Chapter Text
When Trapper closes his eyes, he still sees the inside of that damn LAAT/i.
Red emergency lights, scorched walls from a lucky plasma-cannon, bodies—
brothers—
slumped against the wall, the floors, the seats. He can’t seem to get away from it. Not the way it looked, not the way it felt—the dry heat of Geonosis, trapped in a tin box under the suns—and not the way it started to
smell.
Leaking fuel. Smoke, from the blown engine. The ozone scorch of plasma against metal.
The General.
It’s the first way in which they ever learn to cope:
touch.
Nurseries on Kamino are constructed just like the flash training rooms, the endless rows of computers replaced with berthings for the tubbies. Fourteen to a row, eight rows to a nursery, one-hundred and twelve
vode
decanted and wriggling abouts together.
It’s the earliest thing they know. It’s the very first thing they learn.
When a
vod
cries, his
vode
reply. One hundred and twelve infants, screaming together. When a
vod
rolls onto their stomach for the first time, his
vode
follow. One hundred and twelve rolling infants, in sync like an Alderaanian ballet. When a
vod
is distressed—instincts screaming for the soothing balm of another's' touch—his
vode
answer. One hundred and twelve infants, reaching out and finding their brothers’ skin, their hands, their faces.
Vode an,
their elders say.
Brothers all—
the immediate language for the intrinsic experience of growing up one of many. They grow up surrounded, buffeted on all sides by each other, and that support system never really goes away. It only evolves.
Cadets make a habit of sneaking into one another’s’ pods. It’s practically a right of passage to get chased out of your
vod’s
berthing by the security droids. Thousands of
vode
hit puberty at the exact same time, turning to each other for new sensory experiences—to make sense out of the madness of teenage hormones.
Touch is more freely given than Mando’a, around Tipoca City. No trooper would want to get caught bastardizing the language of their trainers, but a hug? An arm around a shoulder? A friendly scrap in the barracks, a keldabe in the dark, an exploratory touch in the showers? Well, that’s just natural, really.
They might not be natborns but they
are
human.
Trapper keeps coming back to that damn LAAT/i, even days into the conflict on Geonosis, when the sheer exhaustion and demands of battle should keep his nights dreamless. His brain keeps getting stuck on the karking thing—the way it felt to sit there under the dim shadow of those red emergency lights, every brother around him
dead,
the General a warm line of heat against his side.
Trapper had come around, first. His whole body was a bruise with blood dried sticky to the side of his neck. It had run down from somewhere underneath his bucket, adhering his blacks to his skin. No one around him was conscious, no one was even moving.
Regs say to prioritize the highest ranking officer, in situations like that. Trapper had still turned to the
vod
to his right—Wicker. They had been joking together, before the ship went down.
After Wicker and his visibly-broken neck, Trapper had gotten it together—
forced
himself to get it together, really.
He’d turned to the General, in a heap of Jedi-browns and beiges, and checked said heap carefully for a broken neck. He’d deemed it safe enough to rearrange the poor, armorless
di’kut
into a semi-upright position, half-slumped against Trapper’s side, and secured his superior officer there with a careful arm around the shoulders.
When the General had woken up, it had been
him
who started with the reassurances, with the
it’ll be alright
and the
they’ll come for us, soon
. The General reassures with words—the great Negotiator in action.
But Trapper is a
vod,
a brother, and his first language is the language of touch.
He kept his General secured at his side the whole time—kept him tightly against his own body, kept his arm iron-secure around his shoulders, kept him close enough to protect with his armor if their little transport was to be boarded by Geonosians.
He remembers the LAAT/i in sensations. The lights, the distant noise of blaster fire and explosives, the smells… something herbal and warm in the General’s hair, the line of heat against his side that had become so uncomfortable as the temperature inside the LAAT climbed…
The first startled flinch of the General, waking up in contact with another body. The rigid line of tension he’d held. The way he’d finally,
finally,
relaxed into Trapper’s side. The little sigh of relief, hardly audible, but there all the same.
