#speed commissions

On the first, they'd met with such a combined fervor that it ignited between them like a wildfire, the kind that leaves a landscape devastated in its wake. They'd come together in Fox's private quarters in the GAR barracks— old and ugly, unremarkable and uncomfortable but for that it had a horizontal surface and a locked door, and that was all they really needed besides each other. 

Fox had made a sound like a sob when Cody pressed him down to the bed, licking deep, wet, and deeper into his mouth with months worth of wanting it and Cody had echoed the sound right back. They'd always been the same, matched from their scores throughout training down to their fucking personalities; their viciousness, their acerbic humor, and yeah, their weaknesses and comforts, too. Of course, Cody had needed it just as bad as Fox had—the animal comfort of it. The sheer relief of their proximity, finally. 

They’d brought each other to emotional, spine-melting, toe-curling orgasms—practiced hands on familiar bodies, racing down a well-known path—before collapsing into a damp heap, Fox spooned along the length of Cody’s spine, clutching him close. Cody held on equally as tight and felt grounded.

"They trained us so well for everything else about the fucking war," Cody would rasp in the afterglow, tracing mindless patterns on Fox's skin with his nails, scratching just enough to show faint red lines, "but they didn't bother to train us how to be apart from each other. Or how to die next to each other." 

It was morbid. He meant every word of it.

Cody would never share a thought like it with anyone but Fox. (His General would earn the honor later, but not now. He hadn't yet. This was early days, still.) 

"That's because we weren't meant to get attached," Fox muttered into the skin behind Cody's ear, slightly garbled from how tightly he was pressed up to Cody's back. He'd clung like the glue the medics use to sew men back together; like he was trying to fuse them into the whole entity they were supposed to be. 

"They were wrong, vod," Cody kissed the words into the top of Fox's bruised and battered hands. (He was taking and giving hard hits even through his gloves to have such marks, and Cody had wondered about it at the time but not enough.) 

"I'll keep coming back to you," Cody had eventually picked up the conversation's sentiment if not the exact thread, because Fox can hold a silence like no one else. "K'oyacyii, Cyare.” 

Their second meeting some months later had been... less ideal. It was the first real misstep of so, so fucking many in a campaign Cody didn’t know he was waging until it was too late.

Cody had arranged to be in Fox’s private quarters by the conclusion of his shift. He’d tapped Thorn for the intel ahead of time. It’d been so long since he and Fox had exchanged more than a quick check-in—Me'vaar ti gar? and an answering oyayc. K’oyacyii over comms—let alone had a moment to call. Cody had wanted to do something mischievous, something a little like the trouble they used to get into on Kamino together, but with a whole lot less risk—something to distract, because kriff knew he needed it; and they’d always, always been the same. 

Fox had been four hours late; Cody had been upset, and frustrated with Fox’s complete and uncharacteristic lack of a reaction. 

“I missed you,” Cody had said, frustrated, tired, wanting to say something much harsher. Why did I come here if you weren’t going to be here? If you were just going to ice me out, even when you bothered to show up?

“I know,” Fox had replied. It had sounded like an apology. Cody was too distracted by the smarting hurt of it—of the acute yearning for that something between them that neither of them quite had the opportunity to have anymore—to realize it was an apology. (It was the only one Fox knew how to give.)

They hadn’t done more than sleep beside each other that night—and Cody remembers clinging so, so tight and it still not feeling like enough to hold them together. They ate a quiet breakfast together in the GAR barracks before Cody had been called away to the Jedi Temple on urgent business.

The hurt was little, in the grand scheme of things, but their time together was so rare and the enormous distance between them let it smart. Let it turn into a bigger scab than needed grow at all. 

The third time Cody saw him, an even longer stretch of time had passed since the last interval between their infrequent visits. Time had grown a series of red flags around Fox, flags Cody didn’t want to see.

Fox was thinner than Cody had ever seen him with bags under his eyes like bruises and new, little silver hairs creeping out from his temples. Fox had done what Fox always did when hurting, when vulnerable, when he felt backed into a corner and on the defensive.

