Chapter Text
Raiden’s consciousness flickers like a dying light bulb, balancing delicately on the edge between awareness and darkness.
He doesn’t remember how he ended up like this, curled in on himself and shivering and so unbelievably cold, and he doesn’t have the energy to get up. He can’t even keep his eyes open for longer than a second or two. It doesn’t help that he can feel the chill seeping into his bones, the frigid metal floor leeching away precious body heat and threatening to drag him into a sleep he’ll never wake up from.
He’s not sure how long he’s been laying here for when the ground starts to shake; faintly at first, before the vibrations quickly pick up in intensity, following a strange rhythmic pattern reminiscent of footsteps before coming to a stop right next to him. He manages to crack open his eyes and see that a shadow’s fallen over him, but he can’t lift his head enough to focus on the dark blur looming overhead.
He can hear a voice coming from… above? Or maybe around him? He can’t tell, just that it sounds strange, like it’s coming from something big.
Then the ground starts to move again — no, something’s being shimmied underneath him, slow and carefully, and then he feels his stomach twist with vertigo as he registers being lifted upwards. If he wasn’t so out of it he probably should’ve been panicking or freaking out or doing something to figure out what’s happening to him, but just trying to stay awake is a monumental effort.
“…—ivering pretty bad… doesn’t look like he’s—…”
His breathing is shallow, slow. In and out, in and out. He flinches at the sudden wave of warmth that rolls over him, a sharp contrast against his frozen flesh that gently washes in and out, like the tide beating against the shore. Then it turns into a rolling surge of heat that engulfs him, scorching at first before he acclimates to the drastic rise in temperature, and it’s blissful. Even with the gross sticky-wet feeling clinging to him he can’t stop the quiet little groan of relief that spills out of him as he melts into the heat, soaking it up like a sponge and letting it thaw the ice in his veins.
The warmth is relieving, but it does little to truly reinvigorate him. If anything it does more than just chase away the chill; it saps what few dregs of strength he’s managed to hold onto so far, draining them away, and numbing the ache in his muscles to leave behind a bone-deep exhaustion that he can’t bring himself to resist.
Letting his eyes flutter shut, Raiden drifts off into a warm, quiet nothingness, even when he feels himself start to tip forward right as he crosses the threshold into oblivion.
…
…
…
He doesn’t know how much time has passed when he starts to emerge from that blissful haze.
His awakening is slow and gradual. The first thing he becomes aware of is the heat, intense like he’s sitting in a bath just shy of scalding, yet not too hot to rouse him further. He’s faintly aware of something embracing him, firm yet soft under his gloves and wrapping around his form like a cocoon. The pressure is snug enough to hold him in place while still allowing him to lay comfortably slack against whatever’s cradling him, and between this, the foreign organic background noise thrumming through his body, and the gentle sway to his environment, he’s perfectly content with rolling over and drifting right back off to sleep.
Instead, Raiden is thrust into full awareness when there’s a loud churning noise right before the walls and floors and ceiling and everything suddenly squeezes him, not hard enough to crush the air from his lungs but enough to have him snap awake in alarm.
His eyes fly open only to be greeted with absolute pitch black, leaving him reliant on all his other senses. Unfortunately, wherever he’s woken up seems almost intentionally designed to assault those same senses, because he’s immediately acutely aware of just how hot, wet, and slimy his environment is.
He’s being practically swaddled by some weird fleshy material, slick and almost velvety yet possessing a firmness and power behind it that lets the space squeeze and jostle its occupant. The air is thick, stale and humid yet still breathable, but combined with the immense heat and it feels like he’s been dunked straight into a sauna or some boiling pot of stew. It threatens to sap whatever energy he’s managed to regain, but his growing fear and the oncoming adrenaline rush in his veins overrides any lingering exhaustion.
Raiden’s first reaction is to try and sit up, but there’s a gross sloshing noise as the walls push him back down into the spongy floor, something wet and fluid pooling shallowly around him. Immediately his hands shoot out in an attempt to resist and he can’t help but grimace at the way he can feel his digits sink into the slimy-soft material. But most notably he can feel just how weirdly strong the walls are, overpowering his efforts and forcing his arms back down into the liquid warmth as if correcting his unruliness.
