by Jenn Burke
Damn, he was heavy. Felix kept trying to shift him anyway. The exertion dragged at his shoulders and lungs, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The past few weeks had taxed him physically as well as mentally. His shoulders burned and his arms shook. Throat aching, Felix fit himself to Zed’s chest. He closed his eyes and breathed in the familiar scent of Zed’s skin.
Zed was here.
Felix didn’t understand how that could be, how Zed could possibly be alive when he, himself, felt so dead—his brain mush from the sleeping pills, his body so heavy. In the past week, his thoughts had only gathered when the ship needed him.
No, Zed couldn’t be alive, despite the warmth of his skin, because miracles were impossible. Better to assume he’d joined Zed in death. His grief had killed him, and his mind had chosen to interpret his last moment as this. He should be grateful…and he was.
He had his Zed; he could go.
But death was an elusive bitch. She tempted and she taunted, she made promises she couldn’t keep. Breath continued to rasp against Felix’s sore throat, and a dull ache spread behind his eyes. The wet noise was him—breathing, trying not to cry, trying not to let go, damn it. And beneath him, warm, the steady thump at his chest, the whistle of air at his ear, the throat moving beside his cheek…
Arms banded about his back, tentatively, then more surely. Felix moved to shake off the comforting touch before the familiarity of the weight, the sense that the man beneath him had actually moved, held him still—but only for a moment.
Zed was alive.
Felix reared back, shock cutting off his breath. He braced his hands against Zed’s chest and looked down. Zed’s eyes, blue as ever and calm as a spring morning, stared up at him. Fixed but focused, the edge of steel present at the rims of his irises, that spark of intelligence sharpening his gaze.
“Holy shit.”
“Hi to you too.”
“Holy—”
Felix shook his head so hard the cargo bay swayed beneath his knees. He had to grip the slippery material of Zed’s shirt to remain steady. Beneath, the warmth of Zed’s skin seemed to burn his fingers. Felix looked down again. The reality of Zed’s actual state slapped him, hard. Dressed—oddly but finely. Stretched out in repose. Warm. Alive! He studied Zed’s face, taking in the blush of health in his cheeks, the faint hint of stubble along his jaw, the glisten of moisture at the corners of his eyes.
“You look…” An itch crept across Felix’s skin. Suddenly afraid, he scrambled off Zed and straightened. Zed bent at the waist and seemed to flow upwards, standing in one fluid motion. He’d always been able to do that, fold his legs and push up with no apparent effort. His grace had always awed and annoyed.
Nessa scrambled to her feet and Elias swore softly. “Shit, man, you’re really alive.”
“Seems like I am.” Zed flashed a grin at Elias and turned to Felix. He took a single step forward.
Possessed by the same instinct that shook off comforting touches, Felix cocked a fist and let fly. He felt his mouth drop open in an expression of horror as his bunched knuckles drove forward, but control required rational thought, and the cause of all his grief, all his pain, of the vast and empty void in his life, had just taken a step toward him. Zed’s hand shot up to catch his fist, ending the punch before it really began.
“Not this time,” Zed said, and that—the acknowledgment of something so familiar between them, Felix’s instinct to always hit first and ask questions later—flipped the switch.
“It’s really you.”
Zed folded his large hand around Felix’s fist and drew him in. “It’s really me.”
Felix stepped into him and this time, he recognized the hug—fully, properly. The arms folded across his back were Zed’s. His love’s, his heart’s. Ironically, pain still tore through his chest. Shouldn’t he feel better rather than worse? Tears pressed again at his closed lids, and he forced them back to where they had come from. They weren’t needed now, were they?
A hand slid over his shoulder and Felix tilted his head enough to catch a glimpse of Nessa. She stood beside the huddle, eyes red-rimmed and shiny. He nodded and she moved in, wrapping them both with slim arms. Another weight fell across his back as Elias joined the pile.
Ignoring his confinement, the rising panic fluttering through his veins, Felix yelled into Zed’s chest. “Qek, get your ass over here.”
