It had been two weeks since they’d left Menagerie’s planet, two weeks since Zarek had tracked Enzo down and ruined any chance there had ever been of his feelings fading away into nothing as he should have let them do months before. Two weeks since the biting cold of the metal hull had dug into his burning back, since he’d felt that sloppy slide of lips and tongue, that unbelievable heat. He had replayed that moment over and over and over and over until his head spun and his wrist was too sore to keep thinking about it, and he knew already that it was never going to be enough.

If you asked him, at gunpoint, there was no way he would have been able to decide whether he was more relieved or frustrated that Zarek hadn’t approached him since. While he wanted to taste his captain again so badly he sometimes thought he was going to burst with it, he still had one foot firmly planted in camp “Sleeping With Zarek is a Terrible Plan.”

He’d love to say that Zarek hadn’t come to him because they’d been too busy, been apart on different missions too often, had too much to deal with; sure, all of that was true. They’d had a veritable avalanche of incoming work the past few weeks and none of the jobs had been worth sparing two people so, yeah, they’d been away from the ship a lot. Still, there had also been plenty of downtime in which the captain could have sought him out.

He just… hadn’t.

Enzo turned his attention to the man in question, who was lounging in the captain’s chair with one foot on the ground and the other sprawled over the plush chair arm. He was scrolling lazily through their potentiel jobs on a holo display resting in his lap. Every once in a while he’d flick one off to the side of the screen, rolling his eyes at whatever ridiculous job request he was rejecting. The boring aspect of being a captain happened like this, late into the ship’s night when there was no one up but a skeleton crew. Enzo’s job at this time was to go through their digital inventory and make note of the things they were going to need to stock up on soon.

The problem was that it was always so incredibly boring and, as usual, he was unable to keep his attention off of his captain for more than a few minutes. The only other person on the bridge was Jaela, and she was busy plotting their course for the next port. At least he had that going for him, the fact that no one was around to witness Enzo brooding over Zarek like a godsdamned teenage girl.

He wondered if Zarek had been thinking about it, too, had been remembering the searing heat between them, had been wondering what it would have been like to follow through. Then again, he figured that if he had been thinking about it Enzo wouldn’t be left wondering. Zarek wasn’t shy, never hesitated to go after what he wanted, and his tawdry bedroom affairs were often the topic of conversation among the crew.

Maybe he’d found him lacking.

Maybe he’d had his taste and had changed his mind, decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.

Maybe, thought Enzo deep down where he wouldn’t let anyone see, maybe he could tell that I feel more for him than I should.

And wasn’t that thought the most terrifying of all, enough to choke his breath off because while he didn’t know if the feelings he had buried deep down in his chest for Zarek were that of a deep, trusting friendship or something entirely different, but he did know that he definitely felt more for his captain than he was supposed to. The fact remained that Zarek had given him somewhere to go, somewhere to call home again when he had lost his pitiful excuse for a family, that over the months they’d become such an inseparable team that Enzo had lost track of who had saved whose ass more. He trusted Zark more than any other person in the galaxy, and it didn’t matter whether that trust stemmed from friendship or something else. What did matter was that pirates weren’t supposed to trust anybody.

Enzo was still contemplatively watching as Zarek shifted in his chair, sliding down further and spreading his legs wider and if Enzo hadn’t been staring before he sure as shit was now. The shift in position had done wonderful things for the picture sitting before him. Pants pulled taught over his crotch, stretched to the limit over thick thighs, leaving little to Enzo’s admittedly active imagination, and his shirt had hiked up enough to show a strip of pale flesh just visible above his navel. Enzo’s mouth went dry, and he swallowed, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

He watched as Zarek trailed a hand absently down his chest, watched as it slipped down, as fingers ran across his bared flesh, hiking the shirt up that tiny bit more to show a trail of dark hair slipping down into the waist of his pants. He was still paying rapt attention as that hand slipped lower, until it was resting on the bulge between his thighs. Breathing had suddenly become much more difficult for Enzo, impossible even, and he was just wondering what kind of cool joke the world was playing on him when that slowly wandering hand gave the object of his attention one long, languid stroke.

Enzo’s eyes snapped up and were met with half-lidded golden irises. The dirty smirk on Zarek’s face told Enzo that, no, that incredibly enticing position had been anything but accidental. Zarek was toying with him. Enzo’s attention was drawn back down as Zarek’s hips pushed subtly into that rubbing hand. When those long pale fingers started to slip into the waistband of his tight leather pants, Enzo made a very embarrassing noise in the back of his throat and lurched to his feet. He was out the door in seconds, but he could still hear Zarek’s dark chuckle echoing down the hall after him.

------------------------

For what felt like the fifteenth time, Enzo’s back struck the hard marble floor of the training room, knocking the breath right out of him. Jaela’s face hovered over his, cheeks flush from her exertion - because, hey, even if he wasn’t putting up much of a fight at the moment he was still big - and she didn’t even offer him a hand up. “Where the actual hell is your head right now, Zo?”

In Zarek’s bedroom, his mind helpfully supplied, and he shoved her out of the way so he could pull himself to his feet, frustrated. “I’m just restless.”

“Bullshit.”

He groaned as he pushed on his lower back and tried to stretch out the tension there, wobbling over to the benches where his water was sitting. “Can’t a guy be off his game every once in a while?” The bench creaked under his weight as he sat down on it.

The truth was that he was going out of his godsdamned mind, could not in any way shape or form keep his thoughts off of Zarek, off his teeth glinting with a filthy smirk, off the way his calloused fingers felt roving over his sensitive skin. He was losing it, he knew, and he was getting sloppy, but he couldn’t tell Jaela that, for the love of fuck. Not only was he fairly positive that she had her own eye on the captain, but he knew she’d give him a serious ass kicking for being idiotic and sentimental.

