It’s 1745 ship time when Rex’s shuttle reaches the landing bay. It’s 1749 when Cody catches sight of him by the shuttle’s nose, looking half-dead and swaying on his feet. He’s still in his armor, and Cody takes a moment to be grateful for that. Cody makes a beeline for him, but before he can reach him, Kenobi stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “Commander. It’s good to see you.”
Kenobi looks dead on his feet. Something about the bruise on his cheek reminds Cody of Priest after Faie had finally gotten strong enough to fight back. “General. It’s good to see you safe.” His cheek itches and he resists the urge to swipe an imaginary stray hair out of his face. He should have worn his shell. “You should get to the medbay.” They should all get to the medbay.
Kenobi heaves a sigh. “I should, but duty calls.” He glances back at the huddle of natborn leaders and gives Cody a tired smile. “I’ll catch up with you later, Commander.”
“Yes, sir.” Kenobi’s hardly turned around before Cody’s heading for Rex again. “Rex!”
Rex tracks his voice too slowly. Cody counts to five before bloodshot eyes meet his, and he’s made it to Rex’s side before he gets a quiet, “Cody,” in response.
“You need to be in the medbay,” Cody says, and then reconsiders. “No, you should come with me. I have a medkit in my room.” He herds Rex back until he’s leaning on the side of the shuttle. “You need a shower, too. And some food.”
Rex squints, scrubbing a hand over his furrowed brow. “…Yeah.” He takes Cody’s offered hand and lets himself be pulled back upright. “Should we, we should, we should probably tell Kix if I’m not going to the medbay.”
Right. Right. Cody schools his expression into something professional and intimidating and starts walking Rex through the crowd.
There are so many freed slaves, enough to fill the hangar, and every single one of them looks like Rex. Cody fixes his gaze on the door and keeps walking.
“Cody,” Rex calls as they reach the lift. “Cody, Kix.”
Cody stops. “Right. Kix.” He shoots Kix a message just as the lift doors open. I have Rex. Going to my quarters. “Come on, in.” He waits for Rex to step inside and takes one more look around the hangar before following. None of the natborns are paying any attention. None of the ranking ones, anyway. “Okay. Okay, let’s go.”
Rex makes it within a hundred meters of Cody’s door before his knees give out on him. Cody’s already got an arm under his shoulders, though, and Rex hardly stumbles before Cody’s taking most of his weight.
“I’ve got you, Rex. Just a bit further. Almost there. Almost there, come on.”
Rex should be talking more. He should be telling Cody to stop babying him. He should be more aware of his surroundings. If Cody wasn’t here…
He closes the door and engages the emergency lock a vod from Deadweight Company had set up for him a few months back. It’s an unauthorized piece of code, something he doesn’t use too much for fear of detection, but it’ll keep the door closed even if a superior uses an override code. Rex just stands there watching.
Cody throws his hat on the shelf and kicks his boots off. “Okay. Okay, you need a shower first. Sit down and I’ll get you something to change into.” He pushes Rex towards his bed.
His ‘pad chimes.
CMO Kix: good
CMO Kix: too busy here too many natborns
CMO Kix: thank you
Cody leaves the ‘pad on top of the dresser and grabs a set of civvies at random.
“Here.” He presses the folded bundle of clothes into Rex’s arms. Rex just stares blankly at them, chewing his already thrice-split lip as he contemplates the bright orange sweater and the soft grey sweatpants. “Civvies,” Cody tells him. “More comfortable to sleep in. Better for healing up any cuts, too. They’ll let your skin breathe.”
Rex nods absently, then turns and retreats into the ‘fresher.
Cody spends a moment in chewed-lip consideration before heading to his conservator and fishing out a bottle of water and some energy gel packs. They feel good on a raw throat, he knows. He gets his medkit, too, and then settles into his desk chair to wait. Deep breaths, Cody, he reminds himself. He should do something. He needs to do something. His hands are shaking. Why are his hands shaking?
He drops his head to the desk. Deep breaths. In two three four, out two three four. In two three four, out two three four. His throat aches.
Rex is fine, he reminds himself. He’s in the ‘fresher. Cody can hear him turning the water on and shucking his armor. Nothing happened. Well, nothing that can’t be undone. Physically.
In two three four, out two three four.
Deep breaths, Cody.
