Chapter Text
The worst day of Ben’s life begins with a number of missed calls from Anakin, and an even larger number of texts. When Ben finally gets around to calling his adoptive brother back, he finds that it’s literally just Anakin being as dramatic as ever. Something about wanting to propose to his girlfriend, Ben thinks, and he’s happy for his brother, of course, but it’s hardly the sort of thing that requires blowing up his phone in the small hours of the morning.
“Can we talk about this when I haven’t just woken up?” he snaps into the phone, waiting for the water for his tea to come to a boil. He finds his largest cup, the one that requires three teabags to properly brew a cup, and sets it on the countertop with the aforementioned three bags of his most caffeinated tea. He has a feeling that he’ll need it, not that a series of texts from Anakin is a particularly strange occurrence.
“You’re in a grumpy mood,” Anakin grumbles, but he sighs immediately after and adds, “But fine. Call me when you get out of work, old man.”
Ben will not, not that he knows that when he promises Anakin that he will.
He’s at work for less than an hour when he’s called into the floor supervisor’s office. Another hour later, and he’s walking back down to his car with all of his belongings he’d kept at his desk in a spare cardboard banker box. Budget cuts, the supervisor had said. You understand. He doesn’t, actually.
I heard they’re just randomly drawing names, one of his coworkers (former coworkers) had said, helping him pack up his things. Horrible luck.
Horrible luck, indeed.
He’s not a day drinker, much as the bottle of wine and decanter of whisky in his kitchen are trying to convince him otherwise. It’s not even noon yet, when all is said and done. Spontaneously unemployed and in no mood to listen to Anakin gush about how happy he and Padme are going to be, Ben shoves his phone in between the cushions of his couch and leaves it there, planning on saying that he hadn’t been able to find it if asked about it later.
It starts buzzing angrily and incessantly not ten minutes later. He digs the phone back out from between the cushions, fully intent on telling Anakin where he can shove his good mood, when he catches sight of the number on the screen. It isn’t Anakin.
“Hi, this is the coroner’s office of the Emporia Police Department. Is this Ben Kenobi?”
Emporia? Ben doesn’t know where Emporia is, doesn’t know anyone who would be within the jurisdiction of their police department and certainly doesn’t know why their coroner would be contacting him.
“Speaking?”
The polite, even-voiced woman continues speaking, and Ben’s ears fill with a dull ringing when she explains that she’s calling because they have Qui-Gon’s body down in their morgue. She’s much kinder about it, definitely not so crass, but Ben couldn’t recount the exact words if he’d tried. They’re asking him if he’d be able to make his way down to Emporia to confirm that it is his apparently deceased adoptive father, and he doesn’t really have a reason not to, since he’s no longer employed.
“I’ll be there as soon as I’m able,” he agrees blankly. “It’s a bit of a drive, I’m afraid.”
“Of course. Thank you, Mr Kenobi. And I’m sorry for your loss.”
Emporia, as it turns out, is only about an hour away from his home, and Ben makes the drive without fully being aware that he’d even left his apartment and gotten into his car in the first place. He’s led down to the sublevel, and, upon confirming that yes, that is Qui-Gon, is presented with his belongings and a few resources for funeral arrangements and sent back on his way. He still needs to call Anakin. He has to do a lot of things.
It’s midway through the afternoon when he returns home. Ben isn’t a day drinker, but sometimes exceptions can be made.
The will reading is a surprise, for a few reasons. To start, it had been an accident that had killed Qui-Gon, so Ben hadn’t expected there to be a will to read in the first place. He also hadn’t realized just how much Qui-Gon had to his name. He’d been a weird one, not holding onto too many things once Anakin had been old enough to move out. The belongings that neither of them had known their father owned are split pretty evenly between the two of them, and neither of them feel any need to try to dispute the contents of the will.
“And, finally,” the lawyer says, voice dry and indifferent, “I leave the deed to Temple Inn to my son, Ben Kenobi.”
“Temple Inn?” Ben repeats.
“It’s an inn located in New Zealand,” the lawyer explains. “The address is written on the deed, of course. I’m afraid I have no other information for you regarding the building, or the state of the business.”
Later, in Ben’s apartment as they try to figure out funeral arrangements—or if they even want a funeral—Anakin huffs suddenly and says, “He doesn’t strike me as an innkeeper.”
“He didn’t really strike anyone as anything in particular,” Ben points out. He’d brewed a cup of herbal tea for each of them, even though Anakin doesn’t much care for anything lighter than espresso. “I don’t even know what I’m meant to do with an inn.”
“Sell it?” Anakin offers. “Or, well. Google it, at least. See what the fuck it is.”
Ben Googles it. There’s very little information on it, besides the fact that it exists at all. “There isn’t even any booking information,” he muses. “Seems to be closed down indefinitely.”
“Hm.” Anakin shrugs. “Weird. Yeah, I’d just sell it.”
Ben doesn’t sell it. In fact, the more time passes that he doesn’t hear back from any of the job applications he’d put in, the more research he does into the logistics of being an innkeeper at all.
“You’re not actually considering just fucking off and moving to Australia, are you?” Anakin asks one night, leaning against the kitchen counter as Ben plates up dinner.
“New Zealand,” Ben corrects absently. “And yes, actually, I am.”
He hadn’t been, not at first. But if he doesn’t get another job soon, he won’t be able to keep paying rent on his apartment. As it is, he’s already had to adjust his grocery shopping to include cheaper and more filling foods than he’d previously gone for. If he were to go to this inn that he’s apparently now the owner of, he won’t have to pay anybody rent, and he’ll be able to figure out a way to get the inn to start making him money.
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Anakin pushes himself off the counter and takes the plate that Ben hands him. “I mean, really?”
“My mind is the only thing I feel I haven’t lost,” Ben counters. “I’ve lost my job, we’ve lost our father, and I’m about to lose my apartment. What else have I got to lose?”
“Your mind, apparently.”
Ben reaches out a hand and smacks his brother in the arm. “Apart from that.”
Anakin shrugs. “Alright, well. Good luck, I guess.”