They'd fought bitterly. Fox was like a veritable land-mine of barbs, criticism, and cruelty; Cody gave it as good as he got. They’d always excelled at fighting each other—both of them stubborn, mean, overachieving bastards down to the marrow.

Fox had called him “Marshal Commander” like it was an indictment, like it was an insult, like he’d never say Cody (let alone the reverently-whispered, achingly tender Kote).

“Coruscant changed you,” Cody had said, low and serious, and perhaps it would have been better if he’d shouted, screamed, or otherwise been karking unreasonable about it. Maybe if he hadn’t said it like he believed it, like he wasn’t just fucking angry and hurting, needing comfort Fox couldn’t give—because Fox needed it too, needed it just as badly if not more, and Cody had missed it through his own pain—just to have spared himself the memory of the little flash of agony in Fox’s eyes when Cody’s words had registered. 

Fox had shut his face down fast, icing Cody out in a second flat. He’d said, “You’re right, Cody. It did." And then, "There’s the fucking door.” 

And Cody hadn’t left. He’d pounced instead, dragging Fox down to the rough carpet of his office, kissing him like he was laying a fist across his jaw. Fox had kissed him back with equal ferocity. They hadn’t spoken a word otherwise, just gasps, moans, and yes’s, more’s, please’s. 

They hadn’t held each other in the aftermath. Cody had reached for it, had reached out to hold him, and Fox had turned away.

There were so many scars on his back that Cody did not recognize. 

He’d dressed in silence. Murmured what they always did, even when they were furious, fighting, whatever.

K’oyaci. And then he’d left him. 

And the final time—the blood-thirsty, vengeful now of it all—had been about Fives.

Cody had—in all honesty, Cody wasn’t sure what he was intending to do. But Rex was insensate in the weeks after Fives' death, and it was Fox that had taken the shot—Fox who took a vod from Cody’s vod’ika.

Cody had come to Fox looking for blood. He’d found it alright, but he hadn’t had to work for it. 

Fox was deliriously feverish when Cody found him, slumped over his desk in a puddle of bloody vomit, murmuring nothing but nonsense, eyes bloodshot and rolling in unseeing circles. A fever of 103, the responding medics had told him. A bleed in the brain, the med scanners had said. 

But nothing spoke louder than the chip the surgical team had found in Fox's fucking head.

By the time Fox wakes from his brain-surgery and bacta-dunk combo, Cody has had plenty of time to process—and plan. About thirteen hours, to be exact. Cody can get a lot done in thirteen hours with a holopad and some intel. As soon as he talks to Fox, he’s going straight to his General.

When he does wake, it's all at once: breath hitching, hands twitching, eyes snapping open.

“I’ve got you,” Cody says, and gets to watch those eyes lock on his own. 

“What,” Fox rasps. His eyes say, don’t. Don’t tell me the truth, please, it’ll hurt too much. Don't say a word.

“I wasn’t paying attention. I am now,” Cody says, squeezing the hand sans-IV. With the other, Fox is gingerly touching the plast over his surgical site, eyes widening with something like horror, something like oh fuck, like dawning understanding.

“Cody,” Fox keens, an agonized sound, and Cody crawls in the fucking bed. 

He carefully straddles Fox’s lap as his vod scrambles to bury himself in Cody’s chest, claw his way under Cody’s ribs, and Cody would let him, would keep him there if he could.

“Mhi solus tome,” he presses into Fox’s hair, and Fox wails to hear it. The keening cry turns into full-body sobs, hands clinging to Cody bruise-tight, and Cody rocks him through to the lullaby of, “mhi solus dar'tome, mhi me'dinui an, mhi ba'juri verde."

“You can’t marry me, you piece of shit,” Fox says when he’s finally cried himself out (it could be an hour or an eternity later) limp and exhausted in Cody’s arms. 

“Fucking watch me,” Cody replies, unbothered. 

“Cody, you have no idea what I’ve done. You can’t.” 

“Let me be the judge of that, Fox.” 

