#cwfkb23

[inkformyblood]

bright in technicolour (CWFKB23)

Free space - Forehead kiss, Canon Era, Soulmate AU (Many thanks to dontbelasagnax for the reminder about this event and by extension, that I hadn't actually posted this) @codywanfirstkissbingo

Cody keeps his helmet on when he’s around the Jedi. The Kaminoans hadn’t cared, the clones barely more than livestock to them, numbers encoded into the chips in their wrists to assign them a bunk, a training stream, an incinerator, but they are not the Jedi. Kamino had been grey and silver and blue, the ocean bleeding through the metal supports and pooling across the lower levels until they were brown and red and green. The clones can see those colours, pick them out at a distance and name them in four different languages, whisper chartreuse and aquamarine and periwinkle amongst the weapon schematics and formations that put down roots and grew amongst their thoughts. 

The vast majority of the galaxy can’t see colour. 

They can see shades, the barest hints of saffron and gunmetal imprinted on their existence, and some can see the full spectrum like the clones can. It is because they’re clones the holonets shriek those first few stumbling weeks of known existence when the universe is larger than Cody had ever thought it could be, everything too much, too loud, too quick to be held onto. They don’t have soulmates so they can see colour. It makes sense. They’re not built for another person to weave their fingers together, palm against palm, and press a kiss against their skin so they can blush shades of rosewood, careys, smitten. It is fine. It’s fine. 

So, Cody keeps his helmet on. 

No eye contact. No disappointment. No polite courtesy he didn’t know ground into the mud beneath his boots because he looked at someone and saw flecks of gold in their eyes. 

The Jedi had explained it to them after that first battle, their eyes directed towards the clones but not looking at them, politeness patchworked together into something functional and it had been appreciated more than they would know. Helmets on, filters activated, and there’s an alarm system hooked up to the entrances to the lower levels in case someone who isn’t a brother strays into their bunkrooms. They were made to be soldiers, to adapt, they could adapt to this. 

The current battlefield is not Cody’s favourite. 

Too much mud for their standard equipment for a start, a helpful piece of information that could have been communicated better by a brother in shades of umber, russet, sepia, but no. They got to find out along with the sheer amount of droids they were meant to fight as they spilled out of the transport ships and onto a planet that squelched with every step and covered everything. Cody hates it. Hate is a new emotion, sparking a solid red with little variation at the edges and Cody reaches for it with both hands. Better that he stains his palms red with hate than with the futility of cutting himself to pieces on the ruined shards of his helmet. 

Cody lies flat on his back in the mud and tastes copper in the back of his throat. Every breath is shallow from necessity, the mud smells solid, damp but warm and Cody hasn’t decided on if he likes it or not. Choking is a risk with his current position but he can’t move, not yet. He’d shot the droid that had gotten a hit off on him, some huge hulking twisted sparking slag heap of metal in one uniform silver shade that had nearly vanished amongst the stinking clinging mud. He hadn’t seen it. There would be more who wouldn’t see them. 

Colours mean nothing when they can't help them. Might as well peel them away and give them soulmates to try and balance the cosmic scales.

Pointless thought to indulge in, peeling wires out of their casing to twist them into fresh shapes, but the blow to his face has shaken them free and Cody isn’t sure if he has a left eye anymore. There’s the pulsing pain of it echoing through his teeth and his bones, a deep thrum that reverberates in his chest like he’s standing next to an engine roaring in full-throttled fury. Nothing else exists except the pain and the thought screaming back against the tempest. 

If Cody had a soulmate, if he had another person he could love like he had been made, devotion  coded into his genes along with every other adjustment the Kaminoans had decided on, who would he choose? Prime had bargained away an army for a child so how could Cody, made in his image, not love just as fiercely, with every piece of him. 

Cody thinks he is halfway in love with the man he would have chosen to be his soulmate already.

Most of his brothers are too.

They were made for the Jedi after all, how could they not love them?

There’s a shout from somewhere, maybe to his left, or it could be his right, Cody’s heart skipping a beat in its battered and bloody cage. He blinks his single working eye, his vision blurred carmine, crimson, sanguine, and Obi-Wan leans over him. He’s kneeling to his side, one hand resting on Cody’s chest and he wishes he could feel it, bruise in the imprint of Obi-Wan’s palm so it lasts. His hair has fallen free from the neat braid he had pulled it into hours prior, copper cascading across his forehead and shoulder. 