Even with as many preparations as Ben has to make to actually go through with this, he’s still willing to call it an impulse decision. It takes a while to get everything in order, the proper visa and the plane ticket and the arrangements to get into the town where the inn is from the airport. He’d made all the plans as if on autopilot, not having really fully thought all of it through. He realizes the mistake to this now, standing in front of the dilapidated inn that he’d gone to all this trouble for. It’s falling apart, whole pieces of the roof missing and a front porch that looks like it’ll collapse if Ben so much as looks at it the wrong way. It may have been nice, once, but it certainly isn’t, now. He can’t. He can’t stay here. It isn’t safe .
Fuck, he hasn’t got enough money to find someplace else to live in the meantime.
“You alright over there?”
Ben turns around when he’s addressed, finds a kind-faced, dark-skinned woman standing near the remains of a fence around the outer edge of the property, hair in thick braids draped over her shoulders. “Just fine, thank you.”
The woman steps over a particularly low part of the fence, moving closer to him so that they don’t have to shout to speak to each other. “What brings you here to Rotorua, stranger?”
Ben points at the building in front of them. “I, ah, I’m just—”
“I’d heard that inn’s changed hands recently,” she says, putting him out of his misery trying to explain what he’s doing. “Got your work cut out for you.” She holds out a hand for him to shake. “Name’s Shaak. I own an inn of my own on the other side of town. If you decide to keep this one, I can help you get your feet off the ground.”
It’s a kind offer. “I’m not sure I will,” he confesses. He had, he’d been so certain that he was going to do this, but now that he’s here and looking at the state the building’s in, he doesn’t know if it’s going to be worth it. “But I appreciate the offer all the same.” And then, because it occurs to him that he’d forgotten, “And I’m Ben.”
Shaak, to her credit, just seems amused. “I wouldn’t give up that quickly, if I were you. There’s good money in the tourism industry here, if you can get yourself into it.”
Even so, the prospect of the repairs he’d have to make leaves him thinking it would be at least two years before he broke even, and that’s not counting however long it’ll take him to get the inn up and running and able to make money in the first place.
Shaak nudges him. “Give it a week. I’ll even let you stay at my inn for free, if you’d like. Get someone to help you assess the damage, place a rough estimate on cost and time.”
“I haven’t even got the money for an appraisal, I’m afraid,” he confides. “And I couldn’t put you out for a week like that.”
Shaak waves him off. “You’ll need someplace to stay until you can get a plane home, regardless,” she points out. “And I’ve plenty of room. It’s the offseason.”
Ben has a plan for the day. Well rested and more prepared for the state his inn is in, he’s going to actually make a plan for getting it up and running. He isn’t a quitter, first off, and Anakin would never let him live it down if he came home after only a week, not when it had taken him almost two months to get everything together to come out here in the first place.
Step one is returning to the inn and braving the myriad of health and safety violations to assess the damage himself.
The porch is rotting away in places, looking like it’ll crumble to dust the moment he steps on it. And Ben’s not even wearing any boots, doesn’t own any. Just an old pair of running shoes, falling apart with age and use. “What am I doing?” he mumbles to himself, carefully stepping onto the porch and bracing himself to fall right through. Miraculously, it holds up, even though it creaks ominously at him as he makes his way across it.
Overall, the interior isn’t nearly as bad as Ben had expected. The wallpaper is peeling in more places than it isn’t, and the floor’s warped in more than a few spots. He doesn’t trust the staircase to his left in the slightest, even though it doesn’t look like it’s visibly unsafe. He doesn’t have any clue how he’s going to fix any of this, and he’s sure that the upper floors are much worse than the bottom one, given all the holes in the roof.
He sighs, and climbs the stairs, even against his better judgement. The second floor isn't too bad, though Ben barely does more than a brief assessment from the landing. The top floor is, in fact, much worse than the bottom one. So much so, in fact, that he doesn’t even step off the top step, afraid of finding a weak spot with his feet and plummeting down to the floor below.
It’s going to be impossible to fix this himself, unfortunately, and he hasn’t got the money to hire someone else to do it. At this rate, it doesn’t even matter how much money that’s going to be. Between materials and labor, it won’t be enough.
The next step is finding a hardware store. There must be someone there who would be able to direct him towards somebody who could help him with the restoration there. After all, a contractor would be exactly the sort of person frequenting those sorts of shops. He assumes, anyway. He’s never met a contractor in person, so he can’t be completely certain.
Shaak had helpfully told him the name of the best hardware store in town, and he asks around until he gets pointed in the right direction. The store itself looks quaint, in the way most of the stores on the town’s main street look. He steps inside, a bell chiming merrily as he opens the door. It smells strongly of fresh lumber inside, although Ben can’t see the lumber anywhere. He sees aisles of light fixtures and tools and all manner of things he wouldn’t know what to do with even if someone told him, and he certainly thinks this is a good start to stocking up materials to fix up the inn, but he doesn’t see anything that would help him with the floors or the roof.
“What can I do for you today, young man?” the man behind the counter asks him, smiling kindly up at him. He’s an older gentleman, maybe about fifty or so, and Ben instantly feels welcomed into this little shop in a way that no customer service worker has ever made him feel in his life.
“Hello, my name is Ben, and I’m looking to restore the Temple Inn on the edge of town?”
The shopkeeper nods understandingly. “You’ve got your work cut out for you,” he tells him, the exact thing that Shaak had said yesterday. “That building hasn’t been up to code since the original owner died, some ten years ago. Passed it onto her son. I believe he sold it not too long ago to someone, not that he ever said who to.”
Must have been Qui-Gon, then. “I believe that someone may have been my father,” Ben muses. “He died about three months ago, left me the inn in his will.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss, then,” the shopkeeper says, and he sounds more sincere than Ben thinks anybody’s ever been. Like they aren’t just empty words, like he really means them. “I’m happy to help you in any way that I can,” he adds. “Anything I can get for you. Restoration’s tough work, but getting in the supplies will be easy enough.”
“Actually, I was hoping you might point me towards a contractor,” Ben tells him. “Someone who could give me some sort of quote on price and time for the project.”
“Oh, you’ll want one of the Fetts, for that.”
“And where would I find one?”
“Oh, all over,” the shopkeep says with an amused smile. “Can’t go ten feet in this town without finding one. In fact, there’s one right behind you.” He leans around Ben and calls, “Cody! This fine young man is looking for a Fett!”
