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Snake felt like an idiot, standing at the door to the makeshift medical ward. Everything at the new Mother Base was still under construction anyways. Diamond Dogs didn’t even have a functional medical platform yet, so the staff was taking care of the wounded in an area close to the living quarters. Not that they had an overflow of staff to begin with.
But there he was, their newly-appointed leader, staring at the orange-painted door with a soiled bunch of Golden Crescents in his fist. The blue flowers had started to wilt already, being picked almost 10 hours ago. When Ocelot had told him that they could be used for painkillers, Snake had tucked a bundle in his pack to bring back personally to base.
He pushed open the metal door and entered the room. It was tiny for its purpose, with no more than four beds lining the wall and a handful of equipment on the other. More like a field hospital than a proper medical unit. Two men, Grey Boa and Raging Wallaby, were currently on duty with armbands decorated with red crosses. They, as well as another patient lying in bed, stopped and saluted.
“Boss! Welcome back!”
Snake waved them off. He wasn’t here to check up on them, he was here to check up on Kaz, sitting on a bed furthest away from the door. His legs were dangling off the edge of the bed, the stump on the left side making his pants leg flap awkwardly. Even in here, he wore his sunglasses, face turned towards Snake. As Snake started closing in on him with heavy footsteps, Kaz’s eyes shifted lower.
“What? Did you bring me flowers?” he snorted, noticing the unfortunate vegetation clutched in Snake’s mechanical hand.
“They’re medicinal plants,” Snake corrected, lightly annoyed. “Ocelot said they can be used to make analgesics.” He looked around at the staff questioningly. Grey Boa stepped up and saluted again.
“I know how to do it,” the dark-skinned soldier said. “Those plants can be used to make herbal oil for external pains.”
Snake nodded, giving the heap of plants to Grey Boa. Eyes glowing, it seemed like he took it as a great honor. Most likely another one who knew only the legendary hero, and not the human man behind it.
“Kaz. How are you feeling?” Snake asked and sat down on the bed next to Kaz, despite having just returned from a mission. Not a particularly dangerous one, but still, he wasn’t exactly fresh from the long journey back from Afghanistan.
“I’m fine,” came the curt answer. Kaz looked away.
A memory flashed in Snake’s mind from the village in Northern Kabul.
A very helpful soldier had supplied him with the building where Kaz was being held, so Snake quickly made his way to it after making sure the unconscious enemy was out of sight. Stopping under a window, he heard a sound. Someone coughing. Certain that his target was in that building, he slowly circled to the door of the small building. He heard the coughing again, and then a sound that made something in his chest break.
“…ss.”
“Boss…”
Kaz couldn’t have heard him; he couldn’t have known that Snake was there. With a black bag over his head, he looked so pitiful, cuffed to a pipe. And calling out to Snake, whom he just hoped would arrive to his rescue, not to mention would arrive in time.
Slowly creeping forward, Snake noticed limbs missing from his MSF sub commander. The dried blood on the cuff of his shirt and on his pants indicated the loss to have been recent, most likely during his captivity. Snake’s blood had started to boil. Kaz had lost an arm and a leg because of him. Could he have arrived sooner? Could he have prevented this?
The same questions still echoed in his mind, back in the present. He lifted his natural hand to Kaz’s damaged shoulder, gently rubbing it. He wanted to say many things to Kaz. Wanted to express how he felt, then and now, but couldn’t find the words. Wasn’t sure if he even had such words.
“Does this hurt?” he settled for instead, squeezing the tense muscles under his hand. Kaz shook his head, blond locks falling into disarray.
“No, the guys tell me that massaging is actually good for the stumps.” Kaz wasn’t able to keep the bitterness completely away from his voice. “Hard scar tissue and so on.”
Encouraged, Snake slid his hand lower on Kaz’s shoulder, gently stroking along his shoulder with light, long motions. Having one less arm meant that his other arm and shoulder had to work harder to compensate. Especially when the loss was so fresh that his body hadn’t had time to learn its new dimensions yet. And true enough; Snake could feel knots and under his hand as it wandered across Kaz’s shoulders
Grey Boa rushed back into Snake’s peripheral view. “Boss! It’s ready. I hope you’re pleased!” he exclaimed, presenting a small, brown glass jar to Snake. The glass was still warm to touch after the heat of the infusion. Snake brought the jar to his nose and inhaled the sweet aroma. Satisfied, he nodded and dismissed the soldier.
Turning his attention back to Kaz, Snake pushed at his good shoulder, indicating he should turn his back towards Snake.
“You don’t have to do this, Boss, “ Kaz said quietly, but moving into place anyways. “I’m sure you have other things to do.”
“It’s the least I can do.”
Snake rolled the grey Diamond Dogs t-shirt up Kaz’s back and over his head. His mouth formed a tight line at seeing the fresh scars, burn marks and cuts on Kaz’s back. His captors had obviously tried every other trick in the book before resorting to limb removal in order to get Kaz to sing. Snake was certain that even if Kaz had known his location, he wouldn’t have given it up.
It was like some twisted form of time travel, this coma he had experienced. Snake had taken a shortcut into the future, while Kaz and all the others had stayed on the slower path. For Snake, the explosion in the Caribbean had been just a few weeks ago. But for the rest of the world, it was nine years. He still occasionally felt like he couldn’t wrap his head around the fact.
