Chapter Text
“Hello. Benedict Kennedy, right?” Kote asked when the door opened.
The person standing on the other side was… soft. A soft sweater, thick enough to cover any hardness to the body, red hair caught soft light from the hallway’s window gently, eyelids drooped softly, making the person look sleep-soft.
But they also had too much vitality for Kote to call them actually sleepy. The latent magic for this human… it was steadily thrumming, a lively, calmly pacing thing.
“Just call me Ben. Hello. Cody Whetu, I presume?” the man answered with a smile, one that was quite sharp compared to the rest of him.
Kote tilted his head, as though he was agreeing.
“Well please do come in, may I help you with that?” Ben asked, nodding at the suitcase Kote had been rolling along, smile matching his words in politeness.
Kote smiled back at the man and pushed the suitcase forward a bit to make it easier for Ben to grab. Ben grabbed it and dragged it beside him, gesturing Kote in.
If the man was going to be this polite, or even half as polite, normally, then Kote was certain he could make this work. It was lucky to find a human that would be decently compatible with him attempting to live in human society.
Settling into the apartment had been easy. Ben was direct with what was his, what was Kote’s, and what was communal. He’d offered to make room in the communal areas too, if Kote wanted some of the space currently occupied by plants. There were wintergreen boxwoods on half of the window sills, a bonsai of what Ben told him was a winterberry tree on the dining table, and random hostas and ivy plants perched on every other spare inch of shelving, it seemed.
The man was also continuing to be polite, and didn’t pry further than to confirm that Kote had enough money for the first two months of rent and general intent to find a job in that time.
Ben didn’t ask him about much at all, promising they could discuss proper rules and rituals after Kote had settled in. It was a pleasant surprise, most humans were curious and brazen and assumptive, a very annoying combination.
He’d only done an actual human society integration mission once before, and it had only been for two summers as Alpha’s “weird little cousin” about a century and a half ago. The rest of his experience with humans had been when he didn’t bother with establishing a life, or staying anywhere in human society for more than a fortnight. And the few times a human had come to the court. (Did Aayla count? She hadn’t exactly been completely human by the time Bly got her home to the court.)
Still, he’d never actually had to live with a human before, he supposed his luck was good if Ben kept being the sort he could get along with. In the worst case, Kote supposed he could use magic to prevent the man from annoying him and just enjoy the apartment’s plants.
It was blessedly unawkward, the first few days with Cody. Obi-Wan found himself sighing in relief practically each time Cody went back into his room to apply to jobs after they interacted, always polite and casual.
Obi-Wan’s past attempts at roommates had been, by and large, just “okay”. A few bits of bad luck, but mainly people that stuck around for a year or so before he or they moved on, no particular feelings about each other. But the beginning was always awkward, with the human trying to remember all of the rules they’d both requested and trying to settle into a new housing situation.
His work as a bartender that left him home all day didn’t exactly help them, most of them being used to living with someone that left for mornings or afternoons or both, not someone who was around except when they slept. His roommates usually had no idea how to interact with him for weeks, even months sometimes, after they first started cohabitating.
But Cody had kept to all of their rules perfectly, easily consulted Obi-Wan when he bought a few begonias and placed them around the apartment, was pleasant and polite when they interacted and without any discomfort. Obi-Wan had even caught the man carefully touching and smiling at his plants. No one had appreciated Obi-Wan bringing some nature, more life, into the apartment since Bail had left to do that Peace Corps thing.
Obi-Wan had good luck, to find a courteous, plant-loving roommate with so much lively latent magic, one who was also competent enough to get multiple job interviews by the second week of his hunt.
Kote walked back into the apartment, feeling a pleased with himself, warm, like dappled sunlight streaming onto earth already baked by the morning light.
He looked around, first for Ben, and then for a place to put his new nasturtium when he didn’t see the man. All of Ben’s evergreens would be very nice to have in winter, Kote was sure, but it was still late summer, early autumn. It was time for the bright colors, the momentary triumphant showmanship, of more flowery plants.