Where the hell is he?!
Aside from the pitch black consuming his vision and the sensory nightmare he’s currently experiencing — he is extremely glad for the Skull Suit keeping him dry and deeply regrets ever taking the mask off — his ears are filled with an endless chorus of grotesque, alien sound.
There’s the constant ambience of what can only be described as wet fleshy noise, squishing and squelching around him. From below he can hear strange, burbling growls, muted yet still loud and strong enough for him to feel the vibrations rumble up through him. Overhead there’s a slow, rhythmic wooshing sound, rolling in and out like ocean waves.
The ocean…
Raiden sits there in the darkness for a minute or two, trying to ignore the churning of his environment or the feeling of slime soaking into his hair while he tries to recall his last waking moments. He knows he’s supposed to be in the middle of a mission on the Big Shell; he still remembers running around the place, dodging guards, defusing bombs, dealing with Fatman… but then it gets spotty after that. A splitting pain behind his eyes, the world seeming to spin and melt around him, and then everything going dark and cold and quiet.
It still doesn’t answer the question of where he is, of course.
He can’t hear anything over the constant organic din filling his ears, and he has no sense of time passing other than the sound of his own heartbeat. His hands claw at the slimy section of wall still pressing down on his chest, shuddering at the rolling wave of pressure that squeezes him for a moment, but with some exertion he manages to shove it away just long enough for him to sit up in the cramped space.
He tries to recall anything that could explain where he is and how he got here, but there’s still nothing. Did he get captured by Dead Cell? Maybe, but he has a feeling this isn’t the case.
If the terrorists really had caught him, then they’d either be torturing him for information by now, or they would’ve put a bullet between his eyes and tossed his cold, dead corpse into the sea. What reason would they have to take him as another hostage, let alone stick him in whatever fucked up inversion of a sensory deprivation chamber this is supposed to be?
He knows he should be contacting the Colonel for help. But between his growing anxiety, the constant churning and gurgling and sloshing and that persistent wooshing noise, the realization that he has absolutely no idea where he is or what’s happened to him has his heart starting to pound behind his ribs. Yet even then the deep, thrumming roar of blood in his ears remains relaxed and steady in spite of his growing panic.
It takes Raiden a moment to realize that’s not his heartbeat he’s hearing.
On shocked impulse he kicks out with a leg into the spongy wall, his boot connecting with a wet squelch that his environment immediately responds to. He shouts as the walls press in again, much tighter than before, nearly squeezing the breath from his lungs as he finds himself being pinned in place before he can try to writhe any further, which he does anyways. But now there’s a new noise; a low, reverberating groan, coming from overhead rather than somewhere below. His stomach lurches as he feels gravity shift a little.
It’s a struggle just to try and move at first, but when the pressure lets up enough for him to wriggle his arms free he starts fumbling for the watch on his wrist. He recalls being briefed on its functions before the mission, that it’s supposed to have a low-power light source built in. Enough to act as a miniature flashlight while still remaining dim enough to avoid drawing attention from the enemy.
It doesn’t take him long to find it. There’s a faint click as his slick fingers catch on the button, and in the blink of an eye he’s greeted by pale, rippling flesh swallowing up his vision.
Raiden reels in horror like he’s been shot, already tasting bile on the back of his tongue. Every surface of the space is made of muscle, pink and glistening with viscous fluids that drip between what little open space exists in thick, gooey strands. The phantom scent of freshly-spilled gore catches in his nostrils and for a moment his head hurts, like all of this is invoking some memory his brain simply refuses to process. But once the initial wave of shock washes over him, he realizes there isn’t a drop of blood in sight.
“Urgh. I think the kid’s awake…”
He jumps at the sudden voice. It’s muffled yet loud enough to be heard over the constant organic din. It sounds strangely familiar, but that doesn’t do anything to ease his rapidly-growing alarm.
