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Chapter Text

Ahsoka shrugs artlessly, head coming to rest on her upturned palm as she leans on the table. She’s four drinks in, and Obi-Wan is pretty impressed that she’s stayed out with them this late. She usually never goes past two before she’s requesting water. Something to do with her master, he knows, but he’s never really asked. He doesn’t particularly enjoy thinking about it, though he knows the squirming feeling in his gut does not belong there.

He still doesn’t like thinking about it. He doesn’t like that there might be something about himself that Master Skywalker finds…displeasing.

Lacking.

He takes a heavy gulp of his Coruscanti Sunrise and leans back against the booth to look at his friends. Ahsoka’s eyes are hazed, her cheeks a darker orange than normal. Quinlan, on the other hand, hardly looks affected at all even though he’s been matching Ahsoka and Obi-Wan drink for drink. Obi-Wan feels lightly buzzed, on his way to inappropriately drunk for a weeknight.

But they’re celebrating, they are. Ahsoka has just completed her first solo mission. She’s nineteen years old, so it’s a bit late, but her master is known to be a bit…unreasonable when it comes to his padawan.

Obi-Wan, whose master had sent him on a solo mission when he was fifteen, tries not to feel jealous. It doesn’t mean anything. It definitely doesn’t mean anything that he’s still a senior padawan at twenty-two. That’s a perfectly reasonable age to still be a learner. Sure, Quin had been Knighted at twenty-one, and Ahsoka had confided in them both that she thinks Master Skywalker will waive her towards her trials sooner rather than later, but it doesn’t mean anything.

They’re here to celebrate. They’re not here to think about Obi-Wan. Eventually, they’ll celebrate Obi-Wan, probably at this same pub, in this same corner with these same drinks.

Eventually, when he does something worth celebrating.

He goes to take another sip. The unwelcome feeling of ice hitting against his teeth snaps him out of the haze of alcohol. He sets the empty glass down and leans across the table to steal a sip from Quin, who lets out an indignant squawk when he looks up from his comm and catches Obi-Wan in the act.

Really, though, they’ve had each other’s dicks in their mouths. They’re definitely past worrying over a bit of shared spit.

“What do you mean you didn’t participate in any extracurriculars when you were on Ni’laken?” Obi-Wan asks over Quinlan’s continued protests. He slides his empty glass to the Knight and cradles the nearly full one between both hands. If you say anything, he warns with his eyes, I’m going to tell everyone in this bar about how teethy your blowjobs are.

Either Quinlan has gotten very good at reading Obi-Wan’s facial expressions, Obi-Wan’s accidentally projected that thought through the Force and into Quin’s mind, or he’s using his weird psychometry thing and picking up on all of Obi-Wan’s sad thoughts sticking to the outside of the glass he’d been drinking out of, because Quinlan falls quiet and slumps back into his seat with a slight frown.

Force, Obi-Wan hopes it’s not the last option. Because then Quinlan will want to talk about it or even worse , try to make it better any way he knows how, and the only thing worse than a toothy blowjob is a pity one.

He forges ahead with the sort of single-mindedness that he learned from Master Jinn. “Mission without your master….first mission without your master…on a planet where the native sentients are known to have erogenous zones on their hands? Come on. No extracurriculars? You, what, actually just completed the mission, protected the princess and came back to the Temple? Without sleeping with her?”

Perhaps he is barreling towards inappropriately sloshed quicker than he had originally assessed.

But the question still stands. 

“It is possible, Obi-Wan,” Ahsoka replies, swirling the remains of her drink around in the cup. Obi-Wan eyes it consideringly. “And anyway, she was hot but she was no—-“

“Barriss,” Quin and Obi-Wan say at the same time. Quin pulls up the ordering-paad and keys in a drink for himself. “If we’re talking about Barriss, I need the alcohol,” he mutters mostly to himself.

Obi-Wan kicks at him under the table until he adds another drink to the tab for him as well.

“No,” Ahsoka says, but she’s even more flushed than she was before, and her hand has come up to stroke at the bottom of her montral. “No, I was going to say she was not worth having to hear Master Anakin give me the safe sex talk for.”  

Obi-Wan laughs, even as he can feel heat start to spread across his cheeks at the very thought. He hides his face temporarily behind his glass and hopes that his friends are too drunk or too interested in bantering between themselves to look too closely at him.

This is…rather inconvenient.

As if the Force has felt his discomfort and has decided to bless her favorite child, a droid model slides over with a tray of their drinks. It sets both down and steps back and away.

Obi-Wan takes his drink and sets it next to the remains of Quinlan’s with a suspicious look at the other man. 

“You can’t wait forever for Barriss Offee to notice you,” he tells Ahsoka, not unkindly. “Cause, like…” he casts around for the words, but they keep dissolving in his brain every time he thinks he’s caught them. “It’s your life too. Right?”

Quinlan nods confidently, which is really all the encouragement Obi-Wan needs.

“So like, you don’t…if there are things you wanna do, you should do them. You know?”

Ahsoka frowns at him, eyes blurry. “Maybe I don’t want to fuck the princess,” she says, a bit too loudly. But everything is loud in this place. No one looks over.

“But princesses are nice!” Obi-Wan says, aghast. “Almost as nice as princes! Very…um…”

“Generous,” Vos replies. Obi-Wan gestures a hand at him in silent thank you.

Ahsoka continues over them, which is actually pretty rude. “Maybe I don’t want casual sex!”

Obi-Wan blinks. “There are other kinds of sex?”

“Oh Force,” Ahsoka says like she’s just realizing something major. “Oh kriff, I’m the prude, aren’t I? I wore a tube top for five years, and out of the three of us, somehow I’m the prude.”

“There, there,” Quinlan tells her consolingly. “How do you think I feel? I have to be a responsible young Knight now while Kenobi still gets to be the easiest padawan in the entire history of the Jedi Order—”

Obi-Wan sits up, offended. He’s not easy . “I’m not easy!”

“Obi-Wan, my friend, you’re the definition of easy—”

Ahsoka snorts into her hand at the betrayed look on Obi-Wan’s face and finishes out her drink. “You know, I think that,” she hiccups and her fangs flash in the poor lighting of the bar. “I think that maybe easy attracts easy. That’s why you think it’s normal to go out on missions and fuck, like, every sentient you come across—”

“I do not—”

“Hello there, Planet, I have arrived to save you all from civil war with the power of my co—” Quinlan starts to add in a very poor imitation of Obi-Wan’s accent before he’s cut off by his and Ahsoka’s laughter.

Traitors, both of them. Obi-Wan swipes at his new drink and pours half of it down his throat. “I excel at diplomacy,” he defends. “It’s not my fault the skills overlap!”

“Do they?” Ahsoka asks, glancing down at her empty cup and then putting her head on her hand. “I’m not sure you do. I think you couldn’t negotiate your way into bed with anyone who wasn’t just as easy as you.”

Obi-Wan thinks muzzily that he might actually be angry if he were sober. No, not angry. But…upset?

It doesn’t matter. He’s not sober, so he’s not upset. Alcohol is amazing. “What, you want me to sleep with a prude, Ahsoka? Would that prove to you that I’m just that charming?”

“I want to see you try, Obi-Wan,” Ahsoka shoots back leaning over the table and balancing on her elbows. “I think it’d be very educational for the both of us.”

Obi-Wan opens his mouth to reply, but before he can formulate words—not that he’s having trouble formulating words or anything—Ahsoka slides out of the other side of the booth, commlink lit up in her hand. “It’s my master,” she explains, fond exasperation in her voice. “He wants to know if he should send out the search parties. I should get back before he actually does.”

They chorus goodnights at each other before watching Ahsoka slip between the comers and goers of the bar, and out of sight.

Obi-Wan slumps back into his seat and pouts.

“Aw, let it go, will you?” Vos kicks at him underneath the table. “I’m easy too, it’s alright, it’s a nice way to live. Tons of perks.”

“I don’t sleep with easy people, they’re not,” Obi-Wan mutters. It rubs him the wrong way, but he can’t quite figure out why. He likes all the people he sleeps with. Maybe that’s it. He genuinely does respect them, at least a little bit.

“Well, not anymore you don’t,” Quin says. “Not if you’re keen on proving ‘Soka wrong. You’ll need to pick the hardest, prudiest Jedi in the entire Order, mate, or she’s going to think she’s right for the rest of our lives and even once we’ve all become one with the Force.”

Obi-Wan nods slowly. It’s hard to think of a worse scenario than that.

“Ah, kark, speaking of Ahsoka, she didn’t leave any credits for her drinks,” Quinlan rolls his eyes and studies the order-paad, pulling out his card to pay the balance. “This is, like, the third time. Do you think she and her master plan it?”

Obi-Wan stares at the last few inches of amber liquid in his cup, somehow both morose and full of energy at the same time. It doesn’t seem like a bad idea at all, finding someone to sleep with that’ll prove to Ahsoka that Obi-Wan isn’t—isn’t—

The realization of the perfect plan feels like a lightsaber to the head. “Her master!”

Quinlan blinks at him. “Sorry?”

“Ahsoka’s master, Master Skywalker. I’m going to sleep with him.”

Quinlan blinks at him again. “What?”

“The prude!” Obi-Wan leans over the table and grabs at Quinlan’s hands. “The prude I’ll seduce.”

“Is Anakin Skywalker a prude?” Quin asks doubtfully. “He’s, like, almost always voted Master I’d Like To Fuck by the padawans. Like since before he even became a master.”

“Exactly!” Obi-Wan replies. “And have you ever heard of anyone sleeping with him?”

“To be fair, If I was going around banging padawans, I’d probably try to keep that to myself too.”

“It’d be impossible. Even if someone slept with him after they were Knighted, you know they’d tell all of the Senior Padawans at least . It’s Anakin Skywalker .”

“Why do you say his name differently than I do?”

“I don’t.”

“No, no, you do. It’s like you’ve put in an extra breathy sigh— ow, shit, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan glowers at him. “If I can convince Anakin Skywalker to fuck me, Ahsoka will have to admit she’s wrong.”

“Obi-Wan, buddy, I’m not sure we’re thinking about all the variables here, you know? You sleep with Ahsoka’s master, and whatever, sure, you win. But then you’ve also slept with Ahsoka’s master. Won’t that be—”

“He’s definitely not a virgin though,” Obi-Wan says, tapping his finger on his chin as he lets his friend usher him out of the booth and through the doors into the temperature-controlled Coruscanti night air. “I mean, there was that whole thing with that senator when I was a kid.”

“How do you remember that?” Vos asks between attempts at flagging down a speeder cab back to the Temple.

“That’s not important,” he waves his friend’s question away. “So he must like sex though, right? They were caught in the coat closet at her birthday ball.”

“Again, how do—weren’t you twelve?”

“Might have been, I don’t recall. Doesn’t matter. I could do it. I’m gonna.” When Quinlan opens the door, Obi-Wan crawls through gratefully. “The Jedi Temple, please,” he says politely when the pilot asks for an address.

Safely inside the speeder as well, Vos continues the conversation. “Isn’t he a bit…old?”

“No,” Obi-Wan defends immediately. “He’s a perfectly respectable age.”

Quinlan’s eyes seem unnaturally bright, which is cause for extreme worry. He only looks like that when he’s just figured out something integral to a mission.

“No,” Obi-Wan demands, lifting his hand to smack weakly at Quinlan’s face and chest. “Stop making that face.”

“Do you know how old he is exactly, Obi-Wan?”

Yes. “No.” Thirty-eight. “Early thirties?”

Quinlan hums like he doesn’t believe him. “What else do you know about him, Obi-Wan? I didn’t think you’d ever really interacted much with Ahsoka’s master.”

“I’m going to sleep,” Obi-Wan declares instead of answering. Answering would mean confessing, and confessing would be an absolutely idiotic thing to do.

So he falls asleep instead, right on Vos’s shoulder.

Waking up is incredibly difficult on both Obi-Wan’s body and his very soul. It’s too goddamn early for this amount of pain to be slicing its way into his head, and the jostling of his shoulder is going to make him lose his stomach contents.

“Wha–” he mutters, trying to bat away the presence leaning over him. 

“Nope,” Quinlan’s voice chirps. “Up and at ‘em, Padawan.”

“Fuck off,” Obi-Wan groans, rolling onto his back and tossing a hand over his eyes. His padawan braid gets caught in his mouth and he spits it out unhappily. 

“Nope,” Quinlan repeats with a grin and shakes his shoulder again even if there’s absolutely no reason for it, seeing as how he’s very clearly awake and cognizant. “It’s time to eat.”

“Why would it be time to eat?” Obi-Wan demands sitting up only to tip forward and press his head into his hands. “I’m never eating again, thanks.”

“Not an option, Obi,” his friend reports. “This afternoon, Master Skywalker is going off-planet for three days. Now’s your time to implement the beginnings of your Seduce Master Skywalker Plan.”

Obi-Wan snaps his head up to look at Quinlan with wide eyes. “My what?”

Quinlan, the ass, grins at him. “Don’t remember, Obi? You decided you were going to prove Ahsoka wrong by sleeping with her master. We came up with a whole plan once we got back to the Temple. Wait a tic, let me—here it is.”

Obi-Wan stares down in horror at the piece of flimsi Vos shoves in front of him. Then he tries to read the words and his eyebrows furrow. “This isn’t in basic,” he states, trying to decipher the curve of the letters.

“I think it was drunk Obi-Wan’s one attempt to try and make sure this wouldn’t haunt him in the morning,” Quinlan admits, but he’s grinning so hard the effect is completely ruined. “Too bad my mind’s like a durasteel trap.”

Obi-Wan looks from the flimsi to Quinlan and then back again. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, deadly, unfortunately for you. Your memory after drinking is like a sieve, isn’t it? But don’t worry. I remember everything.”

“I think,” Obi-Wan says slowly, carefully, “that after much…thought and consideration—“

“Bit of panic and a singular realization, yeah, continue—“

“That it was a completely insensitive conversation on everyone’s part and that to take it further would be nothing but shameful. Sentients aren’t meant to be the…the butt of some joke and that’s absolutely not what sex should be about either, and I feel like it would be best to put this matter to rest. Quietly. Privately.”

Obi-Wan is expecting Quinlan to frown, the way he always does when Obi-Wan digs his heels in and refuses to follow his lead on some adventure or another.

What he isn’t expecting is for Quinlan to pat him on the head and sit down on the couch beside him. “Am I a good friend?” Quinlan asks him steadily.

Obi-Wan stares and then looks around, half expecting to  find a holo camera recording the moment. But no, Quinlan’s new quarters look like they always have.

“Uh,” he says.

“Thank you, you’re right, I’m a great friend actually.”

Obi-Wan thinks of arguing the point, but finds that the very idea makes him feel exhausted. “Alright,” he agrees.

“And do you know what I see when I look at this?” Quinlan holds up the flimsi.

“Poetry,” Obi-Wan deadpans.

“Mm, not what I was thinking, but we can go with it. Now, do you know what I feel when I pick this up?”

“Flimsi?” Obi-Wan guesses and then remembers. Psychometry.

“Longing,” Vos says. “Unadulterated wanting. Force, Obi, I had to tear this flimsi away from you so you wouldn’t crinkle it in your sleep and we both nearly started crying.”

A pit of immeasurable depth begins to open up in Obi-Wan’s stomach. He’s thrown past embarrassing without so much a by-your-leave and into what feels a lot like mortification. “Quin, please,” he mutters, rubbing a hand over his face and collapsing back into the sofa when he blinks his eyes open again, only to be greeted with the same reality. “Look, I…”

This time when he trails off, Quinlan doesn’t interrupt, and Obi-Wan has to find the rest of his words himself.

“Don’t tell Ahsoka,” he finally settles on saying. “Force, she’d really never let it go and it’s inconvenient enough as it is.”

Inconvenient feels like too benign a word for whatever he thinks of—feels for Anakin Skywalker. It needs more thorns, it needs to convey more discomfort. There needs to—to be room for more longing than inconvenient leaves space for. More childhood wonder morphed into wandering thoughts. But, to be fair, the wandering thoughts have been quite inconvenient.

“I won’t tell Ahsoka,” Quinlan agrees, and Obi-Wan sighs in something like relief, already vowing to himself to lay off the drinking for at least three months until he can trust himself again to not go spilling the rest of his most humiliating and shameful secrets.

“On the condition that you go through with it,” Vos finishes.

Obi-Wan whips his head around so fast, he feels every tendon of his neck protest the action. “I’m sorry?”

“I won’t tell Ahsoka about your sordid, one-sided love affair with her master if you try your best in the next, say, six months to make it two-sided.”

“Six months?”

“Completely arbitrary,” Vos reassures him in a way that somehow misses the mark entirely. “Take as long—or short—as you need. You just have to try, because if you don’t then I will tell Ahsoka. Who will probably tell her master.”

“This is blackmail,” Obi-Wan points out faintly, desperately. “You do know that, right? I don’t want to do this.”

“Obi-Wan, I’ve known you for years . I’ve never felt you want anything the way I felt it last night. And…for all your…bluster…you never would try for this on your own. Ahsoka was sort of right. You fuck easy people— not the way she meant it, shut your mouth, Obi-Wan. But you only…offer yourself for the taking when you know they’re not going to turn you down. So this—this situation with Master Skywalker? You were never going to do anything about it, were you?”

“And I was fine with that!” Obi-Wan argues, standing angrily only to clutch at his head when the pain of his hangover pierces him through the temple. He tries to shake it off. “I’m fine with it.”

“Well, I’m not, Obi-Wan,” Quinlan snaps, jumping up as well. “I’m not. I want to see you wanting and then getting . Come on, lover, I’m your best friend. I…I know you’ve had a rough year. Or two. But I also know if anyone’s gonna seduce Anakin Skywalker, you’ve got the best chance in the whole Temple. Even I couldn’t say no to those baby blue eyes.”

“You’d say yes to a tree,” Obi-Wan mutters, scrubbing at his face again, and pacing around the apartments. “And you know I hate it when you call me that.”

“And what a seduction technique it was,” Vos continues as if Obi-Wan hadn’t spoken at all. “You dropped into my lap about five meters away from both our masters in a very unsoundproofed ship and asked all sultry, Wanna fuck? How could a man say no?”

Against his will, Obi-Wan has to snort. They’d both been suffering from concussions following a mission gone sideways in the Mid-Rim. They’d been sixteen and seventeen, and Obi-Wan can still remember his Master’s horrified expression.

“I’d steal all the credits from the Senatorial Chamber just to see what Master Skywalker would do if you tried the same thing with him. Literally, I’d make you the richest man in the Galactic Republic, Obi-Wan.” 

Obi-Wan shakes his head, laughter even harder to hold back now. He can just imagine how that would go over. Skywalker would probably push him out of his lap instinctively and then jet off to the Outer Rim or something. He might even squeak, which would somehow be both funny and heartbreaking at the same time.

He certainly wouldn’t take him up on it the way Vos had after they’d both been let out of the Halls of Healing, skulls still pounding from being knocked into various hard surfaces—the durasteel of a warehouse’s wall, the metalloid of a spacecraft’s wing, the other’s head.

“I just want you to try, just try to follow all the steps we made,” Quinlan says, quieter now. He always does that when he thinks he’s winning an argument. He goes soft and gentle, nudges instead of pushes. Obi-Wan hates that it works so goddamn well.

So many things could go wrong, he thinks about saying. What if Master Skywalker doesn’t take me seriously? What if he finds out about this…plan? What if Ahsoka finds out? What if Quinlan tells her because he doesn’t think Obi-Wan is genuinely trying?

What if Obi-Wan genuinely tries and Master Skywalker decides that—that he’s not enough?

What if Obi-Wan Kenobi isn’t enough?

He’s not sure he’ll survive the mortification of giving those words volume, even though it’s not like Quinlan would laugh or anything. The worst thing he’d do is give him some pitying sort of inspirational speech taken from either his master or a holo film.

(That’s not true. The worst thing he can do is look unsurprised.)

He throws himself back down on the sofa, and looks up at Quinlan. “Fine,” he surrenders. “This is still blackmail. And I’m throwing you under the speeder the instant it looks like things are going sideways for me.”

“Got it,” Quinlan grins, enthusiastic to a fault now that he’s won. Obi-Wan really, absolutely hates him. A lot.

“So, what is it? What’s the plan?” he presses when it looks like Quinlan isn’t going to say anything else.

“Oh, I’m not going to tell you.”

“Vos!” 

Quinlan holds up his hands. “Look, I’ll tell you step by step what we planned out, but if I tell you the whole thing right away, you’re just going to put in for long-term undercover work in the Outer Rim.”

“You inspire great confidence in a man, Vos,” Obi-Wan replies drily, squinting up at him. “The plan is so bad that you think if I were to see it all right now, I’d back out immediately?”

“No! I think if you see it all now, you’ll be way too intimidated to follow through. But if I tell you each step right before you have to execute it, then you won’t have time to overthink it or think about the next step! Then you report back to me, and I, unbiased narrator that I am, decide if it’s enough to move forward with the plan.”

Obi-Wan squints at him harder. “You just want to be involved so you know exactly what’s going on.”

“Kenobi, I need to know what’s going on.”

He considers this carefully. “Fine,” he says again, somehow more reluctantly than the first time. “Fine, alright. Force. Fine.”

Vos beams. “Obi-Wan Kenobi, forget his bedroom, we’re gonna get you inside this man’s kriffing heart.”

Obi-Wan puts his head in his hands. Kriff, he needs a fucking drink.

Chapter Text

There is a snag in the plan almost as soon as it leaves the proverbial launchpad, because of course there is.

Quinlan escorts him out of his quarters and down the hall with an arm thrown around his shoulders, ostensibly to make sure that he can’t physically back out of their deal.

“I’m not going to run away,” he mutters under his breath to that effect. “You’ve tied my hands well and truly too tightly to even try.”

“You tied yourself up last night, mate,” Quin replies solemnly, pulling them to a stop. “I just got to sit back and watch.”

“Enjoy it, did you?”

“Well, you made a bit of nice picture, that much is true,” his friend says. “Though I have to say, I could have done without the tears—”

“What are you two discussing outside my quarters?” Master Skywalker’s voice cuts through the beginnings of Obi-Wan’s response. Obi-Wan closes his mouth immediately and blanches when he accidentally makes eye contact with a glowering Master Skywalker. He snaps his eyes down to study the floor between them.

“Master Skywalker!” He hears Quinlan say. “We were just trying to find you!”

“Me?” The Jedi master sounds taken aback.

“Him?” Ahsoka asks from behind her master’s form, shoving him slightly out of the way so she can poke her head around his shoulder. Her padawan beads swing out and hang, dangling in the air. Obi-Wan lets himself look at them for several seconds before he looks away, darting his eyes up to look at Master Skywalker—who’s still looking at him consideringly—and then to the much safer visage of Quinlan, who pulls him closer.

“Ahsoka!” Quinlan makes a show of looking surprised. “I’m honestly surprised you’re awake and moving around so early in the morning. With how much you drank, we thought you’d be out cold until tonight.”

Ahsoka bares her teeth at them both, as if Obi-Wan has contributed anything at all to this conversation. 

That’s the flaw in the plan, he’s just now remembering. He doesn’t know how to talk to Master Skywalker, let alone make eye contact long enough for him to fall in love with him. Or something. Whatever the plan is. Not that Quinlan had told him the first step before dragging him out of his quarters.

“You’re one to talk,” Ahsoka snipes back. “I see Obi-Wan’s wearing the same outfit he wore last night. And you’re obviously not coming from the padawan dormitories.”

Obi-Wan flushes and brings his hands up to clasp them together beneath his robe. “I don’t know what you’re implying,” he tells her. He can feel how heated his cheeks are. Master Skywalker is still studying him. “Of course I slept at Quin’s.”

“What do you want me for?” Anakin interrupts before either Quin or Ahsoka can say anything else. “You’ve found me.”

“Oh!” Quinlan says. “Obi here wanted to ask you some questions.”

“And he needed an escort?” Anakin’s eyebrow raises as his eyes fall heavily onto the arm Quinlan’s still got wrapped around him. “He can walk free of aid, yes?”

Perhaps it’s the lingering mortification of last night, coupled with the residual anger towards Quinlan for forcing him into this which he can’t bring himself to let go, egged on by the annoying use of that despised nickname. No matter what, he finds himself tilting his head back to frown at Master Skywalker and snap, “He can speak for himself as well.” He blinks at the older man, who blinks back at him. “Master,” he adds, shrugging off Quinlan’s arm. “Sorry.”

Anakin looks at him, but his shoulders seem to relax if anything. “What questions did you have for me, Obi-Wan?” His tone changes as well, though nothing so obvious that Obi-Wan can point to it and say there . There is the difference. 

“Master, I’m hungry, if you don’t move out of the way so I can go to the refectory, I’m going to eat your arm,” Ahsoka announces. 

“Can togrutas digest durasteel?” Quin asks, tapping at his chin. Obi-Wan barely contains the urge to elbow him because one should not poke fun—even adjacent fun—at Anakin Skywalker’s missing hand. He’s sure that the man had felt a great deal of pain from the severance, and he always wears a thick glove over the prosthetic as if he’s self-conscious about it.

Quinlan and Ahsoka continue to bicker in the background, and Master Skywalker steps forward out of the doorway. It brings him much too close to Obi-Wan for comfort, and he’s sure everyone in the Temple can feel his spike of pure panic in the Force.

For a split second, Master Skywalker looks aghast. “I’m not going to hurt you, Obi-Wan,” he says, and Obi-Wan knows this. He does. He just isn’t sure if Master Skywalker is aware of the vast myriad of ways that he could potentially hurt him.

But his statement makes a sort of sense—everyone knows how fierce Anakin Skywalker was on the battlefield during the Clone Wars. He’d seemed like some avenging mythical creature in the holos, taking out swathes of droids with his lightsaber and standing proud and tall and threatening over the remains. 

Obi-Wan had been a bit too busy being a commander in his own right with Qui-Gon across the galaxy to spare much thought for Master Skywalker’s battle prowess at the time, but it’s been almost a whole year since the end of the war. He’s had more than enough time to watch the holos, listen to the sex-driven, slightly intimidated gossip from the other senior padawans.

I loved him before was a phrase he’s gotten very good at swallowing down, even if it’s true. I loved him before he saved the galaxy, when he was just saving me. 

Ahsoka darts out from behind her master and pushes past Obi-Wan in an attempt to grab at Quinlan, who most assuredly deserves it even though Obi-Wan hadn’t been paying attention to what they’d been bickering about. Anakin Skywalker thinks he has questions to ask him, and all of a sudden the only thing he can think to say is Fuck me?

He’s terrified it will come out of his mouth misshapen and deformed, sounding more like Love me? so he doesn’t say anything for several seconds. Instead he tilts his head away, pretending to be distracted by Ahsoka trying to clamber up on Quin’s back.

His eyes catch onto the swing of Ahsoka’s beads, and inspiration unfurls in his stomach. For a moment, it’s easier to breathe. “The Trials, Master,” he says, unclasping his hands so he can fiddle with the end of his padawan braid. “I—I have been thinking of the Trials.”