“I won’t survive it,” Fox whispers. 

“Let me prove you wrong,” Cody says, and means please; I love you. 

--

Unfortunately, it does nothing to dissuade him from his current course of possible terrible decision making. Duly unfortunate, it also only reinforces his present concern.

“Your Jedi,” 17 begins and immediately has to stop when the little sheb begins vibrating. “Stop that. Stop it. I’m not giving you his name until the end of this discussion, so listen.” The vibrating continues.

There are not enough pain medications in the world for this conversation.

17 sighs and soldiers on. “Your Jedi is a fucking idiot. A Sith-fucking torture-mask half-suffocating him and muscle-eating maggots in his body, and he flirted with our captor. He was being eaten alive from the inside out and he taunted her.”

Kote goes still like a predator scenting blood. At least the vibrating has stopped.

On second thought... 17 isn't certain that this is better.

“I am assigning you to be his second because I think you’re just the right kind of crazy to keep him alive.”

“Yes, sir,” Kote says.

“Vod’ika.” This is not a word 17 uses often. He is not the type for endearments. His vode are his men, his cadets. This has and will always come first, even before the bonds of brotherhood that each and every vod to the next. It must. This is how 17 loves them. This is how he keeps them safe.

Keeping Kote at arms length will not keep him safe from this danger.

“He is a Jedi. He is not yours. Do you understand me? He is not yours. He cannot be yours. Don’t forget that.”

“Understood, sir.”

Fucking little liar.

“Get out of here, Commander.”

“Yes, sir.”

______________________

After their first ever engagement, Cody returns to his Commander’s quarters with a can of orange armor paint—orange for shereshoy, their chosen unit colors—and paints a sunburst on his armor. A sunburst in shereshoy, the exact glowing orange of his General’s hair catching the firelight as he held back an explosion with nothing but the Force, just long enough for their troops to pull back, not a care for his own safety.

(This is fine. His safety is in Cody's hands now.)

Then, Cody sends a message to Fox.

CC-2224: Him.

He receives a ping back by the time he has emerged fresh and pink-skinned from the sonic. He receives several pings back in rapid succession.

CC-1010: no.

CC-1010: absolutely NOT

CC-1010: youre fucking joking you piece of shit

CC-1010: answer me

CC-1010: aNSWER ME

CC-1010: you had ONE

CC-1010: ONE (1) JOB

To which Cody replies, again:

CC-2224: Him.

______________________

On Steady’s first tour with the 212th, his Commander—the legendary, indomitable Commander Cody of the 212th Legion, second to the High General Obi-Wan Kenobi—drags said High General into the medbay by the scruff of his neck, bodily throws him down upon a vacant med-bed, and straddles his chest in full kit.

The General squawks.

“Medic,” Commander Cody greets him. He unearths a datapad from some location unknown and begins, immediately--still sat astride a Jedi General--to attend to various forms and spreadsheets that Steady does not even want to think about. “The General is in need of medical assistance.”

“S-sir,” Steady stutters, nearly fumbling his scanner onto the floor just as the General slaps at the Commander’s armored thigh and cries, “FIEND! BETRAYER!”

Commander Cody places a gloved hand over General Kenobi’s mouth.

General Kenobi bites Commander Cody.

Commander Cody glances up from his datapad long enough to comment, “Kinky.”

“What the fuck,” a junior medic, Pielke, whispers in fear or perhaps awe.

“I reiterate,” Commander Cody says, slow and unaffected, “The General is in need of medical assistance. See to your duty, or find me another medic who will.”

Steady takes a deep breath and asks, as calm as can be, “Are you going to continue sitting on our General, Sir?”

Commander Cody glances down at his captive. His captive bites him. Again.

“Hmm. Yes. Will this be a problem?” Unspoken stands: if so, make it not a problem.

Steady sighs and gets to work.