Ben turns, finds a man about his age standing not five feet behind him with a pack of drill bits and a sledgehammer in his hands. He’s…
He’s fucking hot, is what he is. Dark hair that’s just long enough to curl, tattoos on his golden skin peeking out from underneath his shirt collar and all down his arms, wide nose and sharp features. Ben had been looking for a contractor, sure, but not one who looked like this. He doesn’t think he can handle being in this Cody’s presence for as long as it’ll take to get back to the inn, much less for as long as the restoration will take.
“If it’s about Fives again, tell him I’m retired.”
“Ben here is looking to restore the Temple Inn,” the shopkeeper explains. “Would you be so kind as to pop down there and give him a quote?”
Cody sighs. “Plo…”
“You don’t have to,” Ben rushes to assure him. “I’ve been told I can find another Fett not ten feet from here.”
“Wolffe’s at the paint counter today,” Plo adds helpfully behind him. “A little more than ten feet, technically, although still within the shop. You’ll have to wait until he’s off though, if you’re willing to hold off for a couple more hours.”
Cody sighs again. “That’s quite alright. I haven’t got anything else to do today, anyway. Better find some way to keep busy, or else the next person looking for me will have some complaint against Fives.”
Fives, Ben can only assume, is another one of these Fetts.
Cody steps up to the counter and sets his spoils on top of it. “Now, are you going to let me pay for these today, or is your register going to be conveniently down again?”
“You know how these damn computers are,” Plo says, and even Ben, who doesn’t know him at all, can tell that he’s completely full of shit. “Horribly unreliable.”
Cody scoffs. “Alright, well. Take it out of Wolffe’s pay, then. I don’t care anymore.” He tilts his head towards the door. “Shall we?”
Ben nods, suddenly feeling incredibly out of his depth. He follows Cody out and down the street to where an old beat up pick up truck sits parked by the sidewalk. Ben almost forgets that the steering wheel is on the opposite side of the one he’s used to, but manages to avoid embarrassing himself in front of the remarkably attractive stranger that the kind shopkeep had introduced him to.
“So, how’d you come to be in charge of the restoration of the old Temple Inn, anyway?” Cody asks him, as they climb into the cab.
“It’s mine now, I suppose,” Ben explains. “My father left it to me when he died.”
Cody doesn’t say anything for a moment. “I see.” Ben isn’t sure what exactly it is that Cody sees, or if he even does. “When we heard that the inn had been sold, we expected to meet the new owner. He never showed up, and we assumed he’d heard somehow how bad it was.”
“He never even told me he’d bought an inn,” Ben says, settling into the seat as Cody drives them down to the inn. “I had no idea he owned one until the lawyer told me it was mine, now.”
Cody looks shocked, like he can’t imagine that Ben’s father wouldn’t mention something as important as buying himself a business. “Did it just never come up?”
Ben shrugs. “I couldn’t say. A lot of things never came up with him, I suppose.” Largely due to the fact that Qui-Gon never had time to talk to him, it seemed like. Any time Ben had tried, Qui-Gon had either not picked up, or had only had a few minutes before saying he’d had something else he had to do and hanging up. “Regardless, I’d just lost my job when he died, and I must admit I’d liked the sound of a fresh start.”
“And I take it you had no idea the state the inn you’ve inherited was in until the moment you saw it for yourself?” Cody guesses.
“That would be correct.”
Cody lets out a low whistle when they pull up in front of the inn. “Worse than I remember,” he mutters. A bad sign, as far as Ben can tell. “Easiest part’s gonna be the landscaping, I can tell you that right now. And the porch and fence are gonna have to be completely rebuilt.” They haven’t even gotten out of the truck, yet.
Completely rebuilding the fence and porch sounds expensive. Contractors are not landscapers, so that’ll be at least two separate people that Ben has to pay for. A plumber and electrician, too, of course, later down the line when the structure is able to handle them. Maybe it’s time that Ben starts to brace himself to put up with Anakin’s relentless teasing for the rest of his life for only lasting a week into his fresh start.
They climb out of the truck and head towards the inn together. “Have you been inside, yet?” Cody asks him, kicking the first porch step with the toe of his boot.
“I have.” Ben isn’t much looking forward to pressing his luck with the porch again. He’d survived the first time, he doesn’t know he’ll be so fortunate again. “The first floor didn’t look too bad, but I didn’t dare brave the second or third.”
“No, with the roof in the state it’s in, I wouldn’t recommend it,” Cody agrees. “You’re lucky it doesn’t rain here more than it does, otherwise the building would probably be condemned.”
Oh, wouldn’t that be just Ben’s luck.
“Anyway, I think it’ll probably all be repairable, but it’ll be a lot of work.” He steps up onto the porch and in through the front door, seemingly entirely unconcerned about the risk of falling through to the ground. “Oh, no, this isn’t too bad at all.” Ben follows him, much more cautiously, until they’re both standing in what was once the check-in area. “We’ll have to replace the flooring, and I’d recommend ditching the wallpaper entirely, although that’s more a matter of personal opinion.”
They’ll have to replace a lot of things, if they’re moving the subject to interior design instead of structural integrity. “Oh, you don’t like the English roses? It does so remind me of my grandmother’s sofa.”
“How can you tell they were English roses?” Cody asks him. “There isn’t enough of it to even tell what color it used to be.”
“Well, what else would it be?” he asks sardonically. “An old-fashioned wallpaper for an old-fashioned inn.”
Cody snorts. “Of course, how could I be so blind.”
They poke around the inn for the better part of an hour, Cody inspecting everything as closely as he dares and Ben trying so very hard not to spend too much time appreciating the way that the tattoos dance when his muscles tense or the way he fills out the light wash jeans he’s wearing.
“Alright, so, be honest with me,” Ben says, as they make their way back out to the truck. “How much am I looking at?”
“Better part of a year, at least.” Cody glances back at it. “Not more than a year and a half, especially if Plo puts in rush for all the things that we’ll need to order in. You’ll have it up and running in time for your second tourist season, for sure. Wish I could promise you the next one, but that’s much too soon.”
Ben doesn’t like that he hasn’t given him a price yet. He didn’t mean time, he meant money.
“And the cost?”
Cody blinks at him, like he hadn’t thought about that aspect yet. “Well, that depends, I suppose. Are we doing the work for you, or are you helping us with it?”
Ben doesn’t know who we might be any more than he’d know how to help. “I’m not exactly a handyman,” he points out, and he’d assumed that Cody would be able to tell that from the…everything, about him.
