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“Ah, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, voice soft and relieved, “there you are.”
Obi-Wan does that sometimes, has for as long as Anakin can remember: talks to him like he's the number one person Obi-Wan wants to see. He's pretty sure Obi-Wan doesn't realize it, since it kind of goes against the attachment rules he's so keen on. When he was little and had just arrived at the Temple, it made him sad in good way, happy and homesick all at once. It reminded him of his mom. Now he hears it more often on the battlefield, cutting through the screams of artillery and troopers alike, hidden beneath the cheer Obi-Wan uses to mask his stress and fatigue. It's nice to hear it in the Temple again.
“Hi,” he says. “Miss me?”
Obi-Wan gets that look like he's desperate to roll his eyes. “More every day,” he snarks, but it does nothing to hide the happy upturn of his mouth.
“I knew it.” Anakin waves a hand. “What's with the soup?”
Obi-Wan looks down as if he'd somehow forgotten the tray in his hands. It's a lot more than soup, now that Anakin gets a better look. Soup, a small bowl of blue-green Alderaani grapes, one of the flaky little pastries with jam they sometimes serve for the youngling's breakfast, a glass of water, two different kinds of juice. Spoon, fork, napkin.
“Oh,” Obi-Wan says. “It's lunch.”
“Yeah, uh-huh,” Anakin says, fondly exasperated. “I figured. You're happy to see me for lunch?”
“Not my lunch.” The tray wobbles like Obi-Wan tried to gesture and stopped. “It's for Cody.”
“Oh. He's here?”
“In my rooms.” His mouth twists a little. “I was on my way back, but. Emergency Council meeting. Something on Ryloth.”
“Yeah.” Anakin's so proud of Obi-Wan, really, the youngest person on the Council and doing a damn good job, but when the mere mention of it puts stress lines between Obi-Wan's eyebrows he has the strong, bad-Jedi urge to kick over every chair in that damn room. “So...?”
Obi-Wan holds the soup out to him, conveying nothing. Anakin raises an eyebrow, something he perfected from watching his master and absolutely not something Obi-Wan should be huffing at him over.
“Can you please take this to Cody, Anakin?”
“Oh. Yeah, alright.”
Obi-Wan practically beams at him, depositing the tray in the hands he extended without even realizing. “Thank you Anakin. Would you tell him I'll try to be back within the hour? And he should take a break. We were going over some new strategies but it'll keep for now.”
“You're telling someone to take a break?” He teases. Obi-Wan rolls his eyes for real this time.
“Yes yes, hypocrite, all that. I'm fine Anakin, really.”
“Uh-huh.” Obi-Wan hasn't had a day off since the first battle of Geonosis. “I can bring Ahsoka over for dinner, if you're staying dirtside that long.”
Obi-Wan's eyes soften then, and Anakin's eleven again, reaching out for the blanket Obi-Wan's handing him because he knew that Anakin still got cold sometimes even if he never said. “I'd love that.”
“Great.” Ahsoka will love it too, and it warms Anakin inside, knowing he can make two of his most important people happy at once. “I'll comm you later.”
“Perfect.” Obi-Wan's already headed up to the Council room, always pulled in two directions at once. “Thank you again Anakin.”
“Bye Master,” he calls, and it isn't until he's in the lift headed to Obi-Wan's rooms that he starts to think about what he's committed to.
It's not that he doesn't like Commander Cody, he likes him a lot actually. He's smart and competent and professional, and Anakin has never doubted him on the battlefield. It's just that, well.
Cody's intimidating as hell. He stands like he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders and has never once felt it. In any and all crises his voice is strong and collected, perfectly pitched and even. He enjoys ripping the heads off battle droids with his bare hands. Anakin's pretty sure a Venator could explode in his face and Marshall Commander Cody of the Third Systems Army would just blink and brush off the ash.
And he gets Obi-Wan. Really gets him, in a way that Anakin doesn't, for all that he loves Obi-Wan, hopelessly attached in a way he's given up on trying to reject. Obi-Wan and Cody are two weird peas in a pod, and Anakin's like. A carrot. A whole different vegetable.