Trapper’s
vode
have dragged him into a cuddle pile every night since the crash, whether they were making camp on the Geonosian sand or propping one another upright with their bodies, catching furtive minutes of rest while others stood guard. He has hardly spent a moment untouched since the whole nightmare started.
Honestly, Trapper doesn’t know what he’d even
do
without his
vode—
without the comfort of them close.
Trapper stares at the Command tent and
wonders.
It becomes the Question— the one every vod is talking about from the bridge of the Negotiator to her dark bowels where the laundry rooms churn and chug: who takes care of the General?
Trapper spreads it to his batchmates who spread it to their squad who spread it to their friends, riduur, and kriff-buddies. No one gossips quite like a
vod
company gossips.
Trapper thinks it’s got to be Ghost. Ghost Company is…
very particular
about the General being
their General.
Not the 212th’s, not the 7th Sky’s,
theirs.
Just the handful of them, dogging his footsteps like a pack of nexus. And who is going to argue that claim? Ghost is all ARCs and ARCs are all banthashit insane. No one kriffs around with an ARC unless they want to lose teeth. No one challenges Ghost’s unspoken claim on
their General
unless they want to chew on boots for the next tenday.
So, Trapper goes hunting for Ghost.
Heh. Ghost hunting.
On the first week of every month, so long as they aren’t on a ground campaign, a handful of brothers set up their ink shop in medbay. Bones rules over the whole operation with a beskar thumb, providing sterile, safe materials to the artists in exchange for full administrative control. His terms are simple:
Brothers that are too rowdy will be removed. Brothers that do not have adequate bartering material will be removed. Brothers that want something
fucking stupid
tattooed on their ass (see, namely: any tattoo in their General’s likeness, any tattoo that is the result of a dare, and any tattoo that features tits, dick, ass, or a distateful arrow pointing to any of the aforementioned) will be removed. Brothers that question the medics
or
the artists will be removed.
All in all, it works pretty well.
Wooley has been talking up his next piece for a while now.
Vod
is loud. Trapper has no kriffin’ idea how he made it through ARC training alive, given that his mouth runs like a karking blurg to anything that holds still long enough, but maybe opsec brings out a different side of him. Who’s to say? Regardless, he’s grateful for Wooley’s constantly-running mouth because he knows exactly where to find the banthashit Ghost ARC on this fine day: in medbay, getting ink.
Trapper plants himself down at Wooley’s side without a single word, watching Dynamite carefully push black ink under the skin of Wooley’s forearm with a lovingly-donated hypodermic.
The simple Aurebesh script will read
“go down swinging”
when it’s complete, but for now, it just says:
go down.
Bones is giving Trapper a significant
look.
Wooley slings his free-arm over Trapper’s shoulder. “What’s up,
vod’ika?”
This effectively shields Trapper from the line of scowling
vod’e,
angry that Trapper cut in front of them.
That’s another thing about Wooley that makes him a good target for Trapper’s questioning—he’s friendly, almost to a fault. One would think with the mohawk and the ink and the piercings and the permanent bitch-face that Wooley would be one mean motherfucker. To droids, sure, Wooley is as mean as they come. But he’s never anything but soft with his vod’ike or with the General , and Trapper intends to exploit this.
“I’ve got a question,” Trapper begins, watching the needle go
through
and
through
and
through
Wooley’s skin.
Wooley hums. “Shoot, kid.”
Trapper seems to have won himself some respect, coming off of Geonosis. Even the Commander had given him a nod of approval when he’d brought the General back out safely. Not that Trapper did much, or anything. Maybe some of that respect has trickled down. This seems too welcoming, even for Wooley.
“On Geonosis,” he says, and gets a suspicious glance from Dynamite for his trouble, “in the LAAT/i with the General, he seemed…”
Wooley turns to face him fully, his brow raised. The ring through his bottom lip flashes dangerously in the sterile light of medbay. Bones has dropped all pretense of doing anything else and is just standing there, eyes drilling into the side of Trapper’s head.