“Sure, but you never are,” Jaela said. Then, as if realizing she’d just paid him a near compliment, “You need to get your shit together. What do you think is going to happen if we’re out on a mission and you can’t get your head out of your ass long enough to get the job done?”

“I get it.” He rolled his eyes and used the hem of his shirt to wipe down his sweaty face. “I’m working on it, alright?”

“Working on what?”

Enzo, to his credit, didn’t jump even though he hadn’t heard so much as the sound of the captain’s shoe as he made his way over to them. He did, however, close his eyes behind the now-damp hem of his shirt for just an extra second to steel himself because, fuck, this was an enormous ship - so why could’t he seem to escape Zarek’s overwhelming presence for more than an hour?

He dropped his shirt and met the captain’s gaze - Zarek’s amber eyes always just that little bit amused - studiously ignoring the way his heart leapt into his throat like the traitor it was. “Yoga poses. You know, I just can’t get my downward facing dog quite perfect.”

“Is that right?” Zarek asked, the corners of his lips twitching up in a grin. His eyes wandered from Enzo’s head to his toes and back up again, and his teeth bit down on his lower lip for just a second before he was grinning again. “Always knew you’d be flexible, Zo.”

Fuck, that wasn’t fair. He was beginning to suspect that Zarek was being a tease on purpose. Pretending a level of bravado he definitely wasn’t feeling at the moment, he laughed and leaned back with one hand on the bench. “You have no idea.”

“Alright, if we could all keep our pants on for a few more minutes,” Jaela said, rolling her eyes and tossing a towel in Enzo’s face. “What have you got for us, Zarek?”

“There’s a ship headed down from Malin - dunno where they’re headed, but I know they are stopping at the Tau Ceti port for twenty-four standard hours before they get there,” Zarek said, and his eyes took on that gleam, the one that they got when he was particularly looking forward to a job, like there were torches lit behind them.

Enzo was caught up in Zarek’s enthusiasm, awkwardness forgotten in the face of that toothy grin. He stood and wiped the back of his neck down with the towel, already impatient to get moving. Jaela stood too, standing between them and looking up, her antennae twitching. “What’s the haul?”

Zarek slung an arm around her shoulders, and then the other around Enzo’s, turning them as one to make their way out of the training room. “No fucking clue.”

“Typical,” Enzo said, rolling his eyes but still following Zarek’s lead, comfortable under the weight and heat of his heavy arm. “Let’s try another one: why do you look like someone just handed you a brand spanking new starship with a couple of naked pleasure bots inside?”

“There’s the right question,” Zarek said, turning that sharp grin on Enzo, who felt his cheeks flame and ducked his head to hide it. “Because, my friends, Vikali did some digging and found out that this particular transport is accompanied by two Galactic Navy-issued ships - and guess what else they’ll be picking up when they reach Tau Ceti?”

“Zarek - you’re shitting me,” Jaela groaned, slipping out from under his arm and stopping in her tracks, causing Zarek to pull Enzo with him as he turned towards her. “You don’t mean Reapers?”

Reapers - an elite force for hire. They acted primarily as guards, but they didn’t come cheap. If you had the money to hire one you were either very well off or else very desperate. There was a reason for it, too. Reapers weren’t just well-trained, weren’t just equipped with the best weapons and equipment available in the quadrant - they were genetically modified, enhanced - deformed, too, but it didn’t matter because they were a damn near unstoppable force because of it.

“Reapers!” Zarek said with undeniable relish, squeezing Enzo’s shoulder in his excitement.

Enzo pressed his shoulder into Zarek’s side and caught Jaela’s eye, grinning because he knew exactly what it meant to hire Reapers along with a Naval escort - there was something massively valuable on that ship. His mind was already spinning with possibilities, already dreaming up what they’d find, what they’d get for it, the possible places they could sell off something so high profile. This was going to be dangerous, and they’d have to act quick because once the Reapers joined the caravan there would be no getting to it, and even before the Reapers got there he had no doubt that there were going to be security measures out the asshole.

He couldn’t wait.

“When do we move?”

“Right now,” Zarek said, and flashed Enzo another grin before dropping his arm and striding down the hall.

Enzo and Jaela followed until they reached the comm panel on the wall, watched as Zarek dialed in his code and started to speak, his voice echoing throughout the rest of the ship through the speakers, “Alright, gents, I expect every single one of you sorry fuckers to be battle-ready and waiting for me on deck four within twenty minutes. We’ve got a good one, and it’s time-sensitive. We move out now.”

Jaela was already scurrying away, making her way to the bridge so she could kick out the second shift pilot and take over. She was the best they had, after all, and on missions like this one Zarek didn’t like anyone but his inner circle at the helm.

Just like that, Enzo found himself alone with the captain for the first time since their tryst, and if he’d thought time would have dulled the tension between them he was dead wrong. It lay there thick and heady as he caught Zarek’s gaze, as his grin slipped, as his eyes were drawn to the captain’s lips, his neck, his collarbone. Just a look, just a split second and he was ready to throw his already dubious scruples out the window and -

The training room door opened and out flooded the rest of the crew who had been working, an air of savage excitement in the way they were walking because it had been ages since they’d been on a ship-wide mission and they all knew it meant something good was coming.

Enzo dropped his gaze and the moment was broken, and he joined the group headed towards the barracks without a backwards glance at the captain, pulse racing for more than one reason.