#trixree writes

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.

Obi is on all fours crouched over a body of water that falls somewhere in classification between a pond and a fountain (as most things in the Room of A Thousand Fountains do). Water burbles a steady stream across moss-coated rock, falling gently into the pond below—Bant is going to rule that it is, in fact, a pond due to the general scum and grime levels; all natural and indicative of a healthy miniature ecosystem, of course!—and fills the green, pleasantly-humid space with an equally pleasant white noise. Much less pleasant and peaceful, the sleeves of Obi’s tunics are tied into a soaking wet mass at his shoulders, his pale and freckled arms plunged the majority of the way into the water.

“I am being perfectly-fucking-reasonable,” he declares archly, his hands making sweeping movements below the surface. Obi sniffs at them in displeasure, his jaw clenched so tight that it’s giving Bant a sympathy tension headache.

“Sure you are, honey,” Quinlan coos back.

Obi-Wan snarls, brandishing one dripping-wet and mossy hand in Quin’s direction and miming what Bant is certain is a Force-choke. “Begone from me,” Obi-Wan demands in the casually superior tone of a Coruscanti business-person who ordered the chicken salad with dressing on the side.

Bant takes a deep breath, steeling herself, and asks in her best Creche-duty voice, “What are you doing, Obi-Wan?”

He plunges his Sithly hand back into the pond with a deep scowl. It ages him in a way truly nothing else manages to—twenty-one he may be, but Hell if he looks not a day over fifteen. His padawan braid, a long and proud thing, resembles a wet rat’s tail. As she waits for a reply, it drips, swaying with Obi-Wan’s vigorous sweeping motions.

“Frogs!” he shouts, sudden and furious. “Fucking, kriffing, nerf-herding, bantha-shitting frogs!”

“Frogs?” Bant soundlessly mouths at Quin. He is too busy stuffing both hands over his mouth to prevent barking, cacophonous laughter and does not register her silent question. The Room of a Thousand Fountains is, after all, a place of peace and serenity.

“Master Jinn,” Obi-Wan continues in the same distressed and obnoxious pitch, “is starting a terrarium, Bant. A terr-ar-ium,” he hits each syllable with the same fervor as he hits Quin during a spar—viciously and with no quarter. “You know what that means, Bant? Bant, my dear? My darling? It means I will be keeping a fucking terrarium.”

Bant winces. It’s common knowledge among their little friend group that Obi-Wan’s Master is a bit of a... douchebag. Not that Master Jinn is not an excellent Jedi; Bant has heard of his sweeping successes in diplomacy and seen firsthand how magnificent of a duelist he is. She would be hard pressed to find another Master among the Coruscant Temple that is more in-tune with the Living Force! Master Jinn can walk into a room and any greenery or foliage will spontaneously grow an additional three centimeters.

(Obi-Wan maintains that the plants are just quivering in fear of their most natural predator.)

This is, unfortunately, as far as Master Jinn’s skill with living-beings extends. He is a gardener like no other and yet anything approaching sentient status perishes instantly in his care.

Bant was shocked to learn that Obi-Wan was not, in fact, Master Jinn’s first padawan. Somehow—somehow!—the man had three! Granted, one of those three did turn to the Darkside and enslave her best friend for a time, but Obi-Wan’s lineage brother Feemor seems to be well-adjusted enough. By Obi-Wan’s account, Feemor is even a little bit… dull. Even so, Master Jinn’s record of having raised one successful and well-adjustedJedi seems so unfathomable, given what Bant knows of Obi-Wan’s padwanship.

Obi-Wan does the cooking because, if left to his own devices, Master Jinn will claim to be able to subsist on the Force and truly terrible tea alone. Obi once told her, practically vibrating with frustration, that he isn’t sure Master Jinn knows how to boil a pot of water. He also claims to have seen the man eat an uncooked handful of dry pasta. Bant maintains that this is impossible, even with those hard human teeth. It’s just too crunchy! Much, much too crunchy to manage, surely.

Wouldn’t it hurt?

No, said Obi-Wan. Pain is something for other people. Pain does not visit Qui-Gon Jinn.

Obi-Wan also does the laundry, the tidying, and any and all such general tending that is necessary to keep two human males functioning optimally. Once (and only once) Obi-Wan came to Master Jinn looking for comfort after a nightmare. He swears, up and down, that Master Jinn patted him gingerly on the head with an expression akin to a grimace and said only, "I see" before beating a hasty retreat.

This is the same man who coos at cacti.

When Master Jinn rescues some hapless creature and brings it to his Temple quarters under the obviously misguided belief that he will be able to care for them, their care always falls to Obi-Wan. Case in point: the tooka, the porgs, the other tooka, the terryl, the juvenile varactyl, and the kowakian-lizard monkey.

“Oh dear,” Bant says, sympathetically.

“So,” Obi-Wan continues, voice like the world’s most damp drill sergeant, “I am acquiring frogs instead of purchasing frogs because when the inevitable happens, I would really rather appreciate still having credits."

A mournful chirping sound fills the air, distinctly amphibious.

“Come here you son of a fucking bitch,” Obi grits through painfully clenched teeth. Something little and distinctly slippery makes a flying leap out of the water only to be seized (carefully) by the Force. The frog spins pathetically in the air, long spindly legs kicking fruitlessly as it croaks in confusion. “Hush, we are both victims here. Blame the madman, not me,” he tells the frog promptly before plopping it into a container previously hidden behind his enormous (and hideous) water-proof boots.

“One down!” Quinlan brightly announces, clapping once. “How many more to go?”

Obi-Wan brandishes a single pointing finger at Quin as if it is a weapon of war. “Three, but that’s none of your business, is it, you useless, unhelpful cretan?”

Quin giggles, high and pitchy. “He loves me,” he turns and stage-whispers to Bant’s slowly retreating person. She freezes. Damn it.