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Because baseball is anything but predictable, it ends up taking almost a week before they make it for that drink.
After they part ways outside the video room, Cody tries to stick around for the whole game, so they can meet up afterward. So of course, Vos’ start that night turns into the kind of shitshow that spirals immediately out of control, then refuses to end, ultimately featuring Skywalker – the day after his own start – as a pinch-runner in the 14th inning. It’s in the 11th that Cody reluctantly texts Obi-Wan to say he can’t be out so late on a weeknight, and can they take a raincheck. He doesn’t go into detail as to why, although Rex has probably talked about their younger brothers before. And Obi-Wan doesn’t press, just texts back “of course” from somewhere in the clubhouse, and then, “let me know when”.
“Definitely,” Cody taps out in reply as he half-jogs to his car, though he isn’t sure he will. Their bullpen session had been electric, at least for him, and the time in the video room afterward just as much so, if in a different way. Obi-Wan was brilliant, his baseball intellect astounding, and Cody hadn’t had a conversation that had pushed him so much in years, not surrounded by mid-level analysts with business degrees as he usually is. He got the feeling, as they compared clips against different batters, spin rates, release points, that Obi-Wan felt the same way, if the way he kept looking at Cody out of the corner of his eye and smiling was any indication. Cody even forgot to ogle the man, briefly, he was so caught in the weeds of discussing Obi-Wan’s arsenal. Exchanging numbers afterward had felt natural, the best way to make sure their conversation never had to end. But now, in the night air, hoping he’ll make it home before the curfew he’s set for Fives, Cody thinks it was probably too good to be true. It’s been a day of fantasies, really, and fantasies don’t last. Real life is far too good at getting in the way.
(He makes it home approximately two and a half minutes before Fives does.)
Cody doesn’t see Obi-Wan the day after, at least not in person, though he does – because it is his job – watch more video of the man’s last start, three days prior. He finishes up his usual analyses, types a brief summary of the release point changes they’d discussed in the video room, and sends them to his boss for review. Then he goes home and makes dinner for a recalcitrant eighteen-year-old. He does not text Obi-Wan.
Two starts later – Obi-Wan single-handedly demolishes the Geonosis Spiders, then twirls a one-hit complete game against the Tatooine Suns – the team has their first off day in a couple of weeks. Cody is at his desk, updating a graphic about commit points, when his phone buzzes.
“Drinks tonight? :-)”
Maybe it’s the dorky emoji. Maybe it’s the fact that Fives has made it abundantly clear that he’d rather spend his last summer before college doing god-knows-what with his high school friends, rather than having dinner every night with his slightly stodgy older brother. Maybe it’s the way Obi-Wan’s fastball had crackled against the Suns, the way he’d been audibly grunting with every pitch for the last three outs, somehow gaining velocity at the very end of the game, as if calling on some previously untapped source of strength to finish it out. But whatever the reason, Cody finds himself texting back, “when and where?”
He gets to the bar before Obi-Wan does. It’s a hole in the wall, really, across town from the ballpark. The bartender, a burly middle-aged man in a white apron, more or less ignores him. Cody wonders if Obi-Wan lives out this way, or if he just prefers to do – whatever this is – far away from where he works. There’s no such thing as anonymity any more, in the age of smartphones, but the place is pretty much empty. Probably because it’s Wednesday. Cody is eyeing the list of beers on tap and contemplating whether or not Obi-Wan knows what day of the week it is – ballplayers usually don’t, in his experience – when the bartender suddenly springs to life.
“Look who the cat dragged in!” he booms. Cody turns to look over his shoulder, and there’s Obi-Wan in the doorway, wearing low-slung light-wash jeans, a faded black Grateful Dead t-shirt, and a sheepish expression.
“Hi, Dex,” he calls back, hands in his pockets. Cody takes a moment to appreciate the curve of his biceps, how thick his thighs look in his jeans, before he gets closer, and Cody has a new wave of details to notice. The faint freckles across the bridge of Obi-Wan’s nose, the way his hair tumbles, loose and a little wavy, in the front when it isn’t being squashed down by a baseball cap. The way his eyelashes look almost blond as he looks up through them to say, more quietly, “Hi, Cody.”
The bartender – Dex – lets out a snort. “Oh, so it’s like that, is it?” Then he’s off and clattering glassware before waiting for an answer, which is good, because Cody isn’t sure what he should say in response. Isn’t sure of anything, really, other than that he can’t take his eyes off Obi-Wan, who is sliding onto the stool next to him.
