Chapter Text
There are almost as many pieces to his tuxedo as there are to his armor, and each and every one of them is substantially less useful. Cody is grateful that he’d been able to find a clip-on bow tie, at least, but he can’t seem to make his pocket square either fit in his pocket or stay a square.
Rex, lounging on the couch behind him, has offered far more witty commentary than actual clothing advice.
“Never thought I’d see you rubbing elbows with the Imperial elite, Cody. Where’s the rough-and-tumble marshal commander who held Sherma Bridge with nothing more than a hope, a prayer, and a DC-15?”
Cody glances at his brother with a wry smile. “You know I’d much rather be back on that bridge than in this monkey suit, Rex.”
Rex laughs. “I know. Seriously, though. You must be pretty desperate to catch this guy if you’re putting on a tux for him. What are you planning on doing at the ball, anyways? Looking for someone with an evening arallute in their corsage?”
“You got it in one," Cody says, but his chuckle turns into a groan as he bends down to lace up his oxfords. These pants have been starched into a stiffness more akin to durasteel than wool, and his hand-to-hand reputation with the 212th will be in serious jeopardy if he has to fight anyone in these.
There’s no sympathy from his audience. He straightens up to see Rex shaking his head as he scrolls through a datapad.
“Don’t get me wrong, Codes," he says. "I’m glad all your hunting finally brought you back home. I just still can’t believe that the Empire's Most Wanted, the guy who's eluded you for a year, named himself after a flower.”
Cody sighs; honestly, he gets the same reaction from most of the brothers he’s reunited with. “It's not just any flower, Rex. It's a very specific Alderaanian flower.”
“Oh?”
A few swipes of Cody’s fingers sends a file from his wrist comm to the datapad Rex is holding. A holoprojection pops up when Rex accepts the data packet, and a graceful flower with five blue petals and crenulated gold edges rotates in front of them.
Rex squints, leaning forward. “I feel like I’ve seen this before.”
“I doubt it. The evening arallute is almost extinct now. Along with the rest of Alderaan.”
That, at least, evokes a wince. “You think he’s out for revenge?”
"Maybe. But he doesn't act vengefully.” It's something he's told the Inquisitors a thousand times no avail; it’s hard for them to understand any other motive. "The Evening Arallute is clearly an incredible fighter, but he avoids violence whenever he can. I've sent hundreds of men after him over the past year, Rex. Every single one has come back home."
"Compassion for Alderaan and compassion for his enemy," Rex summarizes, and then understanding lights up Rex’s face like a Coruscanti dawn.
“Wait a second,” Rex says, and Cody winces. “Compassion, huh? That's why you've set this whole thing up on the night of the Emperor's ball. You still think it’s Kenobi."
Cody’s fingers pause where they’re twisting his cufflinks into place. He's tempted to let his silence answer for him, but the Emperor and all the Inquisitors have constantly dismissed the idea as ridiculous. Cody wants to say it out loud to the one person in the galaxy he knows might believe him.
“Yes. Yes, I do."
He catches Rex's eyes in the mirror, and the worry in Rex’s face makes it seem even more like a reflection of his own. Rex stands, biting his lip the way he always does when he’s biting back words.
“Vod, this isn't going to end well,” Rex cautions. “Either he's not the man you thought he was, or he's really not the man you thought he was.”
Cody tries not to think about what Rex isn’t saying. He straightens his back and breathes as deeply as the cummerbund lets him. “I know.”
With a sigh, he lets Rex turn him around and give him a once over. Warm, familiar hands straighten his lapels and brush imaginary dirt from the lines of his shoulder seams. When he at last passes muster, Rex steps back, shaking his head.
“Good luck, Cody,” he says.
Cody summons a wan smile from the snakepit of his nerves. “Thanks, Rex.”
-—-
The party is in full swing when Cody at last arrives, feeling stiff and out of place in his borrowed suit and his pinching shoes. The room at the very top of the Crystal Spire is almost unrecognizable as the palace’s throne room: the long red carpet and audience booths have been replaced with a dancefloor on one side and cloth-covered tables on the other. At the far end of the hall, the vast stone dais has been cleared of its throne and instead hosts an elaborate stage wreathed in blue curtains. Atop the stage, a string quartet plays an upbeat waltz next to a grand piano that looks as old and beautiful as the Naboo palace itself.
Lords, ladies, and various gentlefolk twirl in improbably elaborate costumes throughout the room, their reflections casting bright spots of color along the floor-to-ceiling windows. Some of their clothes seem in such defiance of the laws of physics that Cody wonders briefly if they’re holograms. He catches himself staring a second too long and hastily averts his eyes; he’s here to spot criminal activity, not to question whether or not the fashion industry is using antigrav to make strapless, backless push-up bras.
Still, it’s difficult to catch his breath. The party-goers and staff are whirling around the room in tight, overlapping circles. It feels like he’s caught in the intricate machinery of a vast imperial engine, watching the cogs spin and turn about him. Watching the servers is even more difficult than watching the royalty; in his disorientation, Cody nearly takes one out at the knees when one gets too close.
“My apologies for the disruption,” the man says, bowing slightly over his tray of glasses half-full of a sparkling purple liquid. “Would Sir appreciate some champagne?”
Cody gets the distinct feeling that “for your nerves” was left unsaid. He takes a glass for show and as an apology, swirling the liquid around in its flute with distaste. It’s not as though he really needs to blend in, honestly. He’s at the ball mostly to see and be seen, so he starts making his way through the tables and towards the dancefloor.
His borrowed suit is rubbing uncomfortably against his neck, his shoes have cut off feeling in one of his toes, and he has to tighten his grip on his glass to stop himself from reaching for the reassuring weight of his blasters in his shoulder holsters. He wasn’t kidding with Rex, earlier; he’d much rather be on the Rylothian battlefield than here.
