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“No, really, Cody,” Ahsoka laughed, “who’s your favorite: me or Rex?”
If he’d just laughed it off too, she would have dropped it. She would’ve, honest. Cody could’ve cuffed her on the shoulder and said, Commander, I couldn’t possibly choose between you two because you’re both an equal pain in my shebs. She would’ve accepted it and moved on. Accepting and moving on was one of Ahsoka’s strengths, in her humble opinion, and she would’ve done it gracefully.
Instead Cody said this:
“I will not answer that.”
And it was all serious-like, too. No joke, no gotcha.
Cody meant that.
Rex’s brow furrowed and his hand paused on its journey in delivering a sipful of awful beer to his lips. “Wait, what?”
“Yeah, what?” Ahsoka echoed. “I mean, s’not a big deal. Just, like, which one of us would you save if we were hanging off a cliff or something?”
“I mean, me, obviously,” Rex said, confidence wavering, “right?”
“Why obviously?”
“Because— Because we’re bros! Bros before—” Rex let his jaw hang open but elected not to finish his statement. “We grew up together, we’re family.”
“What, and we aren’t?” Ahsoka spluttered.
She’d never been so offended in her life. She and Cody were more than family. A family that didn’t need identical DNA to say they’re family. That’s real family.
“No, that’s not what I— You know what I mean! Cody and me,” Rex shook Cody’s shoulder for emphasis, “we’re close. On an emotional level. For example, he would for sure take my side if it came down to you or me in a tense, no-win situation, no offense.”
“I take great offense,” Ahsoka calmly stated. See, previous: never more offended in her life. “In fact, I’m so offended that I think I need to hear it directly from Cody that he would pick me if we were ever in such a ridiculous scenario.”
They both looked at him with earnest, demanding expressions. Cody looked around for a corner to back himself into.
“I, uh,” he said, “I don’t… know.”
“You don’t know.” Ahsoka turned to Rex grimly. “He doesn’t know.”
Rex sighed, also grim. “He doesn’t know which one of us he loves more.”
She nodded. “If we were both hanging off a cliff about to die, Cody wouldn’t know who to save. He’d probably let us both die because he couldn’t handle the pressure.”
“I didn’t say th—”
“I’m disappointed,” Rex said solemnly. “I mean, we’re about to fall to our deaths, and what? You can’t even tell us who you love more than the other one?”
Cody threw his hands up. “Why is there a cliff? What is happening?”
“Maybe he doesn’t love either of us,” Ahsoka answered. “Maybe that’s why he can’t say.”
Rex shook his head sadly. “Wow, Cody. I expected better.”
“There’s no fucking cliff! Why do you keep talking about a cliff? She’s a Jedi!” He stabbed his finger in Ahsoka’s direction. “She can just Force jump away and bring you along with her!”
“Oh, so you really don’t want to save us?” Ahsoka blinked and looked away. Quietly, she said, “Wow. Just, wow.”
Cody growled in frustration. “That’s not—” He clenched his fists on the table before standing up abruptly. “I don’t want to deal with this. This is a dumb problem you two fabricated and I’m not a part of it.”
Ahsoka and Rex shared a look as Cody stomped away. Ahsoka took a sip of her drink. Rex shrugged, eyebrows still raised. Obi-Wan and Anakin stared at them from across the table with bewildered looks.
“You guys are…”
“What, Anakin,” Ahsoka set down her glass so hard some of the liquid sloshed out, “we’re right? Cody doesn’t love us?”
“Um, no, that’s not what I was going to—”
Obi-Wan stopped him with an outstretched hand. “I think they need this, Anakin.”
“He could have just made a joke about it,” Rex grumbled. “That’s what gets me.”
“Exactly,” Ahsoka agreed, crossing her arms. “Like, we weren’t really asking him who he loves more, you know? It was just a metaphor.”
Anakin pursed his lips and raised a finger. “Um, you did kind of—”
“Right, that’s right,” Rex said. “A metaphor. He could’ve said either one of us and we would’ve known it was just a joke. But no, he deflected.”
“And made it weird.” Ahsoka shook her head from side to side and slipped further into the booth seat next to Rex, resting her cheek on his shoulder. “Literally, it would have been fine if he said Rex. I would’ve just cried a bit, but I’d be fine. But now I’m sad.”
