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“I’m going to tell him,” Wolffe says decisively and then yowls when Cody stomps on his foot, hard. Obi-Wan pauses where he is recounting his story at the other end of the three tables they had hastily pushed together, only continuing when Cody gives him a smile and eye-roll at Wolffe. Obi-Wan smiles back, confusion still there in the furrow of his brow, even as he carries on with his story.
Whispering back, furiously, Cody says, “You’ll do no such thing.” Cody cannot remember why he thought it would be a good idea to invite Wolffe and the others out to meet his and Obi-Wan’s grad school friends before they broke for the winter holidays, but it had clearly been a terrible one. He takes a long swallow of his pint, distressed to see how close to the bottom he was.
“C’mon, Cody,” Wolffe wheedles, waggling his eyebrows, “he deserves to know.”
“Deserves to know what?” Ahsoka asks, eyes bright with curiosity, leaning in closer across where her legs are draped across Wolffe’s on the bar bench. If Cody doesn’t look at them too closely, he doesn’t have to acknowledge whatever seems to be going on there.
“Well,” Wolffe says, leaning forwards as well, so there is nearly no space between them, “I’m sure Obi-Wan has treated you to your own personal rendition of his favourite story. The one about how he and Cody became friends.” Wolffe tilts his head over to where Obi-Wan is retelling the story once more to Kit and Thorn, who – having not been subjected to it before – are listening delightedly. Cody loves and despairs of the story in equal measure, by turns relieved and mortified that Obi-Wan only knows part of it.
Ahsoka nods her head and gives Wolffe a sharp grin, “I’ve heard it once or twice, they were in the same class at school and Cody hated Obi-Wan, sending him notes telling him that and Obi-Wan handled it by deciding they were going to become friends and spent the next month winning him over until they were best friends.”
Wolffe grins and Cody puts his head in his hands wishing the table could just swallow him whole.
“Only,” Wolffe says, relishing the drama, “Cody didn’t hate Obi-Wan.” And Ahsoka is a smart woman, she sees the writing on the wall and makes a squeak of joy, hand covering her mouth as she looks over at Cody delighted. Not to be outdone, Wolffe continues, “He had a crush and didn’t know how to handle it.”
“I was seven!” Cody protests, louder than he should, face burning. Thankfully Obi-Wan had just hit the punchline of his story so that the others were laughing loud enough to drown him out. He glances over there, finds Obi-Wan looking in their direction, and Cody smiles, helpless, even as he is aware of Wolffe and Ahsoka falling over each other as they laugh.
“Plenty old enough to know that the way to handle a crush was not to slip him a note telling him to leave school.” Wolffe teases back and Cody wishes he was close enough to pull Wolffe’s hood over his head and shut him up, instead he has to settle for kicking at his shin.
“No!” Ahsoka says, gripping Wolffe’s shoulder through breathless laughs.
“Yes!” Wolffe says, hands wrapping around her ankles as they continued to cackle.
“So, what,” Ahsoka says finally, breath caught and a worrying amount of eye-contact taking place between her and Wolffe, “Obi-Wan thought it was a declaration of war and decided that you were going to be friends instead.”
“Basically,” Cody sighs, remembering the hot thrill of horror-joy that had flushed through him when, the next day, Obi-Wan had come and sat next to him, pointedly smiling, and never left. Not throughout their school days or through their time at different universities, and now back together for their grad programmes where they shared a flat, a friendship group and most of their free-time.
“And he doesn’t know?” Ahsoka asks, glancing over at Obi-Wan’s end of the table where a quieter topic has split them into smaller groups.
“Not yet,” Wolffe says grinning wickedly and Cody – finishing his last gulp of his drink – regrets, with the intensity of a dying sun, that he hadn’t taken that PhD offer in the States, choosing to stay near home, his family and the crappy grey weather instead.
Thankfully the conversation moved on, Wolffe’s attention span not happy to stay on even his most favourite topic – teasing Cody – for too long. Everyone else seems happy and Cody gives himself a moment to just bask in it, the sounds of his family and his friends lively in conversation.