“Doesn’t mean you can’t at least put in the effort,” Cody says. “It’s up to you, of course, I won’t force you to do anything you’re not comfortable doing.”
“I’ll help in any way that I can,” Ben promises. Even if it’s just handing things to Cody and whatever help he scrounges up, he isn’t about to just let them do all the work.
Cody smiles. “Well, then. Can’t charge you if you’re working with us, can I?”
Ben blinks. He feels distinctly like he’s been tricked, somehow. “Wait, hang on, you can’t—I’m not—Surely you don’t expect me to let you do all this work for free?”
Cody shrugs. “You can’t force me to accept money any more than I can force Plo to.” He grins wider, and it’s easy for Ben to ignore the way it settles weird in his stomach while he’s busy trying to figure out what exactly is happening to this conversation. “Have you eaten lunch, yet?”
Kit’s Cafe is just as quaint as everything else in this town. Kit himself—at least, Ben assumes him to be Kit—is an eccentric man, but so incredibly friendly. It’s difficult to say for sure how old he may be, crow’s feet and laugh lines on his face, but his hair is curled into dreadlocks and dyed a vibrant green, held back from his face with a wide headband. He fawns over Ben and Cody both, filling them up with so much food that Ben’s not sure how he’s meant to finish it all. Even less sure how he’s going to pay for it all.
“Oh, what did you find at the Temple Inn?” Kit asks Cody, and he doesn’t sit at their table, but Ben suspects that may only be because it only seats two.
“It’ll be rough,” Cody says, taking a sip of his water. “But we’ll get it up and running eventually.”
Kit grins, fond and lost in memory. “I stayed at that inn when I first moved out here, you know.”
“Is that so?” Cody asks dryly, and it almost sounds like Cody’s already heard this story.
Kit rolls his eyes, but turns to Ben and continues, “I moved out here on something of a whim. Didn’t have any place else to go. I stayed there for about a month until Plo found out. Practically dragged me down to his house the next day. ‘Course, he didn’t have a spare room for me. Idiot wouldn’t even let me sleep on the couch, he took it and made me sleep in the bed. Lasted about a week before I realized he was killing his back.” The grin widens. “Ended up sharing the bed. A compromise, you see.”
Ben blinks up at him, completely taken aback. He’s only just met this man, this is a lot of information to get when he’s pretty sure that Kit doesn’t even have his name yet. Or maybe he does, if Plo might have told him.
“Anyway.” Kit raps his knuckles on the tabletop, and Ben catches sight of a wedding band on his left hand. Ah. A few extra things click into place for him. “No pressure or anything, right? I’m not gonna be upset if you give the inn a more modern look or anything.”
“Oh, well, that’s a relief,” Ben says, laying a hand on his chest. “Cody suggested doing away with the lovely wallpaper entirely.”
“Now, hang on—”
“Cody!” Kit’s grinning, still, clearly not actually angry. “How could you?” He nudges Cody’s shoulder. “Just for that, the food’s on the house.”
That’s…not a punishment, as far as Ben’s aware. Cody doesn’t seem to agree, grumbling into his glass of water as Kit laughs, patting Ben on the shoulder and walking away. “Enjoy the rest of your afternoon!” he calls as he goes.
“If neither of them accept payment for anything, how do they make money?” Ben hasn’t forgotten about the way that Cody had asked Plo are you going to let me pay back at the hardware store, like this was a regular occurrence for the both of them. Even now, he doesn’t seem surprised that Kit isn’t letting him pay for their meal, either.
“Oh, I’ve no idea,” Cody snorts. “I’m pretty sure it’s just my family they don't take payment from, at least.”
“It would seem I’ve been roped into it, as well,” Ben points out. “Even Shaak is letting me stay at her inn free of charge.”
“Nah, Shaak’ll put you to work before too long,” Cody assures him. “Probably just housekeeping and gardening, if I had to guess.” He shrugs. “As for Plo and Kit, I wouldn’t worry too much about them. They’ve been running these shops for years, they know what they’re doing.”
And Ben believes Cody, because Cody’s known them for probably something close to his entire life, if he had to guess, but he doesn’t see how. It’s becoming increasingly likely that Plo won’t charge Ben the proper price for any of the materials it’ll take to fix the inn up, which is going to put him down to a severe deficit. It’s no way to run a business.
“Anyway, speaking of Plo, we should get back to his shop. Get an order placed. We’ll need to get some lumber and sealant to get that porch fixed up.” Cody stacks their empty plates up and gets to his feet. “Maybe we’ll be able to talk Plo into at least letting us pay him cost.”
They are not able to convince Plo to let them pay cost. He places the order for the lumber and tells them that it’ll be delivered to the store within the next couple days. “I’ll give you a call once it’s all in.”
There isn’t much to do after that, since they can't do anything without the lumber. Cody picks up a couple boxes of nails, at least. Tries to sneak a couple colorful bills onto the counter, but Plo calls out to him as they’re on their way out the door, “If you don’t take that back it’s going to Wolffe,” and Cody doubles back and grabs the money back off the counter.
“One of these fucking days,” he grumbles, and the bell chimes too merrily for how violently Cody opens the door.
“Wolffe is…your brother, I assume?” Ben asks, after making sure the door doesn’t slam too hard behind them.
“One of them,” Cody agrees. “Would you like a ride back to Shaak’s?” He pauses, hand on the handle to the door of his truck. “Actually, do you have a pair of work boots?”
“I don’t have any pairs of boots,” Ben confesses, still reeling from the fact that the materials to rebuild the deck are apparently just being given to him, and the labor for building the deck is going to be free. “Is that a problem?”
“It can be.” Cody opens the door and climbs into the truck. “Get in. I know a good place.”
The boots that Cody had bought him are stiff, but not uncomfortable. He laces them up before going downstairs, stopped on his way out the door by Shaak pressing a box full of still-warm pastries into his arms. “None of those boys eat anymore,” she grumbles, when Ben tries to ask her about it. “Not since they moved out of their folks’ house.”
Cody’s truck sits idle in the small parking lot, three men grinning in the truck bed and shoving each other. They’re all obviously brothers, and Cody’s brothers at that. He thinks two of them are twins, but it’s impossible to say for sure. The third is easy to differentiate only because his hair is bleached light blonde and shorn close to his head.
“Hello there,” he calls, the moment he’s close enough. “More Fetts, I presume?”
