MGS: Photo Shoot
May. 14th, 2011 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
what_we_dreamTitle: Photo Shoot
Series: MGS
Pairing: None
Rating: G
Notes:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
help_japan commission for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thelonebamf, for the theme of Philanthropy working jobs they're not used to doing.
It’s a narrow, nondescript street lined with two and three storey buildings with cheap mom and pop stores on the ground floors and dingy apartments above. There’s no graffiti on the walls, but there’s been no attempt at maintaining clean facades, either. From all angles, it’s just an ordinary city street. Except for the two figures standing on the roof of one of the buildings in the dark, staring across the black river of asphalt.
“And you’re sure they’re meeting in there?” Snake, leaning nonchalantly against a curve of ancient moulding, examines each window of the opposite building through a pair of field glasses. He’s wearing a simple black sweater and dark jeans, but against the night sky he’s nearly as invisible as he would be with stealth camo.
“Have a little confidence,” replies Otacon, squatting beside him. The ends of his dark trench whisper against the uneven tar paper when he moves.
Snake lowers the binoculars and looks at him. “Last time you said that, I had to carry you home.”
“That was different. How was I supposed to know the fence would give out?”
“I really can’t imagine. Unless, possibly, because I warned you it would?”
Otacon coughs and turns away, raising his own binoculars as his coat skims over the rough ground with a sound like pebbles grinding against each other. “Anyway. Yes. We know La Révolution is in there; I have email exchanges confirming the address as their neutral bargaining ground. But emails can be faked, and the accounts are purged regularly. We need tangible evidence: photos and video. The problem is the major players only meet rarely, and after their last purge I lost their trail. They could come back tomorrow, or next month. And since we’re talking about a Nigerien militia, they’re a bit leery when it comes to cameras suddenly being mounted on the street. If we try to monitor them remotely, they’ll just spook and we’ll never get the photos.”
“So?”
“So what?” Otacon asks, surprised, coat rustling.
“So what’s the plan?”
“I don’t know,” he says, as if speaking to a child. “That’s why we’re here.”
Snake sighs. “You’re telling me we came all the way out here, and you’ve got no plan.”
“Well, not entirely. There’s a vacant first floor space. We could lease it.”
“I don’t think they’d take much more kindly to a surveillance op inside a shop than one outside,” says Snake dryly.
“Of course not; we’d have to have some camouflage. You know. Like a duck blind. Except without the ducks. Or the swamp. Or a blind, really.” Otacon trails off slowly. Snake, recognizing the threat of digression when he sees it, cuts it off.
“What you’re saying is, you want us to open a small business.”
“Right.”
“You and me,” clarifies Snake, in case Otacon isn’t seeing the problem here.
“Philanthropy.”
Snake rolls his eyes, and breaks it down further. “A man who has never done his taxes and one who thinks decorating merchandise with cartoons whose eyes make up 50% of their heads is a good business model, opening and operating a small city business.”
“It wouldn’t be a real business, Snake. We wouldn’t have to make money. We just have to appear legitimate enough to hang around for a couple of weeks. And hey, we could get lucky. They might meet again tomorrow.”
“Hal, I’ve never even run a goddamn lemonade stand.”
“That makes two of us. But it can’t be that hard. I mean, 8 year-olds run them.”
“8 year-olds have no bottom line.”
Otacon doesn’t answer. After a minute, Snake tucks away the field glasses and runs a hand through his hair. He leans up against the edge of the roof and crosses his arms over his chest, in the universal stance of a man who has fought stupidity and lost. “Fine. Say we open a business. Selling what?”
“I don’t know, what about a corner store?” says Otacon, shrugging.
“Too much crap; we need a clear line of sight from the counter to the windows.”
“A dry cleaning place?”
“Too much heavy equipment to order.”
“Insurance agency.”
“You’re a crap liar, and I’m sure as hell not selling it.”
“Hey, how about a tourist agency?”
“Hal!”
Otacon makes an irritated noise in his throat. “Well, you come up with something. I don’t see why I have to plan everything.”
The fact that they’re having this conversation makes Snake wonder why he lets the engineer plan anything. “We need something with an open space, not much stock to order, a reason to have cameras in the front window, and – ideally – no customers.”
“So basically an empty room,” comments Otacon, sarcastically.
“No,” says Snake, slowly. “With cameras. Photography – it can’t be that hard. And people always say they can never get their businesses off the ground. Hell, we probably won’t even have to buy a camera.”
There’s a thoughtful silence. “Well, you’re right, it’s not that hard. I’ve got some experience with digital –”
“I can take the photos; you’ll be doing the salesmanship.”