“You doing okay?” Obi-Wan asks quietly an indeterminable amount of time later, pausing on his way up to the bar. He has a hand propped on Cody’s shoulder and the table to lean down and be heard over the noise of the bar.
Cody glances up, sees that his siblings and cousins are otherwise distracted, and turns so he is mostly facing Obi-Wan and huffs, “Mostly.” It was lovely to see them, and Cody missed them fiercely when they weren’t near, but so many of them descending at once and disrupting the careful equilibrium of his life was taxing.
Obi-Wan makes a response to that, Cody can see his lips move, but it is lost when the group of astrophysicists at the pool table crow with loud laughter. What Cody does hear is him say, “Stay strong,” and “need a drink?” Cody nods vaguely, distracted by how Obi-Wan’s hand has moved up to his hairline and scratches his nails gently before leaving. Cody has to focus on not doing something stupid like close his eyes in bliss or whimper because Wolffe would definitely notice that and then there would be no stopping him.
He tries to tune-in to the conversations happening around him, Kit leaning into Fox’s space with a delighted smile on his face as he asked about Fox’s work; Thorn discussing something arcane and esoteric with Siri; Bly and Aayla snickering over a mutual acquaintance; Wolffe and Ahsoka comparing scars; Rex and Mace sitting in companionable silence. Before he realises it, enough time has passed for Obi-Wan to flirt his way over to ordering a couple of pints, because he is leaning over Cody once more, dropping off his pint and trailing his hand across his shoulders before returning to his side of the table and immediately begin to egg on Kit and Fox.
“Everything alright?” Obi-Wan asks, voice rough and eyes blinking out from under the covers. Cody’s gut clenches, his defences stripped against this Obi-Wan, cosy, sleep-soft, half-awake, the Obi-Wan he never got to see other than morning glimpses before the tea hit his system.
“Yes, all good. Go back to sleep,” Cody says, soft. It had been a long walk back from the bar, with the way that Rex kept pulling them over to stare at architectural features in the old town, and by the time they had gotten the others set up it was well past midnight. He had hoped that Obi-Wan would be asleep, so they didn’t have to do this, so that Cody could steal in and out of his bed without having to contend with the reality of him like this. He had hoped even more to avoid this altogether, Fox and Wolffe had taken his bed, he would have been fine on the floor but then Rex and Thorn had come too, and their small flat quickly ran out of spare surfaces to kip out on.
He had made noises about forcing his brothers and cousins to get a hotel room once he had the final headcount, and Obi-Wan had gotten this offended look in his eyes, as if Cody’s suggestion was the deepest affront to the posh manners instilled over summers with his wealthy grandfather. “Or…” Cody had said, desperately thinking of something that would get that look off Obi-Wan’s face.
“Or you could bunk with me while we’ve guests staying.” Obi-Wan had said with an eye-roll, like Cody was the one who was being strange about this. Cody had worked not to choke on his tongue, but clearly some of his misgivings were visible on his face because Obi-Wan had knocked their feet together on the sofa, insistently, until Cody used his legs as a clamp to still them. “C’mon, Cody,” he had wheedled, “we used to share all the time.”
“When we were fifteen,” Cody had said, remembering how torturous that had been then, waking up entangled together, his body aflame and shaky. “We were a lot smaller back then.”
“And I have a bigger bed now,” Obi-Wan had said, with a smirk that had Cody’s blood skittering again, trying not to picture what exactly Obi-Wan had been using that bed they had lugged up to their third-floor flat for. “It’s the best solution, you want to spend as much time with your family while they are visiting, and nobody has to spend any money on a hotel room, and I don’t have to sit there watching you grimace through the backpain.”
“I won’t—” Cody had started to say, before Obi-Wan had interrupted with a jerk of his leg, a kick without the swing, given Cody’s clamp on his legs, but his point was well made. Cody conceded, “maybe, I am no longer eighteen, but I could do it for a few nights.”
