It did help with the disguises - he without glasses, Snake with them, so they both looked a bit different. It just so happened Snake was perched on the end of the bed at exactly the point where Otacon's eyes stopped being able to focus completely fully. He thought, nerdishly, that Snake looked a bit like someone had duplicated his base layer, given it a pretty vigorous Gaussian Blur, and set it to around sixty per cent opacity.
It made the shadows around his eyes bleed slightly into the light reflecting off the frames of the unfamiliar glasses.
"At least now I know why I'm not a scientist," he said.
"Why?"
"Scientists never shut up," he explained. "I asked one of the men you told me to watch out for about Metal Gear in the hope he'd say something useful, and he spoke for hours about deterrence and innovation and nuclear proliferation and world peace - "
" - We're all like that. I thought you were used to it by now."
"No," Snake argued, shaking his head. "You're different."
"How am I different?"
"You actually know what you're talking about," Snake said, and Otacon wondered if there was some ironic subtext he was missing but realised from Snake's expression that wasn't the case. "The ones in the conference just said words they'd been taught. They had no idea what they meant."
"I suppose that's weapons development," Otacon said, moving in to sit beside Snake, who slid into focus until Otacon was able to make out the little pits and lines at the corners of his mouth instead of them being an abstract brushstroke pattern. "They don't particularly encourage their scientists and engineers to think very hard about what they're doing. If they did - "
" - they wouldn't be at a conference discussing how the industry has changed with the introduction of the Metal Gear model, am I right?"
Otacon shrugged. "Well, look. I'm here. Under a false identity, yeah, but I'm still here."
Something about taking on a false identity frightened him a bit. It was a little more comforting than he'd wanted it to be. It reminded him of when he was a kid and would play stupid pretend games, even when he was alone in his room and old enough to know better, because not being somewhere was a comfort.
"How're you getting on with the glasses?" he asked Snake, who smiled and slid them off his face in response, looking at them in his hands - except his eyes kept sliding up to Otacon's face, and Otacon pretended not to notice.
"They make everything swim," he said. "It's a bit like being drunk except without any of the good bits."
"What? Like everyone looking more arousing?"
"We'd look more arousing if we weren't in these stupid disguises," Snake groaned, handing the glasses back to Otacon. He put them on. They were slightly warm from Snake's nose. He expected Snake to look a little more sharp and in focus until he realised Snake was sitting so close he was in perfect focus already.
"I..." he said, slowly, frowning at Snake as if he was a difficult puzzle, or a nasty password he couldn't quite remember. "You always look like yourself. And I'm, er, used to being invisible."
Snake watched him, seemingly nonplussed, but there was a peculiar intensity with the way he was looking at him that made Otacon worry.
"And I...do you want to..." he thought fiercely, trying to work out what was wrong, "...kiss or, or...something?"
"Kiss?"
"Or something," Otacon suggested, flushing. "Because I, er, look, you're staring at my mouth. You've been staring at my mouth since I came in here."
"Staring at your mouth?"
"Well, mostly at my mouth."
There was a short silence. Snake sighed.
"You're not just suggesting it for my sake?"
Otacon leaned in and killed the build-up before it started, quickly, because he could feel the heat burning through his face and it was horribly distracting and nervy.
He straightened himself out, trying to ignore the adrenaline jitters, and smiled giddily.
"No," he said.