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Kaz fell to the ground.
It made an unpleasent sound, his mind almost dismissed it. Snake had heard many bodies fall to ground in his life, all kinds of ground too, dirt or metal or concrete, grass and other bodies even, everything.
It was background noise in his profession and not one that mattered much.
Not until now at least, cause it was Kaz. Kaz was always an exception, Kaz always mattered, somehow.
Why? He didn't know.
He pulled his gun out and shot the enemy soldier standing just a bit further and had their gun pointed to where the blonde used to stand. A simple reaction, just like usual.
Everything was the same as ever. An stealth mission, an undercover with both of them. Kaz liked being his support when one was needed.
They had blended in, took the head of that operation down, got useful info on their future plans and came out with head held high.
Victory secured, not yet spotted.
Until now. The last moment, cause Kaz thought they were safe and he could drop the act and custom. Dumb move.
That was unusual, those were unusual. He knew he shouldn't have brought Kaz, even though the man had godly acting skills...
A mistake, unusual.
Later, Snake would wonder why he shot with his pistol instead of a tranquilizer. Maybe cause his body understood what had happened before his brain could. Maybe cause he just liked to.
Both likely too.
"B-Boss..." Kaz mumbled, voice shaking and weak. Unusual. He never sounded weak, his XO was a strong man.
Everything was so... unusual.
I finally hit him.
Eye slowly traveling down to see Kazuhira Miller on the ground, face buried in dirt and blood. Blood.
Cause that was why that soldier had their gun up, they had shot Kaz. Kaz was shot.
Kaz was shot.
He repeated that to himself a few more times before basically falling to the other man's side, no even knowing how he just got there. There had been a few steps between them, he must've jumped ot ran.
He didn't feel distressed, not really. Calm and collected, maybe too calm even, numb in a sense. He put a hand on the other's face to soothe the harsh breathing.
Kaz calmed down too, just a bit, still shaking from the pain and bleeding though. Anxious around the touch, like an abused dog would be to pats.
The first order of business was getting out of the hot zone now. He briefly wished he had Kaz in his ears telling him that but Kaz was here instead, dying on the ground, still inside the enemy territory.
He wasn't supposed to be here but he was. Always doing what he wanted to, not what he was ordered to.
"Kaz." He didn't shout. In a way, he wanted to but he didn't, he was trained to not. So much were trained out of him, everything human, nothing human, he didn't now what a human was anymore, just that he wasn't one. "Kaz..."
Kaz was shot.
Kaz was bleeding out.
He turned his partner around gently, the wound was on his left shoulder and dangerously close to all it shouldn't be to. Too much dirt sticking to it. Bad. If the bleeding didn't kill him...
An infection would.
He had to get out of here, he had to get Kaz out of here or there wouldn't be a Kaz left. Snake couldn't lose Kaz like this... to a gunshot wound from a stranger.
He could, in theory, Kaz was a good soldier and good soldiers always died.
She had been a good soldier too.
He could but he didn't want to.
"Snake..." Kaz was gasping, horror dawning on his elegant features with none of the grace he usually carried. It wasn't as disturbing as it should be, to watch, considering that not much disturbed him these days. "I- I-"
Snake felt weird. He didn't care about death like this but he also did, cause it was Kaz.
It was always Kaz that made him care for things he didn't care, for some reason. Nicer beds, better food, bigger units, wounds, bullets, people dying.
Kaz dying.
Why and where and how Kaz died. The hands Kaz died by.
"Hold this over the wound." Snake took off the yellow scarf, exposing Kaz's bruised neck and putting it in the man's right hand. Not gentle, he never was. "I'll get us out, okay?"
Kaz nodded, glasses broken from the face first fall and head already heavy with blood loss.
He gripped the thing and squeezed it over that hole, like a lifeline. It was. Big Boss lifted his partner up, holding him bridal style cause any other position would just make things worse.
Kaz wasn't heavy.
Maybe it was because he didn't eat enough, maybe it was because he was just built like that, maybe it was because Snake was too strong.
All of the above, none. Who cared? Not him, maybe him.
Snake ran to the opposite direction of that building and trees started to appear, he called for back up but that didn't even register in his brain.