“Spit it out,
vod,”
Wooley demands.
Well, alright then. “I think he’s skin hungry,” Trapper says. “Sure seemed like it, anyways.”
Dynamite has stopped working. All chatter has stopped, even from the line of
vod’e
waiting for their turn with the ink masters. Wooley just
stares
at him, assessing. Bones comes around the side of the bench until he stands right in front of Trapper, close enough that their boots touch. His hands—big hands, maybe that rumor about Bones’ being alpha-class is true—land on Trapper’s unarmored shoulders with a dull
smack.
“Say more,
vod.”
Bones commands.
Trapper goes to shrug but finds he can’t—not with Bones’ hands braced on his shoulders like that.
“Well, I was the first to come around. The General was still out. I rearranged him to be more comfortable, pulled him up against my side so that I could put plastoid between us and whatever would pry open that door. When he came around, he went all stiff and spooked, like a
vod
that’s been isolated for too long, ya know? But I didn’t budge, and eventually he just… relaxed. All at once, too. One big slump and he shivered, too, even though it was hotter than a Tatooine Summer in that thing. Made a sound, too. Just seems like he’s skin hungry, is all.”
Trapper isn’t sure whether or not Wooley is going to beat his sorry
shebs
for touching the General at all, or whether Wooley’s going to plant one on him. He reaches forward, all ARC muscle, and Trapper can’t resist it when Wooley tugs him into a Keldabe this side of too-rough.
“Good job,
vod’ika,”
Wooley says, shaking him a bit by the back of the neck. Like a tooka would scruff her young.
Bones has released Trapper’s shoulders and is staring balefully up at the ceiling, arms limp at his sides. “I am going to do murders,” Bones declares. “I am going to do so many murders.”
Who? Is getting
murdered?
How is this murder-worthy news?
Trapper does not know and he does not
care
to know.
“That’s all,” he says, going to stand as soon as Wooley releases him. Every eye in that room is on Trapper and he
does not care for it.
Not one bit,
nope.
He feels
normally
about the General, thank you very much. This information does
not
make him want to do murder, not even a little bit. He just thought it should be brought to the right people, is all.
He beats a hasty retreat and only exhales when he’s safe back in the barracks. One of his batchmates, Luey, peeks over the edge of the bunk. Luey is trans and started going by
she
just last week, so Trapper immediately says,
“Kriff,
dude,” when she startles him and then corrects it hastily to, “Uh—I mean. Dudette?”
Luey snorts. “Cute. Why do you look like you just bumped into the ghost of Fett?”
Is Trapper really that pale?
“I told Wooley about the General-thing,” he explains, clambering up until he’s sharing her bunk with her.
She throws an arm around his shoulders and pulls him into her side, toppling them both down onto the bunk into a sprawl of limbs that makes every part of Trapper’s brain go
yes, vod, good, perfect, safe.
“How’d it go?”
Trapper ponders it for a minute, nuzzling into her side. “Someone is going to die, but fuck if I know who.”
Luey laughs so loud it hurts his karking ears.
“Ghost is so fucking weird,” she says, sagely. Trapper agrees.
“Knock knock,” Crys bellows as he elbows his way past Boil and Waxer into the General’s quarters. Wooley is close behind. They’re going to be pushing it on capacity here—the General’s quarters aren’t actually all that big—since Cody and Longshot are already inside.
“Watch it,” Cody growls from his usual position at the General’s side. His
ori’vod
has a nasty habit of clinging so hard to his own sense of professionalism that he ends up making it everyone else’s karking problem.
Shebese
needs to get over it. Most of them want to fuck the General—doesn’t mean they need all need to snort the reg manuals over it to cope. Crys has his own right hand and a sensible appreciation for the art of self-pleasure, thank you very much.