________________________

Rex would describe his relationship with his Jedi General as… informal. He would describe his relationship with his baby-Jedi Commander as unorthodox. He’s hardly alone in that—the entirety of the 501st has already adopted the little fiend, especially the ARCS; they are going to teach her terrible things. Despite these more-flexible-than-regs-allow relationships, Rex has absolutely fucking nothing on whatever Cody and Kenobi have going on.

“I would like to see my Grandpadawan. Where is she? Where is my precious child?” Kenobi announces upon striding into the hangar, immediately wrestling command of the whole room’s attention with barely an ounce of effort. Cody is, as always, not far behind.

“You’re never this excited to see me,” Anakin grumbles at the man, somewhere between genuinely irritated but also genuinely amused. Anakin is not-so-secretly pleased by Kenobi's open affection for his padawan.

Kenobi ignores him. This is, for some reason, Kenobi’s second favorite game to play with his former-padawan. First is a game called Torment, Terrify, Embarrass.

Ahsoka skips forward, practically preening under Kenobi’s attentive stare. She rocks on her heels, back and forth and back again, and chirps, “Hi Master Kenobi! I missed you.”

Anakin gasps in offense. “Missed him? You saw him last week!”

“Bah,” Kenobi dismisses this as unimportant. To Cody, he says, “Darling, isn’t she wonderful?”

“She’s wonderful, Sir.”

“Thank you, Uncle Cody!” Ahsoka beams.

Rex does not know why she started calling Cody by this title immediately upon meeting him. Neither does Anakin. (It infuriates Anakin, precisely because he doesn't understand it and Ahsoka won't tell him.) It is especially baffling, seeing as Cody took one look at her down his nose as if he was examining gum on his boots and asked her where her armor was and who let her out of the creche.

Kenobi whisks Ahsoka away for a spar or meditation or tea or some other Jedi nonsense, Anakin trailing and grumbling in their wake. As soon as they’re gone, Rex says to Cody, judgmentally, “‘Darling’?”

“Perish,” Cody replies, not without affection.

“No, seriously. What the kriff is going on, Cody? You two flirt like it’s going to win the war, he calls you natborn pet names, you’re his second.”

Rex is, in short, worried. He’s worried about his ori’vod, who has always been prone to follow his own rules in such a way that makes it seem as though he’s following everyone else’s when, in reality, he couldn’t give two shits. But sleeping with his direct superior? His General? And a Jedi?

That’s dangerous.

(Loving him? That's even more so.)

The smallest of smirks dances around Cody’s lips. “Don’t worry, Rex’ika.” A heavy hand clasps his shoulder and squeezes. It is a threat as much as it is a comfort. The two are indistinguishable when it comes to Rex’s favorite ori’vod. “He calls me ‘cya’re’, too.”

______________________

“May I take a holo?” Cody asks as they drift in post-coital bliss. His hand draws idle patterns across his lover’s back, connecting freckle to scar and occasionally spelling out promises he can’t—will not—dare make out-loud, for both their sakes. (He will keep them and this is what matters.)

Obi-Wan hums a vague affirmative and Cody’s mobile comm jumps into Obi-Wan’s hand from across the room. Cody trades him a kiss for the device.

He angles his camera such that the holo hints at Obi-Wan’s nudity but stops before showing anything illicit. His hair—a bit long, at the moment; Cody will trim it for him tomorrow—tickles Cody’s bare shoulder. Cody splays his hand flat across the expanse of his lover’s back. Possessive. Perfect.

“Can I send it to someone?”

A curious sound. Obi-Wan shuffles around and drapes himself across Cody’s chest. He peers at the holo and smiles—not his Negotiator smile, not his Dangerous smile, but his smile. His simple one. His honest one. It makes Cody’s heart do things. Terrible (wonderful) things.

“It’s lovely. Who would you send it to?”

“Seventeen,” Cody says after a beat of consideration.

Obi-Wan laughs and laughs.

Eventually, in between slow and claiming kisses, Obi-Wan says, “Of course, cya’re. Give him my love?”

Cody thinks about this. “No,” he decides.

This sends Obi-Wan into another fit of giggles. Cody kisses them from his mouth, swallows them whole.

