Terrance, of course, had not been wrong. Enzo thought privately that it hadn’t been absolutely necessary for the captain to tell Kade everything. He could have left some things out, like how Enzo had been ordered to leave and begged to stay. If he had, Terrance wouldn’t have gotten the verbal lashing he’d received and Enzo wouldn’t be standing in front of his irate guardian once again waiting to see what he was going to have to say.

Kade was pacing. He always paced when he was upset, back and forth, heavy boots clanking on the metal grates in his room. There was never any sound, no grunts, no mumbling as some of the other men on the ship were wont to do. Just silent pacing, every step pressing against Enzo’s shoulders, a pressure that built until he felt like he was going to burst.

“Do you have any idea - “ Kade started, but cut himself off with a frustrated breath and paced back to the other side of the room again.

Enzo, wisely, stayed silent until Kade made his way back and stopped in front of him again. “When your captain tells you to leave, what do you do, Enzo?”

“Kade, I’m - “

“What do you do?”

They were long past the point where Enzo flinched when Kade’s voice took on that low, you-are-in-danger-boy growl, but it was a close thing this time because he knew that his guardian was this close to losing it. He jutted out his jaw because he was not going to show weakness even in front of this man - especially in front of this man who he wanted nothing more than to impress but just couldn’t seem to lately - looked him in the eyes and said, “You leave, sir.”

“You leave,” Kade said. Enzo could tell how tense he was from the set in his jaw, the way he was all but grinding his teeth. “What did you do when your captain told you to leave?”

Enzo just barely stopped himself from huffing out a breath that would have earned him an even worse verbal lashing. “I stayed.” Then, because he couldn’t resist, apparently, “But I didn’t just stay, I asked to stay and Terrance said - “

“Terrance didn’t have time to argue with you, Enzo!” Kade slammed his fist into the table, and Enzo jerked in surprise. “You’re not a child. You’re eighteen years old, a full-grown member of this crew, and you need to start acting like it. I’ve let you get away with a lot over the years, but I’ve told you before that it can’t go on like this.”

“But I got the target!” Enzo snapped, clenched his fists at his sides. He was grinding his teeth, he noticed, so hard he could hear it. “I - “

“You could have died!” Kade roared, and his band sizzled to life, red sparks shot from his fingertips. “Cando - again! You have no idea, Enzo, you don’t - “

“He saved my damn life!” Enzo hissed, quiet and yet Kade still heard him, still snapped his mouth shut and stared in a way that made Enzo sincerely wish he hadn’t said anything at all. “He - I mean he did. He took blaster fire for me, Kade.”

His admission didn’t help. In fact, Kade’s face had gone slightly pink. “If Cando saved you, he did it for another reason. You think it’s a goddamn coincidence that he showed up on your first mission since he met you?”

“That’s ridiculous - what would he want with me?” Enzo crossed his arms and he wasn’t exactly sure why he was defending that big smirking idiot but now that he’d dug his heels in, well, no one ever said he was a smart kid.

Kade pinched the bridge of his nose. “Kid, it’s way past time I started treating you like crew. This is my fault, this constant insubordination and unwillingness to follow the rules.”

“But - “

The admiral quelled his protestations with a held up hand. “There’s a bunk for you in barrack three. You have until the end of the day to get in and settled.”

Enzo felt the words like a physical blow, and it was a moment before he could bring himself to speak. “Kade, don’t - don’t punish me like this, please, I just wanted to make you proud. I just - I’m sorry.”

“This isn’t punishment, Enzo,” Kade said, but he wouldn’t look Enzo in the eye and Enzo privately thought that was bullshit. “That bunk has been there for you since your eighteenth birthday. I just let sentimentality get in the way, but now I realize that was a mistake. It’s for the best for both of us.”

Before he could formulate a response he felt Kade’s large hand land on his shoulder, and when he looked up the man was staring down at him with, if not remorse, then sympathy. “This was always the plan, Zo. It’s better this way - safer for you. Besides, you need to find your place on a team and you can’t do that if you’re getting special treatment. No one will be willing to cross you because they’ll be afraid that I have a soft spot for you. This way you can really become one of us.”

They’ll be afraid that I have a soft spot for you, the implication being that he didn’t and Enzo knew he was being petulant and childish but that really hurt because he sure as fuck had a soft spot for the admiral. He shrugged off the hand on his shoulder and turned to head to the mess hall, too proud in that moment to pack up his things and unwilling to do it under Kade’s heavy gaze anyway. “Of course, Admiral,” he said.

He left without a backward glance, and he was too far away when the metal chair flew across Kade’s room and hit the wall to hear it, but a passing crew member did. He heard, too, when Kade flipped over the table the chair matched and the glass bottle that had been on top shattered into a hundred pieces. He looked at the door to the admiral’s bedroom for just a second before deciding he really didn’t want to die that day and scampering out of the hallway.

Later, when all of Enzo’s stuff had been moved into the metal chest at the foot of his new bed and he was lying in bed with an arm tucked beneath the back of his head, he wondered at the gross overreaction of his no-longer-guardian. He thought, maybe, that it was just wishful thinking on his part that had him wondering if Kade had put that painful distance between them because he thought Cando was trying to get to Enzo in an effort to hurt the admiral. Besides, despite what Kade and everyone else had said, he’d seen no real evidence that Cando was as dangerous as he was made out to be. He’d taken a bullet for him, and honestly when Enzo really stopped to think about it he realized that the man hadn’t done anything to try and harm him, just given him a really good chase and a few choice words.

It was a long time before Enzo was able to drift into an uneasy sleep, not used to the sounds of others snoring, the shifting of bodies, the low crinkling of the scratchy sheets. When he finally did drift off, he dreamed of broad shoulders and scarred white hands, of sharp teeth and a low, dark laugh.