Slim gray ankles wandered into view and Felix pressed a hand toward the ashushk, offering her the link she might be most comfortable with. A palm slid along his and then she folded his arm back around Zed and patted his shoulder.
“Welcome back, Zander.”
From the center of the huddle, Zed said, “Do I have permission to come aboard, Captain?”
Laughter rippled through Felix’s back, then Elias’s voice boomed in response. “With an escort like that, you really think you need to ask?”
Felix closed his eyes and pressed his face into Zed’s chest. He smelled different, but not so much that Felix didn’t recognize him. Everything else was right, though. Everything.
No, not everything.
The tension was gone, and the fear. Zed didn’t just look healthy, he was. He was well.
Felix struggled out of the tangle of arms. “Oh, my God, you’re…”
“I’m here and I’m alive, yes.”
“No, you’re fixed!” Fear jolted through him. “You’re fixed, right?”
Nessa extracted a wallet from her pocket and scanned the back of Zed’s shoulders. Blue eyes cut sideways and an expression of amused indulgence softened Zed’s features.
“Seems that way,” he said.
Nessa muttered and fiddled with the diagnostic program on her wallet. When she glanced up, she looked happier than she had in months. “His brain activity isn’t exactly normal, but it’s what I’d count as normal for Zed. Heightened levels of—”
Felix cut her off. “Don’t waste intelligent words on me, Doc. Just tell me if he’s good.”
Lips caressed his ear. “I’m only good when I have to be.”
A flush he thought he’d never feel again raced across Felix’s skin.
“If he can flirt, he’s good,” Elias said.
“Flirtation does require a certain level of wit,” Qek observed.
Felix smiled and ducked his chin. The curve of his lips felt weird, unnatural. Nessa touched his arm again and he glanced up.
“So far as I can tell without a full work-up, he’s good.”
Felix looked at the hand on his arm, and flashed to all the small touches Nessa had inflicted on him over the past few weeks. Before Zed’s death and after. But the words to make it right, to thank her for the awkward hugs and tenacious support, weren’t there. Not yet. So he offered a nod and she took it as her due. Of course she did—he’d managed not to shake her off this time. He’d let her hug him and touch him. Maybe that was enough for now.
He turned back to Zed, who still had an arm curled around his back, and reached up to brush his thumb across his chin. “It’s as if you just woke up.”
“Yeah.”
“Can you tell us what happened? Do you remember anything?”
Zed nodded gently.
“Start at the beginning,” Felix said.
*
Nessa insisted they move to the med bay and talk there, and though it wasn’t the best location for a group meeting due to the confined nature of the space, no one protested. Zed had had enough tests to last a lifetime—two lifetimes—but he understood continuing to verify his vitals was a way for Ness to deal with him being back. Just as Flick kept a hand on him as they walked through the corridors, or how Elias kept glancing over as if he expected Zed to have disappeared in the seconds his eyes weren’t on him. Qek seemed to be the only one who’d accepted his reappearance without much of a reaction, other than an unwrinkled face and muted clicks. Zed figured she was working through the logic and possibilities.
In the med bay, Zed hopped onto the bed. The last time he’d been examined by Nessa ab
oard the Chaos flashed through his mind—the questions she’d asked, the incorrect answers he’d given, the first time he’d forgotten Flick’s full name. The turning point in his up-to-then quiet internal battle with the poison that had tried its damnedest to kill him.
And he’d won. With weird, unexpected help, sure, but he’d won.
He smiled at Nessa and her diodes and sensors. “Go for it.”
As she worked, Zed told them about the space room, about the voice in his head, about the Guardians’ means of communication. He told them that he’d been taken care of—fed, clothed. He kept his observations clinical, his words impartial, and didn’t share anything personal about his talks with the voice or his own revelations about himself. He owed the people standing around him, his crew, a debt he’d probably never be able to fully repay, but there were some things he just didn’t want them to know. Like how broken he’d actually been even before the poison had snapped his mind.
“So they just healed you…because?” Elias glanced at Flick, the quick exchange telling Zed that they’d picked up on the fact that he’d edited his story.