Master Skywalker’s brows furrow. “Surely Master Jinn would be able to help you more than I would,” he points out, and Obi-Wan rubs the back of his neck.

“You were trained by him,” he responds. “And I—you were Knighted younger than I am now, and I don’t want him to think I’m demanding…or anything. Ah.”

He’s apparently tread on his own issues though, because his stomach feels suddenly as small as his throat. He should have fucking asked Master Skywalker to just fuck him. Why had he landed on those words instead? He can see the beginnings of pity steal into Master Skywalker’s eyes. He hates it. He hates it.

Quin’s hand falls down to encircle his elbow. He must be trying to ask if he’s alright, but all he does is tug him closer towards him, away from Master Skywalker. It’s probably for the best though. Whatever step one of their plan was, Obi-Wan’s no doubt gone and mucked it all up.

“Of course I’ll talk with you, Obi-Wan,” Anakin says before Obi-Wan can beat a hasty retreat or Quinlan can say anything at all. “Ahsoka and I were heading for breakfast. Why don’t you join us?”

It’s the worst thing about Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan thinks dully. Whenever he talks to someone, he has this way of making it seem like they’re the only person in the galaxy. It’s the worst thing about Obi-Wan Kenobi, that he’s never been able to convince himself out of believing it. “Okay,” he agrees.

“Come along then,” Anakin prompts quickly, stepping further into the hall and gesturing for Obi-Wan to follow him. “Knight Vos can come as well.”

“Oh well, thank you Master,” Quin rolls his eyes and drops Obi-Wan’s arm with one last pat of his hand to his sleeve. “Obi, go on ahead, I gotta talk to ‘Soka about something.”

Obi-Wan narrows his eyes in suspicion. He wouldn’t tell Ahsoka of the plan, right? No. That had practically been one of Obi-Wan’s only conditions. “Quin….”

Master Skywalker’s hand ghosts over the same area Quin had touched, and suddenly Obi-Wan can’t remember a single word in Galactic Basic to save his life, let alone a protest of any sort. He turns easily to trail next to Anakin, even when that slight touch has disappeared completely, Master Skywalker’s hands falling to his side.

“This may very well come across as…exceeding my mandate,” Master Skywalker murmurs as they increase the distance between the other two. “But I would advise…caution. Between yourself and Knight Vos.” 

There’s the slightest bit of emphasis on Quinlan’s title. Obi-Wan is very confused. “Caution?” 

“Relationships between Jedi are common,” Master Skywalker says carefully, eyes pointedly looking forward. “They’re not even frowned upon, if the Jedi are of equal rank.”

Obi-Wan’s skin prickles and shrinks until he feels like

he’s going to burst out of it entirely.

“Between padawans, it’s fine. But a Knight and a padawan? Even a senior one…it’s not allowed, Obi-Wan.” 

What about a padawan and a Master? It’s a question that Obi-Wan is not stupid enough to ask, though he burns with the desire to do so. “No exceptions?” He asks, mouth dry.

Anakin frowns. The furrow of his eyebrows accentuates the scar that runs through one of them. Perhaps he should look scary like that. Obi-Wan certainly recognizes that face from the war footage. But this is Master Skywalker. This is the man who—

“No exceptions,” Master Skywalker says forcefully, like he’s issuing an order for surrender. “Imagine what it would do to the Order’s reputation if the holos found out about a Knight and a padawan of any age going at it in all parts of the Temple.” The words are callous, and Obi-Wan can feel himself blush.

“What if…what if I were a knight?” He asks quietly, fingers grasping for straws because what’s the point of all of this if Master Skywalker would never even consider him an option. “Would it be…possible? For…a knight and a Master? Even if they wouldn’t be of equal rank?”

When Master Skywalker laughs, there’s a hard edge to it. “Quinlan Vos won’t become a master before you’re a Knight, Obi-Wan. No need to worry there.”

“I…” Obi-Wan trails off. And oh. He’d forgotten the premise of the conversation, too wrapped up in the terrible thought that Anakin would never want him. “Quinlan and I aren’t…we’re not involved.”

It feels important to state that. Should he say it again? Just to make sure Master Skywalker understood?

The master nods once, jaw set. “Better,” he says. The word of praise—even said so reluctantly in that tone of voice—makes Obi-Wan’s knees slightly weak, a situation not at all aided by the way Anakin stops them just at the doors of the refectory and pulls him to the side, setting his hand gently on Obi-Wan’s shoulder. The bare skin of his fingers brush against his padawan braid.

“It is hard to carry out a relationship in secret, Obi-Wan,” he tells him, forcing eye contact by ducking his head down until Obi-Wan has to meet his eyes. “There are many relationships we enter that…that we believe are worth the secrecy. And they’re usually not. Or perhaps they might have been at the beginning, but the secrecy—the hiding—it turns almost everything sour. It makes you second guess everything. Even the love in the first place.” 

Master Skywalker’s face is doing something funny, and Obi-Wan doesn’t understand anything that’s going on. “Is this about the Senator?” 

Master Skywalker frowns even as he flinches back slightly. “No,” he denies, which is very good because in the list of things Obi-Wan wants to talk about, Anakin’s Skywalker’s Well-Known and Speeder-Crash of an Affair and Apparently Love For Senator Amidala is at the very bottom. “It’s about your relationship with Knight Vos.” 

Obi-Wan stares at him. “I am not in a relationship with Quinlan Vos.”

Master Skywalker sort of looks like he’s been forced to bite a lemon wedge. “Right.”

“No, seriously!” Obi-Wan stresses. “We’ve talked about it and agreed we both find the other distinctly unlovable.”

“Obi-Wan, you’ve not taken the care to be discreet in the past. I’m sure most of the Temple knows that you two are—”

“We’ve slept together, yes, alright,” Obi-Wan desperately wants to hide his face in his hands. This is mortifying.

“So you are together,” Master Skywalker says like he’s laying the matter to rest.

“No!” Obi-Wan corrects. Again. “No, we’ve…just…casually…for the fun of it. No…no deeper feelings. Or anything.”

“Sex isn’t meant to be fun, Obi-Wan, it’s supposed to be a connection between body, mind, soul, and—”

Oh kark. No wonder Ahsoka had called him easy if this was her example of sexual piety. “It’s fun,” Obi-Wan declares and thinks that maybe Master Skywalker really is a bit of a prude, regardless of his senatorial past. “I have fun. I like it when I’m out in civilian dress,  in a club on the lower levels and someone pulls me back into their arms, and we dance and laugh and have a good time and I leave limping the next morning without knowing their name. I also have fun when another padawan is bored and wants to practice taking a cock up the—”

He’s cut off suddenly by Anakin’s hands, which clamp abruptly over his mouth. The Jedi Master is so red in the face that Obi-Wan is sort of worried his heart is about to give out. Anakin Skywalker is a prude. And Obi-Wan had just told him how much he likes being fucked.

As his own words catch up to him, he stares up at Anakin in horror. He’s suddenly very, very relieved that the Jedi Master had stopped him from speaking before he could say anything else. Something even more unforgivably honest, like I’ve never had sex with someone I was in love with, but I so desperately want to know what it feels like. Please touch me more.

No, what he’s said is bad enough. Fuck. Master Skywalker looks downright pained . If it hurt to think that Ahsoka thought of him as easy, it’s almost devastating to watch Anakin realize he’s a bit of a whore.

“What’s this then?” Quinlan asks from behind Anakin, and they jump apart at once. When Master Skywalker’s hand leaves his mouth, it feels vaguely cold to the air. Maybe Obi-Wan should try to grow a beard. That’s more likely to keep him warm than depending on Master Skywalker to hold his face for the rest of his life.

Master Skywalker glares at Quinlan before turning to his apprentice, apparently deciding to ignore him completely. “Ahsoka, come along. I know they’re serving govinlak this morning, and I’m not missing that.”

Very seriously and not dramatically at all, Obi-Wan thinks he can hear his heart break as he watches Master Skywalker’s broad back walk away from him, disappearing into the refectory.

So that’s that then.

“Obi-Wan, what the fuck did you even say?” Quinlan hisses at him, moving to take the spot Anakin has just vacated.

“Nothing,” Obi-Wan mutters. “Fuck. Never mind. Fuck this. Hey. Wanna fuck?”

“Your chin’s dimpling more than your dimples, friend,” Quin tells him solemnly. “You’d burst into tears probably before I get my pants off.”

Obi-Wan pouts, though he can’t pretend the Jedi Knight doesn’t have a point. “What was the first step of the plan, Quin?”

He narrows his eyes, before nodding slowly as if satisfied with Obi-Wan’s commitment. “First step was Begin cautiously. ”

Fighting a wince—and the terribly embarrassing urge to cry—Obi-Wan shrugs. “...might have fucked up, Q—”

“Obi-Wan!” Master Skywalker calls, and both Obi-Wan and Quinlan whip their heads up to look at him. He’s reappeared from the doors with two raised hours. “Come along, Obi-Wan. Unless you two have decided on something more… fun?”

Obi-Wan chokes on a breath of air and skitters forward automatically to close the distance between himself and Anakin. “No, Master,” he mutters, simultaneously relieved, confused, and embarrassed. “Sorry, Master.”

By the time everyone is sat at the table with food in front of them, Obi-Wan has actually thought of a way out of this mess. Or at least, he’s thought of a few questions he can ask Anakin, ones that the man will think are impressive and definitely worth a trip to search him out specifically. Perhaps even ones so impressive that he’ll have no other choice but to fall in love with him.

Alright, not really.

“Obi-Wan, your questions?” Anakin prompts gently, doing that thing again like he’s focusing all of his attention on him. It’s warm under Master Skywalker’s considering gaze.

“The part of the Trials where we prove how much we have learned through teaching others—what, um. What did you do? For it? I can’t remember.”

“You wouldn’t, would you? You were about three, I think,” Master Skywalker agrees with a wry twist of his mouth. His eyes are shuttered slightly. Obi-Wan can’t even begin to understand why. “I built a miniature pod-racing track through the Room of a Thousand Fountains and taught a group of younglings how to build their own pods for it.”

Obi-Wan blinks at him. “You…Anakin, you could have killed the younglings!”

Anakin shakes his head with a sharp grin. “It was a small track. And it wasn’t about the racing, Obi-Wan. More about the crafting, the flying. Being one with the Force. I’m a big proponent of moving meditation and connecting to the Force through different methods, which was what I was trying to show.”

He runs a hand through his hair as he leans back and winks at him, as if that’s not practically an attempt on Obi-Wan’s life as well.

“It was also about the racing,” he admits. “Is that what this is about? Are you having difficulty thinking of something for that Trial?”

“Maybe,” Obi-Wan lies. He hasn’t particularly thought of it at all before this morning, so distant in the future his Knighting has always seemed. “Um. Yes.”

“Would you like to know what I did for mine?” Quinlan asks, and Obi-Wan blinks at him incredulously. Has he forgotten about the plan? Does he really think that Obi-Wan has put any thought into this?

“Unfortunately, Quinlan, I don’t have that much time,” Master Skywalker cuts in smoothly, leaning back over the table and placing a gentle hand on Obi-Wan’s arm. “I’d like to hear what you’ve thought about, Obi-Wan, if you’d tell me.”

Maybe it’s the slant of his eyebrows or the fingers on his arm or the tilt of his head or the way he sounds interested if not also slightly concerned. Maybe it’s all of it.

The words come before Obi-Wan even realizes they’ve been formed in his mind. “Do you…do you remember, during the war, we were….” He trails off and looks away, jaw clenched. Quinlan taps their feet together before turning to ask Ahsoka something about Barriss, which distracts the girl quite wholeheartedly.

“Tell me what you’re thinking about,” Anakin commands gently.

“Zygerria,” Obi-Wan spits out. The word lands on the table between them. Anakin’s hand tightens almost to the point of pain on his arm.

“Why are you thinking about Zygerria.” He demands without demanding.

Obi-Wan looks away, familiar shame rising up inside of his chest. He tries his hardest to not think of the planet, that much is true. He still remembers the heat of it though. The noises of the market, the brush of fabric against his bare thighs.

It’d been a joint mission between Anakin’s men and Obi-Wan’s master’s, an attempt to find the missing Togruta colonists of Kiros. Ahsoka had been badly wounded in a previous battle, still on the mend. Obi-Wan had taken her place as an undercover slave that his master had every intention of selling. Instead, he’d been given as a gift to the queen of the Zygerria.

“When they found out I was Force sensitive,” Obi-Wan says stiltedly. “They put cuffs on me so I couldn’t feel it anymore. And—I didn’t have my saber or anything. When things—when it got bad, when they knew I knew everything—they took me into a room and left me alone with a prisoner. And. They told him that if he killed me, they’d let him and his family go. They just wanted to show Master Jinn, my um. My body. But they didn’t want to be responsible. And—there was a moment, he was on top of me—and I didn’t know how to fight back. I should have been able to win easily, but without the Force, without my lightsaber…I was nothing. And then….”

He clears his throat and chances a glance up at Anakin’s face. He’s never looked so intense, Obi-Wan doesn’t think. Except that’s not true.

He’d looked about the same when he’d broken down the doors and pulled the prisoner off of Obi-Wan. He’d Force-choked the life out of him, like he were some sort of droid, before dropping to his knees beside him and running those same hands over his face and chest, intense and frantic and half out of his mind.

“Why are you thinking about Zygerria, Obi-Wan?” Anakin asks steadily. His thumb has begun stroking against the rhythm of Obi-Wan’s pulse.

Those same hands had lifted Obi-Wan up and into his arms as if he hadn’t weighed a thing. At twenty, he’d been slight, sure, but he’d been muscular as well. But Master Skywalker—perhaps through clever use of the Force—had carried him out of the room he’d thought for a few seconds he’d die in. He’d pressed his durasteel hand against Obi-Wan’s skull, forcing his head down into the crick of his neck.

But Obi-Wan had looked up. Obi-Wan had looked back. Obi-Wan had seen the string of bodies leading from the room down the corridor to the doors they’d escaped through.

On Zygerria, he’d realized the price of his body and then, almost immediately after, the price of his life.

He wets his lips before looking at Anakin again. “I can’t pretend my padawanship wasn't absolutely scarred by the war. Even if it’s over now. I’ve been trying to think of all the things I know that I could demonstrate and teach to pass this Trial, but the thing I keep coming back to is the thing I didn’t know. When I needed to know it. How to protect myself without the Force, with just my body.”

Anakin tilts his head. For a second his grip tightens. “You will never be in that situation again,” he says finally. “Zygerria will never happen again.”

There’s something hard and unyielding in his voice, like his words are backed by duracrete.

“I don’t want to be,” Obi-Wan agrees. “But I…but who knows what the Force has in store for us?”

“You sound like Qui-Gon,” Anakin mutters and lets go of him. “I don’t like it.”

“That I sound like my master, or my idea?” Obi-Wan asks, biting his lip slightly.

“The former. The idea…is it that you want to teach self-defense to Initiates?”

Obi-Wan dips his head and pulls his own arm back to his side of the table. “I think so, yes. Just…the basics. We do katas with training sabers, we have so many games for Jedi children to play to practice their precision with the Force, but…there’s almost nothing in the curriculum about hand to hand combat.” He rubs a hand over his throat absentmindedly. Sometimes, he still wakes up and thinks he can feel hands wrapped around his neck.

“You’re right, Obi-Wan,” Master Skywalker finally says, eyes glued to his neck and jaw bunched tight. “You are. I think it’s an excellent idea.”

Obi-Wan ducks his head to try and hide his grin at the words, but it’s impossible. It’s too big. Master Skywalker likes his idea. He feels all of twelve years old again.

“I see one flaw in your plan though,” Master Skywalker continues. “It’s only—do you know the basics of hand-to-hand combat?”

“Oh,” says Obi-Wan. “No.”

“Then how will you teach it to Initiates?” Master Skywalker points out, and Obi-Wan flushes slightly.

“Well, I mean—um.”

“That’s where you come in, Master Skywalker,” Quinlan interrupts, laying an arm against Obi-Wan’s shoulder and grinning at Anakin as if his interference is at all a welcome development.

Anakin frowns. “You want me to teach you?”

At one point, when Obi-Wan had been a youngling, there had been nothing he’d wanted more in the entire world. He’s grown up now though. Grown up and self-aware enough to know that he’d come in his pants the moment Anakin Skywalker put his arms around him and took him to the floor. To, not on.

“Of course not,” Quinlan waves him away. “We know you’re quite busy as a Jedi Master. We were only hoping you’d have connections in the lower levels for a teacher for Obi here. Everyone knows you used to spend a lot of time down there.”

Anakin bristles. “No more than I’ve heard you do, Vos.”

“You’re right, but my connections aren’t especially the fighting kind,” Quinlan smirks. “And Obi-Wan’s met most of them already.”

“Gross,” Ahsoka declares.

“We just figured we’d ask before I teach him myself, given that I’m no Master,” Quinlan continues. “But, well. I’ve taught him a lot of things I suppose. What’s one more type of hand-to-hand?”

Master Skywalker stands suddenly, banging the table with his knees. It must hurt a lot because he glowers at Quinlan like he’s just tried to gut him. “Padawan Kenobi, I’ve a mission off planet for three days. When I return, if you’re still amenable, I’ll teach you hand to hand.”

“Combat?” Quinlan asks innocently, and Master Skywalker’s lip curls up before he turns around to stalk away.

“Master, where are you going?” Ahsoka calls after his retreating figure.

“To the ship!” Master Skywalker yells back, disappearing behind the doors in a swirl of his cloak.

“He’s not scheduled to go for hours,” Ahsoka says, sounding baffled. “What has gotten into him? He’s never been early to anything in his life.”

Obi-Wan shrugs, practically vibrating out of his skin. He can’t believe he’d just said all those things to Master Skywalker. And Master Skywalker had listened. Master Skywalker had said he wanted to teach him.

He’s said that before, a tiny voice in the back of his head reminds him. And nothing came out of it that time.

“I better go and make sure he’s not trying to leave without his bag or Artoo or something,” Ahsoka sighs, slipping from out beneath the table. “But don’t think you two won’t be telling me everything about what that just was later.”

“Of course,” Quinlan promises. “A full mission report of my decision to fuck with Anakin Skywalker for the fun of it.”

Ahsoka rolls her eyes and warns, only half-jokingly, “I’m telling you now then, abort mission. He’s fragile, and he’s my master.”

Obi-Wan doesn’t think there’s anything about Anakin Skywalker that’s fragile. He also thinks Ahsoka needs to stop sounding so fucking smug when she calls Anakin her master, or Obi-Wan is going to lose it.

“How can I though?” Quinlan asks rhetorically. “When the first results have been so very positive?”

Obi-Wan doesn’t know about that. He doesn’t know much about beginnings and he doesn’t know much about caution, but he thinks whatever just happened was probably neither.

Which is why he can’t understand why he suddenly feels so…hopeful.

What a terrible emotion. What a goddamn ruinous feeling.

Chapter Text

“It’s like you want this plan to fail,” Quinlan says upon opening the door to his quarters and looking Obi-Wan up and down.

Obi-Wan blinks and looks down at himself. “What do you mean?”

“I told you to wear something revealing! Change it up! Make him look!”

“I did!” Obi-Wan defends himself. He gestures to his chest. “I took the second layer off.” 

He feels, quite frankly, very exposed. And like everyone he’d passed by in the Temple had noticed the absence of his usual brown undertunic, what it meant and who he was trying to tempt. 

Vos puts his head in his hands. “Obi-Wan, I love you like a brother—”

“I feel like you can’t say that with the same mouth I’ve stuck my dick in,” Obi-Wan interrupts, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Obi-Wan, I love you like a brother, but sometimes you boggle my mind.”

“That’s not the only thing I’ve—”

“Boggle, Obi-Wan! I was expecting to see you dressed—dressed more like Ahsoka! You took a tunic off! Your underlayer! Where’s the tube top, Kenobi?”

“I suppose I hope that dressing like his padawan wouldn’t make it click in his head to view me in a sexual light….”

Quin raises one hand and pinches the bridge of his nose with the other. “Darling, have you seen Padmé Amidala? The senator Master Skywalker had the—”

“I know who she is, thanks —”

“Have you ever seen her in that—like, that black corset dress she wears when she’s trying to be intimidating? Master Skywalker had an affair with that black corset dress, Obi!”

“I wasn’t aware I was competing with Senator Amidala,” Obi-Wan says stiffly, crossing his arms over his chest. After all, it wouldn’t even be a competition. He still gets spots sometimes. Not to mention everything else.

Quinlan seems to key into the change in his mood rather immediately, because he steps forward and puts a bracing hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean it like that, Obi,” he mutters. “Just that Master Skywalker seems like the type to notice flashy, big changes—”

Obi-Wan steps out of the reach of Quinlan’s arm and snaps sourly, “Well. It’s too late now to do anything else. I’m already late to meet him. Hopefully he hasn’t noticed.”

“Oh, Obi-Wan, come on,” Quinlan says, following him into the corridor.

“See you in a bit,” Obi-Wan tells him shortly, running a hand through his hair in self-frustration. “Hopefully limping and bruised.”

Quinlan hasn’t done anything wrong. Obi-Wan is just…nervous. He’s been nervous and short with everyone for the past two days. The Plan sits heavily on his mind. It’s almost all he can think about. He’d accidentally made tea for his master with cold water instead of boiling because he’d been distracted thinking about Master Skywalker finding out, about Master Skywalker scorning him, turning away, laughing.

“Because of the hand-to-hand,” Quin says. He’s smirking, even though he still looks wary, slightly concerned.

The response is enough to pull a grin out of Obi-Wan. “Obviously,” he winks.

“Knock him off his feet, darling!” Vos calls from behind him.

“Oh, I intend to try my hardest!” Obi-Wan replies, feeling lighter at the familiarity of the banter. There’s no doubt in his mind that Master Skywalker will probably have him flat on his back within minutes of arriving at the training salle they’d booked.

The fun part is going to be getting there. 

Hopefully.

He really is late by the time he finishes climbing all the stairs to the training salle. It’s an open-air one, in one of the circular elevated towers of the Temple. It’s one of his favorites.

He thinks it’s probably one of Anakin’s favorites too, but also doesn’t know that for sure. Ahsoka always complains about having to make the journey up to it—all those stairs, she’s exhausted by the time she gets to the room—but Obi-Wan doesn’t know if their constant use of the room signals Anakin’s enjoyment of it or Anakin’s enjoyment of giving his padawan a hard time.

“Sorry I’m late, Master Skywalker,” he says as he bursts into the room. He’d run the last few flights of stairs, trying to make up for lost time, but all that’s done is make him feel sweaty and hot all over. His hair is sticking to his face. He’s probably as red as an Alderaan tomato.

Anakin is not alone

He’s laughing actually, sitting on the ground in a loose meditation stance, while Master Secura bends her body backwards into a bridge a scant foot away from him, lithe legs and taut stomach trembling with her own laughter.

Obi-Wan’s mouth is very dry and his throat is suddenly very tight. There must be something in this training salle that he’s allergic to, because his eyes feel itchy.

Master Skywalker hasn’t even seen him yet.

Obi-Wan swallows and runs a hand through his hair, taking a step forward further into the room. Anakin has stopped laughing, but there’s a smile in the corners of his eyes as he leans back onto his hands and stretches out his feet so that they’re beneath Master Secura’s arched back.

“You really told your padawan that was the best way to meditate?” Anakin is still chuckling every now and then. “Flexible meditation. Did he try it?”

Master Secura has her eyes closed. Her lekku are just touching the floor. Her usual outfit, revealing and tight and so very eye-catching has somehow managed to bunch up even more, and Obi-Wan can see every muscle in her exposed arm, her tight abdomen, and he’s still on the other side of the room. Master Skywalker must be getting an eyefull.

And Obi-Wan really thought that taking his under-tunic off would be enough to draw Anakin’s eyes.

How stupid of him.

He can’t even get Anakin’s attention now, and this is his time with the man.

“Made him flexible enough that it apparently came in handy when he was a senior padawan,” Master Secura still has her eyes closed. Obi-Wan realizes suddenly who they’re talking about—Quinlan—and exactly what Quinlan had been implying. He blushes a dark red.

Master Skywalker scowls at the same time. “Hm. Well. You’re not centering yourself.”

Aayla opens one eye to look at him, catches sight of Obi-Wan instead and moves to flip out of the position at the exact time that Anakin lightly hooks his foot around her middle and brings her crashing down onto him.

He’s laughing at her outraged cries. It’s a lovely sound, deep and powerful and loud.

Obi-Wan has never felt smaller, more inconsequential and when he was thirteen years old, he’d been put on a transport ship to the Agricorps and Knight Skywalker hadn’t looked at him once. “Um. We can reschedule,” he finally forces himself to say loud enough that Master Skywalker’s head snaps towards him. 

“Obi-Wan!” Master Skywalker says. He tries to stand, but Master Secura has stopped trying to move off him, dead weight on his legs that any man in the galaxy would probably kill to feel.

Obi-Wan looks away, out between the columns at the bustling city and speeder-filled sky around them. “I apologize for my tardiness,” he says hollowly. “But if you’re…busy, we can reschedule.”

Master Skywalker pushes Master Secura completely off his legs rather roughly and stands. Obi-Wan blinks at him. 

Quite gracefully, Master Secura rolls onto her back, up into that Force-damned arch, before flipping her legs over her head and standing with a bounce. Obi-Wan looks at the floor just in case Master Skywalker looks at her breasts. He doesn’t want to see that.

Desperately, he wants his undertunic back. He feels so exposed, so transparent. Surely Aayla Secura has taken one look at him and understands exactly what he’d been hoping to do. Surely she’s laughing to herself. Surely she’ll tell Anakin later that night if they meet up again, legs tangled in a different way all together—

“Don’t be too hard on the poor boy,” Master Secura tells Anakin. Obi-Wan glances up through his eyelashes. Anakin is staring at him with an unreadable look in his eyes. “He wasn’t that late. Probably with Quinlan, right? Padawan? Lost track of time?”

“Um,” Obi-Wan says. “Yes, Master.” It’s only sort of true. After all, he was with Quinlan, but only briefly. But he’d been late because the man had demanded to judge his appearance before letting him see Anakin.

He can’t wait to tell him that he should have really tried to dress more like Vos’ old master if he wanted Anakin’s attention. That’ll go over simply stunningly.

Anakin looks like he’s encountered something extremely foul-smelling. Obi-Wan hadn’t realized how important punctuality was to him. 

It’s not as if he hadn’t been busy.

The master folds his hands behind his back and just looks at him for several seconds as Master Secura excused herself from the room with a chipper goodbye. Master Skywalker doesn’t watch her leave, but Obi-wan doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not. 

“Padawan Kenobi,” he says in a very stiff and low voice that Obi-Wan has heard but never directed at him. “I do not need to remind you that my time is valuable. If you’re not going to actually take this seriously, then I fail to see why I should.”

Obi-Wan drops his eyes to his shoes. This is even worse than seeing Master Secura and Anakin laughing together. Now he has Anakin’s attention and the man is disappointed in him. His throat feels much too tight to get any words out, so he settles for nodding.

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin says, his tone unreadable.

