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CORUSCANT KNIGHTS FAMILY AND FRIENDS CHARITY GAME
Tickets available now! Come one and all to the Family and Friends charity game. Your favorite Knights players and coaches, and their spouses, siblings, partners, and friends, will be taking the field for the charities of their choice! Ticket sales benefit Coruscant Children’s Hospital. For a guide to the individual charities of the Knights and their guests, click here.
Team Lineups
HOME:
Aayla Secura SS
Mace Windu 2B
Sabine Wren RF
Garen Muln C
Cal Kestis 3B
Ahsoka Tano LF
Rex Fett 1B
Bant Eerin CF
Obi-Wan Kenobi SP
AWAY:
Kit Fisto SS
Merrin Nox LF
Stass Allie CF
Cody Fett C
Steela Gerrera RF
Bana Breemu Muln 2B
Anakin Skywalker 1B
Ezra Bridger 3B
Quinlan Vos SP
Cody’s thought about this moment thousands of times, since he was three years old, the very first time he held a bat and swung it at a ball on a tee.
Like most moments so long-anticipated, when it finally arrives, it’s a tiny bit different from how he imagined it.
The venue is the same, the Knights’ stadium sloping up all around him from where he stands in the visitors’ dugout. There’s a smattering of fans milling around on the first level of the stands. And the weather is gorgeous, blue sky, bright sunshine, cool breeze. It’s an absolutely perfect day for a ballgame.
The family-and-friends charity game might not have been what Cody imagined when he was in high school, covered in dirt and bruises and brimming with big league ambition. But as he watches Obi-Wan toss his warmup pitches, he can’t exactly complain.
Depa, the head of PR, had made a half-hearted attempt at convincing the real major league players to switch up their positions on the field. It had worked for… a few of them. Anakin had semi-graciously given way to let Obi-Wan and Quinlan pitch, and had signed up to play first base instead. Cody is on Anakin’s team, playing against Obi-Wan, as team traditional apparently dictates. So Garen is catching Obi-Wan, and Cody is catching Quinlan, whose younger sister Aayla is playing shortstop behind Obi-Wan…
It’s a seven-inning charity game. Cody is trying not to overthink the strategy too much. He hasn’t even been studying video. Okay, only a little.
As Obi-Wan wraps up his warmup, the dugout around Cody starts to fill up. Cody recognizes Garen’s wife. She’s talking to a slightly terrifying-looking woman who he remembers seeing waiting outside the park for their right fielder, Cal Kestis. Their manager Mace has been guilt-tripped into playing second base for Obi-Wan’s team, which puts his wife Stass on Cody’s team; rumor has it she played in the Women’s Baseball World Cup once. Cody likes their odds.
A shadow falls over Cody where he’s leaning on the dugout railing, and he looks up to see Obi-Wan standing over him with a crooked smile. Cody pulls himself up onto the dugout ledge so they’re level with each other, unable to resist returning the grin.
“What are you doing over here? Your team is on the other side.”
Obi-Wan shrugs, the tan alternate jersey he’s wearing tight across his shoulders. “Can’t I come wish my fiancé good luck?”
As Obi-Wan leans in, a towel comes flying out from behind Cody. Obi-Wan reaches out and snags it before it can land.
“No fraternizing!” Anakin barks from the dugout bench. “Cody, don’t tell him a thing about our strategy!”
Stass looks up from where she’s lacing up her spikes next to him, faux-alarmed. “Were we supposed to have strategy?”
Cal’s… whatever she is… snickers from next to Stass. Anakin pulls a face.
Undeterred, Obi-Wan pulls Cody in by his belt loops and kisses the corner of his mouth. “Good luck out there,” he murmurs. “Wear your helmet.”
Cody leans in and kisses him back, a quick press of lips. “Yes, dear.”
Anakin makes exaggerated retching noises, and Obi-Wan throws the towel back at him without looking. A “thwack” from behind Cody, followed by an “ow!” from Anakin, only reinforces Cody’s longstanding belief that throwing things at major league pitchers is not a good idea, because they tend to throw them back harder.