“Hello?!” Raiden shouts as he pushes up against the ceiling of his fleshy prison. There’s a wave of pressure that pushes down on him, making him groan and writhe as he’s forced to curl in on himself, squeezed so firmly that his legs fold up against his chest and suddenly everything is too close and warm and wet and tight and he wants OUT of this terrible, living, breathing thing that he’s trapped inside of.
The voice sounds out again, reverberating through his bones.
“Mnnnff— Raiden, stop. You’re fine. Stop wriggling, you’re gonna give me a cramp.”
…is that Pliskin?
He grits his teeth and heaves against the walls with every ounce of strength he can muster, grunting with the effort. He barely overhears the muffled murmur of “fucking hell” before yet another wave of pressure squishes him back down, this time strong enough to make him cry out as the muscle briefly threatens to crush him.
Even with his breathing turning ragged and frantic, the air inside the organ is still breathable, if stale and tinged with the smell of whatever last meal his host had. If he wasn’t so shocked and confused and scared out of his mind right now he’d probably have the clarity of mind to question it.
But right now all he can think about is that he’s going to fail the mission, he’s going to fail Rose, he isn’t going to save the hostages or rescue the President because he’s going to be melted alive and he’s going to die.
“Pliskin!“ Raiden yelps, clawing at the slick folds kneading against him. His skin isn’t tingling and he doesn’t see any holes being dissolved into his suit, but he knows it’s only a matter of time. “Pliskin, you— you have to help me, I don’t know what the hell happened to me but I’m trapped and—“
“Raiden.” He cuts him off before he can say another word, stern and calm like he’s walking a rookie through disassembling their gun. “You need to calm down. You aren’t in any danger right now.”
“What??” He squirms as the walls slowly relax around him, enough for him to sit up again, but he is by no means calm because he’s inside something’s stomach and he’s going to get digested if he doesn’t find a way out and why is Pliskin acting so calm about this??
He can hear Pliskin sighing over the sound of air rushing in and out of his host’s lungs, the space flexing slightly with the movement of the diaphragm.
“I had to swallow you to save your life.”
It takes Raiden about four seconds to process those words, and an extra three to finally understand just who he’s sitting inside of right now.
“WHAT?!”
“Kid, listen to me. When I found you, you were six inches tall and on the verge of turning into a popsicle. I had to do what I could to keep you from freezing to death.”
“So you ATE ME?!” Raiden howls, starting to thrash and shove against his stomach lining again. His foot must’ve jabbed against one of Pliskin’s internal organs or something, because there’s a particularly strained grunt and then suddenly he’s being tightly squeezed again from every angle, cocooned in flesh that refuses to let him move without tremendous effort.
He can hear another voice coming from somewhere outside, but he can’t tell what’s being said or who they might be. They must be aware of his predicament, though, based on Pliskin’s response.
“Yeah, he’s awake. I’m trying to get him to calm down but he’s freaking out pretty bad right now.”
Raiden groans with exertion as he tries to get his fleshy prison to let him go, but the powerful muscle refuses to budge and it feels like he’s struggling to breathe beneath the strength being exerted to hold him still. Between his forced immobility and the belief that he’s going to meet some awful, fucked up demise, he’s left blind with panic.
“Pliskin— Pliskin please, you have to let me go, I can’t stay in here, I’m gonna die—“
If he wasn’t so deep in the throes of his terror, he would’ve noticed the gentle pressure nudging into his side, or that the other voice from before sounds closer and a little clearer. What snaps him out of his mental spiral, though, is the sound of his codec suddenly starting to ring in his ear. He picks up the line, desperately hoping it’s the Colonel or somebody else that might be able to help him.
“Raiden, can you hear me?”
The voice is unfamiliar, but calm and gentle and strangely sounds closer in proximity than Pliskin’s own voice, as if it isn’t having to filter through nearly as many layers of flesh and muscle and bone.
“Who is this?” Raiden responds, unable to suppress the raw fear in his voice.
“I’m a friend of Pliskin’s, you can call me Otacon. I know you’re really scared right now, but I promise you’re completely safe in there.”
