from your lips
REMINDER: final week of @codywankissbingo starts in only a few days! To commemorate, I'm posting what I think'll be my last fic for the event, which I wrote for the "blowing a kiss" prompt.
Set during the Clone Wars, feat: head injuries and a discovery of flirting. Fic and card below!
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Obi-Wan had more experience than he liked to think about with head injuries.
The last one - sustained when Ventress tried to drop half a mountain on him - had left the world spinning a bit unsteadily and his ears ringing. He felt aware enough to realize he was…off but they hardly had the time in the middle of a battle for him to visit the medics to have them tell him what he already knew.
Instead, he simply kept going through the fray, attempting to hold onto his concentration as best he could. Time slipped and slid away, full of the noise of blasterfire and the stink of singed circuitry, until he ended up, in a moment of quiet on the battlefield, looking across a sea of destroyed droid bodies at Cody.
He was…beating one of the droids to pieces with its own arm.
Obi-Wan stood, swaying on his feet, just watching with a warm feeling in his chest.
Cody noticed, a breath later, glancing his way, armor splattered with oil and bearing a few new scratches. Obi-Wan grinned at him, feeling wobbly, and, because it seemed like a good idea with another wave of droids about to break over them both, raised two fingers to his lips.
He pressed a kiss to his gloved fingertips and, because it seemed the only thing to do, blew it towards Cody, who just--stood there, looking confused, until the droids came down on them again.
And, by the time the battle had ended, Obi-Wan had forgotten about the entire event.
Probably something to do with the concussion the medics insisted that he had.
#
Cody knew all the hand signals used officially by the GAR in the field.
He’d learned many of the signals the Jedi used amongst themselves, and picked up more from the independent fighters on worlds like Ryloth. He had what he personally considered to be a broad and comprehensive knowledge base, important in a war where - sometimes - they simply couldn’t speak to convey a plan.
And yet, he had absolutely no idea what his General had tried to tell him earlier on the battlefield.
He knew, well enough, that Obi-Wan had fought in wars before, so perhaps the sign - the press of fingers to lips and then the odd blowing motion - had come from one of them. Cody had no idea and it ate away at him, knowing that he’d missed communication across the field of battle, that he had - quite likely - made things harder or cost men their lives.
He pressed his lips together, thinking about that, as he went hunting for his General through the halls. They needed to discuss the sign he’d used and any others that he might decide to throw out, so Cody could be prepared, next time.
In the end, he found Obi-Wan in his quarters with the lights dim and the smell of bacta still on his skin; he’d been to the medics already, then. Obi-Wan greeted him warmly enough, invited him in, and then stared at him - blankly - when Cody brought up the sign he’d used on the battlefield.
“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan said, looking honestly puzzled, “what sign did I give you?”
“This one,” Cody said, and recreated it as well as he could: lips to finger tips, hand titled forward, lips pursed, blow.
Obi-Wan blinked at him and then, after a beat, a pink tinge spread all across his cheeks. “Ah,” he said, “yes. I recall now.” He leaned back, a little grin stretching across his mouth. “That’s, hm, not precisely a sign for anything, really. Nothing related to a fight, anyway.”
Cody frowned and asked, because he knew well enough he was missing the context for many of the things nat-borns did, “What’s if for, then?”
“It’s a flirty gesture,” Obi-Wan said, grin kicking up the corner of his mouth a little further as he tilted his head to the side. “Sorry to make you worry about it, Commander. I hit my head quite hard during the fight and must have simply been unable to think of a better way to communicate how impressed I was with your strategy on the field.”
Cody knew about flirting, though he’d never attempted to engage in it. He’d never thought much about it.
Which did nothing to explain the slow spread of warmth through his gut as he thought about Obi-Wan--flirting with him across a battlefield. His thoughts spiraled in, tight, as he stood there, until an urge to better understand had him asking, “It implies sending--a kiss to another person?”
“Blowing it to them,” Obi-Wan said, eyes crinkling in the corners, “yes. From your lips to…well. Wherever, I suppose.”
Cody wondered what Obi-Wan’s destination had been, gaze dropping to Obi-Wan’s mouth for a moment before he managed to wrench back control of himself.
“I see,” he said, looking into Obi-Wan’s bright eyes and imagining knowing what it had meant on the battlefield. It was only a small jump from there to imagining Obi-Wan’s actual lips on his skin and--
And that was something Cody had experience very carefully not thinking about. He cleared his throat and looked to the side. “Should we discuss our new orders?” he asked, tone carefully modulated, and let the moment slip away.
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