The party started about an hour ago, so the room is fairly crowded by this point. Cody walks a slow lap around the dancefloor, carefully keeping his shoes from going anywhere near the polished teak of the dancefloor. Even through his discomfort, he can’t help but be grimly satisfied by the scene. He’s set an irresistible ball for a socialite above, and an irresistible security flaw for a vigilante below.
Now, it’s just up to the Arallute—to Obi-Wan, his instincts insist—to pick a destination.
He’s made two laps around the room and not seen a single piece of auburn hair. There aren’t any emergency messages coming in on his wrist comm, either, and the security guards in the room seem to be alert but at ease. Grudgingly, he drifts closer to the dancefloor and squints into the throngs of couples swirling in a bright menagerie of colors and shapes. There’s no sign at all of Obi-Wan, and he feels adrenaline start to catch fire in his veins.
He could be wrong. The Emperor and the Inquisitors have never seen Obi-Wan on the battlefield, and even Cody will admit that Obi-Wan is… a very different man in court. He wears the same ridiculous clothing as the other Imperial peacocks, and all of his contributions to court gossip, intentional or otherwise, indicate a vain but ultimately harmless fop. It’s been hard to reconcile the compassionate, strategic genius of Ryloth with this court dandy.
Perhaps Cody’s judgment is compromised. As much as he’d hate to put Obi-Wan behind bars, Cody has caught himself halfway hoping Obi-Wan is their masked vigilante. At least then he’d have some proof that, beneath the silks and gems, Obi-Wan is still the passionate tactician Cody remembers.
He breathes in sharply through his nose. Rex was right, of course; there’s no way this ends well. If Obi-Wan doesn’t show up at the ball and the Arallute assaults their holding cells, well. Cody’s always done exactly what he’s needed to do to bring peace to the Empire, but the chasing the Arallute has been the ride of a lifetime across planets and galaxies, and Cody spent three years more than halfway in love with Obi-Wan Kenobi.
To lose them both in one blow hardly bears thinking about.
He’s about to call for a team to check Obi-Wan’s rooms when the string quartet plays a rapid flourish of an outro, and a grinning Kithar ascends to the topmost tier of the stage and leans into the mic. One of Obi-Wan’s usual party crew, unless Cody misses his guess. Vos? Vos raises his arms, and a hush falls across the crowd.
“Thank you so much to Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes for a lovely performance,” he says, and the curtains fall behind him to obscure the players as they start packing up their instruments. A smattering of applause follows his words, but most people are watching with intense curiosity. This had clearly not been part of the original agenda.
Cody frowns as Vos rubs his hands together in showy deliberation. From behind him, the stage creaks lightly as something heavy rolls across it.
“While they take their break, though," he says, glee evident in his voice, "we have a special surprise for you tonight. Please give our next entertainer a very warm Naboo welcome!”
He flings a hand out and steps sideways along the rim of the stage as the curtains pull apart, and— and—
The grand piano has been moved to the center of the stage, and someone is draped on their side across the closed lid, their head propped up on one elbow. Their dress is a long, slinky black velvet number with a back so low that everything from the base of their neck to the topmost curve of their ass is on display. The span of their shoulder blades is a study in the topography of muscles and scars, and their hair is an all-too familiar auburn.
“No,” Cody says, and he doesn’t mean to say it out loud.
The performer lifts their free arm up to the sky, fingers spread wide, and the roving white spotlights catch on the glitter of hundreds of small diamonds wound along their arm. The crowd, which had started to whisper furiously amongst itself, immediately quiets into a thick fog of anticipation.
“The Naboo are glad to die for love…" the performer sings softly, and their tenor is so beautiful and sweet that the whole room seems to strain towards them for a hint of who they are.
But Cody doesn’t need to. He knows that voice.
Obi-Wan turns so that the profile of his face catches the stage light behind him, limning it in whites and blues. Cody can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything but watch, unblinking, as Obi-Wan rolls onto his other side to face the audience. The front of his dress—and by all the stars, it’s definitely a dress—isn’t much better than the back. It’s held up by a diamond collar fixed to Obi-Wan’s neck, and the rest of it is a mix of velvet and winding, see-through lace.
Obi-Wan grins and tosses a strand of hair out of his face, and Cody swallows to see glitter on his cheeks and black lines around his eyes. When Obi-Wan swings his legs over the ledge of the piano, he reveals a slit that ventures all the way to the crease of his thigh, and suddenly the string quartet launches into a jazzy riff from off stage.
“A kiss on the hand may be quite Coruscanti, but diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” Obi-Wan sings, flashing the diamonds around his wrist at Vos, who reaches out to help him hop down. When he stands up, he's so much taller than his friend that Cody instinctively looks down. The shoes he's wearing are strappy, covered in blue and silver gems, and their stiletto heels must be at least four inches tall.
Kriff, as if Obi-Wan needed help making his legs look longer.
The music kicks up, and Cody cannot find it in his soul to look away. This is nothing like the Obi-Wan he knew, the one that he bled with and fought for, and he's struggling to reconcile the two even as he stares, mesmerized by the spectacle of his former general. If this is an act, it's a damn good one.
“Sir,” one of the waitstaff interrupts, and Cody just barely manages to drag his eyes away from Obi-Wan. “Sir.”
“What?” he growls, far more gruffly than intended, but the waiter from before just raises his eyebrows and looks down at where Cody’s wrist is flashing a vivid, emergency red.
Cody opens his mouth to apologize, but the waiter’s already gone.
“Boil, tell me this is important,” he says into the comm, stepping away from the crowd but unable to stop from glancing back towards where Obi-Wan has started teasing Vos while the Kithar plays the grand piano.
