#firewoodwander

When Rex finally finds enough courage to reveal it to Cody - because keeping stuff from him is infuriatingly impossible - what he gets is to get laughed in his face.

“You’re such an asshole!” he exclaims, elbowing him on his side but to no avail. Cody’s about to double over for how much he’s laughing.

“Rex, my sweet little vod’ika, I’m so sorry for you,” Cody manages to say, barely holding back his laughter. He even dries one tear from his eye for dramatic effect, but after clearing his throat he becomes serious again. “You’re not joking, right?”

“Of course not! I’d never joke about something like that,” Rex immediately replies. Cody sighs, ruffling his short hair - it used to be longer but Rex has started cutting it very short only recently so Cody hasn’t lost this habit yet.

 “Is this because he helped you find your name?” Well, that sure is a question.

The fact that Wolffe helped Rex pick up a name sure has helped, but it’s not all. It’s actually hard to be able to tell exactly how and when it began; he supposes it was something that happened gradually.

Wolffe is tough and fierce, and that’s something Rex has always admired, because he could never act the way he does, not with his hair mutation: the Kaminoans are already constantly coming up with excuses to get rid of him, there’s no need to give them more. He has to be the perfect soldier, not like Wolffe who can growl and snarl at the trainers with little to no repercussion.

That’s not to say that Wolffe’s life is an easy one - none of them could ever even dream to aspire to something like that - but instead of keeping his head low, he takes this life by the tail, he kicks and screams, he doesn’t go down without a fight.

In the end, Rex realizes, it’s a mix of wanting to be him and wanting to be with him.

 Remembering that he’s still involved in a conversation, he shrugs.

“Dunno… Maybe.”

He slides against a wall, letting himself fall on the cold floor. Not the most comfortable spot, but he doesn’t feel like moving right now. Cody follows him down immediately.

“You plan on telling him?”

“Of course not! That would be a death sentence!” Rex exclaims. He isn’t actually sure about that, but he’s also not sure of the contrary either.

Still, he doesn’t want to risk ruining everything he’s build until now just because of a stupid crush, because at the end of the day, it’s just that, a crush. Wolffe, Cody and the rest of their batch have taken him under their wing, integrating him in the group; he doesn’t want to become a pariah even for them.

“That’s dumb,” Cody says, and Rex doesn’t have it in himself to disagree. Still, there’s something about Cody’s smile that doesn’t convince him at all.

“What?” Rex asks then, because if Cody’s going to pull some shit, he’ll kill him. Cody shakes his head.

“You’ll see,” is the cryptic answer. “Hopefully…”

 The days pass and Rex still has no idea about what Cody meant with that. If it was supposed to be a warning, he should’ve been more specific.

Oh well, he was probably messing with him anyway.

 Today he’s supposed to watch Wolffe’s batch train-- well, he’s not the only one of course: the cadets are occasionally granted a chance to see the older ones train and then give their own assessments on it; it’s a way for them to develop critical thinking skills.

While all the other cadets are taking notes, however, Rex just stares at Wolffe wiping the floor with the training droids. He hasn’t missed his target once.

When his blaster malfunctions, instead of hiding or retreating, Wolffe presses forward, showcasing a great sense of determination. He plummets the droids with his bare fists, sending a wave of heat through Rex’s entire body as he thinks that now more than ever he would love to have a spar with him.

He shakes his head, lowering his gaze to the datapad in his hands. Right, he should write some notes down.

 It takes him just a moment to gain back his concentration; as much as he’d love to keep ogling at Wolffe, he also has a job to do, and he can’t afford his performance to be scarce.

He writes about adaptability, movement, observation of the enemy, fury. He knows he should also find something to critique - the longnecks looove when they do that - but what is there to critique? Wolffe is flawless.

Anyway, he’s doing pretty good by the time the siren signifying the end of the session begins to echo. Wolffe immediately takes off his helmet, a cocky smile on his face that makes all the heat in Rex’s body go to his face; he hopes nobody notices.

Then something happens: the bastard begins to look around and, seeing Rex between the other cadets, he winks at him. He winks.

At this point Rex is pretty sure his entire soul has left his body, though he keeps his face carefully blank as the cadets around his area begin to wonder about whom exactly that wink was pointed towards.

