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“You should take them,” Cody said – because one of them had to broach the subject, and Cody found it best in these situations to get his general on the back foot – to press his advantage before Obi-Wan could dig in too hard.
There could be no doubt what Cody meant. They'd both been staring at the ration bars almost since the moment they’d gotten the emergency shelter set up. The four silver wrappers – their seams ironed flat from being pressed into the containers on Cody’s belt – were arranged on the ground between them like grim hash marks: the material sign of how little had survived their crash landing on Hadron III, at least a day and a whole hyperspace lane off course from any place the 212th might conceivably think to look for them.
They’d had mere seconds to fire off a distress call after shaking the tri-fighters that had taken out their hyperdrive and starboard engines. And neither of them had needed working biosensors to know they could hardly have picked a worse place to get stranded. Hadron III had been one of the cautionary case studies in Cody’s planetary politics module: nearly all of its ecosystems had been wiped out by biological weapons during the previous decade’s extinction-level civil war. And while a combination of the steri-pen in Cody’s belt and some Force-powered superheating would probably ensure enough drinkable water to avoid fatal dehydration, any attempt at ingesting local flora or fauna would have to be treated as a last resort.
So they were back to the ration bars. The ration bars, the small pile of remaining bacta patches, and the sleek gray data stick that contained all the intel they’d been sent to retrieve a week ago: intel that would now die with them – along with the civilian population of Morag it was meant to save – if no one was around to put it in GAR hands.
“You should take the bars,” Cody repeated, emphasizing his point by pushing them across the ground toward the place where Obi-Wan had propped up his right leg – currently stabilized with a splint made from Cody’s cuisse and greave and some careful loops of grappling wire.
Obi-Wan shook his head, pinching a familiar, stubborn divot into his brow.
“I can go much longer than you without eating, Cody,” he objected. “If I draw on the Force to sustain me – drop into a healing trance for a time – I could go well over a month if I had to.”
“Exactly,” Cody agreed. “You could. I couldn’t. My metabolism’s much faster than a nat-born’s: even if I ate all the food myself there’s a good chance I wouldn’t make it past two weeks. But if you take the food –”
“I could put you into a trance then,” Obi-Wan suggested. “Slow down your system so you could conserve your energy.”
“You could,” Cody allowed, “but you’d have to stay conscious to keep me from slipping too far under as I got weaker. It would take two of us to keep me alive, but only one to keep you alive: that’s not hard math.”
“But I need you too,” Obi-Wan disagreed. “With the injury to my leg, I may not make it to an extraction point on my own.”
“And with the gash on my arm, I’ll be burning through bars and bacta even faster than I would otherwise,” Cody pointed out. “If we think about the situation rationally –”
“I can’t,” Obi-Wan snapped, and then, after a slow inhale and a hand tugged sharply through his hair: “I can’t yet…consider it in that light. Give me – just a moment, Cody. If you please.”
Cody nodded, and then he leveraged himself up with one arm, pushing off the sleeping mat they’d managed to pull out of the wreckage and ducking out of their shelter into the planet’s rapidly falling dusk.
The scenery around them offered little in the way of consolation – the remains of what might have been a grassy slope years before, now blighted into an expanse of nauseating, bilious yellow – and Cody turned to inspect their shelter instead.
Obi-Wan had been able to float some of the durasteel plating from the wreck to the relative security of a nearby cliff face, where Cody had used his uninjured arm to help him do some quick-and-dirty welding with the lightsaber. It would be a passable place to spend the night while the bacta did what it could with their wounds, but Cody suspected they would need something more secure from the elements before a few days were out. They had no working comms, so they’d need to create some kind of a landmark for rescue ships to spot, on the off chance their signal had gotten through. And they’d need to work out a system for hauling and storing purified water, along with a safe place for Obi-Wan to rest when he went into his trance.
Tomorrow Cody would concentrate on the things that Obi-Wan’s leg would make most difficult for him – the things that would be harder for him to do on his own, as time went on.
Tonight he sighed, letting his shoulders slump forward for a moment, curling them around the hot spears that needled down his arm and disappeared into the numb, heavy weight of his right hand.
Some days he would give a lot to be just a tiny bit worse at his job.
His uninjured hand moved to the far pouch on his belt in a practiced motion, and then he paused, the edges of the world around him going clear and sharp, the way they did when he spotted an opening in the field – when he saw right where to put his body to change the balance of a fight.
He stepped back into the shelter before the feeling could fade and saw that Obi-Wan was already looking in his direction, his eyes running down the length of Cody’s arm to the torn strips of tunic they’d tied in a bandage around his wrist.
“There’s one supply we haven’t sorted,” Cody announced, drawing Obi-Wan’s attention away from his injury by pulling the single cigarette out of his pouch.
Obi-Wan’s eyebrows darted upward, the worried furrow disappearing in an arc of surprise.
“I wasn’t aware you smoked, Commander,” he said quietly.
“Not many people are,” Cody agreed, walking the short length of the shelter to settle back in at Obi-Wan’s side. “So what do you say? I think we’ve earned one.”