“But Snake –”
“No way in hell am I dealing with soppy women and their little sticky-handed offspring. Besides, you look honest. People like that.”
“Snake – ”
“So you’ll take care of the lease. Don’t worry, I’ll help you move in the heavy equipment.” Snake pushes off from the roof and heads towards the rusty fire escape at other side.
Otacon stares after him. “…What heavy equipment?”
Snake doesn’t bother to look back over his shoulder. “Exactly.”
----------------------------------------------------------------
It’s typical of Philanthropy’s endeavours, Snake thinks, that they end up renting a space which clearly last saw use sometime around the Eisenhower administration. The paint has passed the peeling stage and moved right on to disintegrating, the floor boards have warped with the heat and cold of many unregulated seasons to resemble a rough sea more than hard wood, the sole counter appears to have been mercilessly attacked by a D-movie axe murderer, and the back room smells like it’s been colonized by a rotting sea monster.
He squats behind the counter screwing on a new laminate top, and watches Otacon’s battle to clean the walls to a stage where they don’t resemble the victim of some sort of hideous flesh-eating disease. Currently the walls are winning by a country mile.
“This,” Otacon pants, using a high roller to slop paint over the portion near the ceiling, “is not what I had in mind when I said we should start a business.”
“You thought we could just vacuum up the dust and call it a day?”
“I don’t know. I just didn’t envisage complete home renovation. I mean, next thing we know, one of us is going to be up on a ladder with an apron and bandana, dusting the ceiling.”
“And that one will be you.”
“I’m not cut out for this. I don’t have the biceps. Look, my arms are shaking!” He raises the paint roller in demonstration; flecks of Buttercup Yellow splatter his face, hair and clothes. He curses and puts it back hastily in the pan to rub at his glasses. Snake rolls his eyes and turns back to his work.
“Not sure you really deserve sympathy there, Hal.”
“Just you wait until the till jams on you,” mutters Otacon, as paint smears across the lens and then refuses to come off. “See if I help you then.”
“Jamming from the hoards of customers we’ll be attracting with our leprous walls?”
“Just you wait.”
--------------------------------------------------------
There first customer, ironically enough, comes in while Otacon is off having posters printed.
The store still doesn’t look like one anyone without a moderate to severe untreated eye condition would enter. The linoleum floor is stained and scarred, the walls a cheerful yellow but bulging bulbously like the lids of botulism-infested jars. There is a pathetic display of camera parts in the window, primarily to camouflage the two cameras which are actively filming the store front across the street. And that, apart from the back counter with a till from 1980 and a crooked rack Snake found in a back alley that’s now holding cheap postcards of major American cities, is it.
All in all Snake considers, even with Open signs five feet tall, no sane person will ever enter the store.
Which is why Snake nearly drops the magazine he’s reading when the dented bell above the door jangles. Until he sees the boy standing in the doorway.
He’s the kind of boy who is stereotypically cast as the know-it-all in schoolroom TV shows. The one with the Neville Chamberlain haircut, the glasses the size of saucers, and the look that says he has seen more interesting things on the bottom of his shoe. Snake estimates the kid to be about ten in reality, and about 55 in his mental opinion of himself.
Snake gives the boy a long stare. It doesn’t seem to phase him; he walks in and pulls a camera out of his shoulder bag.
“You’re new,” he says, looking around.
“Could be.”
“You’re a camera store.”
“No; we’re a photography store.” That’s what the sign stuck on the door in plastic letters says. Photo Shoot, professional photographers. Otacon nearly laughed himself sick coming up with it.
“I need my pictures developed.” The boy puts the camera down on the counter and pops open a small panel in it to pull out a tiny chip.
“Too bad, kid, we don’t develop. Just photography. Taking pictures,” Snake elaborates. The kid gives him a look that says he has encountered more intelligent statements in his grade school primer.
“If you’re a photography shop, you must have a printer.”
“Still on order.”
“Then why are you open?”
Snake glares at him. “We’re taking bookings.”
The kid looks highly sceptical. Snake meets his stare flatly, and then looks down pointedly at the camera on the table. The kid snorts and picks it up slowly, as if to make it clear he’s doing it entirely because he wants to and not for any reason to do with Snake.
“I don’t think you’ll do very well. Mr. Earesly and the shoe store only lasted 2 months. And Mrs. Fowlds and the cards and fairies barely made 3. And they were trying. Not just a rack of post cards.”
“Times are hard, kid. Now go away.”
“I’ll tell my mother you aren’t selling anything. I’ll tell her you aren’t even trying.”
“Was she thinking of getting family portraits done?”
The kid looks at him suspiciously. “No.”
