he has no convenient shaska to fall onto.

This is how Mission: Evasion came to be. Miller would give it a better name, surely, something along the lines of Sneaky Snake, but the XO is not involved.

"Snake."

That voice conveys the thinly veiled annoyance in a manner that makes Venom freeze on the spot. The box comes to a stop with the rough drag of cardboard on concrete. A tense moment of silence follows, but things seem calm enough, so Venom dares to take a cautious, carefully measured step forward.

Only to bump into something.

There is a curse, followed by,

"Quit fooling around."

The slit is too damn narrow for him to see through. R&D will have to do something about that. Venom stills again. Peeks through the gap at a different angle. He can see leather, the brown leather of a boot. The foot taps the ground. Spurs jingle.

He's going in the wrong direction, it seems. The iDroid shares that opinion. Venom, protected from the scathing glare of the Tactical Instructor by trusty cardboard, marks his goal and begins the slow and arduous crawl backwards, until his foot hits metal.

"You have arrived at your destination," says the lady with the professionally sexy voice.

"Are you kidding me?" asks Ocelot.

He has to crouch and take a step over the threshold, and then it still takes some tricky manoeuvring to get the position just right. When he does, Venom allows himself to lie down and relax. Mission complete – almost. He is now one box amongst many, and while there may be others like it, this one is his.

The sound of leather creaking reaches his ears in the next instant.

"Alright," Venom hears Ocelot announce joyfully, "I'm shooting on three. One"

Venom looks at his wristwatch. The truck is running late. Murphy's law, he guesses. He wishes he wasn't as intimately familiar with it.

"Two."

This is going to be a close one. While he has gotten not as much accustomed as resigned to letting himself be treated for injuries suffered in the line of work, he really wishes to avoid having to explain to the medical team as to why he needs some lead pulled out of his backside. Why Ocelot thinks that bullet-wounds are something his life lacks, is a mystery.

xxxx

Ocelot's finger tightens on the trigger. So god help him, he is going to shoot Snake.

Never make a threat you do not mean to follow through with.

That sound familiar, Boss?

Miller is going to murder him when he finds out. Or hurl his crutch at him, which is the next closest thing.

"Thr-"

He is interrupted by the double honk of a horn. The delivery truck rolls around the corner, and two members of the Base Expansion Team jump out. They salute him briefly, before going about their duties.

Ah, of course. It is noon. Ocelot chuckles. If he had arrived a couple of minutes late...

"Snake," he cajoles, softly. The other man has to know that he has seen through his plan.

The soldiers are almost done loading the few crates, and Snake still refuses to come out of his cardboard castle. It is time for him to learn that it cannot bear his weight, in a rather humiliating way that Ocelot plans to enjoy to the fullest.

The Russian smirks in satisfaction as the soldiers lift the box. In the next moment the smile is draining from his face, slowly, like stagnant water from that clogged washbasin in the third floor's common bathroom he has avowed to never visit again after the incident with the exploding toilet.

There is no sign of the Boss. Ocelot's brain is still busy processing what his eyes tell him, because it is just not possible. He has not taken his eyes off that damned box, not for a single bloody second.

Harried Badger and Merry Sloth shoot curious glances in his direction as he slowly circles the loading area.

A glare from the Russian sends them scurrying, double time.

There is nowhere Snake could have gone; no place for him to hide. He still must be here, somewhere.

Ocelot decides to try a more diplomatic approach.

"You can come out now."

There is no answer. He has already completed not one, but two full circles, and found no hidey holey his superior could have escaped into. Just to be sure, Ocelot gets down on one knee, and checks under the railing. Then he straightens, and peers over it. He spends a good couple of minutes scanning the sea for a floating body. Then he taps the metal floor in search of hollow spaces.

It is another twenty minutes before he is ready to admit defeat. Snake has slithered between the cracks in the concrete, just like his namesake, or merely vanished into thin air.

o

Ocelot lasts a week before he can take it no longer. Snake's eye flicks upwards at the unmistakable sound of his footsteps, but he does not otherwise acknowledge his approach.

"Fine." The Russian spreads his arms in a gesture of which he hopes that it conveys all the frustration of the past days. "I learned my lesson. You win, Boss." The words do not come easily. "Are you happy now?"

Snake grunts noncommittally, and raises a can of that teeth-rotting stuff he seems to crave to his lips. Ocelot watches in impatient silence as he drains it, head tilted all the way back, throat moving. Done with the drink, the other man crushes the can in his prosthetic hand and tosses it in the direction of the bin. It bounces off the edge, spins, and somehow still manages to land inside.

Snake's full attention is now on Ocelot, who briefly contemplates the unfairness of life.

"You're going to make me ask, aren't you?" The Russian laughs, and it comes out strained and bitter, even to his own ears. He has to remind himself that there is nothing to be ashamed of in being defeated by Big Boss.

Nine years bereft of that particular feeling have left him... cocky.

Snake blinks. "Something wrong?"

Ocelot swallows past the initial urge to shoot that barely perceptible smirk off his superior's face, and grits his teeth. "How?" Ocelot tries again, and when no answer is forthcoming, "How did you do it?"

"You tell me."

Another lesson from the legend. Ocelot used to scoff at those, but that was before he had learned their true value. "You couldn't have left that box. There was no place for you to go; I checked. You weren't inside that truck, either, and-"

"Damn." Realization dawns. "You weren't there at all, were you?" It is not a question, and he snorts at the obvious solution he failed to see before. "R&D made you a mobile decoy, you sneaky bastard."

"Ocelot," Snake chuckles, shakes his head, and heaves himself to his feet.

Fooled again. The younger man has had enough. "Are you going to tell me, or are you just going to keep gloating? Because, frankly, you're insufferable like this."

The Boss just beckons him to come closer, after briefly scanning their surroundings.

Ocelot does as he is bidden. If this information is for him and him alone, he cannot but feel a spark of something he thinks he had buried long ago. A crook of Snake's fingers is all it takes to bring him even closer, until he has to fight the urge to push the other man away.

He doesn't like having another predator breathing down his neck.

Snake closes the last inch, until Ocelot can feel the faint brush of his beard against his cheek, and smell the sweetness of liquid sugar on his breath. Warm breath tickles the shell of his ear in a soft caress, as Venom whispers,

"You've got to think outside of the box."

Ocelot barely registers the hearty slap on his shoulder that nearly knocks him over. Big Boss retreats again and does his vanishing trick, leaving him alone to nurse the threatening headache Ocelot is developing more and more often these days.