Anakin tried to catch Obi-Wan’s eye, but his former master seemed to be suddenly very interested in reading the 79’s menu. He looked between Rex and Ahsoka’s sullen faces. “You just said you’d be sad if he said Rex but now you’re also sad, that doesn’t—”
“Hey,” Rex exclaimed, snapping his fingers. Ahsoka perked up. “What if we made him choose?”
“A cliff?” Ahsoka asked excitedly. She knew several that would work.
“That too, but I was thinking the emotional stuff. Like if either of us were to be involved with someone Cody didn’t care for, who would he give the worse back-off speech to?”
A spark lit in Ahsoka’s eyes. “Like, whose date would he threaten worse if he thought they weren’t any good for us?”
“Yeah!”
“But how can we quantify which speech is worse? I mean, two separate speeches, two separate people. It’s all subjective. He could tell one to back off and the other to go fuck themselves, when you take in body language and context clues, who’s to say which one had it coming worse than the other?”
They both sighed and slumped back in the booth. Obi-Wan stopped pretending to be fascinated by the Thursday night twelve credit margarita special with live Malreaux rose to join Anakin in staring at them in bewilderment.
Rex snapped his fingers again. “What if…”
“Yes?” Ahsoka bit her lip.
“What if we dated each other,” he finished.
“Ooh!”
“That way, he only has one decision!”
Ahsoka clapped her hands together. “Yes! He gives the talk to one of us! And then we know for sure, because whoever gets it, that means he doesn’t think they’re good enough for the other one.” She smiled serenely. “Me, obviously.”
“You? You’re definitely not good enough to date me,” Rex scoffed.
“As if!”
“You wish you were good enough for me!”
“I’m too good for you, honestly. I make you look good, dating wise.”
“I’d be so good at dating you that Cody would be like oh wow maybe I should date Rex because he’s so good at it and also good as a person because I love him. He’d be nice about it, of course, but he’d get you to back off.”
“That doesn’t even make sense, doofus! He loves me as a person way more than he loves you so he would definitely tell you to back off from me.”
“Why though? I just mean, Cody’s and my backstory is long and varied—”
“Cody loves me! Not you!”
“You’re joking, right?”
“I’ll joke over your grave, Rexter!”
“And I’ll joke… I’ll joke at your funeral!”
“You’re copying my jokes now!”
“I’ll copy your death! When I murder you and joke at your funeral! Who’ll be laughing then, hm?!”
“Hm,” Obi-Wan hummed, narrowing his eyes. He glanced at Anakin. “Care to weigh in?” These were his subordinates, after all.
“Ah—” Anakin paused with a look Obi-Wan knew all too well. “Well,” he stalled, “I’m not sure…”
“We’re good,” Ahsoka announced.
Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow. “You are?”
“Yep,” Rex answered. “We’ve got it figured out.”
“You’ve got what figured out though?”
“Don’t worry about it!” Ahsoka smiled sweetly. She patted first Obi-Wan’s, then Anakin’s hands, lifting her fingers in disgust when they came away sticky from whatever Anakin had spilled on himself earlier in the night.
“Yep,” Rex said again. He stood from the booth, then offered a hand for Ahsoka. “All figured out.”
Ahsoka rested her heels against the base of the booth so she stood taller than her natural height, then smiled smugly at Rex when their eyes were even. She probably counted her montrals as additional height, and thus, considered her power display accomplished. “I think we’ll know with whom Cody’s real affections lie soon enough.”
Rex smiled. He raised an eyebrow smugly. “I’m sure we will.”
Anakin sighed. He raised his glass to his lips and drained his beer. “I don’t think I want to know what their thought process is on this one,” he announced to the retreating forms of his padawan and captain.
Obi-Wan shook his head, for once agreeing with his former padawan. “I just hope that Cody doesn’t become… distracted from his duty by all this nonsense.”
“Cody,” Anakin scoffed, “distracted? I don’t think that’s possible. He’s, like, incredibly committed to the job. Too committed, if I’m being honest.”
“For his sake,” Obi-Wan sighed, “I hope you’re right. I have a feeling his commitment will be tested in the coming days…”
“You’re sure he’s coming by this way?”
“It’s the only way to the briefing room and he has a meeting with Kenobi in five.”
