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“It’s Life Day!” Leia shrieks with all the power that her six year old lungs can muster - which is perhaps more than Cody’s old ears care to handle so early in the morning. “Uncle Cody, Uncle Cody! Come play games with me! Uncle Obi said that you could teach me Sabacc!”
Cody nabs her as she’s running past, plucking her from the ground and hoisting her easily onto his shoulders, grinning as she squeals and immediately starts pulling at his hair like she would Boga’s reins. “I’m not sure I should teach you Sabacc, kiddo,” he manages with the death grip she has on his chin. “Maybe next year?”
He can practically feel the pout radiating off of her. “Aww, but daddy said you were the best at Sabacc! He said he could never beat you! He said Uncle Obi’s tells were too obvious, though, whatever that means.”
Did Skywalker seriously never play Sabacc against anyone else? Cody simply has perpetual beginner’s luck and a resting bitch face. “How about you go ask Uncle Obi to tell you all of the rules of Sabacc, and if you have them memorised by tonight when we’re settled in, then I’ll teach you?”
“Okay!” Leia replies, and immediately starts squirming. “Put me down, you’re too big!”
He happens to know that the kid likes to climb trees, so he sticks out his arm and grins as she clambers onto it, dropping down onto the ground and losing no time sprinting out the door into a full tilt run with a scream of “Uncle Obi!”
He shakes his head, laughing quietly, and picks up once more the bags that he dropped in favour of fielding his niece’s rambunctious entrance.
“She’s a handful, huh,” Padmé comments, sweeping into the room with her hands open to take one of the bags of gifts. “Luke is often quieter, but if you put the two of them together at just the wrong time, it’s cause for concern.” She smiles at him and pulls him into a one-armed hug. “Commander, always a pleasure to see you.”
“Likewise, senator,” Cody returns her smile, “though I’m sure I don’t have to remind you—”
“The title of commander died when the chancellor did, yes, yes.” Padmé waves her hand vaguely in the air. “And good riddance to bad rubbish, I’ll always say. But I do believe you still deserve the respect of your title, Cody.”
“And I still appreciate it, senator.”
“You can just call me Padmé,” she says, leading him further into the house. “I feel like it’s been long enough at this point.”
“You make a fair point,” Cody replies, and she looks at him knowingly, waiting for the other shoe to drop, one eyebrow raised. “Senator.”
“I knew it. You’re worse than Ani,” she sighs fondly, and welcomes him further into the house.
It’s a fairly modest home, for Padmé being the senator of Naboo and assistant vice chancellor. Cody sets the food bags in the kitchen before heading over to where he knows his and Obi-Wan’s room to be, placing his bag in the corner before heading back out to where his husband has undoubtedly made zero progress with bringing things inside.
Sure enough, Obi-Wan’s listening to something Leia’s telling him, thoroughly enraptured, with her propped up on his hip as she gestures wildly. He hasn’t even pulled anything from the ship, Cody realises, rolling his eyes with a fond laugh. So much for “let’s get set up quickly, Cody, none of that standing outside for aeons in the snow like we did last year, all of us freezing our asses off when we could have been congregating inside to say hello instead.” Oh, well. Between the two of them, one always runs warm, and it’s not Obi-Wan.
Cody nestles into his scarf as he walks back over to the speeder, running a hand along his husband’s hip as he walks past, smiling when Obi-Wan grabs his hand for a moment before letting him pass, not taking his attention away from Leia.
A small form runs out to meet Cody around the back of their speeder, blonde hair askew and blue eyes too big for his face, and kriffing hells he’s not wearing a coat—
“Uncle Cody!” Luke shouts, wrapping Cody’s leg in a tight hug. “It’s been forever!”
“Hey, ad’ika,” Cody greets him with a broad grin, quickly whisking off his own coat to drape it over the boy’s narrow shoulders so he’s practically swimming in the fabric. Padmé would probably kill Cody if Luke caught a cold on Cody’s watch. She’s scary. “How’ve you been? It’s been— Force, Luke, have you gotten taller since the festival?”
Luke beams at him proudly, “Daddy says I’ve gotten three inches taller!”
Cody whistles lowly. “Keep it up and you’ll be taller than Auntie Soka before next Life Day, ad’ika.”