“Then I don’t see a loss in it for me. Now scram.”
When Otacon comes in later, Snake tells him he successfully fielded their first customer. Otacon looks at him in something that looks suspiciously like amazement.
“What did he buy?” he asks, putting down the rolls of paper-wrapped posters on the counter and picking at the tape keeping them shut with his nails.
“Nothing. I chased him off.”
“I think,” says Otacon slowly, looking up from the posters, “that you may not have entirely grasped the concept of a store.”
-------------------------------------------------------
Snake, like most mercenaries, doesn’t believe in concepts like cosmic justice or karma. But that doesn’t mean he can’t appreciate the fact that their second customer comes in while Otacon is minding the store.
He himself is in the back, ostensibly looking at stock catalogues but actually reading Jane’s Defence Weekly, when the chiming bell causes him to look up entirely instinctively. He blinks once, and then stands to get a better view through the narrow doorway while a grin spreads slowly across his face. There is an entire category of women in the world who he has always gone out of his way to avoid; these are the ones who could be described with the adjective simpering.
She’s in her mid-thirties, and isn’t particularly well off – her clothes, her make-up, and the fact that she’s come into the store at all project the fact louder than words. But she carries herself with a stunning amount of self-confidence, looking around the thinly stocked store with a very evident belief that things will go her way. And then she catches sight of Otacon, standing at the corner like a deer in the headlights, and gives a huge, simpering smile. Snake almost wishes he could see his partner’s face. But that would mean putting himself in the line of fire.
“Oh, you are open,” she says, as if she weren’t standing in the store. “Great!”
“Um, yes. We opened yesterday. We’re still in the process of getting set up, though,” says Otacon hurriedly, lest she try to actually make a purchase.
“But you do photographs, right? Group photos?”
“Yes,” admits Otacon. “Well, we will. Um, soon.”
“Great. Because our other photographer just cancelled with absolutely no notice – so unprofessional – and I was walking home to try to find someone else, and saw the sign. It just seemed like fate, you know?” Her smile widens to reveal white shining teeth. Otacon leans away slightly.
“Right. Well, I can take your name and number, and contact you when we get our bookings set up. We’re having a bit of minor trouble with our systems, but –”
“Oh, but we’ve already got the venue booked!” Her eyes open wide, expression shocked. “We have to do the shoot on Friday. It took forever to get a reservation, and my parents are only in town for two days.”
“Friday’s a bit –”
“And then of course we’ve already convinced the kids, and that took even more work than the reservations. They would only agree to come if we took Charlie too, which is probably a mistake, but sometimes you just have to make sacrifices.”
“Uh, I’m really not sure – Charlie?”
“Our dog, a German Shepherd. You know how they can be,” she says absently, and then continues, “And Stan’s poor father isn’t doing at all well these days – they say it’s just a bad bout of gout, but when can you really trust doctors? – so it really may be the last chance we have to get a big family photo done. And the weather is supposed to hold,” she finishes triumphantly, as if playing an ace.
“Yes, but, you haven’t even seen any of our samples,” cuts in Otacon desperately.
“I’m sure they’re marvellous.” The smile breaks out again, wide and winning. “So. Friday at 1. My name’s Myra Steele, 350-502-2591. We’ve booked the Japanese garden at the university for half an hour. See you then.”
The door bells ring cheerfully as she strides out into the bright afternoon sun. Otacon turns around with a pen still in his hand, face frozen in stunned horror.
“Good thing she didn’t try to bargain about the price,” comments Snake, watching her leave.
“Guh,” says Otacon eloquently, and drops the pen.
----------------------------------------------------
Unsurprisingly, they don’t have many bookings. A couple of stray, nervous people come in for passport photos, and are turned away with the news that Photo Shoot’s approvals are still in the mail. Some more come in wondering about graduation shots, and are told to call back in a month, when they sure as hell had better be finished this damn stakeout. Plenty of people come in looking to get pictures developed, enough that Otacon drafts up a sign for the front door to go under the Hours of Work notice reading: NO PICTURES DEVELOPED. After that, customers substantially filter away.
Or, to put it another and more accurate way, all the normal customers filter away.
-------------------------------------------------------
“I need some family pictures taken.”
“Sorry, but we’re all booked up until next month.”
“It’s urgent. I need them by tomorrow.”
“I’m afraid we’ve got no spots open. Could you rebook your event?”
“No. The mortician says Uncle Peter’s got to be underground by tomorrow.”
----------------------------------------------------------
“Do you guys do films?”
“No.”
“Because my girlfriend’s totally hot, and I thought –”
“No.”
“We’ve got lots of chains, and one of those crotchless leather suits –”
“No.”