 Right, Rex isn’t alone. Even though he’s pretty sure Wolffe was looking at him, they’re far away from each other, so he might’ve just projected his own desires on him.

Still, it seems that he was really looking at him, so… Agh, he doesn’t know!

Asking Wolffe might be the solution, but how weird would that be? Pretty weird, in Rex’s opinion. Imagine going to someone and asking “Hey, you remember before, when you winked? Was that directed at me?”

Yeah… he’s not going to do that.

Still, what if he did actually wink at him. What should he do?

Again, mentioning it might make things weird, so maybe he should just pretend that nothing happened. Yes, this sounds like a great choice; he’s going to do just that.

 No matter how much he’s tempted to ask during the next days, he keeps his mouth shut.

It’s for the best.

 The unfortunate thing about Rex being younger that Wolffe, is that he still has some few months to spend on Kamino before being deployed. He’s not going to lie: he’ll miss his older friends.

In all this, he still hasn’t had the guts to confess to Wolffe, and neither he understood what Cody meant with that “you’ll see”, or what that wink was for, admitting that it was actually pointed at him. So many mysteries and he hasn’t found the solution to even one of them.

Well, not that he’s thinking about that now, no. Now he’s moping around because it’s their day of deployment, meaning that for a while Rex will have to make do without them. He doesn’t like it.

 It’s his fault, he realizes, for having gotten attached to them and, more importantly, to the protection they granted him. He should’ve relied only on himself but instead he became too dependent from their support.

Things are definitely going to get harder for him, but he’s not afraid of decommissioning anymore, not when he’s the best of his entire batch. The longnecks would be dumb to get rid of such a promising asset.

 Tap tap.

“Hey, Rex? You there?”

Rex shakes his head. R-Right: he’s supposed to wait for them to get their armor on so that he can give them his last goodbyes before - hopefully - meeting all back on the battlefield, but instead he’s closed himself inside his head.

Of course, the one who had to shake him back to reality is Wolffe.

“Yeah, yeah I am.”

“Couldn’t tell,” Wolffe jokes, though Rex can see that he’s tense. He raises an eyebrow at him, questioningly.

 Instead of answering, Wolffe looks around. Everyone else is ready, just like him.

“Um…” he begins then, talking to his batchmates, “You go on. I’ll catch up in a moment.”

Nobody comments on the reason why he said such a thing. Ponds chuckles while Fox rolls his eyes.

“Finally!” Bly says, and the three of them begin to walk away, followed by Cody who pats Wolffe on the back and ruffles Rex’s hair - he still hasn’t stopped doing that.

“See you soon, vod’ika.”

“See you soon…”

 Thus, Wolffe and Rex end up completely alone.

“Wolffe,” Rex begins to ask, “What exactly do you--”

“You are the most oblivious motherkriffer I’ve ever seen.”

Rex wants to know why he would tell him something like that, but when Wolffe surges forward kissing him on the lips, he thinks he gets it: in the end, his crush wasn’t as one-sided as he thought.

The winking episode comes to mind immediately. Kriffing hells, he really is dumb then: instead of accepting the reality as it was, he made up excuse to think that Wolffe didn’t actually wink at him.

Was this what Cody meant all along? The asshole should’ve just told him already!

 When they pull away, Rex can only think about the fact that he’s just kissed Wolffe, no, that he has been kissed by Wolffe.

“Seriously,” Wolffe begins then, continuing what he was saying before, “How could you not--”

This time it’s Rex’s turn to interrupt him with a kiss. It feels too good to be true but he’ll be damned if he lets this opportunity pass, not when he’s wasted so much time convincing himself that Wolffe didn’t see him that way.

Well, what matters is that it’s happening now.

 This time, when they pull away, they do it only because they’re both out of breath.

“Sorry…” Rex can’t help but to mutter then, but Wolffe shakes his head.

“Nah, it’s my fault, I should’ve just asked you out instead of going around it,” he replies, then he smiles. “At least we got there, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Rex replies, returning the smile. “So… See you on the battlefield?”

“Yes,” Wolffe replies, before his expressions turns serious again. “I’ll wait for you.”

 They kiss one last time before Wolffe walks away to join the others, with Rex following him with his gaze until he disappears from his view.

On one hand, he feels empty, but on the other… It’s weirdly exciting: it won’t be long before Rex will be deployed as well, meaning that they’ll really see each other in battle soon.