Rex is going to be fine. He’s well enough that he walked almost the whole way here. If there’s anything Cody can’t fix, he’ll take him to the medbay. Rex is going to be fine. Cody has him, and the door is locked, and he’s going to be fine.
But he could miss something.
In two three four, out two three four. Listen to Rex getting in the shower.
What if Cody misses something?
Something clatters to the floor and Rex curses.
In two three four, out two three four.
What if they’d left Rex behind? What if they’d forgotten him, or he’d been deemed acceptable collateral damage? It had been a very real possibility, something they’d discussed on the bridge. If Cody hadn’t come up with an alternate plan in time…
But he did. He came up with a better plan and now Rex is safe, he’s right there in the bathroom. In two three four, out two three four.
Cody rests his forehead on his crossed arms and just breathes.
Rex takes a full fifteen minutes in the shower, and the cloud of steam he comes out in makes Cody glad he decided to save this week’s hot water ration. His hair’s grown out in the last week. His roots show and they make the bleached tips look like a halo, a fine fuzz around his head. The blond clashes horribly with the orange of the sweatshirt.
“You look terrible,” Cody says, and it’s true. The blue-black marks under Rex’s eyes are one part exhaustion, three parts bruise if the swelling around the bridge of his nose is anything to go by, and his face is noticeably thinner. Cody herds him forward and pushes him down to sit on the floor, leaning on the bunk. If he lets Rex sit on the bed, Cody’s afraid he won’t get through with his checkup before he falls asleep.
“Says you,” Rex mumbles.
“Mm.” Cody pinches the back of Rex’s hand— "don’ pinch me” —it takes a worryingly long time for the color to come back. “Drink all of this. Slowly.” He presses the water bottle into Rex’s hands, ignoring his grumbling. “Anything hurt particularly badly?” He’s already feeling along Rex’s scalp for cuts or cracks. Most times, blood shows bright on his hair and Cody hadn’t seen any before his shower, but then his hair had been rusty with slag dust and who knows what else and Cody’s not taking any chances.
For a long moment, there’s no response. When Cody pulls back, satisfied with the continuing integrity of Rex’s skull, Rex has nodded off.
“Rex. Vod’ika.” Cody tweaks Rex’s nose and gets a sleepy, indignant snuffle in response. “Hey. Anything hurt worse than the rest?”
Rex blinks long and slow. “…M’back.”
Cody’s breath catches and he forces himself to turn the gasp to a long, slow inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. “Alright. Here, set the water down and turn around for me.”
Slowly, with a good deal of gasps and bitten-off whimpers, Rex shifts until he’s showing Cody his back. “It’s a good thing this has a zipper, because I don’t think I can get my arms over my head,” Rex says. The zipper catches once on the way down, then Rex is shrugging Cody’s hoodie off and dropping it to the floor between them.
Rex’s back is ripped apart with charred whip marks, raw red and pink and deep black with bruises. Cody breathes deep, and the smell hits him, heavy and coppery and sweet over the clean soap, and with the sick edge of infection. Rex is sweating again, and Cody can smell that, too. “Gods,” he breathes, and Rex’s shoulders twitch. “Maybe you should have gone to the medbay.”
Rex is shaking his head before Cody can finish. “They’re gonna be busy,” he says. “With the Togs and the Generals.”
Cody swallows his tongue and sets to work.
Washing out the cuts isn’t pleasant for either of them. The painkillers he has on hand aren’t fast-acting, and waiting any longer is just inviting infection, so Rex bites down on a towel while Cody rinses his back with sterile saline. The worst of them have to be stitched and that’s painful, too, and Cody doesn’t want to think about the noises Rex made when he had to pull out the broken barbs. Then, it’s just a quick once-over with bacta ointment and a liberal application of adhesive bandages and the worst is over. They sit for a long, silent moment, Rex panting and Cody shaking, and then Cody says, “You should have one of those gel packs while I look at your neck.”
Rex complies, bending forward to suck on the gel pack while Cody opens a fresh wipe and sets a hand on the back of Rex’s head to steady him. The collar they’d had him in was heavy and wide and rubbed all the way from the base of his neck up into his hairline. Most of the blood’s been washed away by the shower, and the deeper abrasions are scabbed over, so there’s not much for Cody to do. Still, he’s careful around the worst of the chafing, the place where Rex’s identification chip rubbed against the collar. It’s hardly visible and with the way it’s been on all of them since birth, Cody usually doesn’t notice it. Just a little lump right above the knob of his spine. Now, it’s red and scraped and Cody cleans it carefully, trying his best not to press in and trigger the strange, staticky twinge of the chip pressing against bone. Rex shudders anyway.