“Safe?! I’m going to get melted!” He shrieks back at Otacon.
“Are you, though?”
“What!?”
“Are you actually melting?”
Now more confused than terrified, Raiden takes a moment to examine himself. He hasn’t been really focused on his surroundings, given that all he can see is the honeycomb-like texture of Pliskin’s stomach lining, but with him being prompted to actually observe only now does he start to notice the finer details.
He’s soaked from head to toe in gastric fluids, but aside from making him feel wet and miserable, they haven’t done anything to hurt him. His skin isn’t tingling or itchy or burning, and his suit shows no signs of damage. He should be suffocating from the lack of air, or passing out from the sheer heat of Pliskin’s core, yet he’s able to breathe just fine and the warmth cocooning him feels no different than standing in a hot shower.
Somehow, despite him being trapped inside the most hostile part of the human body, he’s… fine?
Otacon takes his silence as an answer.
“I get that this is probably really unpleasant and scary for you, but it’s really the only option we had to keep you alive. You don’t conserve body heat very well at your size right now. If Sn- Pliskin hadn’t eaten you, you could’ve died from hypothermia within minutes.”
“Yeah,” Pliskin’s voice vibrates around him, and suddenly it doesn’t feel quite so unsettling anymore. “If it helps, we’ve dealt with this exact situation before. This isn’t our first rodeo.”
“You… what?” It feels like what is all he’s been able to say in response to everything that’s been happening to him.
“Just try to relax, kid.” There’s a dull thump-thump from somewhere above as Pliskin pats his stomach, some attempt at a reassuring gesture. “We’re working on a way to fix this, but until then you need to stay in there.”
By now most of his fear and the accompanying adrenaline have ebbed away, but the concept that he’s genuinely safe despite being inside another person’s body is still something he’s struggling to grapple with. The growing sense of weariness creeping up on him makes it easier for him to just accept it, though he’s reluctant to let his eyes droop too much.
“Alright,” Raiden croaks. “How long do I have to stay in here?”
“Shouldn’t be too long, no more than an hour at most,” Otacon replies. “You should get some rest if you can. Right now Pliskin’s body temperature is the only thing keeping you from turning into an ice cube, but we’ll get you out and back to normal as soon as everything’s ready, I promise.”
Now that he’s thinking about it… when was the last time he really got to rest?
He’s been running around the Big Shell for so long, following orders and dodging bullets almost non-stop. He’s been so focused on the mission that he’s hardly had the time to even think about taking a break, not that he would’ve been able to anyways. But now, in here, there is no mission. There’s no voices chattering at him over the codec, no bombs or mercenaries or vampire freakazoids to worry about.
In here, the outside world may as well simply not exist anymore.
With how vigorously he’s been fighting against the soldier’s belly, it’s no wonder that he’s starting to feel exhausted. As if sensing this the walls gradually relax, easing him back down into a reclining position against the soft inner curve of the stomach, and between the heat melting into his bones and the velvety sponginess of the folds cradling him, it’s… weirdly nice. Even if his skin feels gross and slimy, but the sensation just draws up a memory.
Before he was deployed on the rig, they had to replace his blood with some nanomachine-infused alternative. He wasn’t (and still isn’t) sure what for, but after getting past the painful part of being hooked up to some machine and then crawling into a vat full of warm water, the experience was kind of relaxing. Just getting to lay there, letting his mind space out as the heated liquid regulated his body temperature, and if it weren’t for the ache of having a bunch of tubes stuck into his veins he could’ve peacefully drifted off to sleep.
A weary sigh escapes him. He makes the decision to flick off the watch-light, letting the pitch-black swallow his vision, and it becomes that much harder to resist dozing off to this strange primal hypnosis, induced by the ambient churning of Pliskin’s guts, the quiet rush of his breathing, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat…
He’s supposed to be safe, but he still can’t help but worry.
“Pliskin… you’ll lemme out soon, right…?” Raiden mumbles into the dark, looking for some last bit of reassurance, even if he feels a little childish for asking.