But Obi-Wan would rather actually  be punched in the face than hear more of a lecture, so he cuts in quickly. “I won’t be late again, Master,” he promises the floor and fights the urge to fidget. “I apologize for wasting your time.” And then, because he can’t help it even though he knows he should bite his tongue and not ruin the remains of a good thing, “I can find another teacher if you would rather.”

I’ve done so before, he doesn’t say. He wants to. The expression on Anakin’s face when he dares raise his eyes makes him think his meaning has not been lost.

“No,” the master says roughly, and he strides forward. Obi-Wan fights the urge to flinch back. “No, I’d said I’d do it.”

His breath catches in his throat and he looks up fully to see Master Skywalker only a foot away. Indecently close. Painfully close.

Carefully, like he’s weighing every action, Master Skywalker places his mechno hand on his shoulder, close to his neck. It’s ungloved, but the dursteel isn’t cold at all. “I said I’d do it, alright?”

“Alright,” Obi-Wan agrees. Anakin is looking down at him, head tilted slightly and eyebrows furrowed. He looks very serious, like he’s declaring war.

“Just no more—tardiness,” the Jedi master demands in that same low voice. He squeezes once and then drops his hand quickly, as if surprised by his own daring. His eyes have dropped from Obi-Wan’s face to the exposed skin of his neck and collarbones.

He looks…displeased.

The expression needles at all of Obi-Wan’s sore spots and he steps back, fighting the absolute ridiculous urge to cover his chest. He’s not even that exposed. He’s worn more revealing things in front of people before, he’s worn nothing in front of people before. None of them were Anakin Skywalker though. It never felt like their opinion mattered.

“Apologies again for my…delay,” he hears himself say. “But at least you were not waiting alone.”

The raised eyebrow is less of a reprimand than he deserves, of course. It’s not Obi-Wan’s place at all to question who Master Skywalker keeps company with, to even comment on it. They’re not…they’re not friends like that. They’re not close, not really. Not in any substantive way.

“I actually invited Master Secura here for an hour before our session was scheduled to begin,” Anakin tells him.

“Oh,” Obi-Wan says. “Alright.” He hopes his tone is flat.

Anakin’s mouth tips up at the corners in amusement. “Come here, Obi-Wan,” he says, taking a step back and gesturing to the center of the circular training hall. “And take off your shoes.”

Obi-Wan’s nose wrinkles automatically at the very idea. The floor must be dirty.

Now Master Skywalker is full on smiling, even though it’s a small one. It’s a private one. “Take off your shoes or risk the wrath of the legion of cleaning droids I had to repair when I was sixteen for dirtying up a space unnecessarily.”

Obi-Wan frowns down at his shoes and then up at Anakin.

“And don’t pout,” Anakin adds.

Obi-Wan slides off his shoes and starts to join him in the center of the ring. “If you step on my toes, I’m going to tell Master Qui-Gon about all the old holonet porn I found at the back of your old closet,” he threatens and his voice doesn’t even waver, even when he’s sort of started thinking about what exactly he did with himself after he found all of Anakin Skywalker’s old porn.

Mainly, of course, how much he’s touched himself over the years to glossy pictures of people he isn’t attracted to, flipping through to try and find the wornest pages of flimsi, crease marks delineating which of the large-breasted women or slim-looking men attracted a young Anakin Skywalker the most.

The older version in front of him lets out a startled laugh and then shakes his head, curls falling over his forehead from the motion. “Stars, Obi-Wan, you really go for the knees.”

Obi-Wan preens. He thinks a warrior like Anakin must respect his own brand of ruthlessness, even just in a joking manner.

“But who do you think gave me those?” Anakin adds, and Obi-Wan chokes on nothing. “Supplemental for the lesson on human sexuality the Temple provided. Couldn’t look at him for days after. Stuffed ‘em there and never thought about them again.”

Well. That explains why there’d been no creasemarks before Obi-Wan had gotten his hands on them.

“He really didn’t do the same with you?” Anakin sounds curious, as if they’re not talking about porn magazines in the middle of the Jedi Temple. Obi-Wan is flushed all over. He thinks he preferred it when Anakin acted the prude.

He tugs at the collar of his robes before he remembers he’s not got his under tunic on and what he’s really doing is just flashing Anakin more skin than the man probably wants to see if the way the master immediately averts his eyes is any indication. “I suppose he, uh. Didn’t think he had to,” Obi-Wan admits. “We, well. We’ve already talked about my lack of discretion.”

Master Skywalker’s nostrils flare slightly. “Yes, I remember. I thought perhaps you’d remember as well.”

Obi-Wan blinks at him and tilts his head, furrowing his eyebrows. “I don’t think I understand,” he apologizes, “Master,” he adds, when the man’s expression sours even more.

“You’ve forgotten your undertunic,” Master Skywalker mutters. “It’s quite obvious why you were late if you were spending time with Knight Vos and you forgot your undertunic.”

Obi-Wan’s mouth falls open. “That’s not—”

But Master Skywalker has already turned away, pacing to the opposite end of the circle and then back. “No matter. Onto the lesson.”

“Look, wait, I wasn’t—”

“Hand to hand combat is both wildly different and comfortingly similar to saber combat,” Master Skywalker says over Obi-Wan’s protest. It makes him close his mouth, warring internally with the instinct to plead his case, make sure Anakin understands that he wasn’t late because he was sleeping with Quinlan and the instinct to listen to the master as he’s teaching him.

“I promise, you know more than you think you do,” these words are said in a kind voice, a reassuring tone. After the dark derision and curt words he’s said before, this delivery wrankles.

Obi-Wan crosses his arms. “Saber combat relies on the Force.”

“Saber combat relies on one’s understanding of their place in the Force. Body, mind, and soul. The lightsaber is both a weapon and an extension of our will and our bodies in the Force,” Anakin corrects gently. “Wielding a lightsaber is easier with the Force, of course. Everything is. But lightsaber combat depends on you , just as it depends on the Force. And so does hand-to-hand combat.”

Obi-Wan rolls this over in his head, eyes narrowed. “Alright,” he agrees. “But what I need is hand-to-hand experience without the Force. Mind, body.”

“You’re impatient,” Anakin criticizes, a smile in his eyes. “I’m getting there.”

“We only have the room for an hour,” Obi-Wan points out. “I’m just being economical.”

Anakin grins and shakes his head. “Do you talk back like this to Qui-Gon?”

“Of course not,” Obi-Wan tosses his head, even though he does. “Master Qui-Gon is my master.”

There’s a beat of silence suddenly, the air of the room growing slightly more stiflingly.

This is the one thing they do not know how to talk about.

Well. One of many.

“I need to be able to only rely on my body,” Obi-Wan says to break the tense feeling, his throat dry. “If I’m ever in a situation where I have no Force.” You know, again. The words are too honest. Too bleak. “For my Trials so I can teach the younglings. Fighting hand-to-hand, without the Force to tell me when to duck or when the opponent is about to strike, I can’t see how that’s like saber combat.”

Anakin nods slowly. “Alright,” he says. “But your body is the Force, isn’t it?”

Obi-Wan raises both eyebrows. That’s very easy for the Chosen One to say, given that most all of the Temple believes Anakin Skywalker came from the Force itself. “Apologies for talking back, Master, but I do not believe your experiences are universal in this case.”

“Come now, if there is no death, there is the Force, then how can there be birth? We—every living being—we are the Force. So to know one’s body in and out, its limits and its strengths, is to know the Force, even if cut off from it. The key to beating your opponent is knowing every fragment of your body, being attuned to it.”

Now Obi-Wan’s throat feels dry for an entirely different reason. “You want to help me become attuned to my body, Master?”

“Yes,” Anakin looks satisfied and proud.

A thousand inappropriate images flash in front of Obi-Wan’s eyes. “Okay,” he agrees perhaps too quickly. “How do you want me?”

He hadn’t meant it to be suggestive, not actually, but that’s most definitely how Anakin hears it if the awkward flush across his face is to be interpreted. “I want to teach you moving meditation,” the man says much too awkwardly and much too quickly.

Obi-Wan furrows his eyebrows and drops his arms to his sides, stung. “You want to teach me meditation?” Did…Master Skywalker really think so little of his abilities as a Jedi? Here he was talking about his trials, and Master Skywalker didn’t even believe he could meditate.

“I want to teach you moving meditation,” Master Skywalker corrects, stepping forward. He must be able to feel Obi-Wan’s disquiet, because he touches his elbow lightly, loosely. “Obi, I know you know how to meditate. Remember?”

Obi-Wan swallows. He can’t hold Anakin’s suddenly heavy eyes, so he glances at the floor. 

What is he supposed to be remembering exactly?

Being seven years old and laughing much too loudly for the quiet contemplation hour as a young Anakin sat across from him and made silly expressions and noises behind the crèche master’s back until Obi-Wan could not help himself from giggling?

Being eleven years old and struggling with the basic katas, sneaking out of his bunk to practice in the dead of night only to be found by a twenty-seven year old Anakin, who had watched him for Force knows how long before stepping forward and suggesting a meditation, sat across from him on the floor and guided him through it. You know how when you dive into the pools, your head goes completely underwater for a moment? But then you come up for air, and you’re in the water, but you’re breathing too. A part of it. The water’s like the Force, right? You just need to come up for air, be separate but one.

Being twenty, waking from nightmare after nightmare that the Force wouldn’t take from him, stumbling around Master Skywalker’s ship at all hours of the night until Anakin had found him and dragged him to his own quarters, settled him on his own meditation mat, settled across from him, and reached to hold his hands, proposing joint meditation as if that were something Obi-Wan could handle at that point in his life.

“Yes,” he breathes, because the truth is, he remembers all of it.

“When I was fifteen, I was having trouble with normal meditation,” Anakin admits carefully. “Master Jinn didn’t know how to help me. It’s always been easy for him, connecting with the living Force. But for me, I…it felt like I could hardly disconnect. Everything was loud, all the time, and when I tried to meditate the way I was supposed to, I felt like I was going to lose myself in the Force."

“You couldn’t come up for air,” Obi-Wan says. Anakin squeezes his elbow lightly with the smallest of smiles.

“Now who told you that?” He asks, a twinkle in his eyes.

A liar. A nerfherder. The love of my life. The strangest, most distant, deepest attachment I’ve ever had. “I can’t quite recall,” Obi-Wan teases back, but his heart isn’t in it, not the way it should be if he weren’t hiding so many other emotions from the Jedi master.

“Sounds like a very intelligent Jedi Knight, I’m sure,” Anakin quips. “But I digress. I found, eventually, that the only way I could meditate and feel clear headed afterwards was by tinkering with droids, ship parts, odds and ends. I think I took apart the whole of Qui-Gon’s starship’s engine once when we were grounded for two weeks. It was Aayla who told me about what it was. Moving meditation. She did it too, but not with droids.”

“Fighting?” Obi-Wan connects.

“Something like it. She always called it dancing or stretching, and I suppose it always looked more…graceful than any sort of fist-fight I’d ever seen.”

Obi-Wan is quiet. He can be flexible, he can be graceful, he can even dance. But if the expectation is Aayla Secura, he’s not sure he won’t fall far below the bar.

“During the war, I started sparring with my men and Ahsoka as a moving meditation. It felt more…practical than tinkering. That was hand-to-hand. Brutal too, for all of us, but it centered me. Honestly, it ended up centering me more than the droid-tinkering ever had.”

“You want to teach me moving meditation as a form of sparring?” Obi-Wan asks curiously.

Anakin is quiet a beat too long before he sighs. “Not particularly,” he replies, and Obi-Wan blinks in confusion. “It’s why I invited Aayla up here earlier. I wanted—” he pauses, rubs the back of his neck. “I suppose I don’t want to teach you more fighting than I have to. Aayla’s version of moving meditation, dancing and stretching, it would suit you far more.”

This admittance makes Obi-Wan recoil, feeling slightly wounded, a cut that grows the longer the words ring in his ears. “You didn’t have to agree,” he manages, taking a step back. “I won’t force you to…to teach me. Remember?”

It’s Anakin’s turn to recoil as if he’s been struck. Good. Obi-Wan turns away. Good . He feels something akin to bone-deep humiliation, years and years worth of it welling up in all the cracks in his body. 

A hand grabs his elbow and reels him back around. Stronger than he is, Obi-Wan is forced into turning with the motion, though he refuses to meet Anakin’s eyes. 

“That’s not what I meant,” the man bites out, sounding angry and frustrated and curt. “I just—Force, Obi-Wan.”

When his arm is dropped, Obi-Wan shoots his eyes up at the master. Anakin has both hands tangled in his blond curls and he’s sucking on his lip as he stares at the ceiling, looking as if he is asking the Force itself for patience.

“I lied, alright.”

“About what?”

“It. It wasn’t the war that made me discover I liked fighting meditation better than anything else. When I was a kid, I’d sneak out to the lower levels a lot. When I was a senior padawan, it’d usually end in a fight. I’d want it to. I’d plan for it because after, everything in me was calm. I guess I really connected everything during the war, but I think I’ve always known how much I’m made for it. For the violence of it all.”

Obi-Wan wets his lips and moves closer. He doesn’t…he doesn’t dare speak, though he wants to point out that none of his memories of Anakin are violent. Well, almost none of them.

“But you, I don’t—I asked Aayla here so she could teach me , remind me how it feels to meditate in the Force in a way not rooted in violence. So I could show you.” Anakin drags a hand over his face, over the scar on his brow and finally looks down at Obi-Wan. He doesn’t seem surprised to find him close. “Turns out, the war’s ruined me. I’m worse at dancing meditation than her padawan apparently.” 

Obi-Wan lets out a snort at this, unable to hold it back at the mental image of Quinlan trying to do any sort of graceful movement.

Anakin tilts his head down further, and Obi-Wan’s heart picks up without his permission. They’re so close. He could reach out and touch him. He hasn’t touched him first yet, though Quinlan told him that’s the next step of the plan. A casual touch.

“So I don’t want to teach you sparring meditation,” Anakin continues as if he isn’t close enough to steal the oxygen from Obi-Wan’s very lungs. “But I will. I will because you want to learn and you need to know your body through this sort of meditation before I can teach you hand-to-hand in a way that will feel intuitive.”

Obi-Wan thinks about this. There’s a part of him, a scared and small and young boy residing in his chest, that likes what Anakin is saying, likes what it could mean. He wants Master Skywalker to look after him, keep him from harm, decide these sorts of things for him because he knows best. 

But Obi-Wan isn’t a youngling anymore. He’s spent years wanting Master Skywalker’s attention, yes, but he’s spent even longer wanting Anakin’s. He wants them to be equals. He wants Anakin to love him, want him, not just worry about him.

He wants to show Anakin that he is more than something that must be protected. He’s grown and trained and fought since—since Zygerria. He’s a man now, and if he ever wants the slightest chance at seducing Anakin, the master needs to see them as equals despite their opposing ranks.

“I want to spar,” he announces, stepping back, putting room between himself and Master Skywalker. “I don’t need to know moving meditation.”

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin starts to say, sounding torn between doubt and exasperation. “I really think—”

“Master, I promise I know my body,” Obi-Wan interrupts him, crossing his arms. “I would go as far as to say there are many people in Coruscant who know my body fairly well.”

Anakin’s jaw snaps shut, and he glowers at Obi-Wan. “So you’ve said.”

Prude.

“I want to spar,” Obi-Wan demands. “Surely you cannot think to teach me without first seeing what I’m capable of.”

Perhaps he will be able to overpower Anakin. It would be so sweet, to put him on the floor, to stand above him and force him to realize that he has grown. That he is an equal.

Anakin purses his lips but steps back as well, giving in. “I really do not think this is—”

Obi-Wan attacks.

The first time, Anakin takes Obi-Wan to the mats gently, catching his wrist in one hand and spinning him around until his back is pressed against his chest, sweeping his feet from beneath his legs and forcing him to kneel on the ground.

It’s hardly been a minute.

“You must stop looking at where you plan to strike before you strike,” Anakin tells him, curls brushing against the back of Obi-Wan’s neck.

He never knew that area was so sensitive, but he has to fight the urge to shiver, to arch his back more.

Perhaps there are parts of his body he doesn’t yet know. Perhaps moving meditation with Master Skywalker would help after all.

But Obi-Wan is nothing but prideful. Perhaps too prideful. “Again,” he demands, and Anakin releases him with something like a sigh.

The second time Anakin takes him to the mats, he has lasted at least a full two minutes. Anakin kicks out at his leg, and Obi-Wan buckles, landing on the mat with a shocked huff of air. It’s a gentle fall, and it’s only when he scrambles up on his elbows and looks at Anakin, who has eyebrows furrowed in concentration, that he realizes the master must have used the Force to slow his descent.

“Now can we—” 

“Again,” Obi-Wan demands, and Master Skywalker gives in.

The third time Anakin puts him on the mats, it’s hard enough that Obi-Wan feels winded. He stays there on his back, blinking up at the ceiling of the training salle. A second later, Master Skywalker’s face comes into view, eyes pinched tight with worry.

“Are you alright?” he asks, offering a hand to help him up. This time at least Obi-Wan can see his chest heaving from the sparring session. Obi-Wan had committed to defense, ducking and dodging and leaping away from the attacks until Anakin had been able to catch his thigh with one hand, flipping him over and down in the span of a handful of seconds.

Obi-Wan takes that same hand and allows himself to be pulled up, pulled closer than the bounds of propriety should allow. Master Skywalker smells of sweat, and Obi-Wan can see it beading at the edges of his temple.

His mouth waters. He swallows. “Again,” he demands.

Master Skywalker circles the mat, hands at the ready. Obi-Wan’s back is sore from connecting with the mats so many times, even if for the most part Anakin manipulates the Force in order to delicately lay him down.

His blood courses quickly beneath his skin, breath coming out in rough pants. He doesn’t want gentle. Not right now. Not after how many times today he’s felt Anakin press against him, chest to chest, chest to back, thigh slipping between his own legs. 

It’s the worst sort of teasing contact because it never lasts long enough. Always, Anakin moves backwards, moves away, lets him up even when Obi-Wan is practically begging with his body to stay pressed to the mats beneath Anakin’s own.

“We can be finished now,” Anakin tells him, ducking beneath Obi-Wan’s fist and gliding past his outstretched arm. He taps once at his exposed neck, the way he’s started to in order to convey that he could incapacite Obi-Wan if he wanted to. 

“Finished?” Obi-Wan pants out righting himself and spinning around, lashing out again with his leg this time. Anakin avoids it, closes the distance between them. The thought of being finished loosens Obi-Wan’s tongue. Finished? Anakin is still treating him like a youngling, moving carefully with no intention of hurting him, of truly seeing him as a sparring partner. He wants to be taken to the mats harshly so that they can laugh about it as he would if it were his friend who put him there.

“Finished?” he says again. “Master, Quinlan has left more bruises on me after an hour than you have so far. I—”

Anakin’s face darkens, eyes going flint-hard, and suddenly a hand shoots out and wraps around his throat, sending him to the ground.

His head connects with the mat, and there’s a hand tightening around his throat.

He opens his eyes and it’s a different man on top of him all together, sour breath hitting his face, muddy eyes looking through him as if killing him would be easier if he did not have to look at him dying. Obi-Wan is dying. He is twenty years old and he’s dying, his life is nothing but an exchange. If this man whose name he does not even know offers the Zygerrians his body, he will get his family’s freedom in return, and so he will do what he must and he will look through Obi-Wan as he does it.

But by some miracle, the hand around his throat loosens and lets go. Obi-Wan gasps wetly for air and thrashes over on his stomach, crawling out from beneath the body. There is nothing dignified about his escape. He isn’t fighting back anymore, he just needs to get away, he just needs to breathe. He scrambles forward on his hands and knees, trying to get to his feet but not being able to.

Hands catch him around the stomach, and he yells out at the pressure, kicking back and connecting with the other prisoner’s shin, with his thigh, but he isn’t dropped. Instead he’s held even tighter, pressed back against a chest as the man rolls them around the floor, until Obi-Wan is on top, fully laying on the man, who sits up and tangles their legs together.

“Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan,” the man says, and that isn’t right. The man never knew his name. “Obi-Wan, shh, you’re here, I’m here. We’re at the Temple, sweetling. You’re safe. I’m here.”

A mechno hand presses Obi-Wan’s head to a firm and sweaty chest, and Obi-Wan is breathing in the scent before he can stop himself. He pants open-mouthed against skin and fabric of the robes.

“Come up for air,” the voice instructs and Obi-Wan opens his eyes to stare at the threads of the Jedi robes in front of him.

Another hand, flesh, snakes beneath the layers of his clothes and presses against his rapidly beating heart, soothing over the skin in rhythmic strokes of his thumb.

Obi-Wan blinks and turns to hold tighter to the robes in front of him, to the man wearing them.

“That’s it,” Anakin croons and Obi-Wan hides his face away. “I’m sorry, Obi, I wasn’t thinking straight. I shouldn’t have grabbed your neck like that, I should have known better, I’m sorry,” he keeps up a steady stream of soft words in the same vein as Obi-Wan slowly comes back to himself.

The man is dead. This is the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Obi-Wan is twenty-two. He is currently sitting in Anakin Skywalker’s lap like a youngling as the man keeps his legs from moving with his own, keeps his hand over his heart.

He’s safe. Anakin is here.

“You’re safe,” Anakin agrees. “I’m here.”

Obi-Wan breathes out and tucks his face into Anakin’s neck for one more—two more seconds before pulling back and turning around in his hold to blink at the Jedi master. His eyes feel tight, and his face feels wet.

Given more time to think about this, he’ll probably be mortified at his own lapse in control.

As it is, Anakin’s presence chases away those demons as well.

“Hello there,” Anakin tells him, moving his mechno hand to his face to wipe at one of his tears like they’re something precious.

Obi-Wan swallows. When he finally speaks, his voice comes out croaked as if he really has been choked half to death again. “Um. So. What’s moving meditation again?”

Chapter Text

Obi-Wan doesn’t think he’s ever been more sore or more satisfied as the days stretch into weeks and Master Skywalker shows no intention of stopping their hand-to-hand training, even though now Obi-Wan can go roughly five minutes without being pinned.

Master Skywalker insists on starting every sparring session with at least thirty minutes of moving meditation, and Obi-Wan has to admit it’s helped.

“I’m always going to prefer standard meditation,” Obi-Wan warns one session, shaking the tension out of his muscles and closing his eyes so that he can focus on the different parts of his body like Anakin has taught him.

He moves into the first position of the slowest kata, feeling the Force flow up and around the straight line of his arms, the tensed muscles of his thighs.

“Sitting still and letting the Force flow over me just feels natural,” he says, pushing his hand forward as he balances his weight on his front facing foot. “I feel strange reaching for it like this, like I’m trying to control it. It’s almost improper, Master, really—”

“Moving meditation does not beget moving one’s mouth as well, padawan,” Master Skywalker says from the edge of the mat where he’s probably running through his own exercises. “That, it has in common with standard meditation.”

“Sorry, master,” Obi-Wan mutters back, but he thinks he can feel Anakin’s amusement in the Force, which feels nice.

And it’s a lie to say that Obi-Wan really hates the idea of moving meditation. Honestly, it centers him in a way similar to the standard form, but that’s where the similarities end.

With standard meditation, Obi-Wan tends to project his consciousness outside his body completely, communing with the Force on another plane of existence all together, his soul and mind and Force signature the only things he takes with him.

Moving meditation makes him feel the Force along his body, keeps him in touch with his skin and muscles and bones even as he reaches out to the Force around him. It makes Obi-Wan feel wildly uncomfortable, but also…whole.

It certainly makes him a better fighter, that much is clear when after one month of training an hour or so a day, Obi-Wan manages to sweep Anakin’s feet out beneath him and roll himself over to straddle him, pinning him to the mats. 

Master Skywalker blinks up at him, and Obi-Wan stares back down, hardly able to believe his own luck. He’s never won against the master, never been in this position: thighs around Anakin’s own spread thighs, hands holding his broad shoulders into place against the mat, on top of him so unignorably.

He can feel the beginnings of a blush steal their way across his face as his traitorous mind conjures up memories of similar positions he’s been in with other people and how those had ended.

His hands loosen on the fabric covering Anakin’s shoulders and trail down to rest gently on his chest instead. All words have abandoned him, tongue tied successfully by the sight Master Skywalker makes spread out beneath him. The Force around them seems to grow incredibly heavy, oppressively slow, and time itself feels syrupy thick as the seconds tick past.

Obi-Wan’s thigh muscles twitch from the strain of the stretch, and he moves forward slightly to ease his legs around Anakin’s narrow waist instead.

Master Skywalker’s hair is splayed out beneath his head like a golden halo. He’s holding himself still except for the quick rise and fall of his chest, the evidence that in this past bout, he struggled to keep up with Obi-Wan. He had to exert himself. His mouth is partially open as he breathes heavily, pink lips wet with every exhale, and his eyes are dark with something Obi-Wan cannot name.

Moving feels almost as dangerous as staying still does, but Obi-Wan can’t stop himself from swaying forward, possessed suddenly by the desire to take his fair share in winnings and finally taste his master the way he deserves.

At the slightest movement from him though, Anakin flips them both over, using his greater body mass to force Obi-Wan to the ground. Their legs tangle together in the short scuffle until Anakin gets Obi-Wan on his stomach and plants one hand on the back of his neck and the other on the small of his back. For a moment, Obi-Wan struggles to use his one free leg to kick back at Anakin, but the man uses his stronger thigh against Obi-Wan’s to bend and push his leg until it’s cocked at a ninety degree angle against the ground.

“That was good,” Master Skywalker says, voice rough and deep and inescapable.

The fight goes out of Obi-Wan quickly, leaving room for arousal to sneak into his stomach. After all, should Anakin bend down, lower himself onto Obi-Wan, he could very easily rub his cock against the crack of Obi-Wan’s ass, bent and exposed as he is in this position. 

But maybe the most arousing thing is that Anakin thinks he’s good. That he did well.

“Thank you, Master,” he murmurs automatically as Anakin’s hands release him and the other man stands. As soon as the weight of Anakin’s body slides off of his, he feels cold.

It must be the chill in the air, the seasons artificially changing on Coruscant. 

“I believe we should end our session for today,” Master Skywalker decides, striding away from the middle of the training floor to grab his discarded outer robes and belt. He doesn’t put them on, but then again he looks sweaty, still a bit red in the face and still breathing too fast. When he turns back to Obi-Wan, he holds his robes in front of him calmly, the picture of a put-together Jedi master.

Obi-Wan, on the other hand, feels as if he’s never been closer to exploding out of his skin. He must look a sight too, bright crimson from the exercise and his own lurid fantasies. He’s never felt less like a Jedi Knight. He feels like a—a scraggly initiate with unkempt hair and wrinkled clothes, wrong-footed and incredibly foolish.

Something in his expression must be enough to draw Anakin forward, because he steps back onto the mat and rests one of his broad palms on Obi-Wan’s bare shoulder. “You really did quite well today, Obi-Wan,” he says, his hand squeezing down slightly. His eyes are even heavier than his touch, and Obi-Wan doesn’t know what to do with either of them.