Luke’s already big eyes go even bigger, and his smile splits his face. “Really?!”
“Oh, yeah,” Cody nods sagely. He finally pulls the remaining bags from the speeder and hands the lightest to Luke when he outstretches his arms. “She’s tall, but she’s not that tall.”
“She’s taller than daddy,” Luke replies, all seriousness. He begins to waddle back to the house with the bag, “And daddy’s a giant!”
Another speeder pulls into the vicinity, and Luke immediately drops the bag into the snow and runs for it. “Uncle Bail! Auntie Breha!”
Cody barely has time to move back to avoid being run over by the streak of blue that is Leia in her capelet, and he watches in amazement as the twins are practically jumping at the door before the speeder’s stopped.
Obi-Wan laughs quietly and picks up the bag that Luke had dropped, brushing off most of the snow before taking another of the bags from Cody. “Fascinating, aren’t they?” he smiles, and leans in for a quick kiss, nothing more than a passing press of lips.
“And Uncle Obi and— gross!” Leia shouts, the force of it echoing around the area. “Uncle Obi! That’s yucky!”
“I think Uncle Cody probably agreed to it,” Breha says to her, trying to quiet her down.
“Not verbally! Not right now! They're being gross!"
“Knowing your uncles, he probably did agree to it when they got married,” Bail’s voice is full of laughter and warmth, and Cody has to hand it to him, that was the essence of the second clause of their marriage agreement.
Cody’s smile is impossible to hold back. “Wanna give the kids a run for their money?”
“I don’t think they have much by way of money,” his husband smirks back, “but I’m intrigued to see what you have planned.”
Cody drops the bags to either side of him to pull Obi-Wan in close by the waist. “I love you,” he whispers against his man’s lips, “a whole lot.”
Obi-Wan just laughs and brushes his fingertips along the edge of Cody’s jaw. He leans forward to press a long, hard, and utterly chaste kiss against Cody’s lips.
The kids go running - and screaming their disgust - into the house.
Obi-Wan finally pulls back, grinning like he was on their first night when they were officially together. “And I love you, dearheart.”
Cody clears his throat and finally addresses their remaining - and rather more adult - audience. “Sorry ‘bout that. Sometimes you have to assert dominance, you know?”
Bail lets out a hearty guffaw that he looks like he had been holding in for an impressive amount of time - what politics will do to a man, Cody supposes - and Breha waves a hand through the air. “Oh, please. We were at your wedding. The only explanation I need is where did you get that sweater, Cody? I’m trying to get Bail to adopt more comfortable items in his wardrobe for events such as this.”
Cody smiles warmly. It’s nice to have friends, he thinks, especially ones who are willing to fully accept you for who you are - including playfully antagonising your family.
“We never celebrated Life Day.” Cody willfully accepts his fourth glass of wine from Bail - who is absolutely the type of guy Cody would like to hang out with more if either of them had more time, who knew chancellors could actually be fun - and takes a small sip, savouring it as the flavour bursts on his tongue. “No, I don’t think they told us about any holidays on Kamino. You had your decanting day, if you could remember it, and then you would either party for nothing, or celebrate for no reason at all.”
“What’s the stupidest shit you celebrated?” Tano - who showed up right before dinner - asks, completely unaffected by the amount of alcohol she’s consumed.
Padmé gently smacks Tano on the shoulder, wine tinging her cheeks red. “What’s the best reason you celebrated?” she amends.
“They’re one and the same,” Cody laughs. “We partied so hard the night I caught Rex dyeing his eyebrows.”
Padmé and Tano both choke on their sip of their drinks, while Obi-Wan - who had been listening in silence and absentmindedly stroking his thumb along its axis on Cody’s thigh - drops his head to the back of the chair with a dopey grin. Force, he looks far gone, he’s doing that thing with his eyes where he blinks real slow, and it takes him a second to refocus after each blink, and Cody’s so endeared.
“I’m sorry,” Breha says, laughter in her own voice, though she masks it well, “how exactly does that work?”
“Well, it’s just like dyeing hair, except if you mess it up it goes way worse way quicker,” Cody replies with a grin. “Like it did the first couple of times, before he figured out how to steady his hand.”
Laughter spreads around the table just ask Skywalker walks back in from having put the kids to bed. “Are you talking about the time Rex gave himself a unibrow?” he asks, wearing an impish grin of someone who knows something they potentially shouldn’t.