The kind people that brought him from the brink of death keep saying "You've been in a terrible accident," but right around the same time that Rosinante reclaimed his name from the blizzard in his brain, he also reclaimed knowledge about what bullet scars look like. Rosinante has far too many of those to call anything he’s suffered “accidental.” (He has scars that he can’t identify; scars that terrify him to look at, that seem to have belonged to this body far longer than he has).

He starts thinking of the kind townspeople as "the kind civilians" at about the same time; it's the only word Rosinante has for the "myself" and "them" distinction that explains the easy, comfortable way they walk, their lack of fear, their non-existent defenses—bodies not marked with scars and made for war. 

Rosinante wishes he could remember what fucking war he was fighting. Unfortunately, his body is more concerned with remembering how to breathe on its own, how to digest food, how to lift a cup of water to his own mouth under his own power. 

The passing of time hardly means much to him. His recovery comes at a crawling pace with a grueling mental cost. The civilians who care for him are patient and kind, more compassionate than he can even stand to be with himself. He never shares his name with them—never says more than a “thank you”; he isn’t much of a conversationalist—but the nurses start calling him Uncle, even though he's just one of their many patients, unique only in his anonymity. 

As those initial months spent insensate in a coma turn into weeks spent awake turn into months, and then even years, Rosinante manages to piece together fragments of a life he must have lived once. The ever-climbing sum of time since he awoke from his “Terrible Accident” fills him with a deep, fathomless dread. He doesn't know why, only that there's something he's got the feeling he's forgetting. Go figure: a rabbit in a snowstorm.

There's a boy somewhere in the blizzard; Rosinante's white rabbit. He can't recall the boy's name for the life of him. 

He can recall big, dark eyes ringed purple with exhaustion. He can recall tiny, pale hands that trembled uncontrollably with stiff knuckles and chewed-up nails. He can recall already-pale skin losing pigment in ever-growing, always-spreading patches, eventually creeping up a too-thin neck and peeking out from underneath gaping sleeves. His boy was sick. His boy was also very angry. 

He doesn’t know his boy's voice, but he knows the furrow in that little brow better than he knows his own face in the mirror. He knows that his kid would scream and shout himself hoarse at the slightest provocation, even when he was far too tired to carry on like that without literally exhausting himself. He remembers visiting doctor after doctor with his boy, looking for help. He remembers being turned away, time and time again, with varying degrees of fear and even outright hatred. On some days, he can’t help but look at his own loyal care-takers and think, “what have you done to him?” despite knowing that they’ve done nothing but help and keep him alive and well in what must amount to a rather thankless job otherwise. They did nothing to his kid, Rosinante is certain. Any failing here feels inexorably his own.

It eats at him every day that he still breathes that Rosinante does not know his boy’s name anymore and cannot say what happened to him. He knows in the deepest part of himself that he would have done anything in the world to protect his child. He would have died happily for that boy. 

For longer than Rosinante cares to admit even to himself, that’s all he can say. 

And then one day, one of the nurses brings in a newspaper that gets passed around the ward for the usual entertainment value—crosswords, advice columns, and those little comics that they put in the back with the printed advertisements. (Rosinante likes the advice columns, especially those which are about others’ misfortunes in romance.)

It just so-happens that this week’s paper drops a photograph of Donquixote Doflamingo's broken body in the wreckage of Dressrosa right into Rosinante’s lap. 

(There was more than a rabbit out in that storm.) 

_______________________

Law repels the News Coo like oil on water. And although Law is the Captain of their esteemed vessel, it is Bepo who receives the mail when the Polar Tang breaks surface. For reasons unknown to Bepo, the News Coo are adamant that Law is to be avoided at all costs. They will fly out of their way to avoid landing anywhere within the Captain’s glaring radius. 

And of course, Bepo has asked why! He just has no idea what the News Coo mean by “toxic vibes”; perhaps it's an idiom? 