He’s struggling to maintain eye contact as it is, unsure and wrong-footed by everything in the last few minutes. He’s never won against Anakin before, but he thinks about how it felt when he beat Master Qui-Gon at saber combat the first time.

He’d been proud, exuberant even. So smug that Qui-Gon had chastised him against the emotion, all while he had that amused twinkle in his eyes. And it’s not—

It’s different, because Master Skywwalker is saying the words but he’s looking like he’s saying something else all together, and—

And when Obi-Wan, at seventeen, won his first sparring match against his master, he hardly expected the man to take his lightsaber and sever his padawan braid right then and there. He knew even then he had so much more to learn from Master Jinn, that Master Jinn could teach him for years to come.

But Master Skywalker—these lessons could be ended easily and quickly. They don’t have a padawan braid tying them together, nor millenia of tradition and order. Obi-Wan—he’s found it so easy to pretend that in this training salle, Anakin is his master. It felt so right. 

They’re not though. Not master and padawan. Just a master and a padawan, bound together out of the kindness of one to help the other with a favor.

And now Obi-Wan has beaten Anakin in a fight, which is what Anakin thinks they’d set out to do. Will he decide that Obi-Wan doesn’t need anymore training? Will he no longer be waiting here in the salle for Obi-Wan to arrive? Will they separate again as they had before the war and during it, moving to opposite sides of the galaxy as if it’s the most natural thing to do, even when everything in Obi-Wan screams that it’s wrong?

Will they—

Master Skywalker squeezes shoulder again. “Very good,” he murmurs, before dropping his hand completely, severing their connection. 

Obi-Wan turns to watch him go, equal parts aroused, terrified, and confused.

It’s all together not a great feeling, and his dread only increases the longer he lingers there trying to decipher the meaning behind Anakin’s gaze.

Surely if he decided that Obi-Wan no longer needed training, the master would say something, right?

He wouldn’t just—he wouldn’t just leave him waiting, would he?

Obi-Wan begins to tidy up his own belongings and push the mats back to the edge of the circular salle, keeping his hands busy so that he doesn’t think about Anakin Skywalker’s proven tendency to do just that.

“I should have been sent to the AgriCorps,” Obi-Wan mutters morosely, pushing a piece of sausage around in the cool broth of his soup. 

“I’m pretty sure the AgriCorps has the same shitty food we do, Obi,” Quinlan says, breaking off huge chunks of bread to dab at his own bowl. “Maybe more vegetables.”

Obi-Wan puts his spoon down and rests his head on his palm. “I don’t care about the vegetables, Quinlan,” he snaps, pushing his bowl away from him in disgust. “Okay, I’m sore and I’m tired and it’s cold and my master has been off-world for a month even though he didn’t tell me he was even going, and it’s been a month and a half since the–the Plan, and I’ve gotten nowhere.”

“Obi-Wan, I mean this in the most respectful and beautiful way, but you’re as thick as a sack of banthashit if you think you haven’t gotten anywhere with your Master Skywalker,” Quinlan sets down his own utensils to look seriously at him from across the table. “Or blind as a cave-dwelling lunopus.”

Obi-Wan shakes his head. “You don’t understand,” he mutters.

“I’m starting to think maybe you don’t, you idiot,” Quinlan replies, staring at him. “Obi-Wan, two months ago, you were pining alone in your quarters for our best friend’s master, who you never talked to and could hardly make eye contact with.”

“That’s not true,” Obi-Wan hisses back, even though it’s at least a little bit true. But then, Quinlan doesn’t know much about the war, not Obi-Wan’s part in the fighting at least. There are some things even they don’t really talk about. 

“And now you’re sore and tired because on the fucking daily, Master Skywalker is pushing you down onto training mats while you probably—what, moan and hump his leg?”

Obi-Wan thinks about pouring his soup over Quinlan’s head, but it’s a cold broth anyway. It wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying.

“I don’t,” he mutters, looking away. “I mean—there was…there was one time, a week ago, I uh. I won?”

Quinlan’s eyebrows shoot up and he leans forward in surprise that’s so genuine it’s almost offensive. “And?”

“ And I was…I mean, I was on top of him and there was this moment , or I thought there was this moment, but then…it stopped. And uh. Then a few days ago, I go to the salles and he’s got a bunch of junior padawans lined up, said I should start trying to teach them , and then in a few more days, he’ll have some senior padawans ready for me to train against.”

It’d been just as gutting to hear this as Obi-Wan had thought it would be, though there’s a bit of comfort in the fact that Anakin hasn’t decided to stop training him all together. He’s just…decided they can’t train alone. 

He’s decided that really, what Obi-Wan needs is to be surrounded by younglings. 

“That’s not what I was expecting,” Quin admits as if it pains him. “And it doesn’t make sense either.”

“It makes perfect sense,” Obi-Wan argues, tugging at his braid mutinously. “Obviously, he sees me as a child and has decided to teach all the younglings together. Or–-or worse, he caught onto the fact that I’m nauseously in love with him and has decided that we need to be six younglings apart for the rest of forever because he’s too kind to just break my heart outright.”

Quinlan is distressingly quiet, and Obi-Wan stares down into the cool purple soup in his bowl.

“So really, I should have just gone to the Agricorps because then I never would have had any hope to begin with,” he finishes.

“Now don’t go and get like that,” Quinlan admonishes, pushing his own soup away and standing to walk around their table to sit next to him, arm wrapping around his shoulders. “For one thing, now that I have all this context, I figure you could have been knee-deep in mud and corn all the war and you still would have been panting after Master Skywalker, hope held in one hand, suggestive phallic cob in the oth—”

Obi-Wan shoves him off the seat and Quinlan pops up with a bark of laughter, reclaiming his spot and somehow pressing even closer. He’d never admit it on pain of death, but it’s nice, the touch. The warmth of his friend’s body.

“And for another thing,” Quinlan says, “you can’t pretend you ever wanted to go to the AgriCorps. Day of your departure, you weren’t even packed!”

“I would have been packed,” Obi-Wan replies with a soft smile at the corner of his mouth despite his best efforts, “if someone hadn’t been sneaking into my quarters and stealing my things away so I couldn’t pack them.”

“We learned so much about each other that day,” Quinlan nods, wriggling his fingers in the air to either convey his psychometry or his hand-job ability.

“Why you were born with psychometry, I will never understand,” he mutters, and Quinlan squeezes his shoulders.

“The Force gives its greatest gifts to its bravest little warriors,” his best friend says sagely, before a smirk curls around his mouth. “That’s why it’s seen fit to give you its son if you’d just let yourself just, I don’t know, start humping him next time he pushes you down on the training mat, younglings be damned.”

Obi-Wan scoffs and once again considers pouring his soup over his incorrigible friend’s head. “I’m going to start packing,” he threatens, but it’s an empty threat and they both know it.

“Can I watch?” Vos wriggles his eyebrows like he had his fingers, and Obi-Wan is powerless to stop a bark of laughter from escaping him.

He’s not laughing long though, not when only seconds after he starts, a gloved hand clasps the back of his neck firmly and all the breath is stolen from his lungs.

“Hey Obi-Wan, hey Quin,” Ahsoka chirps, sliding across the table from them and setting down a plate full of what is certainly not food from the refectory. Obi-Wan feels his mouth drop open as he looks at her supper. Those are definitely sweno potato straws, and that’s definitely some sort of breaded bird.

“Where’d you get that?” Quinlan asks, peering across at her plate.

“Master hates when they serve cabbage and sausage soup,”  she says, dipping her potato . “Cause the only non-meat option is just cabbage in cold water.”

The hand on the back of Obi-Wan’s neck squeezes once and then relaxes, thumb stroking over one of the taut tendons there

“And I do believe your dinner is sitting on the other side of your current location, Knight Vos,” Master Skywalker says. His voice is measured and dark, somehow more intimidating when he can’t see his face. “You should correct that.”

Quin looks at Obi-Wan for a second, something calculating flashing in his eyes before he shrugs in a very posed way. “Sure, I can,” he says, lifting his hand to pull his bowl across the table with the Force.

It doesn’t move.

Quinlan’s eyes narrow, and he sits up straighter, hand raised higher as he reaches for the Force again with much more intent behind it.

The bowl doesn’t so much as twitch, but Obi-Wan can feel Anakin manipulating the Force to hold it in place even though he’s not even lifting his hand to do so.

It shouldn’t be so attractive, but stars, is it.

“Quin,” Obi-Wan mumbles, squirming slightly. “C’mon.”

Quin huffs, but stands and manuevers around the table to reclaim his original seat. Master Skywalker slips into the one next to Obi-Wan.

“You get so cranky when you don’t eat, Master,” Ahsoka admonishes, pointing a piece of potato at him.

Obi-Wan fights the urge to tell her that as Anakin’s padawan, it’s really her job to make sure Anakin’s eating correctly and at reasonable times. If Anakin were Obi-Wan’s master, he’d never neglect him like that. 

It’s the sacred duty of a padawan, to mind their master because masters—at least all the ones Obi-Wan’s met—need minding.

“‘M not,” Anakin says gruffly, picking over his own plate of frankly delicious smelling food. “Obi-Wan, you’re not eating.” This is an observation, stated like a command.

“Guess I don’t like cold cabbage much either, Master Skywalker,” Obi-Wan says, tilting his head up. He bats his eyes, glancing down at Anakin’s plate of potato and fried—something. It doesn’t smell as good as the bird on Ahsoka’s plate, but it looks like a mound of pressed together vegetables, all breaded and fried to what must be perfection.

Quinlan scoffs. He knows all of Obi-Wan’s tricks, and he also likes to pretend he’s never fallen for any of them.

“Starve,” Ahsoka suggests, using her fangs to bite into the white meat of the fried bird. Quinlan at least has the decency to shove her, but before Obi-Wan can reply with something witty and scathing, Master Skywalker has pushed his plate between their two bodies.

“Eat,” he demands, and Obi-Wan’s hand flashes out to take a handful of the potatoes all at once in case Anakin changes his mind. “And where is your water, padawan?”

Obi-Wan can’t respond, cheeks too stuffed with food, so he just shrugs. The truth is, of course, that he’s twenty-two years old, and if he’s drinking anything with his meal, it’s from the flash Quin’s got tucked inside his robes.

Master Skywalker’s nostrils flare as if he can read his mind, and he stands abruptly, leaving the table in long strides.

When Obi-Wan looks back at Quinlan and Ahsoka, they’re both already staring at him.

Obi-Wan decides that he isn’t quite ready to parse through the expression on Ahsoka’s face, so he focuses on Quinlan, who just looks disbelieving.

Obi-Wan nods, trying to convey his own sense of disbelief to mask his sudden mortification because this more than anything proves that Master Skywalker thinks of him as a youngling, someone to be coddled and taken care of. And fine, perhaps Obi-Wan has—has only given him reason to think so, but it’s…demoralizing nonetheless. To the Plan.

“I’ve never in my life seen Master give his foo—” Ahsoka starts to say, but before she can finish, a glass of water is gently placed in front of Obi-Wan as Master Skywalker reclaims his seat. 

“Drink,” he directs, and Obi-Wan has very little choice but to do as told.

The Senate wants to throw a celebratory ball on the one year anniversary of Victory Day, and they want the Jedi Generals and Commanders who fought in it to be front and center at the celebration, as well as any clone troopers who can be convinced to come out of retirement and show their face around Coruscant, the core planet of a republic who never treated them as humans in the first place.

The Jedi Council forwards the invitation they’ve received to everyone in the Temple registry above the age of fourteen.

They’ve added their own rules at the bottom of the comm, of course, but the most important one for Obi-Wan is the most gutting too: no padawan, regardless of age, may attend this celebration without being accompanied by a Knight or Master.

There is no way in any dimension of sith’s hells that Obi-Wan will be able to convince Master Qui-Gon to attend something so banal.

“Come with me then,” Quinlan shrugs when Obi-Wan tells him. “I’ll be your Knight for the night.”

Obi-Wan’s first inclination is to scoff in his face, so that’s what he does. “You’re hardly more than a senior padawan yourself,” he points out.

Quinlan leans across the grass between them and taps him on the nose. “But I am a Knight. It’s a loophole, and you should take it.” His smile turns sly, eyes narrowing. “You should also ask Master Skywalker if he’s planning on going.”

“I would think Master Skywalker has plenty of reason to want to avoid the Senate,” Obi-Wan sniffs, crossing his arms. “Seeing as how everyone will be salivating at the chance to write more articles about him and the senator from Naboo if they’re so much as in the same room as each other.”

“But imagine this, yeah, you’re in the room too. So all Master Skywalker can look at is you.”

“You’re delusional."

“And you’re being completely irrational about this, Obi-Wan,” Quin drops his hand and leans back against the stone of the fountain behind him. “Trust me, that man…he’s just as obsessed with you as you are with him.” 

“That’s not true,” Obi-Wan insists, feeling heat creep up his face. “He sees me as a child he must take care of, as—as the ghost of an obligation he almost had. He doesn’t—”

“But I touched his plate the other night when he left his food to go get you a glass of water, didn’t I? The plate he was holding while he was glaring at me for daring to sit next to you? Touched it, I did, for a second. And I felt—”

“No,” Obi-Wan tenses suddenly from where he’d been laying in the grass. “No, that’s not fair. I don’t—I don’t want to know like that, either way. That’s an invasion of his privacy.”

Quinlan moves forward again until he can stare down at Obi-Wan incredulously. “Fucking irrational,” he says like it’s some kind of marvel. “Fine. I won’t say anything except that I think you should ask if he’s planning to show up.”

“What if I want one night where I’m not thinking about Anakin Skywalker?” Obi-Wan scowls at the roof of the Room of a Thousand Fountains.

“And here I was, assuming most of the thinking you did about Anakin Skywalker was during the night.”

“Fuck off,” Obi-Wan kicks out at Quinlan’s thigh moodily. “I mean it.”

“Well,” his friend says slowly, as if trying to choose his words with the utmost care, “I you fear so strongly that Anakin sees you only as a Jedi youngling, why wouldn’t you seize the opportunity this ball presents to you with both hands? The Council even said we could wear outfits befitting a senator, which is their way of saying ‘we’ll look the other way if any of you show up in a black corset dress’, so…let’s find you your corset.”

Obi-Wan sits up slowly, eyes narrowing at Quinlan. “I don’t think black is really my color.”

Quinlan rolls his eyes so hard that it must hurt. “The dress is a metaphor, asshole. Let’s find you the thing that makes Skywalker realize exactly what a hot piece of legal ass you are. Your hair’s long enough, we’ll do it up and hide the braid, make him really realize that you’re not gonna be a padawan forever but you’re also not going to be panting after him forever either.”

“I—I’m not sure,” Obi-Wan mutters, pulling at his shirt collar nervously. He keeps leaving off his undertunic, but he’s still not used to the way that feels when he’s around Anakin. It’s frankly unfathomable to imagine anything more—

“Obi-Wan, I’ve seen you in nothing but a wide belt, fishnet stockings, and transparent scarf we all let you pretend was a top.”

“Yeah, but. This is different, isn’t it?” This is different because this is Anakin. Dressing nice and pretty and risqué wouldn’t be just for Obi-Wan’s enjoyment, nor would it be to snag some older man at a club. It’d be to try and desperately get Anakin Skywalker’s attention. And what if—what if he tries and he fails?

Or worse, what if he succeeds? What does he do then?

Obi-Wan knocks four times in rapid succession on the door to Master Skywalker and Ahsoka’s quarters. He knows it’s quite rude to call at such an hour and with no warning. He knows his excuse is flimsi-thin and he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that if Anakin were to be furious at him for disturbing him like this, he’d be well within his rights to—to report him. Or to send him away at the very least.

He finds himself desperately hoping that’s what happens a second after Anakin opens the door wearing only a pair of loose sleep pants and a half-transluscent outer robe. Obi-Wan is seeing Anakin’s bare chest in the comfort of his own home, curls messy and expression angry.

The sound Obi-Wan makes is definitely mortifying and definitely not human.

Master Skywalker’s entire demeanor softens when he sees Obi-Wan standing in front of him, though it takes only a few seconds for his eyebrows to furrow in confusion. “Snips isn’t here,” he says, leaning against the doorway.

“I…um, I know,” Obi-Wan stutters out. For the love of the Force, he’d planned this. He’d walked all the way here from Master Qui-Gon’s quarters, walked past this very door three times and took one detour to the kitchens and one to the meditation chamber on the fourth level, practicing what he wanted to say the entire time, and yet he’s still tongue-tied under Anakin’s heavy-lidded gaze. 

“In fact,” Anakin’s words slow even more as he drawls out the vowels. “I was told that you three were going out tonight.”

“Didn’t want to,” Obi-Wan shrugs in response, forcing nonchalance. “I, ah. I wanted to come talk to you.”

One of Anakin’s eyebrows arch up, but thank the Force apparently he doesn’t need much more persuasion because he steps back into his quarters, and the door stays open long enough for Obi-Wan to slip inside as well.

“Is this about your trials?” Anakin asks over his shoulder as he walks further into the room, leaving Obi-Wan at the door to take off his shoes and line them up neatly in the entryway.

“No,” Obi-Wan admits. That’s one thing he knows for sure: if he’s ever going to get Master Skywalker to treat him as something more than a wayward padawan, he’s going to have to stop talking about all the things that make him a padawan. Trials included.

Anakin doesn’t seem to have gotten the same memo, however, because he reclines back in the armchair he must have just abandoned and gestures for him to sit down on the couch. “You are progressing extremely well in hand-to-hand, padawan,” he says, resting his head on the heel of his palm as he observes him. “Qui-Gon would be a fool to not put you before the Council for your Knighting ceremony soon.”

Obi-Wan tries not to fidget under his gaze. As much as he hadn’t come here to talk about his padawanship, he cannot stop the words from spilling out of him. “Do you really think so?”

“I do,” Anakin replies simply, pushing back into the chair so he can lounge comfortably as he stares at him consideringly. “The question is, why do you not?”

It takes significant effort to keep himself from clenching his jaw, and instead of answering, he looks around the room. The quarters are familiar, of course. He’s spent enough afternoons in them, sitting on the floor by the caff table and playing Sabacc with Ahsoka and Quin, studying at the window seat that looks over the courtyard because his own apartment had to be fumigated thanks to his master, falling asleep on the couch pressed against Quin’s shoulder during long holomovie nights.

They look different in the low light, Coruscant at night shimmering through the window, no one else occupying the room save for the suffocating presence of Master Skywalker, lounging in his chair like a Loth wolf weighing his desire to pounce.

Obi-Wan’s eyes land on an empty glass next to a decanter of ruby liquor. “Have you been drinking, master?”

Anakin cuts his own gaze away, looking down at the incriminating glass next to his elbow. “Suppose so,” he replies, leaning forward and pouring himself another drink. Obi-Wan watches the red liquid flow into the crystal glass.

“Ahsoka always says you don’t drink.”

“I don’t drink what you and your friends drink,” Anakin corrects with a smirk, long line of his lips pulling over his teeth. “But I can’t think of a man who fought in that war who didn’t turn to something to ease the pain of it, ba—” he hides the end of his sentence behind his glass.

Despite his best efforts, Obi-Wan finds himself transfixed by the bob of his throat as he swallows the drink in total.

“I think you’re just not brave enough to order a Sex on the Skyline,” Obi-Wan says, mouth dangerously dry.

Master Skywalker sets the empty glass down and returns to his previous pastime of staring Obi-Wan down. “And I think you don’t want to tell me why you don’t think you’ll be Knighted,” he says, and Obi-Wan stands.

“I think I should go,” he says, walking to the door he’d only just entered through. “I’m sorry for barging in so late and disrupting your evening, I wasn’t thin—-”

He’s got one shoe half on when suddenly Master Skywalker is there, hands gripping his shoulders and pushing him upright completely, caging his body against the door.

Obi-Wan isn’t even sure he’s breathing as the space between them closes inch by inch. Master Skywalker isn’t that much taller than him, not really, but he knows how to use that height difference to his advantage, how to push forward with his broader shoulders so that Obi-Wan is surrounded by his bulk with no escape. Trapped.

But there’s not a single part of Obi-Wan that feels trapped in this instance. Trapped denotes scared, and Obi-Wan has perhaps never felt safer.

He squirms anyway, half to put up the ghost of a fight and half so that he can press forward against the other man’s firm chest before he can free his hands and rest them there, right above Anakin’s heart, on the bare skin of his pectorals.

At his touch, Anakin’s eyes fall shut with an exhale through his nose.

The seconds tick past in slow motion. “Tell me, padawan,” Master Skywalker coaxes, and Obi-Wan isn’t sure he has any thoughts left in his head. If he does, they’re all Anakin’s. They can all belong to the other man.

“Tell you—tell you what?”

Master Skywalker’s hand, which had been pressed against the durasteel of the door, raises and tucks a strand of Obi-Wan’s bangs behind his ear, letting his fingers ghost over the cartilege and then his jawline before wrapping around his padawan learner’s bread. He tugs at it, and Obi-Wan’s mouth falls open. “Tell me why you believe you won’t ever be Knighted,” he murmurs, twisting the braid around the palm of his hand.

Obi-Wan blinks at him. He says the first thing that comes to his mind, even though it’s not what he really wants to say. “I—I still have nightmares,” he whispers.

Master Skywalker croons at him, using the grip on his hair to walk them backwards. Obi-Wan follows, docile as anything. The idea of putting up a protest—when Anakin touching him like this has been the fuel of countless teenage fantasies—doesn’t even cross his mind, not even when Anakin reclaims his seat in the armchair and pulls Obi-Wan down on top of him.

“Nightmares about what?” he prompts, adjusting Obi-Wan’s legs himself so that he’s straddling the older man. “The war?”

Obi-Wan nods, and Anakin releases his hold on the braid to stroke through Obi-Wan’s hair. Tentatively, Obi-Wan wraps his arms around Anakin’s neck.

He had—there was something he wanted to ask, something about the war—about Anakin—

“Zygerria?” Anakin’s voice is tight.

Obi-Wan shrugs slightly. “It was a war, master,” he mutters, giving into the temptation to play with one of Anakin’s curls hanging against the back of his neck. “There were plenty of Zygerrias you weren’t there to protect me from.”

It’s not quite true, but it’s not quite a lie either.

It’s also something Obi-Wan knows right away that Anakin does not appreciate hearing, if the sudden pressure of the Force all around them is anything to go by.

Obi-Wan wonders what Anakin would do if he follows that sentence to its natural conclusion, if he says out loud the underlying rebuke. You were not my master when I needed you to be, you left me to fight in a war without you when you told me once I’d never be alone.

For the sake of his dignity and perhaps Anakin’s guilty conscience, he rushes to add, “And now this—this Victory Party, as if there’s anything to celebrate about the fact that it’s been a whole year.”

Master Skywalker’s wide and rough palm comes up to rest against his cheek, and Obi-Wan is helpless to stop himself from nuzzling into the touch.

“A whole year,” he murmurs. “And I still get nightmares.”

An arm snakes around his waist and crushes him closer to Anakin’s chest, and he lets himself be pulled in, turning his head to press his face against the line of Anakin’s neck.

If he just opened his mouth, he could lick at the skin there. He could take that much more than he’s being offered now.

He’s always been a touch too greedy for a proper Jedi.

But he–he can’t. Master Skywalker has been—he’s had a few drinks, though not admittedly yet enough to blur the lines of his Force signature—but it’s the drinks that have loosened Master Skywalker’s standards of propriety this much. 

To push for more when he’s already been given more than he deserves…it’s unthinkable, the very essence of greed.

He bites his own tongue hard enough to taste blood and stays where he’s put. 

“I don’t much like the idea either,” Master Skywalker admits, loosening his hand to trace up and down the column of Obi-Wan’s spine. “Standing around in those massive rooms with those high, impractical ceilings untouched by the war, surrounded by all those people who will pretend as if they’ve been touched by the war, who will touch you, who will compliment you on whatever you’ve chosen to wear—Jedi robes, you’re untouchable, you’re pure, you’re perfect. Armor, look at how good of a fighter you are, not a scratch on your plates, look at how well you took to war.”

Obi-Wan pulls back from Anakin’s touch, licking his lips slightly. As much as he feels slightly too raw and vulnerable for this conversation, he cannot pass up such an opportunity. He is, after all, a man on a mission. Perhaps he got sidetracked earlier, thrown off his rhythm, but he’s remembered now, and his ability to compartmentalize is legendary.

“And what if one were to dress…like the senators do?” Obi-Wan asks, adjusting his grip on Anakin so as to trail a hand down his robe, playing with the seam of it, fingers brushing against flesh every now and then. It helps, talking to Anakin like this. Listening to Anakin talk, even if it is about the Senate, the war. He doesn’t truly feel on edge, here in Master Skywalker’s lap. “A Jedi dressed in civilian clothes, what would they think of that?”

What would you think?

What would you think of me?

Anakin hums and lolls his head back, exposing the long line of his throat to Obi-Wan’s perusal. “Suppose that’s what they want more than anything. Better than anything—better than the robes, better than the armor. Show up dressed to the stars and back, looking like one of their old gods, and they’ll believe there was a reason they sent you to fight, a reason they couldn’t go instead.”

“I wouldn’t—a god, really, I only meant…something nice.” There’s a blush stealing across Obi-Wan’s cheeks, he can feel it. A part of him understands that Anakin isn’t truly talking about him, but another part of him can’t stop himself from reacting as if he were. “I’m not sure I have anything that could make me look like a god.”

Anakin arches an eyebrow. “You are planning to attend?” There’s something disapproving in his tone, something that makes Obi-Wan’s spine stiffen in instinctual warning .

“Yes,” he says. “I don’t think our master will be convinced to go, but a Knight has offered to escort me so the Jedi Council doesn’t get an earful about errant padawans wandering about snobby parties."

He’d meant to make Anakin laugh, one of those rare rough chuckles Obi-Wan cherishes, but the man just sneers. “Let me guess, Knight Vos has selflessly agreed to take you.”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan replies, hackles rising at his sudden change in tone and demeanor. “Very kindly, I might add.”

“I’m sure.” Master Skywalker’s arm tightens around his waist, almost to the point of pain.

“And which padawan are you going to escort, Master?” Obi-Wan is spitting out the question before he can remember to bite his tongue again. 

At least Master Skywalker loosens his grip in surprise, and Obi-Wan wriggles out of his lap to stand.

“I should go,” he mutters for the second time tonight, turning back to the door.

And for the second time tonight, he finds himself pressed against said door, except this time his back is to Anakin as the man pushes up against him.

“You shouldn’t go,” Anakin mutters, his breath hitting the curl of Obi-Wan’s ear. “You shouldn’t give them any more of your time.”

“Who I give my time to is none of your business,” Obi-Wan says with the last of his anger and a good deal of his pain. “You’ve made that abundantly clear.” He tries to buck out of Anakin’s hold,  but the other man only pushes against him harder, and that—that’s not sustainable, not when the feeling of Anakin against his back is enough to make his knees weak.

It is not the time for his knees to feel so damn weak.

