smash_logs | Dorm Log The Sequel To End All Sequels

Entry tags:

Dorm Log The Sequel To End All Sequels

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Snake had long traveled via vents and casual walk, looking for very little in particular, but stopping each time something caught his interest. Well. He went anywhere that allowed him a smoke, because there was at least one very loud talking animal who wouldn't let it go that smoking was a horrible habit to get into. And the 'soldier' had known it. He simply... didn't really care. They had their uses. No point in putting the idea down without even trying it once. But people (and animals, evidently) could be so judgmental.

It was seeing Rick that took his thoughts and put them aside in favour of suspicion. Homeless, Snake had figured. Although in a town like FDC, it was hard to imagine someone hadn't bothered to dress him a little better. Not saying he was the epitome of all that was fashionable, but his sneaking suit sure looked better than the outfit Rick had managed to put together. He was sure he'd seen him before too. Briefly, perhaps. Snake didn't forget faces or voices, whether he personally associated with them or not.

He just couldn't put a name to the face.

"Hey," he addressed Rick somewhat gruffly, though his regular tone easily could have been interpreted as 'coarse' to put it lightly. "Dress like that and you're asking for a mugging." Even though they were still on academy campus, it hardly seemed impossible that the 'bullies' of the school would tackle the former core to the ground and beat him up. For. You know. Being a bum.

Excuse you, Snake, Rick was easily one of those 'bullies'. He really should keep a running tally of how many knuckle sandwiches he'd given (and consequently received) so far since getting a pair of knuckles to actually use.

The blonde awoke with a grumble, one leg dangling off the arm of the couch and an arm off the side of the couch. Under the low-sitting rim of his hat he could make out the other man's face--he looked kind of like that crazy Liquid Snake guy at first glance but... no, definitely not him.

"Oh yeah?" Rick sat up, tipping his hat back onto his head. "What's it to you?"

Rick thought he looked pretty stellar in his white button-up (buttons mismatching), green over-shirt, brown pants and differently colored socks peeking above his spurred boots.

"You're advertising yourself."

Except he realised in hindsight that it didn't make a lot of sense. At least, not to anyone who wasn't Snake. Well. Maybe Otacon because he seemed to know the mercenary in and out, which was a minutely agitating discovery, but to be expected with such a kinship. They were friends, after all.

Then he motioned to himself, "Not saying you should dress like me." Because he really didn't want someone coming in and trying to pose as him. Again. (To be fair, Solidus wasn't a very good replacement for the original, either. There could be only one.)

"Just saying there are kids here. Women. Children. How do you think it looks with a guy who can't get himself together?"

I bet that's what I looked like back in Alaska. And that was a bitter thought.

Rick snorted, positively offended. What an unfun sounding guy.

"Yeah, why don't you inform the fashion police that I don't give a crap."

He waved his hand in the air lazily. "Haven't had any problems with any of the women here yet so your argument's pretty baseless, compadre. Fact is I seem to get even more of a reaction outta' them the less I wear."

"Yeah," Snake had to give the guy some credit. "You probably do."

In a way, it was almost something Snake would have said. And in another way, he didn't like that someone could come in and sound like him. Or maybe it was that Snake didn't like how it made him sound. He didn't want to have an immediately journey of 'self discovery,' where he put together two and two with his atypical behaviour. For many moments, he didn't say a word and simply stared Rick down.

"Who are you, anyway?" Because he was sure he knew the voice, but the face was slightly a new one. Maybe he'd seen the guy in passing, but never up close the way they were now. Or at close to up close as they were going to get as long as he was bumming out on the couch.

Edited (Typoing.) 2013-03-07 02:07 (UTC)

"Yeeeeep." Rick agreed. "Sure do. Sure do."

There was a pause and a sniff, the indignant sort like the other man was eyeballing Snake up and down, trying to decide if he should oblige this guy with the glory that was his name.

"Name's Rick." He answered, in that oh-so-familiar sounding voice while shifting on the couch into a more up-right position.

"Adventure expert. Master of explosionese. Degree in dangerology. Tamer of wild dogs." That were Jock. Kind of.

"That sorta' thing."

Rick. What an unimpressive name. Not that Snake had any right to start giving judgment. David wasn't much better, which probably explained why he preferred to go by a codename instead. His eyebrows furrowed as he watched the hobo straighten up. At least more than he had been.

"Adventure expert?" Snake asked, unable to hide the incredulous tone that accompanied the words. "Since when did we need anyone like that here?"

Guess that explains why you're dressed the way you are. Adventurers were more likely to be interested in... Well. Adventures. In comparison to how they looked. And rightfully so, he guessed.