He stuck the cigarette in his mouth so he could fish the lighter out of his belt, fumbling slightly with the awkwardness of the angle. He was attempting to twirl the switch into the right position with his thumb and index finger when Obi-Wan held out his hand, letting it hover in the dimming space between them.
“May I?” he asked, and Cody nodded, feeling the quick kick of his pulse where his lips pressed against the paper.
He placed the lighter in Obi-Wan’s palm, waiting long enough to feel Obi-Wan’s fingers curl up against the edges of his hand, and then he drew back to hold the cigarette in place, taking slow, careful pulls of air as Obi-Wan ignited the lighter and held the flame to the small curl of tobacco at the other end.
As soon as he saw the flare of light fade to a steady glow, Cody took the first drag – holding it in his throat for a moment before sucking in again to fill his chest completely. He felt the familiar compression in his gut, the burning stretch across his lungs, and then the sensation crested and washed across his mind – his headache fading beneath a buoyant wave.
Fuck, he thought, letting his eyes fall shut as he tipped his chin back. That felt good.
Cody had little trouble abiding by most of the GAR’s substance regs. He’d never felt much of an effect from stims, and drinking enough of Titrate’s moonshine to get a buzz always left him feeling like someone had ground gravel through his insides the next day. Spice he never touched: even the idea of being unable to trust his own perception or control his own movements made him feel panicky in ways he couldn’t totally explain.
But the first time he’d had a cigarette – huddled behind a stack of crates on a landing platform in Tipoca City, with Seventeen showing him how to pull his chest open, how to drag the air deep into his lungs – some rattling thing in his mind had settled into place for a moment, like taking his finger off a trigger and letting the plasma charge wind down.
It had become a self-indulgent habit during his cadet training and a desperate ritual during the war: the single carton in his kit a private failsafe against the worst days of his command.
Even now, barricaded in an emergency shelter with his wounded general and his own bicep being held together by bacta patches, the warm, clear rush the first drag had sent across his senses was almost enough to make him forget there were barely enough supplies to keep one of them alive.
Almost, he thought wryly, as he opened his eyes and caught Obi-Wan’s gaze for a moment – meeting his eyes just before they flitted away from Cody’s face and back to the ration bars on the floor.
Cody watched Obi-Wan’s cheeks flush pink, and then he let his breath out slowly, feeling the thick press of air building against the back of his teeth.
“Your turn,” he said.
He held out his hand and kept it steady as Obi-Wan leaned over to pinch the cigarette from his fingers, the callused edge of his thumb catching slightly against the ridge of Cody’s knuckles.
Obi-Wan paused for a moment and then lingered in Cody’s space: his free palm pressed to the mat next to Cody’s thigh, his shoulders tucked inward, canting toward Cody’s hips.
Cody should probably have looked away again when Obi-Wan fitted the cigarette between his lips – the curves of its paper still warm from where it had perched in Cody’s mouth. But he didn’t. He tracked the way Obi-Wan’s lips pursed into a tight “o” as he took a drag – the way his cheeks hollowed, his eyelashes fluttering with his breath.
Obi-Wan blew out a stream of air and then sucked in through his nose, curling the smoke backward in a smooth, silver wave.
“Showoff,” Cody remarked, and Obi-Wan snorted out the rest in a huff.
“I’m a little rusty, truth be told,” he said, passing the cigarette back to Cody. “I haven’t tried that move since my Senior Padawan days.”
“That long?” Cody asked, pausing to pull in another lungful and let it slip out between his lips. “I would have thought Skywalker was a pack-a-week teenager at least.”
“Ah,” Obi-Wan replied, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, “well, I may have indulged occasionally since being knighted – but let’s just say it’s been in a more…utilitarian manner.”
He took the cigarette back again, his weight shifting slightly on the mat so his fingers splayed toward Cody’s thigh. Cody watched him inhale, his profile flaring and fading as his breath heated the tip of the cigarette. If Cody had any sensation in his own right hand, he thought, he might be able to feel the warmth of his general’s – pressed into the pad between them and radiating toward Cody in the dark.
“I tried to give up smoking after Umbara,” he found himself saying – though he’d never told anyone that story before and hadn’t really planned on telling Obi-Wan now. “I used to swap smokes with Waxer sometimes. We’d both been using the same spot at the back of the engine room for a while before we finally crossed paths after that shitty campaign on Jagomir. After that we realized… Well, we never talked about it, but I guess there were times when it was good just to have someone in the same space.”
He paused to resettle himself on the mat, and Obi-Wan waited, his eyes intent but his body language easy and unhurried.
“After Umbara – after Waxer died – for a while I didn’t smoke. I don’t know if it was because I couldn’t face the empty room. Or because I didn’t think I deserved the relief.”
Obi-Wan let out a small noise before visibly quieting himself, shifting positions instead so his left leg was stretched closer to Cody’s and he could bump his toes against the edge of Cody’s boot.
Cody blinked a few times, hard, and then he counted the beats it took for his eyes to clear.
