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Snake sat, well, mostly coiled around himself, with his back leaned up against the wall. There was a subtle, constant sound of the tip of his heavy tail hitting the ground. Thunk… thunk… thunk…
He felt a distant sort of emptiness inside his stomach that just couldn’t seem to be mended by his usual eating habit. Of course, his snake genetics impacted his diet, typically consuming a large meal every few days, but it wasn’t like this, not this sort of craving.
He was still under the watchful care of Naomi and Otacon, though he trusted Otacon more than the double-legged wall hanger rodent, as he said behind her back. Such comments were typically met with harsh glares from his old friend.
Naomi had insisted on Snake quitting the cigarettes cold turkey, an incredibly reluctant and unrealistic effort in his eyes. She was trying to look out for him, considering how he was nearly at death’s door due to Foxdie, but her confiscating every pack and box of cigarettes he had felt a bit extreme to him. It was like she had a specific sense of smell exclusively for tobacco.
Snake stared off into the wall with his eyes glossed over like a child watching something they know they won’t remember… when Otacon walks into the room.
“Well, we evaluated your condition after your fight with Octopus, and based on the bludgeoning damage, we’ll be keeping you in our care for just a bit longer.” The avian looked at snake’s lower half and the visible suction marks along it. “Looks like she gave you a little kiss, lucky you,” he joked.
Snake didn’t laugh, he just grumbled like always. His intense withdrawal wasn’t doing his already grumpy demeanor any favors.
Otacon scanned the files with a feather-light touch (quite literally), examining all of the contents of his examination. He barely noticed Snake staring at him with this sort of… crazed, hungry look in his eye.
His tail anxiously tapped against the metal floor as he thought long and hard. Thunk… Thunk… Thunk…
Snake coiled himself out of his sitting position and slithered closer to Otacon, his back still turned. He felt a bit surprised feeling Snake’s head on his shoulder and Snake’s arms wrap around his waist, but didn’t think much of it. Even back when they were both younger in Shadow Moses for the first time, Snake had always been a bit… touchy.
Snake breathed in the scent of his neck. His smell was sweet and earthy, like fresh air and shortbread cookies… Thunk… Thunk… Thunk…
Hal kept looking over the extensive lab report of all Snake’s injuries and past history. He barely noticed how Snake’s lower half started to coil around his legs and effectively restrict his movements. He only really noticed when he adjusted his glasses and got a chance to look down at the blue scales that started wrapping him.
It was only when he looked at Snake that he saw the look in his eye was not as “lovey-dovey” as he expected.
He gulped and gave a very awkward smile, one more indicative of when they first met, when he felt Snake had much more power over him.
“H-hey Snake… what, what ya looking at?”
Snake stared at him for a bit longer before his mouth slowly began to open. He was salivating more than usual, a telltale sign of his hunger. It opened wider, and wider, and wider- god, I’ll never get used to that, Hal thought. Before Snake clamped his jaw down over him, he noticed that the caps he typically kept over his fangs to prevent them from accidentally releasing venom on himself or others were still on. It gave Hal a bit of peace of mind, knowing Snake didn’t intend to hurt him.
His entire vision was then swallowed up by black and shadowy pink colors. Even if there was some light down Snake’s throat, his hot breath fogged up Hal’s glasses, so he wouldn’t be able to see anyway.
Snake gulped down the engineer/doctor quickly, the small part of his reptile brain telling him Naomi was going to walk in any second and see a pair of talons sticking out of his mouth. He wasn’t spared by the universe with a complete absence of evidence, as he coughed up a few brown and pink feathers the rosefinch left in his throat as a little treat.
Otacon slid down Snake’s body with more of a feeling of annoyance than fear, especially unlike the sort of jumpiness Raiden had experienced at the hands of the reptile many years earlier at the Big Shell, back when snake was constantly spray painting his scales with black stripes to keep up his identity of “Pliskin.”
Snake flopped himself back down onto the ground. His aggressive withdrawal symptoms were not cured, per se, but the feeling of the engineer inside his body definitely made things more bearable. He felt around his lower half until his hands met a hard, misshapen lump in the structure, which he brought close to his face and held like a large body pillow.
Through the thick layers of flesh and bone and scales, he heard a small, annoyed voice chirp.
“I’m having Naomi give you back a pack of Reds once this is all over.”
Snake let out a soft smile and laugh for the first time in months.