The cage cashier job he’d just gotten at the local casino still had too many electronics involved for Kote’s taste, but it also involved handling real exchanges, cash for chips and back, and meant his responsibilities were to count honestly and convince people to follow the rules, two things his nature made him excel at. It had been worth using a bit of magic to make sure his interviewers would consider his documents qualified, despite the casino’s background check being so scrutinous. Especially since they would provide weekend classes to train him to become a dealer. A job that had more tricks and counting and rules and far fewer electronics.
Kote was observing his third arrangement of the new plants when he heard the door unlock and Ben enter the apartment again.
Kote turned around, watching the man come in with an armful of paper bags. The man was wearing a lightweight, soft looking sweater as usual, and Kote could see a bit of dirt on his hands. Ben must have been volunteering at the local botanical gardens again, it would certainly explain the way his latent magic was practically bursting, if he had been spending the past three hours surrounded by plants and good soil, absorbing their vibrancy until Kote almost wanted to open the man up and drink that delicious energy up himself.
Instead, he reached back, stroking the leaf of the nearest nasturtium, resonating subtly with its vibrancy in a small feedback loop as he held himself in place.
Ben looked up at him from where he was taking off his shoes. The man looked at Kote, and then quickly looked down and to the side, at the nasturtium. Ben smiled.
“Is there a particular occasion for your new pops of color? Or were they an occasion all on their own?” the man asked as he moved to the kitchen.
“Got a job, get to start training tomorrow and I have my first shift next week. I figured it was worth a little celebration,” Kote said, keeping his eyes on the other.
Ben was taking his bounty out of the bags and organizing it on the counter methodically. Kote quickly recognized a few wrappings as from stalls at Ben’s usual farmer’s market. The produce was always fresh, the other items the man bought less processed than practically any equivalent at the grocery stores in the area. It was a good diet, nutritious even to Kote and any other fae.
“Well, that’s good news. If it’s all right with you, why don’t I make us a celebratory soup? I should have the ingredients with all this,” Ben requested.
“A celebratory soup?”
“Yes,” Ben laughed, a vaguely tinkling, light sound, “I lived near an old woman for a bit in my youth that taught me to make it. It’s nice and hearty and goes down smoothly, taste’s good as well, so it’s worth serving at celebrations,” Ben explained.
A soup sounded a bit warm for the already warm weather, but it would be rude to reject an offer of reward like this, to deny praise in essence – and to deny praise was to disrespect the praiser by saying their opinion and approval was odious.
“I look forward to it,” Kote responded.
Ben’s smile grew wider, and then the man was focusing on the kitchen, putting some food away and taking more out with knives and pots, setting to work. Kote watched the agile hands arrange everything in what would likely turn into an efficient assembly line as the first few hummed notes of a song filtered through the air. It was a tune Kote had heard on the radio – a device too full of plastic and metal for Kote’s taste like all the electronics nowadays, but one full of the human creativity he was supposed to be collecting – a few times already.
Kote tilted his head slightly as he watched Ben for a few moments more, listening to the pulses of the man’s muffled, dormant magic mix with the tune. It didn’t really match up, Kote decided as he turned back to the plants on top of the short bookshelf. The tune was… bubbly, and the song was about some sex metaphor connected to being on fire, as Kote recalled.
Ben wasn’t bubbly. He was soft, sure, but even that had his limits. Interestingly enough, even though the man was constantly swathed in the trappings of soft, warm things – from the sweaters to his hair to the subtle teas to the plethora of blankets around the apartment to the lack of TV (Ben preferred real, paper books and newspapers, an unusual thing in this day and age Kote had found and was grateful for. Living with an electronic that big was not Kote’s idea of a pleasant living situation) – Kote didn’t think he could call Ben warm. If anything, the man’s constant politeness, prevarications away from talking about himself, and general disinterest in things he didn’t already care about, made Kote fairly certain the man was what humans would call cold.