“I told myself I would give it up,” he said finally, “and I did, for about a month. Even after the banthakark with the Zygerrians, after you and Rex came back from Kadavo, after I… After they told us all you were dead.”
Obi-Wan’s foot pressed against his, and Cody pressed back, leaning into the point of contact to ease the tightness in his chest.
“Then one day I was digging through some old gear I hadn’t had time to get fixed – or maybe, I don’t know: I’d probably been avoiding changing it out. And when I emptied my old utility belt, I found one of Waxer’s cigarettes. I recognized the brand: he had the worst fucking taste in cigarettes. But it was the last one, probably, and I just – lost it, for a bit.”
He broke off, flexing his jaw to dislodge the lump in his throat. Moments later he felt a brush of fingers against his wrist, and he turned his own hand into the touch, running the back of his thumb across the edge of Obi-Wan’s palm.
“So now I always keep just one,” he finished, shifting to trace the short line of the cigarette still tucked between Obi-Wan’s fingers. “Just in case. So I always have one last thing to share.”
Cody finally brought himself to look Obi-Wan in the eyes, and his heart skipped thick and hard against his ribs when he caught the heat in their expression.
Because they’d been watching each other for years now: carefully, always so carefully. But he couldn’t remember if Obi-Wan had ever looked at him like this – he couldn’t remember if anyone ever had. It might have felt like being pinned, being caught and held down, but it didn’t.
It felt like being cut free from a net.
“There’s probably only one good breath left,” Obi-Wan murmured, settling the cigarette between Cody’s fingers.
“Together then?” Cody asked, and he felt Obi-Wan’s hand freeze momentarily against his.
Cody waited for the answering nod before raising the cigarette to his lips. He took a long drag, watching the ring of embers slip past the filter as he sucked the air into his lungs – pulling it deep inside his chest and holding it there – along with the flicker of light in Obi-Wan’s eyes, the soft line of shadow between his lips.
He leaned forward, and Obi-Wan curled toward him, tilting his head to the side and wrapping his hand around Cody’s, as if automatically, his thumb sliding into the crease of Cody’s palm.
Cody breathed out slowly – shivering as he felt Obi-Wan breathe in to match his pace – and the exhaled trail of smoke settled into a single stream, flowing across their lips and stretching between their mouths – until all the air they shared was thick with it.
Fuck, Cody thought, tipping his chin up, trying to chase his release and Obi-Wan’s pull. That felt good.
Obi-Wan’s thumb was still sweeping slow arcs across Cody’s palm when Cody finally emptied his lungs, and for a moment he hung there, suspended, like he’d forgotten how to take the next breath in. Time seemed to grow heavy between them – the weight of it almost rocking Cody forward, into the final sliver of space between their lips –
– and then the metal husk of their shelter shuddered, the silence giving way to a low, sizzling hum.
Engines, Cody realized: it was the sound of a spacecraft hitting lower atmo.
“Fucking hell,” he swore, and for a single, delirious second, he didn’t know whether it was in relief.
“It’s Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, his eyes unfocusing briefly before he came back to himself with a wince. “He’s…emoting very urgently. Someone in the GAR must have picked up our distress call.”
“I’ll go out and meet them,” Cody offered, but he didn’t move – knowing, somehow, that when he stepped off the mat, he would dispel the last of the air they’d both breathed, diverting a current that neither of them would let themselves sink into again.
“Yes. We should get the intel to the Council as soon as possible,” Obi-Wan agreed, though he hadn’t yet released Cody’s hand.
As if that realization had occurred to them simultaneously, they looked down at the loose tangle of their fingers – at the remains of the cigarette, now burned almost entirely to ash.
“We certainly attract a very particular kind of luck,” Cody remarked finally, and he glanced up to see a small smile playing on Obi-Wan’s lips.
“As the Force has kept you safe in this case, my dear, I think I can find it in me not to resent the cost of the result.”
He squeezed Cody’s hand once before relaxing his grip, the curl of Cody’s fingers leaching warmth into the night as they drew themselves apart.
“That’s good, sir,” Cody observed, heaving himself to his feet and tucking the cigarette butt back into his pouch, “because you were losing the argument about the ration bars pretty badly.”
Obi-Wan snorted.
“I was merely gathering my reserves,” he said. “Lulling you into a false sense of security before I struck back with the full force of my unanswerable logic.”
“I’m sorry to have missed that, sir,” Cody replied, holding Obi-Wan’s gaze and feeling a phantom tug of breath against his lips. “I’m sure it would have been something to remember.”
“Indeed,” Obi-Wan murmured, his smile growing crooked at the edges.
Cody dipped his head for a moment before pulling his spine straight and pivoting toward the entryway – putting himself in motion before he could lose the will to leave. He made it three steps before he heard Obi-Wan calling after him.
“Oh, and Commander?”
Cody turned and met his eye.
“I do hope you’ll replace the cigarette. Just in case another opportunity should arise.”
“I will, sir,” Cody acknowledged. And then he stepped back out of the shelter – back into the open air and the search lights of the LAAT/i and whatever remained of the war.