[This is a story I started at the beginning of the year, then set down. I've always planned on finishing it, and I may still, but as it stands I can't work myself up to it. The original plot was that (after I laid out all of the necessary tell-don't-show exposition on their characters) Sunny would leave for work, forget something, come back in the house, and catch Little John smoking. I think I remember the brand I'd chosen for him to be smoking were Davidoff Golds, if that makes any difference. Anyway, this cuts off in the middle of Sunny remembering how she met Little John at MIT, I think.
Unless someone really likes it and asks me to, I probably won't finish this.]
Little John leaned back in his seat, running one hand through his platinum blonde mane (it was getting too long-Sunny would have to cut it soon) and crossed his legs. The little lady herself was still snoring in the bedroom, and John was suffering to maintain his composure until she'd wake up; he couldn't stand loud, grating noises like that, and he wasn't used to waiting on breakfast. Usually being the first to awake, Sunny would spend half-an-hour preparing some comestible delight before waking him with gentle prodding and kisses. Little John preferred it that way, having seen the alternative. This wouldn't have occurred if it weren't for John having another one of his bizarre nightmares, that kind that had always plagued him-they'd always seem so real, the way the the rain would pound against the jungle canopies of Vietnam like the thud of Montagnards slapping their drums, or the icy gales squealing high above that Alaskan island. They'd always end in the same way: getting caught sneaking around, tortured and killed-at which point the nightmare would end and Little John would shoot up quivering with fear.
It was bad enough that Sunny had to see him like that, even if she insisted that it didn't make him any less of a man, but the shock of getting violently killed every few nights was compounded by the feelings of guilt and shame they conjured up over his brief, humiliating stints with the green berets and, shortly thereafter, the CIA. Even so, ruminating on such a subject for too long threatened to depress him, so Little John did what he could to focus on other things. He stood up and sauntered over to his study's window, looking out over the green fields of Krasnodar Krai, still beautifully verdant even under the overcast morning skies. Far off in the distance, the round cap of one of guard towers could be seen-part of one of Solis's outposts in the closed area.
Ever since the election of the first openly socialist U.S. president in 2024, the private astronautics and security industries had been slowly but brutally nationalized over the course of the country's first two four-year plans-although the plans themselves were implemented under some kind of euphemism to anaesthetize the hoi pollois to the idea of a planned economy, but Little John couldn't remember exactly what it was called. Solis, now an international company, however, was too large to fail by the time the commissar came knocking; NASA lost its funding in 2019, and Solis, who had the contracts to design reusable launch vehicles for space tourism, was able to dominate the industry with very little competition (and what competition did exist was quickly assimilated in a blitzkrieg of 'mergers and acquisitions'). Private military companies were less lucky, with most being driven out of business and only a few stubborn foreign security advisors remaining, unable to legally undertake any direct action and risking falling into that nebulous hell of 'non-state actors' if they were discovered to cut the red tape.
A peculiarly loud snort from his sleeping girlfriend snapped John out of his pondering, and annoyed him. Covering his ears, he hid his face in his arms on the desk and groaned. There was a pair of (inordinately expensive) noise cancelling headphones that Sunny bought him in the bedroom, but waking her up was one of the few things that made him feel guilty-in fact, Sunny was the only person who could make him feel guilty, even if she never intends it. She wouldn't have minded being woken up, anyway, but that wasn't the point; what anemic, malnourished shell of a conscience existed in Little John told him that he treated Sunny poorly enough as it was, and letting her sleep in was the least he could do. John sighed, and sat up; to his surprise, the snoring had stopped. She had probably just rolled onto her side, he thought, the way she normally slept when she wasn't latched onto him: like a little angel. Some clanging snapped out of the kitchen, like a skillet softly hitting the magnesium oxide stovetop of the electric oven, followed by the sound of the faucet running.
Little John assumed these noises to be indicative of Sunny starting breakfast the way she did every morning, and quietly pushed open the study's door. Channeling the spirit of the family business, he mischievously snuck down the stairs to the kitchen, but found it empty. Stepping in front of the sink, it occurred to him too late to turn around, even when he heard the soft patter of one bare foot on the linoleum behind him. A handful of cold water struck the back of his head, soaking his hair and leaving him acutely aware of Sunny's breathy giggling.
"I'm sorry, baby," laughed Sunny, handing her boyfriend a hand-towel from a drawer handle. "Why are you up so early, anyway? You always sleep in," she asked, earnestly but still snickering, as she reached into the refrigerator.
"I just had a bad dream, it was nothing," John rubbed the towel against his head once or twice. Sunny produced an egg carton and some leftover ground chuck from the refrigerator, her shoulders dropping as she heard his words. Setting the food on the counter behind her, she looked at John concernedly, a tinge of pain in her eyes, and he averted his gaze.
Sunny furtively stepped forward, wrapping her arms around his neck and asking, "Why didn't you wake me?" John just stood there silent for awhile, then he wrapped his arms around her waist and locked his face into the crook of her neck, savouring the aroma of her messy grey bob. After it became apparent that he just wouldn't answer (the strategy John normally used to approach questions he disliked), Sunny gave a little sigh and whispered, "Would you like to talk about it?"