“Or you could share my bed and not have to worry about any back pain whatsoever.”
“Fine,” Cody had said, ignoring the smug smile of victory Obi-Wan had given him across the sofa.
Cody had changed into his pyjamas before coming in, so all he had to do was slip into bed. Obi-Wan had left a small nightlight on a bedside table on, lighting his way and the fact that he’d left a charger and a glass of water for Cody. He smiled helplessly,
“—’re you sure — you’re okay?”
“Hmm?” Cody asks, clambering into bed and putting his phone on charge. He tried not to sigh in appreciation at the warmth trapped between the sheets.
“At the pub, t’night. Was everything okay? You and Wolffe seemed to be having a spat.”
“Nothing to worry about,” Cody says, nervous and touched by turns that Obi-Wan had spotted that even as he was holding court with Kit, Thorn, Fox, Aayla and Bly. “Wolffe was just being Wolffe.”
“Always worrying,” Obi-Wan agrees with a hum, murmuring something nonsensical, before saying, “he and ‘Soka seemed like they were getting on.”
“Don’t remind me,” Cody says, getting as comfortable as he dared, “at this rate my brothers or cousins are going to end up stealing all my friends.”
“Don’ worry,” Obi-Wan says, propping himself up a bit, looking at Cody, eyelids low and sleepy, “you’ll always be my favourite Fett, ’m not going anywhere.”
“Good,” Cody says, inadequately because the idea of one of his brothers stealing Obi-Wan is both the worse thing he can imagine and thankfully unthinkable. Given that they had bought into Cody’s tragic love story at age seven and spent their time since then trying to urge Cody to finally act. He might not trust them not to spill his secrets, but he certainly trusted that none of them would do that to him.
Half-asleep Obi-Wan rolled onto him, making another pleased little hum as he tucked his head against Cody and fell deeper into sleep. Cody lay there, heart beating a wild tempo certain sleep would never come, until, somehow, between one blink and the next, sleep, warm and stealthily gripped him.
In the morning, Cody extracts himself from Obi-Wan’s warm hold with as much calm as he can manage. He stumbles out into their living room-kitchen area to see Rex still asleep and Thorn blinking himself awake. Thorn takes one look at the telling blush staining Cody’s cheeks and smirks, “Sleep well there, Codes?”
“Just fine, thank you,” Cody sniffs, too tired to handle that knowing expression. “Tea? Coffee?”
Thorn tells him his order, and Cody gets to making three mugs, tea for Obi-Wan, coffee for himself and Thorn.
“It was nice to meet all your friends last night,” Thorn says, getting up and coming into the kitchen. Rex — still asleep — rolls over onto the space his brother had left empty, somehow undisturbed by the boiling kettle. Cody gives himself a foolish moment to hope that Thorn wasn’t going to tease him, “I hadn’t heard Obi-Wan tell that story himself before. It’s quite the tale.” Aunt Arla has taught her sons too well because there is so much pointed criticism that Cody wants to hide. “You should really tell him the truth.”
Cody cannot believe he is getting this nonsense in his own kitchen, before he has had coffee. He frowns at Thorn before throwing himself into preparing the drinks, passing Thorn his before flipping him off to return to Obi-Wan’s room, where at least he won’t hassle Cody.
No, instead, Obi-Wan stirs at the smell of his tea, blinks himself blearily awake and gives Cody a bright, sunny smile, whispering, “You are a king among men, Cody Fett,” as he made grabby hands for the mug. Which was somehow worse.
“So,” Rex says and Cody groans. Because really, this was a masterclass in entrapment. Rex had sent the rest of the family off to watch a film he and Cody had already seen, and then put on a documentary that he promised would be light in tone and on its demands. Which after a long day of marking first-year papers sounded like heaven. “Obi-Wan’s been telling that story a lot recently.” And he had been, not just at the bar yesterday, but over an early dinner with Quinlan and Garen at their favourite sushi bar as well, and on the walk back when they had run into Luminara, a colleague of Obi-Wan’s. Each time, a different brother had made a comment, thankfully just quietly enough that Obi-Wan hadn’t turned around to ask.
