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The thing about confessing one secret, two, three, a dozen, is that Bode has so many.
He thinks revealing his allegiance – or pseudo allegiance as it were because his loyalty was never with the Empire or Denvik – will be it. That had been the biggest thing hanging over his head. Everything is better now. His daughter is truly safe this time. He no longer has to look over his shoulder.
The grief is still there, but it’s softer. The anger gnaws at his heart, but now he meditates with the gentle rays of sunrise, and it feels tamed almost. He feels – not free. He’ll never be free from what he’s done, what has been done to him. He’s…unbound from the darkness. No longer weighted so heavily by it all.
Without that particular noose around his neck, though, another secret has buried itself in his chest.
Bode wakes up with his lungs clogged full.
He hunches over and shoves a finger down his throat, scraping out sodden petals and thorns, blood dripping from his lips and down his chin, streaking over his hand and wrist. The petals are orange like fire, streaks of passionate red and bright, happy yellows like a star bursting from the center. A sunrise of its own, torn and bloody, limp on top of his foot where one has fallen, the rest scattered on the floor, on his knees, sticking from spit and blood on his chin. Bode coughs, blood splatters, and he feels like he’s choking, choking, can’t breathe –
And then it recedes just enough for him to get some air, the thorns tearing his throat with each breath. The edges of his vision go from black to grey. He presses a shaking hand to his face, leaving smears of blood behind, as he squeezes his eyes shut, exhausted even though he just woke up.
Moving helps.
As he cleans up, the blooms wither just a bit, giving him space to breathe, and he only feels like he’s dying when he and Kata arrive at the barn and Cal is there. Cal is there and he smiles at Bode, small and genuine and the corners of his eyes crinkle, and Bode tucks it between roots that strangle.
Because there was a time when Cal looked at him with nothing but hurt and anger in those eyes.
And then for a long while he wouldn’t look at Bode at all.
But recently, he looks at him and Bode believes maybe, just maybe he didn’t mess this up.
Kata goes running to Mosey and Bode leans on the fence next to Cal, their elbows brushing.
There’s flowers in his lungs and a little voice in the back of his mind whispering to him that if he revealing he worked for the Empire didn’t ruin this, then surely telling Cal he – No. It’s a miracle Bode is where he is now. They’ve just gotten back into some fragile form of trust. He can’t lose this.
He can’t lose sliding into the seat next to Cal, their shoulders touching and the other man not pulling away (is it his imagination or does Cal press closer?) He can’t lose Kata excitedly telling them her plans for the day and Cal grinning alongside her even though there’s nothing planned with him. He can’t lose this warm, cozy feeling that fills the cantina so completely Bode feels weightless.
He can’t lose this.
Bode packs up the belongings of the prospector who used to live here. Housing is in short supply and people die, such is the way of living this life, and there’s plans to put together a handful of more houses – especially now that a few of Cal’s strays have decided against leaving Koboh after all – but for now people are rooming together or moving into dead men’s homes. Kata likes looking out the window and seeing nekkos and boglings instead of ISB white and cold space. Bode likes feeling dirt under his feet when he steps out onto the broken porch. There’s wind and rain and humidity and bugs and Kata is in love.
He finds a paint tin buried under a tarp. His first thought is Cal because of course it is. BD-1 is on a weekly rotation of various colors and patterns. The only reason the Mantis isn’t the same is because there isn’t enough paint.
A few hours later, Cal is blinking in surprise when Bode offers him the paint tin. He grins and takes it, twisting off the lid to inspect the color closely. BD-1 whirls his approval, already listing different designs Cal could paint on his chassis with it. Bode watches them admire his gift and the sharp thorns dull into something tolerable.
He can’t tell him how he feels, can’t admit it out loud, but there are other ways to show his affection.
Caf during a late night. Breakfast for a too early morning. Bode starts helping out with other houses and every time he finds new paint. A new blaster part is lifted from a downed raider and he polishes it to perfection before gifting it. He follows when Cal goes out into the wilds, watches his back and makes him laugh.
When his cheeks flush in happiness and his eyes glitter and his laugh changes from that raspy, guarded thing to something wild and free, Bode is helpless.
Petals trail after him in the mornings, fluttering from his lips like drops of blood.
He sits in his new usual booth – one booth over from the one he used before all…this.
When Cal sits with him, as he’s wont to do more often than not, he doesn’t want him to experience any more of his echoes. He’s already seen too much.
“Hey.”
Bode doesn’t startle at Cal’s presence. He’s been tracking him, that soft hearth fire, since he felt him appear suddenly on the roof. Who knows how much he slept last night. Probably around the same as Bode.
He tilts his head back, blinking slowly, eyelids feeling a lot heavier than usual. Sleep sounds good right now, but he just woke up, coughed up an entire blossom, and now he needs to pretend everything’s fine. Because it is. It has to be.
