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“Oh good,” Garin deadpanned.
“Give me a blood sample, as well.” Sazahk shoved a palm-sized device into Garin’s hand, then tapped a finger on Garin’s forearm. “A simple prick there will do.”
“Are you doing one, too?” Garin obediently pressed the device against his arm, pressed the button to jab in the needle, and twitched as it sucked up a drop of blood from his skin.
“Of course.” Sazahk took the device back, switched out the needle and test strip, and rolled up his own sleeve. “Dominic designed these strips to test for every chemical and compound possibly responsible for or caused by the sort of cellular degeneration symptoms I’ve so far identified as being associated with long-term exposure to the Dead Zone.”
“And what symptoms are those, exactly?” Garin’s research had been concerningly vague about the threats they faced.
“Nausea, vomiting, head and muscle aches, skin lesions, infertility, cancer, and neurological deficiencies.” Sazahk pricked himself without so much as a wince. “We’ll conduct these tests every night and evaluate which compounds, if any, accumulate in our bloodstream and how quickly.”
“Great.” Garin didn’t mind the blood tests, but he didn’t like not knowing what they were exposing themselves to and he definitely didn’t like that long list of symptoms or what had been on it.
Unfortunately, there was nothing doing for that, so he busied himself building up the fire into a steady blaze to keep them warm through the night, while Sazahk conducted preliminary studies on the samples he’d collected and filed away their test strips.
Garin tried to keep his eyes on his own work, both because looking at Sazahk’s messiness made him antsy and because he didn’t want to trigger another spat by making eye contact. But Sazahk muttered as he worked, as long-winded with himself as he was with other people. The rhythm of his voice, the hums, and the quiet ah-has, and the little gasps of surprised delight drew Garin’s gaze.
It was hard not to be sucked into the gravity well of Sazahk’s intensity. His body and mind bent toward his study. His eyes sparkled. His long fingers flickered over the screen of his tablet, flicked switches, turned dials on his instruments, and tapped thoughtfully on his plump lower lip. Garin traced those lips with his gaze as he poked the fire and flames danced higher.
The fire light flickered across the green swirling over Sazahk’s high cheekbones, giving him the look of dappled sunlight through leaves.
Oh god.
Garin shook his head to knock the poetry out of it.
It was like he’d never seen a pretty man before. He left the fire, plopped down on his sleeping bag, and pulled his pack to him. He’d seen plenty of pretty men. Fucked plenty of pretty men, too. That was what being passably handsome, decently articulate, and more than decently employed got you.
Granted, he’d never fucked a man like Sazahk, but still.
Garin sorted through his—very neat and well-organized, unlike someone’s—pack to retrieve two ration bars. Garin didn’t even want to fuck Sazahk. Sazahk would probably question the motives of his every touch, refuse to let Garin make him feel good, then lecture him on the proper way to give head based on the nerve structure of human male sexual organs.
Garin’s cock twitched, and he stared down at it. Sazahk lecturing him on fellatio should not have been an arousing thought.
Garin should have gotten laid before this mission.
Once his wayward anatomy proved it wouldn’t be a problem, Garin set aside his pack and tossed a ration bar next to microscope-number-two, which sat on its side next to Sazahk’s crossed legs. “Eat.”
Sazahk glanced at it, and as Garin had half-expected, didn’t reach for it. Instead, he peered into microscope-number-one and pointed left. “We’re going in that direction tomorrow.”
“Mmm, hold on.” Garin took a bite of his own ration bar as he swiped one-handed through the maps from Dom. He hadn’t had time to go over them in detail. He had planned to do that before turning in for the night, but if he remembered correctly… “Yeah, no. I’d rather we didn’t.”
“You’d rather we weren’t out here at all.” Sazahk didn’t look up from his study, but a spot of purple appeared under his jaw.
“And I’d really rather we don’t get steamed or boiled alive.” Garin rotated the maps a few times to ensure he was reading them right and, yeah, that was a bad direction.
That got Sazahk’s attention. He sat up from his microscope and swiveled to face Garin fully, all traces of purple replaced by shimmering light green. “That was rather specific. Why would you say that? What do you know?”
How to read a map? Garin frowned, opened his mouth, and was about to turn his tablet around to show Sazahk the images, when he understood. Dom hadn’t given Sazahk the maps. He’d only given them to Garin. He’d given Garin a leg up on the pushy whirlwind that was Sazahk to give Garin a chance to chart them a properly safe course through this madness. Garin snapped his mouth shut again, but the damage had been done.
“Is that a map?” Sazahk scrambled over and crouched in front of Garin. “Let me see.”
Garin wasn’t about to hide information from his partner, so he sighed and handed over the tablet. “It’s not a full map. It’s just bits and pieces. And I don’t know how experimental the surveying technology still is.”
Sazahk’s dark eyes snapped back and forth across the screen, but his face fell. “I’m not familiar with this cartographic notation.”
“You wouldn’t be. It’s standard in the Human military though.” Garin accepted back his tablet. It made sense Sazahk couldn’t read it, but Garin still had to hide his surprise. He’d expected Sazahk to be able to read it just because. Because he’d seen it once and its design was obvious or something like that.
“What’s over there that’s going to steam us alive?” Sazahk crossed his legs and sat in front of Garin.