“Et tu, Brute?” Cody asks, throwing an arm over his eyes in what he’ll admit is a fit of dramatic pique. More quietly, “What is with all of you?” Rex, when Cody lifts arm is giving him a look that exists somewhere on the spectrum of understanding and unamused. Betrayed by his favourite cousin, when will the familial treachery end?
“C’mon, Cody,” Rex says, not wheedling like Wolffe, but calm, reasonable, it is somehow worse, “Obi-Wan deserves to know, you should just tell him.”
“Tell me what?” Obi-Wan asks, coming into the room, clearly done with his call early and Rex makes a squeaking sound and actually scarpers. Fully jumps up from his seat on the sofa and leaves the living room. Cody glares after his formerly favourite cousin and tries to think of a lie, any lie. Obi-Wan wouldn’t push it, he’d remember it though, which is possibly worse.
They both jolt slightly when Rex leaves out the front door, coat flapping as he throws it on.
“Where is he even going to…?” Obi-Wan starts to ask before he decides to let it go. He plonks himself down in the seat Rex had hastily vacated. “He’s a grown man, I’m sure he can keep himself occupied until he can find the others. It can’t be long until their film is finished.”
“Very good at keeping himself entertained, that Rex,” Cody says, inanely, hoping against all hopes that Obi-Wan is going to let it go.
“Hmm,” Obi-Wan says, with a smile; he tucks his legs under himself, getting comfortable and just looking at Cody.
Cody keeps still under the regard, even though he senses that his brothers have been unsubtle enough that Obi-Wan has to ask.
“Rex’s parting comment.” Obi-Wan finally settles on, and waits. When Cody makes no move to answer him, Obi-Wan snorts, “Are you really going to make me ask?”
Stomach tying itself into nervous knots, Cody sighs, and readies himself to correct this longstanding misgiving. Before he can speak however, Obi-Wan immediately slides his feet in Cody’s lap, and says, “You — you don’t have to. I’m curious, but you are – of course – entitled to your secrets.” Cody quirks a lip, because he loves this man, “No, I should tell you. My family have been urging me to tell you.”
There is another pause. Obi-Wan brows draw together, “They all know?”
“What one of us knows, the rest tend to.”
Obi-Wan takes that news on with a slight wince ,”Ah,” he says, and Cody supposes that he, Anakin, Feemor and Xanatos hardly speak alltogether, let alone truthfully, "So that time Seventeen and I…”
“Got locked in the Chemistry labs overnight in undergrad?” Cody asks with a smile, remembering the way that Seventeen had come storming home complaining about the ginger-nuisance whose forays into science had got them both trapped after the caretakers had locked the door behind them. His roar of frustration when he realised that Kenobi-the-errant-undergrad at his university had been “Cody’s Kenobi” had set everyone into hysterics. “That was one of Jango’s favourite.”
Again, Obi-Wan visibly processes that information, before he huffs, “I suppose anything that makes your father like me more, is a win for me.” Cody doesn’t let the conversation get derailed by telling Obi-Wan that Jango did in fact like him, and had gotten over his initial disdain within five minutes of properly meeting him. “I fret to think what the Fett family could be discussing this time then.”
Cody lapses into silence, the guilt eating at him, and Obi-Wan nudges him again, smiling in that way he does when he is trying to gentle Cody, “Really, we don’t have to do this.”
“We do,” Cody groans, anchoring his hands on Obi-Wan’s ankles, right where the colour of his slouchy cable socks shifts from beige to red. “We really do.”
He takes a fortifying breath and tries to not freak herself out, “You know that story you like, the one about how we became friends.”
Obi-Wan startles, blinks as he processes, and then smiles, an automatic thing, no less lovely for its reflexiveness. “Of course, it’s my favourite.”