“He’s here, sir,” Boil says, and Cody's thoughts coalesce into crystal clear focus. “The Arallute. He’s here.”
Tension mixes unevenly with relief in Cody’s chest as he sprints for the door: if the Arallute took the bait while Obi-Wan took the stage, they can’t be the same person. Obi-Wan’s safe, from the Empire and from Cody, and Cody…
Cody has a job to do.
-—-
It’s always difficult to guard a sprawling facility against a dedicated adversary. Disperse your resources too broadly, and the adversary can easily take out the thinly-spread guards. Concentrate resources to give them a fighting chance, and the adversary will slip through the holes in your defense. Cody has tried to balance the two by creating the appearance of security flaws and concentrating his forces around them, and he swallows his hope as Boil’s GPS marker leads him towards one of the traps he set.
He skids into the hallway leading towards the Naboo palace’s secure holding cells, cursing the pinch in his shoes as he runs. The Arallute clearly has eyes and ears in the upper echelons of the Empire, though, and Cody had needed to sell the idea that he hadn't been planning for an assault tonight.
Even if that meant facing his quarry in ill-fitting oxfords instead of boots.
“Boil, status report,” Cody barks into his comm once he gets within a few hundred feet of the marker. It’s only been five minutes since Boil’s initial call, but the Arallute has pulled off many of his stunts in less time than that. “Boil!”
Adrenaline pounds through his veins as his feet pound down the stairs, taking them three at a time. When the final door reads his biosignature and opens with a whisper of durasteel, Cody at last jerks to a halt.
Four of his men are slumped on the floor. Static fills Cody’s brain until he can crouch next to the familiar shapes of Boil’s armor and rip off the man’s helmet, check his pulse, and see the weak flutter of his eyelids.
“C’mmander,” Boil says, twisting in Cody’s grip, and Cody lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding.
“You’re gonna be fine,” Cody says, activating the emergency alert on Boil’s wrist. His other men are starting to shift and groan, and Cody lets himself relax a single inch. He’s used those words to lie before, but this time they seem to be the truth. “You’ll all be fine. Did you see which way he went?”
“Cleaning s’pply.” Boil gestures limply towards the other end of the hallway, his head lolling to the side as he does. “Shit—s’rry, chute.”
He definitely has a concussion with the way he’s slurring his words, but Kix and Bones will sort him out soon enough. Cody pushes him back to the ground as gently as he can before standing and opening his suit jacket to get to his shoulder holsters.
“I’ve got this, vod.” His blasters fit into each palm like they’re extensions of his arms, a welcome comfort compared to his terrible shoes. “Sit tight.”
Cody takes Boil’s helmet and fits it over his head, clicking his back teeth and blinking twice to pull up blueprints of the holding cells, tracing the line of the medical supply chute. There’s a hallway three floors up that connects both the chute and the servant’s quarters, and he knows he can’t be too far behind if the Arallute has had to shimmy up 50 feet of narrow metal tubing. Cody races up the stairs, not bothering with stealth, and he bursts into the supply corridor with both of his blasters already firing towards the black-clad figure halfway to the exit.
“Stop!” he shouts, hoping more to distract him than anything else.
The figure staggers as a blaster bolt clips his shoulder, then ducks into one of the many supply closets lining the hallway. Cody barrels into it, shoving it open with his shoulder and raising his blasters, but all he sees are rows and rows of full shelving. Even with thermal imaging, the room looks empty.
He curses. His quarry definitely knows he’s here, which puts him at a distinct disadvantage. His helmet's array doesn’t show this room as having a secondary exit, so he just needs to call for help to flush the man out.
...Or not. His comm is non-responsive, and the radio connected to Boil’s HUD is spitting static. The sophistication of the scrambler required to stop Imperial tech from more than five feet away is frankly incredible, and Cody blinks in surprise.
“You must have some powerful friends,” Cody says, starting to move along the lines of narrowly-spaced shelves and clicking on Boil's helmet's infrared. There's maybe two feet between each rack, so he tucks one of his blasters back into its shoulder holster and keeps the other up. He’s not about to back off now, even without back-up; he’s been hunting the Arallute for too long to let this opportunity slip. “Unless you’re a tech wizard as well as an escape artist.”
“No need to be so accusatory, Commander. I’m not the only one with tricks."
The voice is robotic and deep, clearly a result of a vocoder, and Cody can’t get a good lock on the position even as he edges forward. He spins around a corner, blaster out, but there’s no one there.
The voice starts speaking again, echoing from somewhere behind him now. “Or was it some other commander who filled the imperial holding cells with troopers instead of, say, condemned rebels?"
Cody grins. He wishes he could've seen the other man's face when he had opened the cell doors and found himself staring down a series of blaster barrels. Hell, he wishes he could see the other man's face at all.
"Surprise," Cody drawls, trying to keep the other man talking. He's 90% sure the Arallute's vocoder is throwing his voice around the room, but every word is a clue towards the Arallute's identity. This is their first spoken conversation after a year of written notes and encrypted missives. If Cody's honest, there's something familiar about the light teasing, but... he just saw Obi-Wan. The man can't be here; he's safe and sparkling on top of a stage thousands of feet away.
He tries not to think too hard about it; now's not the time to get distracted.
The next aisle is clear, too, and the next, and Cody stops when he turns the corner to see a larger gap in the shelves, almost ten feet, to accommodate a series of round support columns. He hesitates, instincts screaming at him. It's not much, but it's exactly where he'd set up an—
He doesn't even manage to finish the thought before something slams into him from above, muscular thighs slotting around his head and bringing him to a paralyzing, thudding crash into the ground. His tux is shock-resistant, and he's wearing light armor beneath it, but his breath still gets punched out of him. He's glad he was wearing a helmet: the plastoid cracks but holds, and the interior padding keeps his brains on the inside. His blaster, though, goes flying on impact.