Their commitment to pretending Law does not exist has to be commended, though it does lead to some rather awkward situations for Bepo as the de-facto Mail Bear of the Polar Tang. He could have lived his whole life never knowing Shachi’s preferences in illicit magazine subscriptions, but alas… The mail must be delivered. 

Law rarely receives things directly in the mail. He retains first dibs on all newspapers before he passes them on to Jean Bart, and after Jean Bart is done with the paper it's free grabs for the rest of them—the front-page announcement of Doflamingo’s fall has a place of honor, framed in gold in the Polar Tang’s galley. He also maintains a few subscriptions to a surgical journal or two, but Law ultimately prefers to communicate with their allies via DenDen to avoid compromising any intel. 

But today, Law has received a letter. Bepo doesn’t think Law has ever received a letter; Law has been his Captain for a very long time, now. 

There is no return address on the simple brown envelope, comically small in Bepo’s large paws. Trafalgar D. Water Law, Captain of the Heart Pirates is written in neat, tall script with black ink. Nothing more, nothing less.

“Who is this from?” Bepo asks the News Coo, which shoots him a long-suffering look down the length of their beak as if to say, “Really? You’re asking me?” 

“Right, right,” he sheepishly grumbles. “You wouldn’t know. Sorry.” 

(For a moment, Bepo wonders whether it is from Strawhat before he comes to his senses and asks whether or not he truly believes that the other pirate Captain can even read, let alone write so legibly.)

Bepo expects that Law will just tell him when Bepo hands the letter over with a cheery, “For you, Cap’n! Who’s it from?”

Law just raises an eyebrow before shrugging and opening it. This is a good sign! If it was a secret, he’d just tell Bepo to go stick his nose somewhere else.

But Law’s face flushes nearly as pale as Bepo’s fur as he begins to read, some expression blooming across his face in slow-motion that Bepo cannot name. His dark eyes take in the contents quickly before he reads it again and again, still not saying a word.

“This came in with the rest of it? Like usual?” Law croaks. His voice is hoarse like he’s been shouting at Strawhat Luffy's crew for hours. 

“Yes, just like normal. Are you alright, Law?” Bepo asks. “What is it?” 

When Law finally looks up at him, tearing his unreadable gaze from the single-page note to meet Bepo’s eyes, Bepo sees that his Captain is crying. 

“I need to go to Rubeck Island.” 

So Bepo takes him. What more could he do with Law looking at him like that? 

__________________________

Rosinante was not expecting him to come. Why would he? What could Rosinante possibly have to offer him thirteen years too late? Thirteen years dead? Any apology he could offer—and he’d sat down to write thousands of them—would be meaningless in the face of everything Law has endured in his name. 

Law. 

Nonetheless, Rosinante knows the very instant Trafalgar D. Water Law enters the hospital, long before Law even comes to his room. He is not so frail as to have lost all of his Haki, and there is not a shred of doubt in his mind that the presence he feels must belong to the famed “Surgeon of Death.” Who else with a presence like that would come here?

When Law does come to him, Rosinante does not see him until Law is well and ready. Rosinante is waiting as patiently as he can in the rec room with a book he hasn’t read a single word out of when he finally realizes that the room has gradually emptied of all other occupants over time—patients and nurses alike—and he's placed the single entrance and exit to the room behind him.

A deep, rumbling voice says, “Room,” just as the observation really processes and an eerie blue light swells to encompass the space. Rosinante knows who is standing behind his chair. He knew even before his boy spoke.

“You have one chance to give me a reason to believe you are who you say you are, or I’ll kill you," Law says. His voice is steel without a hint of give. It's the best thing Rosinante has ever heard in his life.

When Rosinante turns around, he does so slowly, like he’s afraid Law will startle and disappear if he moves too fast. He doesn’t stand—doesn’t want him to feel crowded. No matter how many times he’d told himself—promised himself, even—that if Law ever came, he would keep it together, the moment Rosinante lays his eyes on his boy, all grown up, he begins to cry. 

Law got tall. He’s a skinny thing, still, with that same silly hat and those same dark, tired eyes. For all that he is different, the expression on his face is the exact same expression Rosinante remembers from the day he nearly died—his boy looking up at him with desperate fury as Rosinante told him he loved him as if it could ever make up for dying and leaving him alone again. 