-------------------------------------------------------------
“Me and the wife want some photos done. For our 50th anniversary.”
“That’s… a really nice thought. But we’re booked until next month.”
“No problem. We’ll register.”
“Okay. Your name?”
“Brooks, Eugene and Edna.”
“Right. And do you have a venue.”
“We were thinking outside. Maybe the park? It’ll probably have to be at night, though.”
“Oh? Why?”
“Edna wants them to be. You know. Artistic.”
“Well, all photography is a form of art, Mr. Brooks.”
“No, young feller. Artistic. With a capital A.”
“Uh…”
“More of the art, and less of the trousers, boy!”
“You want to do naked shots?”
“You could put it that way.”
“Um. Right. Right. We’ll – we’ll call you with a slot. At night.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it, son. Edna’s been pushing for this for years. Oh – here, you almost forgot to take my number!”
“Oh. Yeah. Right. Forgot.”
-------------------------------------------------------
Unfortunately, Friday rolls around all too soon. Which is to say, at all.
They’ve been monitoring the video feed focused on the building opposite in fast-forward at the end of each work day, and live at night in case they need to go in with better cameras for the night shot. But there’s been no sign of movement from across the street. Which means the stakeout isn’t over. Which means they have to go out on their first and, if Snake has anything to say about it, last actual job.
“I’m sure it won’t be that bad,” says Otacon, setting a large camera out on the table beside a tripod. “I mean, not any worse than sneaking into a heavily guarded facility for producing illegal weapons and taking pictures, and then fighting your way out when you forget to turn off the flash.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” returns Snake immediately, scowling at the table-full of equipment Otacon’s laid out. “And that – sneaking – is easy. Stealth and survival is what man was bred for. Organizing hordes of snivelling little brats, and dogs, and women who think smiling wider will solve all their problems in life, that’s something no one should have to deal with. Another is this,” he adds, gesturing at the table.
“You wanted to be the photographer.”
“No. I just didn’t want to be the director.”
“I don’t see how this can possibly be difficult to someone who can tell the make and year of any firearm ever made from 50 feet away. Look. Just one lens, since God knows what trouble you could get into with two. You just click it on like this,” Otacon picks up the black cylinder and twists it into the camera’s body with a click, then presses a button and pulls it off again. “Simple. Here’s the tripod, you know all about that from your heavy machine guns. Here’s the flash for the camera, in case it’s too dark, it attaches here,” he puts the heavy flash on the camera and then takes it off again. “And we’ve got a free-standing strobe light too, just in case.” He indicates it, a second tripod with what looks like a folded umbrella at the top, beside a wrapped-up power cord. “It would be best if we don’t have to use it, since it needs a lot of power and I doubt they have too many jacks out in the garden.”
Snake stares at the mess of equipment. “You realise that we don’t actually have to do a good job here. We just show up, take some photos, and leave.”
“Sure. And what happens when we have to stay here for another month, and this woman launches a smear campaign against us for ruining her family photos.”
Snake raises his eyebrows. “That seems unlikely.”
“A pair of international terrorists running a photography business is unlikely. A client convinced we’ve ruined her last shot at a family photograph sabotaging a business is eminently conceivable. And we can’t afford to be drawing any attention to ourselves here. So we’ll go, and we’ll take good pictures, and we’ll send them to her. And then we’ll buy some really good whisky and try to erase this day from our memories.”
-------------------------------------------------------
Snake has lived through terror, and he’s lived through atrocities. He has caught live grenades, and been trapped unarmed by the enemy in a room with no exits, and lit the flame that reduced his mentor to ashes.
Nevertheless he will never for the rest of his life forget the sudden violent twist in his stomach at the expression on his partner’s face when, having finally arranged two sets of wandering grandparents, a perfectionist mother and frustrated father, two children who wouldn’t stay still even if nailed down, and a dog whose only apparent purpose in life was to knock over any expensive equipment – if even remotely possible into the decorative koi pond – he turned and asked Otacon, “You remembered to put the film in, right?”
The subsequent chaos is also unforgettable, if only because dog bites tend to scar almost as badly as tongue-lashings from upwardly mobile housewives.
-----------------------------------------------------
Two days later, La Revolution comes in at two in the afternoon, caught on video by the cameras set up in Photo Shoot’s window. That evening, Snake and Otacon pack up and leave with an unspoken deal nearly tangible as they load the truck: Otacon never again suggests they go undercover as anything other than a soldier or an engineer, and Snake never brings up Photo Shoot again.