“Have you met Wolffe yet?” the blond one asks him. Not an answer.
“I have not.”
“Then you haven’t even met half of us!” one of the maybe twins says, leaning down and taking the box from Ben before he has the chance to offer it up. “Fuck, I love Shaak’s palmiers.”
His maybe twin brother shoves him. “Fives, you ass, you don’t know those were for you.”
“Oh, right, Shaak gave him an army’s worth of pastries all for him,” Fives counters, shoving his brother right back. “No, she gave them to all of us.”
The blond cuffs him upside the head. “You still should have waited,” he says, even as he grabs a danish out of the box for himself.
Once all three of them have chosen a pasty out of the box, the blond takes the box and hands it back to Ben. “Can we let him get into the fucking truck now? I’d like to get going, if it’s all the same to you.”
Ben blinks up at them, not entirely certain what’s just happened, before opening the door to the cab and climbing up. “Hello,” he greets Cody, glancing back out the back windshield at the other men in the bed. “Um, they’re…”
“I know,” Cody assures him, putting the truck into drive. “Believe me, I know.”
Ben holds out the box of pastries. “Shaak gave me these to share with you.”
Cody takes one of the pastries with a grateful smile. “The three knuckleheads are Rex, Fives, and Echo, by the way. Rex is the one with the pointlessly dyed hair, Fives has the shitty goatee, and Echo’s the one that’s almost normal.”
“I see. And how did you trick them into joining us today?” He assumes that when he’d been saying we yesterday, he meant himself and his brothers. Ben wonders idly if he’ll at least be able to pay them for their help.
“I said, I’ve got three spare sledgehammers, who wants to help me demolish a deck? and then they were the first three into the truckbed.” A pause. “Well. Technically I think Fox got there first, but he was just scowling by the truck by the time I got down there.”
“How many brothers do you have?”
“There’s ten of us, total.” Holy shit, Ben hasn’t met half of them yet. “‘Course, Fives and Echo are twins, and then Wolffe, Bly, and Ponds are triplets. So it’s not as bad as it sounds. Oh! And we’ve got a sister. She’s adopted, though. Dad always wanted a girl. Plus Crys, he’s our dog. No idea how old he is. Basically another brother, if we’re being honest.”
Ben only has one brother, and most days even that feels like too much. He can’t imagine having nine brothers, a sister, and a dog. “Your childhood home must have been huge.”
“Didn’t feel like it,” Cody grumbles. “But then, I suppose if it didn’t feel way too small, it was big enough.”
They pull into the yard in front of the inn, and the truck doesn’t even pull to a full stop before the three in the bed have hopped out, running towards the building. “Fucking animals,” Cody mutters, turning the truck off. “Hold your fucking horses,” he calls as he climbs out.
“This place looks way worse than I remember,” Fives says, looking up at the shattered windows and chipped exterior paint. “You sure about this, Codes?”
“It’s not condemned yet,” Cody says, pulling the sledgehammers out from behind the seats in the cab. “Means it can be fixed.” He holds one of the hammers out to Ben. Ben takes it and follows him up to the inn, joining the rest of his brothers.
Rex raises an eyebrow at Cody, and Ben doesn’t miss the way he glances at him for just a moment. “Of course. Anyone would have come to that conclusion, I’m sure.”
Cody doesn’t reply, just shoves one of the sledgehammers into Rex’s chest before only slightly more gently handing the other two to the twins. “Alright, Ben. Your inn, only right you should get to swing first.”
Ben blinks. “Wait, just. We’re just attacking it with sledgehammers?”
Cody shrugs. “Yeah, why not. Maybe not the most efficient way to do this, but it’s definitely the most fun.” He gestures grandly towards the rotting deck. “Have at it.”
Ben isn’t exactly adept at this sort of thing, but he’s pretty sure he can figure out how to swing a sledgehammer. Just like one of those test-your-strength carnival games, he tells himself, just before he takes aim at one of the porch steps and swings. It collapses immediately, a hole much larger than he’d expected dropping down to the ground.
Cheers erupt behind him, before all of them descend onto the deck with a vengeance. Ben isn’t a particularly violent individual, not anymore, but even he has to admit that it’s a remarkably satisfying experience. Overall, with the five of them, they make pretty short work of breaking the deck down into small enough pieces to be moved. Arms already sore and chest heaving, Ben lifts his shirt up just enough to wipe some of the sweat off his face.
When he resurfaces, his brain shorts out momentarily. Cody’s taken his shirt off entirely, heading towards the truck and hopping effortlessly into the bed. “Got a spare set of gloves for you,” he calls, opening the truck’s toolbox and rifling through it.
Ben tries very hard to respond, but the sight of Cody’s back, covered in swirling black tattoos that ripple as he moves makes it a little difficult. Cody turns back around, a stack of gloves in his hand, and he opens the tailgate and hops back down.
“You alright?”
Ben nods, mouth dry. “Fine,” he bites out, and it’s all he can hope for that Cody doesn’t press. And that none of his brothers say anything, that would also be nice. “I’m fine.”
“Think he’s just thirsty,” Fives says, throwing an arm around Ben’s shoulder.
“Oh, he’s definitely thirsty,” Echo agrees, coming up on Ben’s other side. “Horrendously dehydrated, I’d say.”
Cody frowns. “I’ve got some water in the truck,” he tells Ben, handing him one of the pairs of gloves. “You’re more than welcome to it.”
“No, I’m. It’s not that bad,” he assures him. “They’re exaggerating, I’m fine.” The tattoos wrap around his ribs and onto his chest. It’s very difficult not to stare.
“If you’re sure,” Cody says with a shrug. “Just keep an eye on your limits, alright. Can’t have you passing out on us, can we?”
“Oh I’m sure we can’t,” Fives mumbles, stepping away from Ben and snatching his own pair of gloves from Cody. “Anyway.”
Echo and Rex take their own gloves, and then they all work together to get the remains of the porch loaded up into the bed of Cody’s truck. It takes much longer than destroying it had, and Ben does end up taking Cody up on his offer of helping himself to some of that water.
They’ve got about half of it loaded up when Ben realizes a flaw with this current course of action. “If we’re filling up the bed with the wood scraps, where are the three of you going to sit on the way back?”
“Won’t be the first time,” Rex grumbles, tossing a particularly bulky chunk into the bed. “We’ll find room.”