“Calm,” he says tearily, throwing up a sound-barrier and answering the question all at once. 

________________________

Law’s eyes are just the same as he remembered: big, dark, and smudged purple underneath with too little sleep. He’s just as painfully expressive as he was as a child, wearing his embarrassment, pride, humor, and even his anger just as familiarly as he always had. Those tiny, pale hands that once trembled uncontrollably are now hands that spell out DEATH and are surgeon-steady, swordsman calloused. His boy was sick, but has healed. Recovered. Covered his body in ink, named his crew “Heart”, and found himself a family in a crew of misfits. 

“I’m so, so proud of you,” Rosinante tells his child, now a man, and means it not for the revenge Law won them—won for them both, and all of Doffy’s victims, too—but for living. 

--

For @legendary-chemistry!!! I know you said specifics didn't matter but I made the mistake of thinking about it too hard and Sabo'd your Corazon. Oops

Kenobi’s berth at the Jedi Temple is a greenhouse. Thick green and yellow leaves clog up the windows, letting only slivers of sunlight through their sticky fingers, and climb inexorably from their ceiling baskets to the floors in great, tangled arms. Everything else is a perfect picture of tidiness— save for the terrifying and unknown Beyond of General Skywalker’s bedroom, hidden behind a firmly shut door. (Rex has seen the General’s quarters on their ship. He has no need to acquire yet another type of mold poisoning.)

“I’m hungry,” Ahsoka whines from her upside-down perch off the back of Kenobi’s couch. She digs her toes into Rex’s thigh to punctuate her displeasure. 

Cody, sat on the opposite couch with a datapad and therefore free of Ahsoka’s torment, hums contemplatively. “Unfortunate,” he says. 

“Reeeeexxxxxx,” she drawls, turning “x” into a snake-like hissing sound of misery. 

“No.” He’d like to return to his novel. Unlike a certain Marshal Commander, Rex’s hobbies are actual leisure activities and not simply more datawork or strange, unending bouts of research on sustainable agriculture or whatever. Unlike said soulless automaton, Rex can enjoy a bit of fiction with his war and misery. 

“You’re just gonna’ let me starve?”

“Yes.” 

Cody huffs out a noiseless laugh. Without looking up from his two-thousand cell spreadsheet, he adds, “Starving is preferable to trying to choke down whatever Rex’ika cooks.” 

False. Lies and slander. 

“How do you know?” Rex asks, lowering his novel so as to fix Cody with his best glare. 

Cody, still not looking up, arches a brow. “I’ve seen you soak a ration bar in caf overnight and eat it with a spoon in the morning.” 

Ahsoka gags. Rex pushes her off the couch. 

“Like you’re any better!”

Cody scoffs. “My skills are innumerable and outmatched.” 

Two white and blue montrals peek out over the couch back like a gopher sticking its snout out of a hole. Predator-sharp teeth appear out from behind smiling lips. Ahsoka’s eyes double in size as she croons, “Ori’vod—” 

“No,” Cody drawls. 

“Pleaaaaaaase?” 

“No.” 

“But how else can you prove that you’re a better cook than Rex?” 

Cody looks up. She has his attention, now. She is Rex’s cleverist vod’ika, but certainly not his favorite. No, she’s too clever to be a favorite. Too much of a pain in the shebs, her and her clever brain. Case in point, she has found the one thing that never fails to engage the beloved and feared Marshal Commander’s attention: competition. 

“Go on,” Cody prompts, steepling his fingers under his chin. 

Ahsoka points at the kitchen. “You and Rexy both cook me something and I judge whose food is better. Oh! And Skyguy and Master Obi can judge, too! When they come back from the meeting with the Chancellor!” She waggles her brow-markings at Cody in a terrible imitation of Fives’ patented eyebrow dance. “You’re gonna’ pass on an opportunity to woo Master Obi?”  