And here Cody goes, about to ruin it for him forever.
“There is a bit of context you might be missing from it.”
“Oh?”
“I — well, you see,” Cody starts, “it’s just — you met me then — and so you, um –“
“Cody,” Obi-Wan says amused, nudging him again, “breathe, dear.”
“Right, yes,” and Cody does, and it allows him to say, “It’s only, I wasn’t the most adept seven year old —" Obi-Wan makes a sound of protest, which Cody appreciates generally, but it isn't the time, so he presses on, "so, when I wrote you that letter. It’s not because I hated you. Quite the opposite, actually.”
Obi-Wan snorts, and then he stills, amusement slipping away, “Oh.” Because they have been friends for a very long time, and despite his tendency to get into raging arguments with certain grad students and leave his coat across campus, Obi-Wan is a smart, competent man, who knows Cody very well. He likely knows that if the crush had gone away, Cody could have — would have — told him years ago, for him to have not… Cody doesn’t play it off, certain, that while Obi-Wan doesn’t return his feelings, their friendship will survive. It was time to come clean. “Oh, Cody.”
He stands, before Cody can say anything, and leaves.
Which is far worse than Cody could have imagined even when he was catastrophising about this conversation. He sits on their sofa for a moment, tears pricking his eyes and heart somewhere on the floor, taking a breath that is a lot choppier than it should be. He — he should probably leave, give Obi-Wan some space, Aayla and Bly can put him up, they both owe him for all those nights listening to them moon about each other, they can put up with him moping until he knows if he can come back home.
Cody stands, trying to plan what he needs to drown out the feeling by focussing on logistics, what he needed for the next week. His laptop, some clothes, maybe his—
“Cody, where are you going?”
Obi-Wan has come back, holding a box of some kind. His brow is furrowed but he doesn’t look like he is going to kick Cody out of their home.
“I thought—”
“Cody,” Obi-Wan says, and there is a look on his face that Cody doesn’t know what to do with. Obi-Wan grabs his arm, guiding him back to the sofa, where he gently pushes Cody down, and sits down himself. After a second’s pause, Obi-Wan hands Cody the closed box — which he takes gladly for something to do with his hands — before swinging his legs over Cody’s lap.
“Uhh,” Cody says, face still aflame and pulse still racing.
“In case you get any ideas about fleeing again.” Obi-Wan says tartly, making grabby hands for the box.
Cody dutifully hands it over, even as he sighs, “I thought you wanted space.”
“So you were kicking yourself out of our flat?” Obi-Wan asks, eyebrows climbing in dry ridicule. He opens his box and begins leafing through the pages therein.
Cody shrugs, “You left.”
“Cody,” Obi-Wan says, pausing in his search, “I didn’t — I wouldn’t — this our home. I’d never kick you out of. Besides,” he starts rifling through the box again, letting out a pleased ‘a-hah’ when he finds something. “I needed to find this.”
He hands Cody a worn, folded piece of torn lined paper, the kind that they used at school. Cody unfolds it and recognises his young handwriting with a lurch. He reads the date, the name it was addressed to, skims a few of the childish words before yanking his eyes away. Cody is aware his hands have a tremble, that his face is hotter than it had been before. He had deliberately forgotten the specifics of what he had written, hadn’t wanted to remember, the layer of his mortification so thick, even if it had brought him his favourite person in the world.
“You kept it.” Cody says, voice barely above a whisper.
“Of course I did,” Obi-Wan says back, just as gentle, his face still inscrutable.
“Why?”
Obi-Wan gives him this crooked half smile, leaning forward to put the box on the coffee table, he then turns to take the note from Cody’s hand, gently, rubbing a thumb across it before placing it back inside. He returns to Cody, smiling again, eyes soft, and leans in. Cody can’t move, can’t take that last step himself, even as the evidence is there, as Obi-Wan gets a hand in his hair, as he draws him in and kisses him.