All he could think about was the warm body against him, struggling to breath and suffering as he held his own semi-fetal injury cause he was asked to.
In pain.
Kaz looked pretty when he was in pain.
It was less about the suffering and more about the vulnerability. The blonde never let loose, never showed his true colors and the deep fear he carried around everywhere...
Unless he was hurt. Then he would be Kazuhira, Kaz, hurt and undone, the real one.
"I-I don't wanna..." Kaz wasn't crying but something told Snake that a better man would say that tears would be better than this dry horror that the soft voice was coated in. "I don't wanna d-die, boss..."
Kaz didn't want to die...
That was... something.
Cause the first time he met Kaz, Kaz wanted to die. He had nothing to live for, he saw no future ahead of himself, he was already dead.
It had been an experience, like looking in the mirror and ar a memory both at the same second.
"You won't." Big Boss said, walking a bit slower now that he was in the jungle, the mass protecting them.
You won't cause you don't want to and I don't want you to. I didn't let you go when your life was yours, I'm not letting you go now that it's mine, I decide when you get to leave.
Cause it was his right to, Kaz was his man now and his men were his in every way possible. The man who was his enemy... that Kaz was dead, Snake had killed him.
This Kaz, his Kaz, was a man with a world and a dream to live for, a man with a future. This was a wounded animal ready to do everything to keep going, so alive...
If Kaz had a deadly sin it would be greed. Greed for many things but right now and here? For life. Enchanting, Snake couldn't remember a time where he had any intrest in life and living... death was more up his alley.
Although he wished he could feel that desperation for himself. All those emotions, Snake could only witness...
Blood painted a large part of Kaz's uniform, the green-ish muted color going dark. There wasn't much coming out of the wound now but what had before was progressing through the fabrics of it, fabrics of life.
And those of Snake's barely present sanity.
Red, all over, he could almost see Kaz's pale skin (almost white) overtaken by the color.
It made him sick to remember the field, the blood, her blonde hair messy and her body almost limp, just like Kaz but not in his arms. She was away, no his anymore.
The memory made him wan to rip the uniform to see what he could almost perfectly visualize. The red on white, taking over, again and again and again.
The red of life and the white of death and the red of death and the white of life mixing. Perfect.
"You're doing a good job, Kaz." He was, the already pale man's shaky fingertips were going full white white white from the effort to put pressure on his wound. "A great job, might even get a promotion for it."
His tone was light, his voice tense, Kaz had to stay awake until the chopper and the Medic got here. Snake's big arms held the tall man just a bit closer, Kaz let his head rest against his boss' chest.
Kaz wasn't dead yet, Snake reminded himself.
He didn't want Kaz to be dead, Snake tried to convince himself.
Red on white looked good, in a strange way. He was red, Boss had been white, Kaz was white, unlike back then with her or maybe exactly cause of what had happened with her... Snake wanted to see Kaz covered in his color.
Kaz looked good in red.
"R-really?" Kaz sounded a bit dazed, his eyes blinking at Snake with no focus behind the gaze. He sounded, even through the fear and pain, proud of himself, just a bit.
Kaz knew he was good but every time it was slightly mentioned? He would ascend. So Snake never mentioned it, he didn't want to make that pretty head of Kaz even bigger.
Or that was what he said to his face.
Even though there was something about the way it melted Kaz, that creature of pride and ego, visibly sinking into the floor cause Snake said a simple jood job... that was still no match for the delicious despration and life that was in Kaz' need.
Snake wanted that flavor more than he wanted to aftertaste of appreciation that came with indulging in thr need.
He was a dead man walking, he had to get his life from somewhere.
"Yeah, gonna have to call you Bigger Boss from now on." He smiled, not soft, not sweet, but to those eyes, it probably was. Kaz was a romantic at heart, he saw their world through red glasses, everything from his boss was his ideal romance. "You're just that good."
Kaz let out a wet and weak chuckle. It was strange, to joke sbout something like that, another one bearing the title of Boss.
In Snake head, Kaz couldn't. He would be always be the one dying and giving it up, not the one having to move on.
Cause that would mean he'd get to keep Kaz like this. Kaz who was devoted to this cause and Snake, who was charming and shiny, who was smart and slay as a fox but ultimately just another animal.
Like him, unlike him.