"No," John responded a little harshly, not realizing just how incensed her prodding made him. Attempting to recover, he gently added. "I mean, it was nothing. I'd already forgotten about it." Then he kissed her neck and hoped she'd let it go.
"Okay, sweetie," tenderly replied Sunny, familiar with John's sensitivity when it came to questions of his masculinity. His numerous failures in the military, exacerbated by an unhealthy fascination with the idea of war (inherited from his father), left Little John-in his mind-a broken, fractured image of a man, for which he compensated by seemingly incomprehensible acts of sudden aggression and meaningless power plays; these would sometimes spill over into his personal life with Sunny, reducing him to a puerile, tantrum throwing idiot every time she wouldn't entertain one of his outlandish notions of superiority. But Sunny wore the pants in the relationship, and as long as she could keep him away from those circumstances that forced him (as he imagined, anyway) into asserting his dominance over her or anyone unlucky enough to know him, John was actually a very agreeable and intelligent, if immature, individual-and a highly devoted lover.
"When's breakfast going to be ready?" asked John, nonchalantly, pulling away from their embrace. Sunny pulled him back and kissed his lips.
"About thirty minutes," she kissed him again, smirking, and slid out of the hug herself to go finish preparing the meal. John had inherited his mother's 'talent' for cooking, and Sunny enjoyed it, so she was almost always the one who prepared their meals. John would usually pace around the kitchen, thinking, and get in her way until it was ready, or he'd scurry off and tend to one of his weird little hobbies; which is what he appeared to do that morning, as Sunny saw him slink away up the stairs shortly after their embrace ended. Sunny started to heat one of the stove's eyes, and walked over to the pantry to grab an onion, before remembering the butter she hadn't taken from the fridge. She thought for awhile on how John liked his onions on patty melts, and remembered he liked them sliced, not chopped; then she thought more about John.
Little John's bizarre proclivities to the school of war arose from his childhood, which was (despite what one might expect) totally devoid of any actual violence, mostly because he rarely saw his father, Jack. Rosemary, John's mother and a psychological counselor, was a strong believer in Montessori education, and homeschooled him. The boy excelled in all subjects, but was particularly interested in history and possessed a preternatural aptitude for mathematics, able to solve complex differential equations by the time he was nine years old, with his tutors playfully referring to him as 'the little professor' since he was seven. It was in his eleventh year that the prodigy was diagnosed as an autistic psychopath, a pathological definition first posited by Hans Asperger in nineteen-forty-four. Rosemary hoped Little John might become the next Einstein, but Jack (who was still more enamored with combat than he let on to Rose or even himself) secretly dreamed of his son's genius combined with the boy's natural lack of empathy making him a soldier on par with even Big Boss.
It all came to a head in 2025. Little John, who'd become totally autodidactic and inordinately enthralled with Nietzsche's existentialist philosophy, began to spout overtly hostile rhetoric eerily similar to that which lead to the creation of Outer Heaven, and precipitated the Metal Gear crisis itself; Raiden and Rosemary agreed it was time for the young man to make a change. They approached him first with the prospect of attending a university, but (to Rosemary's horror) Raiden shortly thereafter gave John the alternative of going into the military-using the former Colonel Campbell's still viable connections to set him down the same path the Snakes took. Being raised on his father's superman stories of Solid Snake and Big Boss, Little John immediately agreed, and was enlisted as an 18X, or special forces candidate (at the age of sixteen no less, an entire year younger than normally allowed).
Little John's preferential treatment continued long past the initial entry, and he was allowed to continue his training to become a green beret long after less connected candidates would've washed out. To his credit, he did excel in language and mechanical knowledge-and was told he had the perfect mind and personal philosophy for war, but was totally incompetent and incorrigible when it came down to combat or survival; possessing mediocre fine and gross motor functions and a complete lack of talent for it.
The charade continued unabated for months until the evidence weighed against Little John's potential was incontrovertible, even to the young man himself. Already contemplating suicide, the final insult ostensibly came when Little John was called into a conference wherein he was dismissed from the training program, but (to his great surprise) was given an alternative. As in all special forces units, following the example of the legendary FOXHOUND, recruits were required to pass an ESP expectancy test. Little John, while barely passing most requirements (sometimes only due to bias) unexpectedly showed preternatural ability in the arena of the psyche, and, when he was given the opportunity to hone this unseen talent toward the goal of becoming a supercommando, the naive sixteen year old leapt at it.
Little John never speaks of what occurred in those dark days, or at least he never speaks to Sunny about it-but two years passed, and the boy who left returned a man (more or less). Sunny was never able to ascertain what must have happened for his time in the program to end so abruptly, and uncompleted, but ever since she'd met Little John he was always very resentful of his mother, and especially his father.
At the time, Sunny was pursuing her doctorate in astrophysics at her adoptive father's old alma mater, MIT, when she met a disillusioned undergraduate who looked suspiciously similar to her Uncle Jack, or Raiden. Attending under the assumed name of, "Jean J. Gibson" Little John, for all his genius, was a failing physics major known for