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There was a natural order to the marshal commander’s routine upon returning to the Negotiator after enemy engagements. Check in with the wing captain on the operational status of their starships, visit the armory to drop off his rifle and take notes on inventory needs ahead of their next resupply, stop by the medbay for an update on injuries and casualties, (rebuff Zipper’s attempts to take his blood pressure) and, finally, begin writing a thorough report on the mission’s outcomes.
Because of his commitment to meticulously recounting the day’s events, Cody’s routine necessarily took him from the medbay to the place best suited for report writing, the general’s quarters. There, they could collaborate to produce a detailed record of their battalion’s battles, ensuring an accurate historical account for the archives and a handful of senators. Such was their devotion and duty to the Republic: they would toil away night after night, forgoing the luxury of personal space to instead huddle together over datapads and long-cold thermo-mugs in service to the greater good. The many off-hours spent together were, they both agreed, a testament to their professionalism.
So Cody was not surprised to find himself less than an hour removed from the chaos that had been Geonosis and at Obi-Wan’s door. He was surprised, however, when the door opened after his ping and revealed Obi-Wan sitting on his bed, propped up against the wall, not meditating but eyes closed and trying to stay as still as possible. Wearing only a towel.
The towel slowed Cody’s ability to process the scene.
“Cody, my savior,” Obi-Wan said, reluctantly opening his eyes, one of which sported two clean but untreated gashes under it. “Would you be a dear and fetch me a blanket?”
Cody had questions, but opted for discretion. Only three hours earlier, he’d watched a medevac LAAT depart with an impressively ambulatory Obi-Wan, quite the feat considering that four hours earlier, Cody’s stomach had lurched when he spotted the smoldering remains of the LAAT to which he’d entrusted Obi-Wan’s safety crumpled like foil in the unforgiving desert.
Choosing instead to be a man of action, Cody hung his helmet on the hook Obi-Wan had added next to the entry and headed for the shelves apparently out of Obi-Wan’s reach. Assessing the situation — a mostly-naked but clean Obi-Wan, wounds crying for medical attention — Cody concluded Obi-Wan must have outmaneuvered the medics and returned to his quarters where he was able to wash up before the adrenaline and shock from the crash gave way to an incapacitating full-body ache. If history was any guide, that meant he’d likely been trying to Force heal his body back to health.
On the battlefield, Cody could easily push through the initial discomfort that gnawed at him each time Obi-Wan leapt into danger or, worse, ended up bleeding or battered. On the battlefield, that was his duty, their duty. But afterwards, when duty turned into something softer and more complicated, seeing Obi-Wan in lingering pain set fire to Cody’s rational thinking, igniting an intense indignation that had ultimately led to a few questions from headquarters about why the 212th went through so many training dummies.
Cody unfolded the blanket and took one last glance at Obi-Wan’s state, bruises blooming over his ribs, before draping it over Obi-Wan’s shoulders. It was nothing Cody hadn't seen before, but he much preferred to admire the way Obi-Wan’s muscles cut in above his hip when it wasn’t marred by the reminder of just how human Obi-Wan was despite his superhuman abilities.
“Thank you, darling,” Obi-Wan said and tucked the blanket around his knees. “I’m sorry this trip to Geonosis wasn’t quite as entertaining as the last.” Then, he huffed something close to a laugh. “Given how it went, I may rather have preferred being tied up again.” The look Obi-Wan shot Cody was one he usually paired with his repartee during their sparring and grappling matches.
And the thing was, bruised and barely covered Obi-Wan had already rattled Cody. Plus, he never lied to the man. Sure, maybe he held back a feeling or two, but they shared so much of each other with each other, of their wild ideas, of their sorrows and their joys, even of their mundane days, that it came too naturally to be himself with Obi-Wan, not simply the commander. Those would be his excuses, anyway, for replying before thinking, “Well I wouldn’t pick an arena on Geonosis as the most entertaining place to tie you up anyway.”
The heat in his cheeks was instantaneous and his heart leapt into his throat, not that Cody’s brain was in a state to string together an appropriate apology in any case. Obi-Wan licked then pursed his lips like he was preparing a suitable rebuke of Cody’s inadvertent admission.
“I’ll check on you in the morning,” Cody blurted out, the flight option he rarely called upon in survival situations finally kicking in. But Obi-Wan’s eyes were a tractor beam that wouldn’t let him go. For probably the only time in his life, Cody felt a pang of sympathy for Ventress and her ilk. So that was what it felt like to be pinned down by the glint in Obi-Wan’s gaze.