Cal gives him a funny look. Concern, maybe? He doesn’t need to be. And sets a hand on his forehead. The touch is so unexpected Bode doesn’t have a disarming quip ready. He leans into it, humming breathlessly as a thorn pokes him.
“You look like nekko crap, Bode.”
That gets him moving. He scoffs and takes Cal’s hand off him, manages to sit up without swaying. “You look in a mirror lately, scrapper?”
Cal laughs. And then sits next to him. Thighs touching. Shoulders brushing. He slides a bowl of…something in front of him. It’s warm and there’s cinnamon. Bode squints at it. Cal nudges over a container of honey. His favorite. Petals unfurl, bright and blooming and choking. He exhales carefully. “Found another meditation chamber in Master Khri’s notes. Wanna check it out?”
This is the first time Cal’s asked him to tag along instead of Bode just…following, hoping the other man wouldn’t turn him away.
He never did. Even though he’s pretty sure those first couple of times, back when he wouldn’t even look at him, Cal wanted to push him off a cliff.
“Sure,” scrapes out of him. Cal has that look on his face again. “Wherever you need me.”
Before they set off, Bode tucks himself in a corner and picks thorns out of his throat. Then he finds Kata up on the roof, sitting through an animated lecture from Pili. They'll have to find some learning modules for her soon. Maybe Toa will know something.
He smiles, no blood on the corners of his mouth because he's as thorough as he's ever been, and smooths back her hair to kiss her forehead and say goodbye. She doesn't watch him leave with fear in her eyes. There's no resignation. It's no longer a question of if he'll come back or not. Cal has his back.
Is waiting for him, tossing a dumapple from hand to hand; BD-1 chirping and whirling and impatient as ever to go exploring. He tosses it to Bode – who doesn't fumble when he catches it.
"You barely ate," Cal says. Bode quirks an eyebrow. The tips of his ears turn red. "According to Greez."
"Sure. Greez is definitely watching my eating habits because that's something he does."
Greez watches Cal and Merrin and Kata and literally everyone else in this outpost, but he's not watching Bode. Bode can take care of himself. Bode is a traitor. Cal may have forgiven him quickly, but he's basically the only one. Everyone has a little more self-preservation. Only a little more because otherwise Bode wouldn't be allowed on Koboh at all let alone go exploring with Cal.
Cal rolls his eyes. The blush creeps over to his cheeks. He pushes his hair out of his face – it's getting long, Bode notes. To hide the twitch of his fingers, the urge to run his hands through his hair, he takes a bite of the dumapple. It's sweet and soft, easy to chew, easier to swallow around the blood and a stubborn petal he can't cough up. Cal watches him closely, only seems satisfied when half the fruit is gone.
He pushes off the gateway signpost and starts walking towards the Southern Reach. Bode follows along because what else is he going to do? At this point Cal could say they were going back to Tanalorr and even though Bode won't stop having nightmares about that damn planet, he'll probably be the first one on the Mantis, waiting for everyone to catch up.
There's a few Imps, a couple droids. Bode hasn't had the chance to replace his jetpack, but he's still a mean shot. A 'trooper aims for Cal's unguarded back and doesn't get further than that, crumpling to the ground. Cal shoots him a half-salute in thanks, smiling, and Bode coughs into his fist, wiping the blood on his thigh aiming high at a scout trooper at the same Cal aims low
"You okay?" Bode asks after as Cal gently rotates his shoulder, hissing.
Cal pats him on the arm. "Let's keep going."
"Doesn't answer my question."
They walk in silence for a long moment. Boglings bounce up to say hi and of course Cal stoops to pet them, scritching under their chins. Bode eyes the nekkos. Riding them would make this faster, but shorten his time with Cal, but also help with this troublesome inability to breathe, but also he's pretty sure the nekkos don't like him.
Eventually they make it to Mosey's little camp. The sun is high in the sky; the air is heavy. Bode hates humidity with a passion. Cal, the menace, seems to thrive. He plops down on a crate, taking a long drink from a canteen. He watches him a little too closely. The long line of his throat. The sweat staining his shirt. The way his hair curls and clings to his cheek. He's just so…pretty.
Bode averts his eyes when Cal holds out the canteen, takes it without looking. He drinks and tastes only blood.
"Are you okay?" Cal asks quietly.
He blinks. "I'm fine."
Cal hums, shoving the canteen back in his satchel. "You used to be a better liar."
Bode flinches, but is spared from having to say anything in response by Cal whistling sharply. Some nearby nekkos lift their heads. Cal rolls his eyes and whistles again, waving a hand, muttering about stubborn hunters and even more stubborn nekkos.