Obi-Wan’s lips are soft against his, gentle, inexorable, like the fall of a blanket, the weight of a hug. Yet the feel of the kiss is electric, sparking down Cody’s spine, ratcheting up his heart. Cody breathes out his nose in a shudder, returning the kiss with as much aching tenderness as he can manage, all but collapsing forward, grateful for the grounding points of Obi-Wan’s hand and legs.
They separate, moments – hours? – later, when as Cody presses closer, trying to get nearer, he almost unbalances them both off the sofa. There is a pause, as they resettle safely and look at each other, and then Obi-Wan huffs, smiling wide and Cody lets out a laugh. Almost delirious with joy and relief, Cody just stares at Obi-Wan, taking in the crinkles around his blue, blue eyes, the flush to his cheeks and lips, the warm twist of his smile.
“I can’t believe you kept it.” Cody says, glancing over at the note that started everything.
“Of course, I kept it,” Obi-Wan says, starting to manoeuvre them so that Cody was lying flat across the sofa, with Obi-Wan above him, running his hands across Cody leaving a trail of sparks in their wakes. “It was cute.”
“I told you to leave school,” Cody whines, his mortification a tangible thing.
“And what a ferocious eight year old you were.” Obi-Wan hums, stealing another kiss, that draws out leaving them both flush, and Obi-Wan blinking, before he clears his throat, “It was a challenge.”
“Ah I see, I affronted your pride and you needed to prove me wrong.” Cody says. He reaches out to touch Obi-Wan’s beard before trying to draw him back in for another kiss.
“I liked you, before.” Obi-Wan says, a soft smile on his face, not letting Cody draw him in again.
“What?” Cody laughs, “You barely knew who I was.”
Obi-Wan poked him in the ribs, and swooped in to press a kiss on Cody’s right cheek, right where his scar tails off, before drawing back with angled eyebrows, his determined eyebrows. The ones Cody sees when Obi-Wan knuckles down to write, or when they are at a trivia night. “The first day of class, you were wearing a black hoodie with a golden sun on it, you lent me your pencil. I liked you.”
“Really?”
“Even when I thought you hated me, I was so desperate for you to like me because it was you.”
“No.”
“Cody,” Obi-Wan says, amused, dropping down further onto Cody so he wasn’t having to support his weight anymore, “Maul was in our class,” Cody makes a grumbling sound, remembering him, “My point is that you weren’t the only person I thought didn’t like me, you were the only one I was determined to win over. “And then, well, you became my best friend and I was going to do anything to keep you.”
Cody wraps his arms around Obi-Wan, “I— I liked you so much, before and after, and I didn’t understand how it happened, I kept waiting for you to get bored now that you knew we were friends.”
Obi-Wan looked aghast, “Not the whole time?”
“By the time that you were staying over mine several evenings a week and your dad was changing his hippie quinoa recipe to leave out the walnuts for me, I figured we were actually friends.” Cody reassures him, with a smile remembering the pleased jolt he had felt when he realised that Mr. Jinn was taking Cody’s preferences into account, even without knowing he would be coming over.
“Good,” Obi-Wan says with a relived sigh, like he had been nursing a small worry that Cody had been doubting their friendship. He clocks Cody spotting that and quickly asks, “so why did you decide to tell me know.”
Cody buries his face against Obi-Wan’s nape, making an incoherent sound, “My brothers and cousins.” Obi-Wan laughs, “They kept bringing it up near you, Rex was the fourth this trip I knew it was only a matter of time until one of them screwed up again. So when you heard him, I decided it was time.”
“So they all knew?”
“They dine out on the story, even dad,” Cody says with a sigh, “they all kept telling me that I needed to just talk to you.”
“Far be it for me to agree with your father, but you could have done.”
Cody groans, “Let’s go back to kissing, I liked that more than the idea of you and dad agreeing on anything.”
Dutifully, Obi-Wan moves up to kiss him again, a lovely lingering thing, before saying, “We’re going to have plenty of time, we can do both.” And Cody supposes he could accept that.