“All right, all right, I believe you,” Ahsoka huffed. “Just seems a bit public for our first foray into fake couplehood, you know?”
Rex looked around the empty hallway. “Public?”
“Yeah, anyone could walk by.”
“Well, I suppose. But Cody’s going to walk by. He’s not anybody.”
“Yeah, I know.” Ahsoka rolled her eyes. “Can we just get this over with already?”
“Yeah,” Rex said hesitantly, eyes darting around them. “C’mere.”
Ahsoka stepped into his space and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I hope he buys this,” she said sullenly, rubbing her nose up and down his jaw. She breathed in his scent and closed her eyes as she felt his hands tighten on her hips.
“Yeah,” Rex agreed, his voice an octave deeper than it normally was. “It would be a shame if—” His breath caught when she kissed the corner of his mouth. “If this was all for nothing,” he continued on a sigh. “I can’t think of anything worse than that.”
Their lips met then and all thoughts of Cody departed, even when, of course, Cody walked around the corner and stopped in his tracks at finding them.
“What the…” he muttered.
Neither Rex nor Ahsoka noticed.
Cody felt like he’s just seen a lothcat recite the intergalactic declaration of peace: unexpected, impossible, and not wholly wanted, if he was being honest. After several moments to collect himself, Cody continued on down the hall and passed by Rex and Ahsoka without comment.
Ten minutes later, Ahsoka rested her forehead on Rex’s. “Do you think he’s still coming?”
“I don’t know,” Rex breathed.
“Maybe we should keep going for a while, just to be safe.”
He nodded eagerly. “Yeah, that seems safe.”
“Maybe our problem was that it looked accidental.”
“Accidental, right,” Rex agreed. “Remind me, how did it look accidental again?”
“Because we were just in a random hallway!”
“Right.”
“And maybe Cody didn’t even recognize us, you know?”
“Yeah, totally.”
“Like I could have been any Togruta and you could have been any clone. Cody isn’t that good with people, right?”
“He’s not,” Rex agreed again. “Or at least, that’s what I tell Fives when he asks why Cody doesn’t respond to his messages.”
“See! Exactly,” Ahsoka hit him on the chest plate. “That’s why I think we need to go farther.”
“Like further farther?” Rex asked hesitantly. “Or… farther further?”
“The second one,” she replied, “I think. Whichever one means we pretend we’re in this. Like, in this in this.”
Rex gulped, but nodded seriously. “You’re right. He needs to believe we’re serious, or he’ll never try to scare one of us off.”
“And that’s the whole point,” Ahsoka said suddenly, like it was just occurring to her, or maybe, just reoccurring to her. “We’re tricking Cody into revealing which of us he loves more by threatening to kill the other.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“So how do you want to do this?”
“I was thinking… supply closet? Somehow we get Cody to need to get in there but we’re already there… uh, you know…”
“Kissing?”
“Yeah, kissing.”
“Oh, oh, you’re squeezing my boob too hard.”
“Sorry, is that—”
A breathy moan filled the small space. “Yeah, that’s…”
“You feel so…”
Ahsoka moaned again, shrilly. “Oh Rex, yes. Right there.”
“Right there, ‘Soka?”
The door to the supply closet swooshed closed and Rex and Ahsoka blinked at each other.
“Was that Cody?”
Ahsoka shrugged minutely. Rex’s hand was still covering one of her breasts and she didn’t want to dislodge it. “Hopefully.”
“Yeah, hopefully.” His other hand was doing… distracting things further down but neither acknowledged it. Ahsoka fought another moan. “Should we stop then?”
“What if he comes back? Or it wasn’t him in the first place?”
“Yeah,” Rex said quickly. “It might’ve been someone else.”
“Yeah, hopefully.”
“What?”
“Nothing, just, uh, oh…” The rest of her sentence dissolved into moans and giggles.
Ahsoka set her tray down on the table sharply. “We need to talk.”
Cody stared back at her with wide eyes. “I don’t think we do, actually…”
“Rex is abusing me.”
“What?”
“Well, not, like, abusing me abusing me,” she clarified. “But he said we’re not cut out for long term, whatever that means.”