He looked down at the wide metallic cuff on his right wrist. He still didn’t know what purpose it was meant to serve. An identifier? A marker? A tool of some sort? Power thrummed through it, a tingle he could ignore unless he sought out the sensation. He didn’t touch it, not wanting to draw attention to it, and looked back at Flick. Of course the engineer had followed his gaze, and his green eyes were filled with questions.
“The word they used for me was proof,” he said quietly. “Or…that’s the word my brain assigned to their concept. I’m…” He fidgeted, embarrassment coursing through him. “I’m like an embodiment of an ideal, all right? The proof that the species of the galaxy are not so different that their essences can’t exist in one body.”
“Yeah, that…” Nessa’s voice trailed off, then she cleared her throat as she continued to stare at a monitor filled with symbols and squiggly lines. “That explains what I’m seeing.”
“Go ahead, tell them.” Zed looked at his knees and tried not to swing his legs like a little kid.
“This is the stin,” Ness said, pointing out a particular reading. “And this is what the ashies injected him with.”
“The one that—” Flick cleared his throat.
“Yeah, that one,” Nessa said, her voice soft. “And then there’s this. It’s new.”
“What is it?” Elias asked, leaning closer to the monitor.
“What fixed me.” With an effort, Zed didn’t reach for his new scar. He didn’t know exactly what the Guardians had done, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He’d gotten a reprieve, and that was enough, wasn’t it? “The ingredient I was missing.”
Qek clicked, though Zed couldn’t interpret the noise as one of surprise or one of understanding. Elias and Flick stared at him and Flick’s fingers fell slack on his leg.
“And I, uh…” Zed held up his right wrist with its new metallic band. “I think I kind of have a new job as a diplomat. Or something.”
“What does that mean?” Flick pushed away from Zed, pacing across the small room to the opposite wall.
“Which part?” Zed kept his voice low, his tone even. He ached to pull Flick into his arms, but he looked as though he’d greet any contact with a cocked fist.
“Any of it. All of it. A missing ingredient. What the fuck? You’re not a goddamned muffin, or a stew or…” Flick’s lips pressed into a thin, hard line. “You were dead, Zander. Dead.” He froze and stared at Zed for a moment, before tearing his gaze away to wave his mangled hand. “And now you’re back, just like…like…”
Zed caught Elias’s eye. “You guys want to…”
“Yeah,” Eli said, grabbing Ness gently by the shoulder and tugging her into the corridor. Qek followed, but not before pressing her fingers lightly to Flick’s.
Zed jumped down from the bed and leaned against it, not wanting to make Flick feel any more crowded than he probably already did. Instead, he just watched the man he loved, noting the blond curls that had started to make a reappearance, the dark circles under his eyes, and the new lines etched into his face. God, he wanted to kiss away all the evidence of the past few weeks, but he didn’t think Flick would let him. Not yet.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“I already told you never to say that. Damn it.”
“I don’t know what else to say.”
“What did you leave out? When you were telling us about the Guardians.”
Zed braced his hands against the bed behind him and flexed his arms, lifting his feet about an inch off the floor. The peace he’d found on the Guardians’ vessel hovered at the edges of his perception, and he wondered if he’d ever be able to truly recapture it.
“I didn’t wake up all put back together,” Zed said, looking at the short span of floor that stretched between them. “There was a lot of stuff I didn’t realize and the Guardians…they gave me the space and the time to figure some shit out.”
“Like what?”
“Like mostly how fucked up I was after I lost you.” He looked up. “I lost you, and then I lost me and I stayed lost for a long, long time. But finding you again helped me with that.”
Flick wouldn’t meet his eyes.
Zed took a step forward, his hands held loosely out to his sides, approaching Flick the way he might an uncertain opponent. “You know what the Guardians told me?” He smiled. “Humans are our hearts. It’s our strength—probably our biggest weakness, too, but it’s what differentiates us from all the other races. We love. We give our hearts to others. We bond, we connect, we tie our souls together, and it’s not always voluntary and it’s not always fun, but it is what makes us who we are.” He took another step forward and reached out with a finger and thumb to nudge Flick to face him. “I love you. My heart is yours, always has been, always will be. I’m not leaving you again.”