“Before you go,” Obi-Wan said, with a hoarseness Cody attributed to his injuries, “could I trouble you for a cup of tea?”
Some of the tension gripping Cody’s chest loosened at the request. It was a welcome indication that the grenade Cody just dropped hadn’t completely obliterated any chance at salvaging the everyday closeness they enjoyed.
“Of course,” Cody said, muscle memory taking over as he retreated to the other side of Obi-Wan’s quarters to be useful. Grabbing a cup, Cody considered using “his” mug — the extra large one that had appeared on Obi-Wan’s shelf after he complained one night over the inefficiency of the GAR standard kitchen mug as a caf delivery device — but opted for the handmade mug Cody had procured off some locals in exchange for a handle of Boil’s home brew after Obi-Wan had said their tableware reminded him of Stewjon.
“Thank you, it seems moving is just a bit uncomfortable at the moment,” Obi-Wan muttered. “And I may be running a pinch low on my ability to pull on the Force.”
What Cody heard was that Obi-Wan likely couldn’t move much at all and was verging on Force exhaustion. He shook his head at the brewing tea. At least they were back on familiar ground, like Cody’s distaste for Obi-Wan’s talent for self-sabotage.
“So was your plan to sit here and freeze all night?” Cody asked.
“I would have mustered the strength to pull a blanket over at some point. And,” he added, managing to tighten the blanket around him, “perhaps I was counting on some concerned humanitarian stopping by to take pity on me.”
“Obi-Wan,” Cody said, drawing out the name to register his disapproval. “You could have commed me.”
“Just like you would have commed me, I’m sure.”
All Cody could do was sigh, his own variation of the meditation Obi-Wan had tried to teach him, and exhale his annoyance at Obi-Wan’s accurate assessment of their mutual stubbornness.
“Good thing I’ve let you put bacta on me so you can’t talk your way out of that,” he said, handing Obi-Wan the warm mug of tea. A different heat flashed up Cody’s spine at the memory of Obi-Wan’s breath on the back of his neck, his fingers gliding over torn skin where shrapnel had evaded armor.
Obi-Wan smiled at him over the cup of tea, his pupils large in the dim light of the room and the cleaving cuts under his left eye begging for attention. “Yes, I do hope you know what an inconvenience that was, nursing you back to health,” Obi-Wan teased.
Cody grabbed a tube of bacta out of a drawer and moved to sit on the edge of the bed next to Obi-Wan whose eyes followed Cody’s movements with interest.
His traitorous heart rate picked up. Cody put a dab of bacta on his finger. If he had learned anything from the other man, it was that the best defense in these situations was to distract and deflect. If Ventress gained the upper hand? According to Obi-Wan, just flirt. Grievous backed you into a corner? Possibly also flirt. Body betraying you? Apparently, flirt.
The Jedi you have feelings for flirting with you like a Seppie? Well, Cody was developing his own version of Obi-Wan’s flippancy for these moments.
“For your health or not, the bacta will make sure you don’t end up looking like me,” he said, lightly encasing the cuts with medication so they wouldn’t scar.
“You mean ruggedly handsome?” Obi-Wan said, a raspy edge working its way into his voice.
Cody’s heart stopped — for several seconds that felt like minutes — before beating so loudly he was certain Obi-Wan would hear it. Cody swallowed and bought himself time. How did Ventress go up against this man’s tongue and survive?
“Oh, is that how you feel about the millions of us in the galaxy?” he replied.
A flicker of vulnerability escaped Obi-Wan’s expression and drew Cody’s attention to how close they were sitting, like everything left unsaid despite the charged banter had sucked the air out of the space between them.
“No, there’s only one of you, Cody,” Obi-Wan said with the same gravity of their late night conversations, of confessions held in confidence.
Obi-Wan was never particularly stingy with his flirtations, but this was something else. The walls Cody had built to isolate his basest feelings began to crumble under the drumbeat of Cody’s heart. The desire Cody kept locked away and isolated stirred like a starved man at the hint of sustenance. He and Obi-Wan had traded hints about what lingered just below the surface tension, but these words spoke to greater depths.
“Obi-Wan,” Cody started, wanting to ask for more, needing to quell the doubts still that this was merely Obi-Wan toying with him to ignore the aches of Geonosis.
His concerns must have seeped into the Force because before Cody even knew what he dared ask, Obi-Wan said, “I mean it, Cody. I would never lie to you, about this or anything.”
Blue eyes as electric and piercing as a lightsaber bade Cody to believe. Those eyes had never led him astray and kark he did want to believe.