His assailant tries to wind an arm around Cody's neck to put him in a choke hold, but Cody snaps out of his stun just in time to fling his head backwards, grinning when the blow connects. He hears the Arallute curse and feels it when the other man shifts his weight backwards, getting some distance and trying to tug Cody's helmet off instead.
Cody lets him do it in exchange for rolling his hips while the Arallute's hands are occupied by the helmet, driving with enough force that the man slides to the side and Cody gets the leverage to scramble free. He doesn't make it very far before the Arallute makes another grab for him, and then they're rolling between the row of shelves and the row of columns. To Cody's chagrin, they're evenly matched: they're of a height, and even though Cody's definitely stronger, he can't get a grip on the other man. His fighting style is better suited for use in a street brawl than against the well-honed move sets that the Arallute is using, and his enemy’s outfit is made of a black material that slips out of his fingers like soapy water.
At last, Cody just barely manages to get on top and stay there, using his substantial weight to keep the Arallute’s wrists pinned to the ground. He’s straddling the other man’s waist, and it’s a small triumph to feel the Arallute’s chest heaving beneath his hips, his thighs. Neither of them is the type to go down easy. The unbroken expanse of the man’s perfectly oval mask stares up at him. The exterior is a solid, seamless white except for a splash of paint across the face: a stylized painting of the blue flower with which he shares his name. Is it one-way transparisteel? How is he seeing out of it?
Cody curses when he realizes that the mask reaches all the way around the back of the other man’s head. He won’t be able to get it off one-handed, not without a lot of risk.
“You’re under arrest,” he says, deciding to cuff him and take the mask off after. Cody transfers the Arallute’s wrists to one hand and reaches into the back of his tuxedo pants for his inhibitor cuffs. “You have the right—“
In a feat of flexibility and strength that should’ve been impossible for a man his size, the Arallute slides a few inches further beneath Cody, presses his upper back to the ground, and uses the leverage to crunch up and drive his knees into Cody’s shoulders. Cody tips forward and manages to catch himself on one arm, but the Arallute uses his second of distraction to break his wrists free and slide out from beneath Cody—and to take Cody's cuffs with him.
"Kriff," Cody says, straightening up and spinning on his knees. The man's too fast, too strong. Cody had been the best hand-to-hand fighter in the 212th, and he hasn't let himself slip since coming to Naboo. Who is this man? How is this possible?
He doesn't get much time to wonder. The Arallute slams into him just as he's turning, and his back and his bare head hit one of the support columns with a crack. He slumps onto his ass, dazed, and then he has a lap full of rebel spy.
“What?” he asks, brain barely connecting to his mouth, and Cody can't resist when the Arallute brings Cody’s arms around the back of the column and snaps Cody’s own cuffs around Cody's wrists.
Cody immediately tries to jerk forward, up and against the warm press of the Arallute, but it’s too late. The chain on his cuffs catches and pulls taut.
Seven kriffing hells, he thinks, almost too impressed to be angry as he stares up at the smooth oval mask. Seven kriffing hells .
“There now, Commander,” the Arallute says, panting with exertion, and he leans back on his heels to survey his handiwork. “Now we can have a more civilized discussion, hm?”
Cody can’t do anything but stare while the Arallute settles cross-legged on the floor between Cody’s bent knees. Despite their positioning, Cody doesn’t kid himself that he could get any sort of hold on the man without dislocating his own shoulders. He could kick out, but it’d be more akin to throwing a tantrum than any real strategy, and he’d like to keep some dignity.
“I don’t think we have anything to talk about." Cody tugs uselessly against the cuffs again. “I won’t betray my brothers.”
“And I wouldn't ask you to,” the Arallute says, all polite consideration. “Come now, my dear. Surely we know each other better than that.”
Do they? After a year-long cat and mouse game across all of Naboo, Cody thinks they might.
“What are you asking, then?”
“Right now, I’m just asking you to listen to me. Commander, there’s something terribly, terribly wrong in the Empire. No, don’t give me that look; I know you’ve seen it since you’ve been back on Naboo.”
There’s another ring of familiarity in his words, a softly struck bell, but this time it’s not Obi-Wan that he’s reminded of. Some of his brothers have been whispering the same, though rarely in his earshot.
“Did you ever look into the treasury scandal from a few months ago? The one involving Kamino?” the Arallute asks in a seeming non-sequitur.
“Not my jurisdiction.” It wasn’t, but Cody had. Millions of credits disappearing from the Treasury wasn’t something even the Emperor could hide easily, and there are still thousands of inexplicable errors in line items for the next year’s security budget. They’d been swept under the rug just like everything else, but the pile of secrets there is about to need a bigger rug.
“Do you want to know what he’s trying to buy, Commander?” When Cody stays silent, the Arallute takes a deep breath and tries a different tact. “Those people you captured, the ones that were supposed to be in those holding cells tonight. They didn’t look like rebel soldiers, did they? They looked like scientists, confused and terrified.”
He's not wrong, is the thing. It's one of the reasons Cody had asked to swap them out of the holding cells for his plan: he'd wanted some time to do some digging into who they are, what they did.
It's not too late to start.
"Who were they?" Cody asks.
"Geneticists and gerontologists, mostly. He's contracted with the Kaminoans to do some of the work, but the research has progressed enough that he now needs people better versed in the broader human genome, not just yours."
"If he needs them, he wouldn't be executing them."
"No, of course not. He's kidnapping them." The Arallute pauses to chuckle. "I've just been kidnapping them first."