Wooley was quick to come to Crys about their General’s possible problem. Together, they then came up with a plan (or, well, at least
half
of one) and decided to act during Ghost’s usual meeting with the General. It’s a perfect setting to enact their half-of-a-plan given that they’ll know exactly where the slippery fucker is and he’ll be trapped there until the agenda is through. Cody is thorough, if nothing else, so it’s a fair bet that they’ll be there for awhile.
Crys sets his kit down on the desk with a mighty
thunk
and takes the chair that Wooley so beautifully brandishes.
“General,”
Crys drawls, batting his eyelashes. Cody is glaring at him like he could melt Crys’ flesh off if he just wants it badly enough. Kenobi, for his part, just looks vaguely amused. “Can I paint your nails?”
This, evidently, was
not
what the General was expecting to hear.
“He’s getting really good at it, Sir,” Wooley chimes in helpfully. He brandishes his dark-blue manicure like a practiced holomodel.
Boil scowls. “Why are they 501st blue?”
“They don’t
own
the color,
vod,”
Wooley protests.
“I’ve got blue, gold, light green, white, and black,” Crys unpacks each color from the kit as he talks. “Please? It’s very relaxing.”
“I don’t think—” Cody begins, no doubt gearing up for a legendary chew-out, right up until the General interrupts with a gentle, “Well, alright.”
Crys lays out a hand towel, freshly laundered for just this purpose. He pats the surface down, demanding, until Kenobi acquiesces and presents his pale, graceful hands for inspection.
His fingers are longer and thinner than a
vod’s,
his nails pale and chipped. Crys imagines that they’re good hands for holding. He’s on a mission to find out.
When he takes Kenobi’s right hand between his own, the General startles, like he wasn’t quite expecting it. There’s an awkwardness to him—an
I don’t quite know what to do with my hands—
but Cry’s doesn’t miss the slight shiver that Kenobi fails to suppress when he digs his thumbs into his palm and starts to massage out the tension there.
He really
is
skin hungry. Even though Crys had expected it, part of him is still
surprised
to find it. The longer Cry’s touches Kenobi’s skin for, the more tired he seems to look. His eyes go vague and unfocused for moments at a time and he makes these little noises when Crys finds a particular spot of tension—a quiet
ah
here or a soft hum there.
Crys pulls out all the stops. He bartered some extra stim packs and some of the blue-wrapper ration bars for some sweet-smelling hand lotion, Wooley bartered for a special type of oil that is supposed to be good for cuticles—whatever the kriff
that
means—and he pays exquisite, careful attention to each knuckle, finger, and spot of tension wherever he finds it.
By the end of the meeting, Kenobi is all but a puddle in Jedi-robes, completely melted to his seat and half-asleep where he sits.
Crys has painted his nails 212th gold.
“Thank you, Crys, they look lovely,” the General murmurs, all soft and doe-eyed and
gods
Crys wants to hug him, but he thinks that might be too much for Cody’s patience. “Although I’m not sure how long I can keep them looking this nice.”
Crys beams. “Don’t worry about it, Sir. I’m happy to re-do them, any time you want.”
“Oh—well, I don’t want to trouble you—” Kenobi dithers.
“No, it’s no trouble at all. It’s relaxing, really. Any time, Sir. I mean it,” Crys insists.
He gets to ride that high for as long as it takes Cody to catch up to him outside in the hall. The Commander glowers at him, fuming. Ah, well. Good life and all.
“What the kriff was that?” Cody demands.
“Intel suggested that the General might be skin hungry,” Crys offers. He tries to curb his own smugness. Judging by Cody’s continuing death-glare, he is failing. Oh, well. Crys has lived a good life.
“‘Intel?’
What karking
intel?”
“Trapper,” Wooley exclaims, eyes gleaming.
Cody blinks, flummoxed. “The
vod
you just suggested for ARC training?”
“Yup,” Wooley chirps.