“Hey,” Cody manages not to croak. Emboldened by how normal his voice sounds, he adds, “You look good.”
Dex returns with a couple of waters, something an unlikely shade of neon blue for Obi-Wan, and eyes Cody with a critical expression. “What are you drinking?”
He orders some sort of brown ale he knows Rex likes, which Dex sets down in front of him a few seconds later, before giving Obi-Wan a meaningful look and then disappearing into the back.
Cody wonders if Obi-Wan has a script for this. If he brings men here often enough that the bartender knows the drill. If this is a first date, or a booty call, or if he’s actually misread the whole thing entirely.
“Sorry about him,” Obi-Wan says beside him. He lifts his drink but doesn’t sip it yet. “He’s – a family friend, but I haven’t seen him in a while.”
Maybe he doesn’t bring men here so often, then.
Cody turns on his stool toward Obi-Wan and lifts his beer to clink their glasses together.
“To a long season,” he says, and Obi-Wan smiles, slowly, rapping his knuckles against the wood of the bar top three times in response.
“Slainte.”
Obi-Wan sips his neon blue concoction, almost daintily. Cody absolutely does not watch the way his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows.
“So,” Obi-Wan says conversationally. “How would it go if Rex had to cover for your job?”
Cody stares, for a long moment, then lets out a full-belly laugh.
He normally hates small talk, but it feels like they’ve bypassed that, maybe because Obi-Wan already knows Rex. He finds himself telling the story of when they’d been given each other’s SAT booklets mid-exam by mistake, so Cody had ended up doing the math section twice and Rex had written two essays. How apeshit their father had been when they’d finally come clean. Obi-Wan is cackling by the end, lips tinted slightly blue, and Cody wants to kiss him very, very badly.
“I guess your academic offenses didn’t keep you from college ball, though,” Obi-Wan chuckles. “Did the two of you play together, or separately?”
“Separately. He went back to Kamino College, closer to where we lived when we were really young. I stayed here, played for U of Coruscant. First time we’d ever been on separate teams, actually. It was weird as hell for a while, not having him on the bench next to me.”
“You know, I’ve never seen you both in the same place.” Obi-Wan brushes his hair out of his eyes. “It’s a good thing you look so different. Otherwise I’d have to wonder if this was some kind of elaborate ploy.”
Cody laughs. “Please. How quickly did you know I wasn’t Rex last week?”
“Oh, as soon as you walked out that door.” Obi-Wan leans back slightly, eyes Cody up and down. Cody’s skin tingles. “You move very differently, for one thing.”
“Do we?” Cody shrugs. “I guess I’ve been out of the game for longer.”
“Rex played in the minors for a while, didn’t he?” Obi-Wan is very clearly not asking why Cody stopped playing. And Cody does appreciate it, because explaining was painful, for a long time. But these days, it almost isn’t, and even if it’s too heavy for a first date, or whatever this is, Cody suddenly just wants to get the whole conversation over with.
“He signed as a junior, yeah. I had wanted to finish school first, but.” He shrugs. “When Dad died, priorities changed.”
Obi-Wan doesn’t say anything, at first, doesn’t offer any of the usual platitudes. He does slide his hand closer to where Cody’s is resting on the bar top.
“Rex told me you’d all moved here after you lost your mother when you were young.”
Cody nods, a little curtly. “We were nine. Car accident.” He feels Obi-Wan’s eyes on his scar, wills himself not to blink.
“I lost my mother when I was thirteen,” Obi-Wan says quietly. “After that it was just me and my step-dad.”
Cody tries to imagine growing up with only one other person around all the time. Without the chaos of a twin and three younger brothers. He already feels at a loss, sometimes, with no one but Fives left at home with him. And Fives will be moving out at the end of the summer, and it’ll be just Cody.
His pinky brushes against Obi-Wan’s. Obi-Wan doesn’t pull away.
The moment breaks when a pair of women meander in and sit at one of the tables by the door. Dex comes out to take their drink orders, swings by to offer refills to Cody and Obi-Wan, then disappears again. Their conversation shifts back to the Knights, their upcoming road trip to Dagobah, and they’re off from there.