Cody points exuberantly at Skywalker. “That’s the one!”
“Captain Rex? Gave himself a unibrow?” Bail asks to confirm, only just shy of breaking into laughter yet again.
“Oh, you should have seen him,” and Cody’s almost howling with it, “he looked so kriffing stupid, but he joined in our party anyways, what a fuckin’ vod that guy is.”
“Snips, you might have thought that he hated you because he wouldn’t take his helmet off around you, for the first several weeks of the war,” Skywalker continues when Cody no longer can, having almost keeled over into Obi-Wan’s lap. “But the real reason is that he was hiding that terrible dye job.”
That sends another round of laughter through the table.
“Where is he tonight?” Padmé asks once it’s quieted down a little bit. “We invited him, didn’t we?” This one is directed at Skywalker, who nods.
“‘Course we did. Though, maybe he thought there would be too many inside jokes with Cody.”
“Oh, you should see them,” Obi-Wan murmurs, his fingers carding through Cody’s hair and squeezing ever so gently at the back of his neck. Force, that man is drunk. “It’s like they have a whole secret language.”
“Well, yeah, because we do,” Cody smirks. “You don’t get by under those longnecks without teaching yourself a few things.” He clears his throat, “Anyways, I invited him too.”
“As did we,” Breha says, looking intently at Cody, “and he actually gave us a response, which he appears not to have given the rest of you.”
Consider Cody’s interest piqued. “Oh?”
“He said something about dragging Commander Fox’s sorry ass off-world for once,” she laughs. She swirls the wine around in her glass, “And we can understand that part, too.”
“Fox seems to have an uncommonly large stick up his ass,” Bail agrees, “but only when he wants to.”
Cody grins. “Call that being a commander.”
Laughter fills the space again as Tano lifts her glass and clinks it with Cody’s - which seems to prompt Skywalker to lift his water glass to Obi-Wan’s wine glass and subsequently Bail to Padmé’s, and then Tano again to Breha’s - which sends another wave of it through them.
“Well, then I know where Rex is,” Cody says, grinning with the wine and the company and the fingers still in his hair. “He’s on Pantora, with Vos and vice chancellor Chuchi.”
Bail just about chokes, and Breha giggles into her glass. “Told you,” she whispers at her husband.
Deciding he doesn’t really need context, Cody turns to look at his own husband again. Obi-Wan has his eyes mostly closed, his cheeks are flushed a colour that doesn’t really complement his beard, and his breathing has slowed somewhat. He doesn’t seem entirely aware of his surroundings, but he’s fully grounded to Cody with the fingers in his hair - probably skimming through the surface of his emotions just to make sure everything’s okay. It’s practically Obi-Wan’s base level of operation.
At the intense fondness and love that swoops through Cody, Obi-Wan opens his eyes.
“Hey,” he murmurs, eyes softening into familiar crow’s feet at the corners.
“Hey, yourself,” Cody replies, equally softly. “What do you say we get out of here?”
“You mean walk thirty paces through the kitchen and retire for the night?”
“That’s exactly it.”
A slow smile curls the corners of Obi-Wan’s lips. “I’m amenable,” he says. He pushes back slowly from the table and presses a kiss to Cody’s forehead. “Good night, all. I expect I’ll see you bright and early at the children’s bidding for breakfast.” And with one last kiss - this time to Cody’s nose - he makes his way through the kitchen and towards their room.
Cody watches him go, eyes half lidded, blinking sleepily with the urge to go sleep next to his husband, to wrap Obi-Wan in his arms and kiss the back of his neck before drifting off. He’s going to go do that, actually. He’s the luckiest man in the entire damn galaxy.
“Disgusting,” Skywalker and Tano say at the same time, which earns them rolled eyes from the other three people at the table.
“I’m sure you’ll understand when you’re older,” Padmé smirks. “Anyways, Obi-Wan is on to something - Luke and Leia will definitely be trying to get everyone up pretty early in the morning, so I’d recommend sleeping while you can.”
As if Cody needs another reason. “If you’ll excuse me,” he murmurs, standing from the table with a bow usually reserved for the galas Obi-Wan - and Cody, by association - gets sucked into.