END
Series: MGS
Pairing: None
Rating: G
Notes:
help_japan commission for thelonebamf, for the theme of Philanthropy working jobs they're not used to doing. It’s a narrow, nondescript street lined with two and three storey buildings with cheap mom and pop stores on the ground floors and dingy apartments above. There’s no graffiti on the walls, but there’s been no attempt at maintaining clean facades, either. From all angles, it’s just an ordinary city street. Except for the two figures standing on the roof of one of the buildings in the dark, staring across the black river of asphalt.
“And you’re sure they’re meeting in there?” Snake, leaning nonchalantly against a curve of ancient moulding, examines each window of the opposite building through a pair of field glasses. He’s wearing a simple black sweater and dark jeans, but against the night sky he’s nearly as invisible as he would be with stealth camo.
“Have a little confidence,” replies Otacon, squatting beside him. The ends of his dark trench whisper against the uneven tar paper when he moves.
Snake lowers the binoculars and looks at him. “Last time you said that, I had to carry you home.”
“That was different. How was I supposed to know the fence would give out?”
“I really can’t imagine. Unless, possibly, because I warned you it would?”
Otacon coughs and turns away, raising his own binoculars as his coat skims over the rough ground with a sound like pebbles grinding against each other. “Anyway. Yes. We know La Révolution is in there; I have email exchanges confirming the address as their neutral bargaining ground. But emails can be faked, and the accounts are purged regularly. We need tangible evidence: photos and video. The problem is the major players only meet rarely, and after their last purge I lost their trail. They could come back tomorrow, or next month. And since we’re talking about a Nigerien militia, they’re a bit leery when it comes to cameras suddenly being mounted on the street. If we try to monitor them remotely, they’ll just spook and we’ll never get the photos.”
“So?”
“So what?” Otacon asks, surprised, coat rustling.
“So what’s the plan?”
“I don’t know,” he says, as if speaking to a child. “That’s why we’re here.”
Snake sighs. “You’re telling me we came all the way out here, and you’ve got no plan.”
“Well, not entirely. There’s a vacant first floor space. We could lease it.”
“I don’t think they’d take much more kindly to a surveillance op inside a shop than one outside,” says Snake dryly.
“Of course not; we’d have to have some camouflage. You know. Like a duck blind. Except without the ducks. Or the swamp. Or a blind, really.” Otacon trails off slowly. Snake, recognizing the threat of digression when he sees it, cuts it off.
“What you’re saying is, you want us to open a small business.”
“Right.”
“You and me,” clarifies Snake, in case Otacon isn’t seeing the problem here.
“Philanthropy.”
Snake rolls his eyes, and breaks it down further. “A man who has never done his taxes and one who thinks decorating merchandise with cartoons whose eyes make up 50% of their heads is a good business model, opening and operating a small city business.”
“It wouldn’t be a real business, Snake. We wouldn’t have to make money. We just have to appear legitimate enough to hang around for a couple of weeks. And hey, we could get lucky. They might meet again tomorrow.”
“Hal, I’ve never even run a goddamn lemonade stand.”
“That makes two of us. But it can’t be that hard. I mean, 8 year-olds run them.”
“8 year-olds have no bottom line.”
Otacon doesn’t answer. After a minute, Snake tucks away the field glasses and runs a hand through his hair. He leans up against the edge of the roof and crosses his arms over his chest, in the universal stance of a man who has fought stupidity and lost. “Fine. Say we open a business. Selling what?”
“I don’t know, what about a corner store?” says Otacon, shrugging.
“Too much crap; we need a clear line of sight from the counter to the windows.”
“A dry cleaning place?”
“Too much heavy equipment to order.”
“Insurance agency.”
“You’re a crap liar, and I’m sure as hell not selling it.”
“Hey, how about a tourist agency?”
“Hal!”
Otacon makes an irritated noise in his throat. “Well, you come up with something. I don’t see why I have to plan everything.”
The fact that they’re having this conversation makes Snake wonder why he lets the engineer plan anything. “We need something with an open space, not much stock to order, a reason to have cameras in the front window, and – ideally – no customers.”
“So basically an empty room,” comments Otacon, sarcastically.
“No,” says Snake, slowly. “With cameras. Photography – it can’t be that hard. And people always say they can never get their businesses off the ground. Hell, we probably won’t even have to buy a camera.”
There’s a thoughtful silence. “Well, you’re right, it’s not that hard. I’ve got some experience with digital –”
“I can take the photos; you’ll be doing the salesmanship.”
“But Snake –”
“No way in hell am I dealing with soppy women and their little sticky-handed offspring. Besides, you look honest. People like that.”
“Snake – ”
“So you’ll take care of the lease. Don’t worry, I’ll help you move in the heavy equipment.” Snake pushes off from the roof and heads towards the rusty fire escape at other side.