It makes a terrifying sort of sense, but most conspiracy theories do at the outset. Still, Cody can't help but wonder. He'd never seen any bodies after the cells cleared, and the Emperor had always seemed to know which set of prisoners the Arallute would target next. That, and Tup had been involved in prisoner transport.
So had Fives.
"What is it you think he wants, then?" Cody asks.
"What any man with his power and his legacy wants, Commander: a little more time with it."
Kriff. The subject of succession had been on everyone's tongue when the Skywalker boy had gone missing almost a decade ago, but no one talks much about it any more. There had been a recurring joke that the Emperor was acting like he was planning on living forever.
Maybe it wasn't just a joke after all.
"Do you have proof?" He shouldn’t even be asking, but if there is proof, he needs to at least see it. If Kamino’s involved—if there’s the chance Tup and Fives were involved—then he owes it to his brothers. He owes it to himself.
"Not with me."
"Then I can't—"
“But I have it. If you’re willing to keep listen, I promise to bring you something worth listening to, next time.”
The Arallute leans forward, the soft smooth curve of his mask blocking out almost all of Cody’s sightline. “I’ll find you, Commander. I’ll always—”
He stops, then, his head cocked as if he’s listening to something faint and far away. “Hm. Oh, dear.”
Despite himself, Cody frowns, curious. “What, what’s wrong?’
“This may be a little uncomfortable.” The Arallute shifts back onto his knees and moves closer, and Cody immediately expects the worst: a knife to his neck, a blaster to his temple. “But I’d really prefer not to die today.”
His hand slips inside Cody’s suit jacket and slides up, over the cummerbund and to the curve of Cody’s left-hand shoulder holster. He takes out Cody’s remaining blaster, and Cody swallows. At this close range, the blaster resistance of his suit would be about as much protection as a sheet of flimsy.
Behind them, the door opens, and shouts echo past the shelves.
“There’s one heat signature in the back; it might be the commander.”
Cody’s eyes flick between the mask and the blaster, frozen in uncertainty. His uncertainty only worsens when he watches the Arallute switch the setting to stun and nestle it back into Cody’s side.
“Try to yell if you’d prefer to be stunned. It’s your call,” the Arallute says, perfectly reasonable, and then kisses him.
A tongue presses against the seam of his lips, and Cody feels the wiry brush of a beard against his cheek. He opens his mouth more in surprise than anything, but the Arallute takes the opportunity to lick in. Cody closes his eyes on some long-buried instinct and kisses back, tilting his head for a better angle. The Arallute scraps his teeth against Cody’s tongue like a reward.
The mask isn't real, Cody realizes suddenly. It's an opaque holoprojection, pure light instead of substance. That's why he's kissing lips instead of plastoid. The tech required for that kind of opacity and realism is—
The Arallute moans theatrically into his mouth and pulls one of Cody's legs against the small of his back. Footsteps round the corner, and Cody abruptly remembers that he's making out with his sworn enemy on the floor of a supply closet.
"Oh, sorry, I'll, uh," the guard says, backing up immediately, and Cody would laugh if his mouth weren't otherwise occupied. Regulation would probably tell him to yell despite the blaster snugged against his ribs, but if Cody couldn't take this man down alone, he doesn't think anyone else has a chance.
And he wants—well. He wants to see the proof the Arallute promised. He wants there to be a next time.
A strong hand slides around his neck and pulls him in impossibly closer, forcing Cody’s arms to strain against their cuffs. With the beard rough against his face, with the lips moving softly and surely against his own, this is exactly how he’d imagined what kissing Obi-Wan would be like. A curl of guilt travels up his spine at the thought that this imagined semblance of Obi-Wan might be the closest he could get.
The Arallute moans again, softer this time, and the guard beats a hasty retreat.
“It wasn't one person, you dolt, it was two people on top of each other,” the guard fervently whispers from the other side of the shelves. It’ll be awhile before another comes around, then. When the guard’s voice and footsteps fade, the Arallute pulls back, lingering oddly close.
Cody feels suddenly like he's standing on a blind cliff, not knowing how far he has until he falls. Feet? Inches? Or is he at the edge already?
"Thank you," the Arallute says, and the vocoder doesn’t filter out the softness in his voice.
"For not yelling?"
"For that, too."
The Arallute doesn't move further away, and Cody’s breath quickens. His impractical pants are starting to get uncomfortably tight from both the kiss and the long warm press of another body against him, and Cody swallows. His blood’s been up since their fight—since seeing Obi-Wan in that dress, if he’s honest—and he can't even cross his legs to hide it.
Hiding becomes moot point when the Arallute turns in the vee of Cody’s legs to put the blaster to the side and brushes against the hard line of Cody’s pants. Cody can’t help his sharp inhale—or his wince of embarrassment.
“Oh?” the Arallute practically purrs. Cody can’t see the Arallute’s face, but he can hear the grin. “You had a third blaster all along, hm? You really do come prepared, Commander.”
“Ha ha,” Cody deadpans, shifting on the floor and cursing the day he was decanted. The Arallute finishes setting Cody’s blaster out of reach and then leans back in, the white curve of his mask completely impenetrable. He cups Cody’s jaw with a gloved hand, but he lets his hand fall when Cody jerks his chin to the side, staring pointedly at the stacked bedsheets on the shelves behind him.
“I never took you for a cruel man,” Cody says stiffly. “There’s no need to—to tease.”
“Tease? Oh, my dear.” Even through the mask, the Arallute’s consideration is a heavy weight in the air.
His wrists are cuffed behind him, but Cody feels as though his anticipation alone could keep him pinned. He is a spring wound so tight it looks like a thread.
“My dear commander,” the Arallute continues, “how can you not know? If you just said the word, I’d have you here and now.”
