Zarek caught him before he’d even dropped a foot, wrapping one thick arm around Enzo’s torso and spinning to pin him against the tree trunk before they both fell. Enzo groaned as the bark scraped against his acid-burned back, dropped his head gently back against the tree. “Thank the stars you’re secretly a fucking monkey,” he breathed, and he was suddenly very aware of how little space there was between them by the way their chests brushed together with his breath. Zarek had one leg between Enzo’s thighs, the spikes at the toe of his boot jammed into the trunk to support them, and if Enzo hadn’t just almost died - or, really, if it were literally any other person than the captain he’d been holding a torch for for over a year now - he would have been leering at the position.

He jolted when Zarek groaned and dropped his head to rest on Enzo’s uninjured shoulder. “We lost the stupid fucking - “

Before he could finish the thought something came sailing down through the branches in a shower of leaves and twigs, landing on top of Zarek’s head with a soft thud. Enzo quickly snatched it up and pulled the cuff off from where it had been resting on its now-normal-sized head like an absurd crown. Once he’d secured it around the bug’s neck he held it between them for the captain to see. “You were saying?”

Zarek blinked at the bug, then at Enzo. “You - what?”

It was the first time Zarek had looked at him quite like that, with something like wonder, like he’d never quite seen anything like Enzo before in his life. He laughed, and Enzo’s eyes were drawn down as the captain’s tongue darted out to wet his own bottom lip, as he sucked it between just-too-sharp teeth. Enzo’s breath hitched up in his throat, and his chest flushed with heat and he just knew his pupils were blown.

Enzo nearly jumped - which would have been a spectacularly bad idea - as Zarek’s fingers slid up under his shirt and stroked along the ever-sensitive flesh of the scar on his side. He got the feeling that the captain was thinking about that time, too, about the first time he’d looked at Enzo and said I think I like you, kid. Even through his pain, Enzo felt just a short pooling of desire low in his belly, and he fervently wished he hadn’t just had the shit beat out of him because, damn, he’d dreamed about this moment. It was terrible timing, but adrenaline did weird things to the libido.

“What are you doing?” he asked, breathing the words into the small space between them, completely unsure whether or not he wanted the moment to end. Zarek’s fingers roved down the scar with possessive boldness, and Enzo felt like the reward at the end of a job, like he was a payday Zarek couldn’t wait to get his hands on.

“Dunno,” Zarek said, leaning closer. Then, as if he’d heard Enzo’s thoughts, “Must be the adrenaline, hm?”

Jaela groaned into the communicators, her pain-filled exhale jerking Enzo and Zarek out of the moment so fast that Enzo thought he was going to have to add whiplash to his growing tally of injuries. Zarek let out a breath and then just like that he had his captain persona back, straight to the business of assessing their situation. He eyed Enzo’s rapidly swelling shoulder. “Alright, that shoulder isn’t going to do jack shit for you, so we’re about to do something… different. I swear, Zo, if you ever tell anyone about this I’ll whoop your ass.”

Enzo shivered. Zarek had threatened to beat his ass more times than he could count, but after that moment that had just passed between them his mind went straight to dirty, conjuring up all sorts of ways ‘whoop your ass’ could be interpreted. It wasn’t helpful, alright, and Zarek’s lips quirked up in a devilish smirk like he knew exactly how Enzo was taking that threat. Enzo glared and shoved the bug into one of the zippered pockets on his pants, gasping when the movement jarred his injured shoulder. Taking cues from Zarek, he managed to pull himself onto the man’s back, wrapping his thighs around a thick waist. He draped his uninjured arm over Zarek’s shoulders and signaled that he was ready.

Zarek started making his way down the tree, jamming the stakes into the bark and jerking them out at a much slower pace than he’d gone on the way up, significantly less graceful now that he had a passenger. “Damn, kid, you’re a lot heavier than you were six months ago.”

“Not a kid anymore, Zarek,” Enzo husked into Zarek’s ear, low, sultry in a way that had gotten him plenty of bed partners. It was a bluff, really. No matter how much Enzo truly, desperately wanted to sleep with his captain there were so many reasons why he couldn’t; not least of which being the fact that he was rapidly losing any shred of energy he’d had left. His shoulder was screaming at him, and his hand and back felt like they were literally on fire from the bug’s acid spit. He rested his forehead on the back of Zarek’s neck with a pained groan.