Cody set down his spoon. It was soup day in the GAR mess, one of his favorite days, but today the thin pea soup was going down like lead, even before Ahsoka’s little announcement. “Is he or isn’t he hurting you?”
“Will you move past that, Cody? I told you, he’s not as serious about the relationship as I am.”
“Relationship, what relationship?!”
“We’re in a relationship! Haven’t you noticed!” Ahsoka rolled her eyes. “Keep up, Cody.”
“But you said Rex was abusing you—”
“I am an innocent young woman,” Ahsoka said loudly. “Rex is obviously taking advantage of me. And he doesn’t want to get married, which I do want, obviously. So I am coming to you, my favorite non-identical-blood brother, for advice.”
“Rex is younger than you.”
“That’s not the point!” Ahsoka whined. “I’m cuter!”
Cody looked around, but there was no one within hearing distance in the mess hall. “No comment,” he stated flatly.
Ahsoka growled several obscenities he would be having a discussion with Skywalker about, and then stormed away from the table, leaving Cody to droop in his seat in relief.
“Maybe this is pointless.”
Rex kissed up her throat and ended at the junction of lek and cheek. He dipped his tongue there and waited until he heard the specific moaning trill she made whenever he did particularly good to lean back and look her in the eyes.
“Pointless, how?”
“Cody,” Ahsoka panted.
“What about him?”
“He’s not here.”
Rex chuckled, “I should hope not.”
“You know what I mean.”
Ahsoka pushed him back slightly so his mouth disconnected from the path it had started to chart down one of her front lekku. She looked up at him with blown pupils and flushed skin.
“I know,” he sighed. She was so beautiful though, especially like this. Laid out beneath him on his bunk and waiting for him between meetings. “But is it wrong if I say I’m not sure I want to know anymore who he likes less?”
Ahsoka’s eyes widened briefly and her breathing picked up. She ran her hand down his cheek to the center of his chest. “Pussy.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re a pussy. You’re afraid you’ll lose.”
She watched him hesitate, then slowly let a smirk unfurl. “I think you’re the one who’s afraid.”
“You need to think of your own comebacks and stop stealing mine,” Ahsoka said with an eyeroll, but her smile was fond.
Rex’s smirk widened, her only warning before he flipped them so she was laying on top of him, her lekku resting against his chest and his hands on her ass. “Maybe you should teach me some more of your comebacks so I can start thinking of them myself.”
“That doesn’t make sense, oh—”
“Ahsoka is taking advantage of me.”
“Nope, she already used that one.”
“Damnit!”
“So anyway, I was in a ventilation shaft and Artoo was no help. Just spewing nonsense like left is right, up is xenophobia, droids are the superior race—kind of fishy, right? Well turns out I had carbon monoxide poisoning—”
“Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan cut Anakin off rudely, “why are you sitting in Rex’s lap?”
Ahsoka rolled her eyes. “We told you,” she said. “We’re tricking Cody into giving one of us the shovel talk.”
Rex nodded. He had his arms wrapped loosely around her waist while she sat sideways across his lap. He at least had been pretending to listen to Anakin’s story, while Ahsoka was tapping away at a datapad. “I apologize for the unprofessionalism, sir.”
“I don’t.”
“I know you don’t, Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan sighed. “But what I meant was, why are you still sitting on Rex’s lap? Cody left half an hour ago.”
Rex and Ahsoka looked around curiously. “Oh,” Rex said, while Ahsoka mused, “I could have sworn he was around here somewhere…”
Anakin’s eyes narrowed. “Say, why don’t either of you care about who I love more?”
“What?”
“Well you’re all worried about who Cody’s gonna yell at because that means he loves the other one more, so,” he pointed out, “what about me?”
“What about you?”
“I could give a shovel talk. I’m probably great at it!”
Rex and Ahsoka gave each other blank looks before turning back to Anakin.
“Would you like to give one of us a shovel talk, sir?”
Anakin scoffed. “No! Maybe! I don’t know!”
“There, there, Padawan,” Obi-Wan attempted to placate, “I’m sure both Ahsoka and Rex know you’re fond of them.”
“Yep,” Ahsoka quickly agreed, “we know you could never choose and we’re fine with that, Master. Really.”
“But Cody—”
“It’s different with Cody, sir,” Rex interjected.
