This story is dedicated to the one and only Shining Zephyr - A wonderful writer with a spirit to match. You made the table conversation cool again! Thanks for everything, chicky.

This idea came to me pretty randomly one day and I had to explore it even though it's pretty short. The story takes place between MGS and MGS2, which there is only about 2 years between. I think people sometimes forget that after Shadow Moses, Otacon and Snake didn't instantly become best friends...there was a period where they had to get to know and trust each other and that's kind of where they are in this piece...the 'getting to know each other' phase.

In it, you'll find elements of Solid Snake Soldier's and Shining Zephyr's work since both of them have inspired me so, so much! Enjoy! - Andi

I still remember what I was doing when Snake showed up to my New York apartment. I had just put in the second disk of season one of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing. I let the knocking go on a few minutes, thinking it was someone's hard rapping on the neighbor's door across from me. But after the knocks got impatient and started to sound like canons being shot in the hallway, I decided to peep outside.

When I opened the door, Snake was positioned like a bent action figure with his arm in mid strike, complete with a duffle bag accessory in his other.

"Can I come in?" He asked when he got tired of humoring my blank stare.

Solid Snake has never needed anyone or anything but Solid Snake. I came to that conclusion within the first five minutes of talking to him—even through the door of the storage locker I was talking to him from behind. There wasn't a single thing Snake could gain from befriending or even graciously associating with other people so, for the most part, he didn't. There were exceptions but not even they were considered "friends". The 'I always work alone' motto, that worked for him and it was as permanently instilled as every scar on his body he had inherited in his experiences that caused him to adopt it in the first place.

Strangely enough, I was one of those exceptions. After Shadow Moses, Snake and I went our separate ways. I went to England for a while to search for my family before I finally came back to New York to try and continue my life as normally as possible and Snake, he stayed in Alaska, constantly reliving the events of Shadow Moses and harboring the demons of his past. In the few and far between moments in time we were in touch, he never told me how bad it was and on some levels, I don't think he even really knew. But he was a loner, a social renegade who prescribed his own self-help methods for the darkness that swallowed his life and they usually included too much alcohol and too little control over his consumption of it.

After a while, even our loose contact faded. This was the first time I had seen Snake in a little over a year and the first time I had heard from him for nearly five months and though I wasn't even sure how he had found my address, I moved to let him come in.

I could tell he was a little shell shocked by the contents of the living room: mismatched, strategically placed furnishings padded with more anime decor than a 13-year-old Japanese boy.

"Are you hungry?" That was all I could think of to say when I caught a glance of the popcorn I had just taken out of the microwave. He shook his head, dropped his bag, and took a seat in the chair that I would have used for company if I ever got any. "Something to drink?"

He shook his head again.

"Did you need something or were you passing through the neighborhood on your way back to the Arctic?"

He forgot to shoot me the usual look he did whenever I made a joke that didn't sit right with him which was usually every single joke I had ever made.

"I need a place to stay for a while."

"Forgot to pay your rent?"

I got the look that time. "No, I just don't want to be at home right now. I was hoping I could stay here for a while."

It wasn't until the possibility of incorporating another human into the structure of my apartment came up that I realized truly how small the 700 square feet I existed in was. A one bedroom, one bath unit sandwiched in a building with five other like living quarters—it was truly housing for the single or at least two people who loved the idea of never being able to turn a corner without seeing the face of the other. We weren't the latter.

"How long is a while?"

"Not long."

"All I have is the couch."

"That's fine."

"Does Meryl know you're going to be here?"

"Yeah." His response was short, unhesitant, and slightly irritated. Knowing Snake, I naturally didn't think anything of it at the time.

Meryl Silverburgh, she was the other exception and the way that mine and Snake's even loose contact had been possible. Even though she was young, she developed feelings for Snake far beyond her years and found it somewhere in her patience and tolerance to move in and have a relationship with him after the Shadow Moses incident. Maybe Snake didn't know how bad he had gotten with the self-medicating but Meryl did and I was always surprised how she stuck around despite it.

So with that, the deal was made and without a single hint as to why he was choosing the sofa of a cramped city apartment versus his Alaskan retreat. I sat on the sofa and hit the stop button on the DVD player. Heero Yuy and Duo Maxwell would have to wait.

When I woke up the next morning, I didn't remember that I had a mercenary sleeping on the sofa. It didn't spring back into my mind until I walked within the vicinity of his snoring. He barely fit on it but even with his feet propped up on the opposite arm and his own arm hanging over the side, he looked relaxed somehow. I couldn't even imagine what the days prior had been like for him if that was restful.

Snake stumbled into the kitchen around the time I was pouring my first glass of coffee. I turned around to him and held up my mug. "Want a cup?"