Otacon stares after him. “…What heavy equipment?”
Snake doesn’t bother to look back over his shoulder. “Exactly.”
----------------------------------------------------------------
It’s typical of Philanthropy’s endeavours, Snake thinks, that they end up renting a space which clearly last saw use sometime around the Eisenhower administration. The paint has passed the peeling stage and moved right on to disintegrating, the floor boards have warped with the heat and cold of many unregulated seasons to resemble a rough sea more than hard wood, the sole counter appears to have been mercilessly attacked by a D-movie axe murderer, and the back room smells like it’s been colonized by a rotting sea monster.
He squats behind the counter screwing on a new laminate top, and watches Otacon’s battle to clean the walls to a stage where they don’t resemble the victim of some sort of hideous flesh-eating disease. Currently the walls are winning by a country mile.
“This,” Otacon pants, using a high roller to slop paint over the portion near the ceiling, “is not what I had in mind when I said we should start a business.”
“You thought we could just vacuum up the dust and call it a day?”
“I don’t know. I just didn’t envisage complete home renovation. I mean, next thing we know, one of us is going to be up on a ladder with an apron and bandana, dusting the ceiling.”
“And that one will be you.”
“I’m not cut out for this. I don’t have the biceps. Look, my arms are shaking!” He raises the paint roller in demonstration; flecks of Buttercup Yellow splatter his face, hair and clothes. He curses and puts it back hastily in the pan to rub at his glasses. Snake rolls his eyes and turns back to his work.
“Not sure you really deserve sympathy there, Hal.”
“Just you wait until the till jams on you,” mutters Otacon, as paint smears across the lens and then refuses to come off. “See if I help you then.”
“Jamming from the hoards of customers we’ll be attracting with our leprous walls?”
“Just you wait.”
--------------------------------------------------------
There first customer, ironically enough, comes in while Otacon is off having posters printed.
The store still doesn’t look like one anyone without a moderate to severe untreated eye condition would enter. The linoleum floor is stained and scarred, the walls a cheerful yellow but bulging bulbously like the lids of botulism-infested jars. There is a pathetic display of camera parts in the window, primarily to camouflage the two cameras which are actively filming the store front across the street. And that, apart from the back counter with a till from 1980 and a crooked rack Snake found in a back alley that’s now holding cheap postcards of major American cities, is it.
All in all Snake considers, even with Open signs five feet tall, no sane person will ever enter the store.
Which is why Snake nearly drops the magazine he’s reading when the dented bell above the door jangles. Until he sees the boy standing in the doorway.
He’s the kind of boy who is stereotypically cast as the know-it-all in schoolroom TV shows. The one with the Neville Chamberlain haircut, the glasses the size of saucers, and the look that says he has seen more interesting things on the bottom of his shoe. Snake estimates the kid to be about ten in reality, and about 55 in his mental opinion of himself.
Snake gives the boy a long stare. It doesn’t seem to phase him; he walks in and pulls a camera out of his shoulder bag.
“You’re new,” he says, looking around.
“Could be.”
“You’re a camera store.”
“No; we’re a photography store.” That’s what the sign stuck on the door in plastic letters says. Photo Shoot, professional photographers. Otacon nearly laughed himself sick coming up with it.
“I need my pictures developed.” The boy puts the camera down on the counter and pops open a small panel in it to pull out a tiny chip.
“Too bad, kid, we don’t develop. Just photography. Taking pictures,” Snake elaborates. The kid gives him a look that says he has encountered more intelligent statements in his grade school primer.
“If you’re a photography shop, you must have a printer.”
“Still on order.”
“Then why are you open?”
Snake glares at him. “We’re taking bookings.”
The kid looks highly sceptical. Snake meets his stare flatly, and then looks down pointedly at the camera on the table. The kid snorts and picks it up slowly, as if to make it clear he’s doing it entirely because he wants to and not for any reason to do with Snake.
“I don’t think you’ll do very well. Mr. Earesly and the shoe store only lasted 2 months. And Mrs. Fowlds and the cards and fairies barely made 3. And they were trying. Not just a rack of post cards.”
“Times are hard, kid. Now go away.”
“I’ll tell my mother you aren’t selling anything. I’ll tell her you aren’t even trying.”
“Was she thinking of getting family portraits done?”
The kid looks at him suspiciously. “No.”
“Then I don’t see a loss in it for me. Now scram.”
When Otacon comes in later, Snake tells him he successfully fielded their first customer. Otacon looks at him in something that looks suspiciously like amazement.
“What did he buy?” he asks, putting down the rolls of paper-wrapped posters on the counter and picking at the tape keeping them shut with his nails.