He won't be jealous, refuses to be jealous, because he wants Obi-Wan to be happy.
The door to Obi-Wan's room isn't locked, and he kicks at the base a little to knock before letting it woosh open. “Hello?”
The front room is empty, though the little low coffee table is scattered with datapads and the cushions on Obi-Wan's squashy couch are rumpled. There's a mug half full of cold green tea that Anakin knows Obi-Wan will drink as soon as he gets back, because his standards are low and he's gross.
There's a noise from the kitchen, and he turns to look over the little half-height wall separating the space. He draws up short.
He knows the clones take their armour off, he's not an idiot and he knows the full kit can be uncomfortable. It's just weird to see Commander Cody out of armour. Weirder still to see him in a maroon off-duty top and a pair of Obi-Wan's sleep pants, blue and worn soft.
He stands at attention, springing up from Obi-Wan's battered kitchen table. “General.”
“Commander. Uh, at ease.” Anakin holds the tray up, wrong-footed. “Obi-Wan wanted me to bring this to you.”
Cody sits back down at the table. He's got a mug between his hands, some tacky souvenir thing Obi-Wan picked up recently that just happens to be perfect 212 orange. “Thank you, General.”
“You're welcome.” He sets the tray down and immediately feels like needs to do something with his hands. “He had to go to a Council meeting, said he'd be back in a hour. He says to take a break.”
Cody snorts at that, then sniffles. Anakin takes a closer look at his soft clothes, the blanket he spots folded up on the seat of a chair, the half full mug.
“Commander,” he says slowly, “are you sick?”
“I'm fine,” Cody says immediately, then coughs. He covers his mouth. “I should be fine by this evening, Helix looked me over.”
“You sound like Obi-Wan,” Anakin says with a grin.
His nose wrinkles. “I'm not that bad.” A pause, then hurriedly, “General.”
“It's fine, at ease.” He bounces a little on the balls of his feet. “Would you like, uh, tea...?”
Cody lifts his mug a little and Anakin feels like an idiot. “Right. Yeah.” He puts the kettle on anyway, because now he really needs something to do with his hands. He turns around in time to see Cody start unpacking the tray, laying it all out neat and orderly. He stops, one bottle of juice in each hand, just looking at them. Anakin read the labels on the way up. Vitamin C orange tangerine, and Vitamin C fresh greens blend. Good choices for someone with a cold. Cody's not looking at them like they're prepackaged juice though. His scar has smoothed out, no longer crumpled at the edge of his eye socket with stoic focus. He looks. Huh.
In the Force, all things shine. Well, sort of. Shine is how Obi-Wan describes it, and it sounds nice and poetic. Living things have a light, a glow, luminescent and lovely. Obi-Wan described Anakin as pure noontime heat once, Ahsoka as a transparisteel window in shades of gold and crimson.
For Anakin, the Force is sensations. Tactile feelings. Padme is silk and granite, elegant and unyielding. Obi-Wan is the scratchy warmth of a sweater. Ahsoka is the fizzy bite of a sparkler held too tight in the hand, and Rex is a cool, steady breeze. Cody is a river stone, polished smooth by the current rather than worn away. Looking at him now though, Anakin thinks Obi-Wan's shine analogy fits better.
He would bring Padme two juices if she was sick, and soup, and fruit, and dessert. He'd give her warm soft clothes to borrow and tell her take a break and rest.
He feels like he's stumbled into a secret, hidden room, and tripped on the way in for good measure. Obi-Wan's not... romantic. It feels wrong to even think it. He's a Jedi, really a Jedi, like Anakin's scared he never was and scared he never wants to be. But he knows Obi-Wan, not in Cody's two-halves-of-a-whole way but from years and years together. He knows the patterns of his life, his care. Of course Obi-Wan would bring someone a meal, look after them. Of course he'd tell them to rest when he never will, take the weight off their shoulders and carry it for them.