"Sure."

"I hope you slept alright. I slept on that couch a few times when the air vent in my bedroom wasn't working during the summer and I think I would have had better luck on the floor."

"It was fine." He took a long first sip from his mug and sat down at the small table in the center of the kitchen. We sat at the table, se-sawing our mugs to and from our mouths in silence until he finally looked at me and asked, "How long have you been living here?"

I shrugged, a little baffled by his interest. "I don't know. Three years, maybe. I'm really lucky the owners held the apartment for me when I was on Shadow Moses and in England. It would have been almost impossible to find another one here."

"I had almost forgotten about you going to England. Did you find your family there?"

I shook my head, staring into the ripples removing the spoon from my coffee had created. "No. Well, not all of them. I did find my step mother, Julie, but..."

"But..."

"Let's just say it was bittersweet. She couldn't give me any information for the person I was really looking for."

"Who's that?"

I sighed. My step sister, Emma, brought up a wall immediately within myself that I couldn't knock down, no matter how much I wanted to. Remembering the way I left her wouldn't even let her name come out of my mouth to anyone else.

"It's not important." I lied. "I have a feeling they simply don't want to be found."

"I know what that's like."

I couldn't resist the opening. "Is that why I haven't heard from you in five months?"

He looked down again and shook his head, "You wouldn't have wanted to talk to me."

"There's email."

"I was in a bad place, Otacon."

"When have you ever been in a good one?" I caught myself. "Look, I just started thinking really bad things when I didn't hear from you. You could have found some way to let me know you were okay."

"What could possibly happen to a man carrying a ticking time bomb inside of him in the form of a virus?"

It was my turn to give him back his look. "I'm serious, Snake. You could have dropped dead and I wouldn't have known."

He smirked. "I guess I see how that might ruin your day."

I groaned heavily and leaned back in my chair to cross my arms in front of me. "I'm happy you find that amusing, Snake."

"Take it easy, Otacon. I'm no more happy about it than you are. You don't think I think about it?" It wasn't until that moment that I realized he did and more than would have ever given him credit for.

"We have to find Naomi. It's the only way we'll cure it."

"She doesn't know how to cure it. She told us both that."

"And you actually believe her?"

"What other choice do I have right now?"

"You have your own team, Snake, willing to help you. Me and Mei Ling and Meryl--"

"I don't need Meryl!" he snapped at me. As he huffed slightly behind another sip from his mug, I don't think he realized I was snapping back.

"Oh, that's right, Snake. You don't need anyone. I almost forgot. Snake the lone mercenary, treading the world all by himself, never needing a single soul but his own! It must be really nice to be so damn free and void of human interaction." I realized I was starting to yell but at that point, all I could do was lower my voice. I couldn't take the anger it was rooted and seething in out. "Why are you even here, Snake? Did you get bored watching Meryl and the caribou in Alaska and decided to let me amuse you for a while instead? Because that's all I am, right, Snake? Entertainment. Me and all my stupid little emotions. I bet you're just tickled pink." I got up and threw my coffee cup into the sink, breaking the handle on it as I later found out. I didn't know where I was going in my spacious matchbox of an apartment but that kitchen and everything in it—the chairs, the table, the floor, even the coffee maker—felt suddenly like a gasoline that had doused the small flicker of a heated discussion and I had to get out before it engulfed me.

"She left me." If Snake was looking for a way to stop me dead in my tracks, he found it when he said that. When I turned back around to him, I knew Snake wasn't only correcting my assumption that him and Meryl were still together...but he was also telling me I was wrong about everything else I had assumed and said as well. "I guess the drinking finally became too much for her. She left me a note with one line: 'I'm sorry but I'm done.' So, I drank for five months alone in that house and one day, I couldn't look at anything in that place anymore including myself." He looked up at me to meet my blank expression, "So, I took the first plane out of Anchorage and came here. I didn't know whether to bother you or not so, I spent the first few nights just walking around. I had to call Meryl for your address but she wouldn't give me your phone number so I'm sorry about showing up out of nowhere."

Since it's pretty hard to stand with a foot in your mouth, I was sitting back down at the table by then. He was apologizing to me. He wasn't even angry at me which only made me want to double the amount of it I was feeling at myself and hammer it into my heart. With a spike.

"It's okay, Snake." I offered, feeling so much like an ass I considered trading sleeping spots with him.

"I can leave tomorrow. Tonight even if I can find a flight--"

"That's not necessary," Before he could get out a response, I added, "You can stay as long as you like. Besides, 700 square feet isn't that small, right?"

It was a terrible joke and he didn't give me his look that time. Instead, we both laughed.

Just like friends do.