“So, if I asked if you have been flirting with,” Cody considered, “intention?”
“I couldn’t say no,” Obi-Wan breathed, imperceptibly closer than he had been a moment before. Cody was suddenly very aware of how hot he was beneath his armor.
Cody inhaled sharply. “And if I asked if I could kiss you?”
“I’d say right now,” Obi-Wan said.
That was enough encouragement for Cody to fill the vacuum of space between them and find Obi-Wan’s lips, taking care to be gentle with the injured man while fuelling the fire building inside him. The soft press of Obi-Wan’s mouth warred with the gentle pinpricks of his beard fanned the blaze eager to consume him.
But the sound of Obi-Wan stifling a stab of pain instantly threw water on the flames and Cody pushed him to an arm’s distance, helplessly scanning the injured man for damage.
“I’m fine,” Obi-Wan protested. “I shouldn’t have tried to raise my arm, is all.”
So, not fine. As much as Cody wanted to continue exploring Obi-Wan’s mouth and other parts of him, he would never risk further injury to Obi-Wan. Cody could wait however many days it took medbay-averse Jedi to heal from a shuttle crash. He — they — had already waited this long to acknowledge the perpetual pull between their two bodies, they could wait a few more days.
“You should rest,” Cody said, earning a derisive grumble from Obi-Wan. “I have heard a wise Jedi counsel the value of patience.”
“I happen to know that Jedi,” Obi-Wan griped, “and he also says being tied up would be quite nice.”
Despite his body’s protests and the uncomfortable pinch of his armor in delicate places, Cody stood and made more room on the bed for Obi-Wan to recuperate. “When you’re healed and healthy, Obi-Wan, I’ll be more than happy to continue where we left off,” he said, leaning over to leave one last kiss on Obi-Wan’s unscathed forehead.
The constant demands of running an army turned out to be an exceedingly efficient distraction from stewing over Obi-Wan’s recovery.
Cody, likely to the dismay of his subordinate officers and their troopers, took a sudden and keen interest in the readiness of the 212th’s heavy mechanized units for deployment should the call come for more AT-TE walkers in the field. When had the hydraulics last been bled? Could each crew member perform a manual load of the main gun? Well, he’d like to see it, just to be sure.
Eventually, after the company’s captain had politely suggested other areas of the ship where the commander might ruin some other officer’s day, Cody found his way to the hangar deck. Where there was an intruder. Or a shapeshifter. Or some Sith trickery happening right in front of him. Because an Obi-Wan shaped thing was parading about, moving effortlessly among the men. With a seemingly full range of motion and the ability to lift his arms above his shoulders. Nary a bruise or scrape in sight. Less than half a cycle since he’d left the man grumbling and disgruntled and alone in bed to recover.
Of course Cody was cautiously optimistic that Obi-Wan had somehow healed faster than he had from previous injuries — or perhaps that he hadn’t been as badly hurt as originally feared. But Cody also knew Obi-Wan and his penchant for underplaying how badly he was ailing, enduring severe anguish if it meant mission success. So Cody didn’t get his hopes up that this was anything other than another marvelous acting job by the famous negotiator.
“General,” Cody greeted him, schooling his features. “Good to see you’re feeling better.”
“Commander!” Obi-Wan beamed. “I am, thank you, I took your advice.”
“My advice, sir?” Cody asked, certain the hungry eyes bearing down on him belonged to his general and not an imposter, but still uncertain how such a spry Obi-Wan was in front of him.
“To prioritize my health,” Obi-Wan said, tilting his head like it was obvious. He took another step into Cody’s personal space, the distinct medicinal smell of soap and astringent following him. “You ably convinced me my time was best spent in the medbay soaking in a healthy dose of bacta.”
That raised Cody’s eyebrow. Obi-Wan voluntarily going to the medbay? Willingly seeking treatment? “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. The flare in his gut was also glad to hear it.
“You made a very compelling argument, my dear,” Obi-Wan purred, his lips curling into a smile that made Cody wonder how they’d look curling elsewhere.
If the promise of being taken to bed and tied up was enough to convert Obi-Wan into a believer about the utility of medical care, Cody would have to explore more wanton ways to persuade Obi-Wan to take better care of himself. In the meantime, Cody figured he should test just how thorough the medics in his chain of command were with their patients’ care.
“Then I’d like to deliver on my half of our deal, if you don’t mind?” he said, lifting an eyebrow.
Obi-Wan held out arm to suggest they depart the hangar deck and Cody was more than happy to lead the way.