“Nothing. I chased him off.”
“I think,” says Otacon slowly, looking up from the posters, “that you may not have entirely grasped the concept of a store.”
-------------------------------------------------------
Snake, like most mercenaries, doesn’t believe in concepts like cosmic justice or karma. But that doesn’t mean he can’t appreciate the fact that their second customer comes in while Otacon is minding the store.
He himself is in the back, ostensibly looking at stock catalogues but actually reading Jane’s Defence Weekly, when the chiming bell causes him to look up entirely instinctively. He blinks once, and then stands to get a better view through the narrow doorway while a grin spreads slowly across his face. There is an entire category of women in the world who he has always gone out of his way to avoid; these are the ones who could be described with the adjective simpering.
She’s in her mid-thirties, and isn’t particularly well off – her clothes, her make-up, and the fact that she’s come into the store at all project the fact louder than words. But she carries herself with a stunning amount of self-confidence, looking around the thinly stocked store with a very evident belief that things will go her way. And then she catches sight of Otacon, standing at the corner like a deer in the headlights, and gives a huge, simpering smile. Snake almost wishes he could see his partner’s face. But that would mean putting himself in the line of fire.
“Oh, you are open,” she says, as if she weren’t standing in the store. “Great!”
“Um, yes. We opened yesterday. We’re still in the process of getting set up, though,” says Otacon hurriedly, lest she try to actually make a purchase.
“But you do photographs, right? Group photos?”
“Yes,” admits Otacon. “Well, we will. Um, soon.”
“Great. Because our other photographer just cancelled with absolutely no notice – so unprofessional – and I was walking home to try to find someone else, and saw the sign. It just seemed like fate, you know?” Her smile widens to reveal white shining teeth. Otacon leans away slightly.
“Right. Well, I can take your name and number, and contact you when we get our bookings set up. We’re having a bit of minor trouble with our systems, but –”
“Oh, but we’ve already got the venue booked!” Her eyes open wide, expression shocked. “We have to do the shoot on Friday. It took forever to get a reservation, and my parents are only in town for two days.”
“Friday’s a bit –”
“And then of course we’ve already convinced the kids, and that took even more work than the reservations. They would only agree to come if we took Charlie too, which is probably a mistake, but sometimes you just have to make sacrifices.”
“Uh, I’m really not sure – Charlie?”
“Our dog, a German Shepherd. You know how they can be,” she says absently, and then continues, “And Stan’s poor father isn’t doing at all well these days – they say it’s just a bad bout of gout, but when can you really trust doctors? – so it really may be the last chance we have to get a big family photo done. And the weather is supposed to hold,” she finishes triumphantly, as if playing an ace.
“Yes, but, you haven’t even seen any of our samples,” cuts in Otacon desperately.
“I’m sure they’re marvellous.” The smile breaks out again, wide and winning. “So. Friday at 1. My name’s Myra Steele, 350-502-2591. We’ve booked the Japanese garden at the university for half an hour. See you then.”
The door bells ring cheerfully as she strides out into the bright afternoon sun. Otacon turns around with a pen still in his hand, face frozen in stunned horror.
“Good thing she didn’t try to bargain about the price,” comments Snake, watching her leave.
“Guh,” says Otacon eloquently, and drops the pen.
----------------------------------------------------
Unsurprisingly, they don’t have many bookings. A couple of stray, nervous people come in for passport photos, and are turned away with the news that Photo Shoot’s approvals are still in the mail. Some more come in wondering about graduation shots, and are told to call back in a month, when they sure as hell had better be finished this damn stakeout. Plenty of people come in looking to get pictures developed, enough that Otacon drafts up a sign for the front door to go under the Hours of Work notice reading: NO PICTURES DEVELOPED. After that, customers substantially filter away.
Or, to put it another and more accurate way, all the normal customers filter away.
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“I need some family pictures taken.”
“Sorry, but we’re all booked up until next month.”
“It’s urgent. I need them by tomorrow.”
“I’m afraid we’ve got no spots open. Could you rebook your event?”
“No. The mortician says Uncle Peter’s got to be underground by tomorrow.”
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“Do you guys do films?”
“No.”
“Because my girlfriend’s totally hot, and I thought –”
“No.”
“We’ve got lots of chains, and one of those crotchless leather suits –”
“No.”
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“Me and the wife want some photos done. For our 50th anniversary.”
“That’s… a really nice thought. But we’re booked until next month.”
“No problem. We’ll register.”
“Okay. Your name?”
“Brooks, Eugene and Edna.”
“Right. And do you have a venue.”