“Yeah. Just sleep. We’ll wake you up if anything happens.”
With those words Raiden lets sleep overtake him as he's lulled into a warm, comfortable haze. For the first time in a long time, his sleep is free of nightmares.
Sitting on the edge of the makeshift cot they’ve set up here, Pliskin — or rather, Snake — watches with half-lidded eyes as Hal studies his midsection, his hands pressing into his core to feel the tiny bundle of warmth nestled deep inside. This might not be the first time he’s had to do this, but the feeling of having something so small and fragile and alive tucked inside the confines of his own body is something that he’s still struggling to get used to.
The moment stretches on for a few beats. Otacon remains quiet, listening intently to whatever’s going on underneath his skin before he looks back up from where he’s kneeling between Snake’s legs.
“I think he’s finally out. He’s probably going to be asleep for a while.”
David lets out a sigh. “Good. He kept kicking the shit out of my liver.”
“Well, I don’t blame him,” Hal laughs softly. “I’d be scared out of my mind too if I woke up somewhere weird and found out I’m stuck inside somebody’s stomach.”
“Yeah? Well, the last time this happened, I’m pretty sure you were into it way more than you were actually afraid of being digested.”
Otacon’s face and ears flush pink. “Oh come on, you know I can’t help the things I find—“
“Weird? Fascinating? Attractive? Arousing?” Snake enjoys watching him squirm like this whenever he decides to be an ass and ‘interrogate’ him about his… particularly niche interests. Most of them he doesn’t really understand the appeal, but it’s cute watching his partner get all hot and flustered from even just acknowledging his fantasies in front of him.
Hal just sighs, shaking his head, though there’s a smile on his lips as his gaze drifts back down towards the soldier’s abdomen. “How does it feel? With him… y’know, being in there?”
Beneath all the layers of clothing and body armor and tactical equipment making up his image as Iroquois Pliskin, there’s absolutely no way to tell that there’s another person tucked away behind David’s ribs — but he is certainly aware of the presence inside of him. Raiden’s initial writhing and thrashing had threatened to make him genuinely nauseous, but now that he’s gone still and quiet he’s left with just a warm, comfortable weight resting in the bottom of his stomach.
“Feels weird,” Snake reports, “But not in a bad way. Kinda feels like I swallowed a hand grenade.”
His partner snorts in amusement, his hands still pressing and kneading against Snake’s belly. There’s a lot he likes about him, even if he’s a little reluctant to admit it himself sometimes, but right now he can’t help the fond little smirk at Hal’s curiosity towards his guts.
“Sounds like you’re starting to get jealous, if you ask me.”
Otacon promptly sits up, looking embarrassed at the implication.
“N-No! I’m just… ugh, you’re such a tease,” he groans. “I mean, I know I certainly wasn’t complaining about it last time. I’m just worried about Raiden, I guess. He seemed pretty scared when he first woke up.”
“Yeah, I don’t imagine any of his VR training covered what to do after getting eaten alive,” Snake muses, stealing a glance towards the dingy little workstation set up in the corner of the space.
It’s not really a proper workstation, since it’s basically just Hal’s laptop and a spare portable server stacked on some boxes. Normally they wouldn’t risk setting up shop like this, but this part of the Big Shell hardly receives any patrols, and even then Hal’s gone through the effort to hook into the security system so that they can spot trouble before it comes knocking. They have time to rest — and more importantly, time to help Raiden.
That’s another thing David loves about Hal; just how incredible he could be in his own special way. He might not be able to shoot a gun straight or perform feats of strength and athletics like Snake can, but his skill and talent with hacking and writing code on the fly is something that’s always captivated him, even if the more complex technical jargon flies over his head.
From what he understands, whatever’s affecting Raiden’s nanomachines that resulted in him getting shrank is similar to the glitch in Otacon’s own nanos during the Shadow Moses Incident. Now Hal’s trying to cross-reference and compare the glitched code from back then to the affected code in Raiden’s nanos, with the intent of cooking up some kind of counter-agent to reverse the effects.
