Chapter Text
It’s a good day.
It’s a good day for a lot of reasons--the sun is shining, the war is over, and the Council isn’t yelling at Anakin for once in their lives--but the most important part is that Snips is going to meet a friend of hers and he gets to meet them, too.
Anakin isn’t about to pretend their mentorship has been smooth sailing from the start, but after they got past the whole “got kidnapped by a Sith and went kind of nuts and got forced to go to therapy” thing, they got to know each other better, and he’s never been prouder to have Snips as his Padawan. Anakin’s not too proud to admit Ahsoka’s better at making friends than he is (he would have been a few months ago, but he’s working on it, okay?) so obviously if she wants him to meet one of her friends, that’s great! Snips is a great judge of character, and anyone she likes has to be pretty cool.
“Come on, Skyguy!” Snips says, dragging him along the sidewalk. “The park’s not too far, we’ll meet him there.”
“Oh, it’s a boy?” Anakin asks. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
Snips shoots him a borderline disgusted look. “First of all, no, gross. Second, I’m gay.”
“Oh,” Anakin says. Somehow he’d forgotten that. He’s not sure how--she mentions it all the time. “Uh...”
Anakin’s saved from putting his foot any further in his mouth when Ahsoka apparently sees her friend and runs off towards a guy standing by the fountains. “Obi-Wan!” she shouts, practically throwing herself into his arms.
Suddenly, Anakin’s good day feels slightly less good.
Obi-Wan Kenobi--Detective Kenobi--Kenobi, whatever, catches her and swings her around like she’s some kind of youngling. “Ahsoka, it’s good to see you,” he says when he sets her down. “You’re growing so fast--a year or two and you’ll be taller than me.”
Snips laughs and claps Kenobi on the shoulders--she really is getting taller at the speed of light. “No offense, but that’s not that hard.”
Kenobi sighs, though he’s still smiling. “Unbelievable. It hasn’t even been five minutes and you’re already bullying me.”
Anakin watches all of this with vague horror. It’s not like he didn’t know Snips was still friends with Kenobi--it would be pretty hard to miss him helping her with Galactic History homework over holocomm--but seeing them act like a...like a family makes him feel weird.
He’s got a lot of weird feelings about Kenobi to start with, from his seriousness to his weird eloquence to the way he feels unnaturally untouchable in the Force, like a shadow or a gust of wind. Seeing him now in what appears to be casual clothes with his hair braided back and tightly coiled to look like roses doesn’t help. It’s...way different from the guy he hired way back when about that blackmail thing, or the guy who sold him out to the Sith (except he didn’t?) and kicked his ass two days later in a shitty factory.
Kenobi looks like a normal dude. A very good looking dude, which Anakin is trying not to think too hard about.
“You’re not wearing your coat!” Ahsoka says, straightening out Kenobi’s jacket and still being way too friendly with Kenobi and all of his shady shadiness. “I thought you just got a new one. Did something happen to it?”
“No, it’s just my day off,” Kenobi says. “I don’t expect to get shot at in the course of a normal day, you know. I should be fine, so long as,”--he flicks his eyes up to Anakin-- “nobody decides to attack me with a lightsaber. Ahsoka, when you said ‘we’, you led me to believe it would be Rex accompanying you. Why did you bring Skywalker?”
Good question. Anakin’s not sure why he’s here, either, considering the last time he and Kenobi talked, multiple people almost got murdered.
“Skyguy wants to talk to you,” Snips says.
Anakin sputters. “What? No, no, that’s not true. I never said that.”
Kenobi’s gaze settles on Anakin in that way that feels like he's judging every single mistake he’d ever made, and wasn’t impressed by any of it. Despite Kenobi being some civilian, some random guy, that look makes Anakin feel about three inches tall. “This is a public location, Skywalker. If my company is so objectionable, there’s nothing stopping you from simply leaving.”
“He was talking about leaving the Order,” Snips tells Kenobi. “Or thinking about it, anyways. Since you left the Order and everything, I thought maybe you could give him some advice about it or something.”
And yes, that’s true, but Anakin never wanted to talk to Kenobi about that. There are better options--literally anyone would be better, other than probably Dooku.
Kenobi rolls his eyes. “While I’m sure Skywalker appreciates the thought, maybe you could have asked him about what he wanted, first. And me. Especially considering the last time Skywalker and I interacted, he tried to kill me.”
“Yeah, I’m really sorry about that, by the way?” Anakin says. “It, um. Seemed like a good idea at the time.” Which is, perhaps, not the best thing to say about the time he almost murdered someone. “I mean, I was kind of under the influence, and also, uh. Um.”
“Maybe you can start over and stick to just ‘I’m sorry’,” Kenobi replies, with that look again.
Anakin has to keep himself from shuffling his feet like a scolded youngling and says, “Sorry. Trying to kill you was bad. No hard feelings?”
Kenobi holds the look a couple seconds longer, then turns away with a shrug. “I don’t hold grudges. As long as you don’t try to kill me again, then we should be fine.”
“I won’t.”
“Good,” Kenobi says. “In that case, Ahsoka and I planned to get ice cream. You are free to accompany us, so long as you mind your manners.”
“Ice cream sounds good,” Anakin says.
“Then you can buy your own,” Kenobi replies, walking past Anakin. “And when we get there, we can discuss your leaving the Order, if you want. Ahsoka tells me you’re mechanically inclined, so you’ll have plenty of options in moving into some sort of trade, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. I think you’ll have a much easier time than I had, anyways.”
“He also wants a rematch,” Snips, the absolute traitor, adds. “He says he could beat you in a fair fight and it hurts his feelings that he got his ass kicked by someone who isn’t even a Jedi.”
Kenobi raises a brow and looks directly at Anakin. “Does he, now?”
“I told you that in confidence!” Anakin hisses at his traitor Padawan. “You can’t just tell him this stuff!”
“What, so you can complain about not getting to spar Obi-Wan again when we get back? No thanks, Skyguy.”
Kenobi laughs--he can laugh, what the hell--and says, “Well. If you want to spar so badly, we can stop by a gym sometime after ice cream. Bare hands, I think, would be fine--I don't want to get slashed again.”
Anakin’s heart jumps. He’s not excited or anything, he’s just happy to do something a bit different than at the Temple. Against someone who’s good at fighting. And kicked his ass that one time. “I’ll beat you this time,” he says.
“I assure you, you will not,” Kenobi replies. “But you are free to think so until we get there. In the meantime, how are you doing, Ahsoka? Last I heard, your classes were getting harder.”
Kenobi and Snips talk about coursework as they walk to the nearby ice cream parlor, and Anakin thinks that maybe this won’t be a complete disaster after all.
Maybe it is a good day.