It doesn’t feel like talking about work, somehow, even though for Obi-Wan it must, but it’s just like in the video room, where it just felt like – talking about the game with someone at his level, maybe above his level, but barely, and he know he’s challenging Obi-Wan’s thinking just as much. And unlike in the video room, they don’t stay focused on finding holes in Maul’s swing, or how to improve Muln’s pitch framing. Instead, Obi-Wan peppers in stories about Rex on the road with the team, stories that Rex has clearly been keeping from Cody. The time he and Skywalker got stuck in an elevator, the time he and Skywalker got lost and missed the team bus, the time he and Skywalker picked up questionable takeout and had half the team puking their way through a doubleheader. Cody had known Rex was friends with some of the pitchers, as well as the coaching staff, but he’d thought it was mostly the relievers – hadn’t realized he was so close to Skywalker. He says as much, and Obi-Wan laughs.
“It’s pretty new this season. I think he’s a good influence on Anakin, actually, despite how it may sound.” And now that Cody thinks of it, Skywalker has had fewer emotional meltdowns on the mound this season than the one before. Pitchers need to have short memories, to put the last batter and the last inning behind them in order to move forward, and Skywalker – seems to have trouble doing that. But maybe less so than he used to.
“Rex has always been pretty good at getting people out of their heads,” he muses. Cody was good at that once, too, at standing face to glove to glove to face with a struggling pitcher and walking that balance between reassurance, criticism, and a little bit of gentling a horse. He doesn’t realize he’s said that last bit out loud until Obi-Wan is leaning into his space and laughing.
“I want to be insulted, but I can’t say you’re wrong.” He leans his shoulder against Cody’s, body a long warm line at his side in the overly air conditioned space. Cody looks at his nearly empty glass, at his right hand, his pitching hand, still barely touching Cody’s left. If he turned his head just a little bit more, and leaned down… He glances around the bar. The women have finished their drinks, seem to be discussing where to go next.
“There’s something I should tell you,” Obi-Wan says, low, “before I kiss you.”
He makes as if to pull away, and Cody means to let him, because this sounds serious. But his hand follows Obi-Wan’s, as if of its own volition, and Obi-Wan huffs out a bit of a laugh, presses their palms together. He must – he has to be feeling it too, this pull that Cody doesn’t understand. Is maybe a little bit afraid of.
Obi-Wan laces their fingers together, but he isn’t looking at Cody, he’s looking at his drink when he says, “I’m coming out at the end of the season.”
It’s a bit of a surprise, but not exactly a shock. It’s not necessarily what Cody was expecting to hear, here and now.
All he says is, “Good for you,” meaning it, and then waits to hear why exactly he’s being trusted with this information.
Obi-Wan does look at him, then, bright blue eyes crinkled at the edges, just the beginnings of lines etched there from a lifetime of standing in the sun. “I don’t have to tell you what it’ll be like.”
He really doesn’t. Cody hadn’t been out while he was still playing. Had barely figured out he was gay for himself, midway through college. There’s a reason the majors have never had an out player, and it’s not because they’ve never had someone who would’ve wanted to be.
“I’m telling you this because… I like you a lot.” Cody gets a little thrill at the admission, but Obi-Wan continues, his voice pitched low but with an undercurrent of steel. “And your twin is friends with the closest person I have to a brother. And on top of all that… you work for the team. Which means, if you’re with me, or even if you’ve just been seen with me in the past – ” he lifts their joined hands – “when things get complicated for me, they’ll probably get complicated for you, too.”
Cody knows in his gut how true that is. Knows that this is Obi-Wan trying to spare him. To offer him an out, ahead of time. An out he should probably take.
But when he opens his mouth, what comes out is, “Who do you have supporting you with all this?”
Obi-Wan’s eyes widen, like that was the last question he was expecting. A beat passes before he responds, “Well, my agent, Siri. My step-dad Qui-Gon – he lives out west, and I’ll probably go there for the offseason, after the initial press. Anakin knows, which is – complicated, sometimes, but usually helpful. Windu and Organa have been – fine. They’d rather have the focus be on the game, I think. But. They haven’t been – bad.”
The way he says the word makes it clear that someone has been, and Cody’s hand tightens around Obi-Wan’s involuntarily. Obi-Wan sighs. “Commissioner Palpatine, well.” He laughs, but there’s no mirth in it. “He wanted to know why I couldn’t just wait until I retired. And then, barring that, why I couldn’t just tell everyone I’m gay. He’s worried the fan base won’t understand bisexuality. Thinks it would be better for everyone to just keep it simple.”
Cody wants to fight the commissioner of baseball approximately fifteen times a day – usually over stupid rule changes – but he has never truly hated the man until this moment.
