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“It really annoys him, doesn‘t it?”
“Mm?” Obi-Wan has a mouthful of noodles and no mind to show them to anyone.
Cody jerks his head in the direction of Skywalker’s retreating back as he storms away along the walkway.
“Hm,” Obi-Wan concedes, and when nothing more is forthcoming Cody laughs. He likes Cody’s laugh; he feels he’s in a position of privilege in the hierarchy Cody has constructed of who gets to experience his delight. This laugh is quiet, chuffing, more rubbed against his shoulder than heard. Cody’s eye creases as it watches Anakin disappear, the same way it creases when he looks at Obi-Wan, sometimes. He doesn’t know what ring of the hierarchy he’s in to be witness to that. He’s never asked.
“He came over just to piss himself off that we had lunch together,“ Cody clarifies. Obi-Wan doesn’t disagree, but doesn’t voice it either. It’s a fine line with Anakin, even in his own head.
“Finish your noodles, then, if you’re not going to give me any gossip.” Cody’s gaze is redirected; he digs into his own box with the chopsticks. The sky is a clear blue today, so they are parked on a bench outside the temple doors between the sun-shade-sun strobing cast by the pillars. Cody sits in the light. Obi-Wan keeps his memories of sunburn close and sits in the shadow beside him.
“I am a man bereft of gossip,” Obi-Wan says, after their noodles are gone and they are trotting down the steps and out beyond the shelter of architecture. He is tempted to pull up his hood, but while it is sometimes useful to be blinkered, today he wants Cody in his peripheral so he risks multiplication of his freckles.
“Liar,” Cody decides. He walks leisurely, his bucket left behind on the bench. They don’t have much free time today, just a lunch hour-ish, and at one look at the temple mess menu (Mashed Turnip Five Ways) they made a mutual decision to get takeout and eat it in the fresh air.
“Anakin just-.” He pauses. Anakin just what. They pass beneath statues, ten times the size of a man. Cody glances up at the closest one; its arms are uplifted in celebration of the Force, or just getting some stretches in.
“Skywalker just dislikes the fact you have hobbies that don’t include him.”
Obi-Wan draws his eyebrows together. Cody’s face holds the light in a way that is completely unfair to try to bear witness to while holding a conversation at the same time. “Cody, you are hardly a hobby.”
“You do clear space in your diary for me every day.”
“Slander.” Obi-Wan ilifts his chin, haughtiness a well-honed blade in his arsenal. “Diaries are proof of nothing more than intent. You know well enough no plan survives first contact with the enemy, which in this case is the general entropy of the universe.”
“I write half your schedule, so I know something of anticipating chaos, which in this case is you around four o’clock in the afternoon.” Cody is enjoying this, his teeth flashing as the words grin out of him, “I didn’t put our caf break in once and you went on and on and on.”
“You were being needlessly brutal with that timetable.” Obi-Wan was so peeved about it he cannot help but be drawn right back to the moment even now; it was discombobulating having neither cup nor saucer to tide himself over until the despair of late afternoon dispersed into evening. The absence of Cody between his appointments (to tide himself over until the end of the war) was a compounding misery so absolute that it’s possible he’s never actually recovered.
“We were in the middle of the Rodia crisis, there wasn’t time for extra-curriculars!”
Obi-Wan, primly, “A crisis is the perfect time for creating space to clear one’s thoughts.“
“Ah, so I empty your head.” Obi-Wan wisely makes no concession to that. Cody turns and walks backwards for a few paces, pointing at him; his humour is infectious and Obi-Wan resists only to fuel Cody’s amusement. “Admit that you spend time with me purely because you-”
“You are not a hobby!” Obi-Wan’s laugh is a traitor, stabbing him in the back as it falls out of him. All the same, gods forbid Cody ever finish that sentence. He’ll keep raising his voice on the matter if Cody persists in trying, but Cody knows his panic buttons and lifts his finger from them.
“Well, whatever I am,” Cody begins.
“You are very dear to me,“ Obi-Wan says without thinking. Cody’s mouth closes, and see, he’d have missed that expression, quick as the beat of a wing, if he’d had his hood up.
They have arrived at the end of the plaza. The options are now to carry on down into the street proper, toward the hubbub of tram stations and restaurants and clothing boutiques, or to turn back, withstand the scrutiny of the statues and pass between the pillars once again.
“Whatever I am,” Cody continues as they deliberate, not quite looking at each other (Obi-Wan has his eyes on the paving, Cody is squinting into the light), “Skywalker doesn’t like it.”
