Cody learns to love

The one chapter where Bly moves out for good

  It was time for Bly to finally move out for good. He's been progresively spending more and more time at Aayla's apartment and he's been honestly considering moving out for quite some time. When Aayla found out she was pregnant, it was clear that it was time to move in permanently.

  Bly still found himself hesitating. It wasn't that he didn't want to live with Aayla, he was actually looking forward to waking besides her every morning and not only every other morning. But it still meant leaving home, leaving Cody. It was foolish, Bly knew, he was twenty three years old and he wasn't supposed to be afraid of moving away from his big brother. But he was afraid, even if he would never admit it to anyone.

  Now that Emerie was there, Bly had no choice but to move out. He couldn't let Fox and Wolffe share a room, which he was fairly sure they were both going to hate, just to move out a few weeks later.

  It didn't really dawn on him that he was moving out until he started packing his stuff. And that was when he started panicking for real. Because he was moving out. Because he wasn't going to wake up to Cody singing a terrible song about brushing teeth to the kids anymore. Because Jesse wasn't going to ask him to borrow his laptop every afternoon anymore. Because Rex wasn't going to tease him about the soap operas he watched. He could go on for a long, long time. He didn't have that time, he needed to move his stuff out of the room before Emerie got back home.

  He checked the clock. He still had about two hours before Cody and the kids came. Better get on it, then. Bly sighed as he opened the first bag he brought with him and started packing some clothes.

  "Bly?"

  Bly turned around sharply to see Fox. What was he even doing there? He was supposed to come in an hour or so. "How come you are not at school?"

  "The teacher is sick."

  "And shouldn't you be like... happy?" Bly knew that was a stupid question. Of course Fox wasn't happy someone dared to change his precious routine. But Bly couldn't do what Cody did all the time, just switch to Fox-friendly talking the second he saw Fox. 

  "I like math."

  Of course Fox liked math. Bly always forgot just how weird Fox was. Don't take him wrong, he didn't have anything against Fox. They just didn't really have anything in common and rarely talked about something different than chores or stuff like that. They never bonded the way Bly bonded with some of their other siblings and was pretty sure that he wasn't high on Fox's list of favorite siblings either.

  "I wanted to ask if you... needed some help? With packing?"

  An extra pair of hands couldn't hurt, right? "A little help would be nice, thanks. Do you think you can pack the bookshelf?"

  "Sure."

  Bly tossed a bag in Fox's direction. He watched fox for a bit, how he started carefully taking a book after book and neatly stack them in the bag. Maybe he should let Fox pack everything so he could impress Aayla with his sudden ordering skills. Too bad he had a heart.

  "How to cope with neglect?" Fox read the title of one of the books out loud. Bly remembered seeing that book in sale when he was still a teenager. He bought it more out of hope than conviction that it could actually help him cope with Jango's neglect and abuse but the book surprisingly really helped him. Maybe not a lot but he did feel a bit better after reading it and doing some of the things the book recommended.

  "I think I got it from a friend," Bly lied. He couldn't tell Fox that he still felt hurt by Jango years after seeing the man for the last time and decided to buy a book. Fox would laugh at him. Scratch that, he was probably going to laugh anyway.