Cody chokes, his eyes going wide. “You, what?”
The Arallute moves his hand down Cody’s chest, and it leaves a line of fire blazing from Cody’s pecs to the ripple of his abs. He skips past Cody’s hips to reach both hands along Cody’s thighs, rests his palms on Cody’s knees, and then gently pushes them wider.
“I’d take you apart if you asked. And, if you asked very nicely, I’d even put you back together after.” The Arallute’s voice is teasing, but there’s a current of seriousness beneath his words that seems so, so familiar.
And Cody can’t say he hasn’t thought about it, especially when he thought the Arallute was Obi-Wan. Even now, some primal part of him revels at the thought of the mind that’s outsmarted the entirety of the Empire working him over. On his darker nights, he’d even wondered if he were going easy on the Arallute out of some buried desire to keep up their dance forever.
The Arallute walks backwards on his knees as if to give himself room to kneel over Cody, and Cody bites his lip. He needs to say no. What could the Arallute possibly be getting out of this?
"Why me? Why risk it?" Cody asks.
“The Empire has chased me from Coruscant to Hoth, across and between every star, and you’re the only one who’s ever gotten close." The Arallute shrugs. "But that could change. Don't you want to have this, in case someone else gets to me first?”
"No one else could," Cody says without thinking, laying a claim, and the Arallute just laughs. His gloved hands are warm against Cody's knees, a slight but constant pressure.
It’s not a question of wanting, is the thing. Cody's ironclad professionalism has always had an exactly Obi-Wan-shaped hole, and he’s spent too long conflating this man and his former general. Their kindness, their competence, their compassion mixed with the way Cody is chained to a column, helpless, into an unrelenting assault. Cody shakes with wanting, shivers with it; he feels want overflowing the very outline of his body.
So this isn't a question of want. No; this is a question of duty.
Some of that must show on his face, because the Arallute tilts his head.
“Think of it like this, then: the longer you can keep me here, the better the chance that someone else will come looking,” the Arallute says, a grin clearly evident in his voice.
Cody can't help a hoarse chuckle.
“Well, when you put it that way..."
"That's not a yes, Commander," the Arallute says, and there’s hunger in the breathiness of his voice.
...Kriff it. If this is his weakness, it’s also the Arallute’s. Plus, he’d thought until about an hour ago that he was dealing with Obi-Wan, and he’s wanted Obi-Wan since he knew what it was to want someone.
And the Arallute has a point about increasing his chances of getting caught.
“Yes,” Cody says. “Yes.”
The Arallute runs his hands back towards Cody’s hips instantly, as if Cody's consent was the shot of a starting pistol, and he pulls until the line of Cody's back makes an even triangle with the column and the floor. From his new angle, Cody can tell that the Arallute’s hardly unaffected either, and it sends a thrill of satisfaction down his spine.
The five buttons of his slacks are undone in seconds beneath the Arallute’s nimble fingers, and then those fingers are tugging the waistband of his briefs down below the base of his cock. He springs free, already half hard, and he’s close enough to catch the Arallute’s sigh of satisfaction before the vocoder warps it.
The cold air of the supply closet hits Cody like a shock. It’s enough to make him think twice about this right up until he watches the Arallute take off his right glove with what must be his teeth. His bare thumb slides across Cody’s slit before he gives Cody a few loose pulls, a little rough and more than a little perfect.
Kriff. If he gives ARC-007’s tux back with come stains on the crotch, he’ll never hear the end of it.
“You’re sure?” the Arallute asks, giving him yet one more out, but Cody’s damned anyways. His gut twitches at the rough friction of the callouses sliding casually along his dick, and he breathes.
“Please,” he grits out, and the Arallute hums in satisfaction.
Cody doesn’t actually know what the other man is planning until the Arallute grips the base of Cody’s dick, bends down, and takes the head into his mouth. Cody can’t see that mouth; he can only watch with wide eyes as his dick disappears into the seamless white of the Arallute’s mask and into velvety wet heat.
“Ah, fierfek,” he stutters, and his shoulders jerk forward against the cuffs as the Arallute takes more and more of him in. With the way the Arallute positioned his body, Cody's hips can’t get enough leverage to do more than twitch upward, and the Arallute holds him down one-handed easily enough.
The beard he’d first felt on his face is now thick and wiry against the tender skin of his abdomen. Cody jerks uselessly in his chains, wishing he could touch his partner, wishing he could bury his hands in the Arallute's hair and feel the texture beneath his fingers instead of lying here and just taking and taking it. Being used like this—being pleasured like this, held down and held close—is throwing switches in his brain that might never get flipped off.
He looks down to see the smooth white mask bobbing rhythmically in his lap, the Arallute’s gloved left hand splayed across Cody's lower belly, the lean muscles of his back clearly visible through the skin tight black catsuit.
Tension is building like a screw twisting tight in his spine, and every bob of the Arallute’s head is sending a wash of electricity down Cody’s limbs. Stars above and stars below. In the growing haze, Cody can’t help but think, desperately, about what this would be like with Obi-Wan. He’s wanted Obi-Wan for what feels like forever, just like this, and the Arallute might not be Obi-Wan—but that doesn't seem to matter so much right now.
Cody doesn't have to work hard to imagine an auburn beard to accompany the scraping against his thighs, to see twinkling madder blue eyes locking on his and red lips stretched wide around him. Cody's head thunks back against the pillar behind him as he closes his eyes, visualizing a very specific man between his legs, a specific mouth around him, and all the fire in his gut builds to breaking.
"Wait, I'm," he stutters out, feeling the pleasure moving up his spine starting to crest, but the pressure doesn't let up. He can't think, he can't breathe, and he tips over the edge.