Of course, he also thought of that since the magic inside the human, despite it being buried too far down for it to be any use to the human, reminded him of getting shoved into a shaded brook at the height of summer more often than not. An almost shocking cold, with a bit of bite, even if there wasn’t the disgustingly overwhelming chill Kote had felt from a few winter fae that had let their magic out unfettered at one banquet. The chill was curbed enough to be anywhere from refreshing to mildly unpleasant.
It was nice, to be around Ben and share space with him.
Kote felt himself pause at that thought.
He glanced once more at his human roommate, who was now chopping with his usual amount of efficiency, and then made his way to his own room.
He sat down on his bed, observing the begonia on his windowsill as he reviewed.
Ben had made this foray into human society… fairly pleasant, he realized. Much better than the last time he was in human society. And definitely more pleasant than Bly reported being in human society when he had been a few decades back; the man had said he was a second away from murder more often than not until he ran into Aayla.
Ben was steeped in so much of humanity without being annoying, though. He enjoyed the books and music and creative endeavors of his fellow humans, and avoided the electronics and rudeness that made Kote scrunch his nose at every other car he passed. And the man himself was courteous and cared about his plants and was clearly clever from the sassier mutters Kote had heard when the man read the newspaper sometimes.
And competent, Kote added a moment later, remembering the times he’d gotten to see the man’s skills in the kitchen and smelling the beginnings of cooking meat.
Pleasant, yes, but Kote was pretty sure he could just observe Ben himself for most of this mission and be content that he would be taking good innovations back to the court.
Ah. Interesting. Ben was interesting.
…
Well, there was only one reasonable thing to do with an interesting human, wasn’t there? Kote thought as he felt himself smile, the begonias in front of him reblooming a bit.
Obi-Wan watched Cody pack a tupperware of leftover soup into his bag before leaving the apartment, calling out a polite goodbye that Obi-Wan of course returned.
Humans came in such diversity, he couldn’t help but muse, but in many things they tended to come in clumps.
Most humans were either completely accurate to their first impressions, or completely inaccurate.
When Cody had first shown up, graphic tank top from a decade ago and sandals reminding Obi-Wan of his last bad roommate, he had worried for a moment that he would get another “surfer bro” of the most obnoxious variety.
Thankfully, while the predilection for baring quite a bit of skin was the same, everything else about Cody had been closer to the polite emails they had exchanged before the man moved in. He was polite, liked plants, and quiet.
And competent, Obi-Wan added a moment later. The man had gotten a job within a month of moving in, would have had enough to pay his full share of rent even without savings.
It was understandable, Cody was oddly warm and personable for a stoic, it must make him very professional in business settings. Even if he had just been a cold stoic, Obi-Wan was fairly sure that Cody’s politeness would have gotten him a job quickly on its own.
Polite humans were rare. Well, successfully polite. Many more humans wanted to be polite and tried without succeeding. Cody, however, remembered all the rules down to the smallest of informal social procedures consistently.
It made the man very pleasant to be around.
He hadn’t had a pleasant roommate in a while, had he?
That was… interesting, in the literal sense of making Obi-Wan’s interest poke up.
He’d spent so long in human society after his leaving from the court that much of his fervent curiosity had worn off at least half a century ago, leaving behind only the more casual bits and making Obi-Wan just try to carve out a space with more plants and stories and fewer electronics than most humans lived with nowadays.
But Cody was interesting – with his stable presence (full of delicious latent magic that sang like the after-warmth of a fire) and minimalistic politeness and consistent care given to the plants around the apartment (the man had carefully and correctly taken care of Obi-Wan’s plants for him a few times) – in a way that most humans simply weren’t to Obi-Wan.
Perhaps he should put some effort into keeping the human around, then, Obi-Wan wondered, a small smile growing on his face as his tea frosted over.