Subsequently, Snake had no idea how Kaz felt about him now. Snake had started to realize what Kaz’s certain remarks meant, as well as the strange looks Snake sometimes caught him casting in Snake’s direction. These hints had begun to manifest even stronger just before the nuclear inspection, but then their time had been interrupted. Snake would not have held it against Kaz if he had decided to walk away from the business – and Snake – altogether. But no, there he had been, running interference and even getting himself captured, just in order to make Snake’s escape from Cyprus easier. Did that mean that Kaz’s feelings hadn’t changed? And what’s more, what about his own feelings?
A silence had fell into the small medical unit, the other patient sleeping and the two staff members away for the moment. Snake dipped his fingers into the oil jar, spreading it across his palm. He stared at his bionic arm for a moment, hesitating to use it at all, but decided to wrap Kaz’s discarded t-shirt around the mechanical hand and use it as support. The cotton cloth wouldn’t be as strange against skin as the cold metal.
Kaz sat unusually quiet, head low, as Snake spread the oil on his neck and shoulders. Snake used his fingertips to rub and stroke the muscles straining under the skin, sliding his hand down the side of Kaz’s neck and down over onto his shoulders. When enough oil was covering Kaz’s upper back, Snake moved to knead the trouble spots with his calloused thumb, stabilizing Kaz with the shirt-wrapped hand from the front.
The only sounds now were the occasional pleased hums and distressed winces coming from Kaz, as Snake continued to alter between gliding his hand across Kaz’s shoulders and working on the tension knots. He placed his thumb on the side of Kaz’s neck, the other fingers on the other side, just below the hair on his neck. Putting pressure there freed a loud sigh from Kaz, his upper body relaxing.
“So, Kaz…” Snake started, clearing his throat, unsure of what to say. “Why ‘Diamond Dogs’?”
Kaz inhaled deeply, leaning back into Snake’s touch. “We are dogs of war, all of us here,” he said, raising his head. Snake’s hand continued to drift up and down his neck, widening his fingers to keep his touch on the upper trapezius muscle.
“And diamond… The word originates from the Greek adámas. It means indomitable, unyielding.”
Snake kept his eye trained on Kaz’s upper back, now and then using his knuckles to knead the hardest knots he found. Kaz seemed to be staring at the far wall, lost in a thought.
“Other words for the stones often mean “eternal bond”, “fortitude” or “purity”,” he added quietly. Trust Kaz to have a vast knowledge of just about anything, mused Snake in his head. He pressed his thumb firmly into the spot just outside his shoulder blade, eliciting a gasp from Kaz. Snake continued with confidence, kneading in a circular motion. Sucking in a deep breath, Kaz continued, compassion bleeding through his words.
“The same is true for the Star-of-Bethlehem flowers you laid on the Boss’s grave. They represent innocence, as well as chastity.”
The softness in Kaz’s voice surprised Snake. He felt the younger man – technically still younger, even if Snake had paused his life for nearly a decade – slowly relax more under his touches. Maybe the old Kaz was still somewhere to be found, underneath the layers of anger and bitterness. Maybe he’d even see Kaz smile again one of these days.
“Yielding to no man while maintaining one's virtue - in other words, staying loyal to something,” Kaz spoke tenderly. Snake wondered whether Kaz was still talking about Diamond Dogs, or something else. He moved to use the heel of his palm between Kaz’s shoulder blades, avoiding pressure on the spine.
“That feels really nice,” Kaz continued in a mellow tone. Snake decided to push a little further and slid his hand down Kaz’s damaged shoulder. He tensed a bit at the touch to his stump, but didn’t flinch away. Snake just stroked the injured shoulder lightly, feeling the large areas of scar tissue stretch under his fingers. One day, he thought, one day he’ll find the bastards who did this. He’ll find them and let his venom drip over them, torturing them to the point where they’ll beg for death. But he won’t stop. No. He’ll break them. Physically and mentally break them.
But right now, he’d focus on tending Kaz. The scar tissue felt dry to the touch, so he added a little more oil to his fingers before continuing. Kaz’s arm had been severed right below the deltoid muscle, Snake surmised as his fingers kept on working the soft tissue below the skin. His patient was sighing more often now, breathing heavier.
Switching over to sit in front of Kaz, keeping his hand on Kaz’s skin for as long as possible, Snake noticed a pink flush spread across his cheeks. His mouth was a little open, eyes closed behind the dark sunglasses. He snapped awake from his daze when he felt the hospital bed dip again. Snake tucked his leg underneath himself and repositioned his hands on Kaz’s shoulders, focusing his single eye on his hands instead of Kaz’s face. He slid his fingers just below Kaz’s prominent collarbone, and continued his massage on his upper chest. He wasn’t sure anymore what made him begin this treatment in the first place. Touching Kaz just felt… good. It was good to feel how the pain dissipated from Kaz’s upper body, at least temporarily.
“Boss, I…” Kaz started, placing his hand on top of Snake’s, squeezing. Snake stopped his movements.
“I’m not the man I was back then,” he spoke with something akin to desperation mixing in his words.
“I’m broken now, damaged goods. I can’t—“
Snake didn’t want to hear what it was that Kaz couldn’t. He stopped the flow of words by sealing Kaz’s lips with his own, pressing a quick kiss to those full lips.
“Kaz. I don’t care,” he said, emphasizing each word. Kaz let out a heavy breath, raising their joined fingers to his lips, pressing down hard. Nine years of worry and waiting seemed to evaporate from his face, eyes scrunched shut. For a moment it looked like he might cry. Thankfully, he didn’t, but released his hold, lifting his head up.
“You sure are something else, Boss,” he said, a tinge of happiness spilling through his words. And there it was, the beginning of the smile Snake had so longed to see, breaking through the sadness and anger.