"Oh, Obi—Obi-Wan," he gasps as he comes, shuddering at the feeling of someone swallowing him down and imagining Obi-Wan doing the same. Even through the crash of his orgasm, he bites his tongue, praying the Arallute didn’t catch the slip.
The Arallute swallows again around Cody's softening cock, cleaning up the rest of Cody’s mess, and then he slides off with unbearable slowness. He seems wary when he looks up.
"Obi-Wan?" the Arallute asks, his voice a rough wet rasp, and Cody can’t stop himself from blushing madly.
"Don't," he says, and he sounds about as threatening as a wet tooka for all his efforts to the contrary, limp with aftershocks. "Don't. He's not—Obi-Wan has nothing to do with this."
The mask is still perfectly opaque, but Cody gets the distinct impression that the Arallute is raising an eyebrow at him. His teasing demeanor is back as quickly as it had left, though his voice sounds like it’s been run through the mill. "Why, Commander, should I be jealous? Somehow, I didn't think your tastes ran towards fop."
Cody bristles.
"He's not a fop,” he snaps, still too mired in a post-orgasm haze to question why he's defending Obi-Wan to a man with a multi-million credit bounty on his head. "He's compassionate and clever, and he's a better person than anyone in this godsforsaken—"
With effort, Cody manages to cut himself off and look away, wishing he were wearing his armor. Having his bucket to hide behind would be almost as good as not having this conversation while handcuffed to a post with his dick out.
"I don't see how it matters," he bites out.
The Arallute looks at him, face completely hidden by the smooth white curve of the mask projection but clearly considering. After a few seconds of ratcheting tension, he shakes his head, and his voice is oddly regretful when he answers.
"No, I suppose you don't."
Without waiting for a response, the Arallute slides his hand up Cody's over-sensitive cock and efficiently tucks Cody back into his briefs. Long fingers button up his slacks and re-fasten his belt, and Cody fights not to shudder through all the gentle touches.
The Arallute sits back to survey his handiwork when he's done, and he smooths down the lapels of Cody’s tux like an after-thought. He even reaches out to straighten the red silk pocket square bursting like a bloodstain from his breast.
Cody doesn't imagine that he'll look anything other than ridden hard and put away wet, but some small part of him appreciates the effort.
"Your radio will start broadcasting again when I'm out of range," he says, and Cody doesn't know what else he was expecting. A chance to return the favor? A goodbye kiss? "Until next time, Commander."
He's up and gone in seconds.
Until next time, kriff, Cody is definitely in over his head.
-—-
Waxer is the one that finds him, responding to his comm signal a mere five minutes later. Cody’s just glad it didn’t take longer; his mind is spinning with a million and more implications. The past hour would make a lifetime feel like seconds.
His dignity is somewhere on the floor next to his spare blaster and the imprint of the Arallute’s knees on the carpet, so he doesn’t even manage to gripe when Waxer pulls out his datapad and snaps a picture.
“Thanks, vod,” Cody says gruffly, wondering how much he needs to pay one of his slicers to delete the photo from Waxer’s comm and not turn around and sell it to the 212th.
His back is stiff from the time spent on the floor, and a sharp twinge shoots down his shoulders when Waxer undoes the cuffs. He hadn't lost feeling in them, but they're as unhappy as he is, right now.
Waxer clasps his arm to help him stand, catching him when the sudden motion makes him dizzy. "You alright, Commander?"
Cody sighs. He's been more 'alright' while bleeding out in the trenches of Ryloth. "Yeah. Just frustrated."
"Don’t be, sir. We'll get him next time," Waxer says cheerfully. Boil must be doing fine in the medbay, then. "He just got lucky."
He wasn't the only one who got lucky, Cody's brain supplies, and he grimaces, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. He's clearly been spending too much time with the 501st.
His grimace makes Waxer raise an eyebrow at him. "You know, that party's still going on upstairs. Pardon my saying it, sir, but you look like you could use a drink."
Cody considers trying to catch Obi-Wan before he leaves. They haven’t gotten much chance to speak since Cody’s return to Naboo—since they both left the Ryloth campaign—and Cody now has far more questions than answers.
And some apologies to make. He’d been keeping Obi-Wan at a distance, trying to save himself the heartbreak he just knew was coming, but he'd been wrong, and Obi-Wan deserves better than his silence.
Still, his responsibilities to his men come first. He heads down to the medbay with Waxer to check on Boil’s crew, and something settles in his chest to see everyone doing fine, just a little banged up. Bones thinks there was some sort of propagating virus in their helmet comm system that momentarily blinded and deafened them, and Cody makes a note to ask their infosec team to dig into it.
He dithers as long as he feasibly can, but Bones and Kix eventually kick him out. His terrible shoes have cut off circulation in at least two of his toes, his cummerbund is twisted, and he could just go to bed and put an end to his day, but. He has never been one to shirk his duty, in his job or otherwise.
He heads back to the ballroom more than two hours after he left.
The vast throne room-turned-ballroom has thinned out considerably, and Cody’s eyes catch on Obi-Wan immediately. He’s teetering on his high heels just a little, his arms have only a few bands of the diamonds he was wearing before, but he’s still in that backless dress. There’s a red mark on his shoulder that looks like it’s blossoming into a bruise, and Cody can’t help but wonder why. Had he tossed the diamonds into the crowd as party favors? Had he fallen while onstage? He’s not as balanced in those heels as he had been.
Cody catches Obi-Wan’s arm as he almost sways into a table, and Obi-Wan whirls in surprise before relaxing into Cody’s grip. He’s taller than Cody like this, and Cody has to tilt his head up to catch his smile. There’s sweat darkening the roots of Obi-Wan’s auburn hair to a dark brown, and Cody looks at him with worry.