So much like him, so much like her, nothing like either. Kaz had hope, Kaz looked ahead and saw a future, Snake knew he didn't have much time before the world did something to ruin that.
Maybe it already had. What a bliss that would be...
He didn't exactly want to lose Kaz to death but the thought of losing Kaz to someone he could become sounded much worse, away from and out of love with Snake.
Kaz was still holding his own wound, still breathing against Snake's chest, hot and pale and shaking like the few final trees around them in the wind. The bullet was still there, it had been minutes only, the extraction flight would be here fast enough for Kaz to make it.
But did Big Boss want him to?
The light was now shining on those golden locks and blood, painting both of them in a the stunning orange of the sunset. They were finally out of the forest, the sky above them clear and visible.
Kaz opened his eyes to give him a look of pain as Snake settled down on the ground buy didn't do the same to Kaz. Kaz, still kept within his arms... why? He didn't know.
Why wouldn't he put Kaz dow? This position wasn't exactly helping the damaged shoulder.
But then again, he didn't really care, did he? Kaz looked good in red, in pain, when he bled, to ease it away would be stupid.
There was something in watching his loved ones' life slip out of them, something fascinating. Death, cold and cruel, holding them close. He was that death and being their death was the closest he could ever get to having all of them
The Boss, Kaz, both bleeding, both beautiful in their misery. The two shared nothing and everything, a special purity in their souls and a special filth tainting their history.
The purest kind of dirty. He was a part of that dirt, sticking to them like he belonged there, he didn't... did he? No, yes, maybe.
He was more like mold growing on ripe fruit, ruining the thing that was already wrong even more.
"B-Boss..." So full of love, fear, devotion. Only if he could keep him like that... if only he could stop time right here... he could. He... could. "I'm... I'm scared..."
And he was, really.
Snake was not a kind man, he was cruel, so when he replaced Kaz' shaky hand holding the bloodstained scarf on the wound with his own... he pushed it much harder right where the whole was, unnecessarily so.
Kaz flinched and gasped. Hard and desprate, didn't say anything else though, almost passed out. Out, not away, not yet.
So Kaz feared death but not Snake? Weird, they were basically the same thing.
Maybe he didn't fear death but loss. Death could be a friend if you had nothing to lose, Kaz didn't have anything to lose then. Much like her, nothing left there.
He did now. He had MSF, a nation, a home, a world to lose.
He had Snake to lose.
What a pointless fear that would be... if only...
He would never lose Snake if Snake lost him here. Now that was a thought. Snake wouldn't lose his Kaz if Kaz died, instead he would get to keep his Kaz forever.
Boss lived long enough to go from his everything to his enemy, he lost her even before he killed them... if he let go of the bullet wound now, if he let the blood out, if he used his knife to make it worse...
If he put his hands around Kaz' beautiful neck and stopped the air flow, if he used the same bloody scarf to do so, if he put a palm on his mouth and nose...
If he placed his hand around the exposed wound and forced more and more blood out, if he shoved a finger inside the hole and played with the flesh until it was a gash, if he used his tounge to taste the blood and bite into the exposed muscle tissues, if he ripped the shoulder open and went all the way to that smooth chest...
If he dug down until he could see the ribs, If he got to the beating heart and pulled it out to hold it in his palms, if he played it like a toy but literally this time, if he put his sharp teeth into the hot beating and bloody thing and devoured it...
Snake would never lose Kaz if he took Kaz all for himself right now, by his hands and by his teeth and by his choice. Kaz would be his... Kaz could be his.
All his and he just had to decide. Bet Kaz would like it, Kaz liked whatever Snake did to him. Kaz wanted whatever Snake did to him. Kaz needed whatever Snake did to him.
He loved being his and he loveed having him and they loved being them and he loved him like this.
"Don't worry." He mumbled as he started to rub harsh circles on the wound with the previously yellow, now all amazing red, piece of cloth. Kaz was too out of it to say anything, only letting out miserable noises. "I've got you."
For now, I've just got you here, one day though... I'll really get you... and then I'll keep you.
It sounded ridiculous, like something an animal would growl to its food before digging in! But that didn't sound far from the truth though now, did it?
Snake was a dog and Kaz was his bone, he'd bury it just to keep it.