“That’s one word for it,” Echo mutters. “Fuck, the deck wasn’t even that big.”
“We maybe went a little too crazy,” Cody concedes, and there’s still a lot of pieces left but they’re all small ones, none of them larger than Ben’s forearm. “Should have stopped before the pieces got that small.”
“Ah, but where’s the fun in that?” Fives asks, tossing a handful of pieces onto the pile.
Indeed, even Ben has to agree that it had been fun.
They pile into Kit’s after they finish with the deck, all five of them soaked with sweat and streaked with dirt. Ben feels awful going into the cafe without taking the time to shower and change clothes, first, but none of the other patrons seem to mind. Neither does Kit, who seems to take one look at all of them and brings out three whole pitchers of ice water and one pitcher of lemonade.
“You boys better be taking care of yourselves,” he tells them, setting the pitchers down in front of them. “Your mother will have my ass if you overdo it.”
There’s an immediate scramble between the four brothers to pour themselves glasses of ice water. Ben waits patiently for them to finish before grabbing a pitcher and pouring himself a glass. He’s not used to hard labor like this, and the water in Cody’s truck was fine but it wasn’t cold , not like this is.
“You did good, today, by the way,” Cody says, setting his own glass back down and smiling at Ben. “Keep it up and we’ll have the inn up and running in no time.”
“I do believe that this was the easy part,” Ben muses, leaning back in his chair. “What are you going to do with all that wood, anyway?”
“Burn it!” Echo says, before Cody has the chance to answer. “Bonfire! We can invite the town, it’ll be fun!”
“It’ll be added to the community’s burn pile,” Cody explains, shoving Echo none too lightly. “For the next bonfire.”
“Do you have many of them?”
“We’ve got one coming up!” Fives says, although the look Cody shoots him tells Ben that this may not be entirely true. “You should come! Friday night!”
It’s Tuesday, now. Given the way that the other three are looking at Fives, Ben thinks that maybe Fives is the only one who knows about this apparently upcoming bonfire.
Suddenly, a smile breaks out across Echo’s face, and Rex follows shortly. “Right! Friday!” Rex agrees, until it’s only Cody who seems confused. “You’ll finally get to meet the rest of us!”
“You’re not doing a good job of convincing me to come,” Ben tells them plainly, and Echo chokes on his water.
“You’ll get to meet our dog,” he offers, after a brief coughing fit. “Boga will probably show up, as well.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t met Boga yet, actually,” Cody adds. “She usually hangs around the inn, as I recall.”
“Still does,” Kit agrees, coming back up to the table. “You’ll see her shortly enough, since you’ll be spending a fair amount of your time at the inn.”
“Who’s Boga?”
“Oh, you’ll love her,” Rex assures him. “An upstanding member of the community.”
This is not an answer. Ben’s sure that he knows that.
A goat. Boga is a goat.
Cody had come to pick him up from Shaak’s again, and then driven straight to Plo’s shop to pick up a whole lot of two-by-fours, four-by-fours, and sheets of plywood. His brother Wolffe had helped them load the lumber into the back of the truck, and Ben had been only a little taken aback by his gruff attitude. Mostly, he’s just confused. Plo’s so kind and friendly, Ben can’t imagine him hiring the grouchiest of the Fetts to work in his shop. But Cody had said that Wolffe always had been Plo’s favorite, even if he wouldn’t admit it.
And then they’d made their way to the inn, where Ben had been startled to see a goat standing in front of the inn, right where the deck had been, bleating angrily at them as they climbed out of the truck.
Cody laughs when he sees her, staring displeased at the both of them.
“She’ll be upset until we get the new deck built,” Cody explains, dropping the tailgate and hopping up to assess the different pieces of lumber. “One of her favorite places to sleep.”
Ben steps closer to her, taking great care not to move too fast and startle her into biting. “You’re a lovely little thing, aren’t you?” he asks, holding out a hand. She eyes him warily, uncertain of his motivations.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Cody calls. “She doesn’t take too kindly to strangers, typically.”
She doesn’t seem to hate him too much. In fact, she takes two steps forward and presses her head up against his outstretched hand, just between her horns. He scratches her lightly, no idea how to pet a goat and so treating her like the stray cats he’d grown up with. Gently and with extreme caution. She bleats again, and it doesn’t sound quite as agitated as it had been before.
“You’re not so bad, are you?” he coos down at her. He glances up at Cody, standing by his truck and frozen from where he’d been unloading the wood, one bundle of two-by-fours halfway out of the truck. “She seems friendly enough to me,” he says, not raising his voice too much so as to not startle her.
“Oh, well. She likes you, I suppose.” Cody turns back to unloading the lumber. “You ever use a drop saw?”
“Is a drop saw different from a normal saw?”
Cody snorts. “You ever use any saw before?”
“No.” So perhaps it really doesn’t matter if a drop saw is any different from a normal saw. “I’m not—I’m not a particularly handy person,” he adds. “I probably should have warned you sooner.”
Cody looks him up and down. “I sort of figured that much, to be honest.” He hauls the last of the planks out of the truck bed. “You didn’t even have proper boots.”
That’s reasonable, Ben supposes. He steps away from Boga and walks back over to Cody, taking one end of the bundle of planks that he’s handed. Cody leans down and picks up the other end, walking backwards off to one side of the inn.
“I stopped by earlier to set up the saw,” he says with a grunt. “I’ll show you how to use it and get you all set up.”
“And what will you be doing?” Ben asks, readjusting his grip. “Out of curiosity.”
“Wishing Wolffe was off today, mostly,” Cody says, and Ben sees a very large saw and a few sawhorses set up along the remains of the fence. “I’m gonna be taking the Sawzall and the wallboard for the more precise cuts. Stuff like the notches for the supports and the skirting around the bottom.” He sets down his side of the bundle of planks and gestures for Ben to do the same. “Come on. We’ll get all of them out here and then get started.”
Ben picks up on things quickly, is what Cody’s finding. And, sure, a drop saw is hardly difficult to get a hang of, since it’s literally just lining the blade up with the pencil line and dropping the blade down onto it, but Cody only has to explain the whole process once before Ben nods and sets to it, mouth set in a firm line and a concentrated set to his brow.
He’s at it for less than an hour before his t-shirt starts clinging to his skin in a way that is far more distracting to Cody than Cody can currently afford, carving notches into the four-by-fours so that they can fit together neatly to support the weight of the deck. It’s all very precise, and he needs to fucking focus.