Cody coaxes Rex around to face him again and makes quick work of cleaning and bandaging his wrists. He’s starting to nod off again, hands in Cody’s lap and head dipping down to his chest every few breaths. Before he can drift away, Cody tugs on his hands and pulls Rex in to press their foreheads together. Bloodshot eyes meet his and Rex’s overwarm breath ghosts across his face. Cody’s eyes shut and he drives his forehead forward into Rex’s, near-painful.
Rex’s next exhale is shaky. “Cody…”
Cody grabs the back of Rex’s neck and pulls him even closer. Somewhere in the walls, water flows through the pipes. Rex’s beats against his fingers and his own thuds in his ears. Cody breathes in, and then out. Rex shakes against him.
He opens his mouth, then closes it. His throat is too tight for words, and anyway, he’s not sure what he would say. Instead, he takes another deep breath and wonders if the tears he can smell are Rex’s or his own.
It’s almost meditative, this breathing with each other. Cody gets lost in it and his own exhaustion until—
“Rex?” Rex tips forward, pressing so hard into Cody’s forehead that he almost topples backwards. “Force,” Cody grunts, hauling him back up and propping him against the bed. He’s fallen asleep. “Wake up, dumbass.”
Rex blinks muzzily at him. “Huh?”
“Okay,” Cody laughs. “Time for bed.” He prods Rex until he clambers up into bed, then pulls the covers over him. Rex’s head hits the pillow and his eyes start to slip closed almost immediately.
Before he passes out, though, he reaches for Cody’s arm. “Cody?”
“Yeah?”
Rex cracks an eye open. “Can you… Can you stay?”
“Of course, kih’vod.”
Cody wakes up to the shrill beeping of Rex’s morning alarm. It’d woken him the last three mornings in a row, when Rex’s datapad had sat on Cody’s desk, waiting with the rest of his gear for his return. He pries his arm out from under Rex and turns it to “snooze.” Then, he sets about extricating himself from Rex’s death grip on his whole body. He’s stuck between Rex and the wall, with Rex’s arms around his middle and his legs twined with Cody’s, and sneaking out of bed without waking him is the hardest stealth op Cody’s ever been on. He manages it, though. Rex hardly stirs. Honestly, Cody’s surprised the alarm didn’t wake him. He hasn’t seen Rex sleep in since the Blue Shadow Virus. He’s snoring, too. Cody considers getting a holorecording.
He’ll let Rex sleep in today. He should already be registered as sick or otherwise out of commission, but Cody’ll message Kix just to make sure. Maybe he’ll even be able to lay low today, catch up on some paperwork and keep Rex company. He should be under observation anyway.
Rex’s datapad pings.
GAR-SCHEDULING-DONOTREPLY: attn CT-7567. schedule change. confirmation required.
Cody frowns. Another ping.
Gen. Skywalker: sorry about putting you on the morning shift, Rex, but me and obes and snips need some down time. hope you understand.
A third ping.
Appo: Tried to change the shifts around, but we need someone of rank on the bridge. I’m so sorry, Rex. Lmk if there’s anything I can do to help.
Cody bites the inside of his lip and tastes blood.
Me: This is Commander Cody. There is NO WAY Captain Rex can report for duty today. He should be on medical leave already.
Appo: Sir, I’m sorry. I tried to fix it. There’s really nothing I can do.
Me: It’s alright, vod. It’s not your fault.
Any other day, Cody would take his shift, but he’s got his own duties to attend to today. With no general and tensions rising the galaxy over, there’s no way he can abandon his post. With blood in his mouth and a sinking heart, he shakes Rex awake.
“Wha’?”
Cody pulls the blankets back and Rex glares sleepily at him. “Sorry, Rex. Duty calls.”
“Huh?” He sounds terrible.
“You have a shift in twenty-five minutes. Unavoidable. Skywalker texted you.”
Rex sits up, rubbing his bruised eyes with stiff hands. “You serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious. Come on, up. I’ll run and get you breakfast.” Cody hauls Rex to his feet. He has to catch him once, before he can get a grip on the bedrail. Rex goes wobbling towards the bathroom.
The bandages on the back of his neck are bloody again.