It's nice, that Obi-Wan has someone to bring two different kinds of juice to when they're sick.
It's nice, Anakin thinks, in a flash of guilty and relieved selfishness, to understand how Obi-Wan feels. To share something, a transgression that doesn't feel like one.
The kettle starts its stuttering whistle, never fully recovered from when fifteen-year-old Anakin tinkered with its insides. He moves it off the heat without thinking, and when he turns back to Cody he's watching him, soup half eaten.
“Commander,” he blurts, mouth faster than his brain like it always is. “Thank you.”
Cody's brow creases. “For what, General?”
“For.” Anakin stops. He's good at saying things that sound right in his head, that make perfect sense, except when they're out in the open he realizes that they're inadequate, confusing, careless. He says, slowly, “you look after Obi-Wan. In the field. I know he's bad about medbay, and he's always getting into trouble, and running his mouth and flirting with Ventress—” wait, no, don't talk about flirting with Obi-Wan's... person. “And, you know, being Obi-Wan. So. I wanted to thank you. I can't really protect him from across the galaxy.”
Cody's eyes have creased at the corners throughout Anakin's impromptu speech. He sets his spoon down carefully and says, “I need to thank you too then, General. For looking after Rex.”
“Rex?” Rex is confident, steadfast, quick on his feet and crafty as a tooka. Anakin's often convinced he should be the one in charge of the 501st.
“Yes.” Cody's eyes are dark and serious. “He's a wonderful captain, and a good man, and.” His eyes slide away. “My baby brother. He's my baby brother. Thank you.”
“Okay,” Anakin says, flustered that Cody apparently thinks this highly of him. It puts him off-centre. “Yeah, I. You're welcome. He's great.”
“He is,” Cody says, with a tiny, proud smile. Rex loves him but often laughs it off, says ori'vod worries about me in a tone meant to tease but only ever fond. Anakin gets it, he thinks. Cody's still the most intimidating person he's ever met, and he'd probably fling himself into orbit rather than say it, but it would be pretty great to be his brother.
Probably not as great as being Obi-Wan's though.
He excuses himself a minute later, leaving Cody to his lunch. In the lift back down to ground level, he gets a message from Obi-Wan on his comm, another thank you for bringing the soup up.
No problem, he writes back, Cody's really great.
Sunlight glows through the lift and the high windows of the Temple's main hall. It's beautiful, peaceful. Obi-Wan loves it here. Anakin's not sure how to bring the whole thing up with him, if he should lead by saying he supports them or that he doesn't care about the Code or attachments or anything. Obi-Wan probably knows he doesn't care about the Code. Usually that makes him feel small, and selfish and clumsy, but now it's almost freeing.
Maybe he could tell Obi-Wan about Padme.
He imagines it for a long, sunlit moment. They could all get together, maybe for dinner like he and Obi-Wan and Ahsoka are doing tonight. Padme and Cody would fit in easily. Rex too. It's strange to think about, but he turns the scene around in his mind, studies the shape of it. Puts it back together again in new patterns.
Sometimes it's hard to talk to Obi-Wan, or at least it is about the things that matter. Maybe it won't be like that forever, if Anakin can figure this out. He'd really like that.
He tucks that sunlit image away in the back of his mind. It's chaotic right now, the war, giving them a week, a day, an afternoon free, never enough time. Maybe if they get leave together soon, or a quiet mission, he can talk to Obi-Wan. Maybe after the war, in that nebulous time he won't think about, too superstitious, he can tell Obi-Wan that he might want to leave the Order. Anakin has been terrified of his disapproval, his grief, but now he thinks Obi-Wan might understand. Maybe he'll tell Anakin he's proud, happy that he's found someone, and Anakin can say the same.
His comm buzzes again, and he looks down to a message from Padme. I'm free all afternoon. Can you come home?
Emotion, attachment. Love. Isn't it worth it, if it brings people this much happiness?
I'll be there soon.