"The hill gets steeper," Cal warns him, swinging up on a dark brown nekko easy-as-you-please, the tone of his voice…off. Bode is a little less graceful, the nekko stomping nervously as if it can sense the blooming emotions in his chest.
Imps swap out for raiders, and Bode watches Cal where he’s sitting on the ground, inspecting the jetpack that used to belong to one of those raiders. They had been formidable but no match for the two of them.
His brows furrow, his mouth twists in concentration. He swears at a back panel, but he doesn’t need Bode’s help with whatever he’s doing, so Bode goes to investigate the prospector camp this small group had taken over. It’s too late for the prospector unfortunately. He comes across a sealed crate and doesn’t jump when BD-1 swoops in without him asking and slices it for him, chirping brightly before zooming back over to Cal. He glances over and Cal’s looking at him, eyes dark and contemplative.
Bode swallows and turns back to the crate, rummaging through the junk until he finds something interesting. A lightsaber emitter that’s so rusted he can’t tell what era it’s from, a collection of priorite, and – he grins.
“Hey, Cal.” He turns around, poncho on full display in his hands. It’s dark blue with red stitching. “What do you think? Worthy of your collection?”
The joke is that Cal never turns down a poncho. Even the ratty, smelly ones he found in the oggdo’s lair are coveted.
Cal hums, head tilted, and he smiles back. He stands, hands and thighs covered in grease from the jetpack, a smudge of dirt on his cheek, and walks right up to Bode, inspecting the poncho with a critical eye.
“Nah,” he says. Bode’s chest goes cold. “It’s a little too big for me.” He meets Bode’s eyes. “What about you?”
Bode’s hands drop. “What about me?”
Cal takes the poncho from him, their fingers brushing, and he holds it up against Bode, his smile going crooked, eyes warm. “It’s a good color on you,” he says. “And you’re in desperate need of a poncho.”
“In this humidity?” Bode laughs even though it hurts.
“Fair, but…” Cal lays the poncho over Bode’s chest as if to test the size without making him wear it. His hands ghost over his shoulders, down his chest, smoothing out wrinkles, and Bode can’t breathe. “I think you should take it. It’ll be good for whenever we go back to Jedha.”
“Okay,” Bode says quietly. Cal’s hands leave and the poncho starts to fall. He catches it numbly, watching Cal go and heft up the jetpack.
“This is also yours,” he says, bringing it over. “I meant to get you one earlier, but this is the first time I managed to get one intact.”
This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. His lungs are tangled with thorns and stems and a full bloom presses into his diaphragm. If he doesn’t sit down soon, he’s doing to collapse, but he locks his knees and ignores the way his vision spots at the corners.
“Thanks,” he says instead of a million other things.
According to Santari Khri’s notes, it’s called the Chamber of Enlightenment.
There is no enlightenment to be found here. It was raided a long, long time ago and has been reclaimed by nature and the occasional sapient who needed somewhere to hide out. Bode sits on a broken platform as Cal explores the room, the Force alternating between righteous frustration and the hazy veil of various echoes. He doesn’t know what Cal sees, but none of it is good.
Bode regulates his breathing the best he can, jetpack pinched between his heels on the ground, poncho wrapped around his neck like a towel. BD-1 sticks close to him for some reason. The droid scans the jetpack for the hundredth time, beeps, and scans it again, one foot on top of Bode’s toes to give him a good angle.
“There’s nothing here,” Cal mutters. He picks up a rock with the Force and throws it as hard as he can. It lands in the pool of tar seeping from under a rock formation and sinks slowly. “Kriff.”
The silence that falls after that makes Bode’s wheezing so much louder than he thought it was. Each breath crackles and whistles. Cal whirls around in shock. Bode blinks slowly, eyelashes sticking together, and then next thing he knows he’s on the ground, leaning against that broken platform he’d just been sitting on, and Cal is there, one hand on his thigh, the other reaching up, up, brushing sweaty hair from his face then lingering as if he wants to cup his jaw.
“Bode? Bode, hey. What’s wrong? Were you hit?”
Bode grabs his wrist and just hangs on, squeezing too tightly. There’s a jetpack next to him. A poncho draped over his shoulders. Cal brought him out to a meditation chamber when no one else has been with him in one before. There’s not enough gifts in the galaxy Bode can give him to outweigh how many flowers are in his chest right now.
"What are we doing here?" Bode mumbles.
Cal frowns. "The meditation chamber – ."
"What am I doing here?" He squeezes his wrist. Tastes perfume on his tongue. "Why'd you bring me here?"
"I…." Cal gives in and cups his face, pressing his thumb on a beauty mark. Bode doesn't lean into it. "The chambers always helped me whenever I needed clarity or focus. You've been….struggling. I wanted to help."