“Vod’ika’s
observant.”
Cody pinches at the bridge of his nose. “Go. Begone. All of you.”
“Give him a good cuddle tonight, Sir!” Wooley calls as they retreat because he has neither decorum nor self preservation.
All of Cody’s men have gone insane. Every last one of the bastards.
Insane.
First, Crys pulls his little manicure stunt. Then, Wooley
falls asleep
on the General’s shoulder during clean up on Ryloth, the
shabuir.
Waxer and Boil keep inviting Kenobi to join the
cuddle pile,
of all things, and their only saving grace is that Kenobi continues to politely refuse. Cody has caught more troopers making bantha-eyes at Kenobi than the number of shinies he catches playing lightsaber with kitchen implements.
The whole battalion has gone karking mad.
Maybe it’s something in the water.
Only further proving Cody’s point, Longshot throws himself down into the dirt next to their General with a heavy theatrical sigh, his still-booted feet pointed towards their campfire. He makes a show of stretching his arms high above his head before relaxing back onto his elbows and casting a
far-too-inviting
Look Kenobi’s way.
“I don’t know about you, Sir, but I’m fried,” Longshot drones.
Kenobi rests a hand on Longshot’s shoulder and squeezes, briefly. “Get some rest, Longshot. It’s been a long day for us all.”
Longshot catches Kenobi’s hand gently by the wrist, turning it until his palm is facing upwards and intertwining their fingers like they’re on some sappy holodrama. “What about you, Sir? You’ve been working so hard for us…”
No. Absolutely not.
Cody crams his bucket over his head and barks, harsh through the vocoder, “TROOPER!”
Longshot yelps like a startled massif and drops Kenobi’s hand like he’s been burned. His face flushes something
fierce,
even in the low light of the fire, and he beats a hasty mostly-stammered out retreat.
Bones drops a hand to Cody’s shoulder and squeezes. “Aw, lighten up,
vod’ika.”
“Get karked,” Cody hisses. Across the campsite, Kenobi begins to settle in for a meditation session.
“It’s doing him good, you know,” Bones drawls.
“What? Having troopers crawling all over him like weevils?”
“Touch,” Bones says. “Connection. Do you think there’s a single
vod
in the whole 7th Sky who goes even a day without a gentle touch? A hug? A body to sleep next to? A hand in the showers—”
“Stop.”
If Cody has to stand here and think about giving Kenobi a
hand in the shower,
he might actually explode.
“Still. You can’t deny that Kenobi wasn’t getting what he needed.”
“There are other Jedi,” Cody protests, but it sounds weak to his own ears. It sounds like the same points he’s rehearsed a thousand and one times in order to keep his hands to his damn self.
He doesn’t need that from you, nor does he want it.
“And how often is Kenobi at the Temple, these days?” Bones asks. It’s gentle, but it still stings like a slap.
Cody doesn’t sleep that night.
(Judging by the heavy, dark bags under Kenobi's eyes the next morning, neither does his General.)
The first sign that he
might
have overdone it comes when, after the battle, Obi-Wan decides to sit down for just a moment and gets black spots in his vision for the trouble. He knows, immediately, that if he
does
sit, he will
not
be getting back up.
He sways on his feet and reaches out to the Force to steady himself. Only, this time, the Force slips through his grasp with a painful throbbing of his temples and the grating unmistakable feeling of soul-deep soreness that means only one thing:
Force-exhaustion.
Some of his physical distress must show on his face, for Cody turns to him quickly and asks, sharp and brimming over with concern, “Sir? You alright?”
Obi-Wan opens his mouth to reply and finds that his teeth are vibrating like he’s been far over-caffeinated. Which
can’t
be the case, considering that he hasn’t drank anything in well over a few hours (or eaten anything, for that matter). Now that he’s checked in with his body, the floodgates are open, and he can hardly stop. There’s a strong tremor in his hands and a buzzing in his brain. Every color, every light, every sound is
too much
—a migraine sitting behind his left eye. He’s woozy to the point of actual sickness and has to close his eyes, if only briefly, against the onslaught.