Tears welled in Flick’s eyes, the sight stunning Zed for a breath. Flick had always been emotional, dramatic even, but Zed couldn’t think of any other time that he’d seen him look so…naked. Leaning in, he brushed his lips to Flick’s. A tear escaped, flowing down Flick’s cheek until Zed could taste it. He shifted, kissing away the path the tear had taken, then kissed away another and another.
“I love you,” he whispered against Flick’s skin. “I love you, Felix. I love you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Sweat stung his eyes and greased his neck. Felix pushed a hand over his head, mopping up some of the moisture. Baby curls teased his wet palm. He’d gone from bald thug to scarred child-man. By the time he hit forty, he might actually look thirty.
Hands falling into two raised fists, he eyed the kick bag. It swayed slowly back and forth. Jab, front punch, uppercut, hook. Loose left fist delivering the short blows, right fist the longer ones. He repeated the combination, timing his punches to the jerky swing of the heavy bag until his knuckles grazed an off swing, stripping skin from cartilage.
He should be wearing gloves, or wrapping. Both spilled out of the bin of workout gear he used when he felt like following rules, or wanted to punch something without grazing his knuckles. Right now, he welcomed the stinging pain—it was real, and it matched the burn in his shoulders and calves, the open heave of his lungs. Sensation had returned to his body and he reveled in it.
He was alive, and so was Zed. They had both survived the impossible—and he needed the sting across his knuckles to keep him grounded.
Strong arms caught him from behind. Felix dropped down and rocked backward, knocking away his assailant’s center of gravity. Together, they rolled onto the hard metal floor. A sharp exhale tickled the back of his ear.
“Sneaky bastard, aren’t you?”
“You’re the one who grabbed me from behind,” Felix said, driving his elbow into Zed’s side.
Zed’s hips rocked beneath him, pulling his ribs away from Felix’s elbow as he tossed him aside. Pulling his arms and legs in, Fe
lix rolled with the motion, then released the energy, kicking out at the one leg Zed had managed to put beneath himself. The soldier slid back to the deck with a grin. “Gonna be like that, is it?” he said.
“Oh, yeah.”
Felix pushed up to a crouch and jumped to his feet, fists loosely raised in a defensive posture. Zed mimicked his pose and they circled one another for a full fifteen seconds before Felix tried a feint and strike. Zed dodged both with his preternatural quickness. Barely looked like he’d moved.
“Man, you move fast. Blink and you’d miss it.”
Zed shrugged one shoulder and stepped in with a strike aimed at the lower end of Felix’s rib cage. Felix turned in with his block and attempted to crack Zed across the jaw with his elbow. He missed.
“Gotta be faster than that,” Zed taunted.
Felix danced backward and the circling began again. Zed shouldn’t be faster. He was larger, bulkier. Brute strength should be his call. Felix knew he couldn’t wear him down, either. He glowed with good health as if he’d just spent a month at one of those fancy retreats, whereas Felix was still shaking off the effects of a largely sleepless night. Maybe he wasn’t ready to stop taking the pills yet.
With every exchange—feints, double feints, blocked strikes and kicks caught and turned aside—he looked for an opening, a weakness he could exploit, and found none. Then he thought of something.
He drew Zed out, throwing kicks and punches until he moved forward, committed to a combination of offense and defense, then Felix attempted a takedown that would place both of them on the floor. As he grabbed Zed’s shoulder and twisted his hips, legs flying up, he saw the realization flash across that handsome face. Yeah, buddy. The only way to take Zed down was to hit the floor with him. They crashed down hard, arms and legs loudly slapping the floor. Felix’s head bounced once and he kissed Zed’s elbow, the pointed angle smacking him across the mouth so hard he saw stars. Tasted blood too.
They wrestled across the floor, a flurry of grunts and struggling limbs, truncated punches and aborted kicks. Felix’s bloodied knuckles grazed Zed’s brow. He hissed and retaliated by slamming his forearm down across Felix’s chest. They rolled again, but Zed had the better position. Felix found himself pinned, Zed astride his hips, a corded arm pressed into his throat.