To distract himself, he tilts his head back and tries to glare at Master Skywalker. “And you’re one to talk, Master. Haven’t you given enough of your time to all those pretty senators? To one in particular?”

Anakin’s hold loosens out of surprise, and Obi-Wan uses this to his advantage, flipping around in the master’s arms to glare up at him.

Master Skywalker’s eyes are ablaze with something Obi-Wan has never seen before, and it should frighten him.

It doesn’t. Even like this, nothing about Anakin Skywalker frightens Obi-Wan Kenobi.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” the other man says slowly and carefully through his teeth. 

Obi-Wan shakes his head, once, twice and then it’s like he’s become addicted to the motion. “I know better than anyone.”

“You were a child!”

“I was waiting!” The words burst out of him and fall into the tiny space between their bodies. Obi-Wan has never seen Anakin’s eyes so wide, his face so slack.

The surprise—the implication that this is brand new information to Anakin Skywalker—makes something in Obi-Wan snap, and he pushes against Anakin’s chest. Hard. 

“I was waiting for you to remember that I was there! That you were—that you’d—For years, I was waiting! I—I didn’t know what you did all that time you were out of the Temple, every time I tried to find you in the Knight’s quarters, the—the hangar—the—I knew—I knew you’d come back even when I was twelve and you were caught with the senator—I knew—I knew it didn’t matter…that you’d come back, that you’d…that you’d choose me then…I was waiting for you up until the day they told me I was being sent to the Agricorps, so don’t—”

It’s horrifying to realize that he’s crying, that every other word has to be torn and pushed past his tight throat and that his thoughts are scattering further the longer he tries to force them together. “Don’t tell me about giving my time to people who don’t deserve it, Anakin Skywalker. I don’t need to hear it from you.”

Obi-Wan twists away, back to the door because Anakin isn’t even holding him anymore, and if he thinks too long about that he’s going to start crying all over again which would just be awful. And confusing.

There should be a limit for how many things you can feel towards one person. It’s not fair how full Anakin makes Obi-Wan’s chest feel, as if he doesn’t have any room left for anyone else.

Before he can turn more than his face away, big hands catch him and force his head back around. Two thumbs stroke at his cheeks, smearing the lines of his teartracks until Obi-Wan is sure his whole face must be wet.

Anakin looks devastated. He also looks wild, dark eyes gazing at Obi-Wan with all his focus. The Force moves around them like they are in the center of a hurricane. Some long forgotten prey instinct in Obi-Wan makes him hold still under that stare.

“Baby,” Anakin murmurs, shuffling forward and tilting his head up as he bends down. For a breathless—wonderful—terrifying second, Obi-Wan is sure that Anakin is going to kiss him. 

But instead he just touches their foreheads together. “Please don’t cry,” he says, thumb still moving over the swell of Obi-Wan’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, hush, please don’t—tell me what I can do, love, please—I’m sorry, baby, stop crying, you’re hurting me. Tell me what I can do.”

This is a command as well, though one he’s vaguely sure Anakin never spoke on the battlefield.

He wants to say that not all pain is transferable, transactional. That sometimes there isn’t anything to be done about it except weather it until it fades to something more manageable. A flood rushes into a valley. You take what you can carry and move to the hills. When the waters rise, you learn to climb mountains.

But he isn’t sure how true that is with this hurt. Master Skywalker will never take Obi-Wan as his padawan, yes. They are years too late for that.

But the man is here, in front of Obi-Wan. He cares enough to be begging now, the Hero With No Fear, looking absolutely terrified at the sight of Obi-Wan’s tears. Pay attention to the signals. That was what the third step of the plan had been.

He is here, and he can tell Obi-Wan what he wants to know more than anything else in the galaxy. And if Anakin really cared for Obi-Wan, he’d tell him the truth. 

He’d tell him why.

His mouth opens, the question on the tip of his tongue.

And suddenly the world tips backwards as the door behind him slides open, giving way to a very loud and very drunk Togruta.

It’s only Master Skywalker’s quick reflexes that save him from careening into the hallway.

“Master, Barriss won’t ans—Obi-Wan?”

Ahsoka staggers to a halt both in speech and in steps, taking in the scene before her. Obi-Wan can hardly imagine what she thinks about what she’s seeing: her master and best friend wrapped up in each other, one almost half-naked and the other one clearly recently crying, their hair all mussed up, their Force signatures inappropriately tangled together.

“What’s going on here?” she asks, her eyes falling to the possessive hold that Anakin’s hands have on Obi-Wan’s waist. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she decides, before promptly doing so right over Obi-Wan’s cherry-leather boots.

He doesn’t even try to salvage them as he rips himself out of Master Skywalker’s arms and tears down the hall. If Anakin tries to follow, he doesn’t run nearly as fast.

But then again, he has his own padawan to look after.

Chapter Text

Whatever conclusions Ahsoka has drawn from that night, she keeps them to herself.

She keeps to herself as well, ignoring the looks Obi-Wan throws her in the mess hall, turning off her comm, and throwing herself into her Jedi training, which means she is almost always around Anakin Skywalker.

Coincidentally, being around Master Skywalker is the very last thing Obi-Wan wants at the moment.

He hasn’t talked to him since that disastrous night, and the man has not come knocking either, though he must know where he is, how to find him.

“You skipped out on your hand-to-hand training,” Quinlan points out, tugging at Obi-Wan’s padawan braid. “Maybe he thinks you don’t want to talk to him and he’s trying to respect your wishes.”

“Right,” Obi-Wan says dubiously, before biting his lip so he doesn’t say something stupid like he wasn’t respecting my wishes when I was trying to leave and he pinned me to the door with his partially nude body. 

Mostly because he hadn’t quite….told Quin. About that fact. Or about the minutes Obi-Wan spent straddling Master Skywalker’s lap and playing with his hair and wondering if maybe actually this all might end with less clothing between them and more spit.

Instead, it’d ended with vomit and tears and now Ahsoka isn’t speaking to him and Master Skywalker knows about all the thorny emotions Obi-Wan has spent years trying to will into the Force.

“You left him with a bunch of younglings that he promised to show how to throw a punch,” Quinlan shrugs and shifts. It jostles Obi-Wan’s head from where it’s resting on his thigh. When Obi-Wan punches him in consternation, the Knight tugs at his braid again. “Have we even confirmed that he’s still alive?"

“You’re not funny,” Obi-Wan says and closes his eyes because his friend may not be able to tell a funny joke, but he makes a comfortable pillow.

“I’m hilarious,” a hand comes up to stroke through his hair. “But most importantly and completely hypothetically, would you want to talk to Skywalker? If he were here? I thought you were avoiding him. You can’t be avoiding him and then also upset that he’s not talking to you.”

“I don’t know what I want,” Obi-Wan admits because it’s easy to admit this sort of thing when his eyes are closed and he can feel the sun on his face and the grass beneath him. “I’m kriffing embarrassed as all sith’s hells, but I’m—I’m not good at not wanting him, Quin. It’s like trying to forget the only language I’ve ever spoken. I don’t know if I can, cause like. Then how do I understand the galaxy around me?”

“Force, you get maudlin when you’re in love,” Quin tugs at his braid again and says very casually, “you might want to figure it out though, because he’s coming this way.”

“Still not funny,” Obi-Wan murmurs.

“Just pretend to be asleep, yeah?” Quin says, adjusting his hand so that he’s petting Obi-Wan’s hair, and Obi-Wan lets out a loud snore and turns his head to the side to nuzzle exaggeratedly  into his friend’s thigh.

“Knight Vos,” a very cold and distinctly unfriendly voice says, and Obi-Wan freezes.

“Master Skywalker, hello,” Quin’s hand falls against his temple and stills. Obi-Wan tries not to make a face at the dryness of his skin. “Beautiful day out, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Master Skywalker bites out. “I suppose.”

Quin’s hand resumes its petting and Obi-Wan forces himself to keep his breathing steady and slow, even as he can feel Anakin’s Force signature press down around and against his own. It’s oppressive. It’s unignorable. Obi-Wan feels as though he could drown in its vastness, like it’s liable to swallow him whole.

He can’t help the way his own Force signature responds, reaching out timidly to rub against Anakin’s, the equivalent of a loth-kitten batting its paw at a fully-grown and vicious loth-wolf.

The Jedi master responds immediately to the touch, his signature surging forward to envelop Obi-Wan’s like the tightest hug, the heaviest hand coming down to rest against his mind. Obi-Wan cannot stop his mouth from falling open slightly at the feeling. He has brushed Force signatures with others in the past, of course. It’s a fairly standard greeting, an easy way to check in with a friend, a method master-padawan pairs use on missions to ensure that the other is safe.

Never before has he felt so claimed by a mental touch. Never before has he wondered if his mind will be relinquished from the hold.

“Don’t wake him,” Vos says, something strange in his tone. Anakin’s Force signature rears up around them, a claw of anger striking through his mind, so narrowed and focused that Obi-Wan, even  without a bond tying him to Anakin, can pick up on it. “He hasn’t been sleeping so easily lately.”

This is both a lie and the truth. Obi-Wan hasn’t been sleeping well lately, too worried about Master Skywalker and Ahsoka and the bet and his padawanship. 

But the way Vos says it makes it sound as if he knows intimately well how Obi-Wan has been sleeping.

“I have spoken to him before about your…dalliance. The need you should feel to keep it close to chest.” Master Skywalker’s voice is laden with scorn, and it makes Obi-Wan want to squirm. Anakin is disappointed in him.

“Hm,” Quinlan replies, and his hand stills against Obi-Wan’s head. “Do you want to know what I wonder?”

“No,” Master Skywalker says immediately as if he doesn’t even have to think about it. It gets the lightest of snorts from Quin, who has always seemed to respect it when people give him their honest opinions of him, regardless of how rudely they’re delivered. 

“I’ve wondered,” Quin continues doggedly, because he also doesn’t need a willing partner to engage with him in order to have a conversation, “why a Jedi Master feels the need to involve himself so utterly and authoritatively in a padawan’s love life. Especially considering that the padawan in question isn’t even his own.”

Obi-Wan definitely isn’t breathing. This—it’s a threat, spoken like an observation. It’s dangerous. It’s the truth. It’s an innocent question.

He doesn’t want to hear Anakin’s answer. He won’t be able to inhale again until he hears Master Skywalker’s reply. 

Anakin sounds as if he’s been winded as well. “I—I am showing the same level of care that I would give to any padawan I feared to be caught up in...unfavorable circumstances.”

“Padawan Venoa and Knight Eerin are currently in a relationship,” Quin points out, fingers still moving through his hair with just enough pressure that Obi-Wan understands it for the warning it is: stay still. Stay asleep. “Yet here you are. And there they are, across the courtyard, practically fucking before our eyes.”

“How was I supposed to know that?” Master Skywalker asks, tone very harsh. “I cannot keep up with every unwise padawan dalliance—”

“Just Obi-Wan’s then,” Quin interrupts, and in the Force, Skywalker stills.

His voice is unsteady when he says, “Just is a—”

“Actually,” Quin interrupts, again, “your padawan’s been whining on and on about Barriss Offee for months now. Offee was Knighted before I was.”

This time, Anakin stays silent, though his Force signature thrashes with his emotions. Anger. Scorn. Shame. Something Obi-Wan doesn’t know how to name.

“Is there anything I can do for you, Master Skywalker?” Quin asks. Obi-Wan doesn’t know how he can sit there and sound so guileless when Master Skywalker feels so furious in the Force.

Anakin’s silence continues.

“Because if not, I would very much like to—”

“Is it nightmares?” Anakin interrupts. His voice is soft.

“Sorry?” 

“You said he’s having trouble sleeping. Is it nightmares keeping him up?”

It’s Quinlan’s turn to be quiet. Obi-Wan can’t help but twitch slightly, fidget under the weight of Anakin’s stare. Even with his eyes closed, Obi-Wan knows Anakin is looking at him. He is sure of it. “I don’t know,” Quinlan finally says slowly, cautiously. “He doesn’t usually tell me those sorts of things.”

At this admission, Master Skywalker’s Force signature shifts and flashes with something that feels like smugness.

Perhaps the emotion has slipped onto his face as well or Quin is more in tune with his signature than Obi-Wan knew, because Quinlan only pauses a second before he asks, “What concern of yours is his nightmares?”

And Obi-Wan can’t hear this. He cannot. The last time Master Skywalker talked about his nightmares, the last time they talked at all , had ended with Obi-Wan crying in his arms about them. Surely he is thinking of that night now. 

Obi-Wan cannot bear to hear him speak of it, to confirm every single terrible thing that has run through his head since that night. He came to me and made them my concern, Anakin could say. He invited himself over and into my apartments and cried like a youngling until I held him like a babe. Or perhaps, both he and they are of no concern to me. I came only to request that he keep his distance from myself and my chosen padawan. I was under the impression he learned that lesson years ago.

So when he hears Anakin draw in a breath to say something , he turns his head further into Vos’ thigh and lets out a whimper, flinching away from nothing and curling into himself before whining louder.

Master Skywalker’s Force signature spikes with something a lot like concern, but Quin’s fingers don’t pause in his hair.

“If there’s nothing I can do for you, Master Skywalker, I think you should go,” Quin says, and Obi-Wan’s chest does something strange, tightening and releasing in the same beat. “I don’t want to wake him up.”

“Maybe you should,” Master Skywalker points out, “if he’s having a nightmare.”

“Maybe he’s having a nightmare because of the present company,” Quin replies. There’s—his voice is hard. Unfriendly. Obi-Wan has never heard him speak like that to anyone, let alone a Jedi Master.

There’s a lurch in Anakin’s Force signature, and its heaviness increases against Obi-Wan’s mind.

“He was sleeping fine mere minutes ago,” Quin adds pointedly, and suddenly Anakin’s presence in the Force is completely gone, as if the man has somehow teleported away. Its absence, and the strange bereft feeling Obi-Wan has because of it, almost makes him open his eyes to check that Anakin is still there.

He should never have pretended to be asleep in the first place. Now Quinlan has put his fucking foot in it, accusing Anakin of being—being nightmarish, when such a thing could not be further from the truth. And Obi-Wan has put himself in a position where he cannot correct him. He cannot tell him that there was once a period of time not too long ago where he could not fall asleep if Anakin was too far away, if he could not feel his Force signature close by. Anakin made him feel protected, and he made him feel safe, and he made him feel—well. Certainly not frightened.

Master Skywalker is still there though. He makes a bitten off noise that sounds furious, and then says nothing. 

Obi-Wan hears footsteps receding, and it sends a pang of longing through his chest.

He feels suddenly cold and strangely weightless. 

“Alright,” Quinlan says quietly. “He’s gone.”

Obi-Wan doesn’t open his eyes. Just in case Quinlan is lying. More. “Wonderful. Now I’m furious with you as well on top of everything else.”

His friend tugs at his hair. “Well that’s hardly fair. I think I just stood toe to toe with a mythosaur for your skinny ass.”

His tone is still slightly off, and now that Obi-Wan can react to it freely, his eyebrows furrow as he frowns. 

“I don’t know how any of that was for my benefit,” he mutters.

“Oh, apologies, did you want to talk with Skywalker? Is that why you’ve been running away and avoiding him and hiding out in your rooms and whining about it to me?” The hand in his hair tugs harder.

“Well—” Obi-Wan’s eyes open on their own accord at the sensation, and he’s greeted with a smirk from his friend like he knows it. “I don’t know. Maybe. He—why do you think he came over here?”

“To look at my handsome face up close and personal,” Quin says promptly, and Obi-Wan throws out a hand to hit his leg.

“Be serious,” he demands. “I don’t know what I should do, he’s—there were a few moments that night that I really thought something could happen…the way he touched me, Quin, it was like…all those years of hoping and wondering and waiting would pay off, like all he saw was me, but then—I was so sure I ruined it, and it does feel like I’ve ruined something, like whatever this past month has been is something I’m never going to get back—I said awful things to him, Quin. Just—terrible things.”

He rubs a hand over his face, cringing away from his own memories. He’s never going to be able to talk to Master Skywalker again. He’d hurt him, dragging up all that shit about what happened when Obi-Wan was an Initiate. Obviously Master Skywalker had been going through his own difficulties at the time: the senator, their affair, the reprimands from the Council that had followed. He didn’t need to know about Obi-Wan’s, didn’t need to feel guilty over-–over a silly little miscommunication.

Especially because everything turned out fine. Master Jinn requested to take him on as a padawan. Obi-Wan is going to be a Jedi Knight. He doesn’t—didn’t need Anakin to save him. He’d waited for nothing and he’d hoped for nothing, and he had no business telling all of that to Anakin, not when so much time had passed.

Not when he doesn’t even want him as his Master anymore, not really. 

Not totally.

Not as much as he wants him in other ways.

He shakes his head and sits up, scrubbing his face again, this time with both hands. “Bant and Ven aren’t even sleeping together,” he mutters after a few seconds of silence. He can feel Quin’s eyes on him, but it’s different from the weight of Master Skywalker’s. “Bant could never date a humanoid, she’s not attracted to them. Everyone knows that, probably even the Masters.”

His friend huffs out a laugh that Obi-Wan doesn’t know what to make of. He turns to look at him. “Obi,” Quin says slowly. “I’m not sure Skywalker pays as much attention to the lives of Jedi padawans as you seem to think.”

And Obi-Wan doesn’t know what to do with that, so he shrugs and stands instead. 

When Obi-Wan was seven years old, he met Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker for the very first time. He’d been in the Archives far past his bedtime, having snuck from the creche in order to do very important research.

In their painting class that day, Obi-Wan had stretched up on his toes to try and reach the best shade of blue he knew Master Cia kept on the second shelf so as to keep it away from the younglings because while it was the prettiest and best sort of blue, it also stained the easiest.

But Obi-Wan was seven years old now, which meant he wasn’t a youngling and he could use the blue paint if he could reach it, so he’d been trying really very hard to reach it because Siri wanted to paint a bright blue sunset, something she’d seen in her dreams, and Obi-Wan wanted to help her. 

And then he’d lost his balance just as his fingers had come into contact with the bucket. He’d fallen over and down and the paint had fallen with him and all over him, and he’d knocked up against Bruck. Bruck had been so angry. Bruck had called him Oafy-Wan, and Obi-Wan had known it was an insult, but he hadn’t known what it meant and Master Cia didn’t want to tell him.

She took him to wash the paint off his hands as much as she could, but she wouldn’t tell him what Bruck meant, and it wasn’t as if Obi-Wan was going to ask him.

So at the end of the day, Obi-Wan’s hands and arms and face were covered with spots of blue, he still didn’t know what Oafy meant, and he had a plan.

Because Master Crando always said that the answer to anything in the galaxy could be found in the Archives, so Obi-Wan waited for everyone around him to go to sleep that night before sneaking through the doors of the creche and down three levels and a half to get to the entrance of the Archives. He’d taken the liberty of using the Force to lift the padawan aide’s identification credits from the clasp on their belt. He wasn’t a youngling, he knew that there were areas of the Temple restricted to certain people because he’d seen Jedi use cards to tap in and out of rooms, hold the doors open for him and his agemates so they could get through. 

Obi-Wan didn’t have any card yet, because he was only seven, but thankfully Padawan Aayla Secura did.

And thankfully, Padawan Secura had access to the Archives, even though it was nighttime then, and the Archives were deserted and almost certainly closed.

He wasn’t sure where to start looking, really. He wasn’t a youngling, but he could admit that he didn’t know how the Archives were organized. And he only wanted to know one thing! He didn’t care so much about all the answers in all the galaxy. He just wanted to know what Bruck called him and what it meant.

He found Knight Anakin Skywalker before he found his answer. 

Knight Skywalker, though he didn’t know his name at the time, was snoring very, very loudly, leant back against the section of the Archives Obi-Wan decided he’d need to look through: Creatures of the Galaxy, Ordered By Year of Discovery and Coruscanti Name. 

Knight Skywalker was on the ground, back against a wall of datapads, head tilted back as he breathed in and out through his mouth with the force of Coruscant’s wind generator.

As soon as he saw that aisle, the Force around him rang with certainty. He would have avoided it otherwise, because of the Knight. But the Force seemed so sure, and Obi-Wan trusted her. He’d really only meant to climb over the Knight’s sleeping form to get to the other side because none of the datapads nearest him began with the right letter.

Of course he slipped, one leg halfway across the Knight’s lap. Oafy-Wan, he thought rather meanly as he fell against the man. 

When the Knight jerked awake at the sudden connection, Obi-Wan started to cry.

“Whoa now,” Knight Skywalker said, grasping Obi-Wan’s shoulder with one hand as the other wiped at his eyes. He blinked at Obi-Wan’s face and then furrowed his brow, casting his eyes around before refocusing on Obi-Wan. “Isn’t it a bit late for younglings to be in the Archives?”

“I wanted to do research,” Obi-Wan said, trying to wipe the tears off his face while also keeping his eyes on the Knight before him.

“Research,” Knight Skywalker repeated. He didn’t look less confused. “What does a youngling have to research?”

Obi-Wan’s mouth fell open from the offense. “Master Crando says I ask the most questions out of all the younglings he’s ever taught!”

Knight Skywalker’s eyebrows shot up, and he looked torn between confusion and amusement. “Wow,” he said. “Master Crando has been around longer than any Jedi I know. He must have taught a lot of younglings. You must be the brightest of all of them."

Obi-Wan nodded his agreement and then squirmed when he realized the Knight had not let him move yet. “Sorry for waking you,” he said because he knew he was always supposed to be polite.

“How did you even get into the Archives?” Knight Skywalker asked before checking his commlink. “It’s almost two in the morning!”

Obi-Wan pouted, but at the Knight’s insistent raised eyebrow, he gave him the identification card he’d borrowed from Padawan Secura. “I took this from our padawan aide,” he admitted. “So I could leave the creche and get into the Archives.”

Knight Skywalker blinked down at it before back up at Obi-Wan. “Alright,” he said, “Is this why your skin is blue? You wanted to fool the Temple guards into thinking you’re Aayla Secura?”

His tone made it very clear that he thought such a thing funny, but all it did was serve to remind Obi-Wan of the paint still staining his skin and the mystery still haunting his mind. “No!” he cried, and his voice wavered. “No,” he mumbled softer when the Knight looked at him with concern. “I spilt paint all over myself and I knocked into another boy and he called me something and I want to know what it means, but no one will tell me but Master Crando says every answer can be found in the Archives if you look hard enough and I just want to know what he meant!”

Knight Skywalker blinked at him wordlessly. Obi-Wan crossed his arms and frowned. He didn’t understand what was so hard for the man to understand. “You stole your padawan-aide’s keycard without her noticing, hid it for hours, stayed up well past your bedtime, snuck out of the creche, down to the Archives, to–-what, find the meaning of a single naughty word?”

Obi-Wan huffed and then thought about it. His bottom lip started to wobble slightly the more he did. “If someone’s calling me names, I want to know what they mean.”

“What would knowing do?” Knight Skywalker asked, adjusting his hold on Obi-Wan so that his elbow wasn’t jammed against his ribs. Obi-Wan wriggled around to get more comfortable as well. “It sounds like the other boy is mean. Why do you want to know what mean things he’s calling you?”

Obi-Wan bit his lip and then shrugged. “If I’m wrong,” he said, “I want to know why. And how. So I know, and I can be better next time.”

A Force signature that he had never felt before nudged against his own and then curled around him like a very warm and soft blanket weighing across his shoulders. It felt very nice. “I don’t think you’re wrong,” Knight Skywalker murmured, squeezing his shoulder. “I think people make mistakes or accidents all the time, and name-calling isn’t very nice when they do. It’s definitely more indicative of the bully’s personality than yours.”

Obi-Wan tilted his head. “What does indicative mean?”

Knight Skywalker smiled and stood, carefully lifting Obi-Wan up into his arms once he was safely stable. “Why don’t we go look it up?” he suggested. “And then after that, we’ll sneak you back into the creche.”

And they did.

The chains brush against Obi-Wan’s bare chest, and he cannot stop himself from shivering at the feeling of the fine durasteel ghosting across his skin. He peers at the mirror and adjusts his stance.

It’s strange. 

On one hand, he knows logically that he has worn less clothing—and certainly less fashionable clothing—when leaving the Temple. He has snuck past the guards wearing nothing more than neon tights and fishnet tops and some stranger’s jacket he picked up from some place he doesn’t even remember. He has worn scraps of fabric and called them clothing items, walked around Lower Coruscant with most of his backside out for no other reason than that he liked the feeling of the stares, the attention from the strangers, the way it made him feel free and strangely formidable. 

But on the other hand, he feels vulnerable dressed in such a fashion now. Exposed.

Once at the beginning of the war, Obi-Wan and his master had saved a senator’s life. She had been a hostage; Obi-Wan had proven excellent at negotiation.

When he’d gotten word of the Victory Celebration and confirmation from Quinlan that he could attend on his arm as padawan and Knight escort, he’d hesitantly called in the debt no one but the senator thought existed between them, and she had given him an outfit worthy of an upper-class, Core senator.

And so now he’s dressed up just for the ball. There is nothing Jedi about him. He has tucked the long strand of his padawan braid behind his ear and twisted it up to hide amongst the length of his hair which he has decided to leave loose and unadorned, even though the current fashion is to string flowers or bits of metal in between braided segments. It's called the Victory Style, as it is styled from the padawan braid and its interwoven beads. It makes Obi-Wan slightly sick to look at, so he has left his hair untouched.

The fabric of the shirt is stiff, reminiscent of armor, and it juts out just past the width of his shoulders before turning down into tight, long sleeves. It looks indecent, clinging to the muscles of his arms and ending just past the knob of his wrists.

His arms are also the only thing the top covers, really. It’s more of a short jacket, ending just past his pectorals and leaving his entire torso exposed.

Exposed, save for the lines of chains looping the two sides of the jacket together and draping over his chest. The lengths of the bronze metal varies: tight round his throat like a choker, loose as they swing past his belly button with every shift. If he moves too quickly, they brush insistently against the peak of his nipples, eliciting a jolt of pure sensation.

His trousers are just as tight as the sleeves and so low-rise that he can trace the lines of his hips and of his adonis belt, slightly cut v-muscles he’s usually proud to show off. And last night, knowing what was coming, he’d stood here in only his underthings and squeezed hard against the flesh of his hips until he was sure there would be bruises in the shape of fingers there, ones that would peak over the black line of his trousers.

He just feels so strangely exposed. Is the color too dark for his skin? He never wears this shade of blue. Does it clash with the bronze of the chains?

“Obi-Wan?” Quinlan knocks against the side of the door, and Obi-Wan turns to face him, arms spread slightly. “Damn,” Quin says approvingly, and Obi-Wan ducks his head to hide his smile.

Quin’s dressed up himself, dark plums and browns that highlight the splash of yellow across the bridge of his nose. He’s much more clothed, of course.

“Well,” Obi-Wan says, pulling at the edge of his sleeve as he turns back to study his reflection in the mirror. “It’s no black corset dress, but I think maybe...Anakin will notice.”

And this time, if they touch, it will be Obi-Wan who is mostly shirtless. It will be Obi-Wan’s skin that Master Skywalker’s fingers will touch. 