“How though? We’re family too, right? Like you’re my bro—” He pointed finger guns at Rex, who winced, then leaned over and flicked Ahsoka on the forehead. Rex had to restrain her from scrambling out of his lap to punch Anakin. “And you’re my little sister!”
“Um,” Rex began tactfully, arms now locked around Ahsoka’s, “it’s just different.”
Anakin sat back in his chair with a huff, rolling his eyes when Rex kissed Ahsoka on the cheek to calm her down. “Fine,” he said petulantly, “do your little dating thing, happy in love gross stuff. See if I care.”
Ahsoka had snuggled back into Rex’s chest again. She laughed as she toyed with his fingers splayed over her midsection. “We’re not in love,” she said. “This is all to break Cody.”
“And again,” Obi-Wan sighed, “I must point out that Cody is gone and has been gone for some time now.”
Ahsoka froze. Rex cleared his throat.
“Er, right,” Rex said, wincing some more. “Maybe we should…”
“Go find him?”
“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”
Ahsoka brightened and hopped off his lap. “Come on, Rexter. Let’s go loudly imply that you might knock me up.”
“Or that you’re only using me to get ahead in your career,” Rex countered.
“I outrank you, how would that even work?”
They disappeared through the door and Obi-Wan and Anakin were left staring at the space they had occupied.
“R7, can you start plotting us a course while I get the pre-flight done?”
Beeps and whistles responded and Cody let out a sigh of relief. He’d felt like a hunted man these past few days. Around every corner he expected to find Rex and Ahsoka. And every time he did, it was worse. The most recent time he stumbled across them… He shuddered at the memory. The things he’s seen while they played out this little game of theirs…
But he was safe now. Safe and alone. Apart from R7-A7, whom he liberated from Ahsoka. She wasn’t using him, and he was one of the few droids Cody could tolerate for an extended period of time. Perfect for the mission he volunteered for.
Cody had also liberated Ahsoka’s Interceptor. It happened to be the only small craft out of maintenance in the bay that was rated for long journeys. And Cody had turned down an escort for this job, so he didn’t need the extra legroom of a bigger ship. Her Interceptor was also the last place Cody expected to be looked for.
Heart of the enemy’s lair, and all that. Hiding in plain sight.
Unfortunately he hadn’t considered the sheer amount of willpower that went into annoying him, specifically, and how committed Rex and Ahsoka were to their cause.
“Heya, Codes!”
Cody hit his head on a bulkhead and immediately saw stars.
“Whoa, watch it! You can’t get to Kuat if you give yourself a concussion.”
Cody kept his eyes shut and rubbed at his forehead. If he didn’t open his eyes, he wouldn’t see them. And if he didn’t see them, they didn’t exist. “How do you know where I’m going?”
He’d only gotten the official orders an hour ago. And Kuati ship yards were boring. No one would be gossiping about his mundane meeting to discuss reno schedules.
Rex laughed as he asked, “You filed a flight plan, didn’t you?”
“Obviously,” Cody sighed. “My first mistake.”
“Nah, your first mistake was telling my droid where you were going.”
Cody cracked his eyelids open. Ahsoka’s pointy head was hanging over the cockpit, backlit by the hangar bay’s overhead lights. She wiggled her fingers at him in a wave.
“Your droid is a traitor.”
Angry beeps and whistles echoed from the astromech port.
“Let’s not get caught up in name calling, R7,” Ahsoka admonished. She frowned down at Cody. “You either. He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Can’t you guys just leave me alone?” Cody tried. “Haven’t you tortured me enough?”
“Torture? Rex, we haven’t been torturing him, have we?”
“I think we’ve been very normal,” Rex said.
“Very normal. Say, scooch over a bit, will you, Cody?”
Without waiting for him to scooch, Ahsoka flipped over the side of the cockpit and landed on the small portion of the flight seat Cody wasn’t occupying. Cody grunted in pain when her elbow jabbed him in the stomach and his knee was shoved into a control panel to make room for her in the tight space.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“It’s my ship,” she reminded him. “And anyway, I have a lot to tell you and a quick little trip like this would be the perfect time for it.”
“Wait, hold on—” Rex propped his torso over the lip of the ship’s opening and heaved himself in too. His bulky weight was wedged on the other side of Cody that Ahsoka hadn’t monopolized, sandwiching Cody between them. “You didn’t say anything about crashing Cody’s mission. If you’re going, I’m going too.”
