Fox comes alive all at once from out of the half-slump of semi-patient waiting, hand spasming around the stem of his wine glass in a manner that serves to abruptly remind one that, although Fox is built somewhat slighter than the average clone, he has dedicated the totality of his meager existence honing himself into a lethal weapon. His predator-sharp eyes are locked on the entrance to the bar somewhere over Wolffe’s shoulder—paranoid little osik refused to even set foot over the threshold until Wolffe had conceded the most well-defended position—and the sheer force of his attention has the fine hairs on Wolffe’s arms raising.
“Immediately no,” Fox declares. “Absolutely not. Iba’shabuir.”
Wolffe snorts and pointedly refuses to turn around. “Kot’ika’s here, then?”
This is a fairly typical response to Cody’s general presence. Despite being literal clones, Cody and Fox are so diametrically opposed that merely placing them in the same room gives the very atmosphere an electric charge. Cody lives for the thrill of finding ever escalating ways to set Fox’s fight-or-flight response off.
“And he brought his Jetti,” Fox says, rolling the word off his tongue in a somewhat derogatory manner.
“What?” Wolffe replies, the question startled out of him, and spins around in the booth just in time to watch a slow smile spread across Cody’s face under the purple light of the bar—like a tooka that has captured its prey.
And sure enough, hanging off of Cody’s arm like a natborn noblewoman, is General Kenobi in some sort of fancy leatheris spacer outfit. Cody himself is dressed in a satiny, half-sheer button down that makes him look downright sleazy. Wolffe wants to give him a shakedown and check him for hidden non-regulation weapons, looking like that.
“Vode,” Cody greets, pulling up to the table.
“Jagyc’kovid,” Fox snaps.
Wolffe reaches across the table and gently pulls the wine glass from Fox’s clenched fist. Fox allows this in favor of bringing his whole attention to bear on his favorite asshole in the world. Cody and Fox stare at each other, unblinking.
“Hello, gentlemen,” General Kenobi greets.
“General,” Wolffe greets. Unlike his brothers, he is capable of professionality.
General Kenobi waves a hand and slides into the booth next to Wolffe, parting from Cody with a pat on his arm. “Oh, hush. I left my rank back at the Temple. Just Obi-Wan.”
Cody has not yet sat down. Fox has puffed himself up like a nuna-bird protecting its nest. Fox will likely guard his side of the booth with his life. Cody simply stands there, patient and smiling, while Fox holds himself on the precipice of lunging. If they had the physiology for it, Fox would be growling.
“This is exciting,” Kenobi muses.
That’s a… unique stance. Wolffe snorts and takes a sip of his own drink—some exceptionally strong brandy from a planet whose name he has already forgotten. This one glass is more expensive than every item on Wolffe’s person, from his clothes to his blaster. It tastes lavishly terrible.
“This is par for the course,” Wolffe replies.
“Foxy,” Cody drawls, pleased as pie.
“Why do you hate me,” Fox replies, his tone downright saccharine.
"Foxy, I love you."
“How did you and I come from the same batch?” Fox despairs.
Wolffe kicks at Fox under the table and barks, “Scoot. Let Kote in.”
Cody beams as he slides in next to Fox, who digs his heels in and refuses to budge, leaving the two of them squished into a comically small space from shoulder to shoulder. Cody preens. Kenobi snickers.
“Fox, Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan, Fox. Wolffe, Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan, Wolffe,” Cody introduces, gesturing open-palmed across the table in respective order. “Now my second- and third-closest vode have met my riduur.”
Kenobi pauses in his examination of the wine bottle Fox ordered for the table to wave a bemused hello while Wolffe chokes on his expensively shitty drink and Fox hisses, “Second and third?”
Cody, because he is a shit-stirrer at heart, gently pats Fox’s clenched fist. “Don’t worry, vod. You’re second,” he soothes, knowing full-well that this only infuriates Fox more.
“Who the fuck is first?” Fox grabs Cody’s hand with his own and holds it in a brutally punishing grip. Cody barely bats an eye and threads their fingers together instead.
“Rex.”
“Rex?” Fox scoffs in a manner perfectly befitting of a distinguished senator. “You’re telling me that your pet CT ranks higher than me? After I practically spent all of my training wiping your sorry ass?”
“Only because you love looking at it so much, Foxy,” Cody muses.
“Riduur?” Wolffe repeats, because his vode are idiots and they will spend the rest of the night running down this rabbit hole of who wiped whose ass—it was, of course, Wolffe who was wiping both Fox and Cody’s sorry asses—instead of focusing on what they really should be focussing on. “You’re married to your General? No offense, General Kenobi.”
“I take offense only because I told you to call me Obi-Wan, Wolffe,” Kenobi sniffs.
“The wedding was beautiful. I’m only sorry that you missed it,” Cody sighs.
“Drink,” Fox demands, making grabby hands at the bottle Kenobi is still examining. “Give.” He snatches the bottle from the hands of a High Jedi General, leaning half-up and across the table to do it, and takes a long swig right from the mouth.
“Disgusting,” Cody says, fondly. “This is why you weren’t invited.”
“Don’t despair. No one was invited,” Kenobi muses.
“Everyone is disgusting,” Cody agrees.
“Quite.”
“When?” Wolffe demands. “How? Why?”
“Love, I suspect,” Kenobi replies. Cody laughs and laughs, as if this is the funniest joke that has ever been told.
They drink. They talk. They do what the natborns do—they socialize out in public. It’s surprisingly good. When Cody proposed that they do this, that the two of them carve time out of their leave and pressure Fox into stepping away for a night, to take the time to connect in a way they haven’t since before the war, in a way they never have, Wolffe was skeptical. What use would they have for doing what the natborns do? They’ve never been the same. They've never had that privledge.
But now it makes a little more sense—Cody wanted to show them this. To introduce them to exactly this sort of natborn shit and the capacity of it. Him and Kenobi—a natborn. Married, somehow. Happy, somehow. And so they drink, and they socialize, and they razz Cody relentlessly for marrying his Jedi and his Jedi for somehow allowing this.
And at the end of the night, Fox desperately wine-drunk and hanging off of Cody as Cody attempts to fold him into a cab, Wolffe pulls Kenobi aside.
“Thank you,” he says. “For caring for my vod’ika. Keep it up.”
Kenobi smiles, soft and surprisingly real under the artificial glow of Coruscanti neon lights. Nearly lost to the bark and rumble of nightlife, he promises, “Of course. Always.” They clasp arms and, for a night, Wolffe lets himself believe.