A chorus of “Good night, commander,” comes from the politicians, while Tano gives him a sloppy salute and a cheeky grin, and Skywalker flips him off fondly. Cody rolls his eyes and waves at them, beginning the long, agonising trek of about thirty paces through the kitchen.
Cody’s just thinking about how he’ll probably kiss his husband right at the base of the skull in a way that they both so love when something suddenly feels… off.
“Cody,” Obi-Wan calls from further in, a note of something in his voice that sends Cody’s stomach plunging to his toes and confirms what he had thought was just drunken fears. “Cody! Force, Cody, come here, please!”
Cody, who never really quite stopped being a soldier, breaks into a run towards his commanding officer’s shout. Obi-Wan would have known better than to draw attention to Cody’s presence if it was unwanted, meaning that he’s probably not facing off against an intruder. Still, Cody’s hand suddenly aches for the grip of his blaster.
He can hear chairs scraping behind him, others having also heard Obi-Wan’s call. Well, whatever it is, Cody won’t be trying to handle it alone.
He catches up with his husband, who’s draped dramatically against the doorframe, waiting for Cody to arrive. “Oh, Cody, I can bear it no longer,” Obi-Wan whines, “you simply must release me!”
“What—”
And only then does he see the small sprig of millaflower buds attached to the top of the frame.
“Oh, Cody, it’s agonising, I can’t go on, give me your kiss and set me free!”
Cody rolls his eyes. “You’re so…”
“Cody.”
“Obi-Wan.”
“Darling.”
“Is everything okay?” Padmé asks, appearing right behind Cody’s shoulder. “Do you need help?”
Tano falls to the ground laughing, while Skywalker nearly follows her down. They must be able to sense something with their stupid magic.
“Do you remember him from before the war?” Cody replies, crossing his arms. “Was he always this dramatic?”
The flush on Obi-Wan’s cheeks seems to be more than just from the wine, now. Fighting back what appears to be a grin, he cuts a glance over to the other two empaths, and they just laugh harder.
“Did you put—?” Skywalker wheezes.
Tano, too caught up in her laughter and entirely unable to reply, merely nods.
Cody rolls his eyes again. He can guess at what that means. “I’ve got it, Padmé. Thank you. Sleep well.”
Padmé seems to notice the flower buds at that point, a small smirk appearing on her lips. “Well, if you’re sure,” she says, and pulls at Skywalker’s shoulder to get him to follow her back towards the dining area, Tano dragging herself from the floor with some difficulty - still laughing as hard as she is - and following close behind.
Cody sighs. When the adrenaline kicked in, he had lost all feeling of intoxication, but Obi-Wan clearly is still feeling it. He reaches for Cody, all needy touches and loving glances, and Cody’s weak for him, has always been weak for him, and goes easily to join him under the doorframe.
“So here we are,” Cody breathes against his husband’s lips, laughter just barely contained. “Under the millaflower buds. Just you and me. Whatever will we do?”
Obi-Wan pushes at Cody’s shoulders until he’s pressed up against the doorframe, stepping between Cody’s legs to get closer to him. “Well, I was rather thinking we could start with a kiss, and see where it goes from there.”
Cody’s hands come to rest on Obi-Wan’s soft hips and he leans forward to press a quick kiss to his lips. “I’m amenable,” he quips back.
Obi-Wan grins, and his hands tangle in Cody’s hair, and his lips catch Cody’s again - though in rather more of a smile than a kiss. But Cody doesn’t mind, because this is his beloved, his very heart, and every moment spent with him is a moment well-spent.
“Happy Life Day,” Obi-Wan murmurs, finally pulling back, pressing their foreheads together.
Cody laughs, leans in for another quick kiss. “You’re always my favourite gift, cyare.”
“Oh? Do you have any plans to unwrap your gifts?”
Cody wraps his arms around his husband and lifts, letting the door slide shut behind them as he walks into their room. “You’re terrible, actually,” Cody amends. “I’m wrapping you in more layers. Stay on your side of the bed, with your iceblock feet.”
Another drunken, sleepy kiss pressed just under his ear, soft breath borne on a quiet laugh, and it strikes Cody just how true his sentiment was.
Every day spent with Obi-Wan truly is a gift. The man himself is a gift. And damned if he isn’t Cody’s favourite.