Ben lifts his shirt up to wipe sweat and sawdust off his face for the dozenth time in only an hour, and Cody resolves to buy him a fucking hankerchief tonight just so that he’ll fucking stop.
And look, okay. Yes. He’s hot as hell. Sexy as fuck. It’s not fair. But Cody did not agree to help him just because of that. Cody agreed to help because. Because Ben had seemed like he needed help. And no other reason.
Definitely not because Plo had threatened to pass Ben over to Wolffe if Cody turned him down. Absolutely not because of that.
The saw stops for long enough that Cody’s certain Ben’s lifting his shirt to wipe his face again. He shouldn’t look; he needs to focus.
He looks up. Good news: Ben’s shirt is firmly plastered to his abdomen, not that it makes much difference. It’s gone sheer with sweat, practically skintight with the way it sticks to him. Bad news: on top of the practically skintight sheer shirt that he may as well not be wearing at all, Ben has his head tilted up as he takes a few swigs from the water bottle Cody had given him. Cody gets lost staring at the way his Adam’s apple moves.
Okay. It’s a little bit because he’s fucking hot.
“You’re lucky it’s autumn, you know,” Cody pants, collapsing down onto the ground. They’ve been at it for three hours, and Cody’s glad that Ben doesn’t know much about woodwork because it means that he doesn’t realize how little they’ve gotten done. Ben has an excuse, isn’t an expert by any means and takes longer to line the blade up with the lines for cuts than Cody or any of his brothers would have, but Cody hasn’t got that luxury. He’s behind because he’s been staring, ogling at Ben like some kind of creep.
Cody had removed his shirt a couple hours ago, tossed onto one of the bundles of lumber that he’s starting to suspect he won’t get to today.
“That’s going to take some getting used to,” Ben mumbles, and he lies down right beside Cody. So close he can feel the heat radiating off of him, even, and Cody can’t fucking think with him this close. “It’s spring, back home.” He sighs. “If it’s this hot now, I can only imagine how much worse it’ll be in the summer.”
“Should be able to get electrical hooked up by then,” Cody muses. Should, but at this rate it’s difficult to say. “We’ll get some big box fans, that’ll help us keep cool if nothing else.”
Ben groans. “Box fans?” he repeats. “You don’t think we could get central air by then?”
Oh, how hopeful. How ignorant. “HVAC is gonna be one of the last things we get installed.” News had to be broken to him eventually. “Sorry to tell you.”
“Well, then…those window units, we can get some of those!”
Cody’s already shaking his head. “No, you don’t want to get those temporarily. They’re too much work to install and they’re far too expensive, especially if we want to get enough to actually make a difference.” He pauses, then adds, “And Plo doesn’t sell them, so we would actually have to pay for them.”
Ben makes an uncomfortable noise, high in his throat. “You really think Plo won’t let us pay him at all?”
It almost makes Cody feel bad for not letting Ben pay him, either. But he'd already said that he'd accept no payment, and to change his mind now would risk putting Ben in a place where he'd have to give up entirely. "I have been trying to get him to let me pay for things my entire life," he says, instead of going down that particular train of thought. "But if the cost starts to pile up on him, he may just let us pay him back cost. He won't make a profit on us, but he won't go into debt, either."
Ben stares up at the sky, head pillowed on his arms folded behind him. It hikes his shirt up, and Cody has to force himself to look up at the sky himself, so he doesn't stare at the strip of visible skin, or at blue eyes and auburn hair and a smattering of freckles across pale cheekbones. "I've never seen a community like this one," he muses softly. "Everyone takes care of each other, here."
"We stick together," Cody agrees. "It's the Maori in us, I think. Community is important to us. We look after our own."
Ben doesn't say anything at first. Cody can hear him shift beside him, and then in his periphery he sees him sit up. The sun paints his hair in spectacular stripes of red and gold, and Cody wants to run his fingers through it, to feel the difference between Ben's gentle waves and his own coarse curls.
"I lost my job, just before coming here," Ben says softly. "Budget cuts, they said. Couldn't find another job, anywhere. If I'd stayed another month, I probably would have been evicted. Wouldn't have been able to afford rent." He sighs, and Cody watches him recline again, propped up on an elbow and facing him. "Nobody cares, back home. I could have explained all I liked to the landlord, and it wouldn't have mattered at all."
Cody knows, from talking to outsiders, to tourists and to his old university friends and to his brothers' friends and even to Ahsoka, studying abroad, he knows that everywhere else is nothing like right here, but he could never imagine it.
Growing up, his parents had handed him off to anybody in town who needed a strapping young man to do any yard work or mild repairs around their home. They never asked for money, and Cody, thirteen and not having anything to spend money on, never asked either. Instead, his parents had just waved off the neighbors and said, ah, just feed him a couple times, he'll be fine. In return, any time the Fetts ran into any kind of financial trouble (surprisingly infrequently, as it turns out, given the size of the family), the entire town turned out to help. As Cody got older, he found that the same applied to any of the other families in town. If anybody had been in Ben’s position: suddenly unemployed and unable to pay for rent or food, then eviction or starvation would have never even been an option.
And here Ben is now, an outsider on the remains of his last paycheck. Shaak had offered Ben a place to stay, completely unprompted and completely free of charge. Cody had agreed to come and see the inn, and most quotes aren't even free these days, he's heard. Contractors will charge for the time they took to drive down to assess the damage, and then charge again for the work itself. And then Cody had agreed to do the entire restoration for the great, low price of help out some. Roped his brothers into it, too. Ben's been fed at least three meals at Kit’s that he hadn't even seen a bill for and there's a couple thousand dollars' worth of wood that Ben hadn't given a single cent for. Cody can see the culture shock, if nothing else.
"You didn't have anybody that was willing to help you?" Cody asks, unable to think of anything else.
Ben scoffs. "I used up most of the rest of my money to move to the other side of the world," he points out dryly. "What do you think?"
Alright. Cody will admit, that was a dumb question.
Ben sighs, shaking his head. "No, I. My brother probably would have been willing, I suppose. His girlfriend, certainly. But neither of them are really in a place to, I. I couldn't put them out like that. And I had assumed," he waves backward toward the inn, "that I'd be able to sleep in there. It seemed the better choice."