He kept Rick's other words fresh in his mind. When he played them all back, he had to admit that Rick really just sounded like he was probably fluffing himself up to throw off any potential competition. He thought he was a ladies' man and seemed to think himself reasonably impressive. Except Snake found... really nothing about him of particular intrigue. Except that he probably could have used a bath.

"Since danger never sleeps." Except when Rick was asleep. On the couch.

"Better than being the fashion police or whatever it is that you do."

"I'm an instructor," Snake corrected the adventurous hobo.

Lifting a hand, he pinched at the bridge of his nose, still slightly scorning the idea that he was teaching a class about boxes. It wouldn't have been his first pick. He still couldn't figure out why he was. The hand that smelled like oranges had something to do with it, he was pretty sure. That fucking Crazy Hand.

"And the class has nothing to do with fashion." As honestly the only time Snake ever really had a good fashion sense was when he cleaned up real well in a suit. But he preferred practicality over trend and style.

Rick's sense of fashion: whatever looked manly, which was subject to well, being very subjective. And tacky. And possibly out of date. Whatever campy 80s big action movie hero might be wearing (or lack thereof).

...Probably out of date.

For what it was worth, Rick thought Snake looked pretty manly for a human as he continued to squint at him, glancing at him up and down. Pretty manly in the facial area. The facial hair area.

Rick also thought Rick looked pretty manly, so it was possibly a moot observation. He leaned a little closer to Snake, genuinely curious.

"What is it, then?"

Snake thought Rick looked like a music artist from a few decades who had long since worn out his welcome. One-hit wonder, was the phrase for that. But Snake knew better than to say as much, though it was perfectly well within his bounds to open mouth and insert foot. He'd done that more than a few times in his life thus far and he was sure he was going to have no shortage of it.

Do you have to get so close? I'm not into guys. It was the passing thought as Rick scrutinised him. But then, he guessed it was to be expected. Not everyone could take Snake as he was, he guessed. Most of the people at the academy couldn't. At least, not the people who didn't already know him remotely. Maybe that was the reason he didn't go out of his way to meet new people. Why did he need to, really?

(Snake was such a welcoming fellow.)

His reaction was perfectly deadpan. "Boxes." Yeah. That was what he said.

"Boxes." Rick parroted, equally deadpan, with an additional tint of scrutiny.

"Like... practical box applications like how to use a box to beat up a guy or use it as an escape vehicle in a heist or something"

"Uh..."

Well, the curriculum for boxes was really whatever he wanted it to be. They could make cat houses and cover them with carpet if he really wanted them to. And it didn't seem like such a bad idea when he thought about it. Last time, they'd talked about how to pack boxes, which was stupid, but a little amusing.

"Yeah. Sure," Snake conceded. "Let's go with that."

Because Rick had some good ideas.

"Boxes." Rick parroted again and sniffed with a little nod, but with a little more consideration. Acceptance. Crazy concept, but he tended to like those.

There was a pause and a second sniff, this one acute to an actual smell rather than added emphasis to his words. Smell was such a weird sense that humans had. It was so damn hard to identify and describe smells.

"That smell..." He was sure he'd smelt this one before but this was faint and almost acrid, clinging to Snake's clothes. Reminded him of burning.

"'S not box-smell, is it?" He guessed burning was a thing boxes (and almost anything else for that matter) could do.

He almost said he didn't smell a damn thing. Except he knew better.

"Boxes don't really have smells."

Well, he guessed they did. It depended on what was in the box before he started using it for his own devices. Some boxes smelled like fruit. Like oranges. Some smelled like military equipment. In fact, most boxes Snake had been intimate with had smelled like something to do with some kind of military. Or Patriots, he guessed.

So he settled for the next best thing. No reason to deny Life's Little Treasures. Patting himself down, he offered up his pack of cigarettes. "This is what you want."

YEAH. Yeah that looked about right. Rick reached out and helped himself to a cancer stick without thinking much of it. He had peripheral knowledge of the stuff--something akin to sticking a child in front of campy, big action movies all day and all night until it corrupted practically every facet of their thinking. Obviously cool guys smoked. He was totally a cool guy.

Obviously Aperture knew they caused tumors and stuff in humans (among dozens and dozens of other things)--could just scoop those out later, so Rick wasn't worried about the repercussions at all. He had this human body now, and he was going to USE IT.

"That's it."

Rick could only get about as far as getting it between his lips before looking to Snake expectantly for a light.

Edited 2013-04-10 09:17 (UTC)

Not that Snake was completely in favour of sharing his smokes with some random guy who looked like a homeless man mooching off the academy's living quarters. But to say that his cigs hadn't come through for him at various points in his life would have been a lie. Cigarettes and Snake were something of a kinship that just couldn't be compared to anything else. Where the rest of the world could fail him, he could still light up at the end of it all and have that 'companion.'