Smart, but ultimately way too complicated for him to really wrap his brain around.
“How long until the code’s done generating, or whatever?” Snake asks. The idea of lying down for a while is getting rather tempting, but they’re technically still in the middle of a mission here.
Otacon takes a glance back towards his laptop before getting up off his knees, groaning quietly from the resulting ache of kneeling on the floor for too long. David still doesn’t get how he’s able to parse any info at all from those flowing lines of script on the screen.
“Well, it’s still compiling what I wrote, so maybe another thirty or forty minutes?” His eyes meet Snake’s as he straightens up.
“You look tired. C’mon, you should lay down for a bit, get some rest.”
“I thought Raiden was supposed to be the one getting rest,” he grumbles, but he doesn’t argue against him. Instead he lays back, scooting aside to let Hal join him.
There’s barely enough room for himself on the cot, let alone for two people, but neither of them are complaining about their accommodations as his partner manages to press in against his side. Snake’s arm winds around him to pull him in a little closer, allowing him to rest his ear over his heart.
They stay like this for a little while, hands folded over where Raiden sits snugly in his core. David listens to the quiet puffs of Hal’s breath against his chest, and Hal listens to the steady throb of David’s heartbeat and the slow, lax rhythm of his breathing.
“I was pretty scared at first,” Otacon murmurs.
“Huh?”
“When you uh… swallowed me by accident. In Shadow Moses.”
“Oh. Right.”
His memory of the Incident is a little fuzzy around the edges after four years, but he can still recall it clearly enough. Hal’s nanos had gone on the fritz, resulting in him getting shrunk and requiring Snake to take desperate measures. That meant putting him in his mouth — it’d been bizarre but necessary, but at least it’d been working fine. Up until he found himself getting jumped by some genome soldier, anyway.
It had happened too fast for him to register what he’d done, at first. Getting the butt of a rifle slammed into your ribs tends to be enough of a distraction for something sliding down your throat to go unnoticed. But once he’d dealt with his attacker and was left standing over a crumpled body, he remembers how his blood went cold when he realized he couldn’t feel Otacon’s weight on his tongue anymore.
Hal starts tracing slow, lazy circles with his fingers over Snake’s stomach as he continues.
“The thing is, I wasn’t really scared about dying. Okay, it might’ve crossed my mind once or twice, because it was pretty tight in your throat and I didn’t know if I was going to suffocate or get melted alive or something. But I could hear and feel you fighting that guy and I remember just feeling so worried. For you.”
“You were worried about me even though I could’ve accidentally killed you?” David asks.
“Y-Yeah.” Hal smiles sheepishly, his cheeks growing flushed again.
“I know, that’s pretty stupid. But to be honest once I got over the initial fear I was kind of just… awestruck, I guess? About being inside you? I mean, I was basically living out a fantasy that up until then I’d accepted as being totally physically impossible.”
“Right,” Snake hums.
“And… yeah, maybe I am a little bit jealous of him.” He blushes a little harder. “He probably wouldn’t be so scared if he had somebody else in there with him.”
They haven’t really discussed the aftermath of the Incident much, but he knows it’s definitely had an effect on Hal, and not in a necessarily negative way. There’s been times where they’ve laid together like this, simply listening to the sounds of their bodies at work, and sometimes he finds himself thinking about the experience, what it must’ve been like for his partner. How it’d feel if it ever happened again.
Hal laces his fingers between David’s, letting out a quiet, content sigh. “I wish we could sit like this forever.”
Snake’s breath softly hitches when he feels Raiden briefly stirring in his stomach, just him shuffling around to get comfy before he slumps back down into the velvety warmth of his insides. His eyes are starting to feel heavy again, and this time he doesn’t try to fight the drowsiness creeping over him.
“I’ll keep an eye on the program, so I’ll wake you as soon as the code’s finished compiling,” Otacon assures him.
With that being said, Snake finally allows himself to drift off a few heartbeats later, content with the trust in his partner, and satisfied with the knowledge that right now, Raiden is tucked away inside the warmest, safest place on the Big Shell.