Bode feels his sincerity in the Force and hates himself for not hiding better. "I'm fine."
"Do you ever believe me when I say that?"
He presses his lips together in a thin line before staggering to his feet. "I'm going back to the outpost."
"Bode – ."
"Come with me or not. I don't care."
Except he does care. So much. Too much. Cal stands there for a heartbeat, two, three. Bode's shoulders fall, his steps falter, and then Cal hurries after him until he's side by side and doesn't say another word about it.
He does crack a joke about a scavenger droid though and looks to Bode with such an earnest, endearing, expression on his face his discomfort melts away and he smiles – not at the joke. It was terrible.
He stirs awake to Kata crawling into bed with him. The sun is still below the horizon. The Force is soft and sleepy which means no nightmares. Bode opens his arms and Kata snuggles close. He feels her breathe, her heartbeat, and lets them lull him back to a fitful doze.
Until she whispers, "Are you sick?"
Bode tightens his arms around her. "I'm okay."
"You're not."
"I will be."
The lie tastes bitter. He has no idea if he'll ever be okay. He'll either suffocate or driven to distraction in a fight and cut down.
The idea of falling out of love never occurs to him.
Neither does confessing.
The night is cool for once, there's the promise of rain, and Bode wanders the dirt streets. His poncho fits perfectly and is just thick enough to keep him warm without smothering. The lights on top of the saloon are dim, but he sees a shadow moving up there. One too small to be Pili.
Against his better judgment, he makes his way over. The security droid lets him through despite it being late. His name is one of the few on the all-access list. He hesitates at the door, but the pull of Cal Kestis is too much to ignore.
Cal kneels at one of the plots, alone. Bode steps up behind him, admiring the glint of his hair in the scant light. He wants to bury his fingers in it. It's the worst sort of temptation. Instead he leans into the smoldering fire in the Force, feeling it warm his bones and the blooms in his chest turn towards it like it's the sun.
"I'm sorry."
Bode startles. Cal twists to look at him, still kneeling and looking up at him, his face cast in shadows.
"I thought I was helping, but I think I made it worse."
Well. Yes and no. Cal only made it worse by being himself. He'd gotten back to the house after that excursion and dropped to his knees, hacking up full blossoms and then some. He tried, and that just made Bode fall in love with him a little more.
Cal reaches out and snags the bottom of his poncho, rubbing his thumb along the fine stitching on the hem. "I'm just…worried about you."
"Normally it's the other way around," Bode says flippantly, aiming for teasing and falling short because Cal expression is so serious
There's a moment when neither of them seem to even breathe, and then Cal grabs something behind him.
"Kata brought me this."
And Bode freezes in horror as Cal produces a mangled, bloody fireblossom.
"She found it under your bed."
Fuck. Bode stumbles back, but Cal's grip on his poncho keeps him from making it far. He stands slowly, flowers cradled in his palm like it's something precious instead of something that Bode's been allowing to slowly kill him over the last three months.
"Bode," Cal says so softly, so sweetly his chest shudders. He can see the moment Cal realizes. His eyes flick down briefly, then back up. "You don't have to keep hiding."
"I do," he says desperately. "Don't you see? Everything is perfect. I can't – We just got to perfect. I can't ruin this."
"This isn't any sort of perfect. You're killing yourself."
Bode tears his poncho from his grip to turn and cough into his hand. Blood drips from his palm. Cal doesn't let him hide away. He makes Bode unfurl from his hunched position and takes his face in both hands, thumbing tears off his cheeks.
"Please stop hiding," Cal begs softly.
And it's only because this is Cal asking that he says so quietly it's more of a ragged breath than actual words: "I love you."
Cal's expression morphs from concerned to relieved to giddy and he kisses Bode like there isn't blood on his lips and a petal stuck to his teeth. He kisses like he's been waiting just as long as him if not longer for this moment of revelation. A pressure fills his chest, fills the Force like a tsunami gaining momentum
And them Bode is pushing him away as he falls to his knees, choking and coughing, blood and spit and thorns and blossoms spilling from his lungs. Cal holds him through it, murmuring sweet nothings and sweet everythings, brushing back his hair, gathering the edges of his poncho so it doesn't get caught in the crossfire.
Bode inhales his first full breath in months and exhales it in a wet laugh. "You too?"
"I didn't want to ruin this," Cal echoes ruefully. "But I'm pretty good at giving my emotions to the Force. You are too good at hiding." He swoops in and kisses Bode again, and again, and again. Bode can feel the shape of his smile, can taste his relief. "You don't need to hide anymore."
He hooks his hands on Cal's forearms to keep him in place. "I love you," he repeats, smiling.
Cal smiles back. "I love you too," he says and Bode's chest fills with fire instead of flowers.