The romanticism in smoking, he guessed. Not that many people would have agreed. In fact, most just classified it as a Mostly Disgusting Habit, and Snake supposed those people had a point. Maybe he just didn't care. Yeah. That was probably it.

Shaking his pack just enough to get a stick for himself, he stashed it away afterward. Then like the good samaritan he was, he leaned over to light up Rick's first.

With little hesitation, Rick took baby's first drag. He took it like a well-practiced pro! A nice deep inhalation that filled his lungs and burned everything from his nostrils all the way down to the very bottom of this throat.

He would savor this manly breath of air.

Savor the flavor.

Savor the...

"..."

...Not five seconds later Rick keeled over, red in the face and coughing like some omnipotent force just sucked all the air out of chest.

Snake had actually thought he was a pro. But somehow watching Rick suffer those brief instances where he lacked air seemed to be a bit nostalgic. How long ago had it been that he'd had his first cig? The reaction wasn't that different. He'd thought he was a macho man, just like he did in the present, and it had turned out that cigarettes had thoroughly kicked his ass.

He couldn't resist that crooked smile of his as he moved to light himself up. And in that 'seasoned pro' fashion, he took a long drag, casual, as if nothing could possibly pull him from his moment's peace.

And then.

"Good, eh?" was the question that accompanied Snake giving Rick a friendly pat on the back.

If Rick were paying much mind, he'd probably give Snake a stink eye for his seasoned pro fashion, but he was too busy trying to catch his breath.

"Great." He managed to get out in-between coughs. He figured this was just a hurdle and if he could force himself to take another drag it wouldn't be so bad.

The second one was met with more coughing, but not nearly as much.

"Wonderful."

He laughed. He actually... laughed. In the 'haha, I'm laughing at you' kind of fashion. It wasn't very nice of him, but who ever actually ever said he was a nice guy? (He really wasn't.) After it died down, he shook his head at Rick.

"I didn't know you were a rookie." He still wore that half-smirk, but his eyes held a little bit of... Well. Sympathy wasn't the word, but something skin to it. "For the first few minutes, you think you might just die and then comes the light at the end of the tunnel and suddenly you're in Heaven."

Then he added as an afterthought, "On Earth."

Let it be known Rick was not a big fan of being laughed at, especially when it wasn't his intention to be laughed at.

"I'm no rookie!" He snarled. "...Just been off the horse since. Now." It was obvious his defense was crap, so he focused on taking another drag. Again, he seemed to do better and better with each breath. His chest burned and his throat and eyes felt dry and ragged, but he was absolutely convinced at this point this was super manly and cool; ergo, something he must do.

"Pretty sure I'd be closer to the regular non-Earthly definition of Heaven by now if I couldn't handle it." Rick exhaled through his nose.

"Been there once anyway. Not as great as everyone makes it out to be."

Snake was no genius, but he knew when someone wasn't exactly being clean. So while he continued to wear that same slightly irritating smirk of his, he listened halfway attentively. Where the other half of his mind went seemed like some kind of autopilot, something he could easily dismiss in the event that Rick said something he might find slightly... crucial.

"The regular non-Earthly definition of Heaven, huh?" Just where was this guy from anyway? Didn't know a decent smoke. Comparing Earth Heaven to otherworldly Heaven. And truth be told while Snake believed in all kinds of things - especially regarding conspiracy theory - he wasn't sure about the otherworldly shtick.

Regardless of Samus and her space excursions.

"When you say you've been there, you mean the Earth Heaven or what? That's the only Heaven I'm familiar with." And he wasn't exactly in a hurry to get there either.

Rick was a robot and believed in Robot Hell and that was pretty much it. Any other beliefs were human conventions he adopted superficially and only circumstantially so.

"Up there. Space." Rick jabbed his index finger at the ceiling, finally feeling like all the burn of the smoke was settling into a tolerable feeling. "...I guess space Heaven or whatever some people believe--up beyond the clouds and all that. You been there? Didn't think a human could survive up that high, frankly."

Edited 2013-05-19 08:32 (UTC)

"No."

It was a rather simple response to all of that. Then he figured a little clarification couldn't hurt. "I've never been in-" Wait. His eyebrows knit together. Had he? There was that...

...Just a memory?

"I prefer being here on the ground." Helicopters were okay, he supposed. And harriers. But at the end of the day, it probably really depended on the company, too. He just didn't want to bring that up. "What were you doing up in space?" Make it about Rick, not about him.

(no subject)

bedroomblackbelt - 2013-05-20 04:46 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

loveisbloominginmypants - 2013-05-20 05:45 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only