Cody learns to love

The one chapter where someone wakes Cody up and it's not Boba

  Fun fact: I was originally planning on making a drunk Obi-Wan call Cody and make some drunken love confession at 3 am but then I decided that would be too un-slowburn and wrote it differently.

  Cody was having a peaceful night of sleep. He went to sleep seconds after he tucked Kix and Jesse in, his only stop being Fox's room to give him an early bedtime kiss. Boba was still waking up every hour or so but Cody was already used to that. Wooley seemed to have gotten used to Boba's crying too because he no longer woke up when Boba cried.

  Cody was woken up from his sleep for the sixth time that night. It had to be past midnight because the house was entirely silent. No taping on the keyboard, no muffled sound of the TV playing, no rustling of someone emptying the cupboards. Not even Boba was crying.

  Wait a damn minute. If Boba wasn't crying, what woke him up? Could it be one of the other children? But if it were, he would hear small feet creeping across the house or water running in one of the refreshers. But he heard nothing. Was it his phone, then? But who would call him in the middle of the night?

  Cody checked his phone. He winced at the brightness of the screen but found no notifications. Weird. What else could wake him up at - he glanced at the screen of his phone again - two thirty six in the morning?

  The answer came not even ten seconds later when he heard a quiet noise. Something like a sob. And it came from the refresher.

  Cody sighed. He couldn't ignore that. It probably wasn't any of the younger children, they would just wake him up and not hide in the refresher, but whether it was Bly or Rex or Wolffe or even Fox, they clearly needed him. He made his way to the refresher door, quietly so he wouldn't startle whoever was in there.

  Cody knocked. There was no sound for a moment, then a choked up sob. He opened the door and saw...

  "Echo? What are you doing here?" Cody crouched in front of the boy. Echo was curled up on the floor, hugging his plush tooka, and he seemed to be trying not to make any sounds.

  "N-nothing," Echo choked out.

  Cody sighed. It was more likely that Jango stopped drinking than that 'nothing' was really nothing. He sat down next to Echo. "Tell me what happened, Ech'ika."

  Echo didn't tell him anything but he threw himself at Cody and burried his face in Cody's chest. He started crying openly and what could Cody do except for pulling him closer and comforting him?

  "Shhh... Just tell me what's wrong and I will make everything alright, I promise. Shhh..." he rocked Echo gently. The crying children never got any easier. Whether it was over a scraped knee, a broken toy, an argument or whatever, it still hurt to see his little siblings crying, no matter how many times he has been in the exact same situation.

  "Y-you didn't g-give me a be-bedtime kiss," Echo sniffed.

  "I thought you didn't want one. All you had to do was ask," Cody playfully kissed the tip of Echo's nose, then his cheeks and then finally his forehead. "Better?"

  "No," Echo sobbed. And Cody got this feeling of deja vu.

***

Cody just finished his math homework. He glanced at the clock. It was past midnight already but he supposed he could spare half an hour more to at least read through his biology notes. He had a good memory, maybe he could pass with a B if he read it now and then again in the morning. But first, he needed to use the refresher.

  Cody tiptoed his way around the rooms. Everyone was asleep, unless Bly was scrolling through holo net until morning again but Cody supposed that literally falling asleep during history class taught him his lesson.