But, well. Obi-Wan probably gets enough unhelpfully violent defensive tendencies from Skywalker, if he’s one of the few in the know. Cody consciously relaxes his posture, though he keeps a firm hold of Obi-Wan’s hand.
“Thank you for trusting me with this,” he says, smoothing his thumb across Obi-Wan’s. “It can’t be easy.”
Obi-Wan lets out a choked sound, then another, and Cody realizes he’s laughing, though his eyes look bright. “What was that,” he gasps out, “about gentling a horse?”
Cody can’t help but laugh, too, and Obi-Wan leans toward him again, and the vibration from his chest resonates against Cody’s side as Obi-Wan rests his forehead, fleetingly, on Cody’s shoulder. As they both quiet, he murmurs, “thank you.”
He pulls away, takes his hand back, and Cody lets him, this time, watches him reach not for his cocktail but his water glass. Watches him drink half of it at once, the condensation on the glass dampening his beard. He looks more settled, afterward, left elbow perched on the bar top, the rest of his body turned toward Cody just slightly. The crease between his eyebrows has smoothed out.
He looks more at peace, like maybe what he really needs right now is a friend, someone who can understand what he’s going through a little bit better than any of the other people in his life. Cody really, really wants to be that friend.
But, well.
“You did say,” he says carefully, “that you wanted to tell me that before you kissed me.”
Obi-Wan’s eyes widen, just slightly. “I did, didn’t I?” He opens his mouth again, slightly, but not like he’s angling for that kiss – more like he wants to ask Cody if he’s sure. Like he wants to repeat all the reasons he’s just given Cody for this to be a bad idea.
But Cody’s already heard them, and plenty more of his own. Has spent the last half decade listening to the very good, very important reasons that he can’t have what he wants. He thinks that maybe, just maybe, it might be time for him to stop, now.
Obi-Wan is watching his face, searchingly, and whatever he sees there must reassure him, because he shifts in his seat and tosses back what’s left of his drink.
Of course, that’s when an unfamiliar voice comes from behind him, asking, “Excuse me?” It’s one of the women, her friend hanging back slightly. “Aren’t you Obi-Wan Kenobi?”
Cody can pinpoint the exact moment Obi-Wan’s media face takes over. The smile that sold a million baseball cards appears, like magic, as he turns on his bar stool.
“I am! Are you a Knights fan?”
They are.
Obi-Wan obligingly signs a napkin, and Cody takes several photos of the three of them on both women’s phones, and there’s a lot of heartfelt repetition of “thank you so much” and “so sorry to bother you” and “you’re really my favorite player ever” before the two women finally disappear through the front door.
Cody can see how that would get incredibly tiresome. But, well. They were… really happy. And watching Obi-Wan in fan mode is a sight to behold – he’s charming and lovely and utterly gracious.
And now they have the place to themselves.
Well, almost.
Cody is so swept up in Obi-Wan’s smile, now turned in his direction and getting more genuine by the second, that he’s forgotten about Dex entirely. Until the man reappears from the back room, apron gone, keys in hand.
“I’m calling it a night, kids. Wednesdays are shit for sales around here.”
Obi-Wan looks vaguely startled, as well. “Is it Wednesday?”
Dex snorts and lobs the keys at him. Obi-Wan, with the unerring skill of a professional athlete, ducks dramatically and does not even attempt to catch them.
They land on the bar in front of where Cody is standing, instead.
Dex flips a set of switches by the door, and the neon signs outside the bar flicker out.
“Don’t forget to lock up when you leave.” And with that, he’s gone.
Cody waits for a long moment, to make sure they’re really alone this time. Resists the urge to count to thirty.
Before he can get to ten, Obi-Wan very deliberately steps up in front of him. They’re nearly the same size, and Cody hasn’t done this much, but when he has, he’s usually been the bigger one, in muscle if not also in height.
He hasn’t been pushed up against many bars, himself. Never by someone built like another ballplayer, with callused hands that rasp against the sensitive back of his neck.
Obi-Wan kisses like he pitches, every ounce of that heat and intensity concentrated into the assured press of his lips, the wet warmth of his tongue as he licks into Cody’s mouth.
Cody tangles his fingers in Obi-Wan’s hair, finally, finding it’s just as soft as it looks. Runs his other hand down Obi-Wan’s bicep, his chest, his hip.
Obi-Wan pulls back, somehow, though Cody can’t imagine why, and gasps out, “Is this all right?”
Cody pulls him back in.