“So,” Obi-Wan starts in a low voice, face still close to Cody’s. “Stass is a switch hitter, right? Got any holes in her swing I should know about?”
“Obi-Wan?” Cody answers sweetly.
“Yes, dear?”
Cody leans in, gives Obi-Wan one more smacking kiss on the lips, then shoves him away from the railing. “Go back to your own goddamn dugout.”
Obi-Wan jogs away across the infield, unabashed and grinning like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, as a dugout’s worth of towels rains down around him.
Cody doesn’t come up in the first half-inning, which turns out to be a one-two-three for Obi-Wan. As Stass pops out to left, Cody starts strapping on his catcher’s gear. The plastic clacks around him in a painfully familiar way. For all that he catches Obi-Wan in practice occasionally, he hasn’t put on his full set of gear more than a handful of times since college. And it is his gear – he’d politely declined the team’s offer of a new set, preferring his own, well-broken-in pads and mask. But for all that it’s his old familiar gear, it looks a little different today.
All the players in the game have patches on their uniforms to show which the charities they’re supporting. Obi-Wan’s got the logo of the Knights Academy on his right shoulder, showing that he’s making a donation to the team’s inner-city youth baseball organization. But Cody’s patch is covered up by his shoulder protector, and his cause is one that’s near and dear to his heart, so. Yesterday he decided to paint his charity’s logo on his chest protector.
A bright orange sunburst, the logo for Coruscant’s largest LGBTQ+ community center, shines brightly and unmistakably on Cody’s chest as he jogs out to the plate.
The mid-afternoon crowd cheers. As Cal Kestis walks out toward the batter’s box, Cody takes a brief moment to sink into the reality of a perfect afternoon for baseball. To look up at the blue sky and the half-full stadium and breathe in the smell of sunflower seeds and peanut shells, hear the vendors hawking ice cold BEER and COLD water, ICE cream, CRAAAAACKERjacks, test the texture of the infield dirt under his feet.
Cody takes a moment. Then he drops down into a squat, makes eye contact with Quinlan Vos sixty feet and six inches away, and lifts his glove.
The bottom of the inning passes quickly. Quinlan isn’t pitching anywhere near full out at first, not in a charity game, definitely not one where half the players are random family members with varying degrees of athleticism. Cody’s mildly surprised when Quinlan throws some real heat to his sister Aayla. He’s less surprised when she wisely lays off his fastball and proceeds to knock his slider into shallow left for a single. As the smallish crowd roars, Quinlan swears into his glove. Aayla curtseys at first base, all class, and blows her brother a kiss.
Even so, Cody doesn’t expect to get any real pitches from Obi-Wan’s arsenal when he comes up for his first at bat.
He doesn’t expect it, but he wants it. He wants it so badly it hurts, as he digs into the batter’s box, nodding at Garen and sinking into his stance.
Don’t go easy on me, he says silently to Obi-Wan on the mound. Don’t go easy on me. I can take it. Come on.
Obi-Wan comes set.
Don’t go easy on me.
The kick, and the pitch.
High heat comes flying Cody’s way, Obi-Wan’s actual fastball, and Cody almost drops his bat in surprise. He doesn’t even manage to swing, and of course the pitch is right down the middle, undoubtedly the only time Obi-Wan will put one there while Cody is up. Now that they’ve established that Obi-Wan is really pitching to him.
Cody is flattered. Cody is more than a little bit turned on. Cody is so fucked.
0-1 count.
The next pitch has a funny twist to its topspin, but even his incredibly intimate knowledge of Obi-Wan’s pitching doesn’t stop him from swinging through what turns out to be a front-hip sinker. It just teases the strike zone, flickers outside and then comes spinning back. Cody’s swing is nowhere close. God fucking damn.
0-2.
Set. Kick. Pitch.
A fastball high and away, which Cody somehow fouls straight back. He just missed getting all of that one, and he can tell by the arch of Obi-Wan’s eyebrows that he knows it, too.
Still 0-2.
Obi-Wan steps off to reach for the rosin bag, giving Cody a chance to take a breath. He glances down at Garen, who flashes him a grin. They’ve become pretty good friends, but there’s no way Garen is giving anything away. All’s fair in love and war, and baseball is both.