“No one is going on my mission but me,” Cody grunted, shoving Rex’s pauldron out of his face. “Get out of here!”
“But Cody, you need to know about—”
“Cody, remember our long and varied history of friendship—”
“No, Cody, do you remember when I gave you my last space gatorade and—”
“She’s after me for my money, Cody! I couldn’t resist her feminine wiles!”
“That’s ridiculous, Rex seduced me! With his… his big muscles and his smile. He manipulated me!”
“ENOUGH!”
Rex and Ahsoka stopped their bickering and pleading to blink at Cody.
“Enough already,” Cody said tiredly. “Will you two just cut it out? I don’t care.”
Ahsoka raised a brow. “You don’t care about…?”
“Any of this! I don’t care if you two…” Cody waved his hand around vaguely, almost hitting Rex in the face in the process, “do whatever it is you’re doing here.”
“So you don’t care if Rex kisses me?” Ahsoka asked leadingly.
“No.”
“You’re not gonna give him the shovel talk?”
“The what talk?”
Rex and Ahsoka glanced at each other. Their plan, it seemed, had been doomed from the start. And maybe it had been less of a plan, and more of a series of desires that needed an excuse to be acted on. They saw it in each other’s eyes, through all the layers of doubt and stubbornness.
“So just to be clear,” Rex began, “I can kiss her—” He pointed at Ahsoka, as if there was any confusion. “—and you won’t have a problem with that? You won’t be worried about her or my honor?”
“Your honor— What the— Why would I ever give a shit about your honor? You know what I do give a shit about, not finding you two hooking up in every supply closet I go in from now on! One time it was on the hood of my speeder in the garage,” he muttered in disgust. “Now every time I drive it I’m thinking about your head up her skirt.”
“Oh you were on Coruscant that day?” Ahsoka said thoughtfully. “We were convinced you were on a mission or something. Couldn’t find you anywhere, and let me tell you, we tried.”
“Yeah the garage was after we’d already given up. We had sex, like, a lot of different places we thought you might be that day,” Rex chuckled.
Cody felt like screaming. Maybe if he screamed, they’d leave him alone. Probably not. It’d probably just backfire, just like everything in his life. But it was a nice thought.
He’d just burn the speeder. Or give it to Fox. And Cody would never ask Rex or Ahsoka what else he needed to burn.
“So you’re not going to give one of us the shovel talk, is what I’m hearing,” Ahsoka summarized.
“I don’t think he is,” Rex said. “He seems mad.”
“Cody, are you mad at us?”
“So you guys made up yet another problem, is what I’m hearing,” Cody said through gritted teeth, ignoring them or just thirty seconds behind them in conversation at all times because of the effort it took for thoughts to coalesce with all his rage in the way. “A problem based not on facts or logic, and you came up with a solution even farther from facts and logic.”
“I think it’s further, but yeah,” Ahsoka said, “that’s maybe about accurate…”
“Yeah… I guess that’s probably right,” Rex agreed carefully. “But we didn’t mean to.”
Cody balled his hands into fists so hard his fingernails cut into his palms. “You didn’t mean to start fucking?”
“Well—”
“We didn’t not mean to start fucking.”
“And maybe…” Rex paused. If his right arm wasn’t pinned to the ship’s wall, Cody guessed he would’ve scratched the back of his head. “Maybe we kind of started to like each other too. Like, for real.”
“Yeah,” Ahsoka said quietly. “Like, maybe love.”
“Yeah, that too.”
Cody nodded. He breathed in and out through his nose while counting all the ways to kill a humanoid he knew. The solid lump on his side that was Rex fidgeted and when Cody glared at him, he saw that Rex was trying to reach across him toward Ahsoka. Cody slapped his hand away.
“Sorry,” Rex said dejectedly. He shrugged and his pauldron jabbed Cody in the neck—again.
Cody found the Interceptor’s comms and held the mic button. “R7, if I can get the hatch closed, can you navigate to the nearest black hole and pilot us in?”
R7-A7 responded with a series of happy sounding trills and beeps. He revised his statement on R7. Good droid, always up for some murder-suicide.
“Wonderful. Take us away.”