“That I will concede,” Obi-Wan allows. Anakin doesn’t have to approve, he thinks. “But I don’t plan my life around what keeps Anakin awake at night. Not anymore, anyway.”
Cody stares at him. After a moment, he holds out an arm in the direction of the temple and says, “shall we?”
When they reach the sanctuary of the pillars again Cody catches him with a tug at his elbow and Obi-Wan automatically ducks into the shade with him. Only Cody’s calm expression keys him into the fact there is no threat, despite the familiarity of being hauled out of a firing line.
“It’s just that I’ve never been sure,” Cody says quietly, as if only now deciding to verbalise a conversation he’s been conducting in his head this entire time. They are standing so close passersby might think they are gossiping, though Obi-Wan notices that Cody has angled them so that they are hidden from more than the sun. “About us,” he adds, before Obi-Wan can ask.
Obi-Wan thinks on how something so simple as eating noodles with his Commander had offended Anakin so, how he had perhaps answered some query in Cody’s mind halfway across the temple plaza with his careless tongue. He thinks about his diary, and the daily blocked-out time titled Private Appointment.
“In fact I’ve been very unsure,” Cody’s smile is more of a grimace, eyes sliding from Obi-Wan’s face to their feet as he mulls over his next words, “that there was anything there at all. Even now, I’m wrong-footed. But you said-”
“That you are dear to me.” Obi-Wan treads at last on the heels of context.
“Yes.” Cody’s eyes dart back up and hold his gaze. ”What did you mean?”
“Do you really think I was obfuscating? The colour of my cheeks should have clued you in.”
“We were standing in the sun. You could have been warm.”
“I was,” Obi-Wan says, “but it was less to do with the climate than you think.”
“What do I think?“ Cody asks. His face holds an expression Obi-Wan is sure no-one else has been shown. It is a new page in a book Cody is holding open to him. “What do I think, Obi-Wan?”
“You think,” Obi-Wan says, and gods help him he moves closer, he doesn’t want Cody to mishear, to misinterpret any of this as he may have been doing until now, purposefully or not, “You think that you are not within the circle of those who have my deepest regard.” Cody’s frownline, permanent, beloved, tells him he’s obfuscating. “Of people I love, Cody.”
“I see,” Cody says, though he is still lost.
“There’s only one person in that bloody circle.”
“Oh.”
“Yes,” Obi-Wan smiles. “Oh.”
“Gods.” Cody covers his face with his hand, drags it downuntil its covering only his mouth, “Skywalker’s insufferable enough as it is.”
“We’ve survived worse.”
“Have we?” Cody asks, eyebrows incredulous. At Obi-Wan’s eyeroll he mumbles through his fingers, “what happens now? I’ve run out of ideas. The pillar was the idea. This, this was the idea.”
“You may find out if you move your hand, darling.”
Cody’s hand falls from his face and into Obi-Wan’s grasp. “Maybe,“ he says, trying out the words, “maybe I could kiss you.”
“Maybe you could.” Obi-Wan puts as much tenderness into each word as he can, they brim with it, saturated like honey-dipped bread.
“Maybe,” Cody says, deaf to all but his own doubt, looking at their joined hands. It has to be Cody’s decision, Obi-Wan will not tell him or ask him to do it. He wants it, he wants it, but he will not guide him further, not in this.
Alright, maybe he will nudge a little, at Cody’s continued hesitation.
“Cody, you positioned us behind this pillar for a reason.”
“Yeah,” Cody murmurs to himself more than anything, “yeah I did.” He has found a last reserve of courage, his grip of Obi-Wans hand tightens. He leans in, a false start, leans in again, tilts his head, tugs Obi-Wan’s arm again by the hand, closer, closer.
Obi-Wan closes his eyes.
Cody’s kiss is sweet. Barely there, the first time, but he presses in again after confirming Obi-Wan isn’t going to flee. The second attempt is firmer, Cody is so gentle and good, he doesn’t give himself enough credit for how good he is, really. Nor how good a kisser, how soft. Obi-Wan parts his lips and deepens it. Feels Cody exhale hotly across his cheek. Feels his worry leave him on his breath, drifting away between the pillars and into the sun.
He tightens an arm around Cody’s waist, and Cody comes to him, there is no space between them now, and perhaps never was.
*
“If you really want some gossip about Anakin,” Obi-Wan begins as they make their way back inside the temple.
Cody shakes his head, cutting him off with a squeeze of his hand. “Everyone knows about that.”
Obi-Wan considers this as Cody’s fingers slots themselves between his. “Would you like to be insufferable about it?”
“I’ll add it to our diaries,” Cody says. He leans in as they walk, and Obi-Wan meets him halfway.