They’ve lost
so many men
today.
Good
men. His men. He can
damn well
deal with some discomfort in the face of that.
“Just fine, Cody,” he assures his fretting Commander. His men tend to stress and Cody has quite enough to worry about without adding Obi-Wan’s minimal discomforts to the list.
Cody sighs, the sound rasping through the vocoder of his helmet just before he reaches up and cracks the seal, settling the scuffed up thing on his hip. His eyes are tired. Perhaps just as tired as Obi-Wan’s own must be.
“Humor me, Sir?” Cody asks, and offers a hand. When Obi-Wan does not move or respond, Cody adds, “Please?”
His Commander so rarely asks him for anything.
“Alright,” Obi-Wan acquiesces, and takes Cody’s hand only out of the fear that, if he doesn’t, he will fall right over as soon as he takes a step.
Cody leads him gently through the ship, passing brothers here and there with a small nod or a quick word or two. Obi-Wan hardly tracks the trip. The next thing he knows, they’re in his quarters and there are two trays of dinner rations sitting on the desk. Obi-Wan can’t even remember stopping by the cafeteria.
“Sit, please,” Cody coaxes.
They eat in silence, although the silence is warm, and Obi-Wan
does
feel much better for it. (His skin is still too tight, too
cold,
and the weight of his failures threatens to absolutely crush him into dust, but at least he’s no longer in danger of vomiting on an empty stomach.) By the time he registers that they’ve both finished eating, Cody is once again standing in front of him with his hand held out. His armor has been neatly stacked in the corner of Obi-Wan’s room. When did that happen?
“C’mere, di’kut,” Cody says, unaccountably fond.
The world tilts when Cody pulls him to his feet and the rush of his Commander’s emotions so close, invoked by the skin-on-skin contact of Cody’s hand to Obi-Wan’s own, has him gasping for breath he cannot find.
A fierce protective instinct, a breathtakingly sincere care, admiration, affection, love as clear as a bell—
Cody backs him up until Obi-Wan’s knees hit the edge of his bed and he’s embarrassed to say that he does not have the fine motor control to prevent toppling onto his back. Carefully, Cody crawls over him, though there is very little seduction to the act, no sense of sensuality to be found.
“Tell me if this is alright?” Cody asks, voice soft, and then,
oh-so-carefully,
he lowers his body weight gradually down until he is sprawled atop Obi-Wan’s body, every inch of hard-packed muscle pressing
down, down, down—
Obi-Wan gasps, beside himself with the sheer sensation of it, and when Cody’s hands begin to brush up and down across his ribs over his thin undertunic, Obi-Wan is
gone.
“‘S alright,” Cody murmurs as Obi-Wan trembles, shakes, and cries. “Let it out.”
It’s been
so long—
far, far too long—since he’s been held like this, since he’s simply
felt
another body against his own without the complications of sex (and even those occasions have been sparse). Perhaps not since Anakin decided he was too grown to need to share Obi-Wan’s bed to chase away his nightmares.
When the tears have dried up and the shaking has stopped, Obi-Wan brushes his hands over his wet eyes and tries to dredge up an apology for how awfully inappropriate he’s been.
“We carry a lot of stress in our bodies,” Cody interrupts, not even letting him breathe the first syllable of his apology. “It’s alright to ask for what you need.”
Obi-Wan laughs, perhaps more to cope with the awkward sense that he has karked up beyond belief with such an embarrassing display of vulnerability and weakness rather than any genuine sense of humor. “That’s very wise of you, Cody,” he offers.
“I’m a very wise man,” his Commander huffs, teasing.
Eventually, Cody rolls off, but Obi-Wan is pleased to note that he does not go far. Instead, he stays right there, close enough to touch, throughout the long night.
(And many more nights after.)