Some people, Cody has heard, are very bad at accepting help when there are no strings attached. Ben, he's realizing, is perhaps one such person.
They call it a day at around five, and Cody surveys their progress as he powers down the generator. Technically, they haven’t done too bad. Most of the planks and posts are cut, sorted neatly by size. Most of Cody’s more precise cuts are done, too, sorted into piles by function rather than size or shape. Still, he feels like he should have been able to get his stuff completely finished two hours ago. Would have, if Ben weren’t so fucking distracting.
“You did a fantastic job today,” Cody says, as they make their way back to the truck.
Ben glances back at their makeshift workstation. “Are you sure we can just leave all this here?” He sounds concerned, like he’s worried the stuff will be stolen. Probably, that’s exactly what he’s concerned about.
“Yeah, it’ll be fine. Town’s not exactly overrun with thieves.” Mainly because if someone needs a generator that badly, Plo will give them one for free. And none of the tools are worth all that much anymore. “And if it starts threatening rain, I can get out here and rescue it before it becomes a problem.”
“Oh, but—” Ben cuts himself off. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” Cody assures him. “It’s not the first time I’ve left this stuff laying around.”
They climb into the truck, and the offer to go to Kit’s again is right on the tip of Cody’s tongue when Ben says, “You can drop me off at Shaak’s, if it isn’t too much trouble. I think I’d like a shower.”
Well. Cody’s mother had wanted him to be home for dinner tonight, anyway. “No trouble at all,” he says, putting the truck into drive. They don’t talk much on the way to Shaak’s, too hot and tired to be able to focus on anything resembling a conversation. Cody pulls up in front of Shaak’s and almost forgets to tell Ben, “Oh, by the way. We’re taking tomorrow off, I’ve got some stuff down at the Heritage Center. I’ll see you Friday?”
“Do you not have to prepare for that bonfire, then?”
Right. The bonfire. The one that Fives just fucking invented, and then roped the entire family into helping him orchestrate. The entire town’s already buzzing about it. The effectiveness of the Fetts as planners is truly something to be feared.
“It’s being handled,” Cody tells him. “But we’ll make it a short day. Make sure you’ve got plenty of time to get ready, yourself.”
Ben waves at him just before he disappears into Shaak’s inn, and Cody waves back just a little too late. He groans, smacking his forehead into the steering wheel. “Fucking idiot ,” he mumbles to himself, before he drives himself back to his parents’ house.
The triplets are out front, fucking with Wooley by playing keepaway with something that Cody can’t see. Crys is running around, following Wooley as he tries to get it back. Rex is sitting on the front step, shouting encouragement at their younger brother but offering no real help of any kind. Cody sighs, stepping out of the truck and resigning himself to the fact that he should probably intervene, in his role as the Responsible Older Brother.
He’s not two steps away from his truck when Bly calls out to him, “Think fast!” and throws it over to him.
It’s Wooley’s fucking phone . Wooley does a complete 180, faster than when Cody when he’d had to run suicides for gym class, and promptly trips right over Crys.
Tossing the phone around is stupidly dangerous. If one of them fails to catch it, or if they misjudge distance, or make even the slightest bit of a mistake, the phone could well be shattered. It could be stepped on or tossed through a window or any number of things. In Cody’s professional Responsible Older Brother opinion, the correct thing to do would be to hand the phone back to Wooley and smack whichever of the triplets it was that started this ordeal.
He tosses it to Wolffe.
“Motherfucker,” Wooley mumbles, changing direction again.
“Language,” Cody chides, cuffing him over the head as he passes him on his way up to the house.
Rex looks up at him as he approaches, giving up on encouraging Wooley. They all know the poor kid isn’t getting his phone back until dinner’s ready, and even then it’s not promised. “Have fun with your boyfriend today?” he asks, like a fucking asshole , all smug grin and sparkling eyes.
“Fuck off,” he says, shoving him aside so he can climb up the porch steps into the house.
“Language.”
Cody rolls his eyes, relishing in the cool air inside the house. They don’t have the air running, because it isn’t quite that hot to anyone who hasn’t spent the entire day out in the sun, but the house was designed so that airflow from open windows is just as good as aircon. Boba’s doing homework at the coffee table, the twins leaning over either shoulder and offering him help. Or, well. Echo’s helping. Fives is being deliberately unhelpful, giving him wrong answers and nonsensical explanations. Boba looks about two seconds away from punching the both of them.
“Take it Wooley still hasn’t got his phone back?” Fox asks from the couch, texting someone on his own phone.
Cody doesn’t bother to tell him, since they can all still hear Wooley’s complaining drifting in through the open windows. “How long have they been at it?”
“Twenty minutes,” Boba says, just before slamming his pencil down on the table and snapping at Fives, “Will you shut up ?”
“I am trying to help my dearest baby brother with his homework,” Fives gasps, far too good at feigning affront for Cody’s tastes.
“I don’t need your help! I need you to be quiet.”
Fox snorts. “Fat chance of that.”
“Give it back!”
“Not until you answer our question!”
“Jump! Intercept it in the air!”
Cody hates this family.
“So,” Echo starts, leaning back against the couch and looking up at Cody with a lazy smile on his face. It’s the kind of smile that reminds Cody that Fives isn’t the worse of the two of them, just the less subtle. “How’s Ben doing?”
The three other brothers in the room snap their heads up to watch Cody’s reaction. Even worse, all sounds of tormenting the teen out in the yard stops too, right before five curious faces peer into the window. “Yeah!” Ponds agrees, shoving Wooley off to the side. “How is your boyfriend?”
“Ben is fine,” Cody says pointedly. “Fast learner. Got most of the planks cut all on his own.”
“And you got all the special pieces done, right?” Wolffe asks. There’s a grunt, like he’s just shoved Wooley too.
“Most of them.” Please don’t ask, please don’t ask, please—
“Most?” Fives repeats. “Cody, you’re better than that!”
“Did he take his shirt off?” Rex asks, and oh, how glad Cody is that the answer’s no. He doesn’t think he’d have survived if he had.
“No,” he snaps.
“Do you wish he’d taken his shirt off?” Fox corrects, smirking like he knows the answer already.
“ No!”
“Cody, how many times have we told you not to tell lies in this house?”
Cody turns around, finds his mother standing in the doorway, drying her hands on a kitchen towel.
He would like to repeat: Cody fucking hates this family.