That possibility is worth the feeling of exposure, of vulnerability.

It’s been two weeks since that night in Anakin’s quarters, and Obi-Wan has been thinking of little else. He still hasn’t talked to Anakin, but he’s managed to convince himself to pay attention to the signals. To remember the way Anakin had tugged him down into his lap, the way he’d thumbed the tears from his cheeks. The way he’d called him sweet names, tongue loosened either by the alcohol or by the sight of his tears.

He’s still embarrassed, mortified by his episode, by what he’d told the Jedi Master, but tonight at the Victory Ball, he thinks he can show Master Skywalker that he is an adult. That he can be touched as adults touch one another, that Anakin does not have to only cradle him in his arms like he’s something breakable—that Anakin can be the one to break him apart with his tongue, teeth, fingers, cock.

The idea of being rejected tonight makes his breath catch in his throat, but he has to remember the way Master Skywalker had touched him. He has to believe there’s a chance that he could be wanted half as much as he wants.

He expects Quin to laugh, but the other man is quiet until Obi-Wan looks back at him. “Obi,” his friend says in a very hesitant tone. “I’ve been thinking.”

Obi-Wan turns to face him completely. “The night gets stranger,” he jokes, but Quinlan doesn’t smile back.

“I think we should call the bet off,” he says. “End it.” 

Obi-Wan frowns. “End it?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to continue down this path,” Quin says.

“Don’t think it’s a good idea?” Obi-Wan’s mouth falls open as he stares at his friend in disbelief. His voice is much too high. “Quinlan, this was your idea! Your path that you pushed me to follow!”

“And now I’m saying I was wrong!” Quinlan throws his hands up and walks further into the room to pace around. “I thought it would make you happy, Obi-Wan, but you’re not! You’re stressed and distant, you’re not sleeping well, you’re not paying attention to your classes—”

“No,” Obi-Wan interrupts, shaking his head sharply. “No, that’s banthashit, Vos. You’ve never fucking cared about my classes, you’re not even in them anymore—”

“I know that you don’t talk about them anymore when you used to—”

“No, you’re lying! You’re lying and I know you’re lying, so tell me the kriffing truth! You’ve been encouraging me for months! You’ve helped me, you’ve coached me, you’ve—you’ve—you don’t get to decide to stop now that—I think I’m close! I think he could really maybe want me!”

Vos scrubs both hands down his face rather viciously before dropping to sit on Obi-Wan’s bed. “Obi-Wan, there’s no maybe about it! He wants you! He wants you and it’s disturbing how much!”

Obi-Wan cannot imagine Master Skywalker’s want as being anything but eagerly welcomed. Just the idea of it makes a part of him feel incredibly warm and incredibly needy. “I was under the assumption that getting Master Skywalker to want me was the whole point of the bet," he says as cooly as he is capable of. "Unless—what, did you think he would let me down easily?” A terrible thought occurs to him. “You didn’t think he would ever want me. You just thought I would realize that and move on.”

“No!” Quinlan stands again, but Obi-Wan backs away, arms crossed over his chest defensively. “No, Obi-Wan. I wanted you happy when we started this, I swear. But you—the way he looked at you when he thought you were asleep the other day…you didn’t see it, but it was unsettling!"

“What do you mean?”

Quinlan shakes his head and pulls at the ends of his hair. “It was like—I don’t know. Some mix of a Krayt dragon observing its treasure and a loth-wolf staring down its next meal! Obi-Wan…I’m not sure you could survive how much he wants you. I'm not sure anyone could. And it definitely was not how a Jedi—a proper Jedi—should look at anything!”

Obi-Wan can feel a blush spread across his face as he stares wordlessly at Quinlan. "He is a Jedi Master," he says when he can find the words. "He is a proper Jedi."

"And I encouraged the plan when I thought the same, Obi, but he did not feel nor seem like a proper Jedi when you were in my lap and it was me touching your hair! He looked dangerous. Dark, Obi-Wan. He looked Dark. When we started this whole thing, that night, I figured--you are very hard to resist, Obi-Wan, you must know it. I figured you'd seduce him, you'd both enter a consensual relationship befitting of the Jedi, you'd be happy. One day, you become the Jedi Knight you've always been destined to become, you've always wanted to become, and you'd be happy! But the way he was looking at you...Obi-Wan, it was like he wanted to--to consume you. Like for him, there's no future for you that doesn't revolve solely around him. Don't you understand how frightening that is?

“He wants you, Obi-Wan, that’s not up for debate anymore, and I don’t know what to tell you if you don’t know that yet. But it feels like putting my best friend in the maw of the krayt dragon, going through with this bet.” Quinlan steps forward and puts his hands on Obi-Wan’s shoulders. “I’m calling it, Obi-Wan. No more of this. Let us put the matter to rest.”

It takes all of a handful of seconds for Obi-Wan to weigh his options.

He could put the matter to rest, as Quinlan suggested. He’s already been avoiding Master Skywalker fairly successfully, and before the bet it wasn’t like Anakin was a large part of his life. These past months could just be…an aberration. He’d lived so many years wondering from afar how Master Skywalker’s touch would feel on his skin without any hope of actually feeling it, it would not be impossible to go back.

“Alright,” he agrees, ducking his head. “Yes. Alright.”

Quinlan gives his face a narrowed-eye onceover. “You’re lying to me, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan agrees.

His friend drops his hands from his shoulders with a sigh. “Force’s will, Obi-Wan…at least consider running the other way the next time you see Skywalker, alright? For me?”

“Alright,” Obi-Wan agrees, and Quinlan shoves against him, a mix of anger, frustration, and resignation filtering through his Force signature. 

“Stop fucking lying to me,” Quinlan demands. He looks tired. If Obi-Wan did not want so much, so desperately, he'd feel terrible for the exhaustion he's caused his friend.

But he wants.

Oh, Force. He wants.

“Yes, alright,” Obi-Wan agrees.

When Obi-Wan was fourteen years old, his master and his master’s former padawan got into a row. Obi-Wan wasn’t there to hear the beginnings of it, but he saw the aftermath. He was coming into their quarters from his chores in the refractory at the same moment Knight Skywalker stormed through on his way out. They almost collided with each other, which would have been the most amount of contact they’d had since Obi-Wan was almost sent to the AgriCorps.

Knight Skywalker’s face was lined with fury, and even though Obi-Wan had not spoken to him in a year and a half, he had to ask, “Are you alright?”

Knight Skywalker’s eyes pinned him in place. They were heavy and so dark they were hardly blue anymore. 

When Skywalker reached forward to put his hands on his shoulders, Obi-Wan flinched away automatically, and Skywalker’s demeanor shifted from furious to devastated. Yet, the Knight's Force Signature fell onto his as if powerless to do anything else. It felt so heavy that it was suffocating.

“Padawan,” Master Jinn said from just behind Knight Skywalker. “You are scaring him.”

It was Skywalker’s turn to flinch. Obi-Wan straightened and frowned. He didn’t want either his master or Skywalker to think Skywalker could have any effect on his emotions at all. There was no emotion.

There was only peace.

And peace that certainly did not involve the man in front of him, blue eyes be damned.

“He should be scared,” Skywalker snapped. “There will be war and you are having him study Ataru.” He spat the word like a curse, and Master Jinn’s eyes narrowed.

“That is the form he requested to learn, Knight Skywalker, and I need not remind you—”

“Soresu is the form he excelled at as an Initiate, and you have always said—”

“I need not remind you—”

“You have always said that the best offense is a perfect defense, and I will not stand by quietly when there is a war and you are intent on putting hi—”

“You are not his master!” Qui-Gon Jinn thundered, and Obi-Wan, who had never heard his master raise his voice in such a fashion, startled and moved instinctively behind Skywalker’s broad back.

The statement—or perhaps its delivery—seemed to deflate Skywalker, because silence followed the declaration.

Obi-Wan stared for several long seconds at the shifting muscles of Skywalker’s back before he came to his senses and moved around him, through the door to stand at his master’s side. Master Qui-Gon was right: Skywalker was not his master, and even though Obi-Wan had little idea of what they were arguing about, he knew he belonged on his master’s side of the divide. 

“Padawan, you are always welcome to come to me with your concerns and your dreams,” Master Jinn said softly. “And I urge you to tell the Council of these premonitions as well if you have not already done so. But one padawan learning Form III will not change the events you have dreamed. If there is to be a war, Ataru is as good a style--perhaps the best style--for offensive maneuvers as any. He could be a formidable fighter one day in your war.”

Skywalker scowled, but Obi-Wan thought he looked lost underneath his anger. Lost and desperate. It surprised him then when the Knight’s eyes caught on Obi-Wan’s face and desperation won out against the anger. “Padawan Kenobi,” he said, “Please. Consider it.”

Obi-Wan wasn’t sure what he was supposed to consider, but he felt uncomfortable looking at the plea in the Knight’s eyes, so he nodded his acquiescence.

He and Master Qui-Gon never spoke about it, about the dark possibilities Anakin had mentioned, but when war did break out a year later, Obi-Wan was already practically fluent in the katas for both Ataru and Soresu.

Skywalker, his master Jinn once said over a glass of wine, was frustrating to the point of an aneurysm sometimes. But he was almost never wrong. 

Technically, the open-aired temple next to the Senate connects to both the Senate chambers and the Jedi Temple through a series of tunnels built mostly underground. The idea had been to provide a spot where the Jedi and the Senate could meet on equal grounds, one that could also be used as an escape route if either parties were under attack—from an enemy, of course, that wasn’t the other. 

Architecturally, the place was built to represent the joining and commitment of the Jedi Order to the Galactic Republic and its Senate. Its design parodies that of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, made miniature—made touchable. Made public. It has the same sweeping steps and thick columns lining its entrance, the same wide entrances and cavernous halls.

But it’s built with the Senate’s appreciation for opulence and luxury. Gold lines the doorways and the walls depict intricately carved scenes of galactic history. It has none of the subtle elegance of the Jedi Order; it screams its importance, its wealth.

It is the perfect venue for the Victory Anniversary Celebration, a victory known to have been fought equally by the Jedi on far-flung planets and the Senators on the floor of the Coruscanti Senate chambers.

As if those fights were equal. 

As if senators had died for the Republic at the same rate during those long years that Jedi Masters had been shot down in front of their padawans, that broken lightsaber blades were collected from bloody battlefields and severed padawan braids were sped back to the Temple for hurried funerals no holo newsanchor ever attended.

It is of no matter now of course.

The Republic won the war. 

The celebration of the one year anniversary takes place in that small temple adjacent to the Senate. A committee of senators and their aides have decked the space out. Bright lights in Temple Guard yellow are strung around each tree and shrub and flower in the garden areas. The rotunda in the middle of the building features a bubbling fountain, home to orchestral droids playing classical music pieces that waft through the most isolated halls of the structure.

It is quite beautiful, Obi-Wan has to admit. The floors are glossy and strewn with small petals of white and gold. Floating lights hover just above the tallest attendee’s head, circles of pale yellow that complement the gentle glow of the setting sun. Workers step through the throng of party-goers with their heads down, carrying trays of small bites and drinks as they go.

The first thing Quinlan does upon stepping through the double doors of the main hall is grab a flute of wine for himself from a server who is ducking through the entrance way to serve the guests chatting in the front gardens. He does not get one for Obi-Wan, but then, Obi-Wan didn't expect him to.

There are Coruscanti guards with blasters strapped to their hips lining the stairs leading down to the sunken main floor, which has been converted from atrium into dance hall. Already, a great number of people mill about before the pair of them, and if Obi-Wan were not so annoyed at Quinlan, he’d shy closer to his friend at the sight of half the Senate and half the Jedi Order beneath them.

But he has found that he is annoyed at Quinlan, for obvious reasons.

They hadn’t spoken a single word to each other the entire ride over, but it’s not as if the guard at the doors understands this or even cares. She takes a look at the singular flimsi sheet Vos hands her, a copy of his invitation with both their names and titles scribbled across the top, and steps forward and down slightly. Her voice booms outward: “Jedi Knight Quinlan Vos and his padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Not even a second later, a very familiar Force signature cuts through the feelings and noise of the crowd to wrap around his mind, pushing up against his own until its weight and presence are the only things Obi-Wan can feel.

Slightly dazed by the onslaught and the sheer possessiveness that accompanies it, Obi-Wan has to wrap his hand around Quinlan’s arm to avoid misstepping as they make their way down the stairs.

The Force signature curls around his mind angrily, insistently.

Even after all these years, it still feels like a weighted blanket enveloping his mind—or perhaps a cloak, still warm and soft from the last person to wear it, settling around his shields as if it were resting across his shoulders.

Nearing the bottom of the steps, he looks up from his feet and through the crowd, eyes finding a pair of electric blue ones as if they were magnetized.

The truth of the matter is that a singular Jedi Knight and an inconsequential padawan do not cause much of a stir at an event like this, even when they are announced as if they are royalty. The majority of the people in attendance have already looked away, back to their partners and their conversations and their lives; their duties, their stories, their evenings.

The truth of the matter, the very crux of the issue that Obi-Wan hasn’t realized until this very moment, is that perhaps never in his life has Anakin Skywalker looked away from Obi-Wan Kenobi willingly.

Maybe it was Obi-Wan turning away the entire time.

“Obi-Wan,” Quinlan murmurs at his side, tugging on his arm as they reach the bottom of the stairs. “You promised. Let it go. Let’s go find you a senator to sneak out with. A server. A very tipsy Jedi Knight.”

“Yeah,” Obi-Wan agrees, because he had promised.

But if Master Skywalker only taught him one thing, it’s that not all promises are forged from the same metals. Some are made brittle, made thin. Easily broken.

Perhaps even made to be broken.

When Obi-Wan Kenobi was two and a half years old, he met Anakin Skywalker for the very first time, though he would not remember it on pain of death.

It is unclear if Anakin Skywalker, then-Padawan Skywalker remembers this meeting.

If Skywalker did, he would probably remember it like this:

He was nineteen years old and furious at the entire galaxy. He'd just seen his mother die. He'd felt her last exhale against his cheek, had held her broken body in his arms amidst a raging desert. He had become the raging desert, and he was still trying to claw himself back to personhood a month later. He had a wife now. He had a place to go when the title of Jedi Padawan grew too heavy to bear. He could sneak into Padmé's quarters and curl her into his arms, hold onto the last thing that loved and trusted him in the entire damn galaxy.

Padmé made him believe in the softness of the worlds around them. She was the trickle of sunshine spilling through gaps of storm clouds. She held his face between her slim and unblemished palms and told him about a future that was independent of the wounds the past had left upon him. He loved her for it. He loved her for it. He loved her for the fact that she knew what he had done in the aftermath of his mother's death, and she still looked at him as if he did not have the capacity to hurt her more times than not. There was a flicker of wariness in her eyes sometimes. A doubt she could not manage to shake. 

But a flicker of sunshine was better than a lifetime of storms, so Anakin loved her. He loved her.

He still had his Jedi duties to attend to though, and one of them was that of crèche duty, a responsibility all of the padawans shared with varying degrees of enthusiasm. 

Anakin had always used his time as padawan aide for the crèchemaster as time to work on the specs of his lightsaber, clean its crevices and study its design for possible weak spots. He was terrible with younglings before his last visit to Tatooine, but now he was even worse. His very Force signature seemed to warn the babes to stay away from him, and he was given a wide berth.

That is, until the day that aa very determined youngling toddled his way across the room and into his lap as if he feared nothing in the galaxy.

Anakin looked down at the mop of red hair in shock as the youngling clapped his hands together and tried to grasp his floating kyber crystal.

"No," Anakin said automatically. "That's not for you."

"Boo," the baby said, turning to look at him with very wide eyes. 

"Well, that's not nice," Anakin replied. 

"Boo," the baby said again insistently, reaching out with both hands for his kyber crystal. "Boo, boo, boo."

And then his kyber did the strangest thing. It moved towards the youngling's hands through no will of Anakin's own, nor, as far as he could tell, of the youngling's. 

The youngling's excitement grew exponentially the second his hands wrapped around the crystal, and Anakin was powerless to stop the sheer joy he felt rushing over him from the youngling's soul. 

Blue, he had been saying. Blue.

The Force was so bright around the kid in his lap that it was blinding to look at him straight on. When he stuck his kyber crystal in his mouth, Anakin could only stammer through a reprimand. One that was hollow and fell on deaf ears in the face of the youngling's enthusiasm and Light. He was so--light. 

If Padmé felt like dappled sunlight against his soul, holding the youngling in his lap as he chewed curiously on his kyber crystal felt like flying straight into the nearest star.

"Alright, alright," Anakin said after an indeterminable amount of time. The youngling had yawned around his kyber, and Anakin worried he may drop it down his throat, choke on it, and perish. "Why don't we sleep now?"

The youngling turned very trusting eyes up to Anakin. He apparently understood what was being requested of him, because he shifted in his arms to become more comfortable and fell asleep within minutes.

Drool pooled up against Anakin's sleeve almost immediately. "Excuse me," he told the crèche guard when she walked past him an hour later. "Do you happen to know which youngling this is?"

She took one look at the youngling in his arms before giving him what looked like a rare smile. "That's Obi-Wan," she said. "Too trusting for his own good. Here, I can take him back to his crib."

"Uh," Anakin said, "yeah. Thank you."

He meant the opposite but still sat there and watched the sleeping youngling be lifted from his arms and taken to the sleeping chambers without a word of protest, discarded lightsaber pieces strewn around him as if they were bits of junk.

Chapter Text

There is polite interest from several senators when they take a closer look at him and realize that he is Qui-Gon Jinn’s padawan. Master Jinn did not become particularly famous during the war, unlike Masters Windu, Secura, Skywalker. Mostly, he, Obi-Wan, and the 212th had been stationed in the Mid-Rim, close to the Core.

They were not the first battalion to be called upon to break through sieges or deter an oncoming Separatist legion, and that was by design. Master Jinn’s talents lay more in helping refugees from other planets find sanctuary around the Mid-Rim. The 212th set up field hospitals, negotiated with dignitaries from Republic planets to allow a temporary takeover of swaths of their land for victims of the effort, strengthened shipping routes from Core to Outer Rim to facilitate trade of in-demand commodities and need-based aid supplies. 

Obi-Wan had been sent to fight under other colors when his master could spare him, or when he had been requested, but it was never more than a couple of missions away from his station.

Hence Zygerria.

Hence Ryloth.

Hence—

Well. The point, of course, is that delivering assistance and prying land, supplies, and credits out of planetary diplomats’ cold, greedy hands did not a war hero make. It also did not make much of a friendly reception for Obi-Wan amidst this crowd of senators, when he had done most of the negotiating on behalf of the Jedi Order and displaced populations. 

Especially because he had proven to be very, very good at it. 

“I do hope the Jedi Order will present us most affected senators with a strategic plan on how best we should go about removing the peoples we allowed onto our planets during the war,” one senator tells him now, lip curled up into a smile that doubles as a sneer as he tucks his hands into the red sleeves of his robes: a clear snub. “Now that the fighting is over.”

“Senator Wraeth of Planet Norr,” Obi-Wan bows, tilting his chin back so he can maintain eye contact with the much taller senator. “I hope your planet and its queen have prospered since the last time we spoke.”

“We would prosper more if we knew that the Jedi Order would help us in resettling those refugees moved onto our lands during—”

“I’m going to find a drink,” Vos says, clapping Obi-Wan on the shoulder. “Enjoy.”

Obi-Wan hardly notices his exit. “Unfortunately, Senator, the Jedi Order has made the recent discovery that while it only took a day’s effort for the Separatists to destroy the houses and communities populating the three moons orbiting Norr, it will take much longer to rebuild them. Of course, if your queen were to give more…generously in credits and construction materials, perhaps you would see a quicker resolution to your perceived…grievances.”

Wraeth’s eyes flash, and his hands emerge from his sleeves to curl into fists at his side. “Do not forget that Norr opened itself up—gave precious resources—for the sake of the Republic to support a war effort we never saw the benefit of—”

“The benefit of? Senator, your benefit of supporting the Republic was the fact that the Separatist bombs never landed on your doorstep. The moons of Norr were turned into shield and battlefield and until they are ready for habitation once more, it is the least your planet can do offer shelter and protection to those—”

“Making friends?” Master Skywalker asks, making himself known as he slips behind Obi-Wan. His hands settle for a moment on his bare hips, fingers slotting against the bruises there like he knows exactly where to put them and where to squeeze.

“And do you speak for the Jedi Order, Padawan Kenobi?” Wraeth sneers. “When the queen told me that they allowed a learner to lead negotiations for the Jedi, I was surprised. Yet now I find myself slipping quickly toward offense.”

Master Skywalker’s fingers flex around his waist. Obi-Wan isn’t sure if he means to hold himself or Obi-Wan back from lunging at the senator.

“The Jedi allow anyone who proves themselves knowledgeable on a topic to speak on behalf of the Order,” Obi-Wan says, smiling beatifically. “It is a model of conversational participation that I find myself wishing more of the galaxy subscribed to. I can see why it would baffle you, of course.”

“Alright,” Master Skywalker decides, using his grip to physically steer Obi-Wan away from the circle of senators. “So: not making friends.”

Obi-Wan bares his teeth up at him in something like a grin. “No, probably not.”

“Really, Obi-Wan,” Anakin keeps one hand on his waist even as he moves the other one to knick a flute of sparkling wine from a passing tray. “You’d think you’d be tired of making enemies, given that the war is hardly a year past us.”

“What did you think I was planning on making when I came here tonight?” Obi-Wan tilts his head down and angles it backwards so that he’s looking up at Anakin through his eyelashes. “Love?”

The hand on his bare skin flexes and then pulls back as if it’s been burned. Obi-Wan mourns its loss as much as he celebrates it. He now has the freedom to turn around completely to face Master Skywalker.

Master Skywalker, who is holding his flute of drink like it’s a saber he can use to defend himself. Master Skywalker, whose blue eyes are dark as he looks down at him. His lips look more red than usual, as if he’s been biting at them, and his hair falls in messy locks around his face.

He’s beautiful. He has always been beautiful like some perfectly sculpted statue or ancient god, even now with his heavy brow furrowed and the corners of his lips turned down. Beautiful aggravation. “You should not speak to me in such a way,” he says. “I am a Jedi Master.”

But in reality, he is just a man, and Obi-Wan knows what to do with men who look at him like that, who push him against doors and call him baby , who sound like they are saying stop with their tones, but whose eyes burn like lightning strikes as they trail down his face.

“Sorry, Master,” Obi-Wan murmurs, before cocking his head innocently. “Would you rather I say fuck?”

They have so much between them, so many words said and unsaid that weigh the air down with tension.

But it would be so nice if he could just—fall into Anakin’s arms. For a night at least. If this is want thrumming through the Force between them, who could it hurt to act on it? 

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin snaps, pure reprimand as he pushes them further away from the main crowd, up beside one of the load-bearing pillars in the room twined with small glowing lights. His eyes flash down to his hips, bruised and exposed to his gaze. Obi-Wan leans back slightly to make them more obvious.

Of course, this man has already hurt him before. And giving Anakin Skywalker a chance to reject him again, for the second time in his life, is…foolhardy. 

Especially when that first rejection still stings when he thinks about it too long, when he thinks back to that night in Master Skywalker’s quarters, emotions and words tumbling out of his mouth before he could think them through, all the while the heaviest truth of them all remained unmoved in the pit of his stomach: Sometimes, it’s hard to believe I’ll ever be Knighted because I came so close to never being a Padawan in the first place.

Because of you.

And yet….

He licks his lips and watches Master Skywalker’s eyes follow the movement of his tongue. He steps closer, hand ghosting over his sides like he wants to touch but cannot figure out where.

And yet this is different—their relationship is so different from that one that ended with that rejection in the past. This one is defined by desire, the intense heat of want, impure and heady and so divorced from how Obi-Wan felt about Master Skywalker ten years ago that it’s almost laughable.

He knows sex, knows how to make a partner feel good, knows how to make a partner feel like they’re going out of their minds with lust.

It is hard to believe that he is wanted in any way by any version of Master Anakin Skywalker, but he knows what a man looks like when they want him, though it had taken him far too long to recognize the expression on Anakin’s face.

He will not be rejected. Not if—not if Quinlan can be believed, not if his own eyes can be believed.

“Be more careful what you use that silver tongue of yours for,” Master Skywalker demands in a rough voice. “One day you’re going to offer up the wrong thing to the wrong person, and then where will you be if they decide to take you up on it?”

Anakin Skywalker wants him. Wants his body, his touch, his kiss.

But you don’t want that, a small yet unignorable part of himself whispers. You don’t want his desire. You don’t want a single night. You want his affection and regard and respect. You want his arms to wrap around your chest if you ever startle out of another nightmare. You want his Force signature to make its home right next to yours so when you separate for missions, it takes hours to reach a half-forgotten equilibrium.

You want his love and you always have. The want came later. And it will always come second.

But, well. So will Obi-Wan in the end. Compared to the padawan Anakin chose, compared to the senator he lost.

Obi-Wan has become an expert at settling for less than what he hoped for.

Maintaining eye contact with the man in front of him, he reaches forward and plucks the glass from his gloved mechno hand before raising it to his own lips and taking a sip.

“Pinned against a column in a dark corner of a crowded room, I should hope,” he says, feeling daring enough to take the slightest step closer. “Am I—”

“Ani?” Padmé Amidala asks from behind his shoulder, voice high with unrestrained joy at the sight of Master Skywalker. She flows around Obi-Wan easily—he never saw her coming—and rests a hand on Anakin’s arm with a beautiful smile.

Her outfit is deep purple fading into a sunset sort of gold, half lace that curls over and along the swell of her breasts while leaving her stomach and sides exposed. Her arms are bare, brushing against the long cape-like fabric latched to her shoulders and pooling against her skirts.

Well, it’s no black corset dress, but the senator looks like—like—one of Naboo’s most worshipped goddesses. Like the kind of woman who would be loved by someone like Anakin Skywalker. Like the kind of woman deserving of the boyish smile Master Skywalker gives her as well.

And then she turns to look at him, honey-brown eyes smiling as she dips her head into a bow. “And you are Padawan Kenobi,” she says. She has not yet stopped touching Master Skywalker, and it is all Obi-Wan can think about. 

He bows to her, because he will not be rude to a woman who radiates so much kindness into the Force. “Yes, Senator,” he says. “Though I’m not sure I’ve properly made your acquaintance.”

“Nonsense,” she laughs. “We’ve sat through enough tedious holo calls with dignitaries from around the galaxy complaining about the Republic aid initiatives that I feel as if I know your exasperated face as if it were my own.”

“Right,” he says. “Naboo was one of the 212th’s firmest supporters. Thank you.”

She waves a hand and offers him a gentle smile. It changes the lines of her face; she’d looked girlish, smiling at his master. Now she looks her age, mature and weary, but self-satisfied. “We did not do what we did for thanks, the same as you, I’m sure.”

“Obi-Wan led his own search and rescue mission through Lessu after we retook Ryloth,” Master Skywalker says, voice overflowing with such a potent note of pride that Obi-Wan takes another sip of the glass in his hand so he can briefly hide his face and the blush that’s surely spreading across it. “He fought three different Senate committees in the Mid-Rim so that displaced Twi’lek populations could temporarily settle on Ryloth-like terrain.”