“We were thinking outside. Maybe the park? It’ll probably have to be at night, though.”
“Oh? Why?”
“Edna wants them to be. You know. Artistic.”
“Well, all photography is a form of art, Mr. Brooks.”
“No, young feller. Artistic. With a capital A.”
“Uh…”
“More of the art, and less of the trousers, boy!”
“You want to do naked shots?”
“You could put it that way.”
“Um. Right. Right. We’ll – we’ll call you with a slot. At night.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it, son. Edna’s been pushing for this for years. Oh – here, you almost forgot to take my number!”
“Oh. Yeah. Right. Forgot.”
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Unfortunately, Friday rolls around all too soon. Which is to say, at all.
They’ve been monitoring the video feed focused on the building opposite in fast-forward at the end of each work day, and live at night in case they need to go in with better cameras for the night shot. But there’s been no sign of movement from across the street. Which means the stakeout isn’t over. Which means they have to go out on their first and, if Snake has anything to say about it, last actual job.
“I’m sure it won’t be that bad,” says Otacon, setting a large camera out on the table beside a tripod. “I mean, not any worse than sneaking into a heavily guarded facility for producing illegal weapons and taking pictures, and then fighting your way out when you forget to turn off the flash.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” returns Snake immediately, scowling at the table-full of equipment Otacon’s laid out. “And that – sneaking – is easy. Stealth and survival is what man was bred for. Organizing hordes of snivelling little brats, and dogs, and women who think smiling wider will solve all their problems in life, that’s something no one should have to deal with. Another is this,” he adds, gesturing at the table.
“You wanted to be the photographer.”
“No. I just didn’t want to be the director.”
“I don’t see how this can possibly be difficult to someone who can tell the make and year of any firearm ever made from 50 feet away. Look. Just one lens, since God knows what trouble you could get into with two. You just click it on like this,” Otacon picks up the black cylinder and twists it into the camera’s body with a click, then presses a button and pulls it off again. “Simple. Here’s the tripod, you know all about that from your heavy machine guns. Here’s the flash for the camera, in case it’s too dark, it attaches here,” he puts the heavy flash on the camera and then takes it off again. “And we’ve got a free-standing strobe light too, just in case.” He indicates it, a second tripod with what looks like a folded umbrella at the top, beside a wrapped-up power cord. “It would be best if we don’t have to use it, since it needs a lot of power and I doubt they have too many jacks out in the garden.”
Snake stares at the mess of equipment. “You realise that we don’t actually have to do a good job here. We just show up, take some photos, and leave.”
“Sure. And what happens when we have to stay here for another month, and this woman launches a smear campaign against us for ruining her family photos.”
Snake raises his eyebrows. “That seems unlikely.”
“A pair of international terrorists running a photography business is unlikely. A client convinced we’ve ruined her last shot at a family photograph sabotaging a business is eminently conceivable. And we can’t afford to be drawing any attention to ourselves here. So we’ll go, and we’ll take good pictures, and we’ll send them to her. And then we’ll buy some really good whisky and try to erase this day from our memories.”
-------------------------------------------------------
Snake has lived through terror, and he’s lived through atrocities. He has caught live grenades, and been trapped unarmed by the enemy in a room with no exits, and lit the flame that reduced his mentor to ashes.
Nevertheless he will never for the rest of his life forget the sudden violent twist in his stomach at the expression on his partner’s face when, having finally arranged two sets of wandering grandparents, a perfectionist mother and frustrated father, two children who wouldn’t stay still even if nailed down, and a dog whose only apparent purpose in life was to knock over any expensive equipment – if even remotely possible into the decorative koi pond – he turned and asked Otacon, “You remembered to put the film in, right?”
The subsequent chaos is also unforgettable, if only because dog bites tend to scar almost as badly as tongue-lashings from upwardly mobile housewives.
-----------------------------------------------------
Two days later, La Revolution comes in at two in the afternoon, caught on video by the cameras set up in Photo Shoot’s window. That evening, Snake and Otacon pack up and leave with an unspoken deal nearly tangible as they load the truck: Otacon never again suggests they go undercover as anything other than a soldier or an engineer, and Snake never brings up Photo Shoot again.
END
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Date: 2011-05-15 03:37 am (UTC)I love how they bicker. They're so married.
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Date: 2011-05-22 04:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-15 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-22 04:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-15 11:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-18 08:45 am (UTC)I demand this in ficlet form right now. Oh god. I laughed so hard at that. And the rest of the fic for that matter. I have so much love for the more domestic situations with Snake and Otacon. It makes me yearn for a TV series or something about the Philanthropy years, but I won't be getting one I suppose. At least I have the fanfiction! <3