The captain chuckled, and Enzo could feel it vibrating through his chest from where they were pressed together. “No, I guess you’re not.”

Zarek dropped the last few feet to the ground and Enzo gingerly slid off, letting out a hard breath through his nose when just that bit of movement jolted his injuries. The captain steadied him with a hand on his uninjured arm. “I know it sucks, but I need you to lie flat on your back while I go see if Jaela can stand.”

“Aye aye, Cap,” Enzo grunted, and while the captain walked away he lowered himself to the ground and let out a silent scream because, stars, he wasn’t sure he’d ever been in that much pain. “Fucking shit fuck, balls, godsdamnit!”

Jaela was with Zarek - Echo’s little head poking out of his custom pocket, too - when the captain made his way back over, blood oozing down the side of her head and over her bare shoulder from what had to be a nasty head wound. Enzo grinned, happy for a momentary distraction - also happy she was alive, okay, but she didn’t need to know that. “Damn, Jael, you can’t afford more knocks to the head like that. You’re dumb enough as it is.”

Jaela gave him the finger, but when he laughed her lips quirked in a half smile. “You look like shit, Hagen.”

“You try saving your short ass, getting covered in acid spit, and falling out of a massive tree! See how you look after that shit,” Enzo groaned, unsure of whether his burns or his shoulder hurt worse. He felt like one giant wound. Zarek knelt down with one leg on the ground and the other knee pressing into the center of Enzo’s chest. He gingerly picked up Enzo’s injured arm and Enzo let out a hiss of air.

“Yup,” Zarek said. He gently placed Enzo’s arm back down and pulled off his own belt before shoving the leather part between Enzo’s teeth. “Bite that. This is going to hurt like hell, Zo, there’s no getting around that.”

Holy hell, did it fucking hurt.

Zarek slowly pulled Enzo’s arm back, pushing down on his chest with his knee, right up until Enzo thought the captain was trying to rip the appendage clean off. He had a wild moment where he pictured Zarek yanking his arm off of his body in a spray of blood and brandishing it over his head like a battle trophy. Then, finally, he heard a deafening click and groaned around the leather as the shoulder popped back into place. Zarek allowed him a few minutes to breathe before he took his belt out of his mouth - there were definite indents from Enzo’s teeth in it - and stood, pulling Enzo up by his good arm.

The pain was immediately less, and he decided that, yeah, his back and hand were in more pain than his shoulder. When he looked down at said hand he winced at the bubbling, oozing welts. He did not want to know what his back looked like.

“Shit, Enzo, you should see your back,” Jaela exclaimed unhelpfully. “Looks like a smoking pile of ground meat. Gross. Shame you didn’t bring your coat like me, huh?”

Enzo, too tired for banter, flipped her the bird with his good hand and started making his way back to the ship, eager to try and wash off his wounds. Jaela cackled behind him once before Zarek smacked her back and reminded her that half those wounds had come from saving her fool ass, and she’d do well to show some gratitude.

To her credit, she took his words to heart. Upon their return to the ship she spent a very long time tending to Enzo’s wounds, flushing what was left of the acid, applying an ointment she promised would prevent scarring from the burns, and then wrapping the wounds in sterile white bandages from her own personal stash.

Enzo was equal parts relieved and disappointed that it was Jaela and not Zarek taking on the task. On the one hand, he really wouldn’t mind having those long fingers on him again. On the other, he wasn’t sure if he was ready to deal with the feelings the inevitable end of that scenario would bring up. Whatever the case, Enzo was clean, bandaged, and hopped up on pain meds in no time. He drifted to sleep on top of his covers, face buried in the too-big hooded jacket Zarek had given him all those months ago.

------

They arrived at the planet Dierenterra seventy-two standard hours later, a tiny little lump of space rock, which Enzo privately thought was rather optimistic in labeling itself a planet.. He had slept the entire time, barring bathroom breaks and the time it took Jaela to change his bandages. While he wouldn’t say he was feeling ship-shape (hah), he would say that he no longer felt like someone had flayed his back and palm. It was an improvement, no matter how much it felt like it wasn’t when he twisted too much and the healing wounds pulled.