Anakin makes it sound as if Obi-Wan flicked on his lightsaber and faced down a room full of Sith-trained senators.

The reality had involved a lot more breaks for tea and a lot less bloodshed.

“Ani,” Padmé’s head tilts back as she laughs and then looks up at him and then back to Obi-Wan with a commiserating look. “I know,” she says slowly, perfect mouth still curled up slightly at its edge. “I was also there. As a senator on most of the Mid-Rim committees.”

“I—” Anakin frowns. “Oh.”

“Nevertheless, I believe I interacted more with your counterpart,” Obi-Wan tells the senator, wrapping both hands around his drink so as to physically restrain himself from reaching forward and snagging the corner of Master Skywalker’s sleeve to tug him away from Ms Amidala. “How is Senator Binks?”

“As far as I can tell, he is doing well,” she replies, speaking over the sound of Anakin’s groaning. “He will be thrilled to know you asked after him. I can see if he will be on Coruscant and available for tea if you should like?”

“Oh, no,” Obi-Wan rushes to say. “No need to—tell him anything about me. Or—I will be unavailable. For tea.”

He makes the mistake of catching Anakin’s eye. The man is grinning at him, and, when he sees him looking, raises both eyebrows pointedly.

Be more careful what you use that silver tongue for echoes back as if the reminder of Anakin’s words is being pushed through the Force. One day you’re going to offer up the wrong thing to the wrong person.

Obi-Wan scowls. He most certainly had not considered teatime with the most pathetic lifeform in this galaxy as something that he could stumble into because of his tongue.

Padmé smirks lightly as if she knows exactly where Obi-Wan’s suddenly crowded schedule is coming from. “I suppose you’ll be hard-pressed to fit Senator Binks into your diary with all the other senators clamoring for your attentions—”

“Oh, Pads,” Anakin says with a grin that makes the lines around his eyes deepen impossibly further, “you should have seen the way he took one of them apart already, I can’t imagine any of them want to spend a second alone with him, they hate him.”

He says this with relish, as if being hated by a senator is a mark of honor.

It matches Obi-Wan’s own reluctance to be in the company of politicians well, and he has a moment to wonder if distrust of public figures is something they intrinsically have in common, or if Qui-Gon Jinn had instilled the quality into the both of them.

“I can think of one at least who would probably enjoy a spin around the dance floor on your arm, Padawan Kenobi,” Padmé says to him and for a singular second he wonders if she is flirting with him.

Anakin must think the same thing, because his face twitches into something strange. “I’m not sure that would be wise, Senator. You’d hardly want to get a reputation for—“

“After all, I’d be able to recognize Senator Liana’s handiwork anywhere,” Padmé waves her hand down Obi-Wan’s torso, gesturing to his outfit, and Master Skywalker’s eyes fall once more to his exposed hips and the bruises he’s showcasing.

Master Skywalker’s face slides into a scowl. “What.”

Padmé pats his arm almost absent-mindedly, and Obi-Wan’s back straightens. He cannot imagine touching the man before him with anything less than full intent and focus.

But then again, Padmé Amidala must have spent hours—days—years touching Anakin Skywalker when they were sneaking around Coruscant and betraying their duties for the sake of—of sweet nothings and heated kisses. She must not remember the way it felt to touch him in those first few days, full of breathless antcipation and wide-eyed wonder, shaking hands and heightened heartbeats.

She can just—touch him now, a hand on an arm and a thousand stories and sunlit trespasses between them.

Obi-Wan finishes the drink in his hand and decides he would rather be anywhere in the galaxy than right here.

Master Skywalker looks furious, even as Obi-Wan deposits his empty flute on a passing tray and adjusts the fall of the chains against his sternum.

“I helped the senator during the war,” Obi-Wan demurs to Senator Amidala. “We spent a particularly memorable evening in an empty distillery on Bau’iil, sheltering there before we were found by a Separatist patrol. I…negotiated our release.”

He had done so rather aggressively, if he were being honest.

“She thinks I saved her life,” he shrugs and rubs the back of his neck. “Wouldn’t quite let the matter drop, so. I took my payment.”

Padmé laughs. Master Skywalker looks livid, stopping a server and grabbing a drink off her platter rather forcefully.

“Have you had a chance to show her the rewards of her labor?” Padmé turns to the majority of the crowd, peering over the heads of the Senators and Jedi and upper echelons of society in a bid, Obi-Wan can only assume, to find Senator Liana. “I’m sure she’d love to see.”

“Please,” Obi-Wan shakes his head. “As if she did much other than pass me around to her men.”

It had been a day’s worth of measurements in fact. Liana had insisted upon Obi-Wan’s presence at the seamstress’ to choose the fabric, then at the tailor’s to take his measurements, then at a far too expensive lunch to express her gratitude once more before whisking him away to a hairdresser for another few hours.

He shakes his head and offers up a small smile. “Oh, I’m sure we both had fun,” he tells the senator. “But the day left me exhausted, while I’m sure she felt perfectly fine.”

The glass in Master Skywalker’s mechno hand shatters, and Obi-Wan rears back instinctively, even as the Force rolls around them, refusing to let him move far from the irate Jed Master.

“Oh, Ani!” Padmé sounds startled, turning to face him for the first time since the start of the conversation. Her expression morphs into one of concern at what she sees. Obi-Wan has no idea if it’s because of his clear anger or because of some sort of sign he is emitting that only she knows how to read. 

He takes a step away, hiding his hands behind his back. “Actually I believe I see her,” he tilts his head away from the pair of former lovers, eyes slanting into the crowd and picking a random face that will be his escape. “You are right, Senator, she deserves to see the result of all our hard efforts.”

He gets perhaps ten paces towards his destination—a mousy looking senator standing apart from the rest of the crowd—before a hand falls onto his neck. He knows who it is before he even turns around.

Master Skywalker doesn’t let him look at him for long before he steers him where he wants them to go, changing trajectory completely and herding him away from the main crowd, along the side of the floor before finding an innocuous looking door and pushing him through it.

The room, obviously meant for meditation of some sort, is small and dimly lit by high, thin, horizontal windows lining three of the walls. The sun has almost finished setting, Obi-Wan notes. Its dying rays of orange and red cast strange shadows across Master Skywalker’s face as the man manhandles him around and against the wall adjacent to the door they’d come through. There is no click of a lock behind them, but a surge of the Jedi Master’s power blankets the entrance and keeps it shut.

Anakin’s Force signature thrashes around them, wrapping itself around Obi-Wan’s one second before expanding to fill the room the next, as if it cannot decide how best to suffocate him.

Obi-Wan’s mouth falls open slightly when Anakin’s glove, wet still from his spilled drink, wraps around the band of bronze chains over his chest and twists them to haul him impossibly closer. 

“I have been trying to find you to speak with you for weeks,” Master Skywalker growls, dark and dangerous and full of filthy anger. “And you have been bedding senators.”

And he knows, he does, that he should tell Anakin that he has been chaste for months now, unwilling to let anyone touch him if they were not him. Master Skywalker has his heart, his loyalty, his body. If he does not know that, he should be made aware. Obi-Wan could no more fuck a senator now than he could cut out some intrinsic part of himself and leave it to the loth-wolves.

That is not what he says, of course.

“What,” he says, letting his head drop back to thump against the wall. Before it can make contact, Master Skywalker’s other hand slides through his hair to cushion him against the blow. It’s sweet, but it doesn’t stop the next words from leaving his mouth: “are you not appreciative of our role reversal?”

The hand in his hair tightens and bends his head back, exposing his neck as much as it’s able to be exposed, covered as it is with the chains. Master Skywalker does not reply, though Obi-Wan thinks maybe he is not capable of a response. He does not move away, and that is the only thing that matters.

“I find myself enjoying the other side of the bargain,” he whispers into the space between them, and Anakin uses his hold on the front of his shirt to yank him forward with a snarl.

Obi-Wan collapses into the kiss. He does not melt, he does not soften. He collapses, a building taken out at its knees, turned to rubble the moment his lips find Anakin’s. There is no coming back from this. There’s just this destruction, these walls buckling and falling, the siege ending, the fight over, the surrender so sweet and so complete.

It is unlike any first kiss Obi-Wan has ever had, mostly because it doesn’t feel like a first kiss. It feels like a reclaiming. There is no hesitation and no worrying about its reception. Anakin Skywalker has decided—finally, finally—that he will kiss Obi-Wan Kenobi, and so he is being kissed. It’s forceful and angry, sharp teeth nipping at his lips and seeming to grow harsher when he realizes–perhaps is confronted with the truth that—Obi-Wan knows how to kiss back just as well. Just as deeply. 

He rips his mouth away with a curse and pins Obi-Wan to the wall in front of him, one arm anchoring his shoulders and the other holding his head back by his grip in his hair as he pants harshly, first against his shoulder, and then the slope of his neck, then a few centimeters from hs lips. “You kiss like a schutta,” Master Skywalker mutters, eyes dark and transfixed on Obi-Wan’s parted mouth, swaying forward slightly as if he cannot help himself.

“I will not know the answers should you ask who all has kissed me,” he warns, licking his lips.

This earns him another kiss, bruising in its ferocity as Anakin seems to decide that if he cannot be Obi-Wan’s only, his first, then he will be his best.

And he is making a very, very good case for being Obi-Wan’s best: each iteration of the kiss is different, like he changes his mind about how he thinks he should kiss him everytime he draws back for breath. Gentle, like he’s something precious, a soft brush of lips skating over each other, the hint of a tongue that coaxes Obi-Wan into throwing his arms around Anakin’s neck and trying to get closer, trying to get more. Angry, like Obi-Wan has wronged him in some way and Anakin will take his pound of flesh in spit and teeth and tongue. Hard, like all he wants is to find a way further into Obi-Wan’s body, have him deeper and closer and pinned to him forever.

“Force,” Master Skywalker groans, tearing their mouths apart again. Obi-Wan lets out a whine at the loss and tries to follow his mouth. “Force, you drive me wild ,” he mutters, leaning back to look at him and then leaning closer like he can’t imagine being that far apart. Obi-Wan nods back, disjointed and rather nonsensical. Yeah , yeah he wants that. Wants to get under Anakin’s skin, wants to be the thing he cannot shake off or claw out.

“You don’t get it,” Anakin growls, pressing him against the wall as his hands turn forceful, one tangling into the chains of his top while the other falls to his naked hip, squeezing tightly—hard enough to bruise. “I feel half-crazed and nothing like myself when I think of you, and I am always—” he bites at the edge of Obi-Wan’s jaw, and the whimper Obi-Wan emits is not a sound he’s ever made before. “—always thinking of you. It’s like you’ve been sent by the fucking Force to haunt my every thought til it drives me insane—”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan whines because every word he’s speaking feels like it’s lighting up his nerve endings, but that may just be the result of feeling Anakin’s lips brush over his skin with each syllable.

“Which senator is buying you clothes and leaving bruises on your hips, which padawan is pushing you down onto their bed, what liberties are you allowing Quinlan Kriffing Vos to take with your—”

Obi-Wan yanks his mouth back to his and pulls him in for a kiss. He has never loved someone more, has never even come close. 

Oh, he thinks to himself as he sucks on Anakin’s tongue. So this is how it feels to kiss someone you love.

He never wants it to stop, but his partner keeps pulling away. Obi-Wan brings his leg up to wrap around the backs of his thighs, trying to keep him in place. He doesn’t want to talk. He wants to be taken, roughly and without pause. He wants to be held up against this wall and fucked within an inch of his life, even when the door to this room doesn’t have a lock and their peers and friends and superiors, senators and aides and dignitaries are whirling around the venue scarce feet away from them.

He wants to become so entangled with this man that it would take another decade to pull them apart.

He most certainly does not want to talk.

So when Anakin opens his mouth to say something else, Obi-Wan beats him to the punch, loosening his hold on his hair so he can cup the back of his neck instead, looking up at him soft and sweet and slow. “There’s been no one else for ages, Anakin,” he murmurs, hesitating for only a second before continuing, “I have been yours since you threw me onto the mats that first time. Won’t you do something about it?”

It’s only partially a lie, of course. Obi-Wan has been Anakin’s for far longer than that, but it feels like too much to admit to. I’ve been yours for years, even when I was under someone else, even before the war ended, even before you ever saved my life would be the full truth.

He keeps it to himself.It helps that at these words, Master Skywalker groans and falls into him once more with a furious kiss that turns filthy fast.

Mine mine mine, the Force is screaming around them, and it’s Anakin’s mind, brushing up against his own, twisting and surrounding, shields so far down Obi-Wan can hear his every thought as his hands rake up his sides, his back, his sternum before falling down to squeeze at his ass and grip his thighs. Mine mine mine, Anakin is thinking as he lays such thorough claim to Obi-Wan’s mouth that he can do little but welcome the onslaught and buck up into the solid press of Anakin’s body, the hard line of his armor, the hard line of what must be his cock straining in his trousers. Mine mine mine, Anakin is thinking, when he lifts Obi-Wan up to hold him against the wall firmly, coaxing him to wrap his legs around his waist and tighten the grip of his arms around the master’s neck. Mine mine mine my Obi-Wan my padawan my love my love my love—

Obi-Wan gasps at the thought that isn’t his, ripping their mouths apart to slam his head back against the wall in an attempt to catch his breath and stare at Anakin in wordless wonder, nails digging into the back of his neck. Love?

Love?

Anakin snarls at the interruption and ducks his head to kiss him again, mind filled with images of turning Obi-Wan around and slotting his fingers over the bruises on his hips, the ones he’d seen the second he laid eyes on Obi-Wan tonight, standing shoulder to shoulder with Vos, as if the Knight has any right to Obi-Wan’s side, as if he could protect him or care for him or possess him or love him half as well as Anakin could—as Anakin does—

Lovelovelovelovelovelove—-

“Oh Force, sorry—” says someone, and it takes Obi-Wan a few seconds to remember that it is not he and Anakin alone in the galaxy. To remember that other people exist outside of the two of them.

To remember that the door to this meditation chamber did not come with a lock, that Anakin had been holding it shut with the Force, and when his shields slipped around his mind, his control must have also slipped.

It takes Obi-Wan a few seconds, precious seconds, to tear himself away and apart from Anakin, to peer around the bulk of his broad shoulder while the master tries to shield him with his body, as if the person who has stumbled upon them poses some sort of insidious threat to Obi-Wan’s well-being.

Maybe Master Skywalker was able to feel it in the Force, feel her in the Force. Maybe Obi-Wan shouldn’t have struggled to look, should have just pressed his head into Master Skywalker’s armor and let him deal with the intruder.

But he doesn’t even think to do so, because that is not who he is, and he’s never regretted that part of his nature until now, when he hooks his chin over Anakin’s shoulder and locks eyes with Anakin’s padawan. With Ahsoka.

He watches her face change from awkwardly apologetic to horrified to livid, tears beginning to bead at the corners of her eyes as she stares open-mouthed at Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan, pinned to the wall by her master’s arms. Obi-Wan, with her master’s spit still drying on his lips. Obi-Wan, who Anakin only lets drop to the floor when he hits him hard on the shoulder and unwinds his legs.

“Kark,” Obi-Wan says. “Fuck. Ahsoka—”

Ahsoka steps out of the room, head already shaking so rapidly that her montrals are quivering in the air.

“Ahsoka,” and Anakin sounds—Obi-Wan doesn’t know how he sounds, but it’s definitely not as terrified as Obi-Wan feels. “Shit,” he says. “Snips, this isn’t—”

But Ahsoka keeps shaking her head, some mix of disbelieving and disgusted, eyes on Obi-Wan the entire time, before she turns and breaks into a run.

“Ahsoka!” Both Anakin and Obi-Wan cry, but when Anakin starts to follow, it’s Obi-Wan that grabs his wrist and stops him.

“She’s mad at me,” he says, shaking his head sharply. “I need to talk to her. She needs—we need to talk.”

Anakin’s eyes are a fiery blue. He must not be used to being denied—not about Ahsoka, not by Obi-Wan. He looks torn, and his jaw works furiously as his clenches and unclenches his teeth before finally inclining his head sharply.

Obi-Wan runs.

Ahsoka feels so turbulent in the Force that it’s incredibly easy to track her through the crowd. She hasn’t even gone far. She’s escaped through the main back exit of the faux temple, down its steps, past a few dozen party-goers and fled into the gardens. 

It makes sense, of course. Many Jedi turn to nature when they feel unbalanced. A strong connection to the Living Force can help the most volatile Jedi find peace. 

Obi-Wan finds his friend pacing among a bush of purple flowers, their scent wafting up to fill the air. The moons have just started rising, and their light gives a silver shine to the petals’ color.

“Ahsoka,” he exhales as soon as he sees her, and she whirls to face him, sneer pulling her lips back to expose her sharp teeth. 

“You,” she hisses. “I don’t want to talk to you!”

Obi-Wan can’t help the way he flinches back from the vitriol in her voice. She has never once spoken to him in such a manner, and the anger—the rejection in it, of him, of their bond, their friendship—fills him with dread.

A horrible thought enters his head. “Do you…do you…love him?”

Ahsoka, who was in the middle of pulling on her own montrals in distress, freezes and turns to look at him, mouth falling open and eyes narrowing. 

“Well?” he asks, forcing himself to stand straight under her gaze instead of curling away like a good part of him wants to. You’ve done nothing wrong, he wants to tell himself, but he knows that’s not true, not really. Anakin had said so himself: Jedi Knights and Padawans should not be caught kissing. Jedi Masters and Padawans….it was a breach of etiquette, of decorum. Both of them could face dismissal from the Order. It would be one of the worst scandals of the century.

And on top of that, Obi-Wan had felt Anakin’s love. He loves him, and Obi-Wan returns that love tenfold and deliriously. What sort of Jedi are they? What sort of Jedi can they possibly be?

He has done many, many things wrong, and he deserves Ahsoka’s anger—but not if she is only angry because she wishes she had been the one in Anakin’s arms, the one who caught his eye and won his heart.

A dark jealous beast stretches awake in his chest at the very thought. Mine mine mine, his mind sings. His his his.

But Ahsoka lets out a half-mad, half disgusted laugh and turns halfway away from him, scrubbing her hands over her face. “In love with him? No!”

She feels and sounds honest in the Force, the disgust too much of a knee-jerk reaction to be faked. It soothes Obi-Wan, more than it should. But then—the only other thing he can think is just as horrifying. “Are you…in love with—me?”

This time her laugh is much harsher, mean around the edges in a way that Obi-Wan automatically wants to flinch away from. “In love with you, Obi-Wan? ” She scoffs and crosses her arms, seems to think better of it and lets them hang at her sides. “What is there to love?”

The blow lands exactly as Ahsoka meant it to. Obi-Wan feels wounded, taken out at the knees. 

The galactically-known truth, of course, is that friends are the worst sorts of enemies to make. They know unerringly where to aim their blows. 

“Oh,” is all he can manage. Then, “I don’t understand. Why—why you’re so upset.”

Ahsoka paces to the end of the garden and then turns around, the fabric of her wine-colored skirts spinning quickly around her from the abruptness of the motion. “You kissed my master, Obi-Wan!” She cries, far too loud for their current venue. “You kissed my master!” 

Obi-Wan nods his head. He had. He would do it again in a heartbeat. His mind flashes back to the bet suddenly. Is that why she’s upset? Has she found out—connected the two pieces together? Motive and circumstances and crime, converging in her head to form a clear yet inaccurate picture? Maybe she will stop looking at him like she hates him if he just tells her that this is not because of any stupid bet. That he loves Anakin, that he is confident going forward that any day that goes by where he doesn’t kiss Anakin Skywalker will be a day wasted.

“I love him,” he admits, shaking his head and knotting his hands together. The confession winds him, like he has admitted to murder instead of love. It feels like he has, like he’s guilty. He is guilty. But he loves him, and Anakin Skywalker loving him back is the absolution of that guilt—the only thing that makes it easier to bear.

But Ahsoka laughs again, shaking her head, every inch of her derisive. “Love him? Obi-Wan, you don’t know him!”

Obi-Wan blinks. Of all the things he’d thought she could say, he hadn’t expected that. Know him? What is knowing someone compared to how they make you feel, when it comes to love?

And besides, “I do know h—”

“You don’t! You don’t, because he is my master!” Ahsoka strides forward so suddenly that for a second Obi-Wan thinks she won’t stop, that her intention is to collide with him and knock him to the ground.

But she does stop, several paces from him. He thinks for a second of taking his own step back, forcing more space between them, but he cannot justify such an act of cowardice.

“He is my master,” Ahsoka repeats, voice wavering with the force of her words. “He is not yours! He did not choose you! He chose me! He wanted me!”

“I know!” Obi-Wan cries, raising his hands, palms up and spread. “I know!”

Of course he knows. How can he possibly forget, even for a second, that gut-wrenching agony of the Jedi Council gently confirming that he would be sent to the Agricorps, masterless and unchosen? How can he possibly forget that feeling of blinding anger and debilitating hurt when he heard that Ahsoka Tano was to be Anakin Skywalker’s padawan? That it was not that Anakin had decided to never take on a learner: he had decided to never take Obi-Wan on as his learner.

“You do not have to remind me,” he whispers, shaking his head and crossing his arms over his chest, suddenly feeling vulnerable and exposed in his silly costume. 

Ahsoka sneers. The expression twists her face into something ugly. “Don’t I?” she demands.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Obi-Wan defends. “And I certainly don’t know how any of this connects to what you just saw—”

“I knew about your lessons,” his friend interrupts, beginning to pace in front of him, like some predator cornering its prey. “Anakin tried to fit them in during times he knew I’d be in class, but he’s never been perfect at remembering my schedule and I’ve never been perfect at attending modules I think are boring. When you first talked about it, in the refractory, I didn’t even realize you were serious! I didn’t realize he was! But then I realized they were happening! These lessons!”

Obi-Wan inhales sharply. He opens his mouth to respond, but Ahsoka does not let him.

“And I rationalized it! I thought, well. I learn from other masters all the time! It’s the nature of the Jedi, isn’t it? We have masters, but we learn specific crafts from other teachers. I thought, maybe it's the same! It doesn’t mean that one of my best friends is trying to steal my master! He wants to prepare for his Trials! It doesn’t mean anything that he didn’t ask his own master, that he came to mine! Padawans learn from different masters all the time, and it means nothing— nothing —that the one master my best friend wants to learn from is the one master half the Temple knows he’s kriffing obsessed with and has been for years!”

“That’s not—” but it is true. It’s humiliating, but it’s true. “I never wanted to steal your master, Ahsoka, I promise, that wasn’t—”

“Never?” Ahsoka shakes her head again. “Never? You were happy then, to hear Anakin Skywalker chose me as his padawan? You were never jealous or angry or—”

“I think of the two of us,” Obi-Wan raises his chin, defiant at the worst of times, “you are the one who sounds jealous and angry—”

But maybe Anakin Skywalker just inspires those sorts of emotions in people, in his padawans—one whole, one ghost. Perhaps if their roles were reversed, perhaps if it were Obi-Wan the padawan of Master Skywalker, and Ahsoka the interloper, the one who so obviously wanted his master’s attentions, he’d feel the same anger.

Knowing him, knowing the way he has spent the last several years longing for a scrap of Master Skywalker’s attention like a dog longs for the barest touch of affection, he’d probably be worse.

“Of course I am angry!” Ahsoka shouts, hands thrown up into the skies. “I spent a month and a half telling myself that if he teaches you this…this self-defense trick, you will think it’s enough! You’re my friend, I care for you! I want you to let this go , to make peace with the fact that he will never be your master! Maybe if you learnt this one thing from him, you’d be able to move on from the hurt I know you felt all those years ago!

“And instead, tonight, I follow my master’s Force signature into a side room of a fucking Senatorial Gala, and you’re in his arms? He’s kissing you?”

“Me,” Obi-Wan repeats, a whisper of offense sparking in his chest that is mostly swallowed by the hurt.

“You! You, who could probably have almost anyone in the galaxy! Half the senators in there alone! Half the Jedi probably! And you want my master?”

Obi-Wan shakes his head, near helpless in the face of Ahsoka’s derision. “I love him,” he says again. “It was—if it could only be him, I would give everything to make it so—”

“So what, Obi-Wan, you can’t have him as your master so no one can? You’d rather have him expelled from the Order for getting caught fucking a padawan at a state event than admit he didn’t want you?”

“That is unfair, Ahsoka! I love him, we didn’t—the venue didn’t matter as much as being able to kiss him—imagine if Barriss showed even a sliver of reciprocal interest in you—”

He meant the words to hurt just as much as her words had hurt him, but she laughs in his face. She looks as if she is about to cry. “Barriss and I have been seeing each other for three weeks, Obi-Wan! You haven’t noticed! My master hasn’t noticed!”

Obi-Wan feels as if the pit has dropped out of his stomach. He has spent countless hours teasing his friend over her infatuation with Offee, has comforted her and supported her and offered her advice. And to hear that such a big change has occurred in his friend’s life only for him to miss it — “Ahsoka,” he whispers. “I didn’t know—”

“Yeah, because we didn’t get caught kissing in rooms without kriffing locks!” Ahsoka cries. “So I have to wonder why you did! You, who knows how to fuck someone anywhere on Coruscant without being caught! It doesn’t make sense! It has to be personal!”

And Obi-Wan knows that this is the precise moment that he should admit to the bet. Not in a way that would make Ahsoka believe that he kissed Anakin solely because of it—he doesn’t think that would solve any problems—but in order to reassure her that he hadn’t meant anything malicious by the kiss she’d walked in on. She needs to know that he knows a thousand spots in Coruscant he can go to get away with public indecency, but he hadn’t even remembered other places—other people—existed the moment Master Skywalker shoved him into that meditation room.

He doesn’t say any of this, of course. He is angry and he is hurt, and he is dizzy from both of those feelings coursing through him and so utterly replacing the happiness and wonder he’d felt only minutes ago.

“Have you considered that perhaps our actions are not about nor do they concern you?” He shouts back, taking a step forward of his own.

For a second, Ahsoka looks as if she’s about to hit him. Instead her hands come up to his chest and shove him backwards. Obi-Wan stumbles back, winded from the surprise alone.

“Considered?” Ahsoka’s voice is furious one moment and then suddenly exhausted the next. “Considered?”

She laughs. It’s more of a scoff, and it sounds so achingly hollow, so defeated, that Obi-Wan can only assume she has tried to give her fury to the Force and it took more than she bargained for, leaving only this bleak ache behind.

“Obi-Wan,” she takes a step back, and then another even though he has not moved. She blinks rapidly. “Obi-Wan, do you know that I can’t remember when we became friends?”

Obi-Wan blinks.

“I think it’s sort of normal,” she says. “To not remember the moment you become friends with someone you’ve known practically your whole life. I don’t remember becoming friends with Bant or Quinlan, Fraji or Vano. But you, Obi-Wan,” she trails off and fixes him in his place with a single stare. “I can’t remember if you became my friend before Master Skywalker chose me as his padawan, or after.”