“Hello there, Commander,” Obi-Wan says, and his smile is real even though his voice is a little hoarse.
“You sound exhausted. Singing wore out your voice?” Cody moves to go get him some water, but Obi-Wan pulls him to a halt.
His tired smile turns wry. “I’m fine, thank you. Just not as young as I used to be, but you know how it is. The show must go on.”
As if one cue, the music starts up again with a gentle swell of strings. The dancefloor has mostly cleared out but for a few older, demure couples, and Cody can tell that the night is drawing to a close. When he looks back, Obi-Wan quirks an eyebrow at him and holds out a hand.
After a second’s hesitation—Obi-Wan must be exhausted after the show—Cody takes it. He puts one hand on Obi-Wan’s waist and gently clasps one of Obi-Wan’s in the other, starting to spin them in slow, easy circles. Considering what Obi-Wan’s wearing on his feet, Cody thinks he can withstand another few minutes of wearing his own shoes.
Art commissioned from @MarieMarion on Tumblr. Posted here with permission.
Stars, Obi-Wan is so warm and sweet, perfect in Cody’s arms. The dichotomy of the man he’s holding and the man's public persona summons the Arallute’s disdain to the forefront of Cody’s mind, and his feet stutter on the next turn. Obi-Wan’s madder blue eyes watch him with concern, and he can’t help but ask.
"Obi-Wan, do you even like it? Performing up there in front of everyone?"
“It wouldn’t be my first choice, no,” he says. And maybe Obi-Wan’s just tired, but Obi-Wan’s calm and serious look makes him look so much more like the Obi-Wan Cody knew, even with the glitter and eyeliner.
Cody huffs, trying to center himself and control his reaction. Asking a legitimate question instead of simply releasing the torrent of emotions bound too-tight in his chest takes all of his concentration.
“Then why?”
His hand tightens reflexively on Obi-Wan’s waist, gripping him tight in a way he couldn’t with the Arallute. The back of Obi-Wan’s dress is so nonexistent that the tips of Cody’s fingers are pressing into Obi-Wan’s bare skin, and that one touch feels more indecent, more obscene, than anything he did earlier.
They spin in a contemplative silence. Obi-Wan is studying him as if trying to reduce Cody down to his component parts, as if trying to find his seams. This expression, too, is so much like the old Obi-Wan that it hurts.
"This isn't about the show, is it?" Obi-Wan asks eventually, full of gentle understanding. His general had always been a little too good at reading people, too keenly aware of their pressure points. It had made him a hell of a negotiator and an even better interrogator, and Cody isn't sure which role is being used here.
"No," Cody says. It's been a long kriffing day, and he's so tired of guessing at who's who. If Obi-Wan's not the Evening Arallute, then Cody has no idea why his admittedly reckless but always reserved general is suddenly dancing on pianos. He has two conspiracies on his plate now, and he'd like to solve at least one. "No, it’s not. Stars, Obi-Wan, I barely even recognized you when I first came here, and it wasn't because of the beard. Your clothes, your parties, your obsession with the spotlight… I know you, and none of that’s the real you. So why are you pretending?”
Obi-Wan sighs, but he doesn’t offer up any contradiction. His eyebrows pull close together like a stage curtain drawing shut, furrowing his brow with remorse. He opens his mouth to speak, but he hesitates when his eyes catch on something over Cody’s shoulder.
It looks uncomfortably like a fear response.
"We all have a part to play, Cody,” Obi-Wan says, noncommittal, and Cody's heart clenches.
"If someone's threatening you," he begins, and he's not expecting the short, sour laugh he gets in return. It makes him want to drag Obi-Wan in close, to put everything he has between Obi-Wan and whatever caused him to make that sound.
“Obi-Wan, I’m serious. You can tell me.”
"Oh, my dear." Obi-Wan sounds soft and fond and so, so sad. He puts two fingers to the curl of Cody's scar, and Cody turns his face into the touch. There’s too much unsaid between them, and he doesn’t deserve this level of tenderness from someone he’s been trying to keep at arm’s length: someone he’d suspected of high treason until a couple hours ago.
The creases at the corners of Obi-Wan’s eyes deepen when he smiles. “My dear, there are all sorts of things you can do with a mask that you can’t do otherwise.”
And obviously, he means his foppish persona—but everything the Arallute did to him while wearing a mask flashes in Cody's mind anyways. Kriffing hells . This is not the time or the place.
“Just be careful, please,” he says, flushing, and Obi-Wan’s smile softens even further. “You don’t have to tell me what’s wrong. But if you need help...”
“I’ll find you,” Obi-Wan says, and it sounds like he means it. There's durasteel in his words. “I promise.”
The last notes of the quartet’s closing song fade into echoes, and Obi-Wan lets go of him after another lingering beat. He takes one step back, then two. It feels like the second time in as many hours that Cody’s missed out on a goodbye kiss.
“Be well, Cody,” Obi-Wan says, and his eyes glance down to the red pocket square at Cody’s breast before he turns to leave. The broad, scarred planes of his back are on full display as he heads towards the door, and Cody reaches for his pocket square without looking away, wondering absently if the Arallute had folded it wrong. His questing fingers find something else nestled beside the silk, and he pulls out a carefully preserved flower with five long blue petals and gold crenulated edges.
An evening arallute.
His heart starts racing; his breath stutters in his chest. He looks up to see Obi-Wan glancing over his shoulder at him, his profile limned with the orange light of the hallway, and the twinkle in his eyes is dearly familiar. It’s the same twinkle that appeared whenever all seemed lost on the Rylothian battlefield, seconds before Obi-Wan pulled some crazy stunt that never should’ve worked and somehow always did.
Obi-Wan winks.
"Until next time, Commander."
…
..
.