“Are you alive?” Obi-Wan asks, desperate, frantic, the words running into each other in his haste. He pauses, pulling a breath in through bared teeth, and his gaze focuses on Cody, then into him. There’s the sharp scent of ozone in the air, a distant sense of burning stars collapsing in one themselves and Cody isn’t made to hold this knowledge but he tries. He grins up at Obi-Wan, tasting iron and mud and he tries.

Obi-Wan sags against him, a decaying ruin finally learning it should have relaxed eons before, curling forwards and pressing his forehead to the back of his palm. His other hand is close enough to Cody’s shoulder for him to feel the movement when Obi-Wan’s fingers curl, supporting himself on a fist instead of a flat palm. Cody wants to speak, to tell him about the droids and their uniform colouration, an absence in the Force that Obi-Wan may not be able to see, won’t know about. He twists his face a fraction to the side, pulling a breath through his nose as he unseals his mouth. Blood coats his teeth, his tongue, a fresh trickle working down his neck. 

“Droids.” Cody spits, doesn’t make it past the shattered edge of his helmet. It’s warm, everything is warm. Hurts too much to be dying so this is existence, pain and love braided so closely together it isn’t worth tearing his fingers to shreds to separate them. He loves Obi-Wan. He is in pain. Both things are true. “Droids in the mud.”

“Oh, Cody,” Obi-Wan sighs. He pushes himself upright, his shoulders curling like a scavenger picking over a corpse, no change in pressue on the hand still resting on Cody’s chest.

Cody never thought his name could be beautiful. Functional and his, yes, but not beautiful. If Cody could choose, he would pick Obi-Wan. He has chosen Obi-Wan in every way he is able to. 

The mud clings to Obi-Wan, the bottom of his robes sodden and dark and umber. It doesn’t suit him, the outskirts of Cody’s single edged vision blurring out of focus as he tries to take all of him in. He raises himself up, turning towards Cody and reaching out to the broken line of his helmet. His brow furrows, which isn’t an uncommon expression on him but it isn’t normally directed at Cody, this concern or exasperation painted over Obi-Wan’s features. He can’t fully make out which with one eye and a head full of spiking agony.

Obi-Wan leans closer and Cody should stop him, should press himself further into the clinging mud. But he doesn’t. Obi-Wan’s touch hurts, a swift redirection of Cody’s attention back to a place he’s trying to forget, but he leans into it, breathes through the flashes of sage, burgundy, cobalt in front of his eyes as his jaw grinds shut. 

“Still there,” Obi-wan murmurs, his fingertips cool against the crater of Cody’s face. “There’ll be a scar but it will heal.”

Obi-Wan is closer than Cody realised, not a respectable arm span between them, the distance assessed and calculated and refined in countless messages volleyed between the battalions. No, he’s close enough to kiss, nose to broken and bleeding nose. Cody could. He wants to.

He doesn’t.

There are fault lines of silver beginning to run through Obi-Wan’s hair, clustering at his temples, but the majority is copper and russet, bronze and fawn. His freckles are similarly mismatched , the one beneath his eye dark compared to constellations over his arm, a scattered handful visible where his tunic gapes at the neck, cream woven with bisque and all stained dark with sweat and mud. He is every colour Cody wants to remember and this must be a gift, this ability to see colour from the moment they open their eyes because they love too strongly to be denied this small kindness. Obi-Wan leans up, closer still, and kisses Cody’s forehead. He remains there for a moment, breathing through his nose in sharp shallow puffs, before he retreats.

Obi-Wan’s mouth is red, a sharp line cut into his jaw from Cody’s helmet and blood beads from it, beginning to drip from his chin. “I’ve repaired the damage as best I can, blunted the pain too. I—” Obi-Wan blinks, pulls in a breath through bared teeth. “Cody.”

Cody doesn’t move, isn’t sure he’s still alive and this isn’t some pretty trick his dying brain has thrown at him except for the thudding of his heart in his ear and the stickiness of blood drying on his skin. 

“You have such beautiful brown eyes. I didn’t realise that before,” Obi-Wan says and Cody knows. 

The clones can see colour, and Obi-Wan can too.  