He shrugged on his coat and made his way up to the cockpit, fervently hoping that he didn’t end up looking like someone had taken a meat tenderizer to his back by the time he was healed. Despite their not-so-friendly rivalry, he did trust Jaela, but although she’d said the ointment would prevent scarring it sure as fuck didn’t feel that way at the moment. He just couldn’t find the optimism.

On his way through the kitchen he grabbed up a pink and orange fruit, sticking it in his mouth so he could climb the ladder to the cockpit. Zarek turned as he entered and offered him his usual shit-eating grin, but Jaela was either very focused on piloting the ship or else busy pretending that Enzo didn’t exist. Enzo was willing to put money on the latter because, well, he and Jaela had a very comfortably dynamic in which they gave each other neverending shit and would never, even at the threat of death, admit they cared for each other. She’d spent an awful lot of time tenderly caring for Enzo the past few days, and it was probably making her all sorts of uncomfortable.

Enzo loved it when she was uncomfortable.

He leaned against the back of her chair and took a bite out of his fruit, and there was no way he could have missed the way Zarek’s eyes followed the trail of juice that dribbled down his chin. He wiped the sticky moisture off and manfully resisted the urge to suggestively suck it off his finger, reminding himself again of the million reasons why sleeping with Zarek was, in reality, A Very Bad Idea. He may have been fantasizing about it for nearly a year, but in all that time he’d never seriously entertained the idea that it could actually happen. The fact that it was looking more and more like a possibility had him feeling all sorts of confused.

“How long till we land?” he asked Jaela, relieved when Zarek turned to focus on the holopad in front of him.

“Five minutes, just about,” she replied. Then, acting just like the words were being forcibly torn out of her throat, “How are you feeling?”

Enzo laughed and leaned his forearms on the back of her chair. “Aw, Jael, it’s so sweet that you care!”

“Alright, we’re all very amused,” Jaela huffed. “For just, like, two minutes of your life could you not be a complete jackass?”

“I mean, no, probably not. It’s just my nature. Accept it.”

He couldn’t see Jaela roll her eyes, but he just knew she was anyway. “Whatever, Terran, just make sure you don’t pass out on us while we make the drop-off.”

“Pass out?” Enzo laughed and flicked her gently on the ear. “I’m a damn legend in the making - legends don’t pass out!”

“Well, that’s sure not what the captain told me…” Jaela mumbled as she maneuvered the ship down to the surface of the planet.

“What! Zarek,” Enzo whined. He resisted the urge to smack his captain in the back of the head just barely. “I can’t believe you told her that. I was literally dying of blood loss from an injury I got while saving your fool ass.”

“Yeah, well, I probably wouldn’t have needed saving if you hadn’t stormed into the vault without knowing what was behind the doors first.” Zarek sniffed and shut down the holopad, using his thumbnail to scratch at the dark stubble on his jaw.

Enzo threw up his hands, dramatic as always. “It was my first mission, for Stars’ sake!”

The ship landed without a sound or a shudder, Jaela’s skill behind the help speaking for itself. Jaela smirked at him as she stood. Then, the little shit, she mimed and fainting spell, placing the back of her hand on her forehead and half falling over with a dainty sigh.

“Dick,” Enzo mumbled as he turned to stomp out of the ship, and Jaela’s laughter followed him all the way down the ramp. 

The first thing he noticed when he stepped foot on the planet was the noise, a cacophony of shrieks and wails, chittering birds, roaring beasts, screaming primates - it was loud and there was a lot to look at. 

The second thing he noticed was the enclosures - hundreds of them stretching as far as the eye could see, housing all sorts of creatures in what appeared to be an approximation of their own natural environments. It was really cool, right up until Enzo saw that at least one of the enclosures held humanoids. 

Zarek, eyes drawn where Enzo was focused on a rainforest enclosure with a tiny brick house settled in the center next to a river, took in the pink drathonian woman with round ears each half the size of her head. She was kneeling by the river and washing a sheet while a male drathonian chopped wood for a fire. 

Zarek whistled. "Well, that's new."  

Enzo ground his teeth, and Zarek pressed their shoulders together, the contact soothing him just that little bit. "Zarek. Fuck."

"I know, Zo. Looks like he's graduated from 'kind of weird' into 'full-on psycho'." 

Enzo watched the male drathonian kneel by the female and rub her back, loving, gentle, and wondered just how much trouble he was going to be in before the day was up.