Rex snorts. “Their idea of ‘wooing’ involves ancient poetry and kicking Grievous in the face-plate.” 

“‘Four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one: so that if he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let him bear it for a difference between himself and his horse; for it is all the wealth that he hath left, to be known a reasonable creature’ [1],” Cody sniffs. He stands, setting his datapad on the low caf table, and brushing invisible dirt from his dress greys. 

“I have no idea what you just said,” Rex admits. 

“I think he called you stupid,” Ahsoka offers. 

“Fantastic.” 

“And what are we making you, oh fine and esteemed judge?” Cody asks, carefully folding his sleeves to the elbow and already walking off towards the kitchen. 

Ahsoka leaps up after him, hollering suggestions. With a heavy sigh, Rex follows. He knows he’s about to get his ass handed to him on a silver platter. No one does needless and petty competition like Cody does needless and petty competition. A trauma surgeon could challenge Cody to open heart surgery and Cody’s first question would be “where’s the OR?”

Ahsoka settles on pasta as she settles into a kitchen chair. Rex despairs at her inability to sit normally—she’s spun the thing around so that it’s back is at her front, arms folded over the top and pointy chin resting atop her folded hands, pleased as pie. Anakin sits normally. She must have picked it up from Cody’s problem-Jedi. Although Ahsoka’s take on the tradition involves considerably less draping and more acrobatic folding. 

“Pasta,” Rex repeats. He watches Cody reach for something in the pantry only to get kicked in the shin. “Fuck!” 

“No cheating,” Cody snaps. He hides his bounty behind his back, teeth and gums bared. 

“Cheating?! How do I cheat at cooking?” 

“By sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong,” Cody replies. 

“Yeah!” Ahsoka echoes. 

“We haven’t even started yet,” Rex grits out through clenched teeth. Maybe he was wrong. Fives and Echo can’t possibly be more annoying than these two. 

Cody tsks. “This is why you’re losing, Rex’ika.” 

With a wordless noise of frustration, Rex throws open the pantry and starts looking for… ingredients. Ingredients for pasta. Which he totally knows how to make and absolutely knows what it looks like. He’s for sure had pasta before, right? 

Right? 

He paws through can after can of veg and… other substances, roots through a couple metal containers before deciding that they all just have dried leaves in them, and prods at the white powder in a paper bag labeled “FLOUR” in aurebesh. 

“You doing okay there, Rexter?” Ahsoka teases. 

“Silence from the gallery,” Rex shoots back. 

A clicking and whoosing sound catches his attention and he turns to find that Cody already has a big metal pot on the stove and a small fire going. It must be a gas stove. Rex has never even seen one of those used before. The stoves on the ship are all electric. 

Fuck. 

He turns back to the pantry, shoves some things around, and declares, “Cody took all of the pasta so I don’t know what you expect me to do here.” Fucking saboteur.

Cody and Ahsoka blink at him. 

“Rex,” Ahsoka says. Stops. Blinks at him. 

“Vod’ika,” Cody says in a soothing tone. “Explain to me how what you are holding is not pasta.” 

Rex looks down at the box in his hands. He’d picked it up to get it out of the way of his line of sight. The box says “FARFALLE” above a picture of a very sharp looking bow-shaped necktie. “Uh,” he stalls. 

Cody waits. 

“Uh.” 

Ahsoka stands up and claps her hands together once. “Well,” she says, but with a “p” at the end, sounding like welp, and then adds, “Cody wins!” 

“This victory is Pyrrhic,” Cody says. 

“I haven’t even started,” Rex protests. 

“You’re done, Rexter. You’re done. Go sit down,” Ahsoka soothes. Cody nods somberly. She takes him gently by the shoulders and attempts to steer him back to the couch.

Rex digs his heels in. “Wait, is this pasta? This is not pasta. Right? Right?” 

“Poor dumb Rex,” Ahsoka tuts. 

“Hey! I'm right here!"

"I will have silence from the gallery. Let there be silence. I am cooking. Stop causing a scene, Rex. I raised you better than that."