What would he throw here, if he were Obi-Wan?
A slider outside, which Cody lays off. 1-2.
Fastball. Cody just barely tips it for another foul. Still 1-2. He can hear muttering in the dugout. The scoreboard flashes: 99 mph.
Their eyes meet, sixty feet and six inches apart. Obi-Wan curls his glove hand up against his chest, bending down to see the sign from Garen, and Cody doesn’t think he’s imagining the little smile that plays across his lips.
What would Obi-Wan throw here?
Set. Kick. Pitch.
The answer floats through the air toward him. In the part of his mind where the unconscious becomes movement before it has time to become conscious thought, Cody knows what the pitch will be.
Curve.
He swings.
The crack of the bat – the reverberation up his arm – and Cody doesn’t have to watch the ball fly, he knows. He watches it anyway as it clears the wall in right field. Going, going, gone.
He rounds the bases in a leisurely jog. Rex is hooting at first as Cody goes by, nearly losing his hat with how hard he’s laughing. At second, Mace swats him on the ass with his glove, as inscrutable as ever. Kestis, playing third, just looks gobsmacked. Cody grins at the visitor’s dugout, which has exploded – Anakin and Quinlan and Stass and Kit jumping up and down and bellowing a cacophony as he runs by.
As he approaches home plate, Cody suddenly has a moment of indecision – should he play it cool? Blow Obi-Wan a kiss, a la Aayla? Go into some over-the-top celebration? That’s not exactly his style.
He’s spared the choice as Obi-Wan comes hurtling off the mound towards him. He just has time to touch home before he’s lifted off his feet, holding onto Obi-Wan’s shoulders for dear life as he’s spun around.
Obi-Wan’s laugh vibrates against Cody’s chest as his feet land back on the ground. Cody leans back so he can drink in the grin that splits Obi-Wan’s face, the lines that crinkle at the corners of his eyes and the flush high in his cheeks.
He can’t help it, he leans in for a kiss.
Wolf-whistles rise all around them. Obi-Wan’s lips are firm and full against his – Cody resists the urge to open his mouth, they are in the middle of a game – and he eventually gathers the will to pull away. Obi-Wan keeps him close just long enough to murmur throatily in his ear, “That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Cody pulls away. With difficulty.
He’s not sure which buoys him back to the dugout more, the kiss or the homer, but the ice cold contents of Anakin’s water bottle in his face bring him back down to earth rapidly, for all that the rest of his team is still yelling in his ear and slapping him on the back. As he finally settles on the dugout bench, he looks back out toward the mound.
Obi-Wan is all business again, rubbing rosin on his hands, leaning in for the signs. But just before he goes into his windup, he glances Cody’s way, catches his eye, and winks.
Then he’s off and whirling through his motion, as beautiful as ever.
Obi-Wan’s team eventually wins, despite Cody’s homer. He can’t bring himself to mind. Rex crows, briefly, but mostly remains in awe of Cody squaring up Obi-Wan – though Rex himself had gone one-for-three with a double against Vos, which is also extremely respectable. Not bad for the once-vaunted Fett brothers, after all these years.
Reporters mill around on the infield after the game – they’re allowed to walk out onto the field tonight, the game not being a real one – and Cody is angling toward a particular beat who’s promised to ask him about the community center, when Obi-Wan sidles up next to him.
Cody’s cheeks are starting to hurt, but he can’t help the smile that rises on his face. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself.” Obi-Wan knocks their shoulders together. “Pretty good piece of hitting in the second.”
“Yeah, it was, wasn’t it?” Their eyes meet, and the heat in Obi-Wan’s gaze sends a different kind of warmth through Cody’s body. “You know I can’t resist a challenge.”
“I’ve noticed that about you, once or twice.”
“Just once or twice?”
From the nearby dugout steps, a voice Cody vaguely recognizes as belonging to Barriss from PR calls out, “Cody, Obi-Wan, smile!”
Cody means to look at the camera, he really does. But as the flash goes off, he only has eyes for one person.
It’s a good thing the feeling’s mutual.
Gorgeous art by aesnawan