[inkformyblood]

one cup, two cup, three, and four (CWFKB23 #22)

@codywanfirstkissbingo Sleepy kiss, Modern AU, Fem Codywan

The flat is quiet when Obi-Wan manages to wrangle the door open through a mess of foliage and delicate string lights that throng their hallway. No need to worry about alarms or a security system when they had the normal mess and clutter of everyday life. She steps over Cody’s work boots, placed into the same spot every day, and loosely toes her own shoes off next to them. The sole gapes wide as she does so, revealing the softer innards of fabric straining away from rubber, and she ignores it as best as she can.

Tape is a godsend and where tape wouldn’t fix it, there is a small tube of superglue in one of the drawers she can ask Cody to try. The pads of Obi-Wan’s fingers are still discoloured from her last attempt at trying to fix a pair of her shoes so she’ll pass the problem to more capable hands. Her jacket is summarily discarded onto the back of the sofa and she lingers long enough to retrieve her lanyard and keys from the pocket, returning them to their forced exclusion into the small bowl on the counter for the next two days. The time off from work stretches luxuriously empty, free from any mandatory training or social obligations, and Obi-Wan skirts around the potential issue of their unique living arrangement as she flicks on the kettle, pulling one mug out of the cupboard, pausing and returning for another. Cody has the next couple of days off as well, a rarity with their opposite working schedules. Obi-Wan makes Cody’s cup of coffee how she likes it, strong and sweet and a splash of milk first despite Obi-Wan’s moral objections to the concept, and rifles through her small collection of tea. There is no caffeine in her immediate future if she wants to sleep for any part of the morning; another hidden delight of adulthood that’s tripped her over and bruised up her face. She chews on the tip of her tongue as she draws a bag free, dropping it into her cup and chasing it with the boiling water.

A door creaks further in the apartment and Obi-Wan rocks back onto her heels, a dozy prickle of contentment resting on the nape of her neck. Cody’s steps are steady, sleep-slow and her slippers smack against the floor as she makes her way into the sitting room. Much of her isn’t visible, a walking plaid blanket that hides her face and her curls, but the tattoo over her calf is clearly visible with one of her pyjama trouser legs drawn up over her knee while the other falls to the floor.

“Morning,” Obi-Wan says, breaking into a yawn that she doesn’t bother to hide behind her hand. Her manners are ingrained into her bones but even that runs thin and fallow after so long spent at work.

“G’morning,” Cody responds, her words muffled through fabric and sleep. Obi-Wan can picture her expression, her eyes still mostly closed and her gaze filtered through her impossibly long lashes and her grin easily worn in.

Obi-Wan follows her, both mugs in hand, and places them onto the clear spaces on their cluttered coffee table. She has options for seating, the low slouch of a battered armchair Obi-Wan carried to her student dorm, then flat, then four different flatshares before this one or the other end of the sofa that Cody has already claimed, piled high with blankets and a handful of cushions that Cody would claim as family heirlooms at the first hint of decluttering. She sits on Cody’s legs stretched out over the seat before she wriggles backwards into the hollow created. Cody grunts, shifting her legs straighter before she reaches down to tug a section of the blanket free, pulling it over Obi-Wan.

“You’re in early,” Cody mumbles. She’s partially spilled out of the blanket now wrapped around her waist. She stretches and her shirt rises with the motion, everything about her solid and real and beautiful.

Obi-Wan hums in agreement, leaning sideways against Cody who absorbs the motion with a soft sound. She wraps an arm around Obi-Wan’s shoulders, playing with the loose edge of her sleeve. “Move your head up a bit? You’re lying right on my tit.” Obi-Wan does so, her face flushed but it’s fine. It happens. Cody continues, her voice a little more structured as she wakes, “Figured you’d like the bed to sleep after your night shift so I came out here for the morning. It’ll be nice having us both around the house, little human company to prove I’m not just another cog in the machine.”

If Cody is a cog, then she would be the best cog imaginable, something brimming with lots of interlocking teeth, a fundamental piece of the machinery. Obi-Wan tells her this because why wouldn’t she? It makes perfect sense.

Cody tips her head back as she laughs, the sound vibrating through Obi-Wan like it would rattle all the broken pieces in her chest back together. She curls closer, crossing her legs one over the other and then swapping them back, and Cody rights herself carefully, smearing the heel of her palm across her eyes. She curls her hand around Obi-Wan’s head, drawing her face upwards. The air hangs still and heavy, steam curling from their mugs nearly forgotten on the table, and Cody leans down, kissing Obi-Wan. She tastes like coffee and a stale tang of sleep and like home. Obi-Wan grins against her mouth, pressing herself closer, the mugs and sleep entirely forgotten.