Obi-Wan would have preferred a lightsaber to the chest.

But before he can even get some air back into his lungs, Ahsoka speaks again. “So I don’t know, do I? If you became my friend because Anakin was my master, or if Anakin chose me as his padawan because we were friends. 

“All I know is he dropped everything to escort you on missions during the war. And you only ever asked me about how my lessons were going, even when Quinlan was sitting practically on top of you, arm around your shoulder! And now, you’re practically fucking one another not ten feet from the Grandmaster of the Order, no thought at all to how I would feel—what would happen to me —if my master were expelled from the Jedi for inappropriate relations with a padawan!

“Consider that this is not about me? Obi-Wan, there are days I feel confident that my entire padawanship has not been about me.”

He doesn’t know what to say, what to do. He’s spent years thinking of Ahsoka and Master Skywalker’s Padawan as two separate entities, only intersecting when Obi-Wan had to admit they were one and the same. He never realized—never even considered —that his friend saw this and understood his reluctance for what it was.

He says the only thing he can think of: “I am happy that I am apprenticed to Master Jinn.”

He winces as soon as the words leave his mouth. They sound too stiff, too formal, as if he were speaking in front of the Jedi Council. They are platitudes. They are empty.

“I am happy as well,” Ahsoka says, sounding as if she means the exact opposite. “That Qui-Gon is your master and that you are my friend. But I can’t— I can’t —shake the feeling that it’s not enough for you. That it’s not enough for my master either.”

This time, she cuts herself off with a look askance, and Obi-Wan aches at the very sight. At the words she’s left unspoken: That I am not enough for my master.

Ahsoka Tano has been one of his very best friends since he was an Initiate. She has been happy for him, proud of him, sad with him, and there for him. And almost the entire time he’s known her, she’s carried this doubt in her chest. Doubt and hurt and insecurity because of Obi-Wan.

It is untenable.

“Alright,” he says to himself. “Alright,” he says again, louder for Ahsoka’s sake.

Earlier, he had wondered who it could hurt: kissing Anakin Skywalker, opening himself up for rejection if the Jedi master were to find him wanting and undesirable.

The Force has given him his answer in the form of his sniffling best friend, wet eyes and all.

So in return, he gathers up the love and desire and longing he carries for Anakin Skywalker and pushes them into the Force. It doesn’t accept the offering, but then, it never has before. This time, though, it takes the hope that blossomed in his chest when Master Skywalker had kissed him and then kissed him again and again not even an hour ago.

How silly he had been. How Force forsakenly foolhardy.

“Alright,” he says one final time to cauterize the wound. “You’re right. And you—you are enough, Ahsoka. For your master as his padawan. For me as my friend. I will–I was being incredibly selfish. But I will endeavour to be better in the future. I—I swear that I will not seek your master or yourself out until you find me first.” He ducks his head, rubs at the back of his neck. “I suppose…if you ever want to, that is.

“Thank you,” Ahsoka says. The words sound stiff, like it is her turn to speak in front of the Jedi Council. They are hollow. They are empty. She doesn’t believe him, but then she doesn’t know that Obi-Wan has lived far longer carefully denying himself the things he wants than he has allowing himself to reach for them. “Leave, please,” she requests quietly, turning back to the far side of the garden and Obi-Wan turns to go. Of course, of course.

“Ahsoka,” he says, unable to stop himself. She looks at him over her shoulder. She’s still glaring but it looks more sad than angry now. “I’m—I’m glad to hear about you and Barriss,” he tells her. “It…feels different, kissing someone you love, and I…” he breaks off and shrugs. What does he know about it, really? “I’m happy for you.”

She works her jaw furiously, clenching her teeth before she looks away, a perfect mirror of her master’s expression earlier that night.

Obi-Wan bows his head and takes his leave.

The Victory ball has not stopped in his absence. This is surprisingly comforting, a soothing sort of balm to place over the rawness of Obi-Wan’s current emotions. Jedi and senators laugh and drink and chat to the tune of the orchestral band someone has hired, and Obi-Wan slips into the fray undetected.

He feels like one large exposed nerve. He can sense Master Skywalker prowling the edges of the celebration, though he cannot see him. He doesn’t want to see him. Either he has reached the same conclusion that Obi-Wan has—that they cannot continue this thing that they have barely begun—or it will fall upon Obi-Wan to tell him.

He does not relish either option. He does not want to meet Anakin’s eyes across a crowded room and see reflected in them the same hopeless realization that he’s had, but neither does he want to be cornered by the man and be forced to tell him of Ahsoka’s reaction, her hurt, their duty.

Because it is their duty to pretend tonight never happened. As Jedi, as master, as padawan, as friend. They were stupid to ever forget it.

Obi-Wan must put the Jedi Order first as a senior padawan, and if he falls into a relationship with Anakin, he will never be able to, not really. Especially not while their ranks differ, while Anakin’s padawan protests their relationship, if Obi-Wan will lose a friend because of it—

But do those things matter? He had felt Anakin’s love, his desire. He’d sensed his thoughts for several breathless moments, felt the way he felt about him.

How can he give that up? How can he submit himself to an existence where the idea of Anakin’s love for him fading is a certainty, not an insecurity? Having felt it, how can he go back to a life where he isn’t Anakin’s and Anakin isn’t his?

Must he?

If they were to love in secret, carefully this time, with locks on every door—perhaps if they were to wait until Obi-Wan was a Knight—perhaps only on off-planet missions—

With the war over, how often will either of them be put in a position where their loyalty to the Order is tested? They could be Jedi and carry out a romantic dalliance with one another, should Anakin want to. They could be mature about it. They would understand that their obligations to the Order come first, that missed dates and forgotten anniversaries were excusable if one or both of them were called to serve the Republic. Obi-Wan—Obi-Wan would be fine if the Council saw fit to assign Master Skywalker guard duty to the Naboo senator again.

He would.

He isn’t sure he would.

But perhaps he wo—

“Ah, Padawan Kenobi,” a clawed and weathered hand descends upon his shoulder with a clap hard enough to make him jump and turn. Senator Wraeth smiles at him. It sends an instinctual shiver up his spine, but Obi-Wan attempts to smile back. “I am glad to have stumbled upon you.”

Obi-Wan cannot say the same, of course, but his head is ringing and his stomach is thrashing so terribly that he can’t concentrate on being polite. He settles for smiling back.

Is it his imagination, or has Master Skywalker’s Force signature grown stronger? He can feel him more now, as if the man is close.

“I wasn’t aware I made such a good impression,” Obi-Wan finally says when it’s clear Wraeth will not continue until he says something.

“Nonsense,” Wraeth waves the hand not attached to Obi-Wan’s shoulder. “You are quite the conversation partner, but unfortunately I have not stopped you for my sake.”

“Oh?” Obi-Wan asks. It isn’t his imagination; Master Skywalker is near, and his presence in the Force is near suffocating, leaving very little doubt as to if he knows where Obi-Wan is.

Obi-Wan is running out of time.

Obi-Wan doesn’t know what to do, if he can survive what needs to be done, if there’s another way that he hasn’t thought of yet.

There has to be another way outside of denying himself everything he’s ever wanted, and getting that everything only to feel hollow and guilty because of it.

“Your Knight,” Wraeth says, smile falling from his face as he looks intently at Obi-Wan. “Was looking for you. Von. Van. Vol.”

“Vos?” Obi-Wan can feel his eyebrows furrow, and he automatically turns towards the thrum of party-goers. He and Quinlan were hardly speaking currently, why would he be interrogating random senators about his location?

“It seemed urgent,” Wraeth nods, and his hand squeezes his shoulder once before it drops away. “Something about…a friend?”

Obi-Wan’s eyes snap back to Wraeth immediately. “Sorry?”

Had Ahsoka commed Quinlan? Did Quinlan now know as well? Was he as furious as Ahsoka? Had Obi-Wan lost two friends in the course of a singular night?

The senator shakes his head. “I was not told more, Padawan,” he says. “But I did see your Knight take the stairs to the mezzanine level.”

“The mezzanine is closed for this event,” Obi-Wan shakes his head, even as he thinks to himself that that would not stop Quinlan.

Wraeth shrugs, apparently goodwill thoroughly exhausted now that he has passed on his message. “The mezzanine has a south facing balcony. Even war heroes need some peace and quiet. Don’t you think, Padawan?”

The Force buckles and shakes around them. Obi-Wan frowns, but before he can say anything at all, Wraeth has already melted back into the crowd. 

Obi-Wan turns and takes the steps up to the mezzanine level two at a time.

It is, of course, not fast enough to escape the notice of Master Skywalker, though Obi-Wan isn’t surprised. 

A part of him had expected him to follow. If Quinlan is still here, they can talk, Quin can yell, Quin can leave, and Obi-Wan can turn to Master Skywalker and be yelled at some more. Tonight will most likely end with everyone he loves leaving him.

He will not be surprised because this is to be expected. His love is not enough. He is never enough.

Quin isn’t on the mezzanine level, though the balcony doors are open. He isn’t on the balcony either.

The moons have risen fully now, their light seemingly only a couple of degrees dimmer than the sun. It bathes the stone of the balcony and the greenery there in a nice glow, one that rivals the city glow that surrounds them.

Though Quinlan is obviously not here, Obi-Wan walks from open door to jutting terrace, placing his hands on the rail and looking out into the cityscape. Despite the hustle and bustle, loud noises and constant happenings that are integral to Coruscant, the city-planet seems calm in contrast to his current state.

The night feels quiet, as if time itself is holding its breath.

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin says, a purr through the darkness, an oncoming storm.

Obi-Wan closes his eyes. “Stay where you are,” he requests quietly without turning around. He can feel Anakin’s presence, lingering in the shadows, through the balcony doors but not yet on the balcony proper.

“You feel different in the Force,” Master Skywalker murmurs, though he stays where he is. It is a small victory. “Something has changed.”

Obi-Wan almost scoffs. He would if he had the energy to spare for it, but he still feels too raw, too full of conflict. “Of course something has changed,” he tells him. The words are supposed to be angry, but they just come out exhausted.

So Master Skywalker has not had the same realization that Obi-Wan has. So it must be Obi-Wan’s duty to tell him. To end this before it blossoms into something that will hurt them and everyone else around them—more than it already has.

“Of course something has changed,” Obi-Wan says again very slowly and very carefully. “Ahsoka knows. She saw us. She is not exactly pleased.”

“What is between us has nothing to do with Ahoska,” Anakin replies. “It is for us alone.”

“You cannot be so foolish as to really think that,” Obi-Wan says and finally turns around, rubbing a hand over his face as he goes. Anakin is standing in the shadows, face half-hidden.

Anakin shakes his head and bursts into action, striding forward to take Obi-Wan’s face into his hands. “You are making this more complicated than it needs to be,” he murmurs hotly. “You would sacrifice your contentment for another’s comfort without a second’s hesitation.”

His thumb begins stroke along his cheekbone, and the simple motion drives all thought from Obi-Wan’s mind.

“But what about my contentment?” Master Skywalker asks, tilting his head forward until he can ghost his lips across Obi-Wan’s own. “Are you so quick to condemn me as well?”

“You are being ridiculous,” Obi-Wan closes his eyes. “Your padawan is distraught. My friend is furious with me. The Jedi Order would not hesitate to expel the both of us if they found us in such a compromising position. And for what? We kissed once, Anakin.”

“And in my mind we have kissed a thousand times more,” Anakin murmurs like a vow. “I love you,” he adds, as if he has not already dealt Obi-Wan’s self-control a critical blow.

Obi-Wan shakes his head as much as he is able. He cannot help but think of Ahsoka’s fury, Quinlan’s worried words.

“Anakin,” he whispers brokenly. He means, Do not make me say it. Do not make me admit to loving you. Do not make me admit to the truth that it is not enough.

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin replies in much the same tone. “Tell me you do not feel the same, and the matter is settled. It isn’t—I will not —I cannot bear even the thought of pressuring you into something you do not truly want. But I know you, Obi-Wan. I do . You would sacrifice your basic needs if another person asked for them, you would help someone else to the detriment of your own comfort. You are—you are the best Jedi I know, Obi-Wan. ou take nothing for yourself.”

Anakin’s hands drop from his face to envelop his own hands, cradling them gently between his palms–one rough skin, one smooth leather. “But take me,” Master Skywalker coaxes softly, gently. Desperately. “Take me for yourself and we can figure out everything else.”

Obi-Wan’s Force signature speaks where his voice fails him, reaching out and entwining with Anakin’s. He loves him. He loves him. 

It would be easier if he didn’t, but Obi-Wan can’t even fathom a life where his future and Anakin’s are not bound together. 

“Do you love me, Obi-Wan?” Anakin murmurs, head falling forward as if Obi-Wan has some gravitational pull on him.

“I—” do, Obi-Wan is about to say.

Before he can force the last syllable past his lips, damn the consequences, a voice calls his name from inside.

He pushes Master Skywalker away, back to the shadows on one edge of the balcony, just in time for Chancellor-Elect Bail Organa to emerge from the mezzanine level.

“Padawan Kenobi,” Organa says. He sounds friendly enough, bordering on amused. “I feel that I should tell you that this level is off-limits tonight, but I can imagine the clamor and attention of roughly half the senators in attendance would have led a braver man to seek sanctuary sooner.”

“Uh,” Obi-Wan says. Anakin Skywalker loves him. He had been about to kiss him again. Obi-Wan was going to tell him he loved him.

Now he is talking with the Chancellor-elect of the Galactic Republic as if they are old acquaintances.

“By attention, I do, of course, mean ire and agitation,” Organaa adds with a tap on the side of his nose. “You did not fight the war with the objective of making friends of your allies, did you, Padawan Kenobi?”

“Uh,” Obi-Wan says again, and then, “I did not need their friendship, Chancellor. I needed their credits for non-perishable foods and thick blankets.”

Bail Organa tips his head back when he laughs. “I must admit I am quite glad that Senator Wraeth told me that you wished to speak to me. I have a proposition of my own, if you would allow me the chance. We need your sort in the S—”

The crash of possessive fury from Master Skywalker drowns out most all of Bail’s next words. His emotions, flayed raw and bloody and entirely too chaotic for Obi-Wan to understand, scream through the Force. Mine mine mine, he is thinking. My Obi-Wan, my love. My love, my Obi-Wan.

It is so very distracting, so very tumultuous, so very threatening that Obi-Wan does not recognize the warning reverberating through the Force before there is an almost-silent thump from behind them.

Two glowing red beams of light cut through the night, drowning out the moonshine.

The red light illuminates a Zabrak’s face, red and black markings distinct as the sith—for who else carries a red lightsaber besides the Sith? —flips up onto his hand, balancing on the railing of the balcony before propelling over their heads and landing squarely in front of the balcony doors, a double-ended lightsaber held out in front of him like a neon warning.

“Hello there,” the Sith says with a smirk, yellow eyes locking on Obi-Wan. 

Terror grips his chest in a tight hold, one that constricts his lungs and makes it hard to breathe. He does not have his own lightsaber. He hadn’t thought to bring it. The war was supposed to be over.

They were supposed to be safe.

Instinctively, despite the terror, despite the lack of weapon and the presence of fear, Obi-Wan steps in front of the Chancellor-Elect.

He is a Jedi Padawan, and he serves the Republic, which means he serves Bail Organa.

Thank the Force, he thinks rather nonsensically, for all those hand-to-hand combat lessons with Master Skywalker.

The Sith in front of him has just enough time to smirk, as if he has taken his measure and found him wanting, before a beam of blue light ignites from the shadows of the balcony, and Anakin Skywalker rushes forward with a roar.

Their lightsabers clash with a hiss, blue on red as the Zabrak sith growls at Master Skywalker, whose face seems set in a snarl of its own.

It becomes apparent rather immediately that the Zabrak had not expected resistance. He gives too much ground far too quickly, flipping away from Anakin’s blows instead of trying to counter them.

But he is fast, and his strange, dual-ended lightsaber is built in a way that accentuates his speed. Master Skywalker blocks a blow to his neck only to barely deflect another blow to his hip. For a brief second, Anakin presses his advantage, pressing a flurry of forceful two-handed blows upon the sith, who parries as many as he dodges.

The sith sweeps his lightsaber out low, aiming for Anakin’s ankles. He jumps in time and brings his own blade down to halt the long arc, backing up a step so as to not be nicked by the ricochet of the red saber. 

Using the Force, the sith kicks himself over Anakin’s head, landing gracefully on one end of the balcony, sliding into a crouch, blade held perpendicular to his body as he sneers at Master Skywalker.

“Stars!” Bail exclaims from behind him, and the sith’s yellow eyes snap to them as if he has forgotten about them completely.

“No,” Master Skywalker warns, gripping his lightsaber with two hands as he steps in front of Obi-Wan. His feet are set in the first Djem So kata. His Force signature bleeds wild danger, fury, Darkness.

The Sith leaps.

Obi-Wan moves with him. 

He wants to think it is the danger to the Chancellor-Elect that forces his motions. He is a Jedi Padawan, and he cannot stand still while a sith attacks the head of the Republic. He wants to believe that it is the slight tang of Organa’s instinctual fear that pushes him into action. 

But he knows that it is not. It is the sudden and terrible darkness of Master Skywalker’s signature. It is the terror in his chest: not for himself, not for the Republic, not for Bail Organa, but solely for Anakin Skywalker. It is the sudden rush of realization that floods his body, that tells him that he needs to help Anakin, needs to fight with him, to protect him.

Obi-Wan cannot—will not—stand and watch this. Not when the smell of singed hair reaches his nose and he realizes how close Anakin just came to losing his head. He ducks around his master’s body and throws himself into the path of the sith. His fist makes contact with the sith’s throat, and he spins around to press his body against the line of the sith’s back to avoid the burn of his saber.

It is as Anakin told him once, weeks ago. He does not have his weapon, but his body is attuned to the Force. It flows through him, and he does not try to fight it. The Force tells him to strike at the sith’s knee, kick out at his chin, duck before his lightsaber can sever his extended arm.

Obi-Wan listens, Obi-Wan obeys, Obi-Wan moves.

And then the Force screams so loudly with Anakin’s concern—his fury that Obi-Wan is in the line of danger—that his concentration is shaken, his connection with the Force severed until all he can feel and see is Anakin’s emotions instead.

He pivots when he should have ducked, and the sith’s lightsaber strikes diagonally across his body, cutting through the flesh of his thigh and arm, nicking his exposed stomach, melting at least one link of the chains of his shirt.

It is agony. 

“Obi-Wan!” The cry rends through the night, as Anakin drops his defenses to turn completely to look at him.

He registers the following events in a haze of pain: Anakin slashes at the sith, hitting the mechanical middle of his saber and splitting the long line of the weapon into two halves. But the Zabrak knows he has unsettled him with his successful hit on Obi-Wan. Perhaps he can read it in his body language, perhaps he can feel it in the Force.

It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that for one singular moment, Jedi Master Skywalker is only Anakin, overcome with his fear for Obi-Wan, and the sith uses that moment to grab the Chancellor-Elect and escape over the edge of the balcony.

Anakin drops down next to Obi-Wan’s form as if he is the most important thing in the galaxy. “Obi-Wan,” Anakin demands, though it’s unclear what he wants from him. His leg is on fire, his arm useless. His mind is disjointed and in chaos, pain suffusing every layer of his thoughts.

But he knows one thing. “The sith—” he gets out between clenched teeth. “He has—”

“You need medical attention,” Anakin says as if that is the end of any discussion.

“The Chancellor!” Obi-Wan cries, but it is like Anakin does not remember to care.

“I can—I am not much of a healer, but I have seen Che do it enough, I can take the pain away—”

I’m not sure you could survive how much he wants you. I’m not sure anyone could . Vos’ words float back to him, strange and unasked for.

“You need to go after the sith,” Obi-Wan says. It winds him to get the words out. Anakin’s hands are soaked in his blood.

Quinlan’s voice rings in his ears: It definitely was not how a Jedi—a proper Jedi—should look at anything.

“I will not leave you,” Anakin snarls, pressing his hands around the wound. “I will not!”

And Obi-Wan—

Obi-Wan suddenly understands what it is like to be loved by Anakin Skywalker.  It is a cage. It is gilded, it is comfortable. It is what Obi-Wan has always longed for. It is suffocating. It is inescapable.

The sith has the Chancellor-Elect of the Republic, but Anakin Skywalker loves Obi-Wan Kenobi.

And Obi-Wan is injured.

And Anakin would allow the whole galaxy to burn in order to save the person he loved from one single second of suffering.

That is the nature of Anakin Skywalker’s love.

And despite his emotions, despite how erroneous his own feelings towards Anakin makes him, Obi-Wan is enough of a Jedi that he cannot bear the heaviness of this love. Not when the Chancellor-Elect’s life is at stake. He cannot—he cannot bear Anakin’s love in exchange for the future of the Republic.

“Please,” he begs, weak enough to try one last time to make the man before him see reason even though time—and breath—is of short supply. “I will be fine—I will—I will drag myself down the steps and into the middle of the dancefloor if I have to. You must rescue—”

“No,” Anakin says matter-of-factly, clipping his powered-off lightsaber to his belt. “No, sweetling, I will take you to the Halls of—”

“It was a bet!” Obi-Wan cries, using every ounce of his strength to tear himself away from Anakin’s arms, forcing the man into silence. “It was all a bet!” 

Anakin blinks. His eyebrows furrow, as if he is worried that delirium has set in.

Quite honestly, Obi-Wan thinks it may have, though he knows that cannot possibly be true.

He only wishes it were.

“None of it was true! We bet on if I—if I could seduce a prude, if I could seduce you ! It was never real, any of it. Quin and I, we just. We made a bet—” the pain hastens his words. Perhaps it’s guilt that none of this is technically a lie. That if Anakin checked his Force signature, he would find nothing but truth. 

But now come the lies.

“I proposed that it was you. I knew that you harbored inappropriate feelings for me,” he pants, drawing his leg up towards him, away from Anakin’s slack hands. 

He tries to give the pain to the Force, but She will not take it.

“If I got you to fuck me, Quin would take me on a proper date. To the Coruscant Sky Lounge tower. So we could talk about leaving the Order. Together,” he gasps out, forcing himself to meet Anakin’s face. It is hurt. It is thunderous. It looks as though he has broken the Jedi master beyond repair, cracked him open and left him for dead amongst the sharp, bloody swords of his words and lies, woven together until they sound like confessions.

And true enough, at this last word, Anakin stumbles backwards. First on his knees and then he stands as if someone else is controlling his body. His eyes are locked on Obi-Wan’s face, even as they brim with tears.

His hands are still covered with Obi-Wan’s blood.

“Go,” Obi-Wan commands, weak as a Loth-kitten. “I swear it, I do not love you. It was all for a foolish wager, just a bet. There—there is nothing for you here. And the Chancellor-Elec—”

But Anakin is gone over the banister, jumping from the balcony to the ground below before Obi-Wan can even finish his sentence.

Good.

That’s good.

If anyone can find Chancellor-Elect Organa, it is Anakin. He is the best Jedi Obi-Wan knows. He will be able to track him down. Rescue him and bring him back.

He only realizes that he is not alone when soft hands frame his face some undeterminable time later, a voice this side of familiar filtering through his ears, crying his name.

But he is so exhausted. He is so heartbroken. He is so guilt-ridden. 

Anakin’s expression right before he left over the side of the balcony haunts him like something he should never have seen, like something he will have to live with seeing for the rest of his life. 

He has ruined everything.

He has saved the Republic.

Despite what the voice is saying, high and worried and achingly familiar, he deserves to close his eyes. At least for a moment.

At least for a temporary rest.

Chapter Text

Obi-Wan rises to his feet shakily. He is strangely light, like some weight has been removed from his shoulders.

He’s never realized how heavy a padawan braid is, but now that it’s been severed, it’s like he can stand fully upright for the first time in years.

“Knight Kenobi,” his master is the first to say, giving him a smile so wide that the lines by his eyes go as deep as Obi-Wan has ever seen them. “May I offer you my sincerest congratulations. I can think of no padawan more ready for Knighthood.”

Obi-Wan feels like he is going to faint. 

“Thank you, Master Qui-Gon,” he thinks he mumbles, right as the members of the Jedi Council converge upon them, touching him on his shoulder and murmuring their own kind words of praise and congratulations.

Obi-Wan is a Knight. A Knight.

He can hardly believe it—doesn’t truly believe it even though he’s holding his padawan braid in his hand, can feel the familiar beads against his fingers.

“Chancellor Organa’s recommendation this may have been, but long-deserving you have been, Young Kenobi,” Grandmaster Yoda tells him, looking rather pleased with himself, ears perked up and claws resting easily on the top of his gammer stick.

“Thank you, Grandmaster Yoda,” Obi-Wan thinks he mumbles, already being clasped into a friendly embrace by Master Fisto, who had been the one to teach him and his age mates how to swim in the Temple pools when they were only younglings. Obi-Wan had nearly wet himself from the terror of the deep water and had clung to one of Master Fisto’s montrals the entire lesson. Thankfully, if Master Fisto recalls this episode, he keeps it out of his congratulations.

“Thank you, Master Fisto,” he thinks he mumbles.

He is a Knight. Is he really? A Knight? Have they truly Knighted him?

“Thank you, Master Koon,” he thinks he mumbles to Master Shaak Ti by mistake. He does not even have time to apologize before he is swept up into the tight embrace of Quinlan Vos.

The Council had voted unanimously in favor of waiving Obi-Wan’s trials in the face of what Chancellor Organa had told them was a show of great skill and bravery worthy of any Jedi Knight. He’d felt slightly embarrassed and incredibly wrong-footed when the Council had invited him and his master to the Council Chambers to read out the short missive from the Chancellor: 

Though I understand that the Senate and Republic has no true mandate nor power to interfere with the inner workings of the Jedi Order, I would be remiss if I did not remind you that the Jedi Order has taken a sacred oath to protect and serve the Republic. I cannot understand then how this oath is to be kept while the best and brightest of the Jedi remain tethered to apprenticeship. Padawan learner Obi-Wan Kenobi selflessly moved to protect this body of the Republic at great personal cost to himself in the face of nightmarish danger. I would see him honored for it.

What followed was a notification sent out to the comms of every Knight and Master in the Jedi Order to invite them to Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Knighting ceremony, as is tradition.

Obi-Wan thinks he’d feel more overwhelmed by the amount of Knights and Masters in attendance if he could feel anything through the buzzing fog in his head.

The only thing keeping him upright currently is Quinlan’s arms around his waist, literally holding him up. 

He’s a Knight. A Knight. He’s been Knighted.

A large, familiar hand grasps at the back of his skull and brings their foreheads together roughly. “Obi-Wan, congratulations, my friend,” Quinlan cheers, somewhere between a yell and a murmur, achingly private. He’d been the first through the doors when the Council had opened them to spectators. 

Obi-Wan can’t feel nor can he think. He is a Jedi Knight. 

This morning, he woke up in the Halls of Healing for the last time, after a week-long stay spent in and out of bacta tanks to cure any damage left by the Sith’s red blade. He has a scar now, from one side of his chest down to his hip, his thigh in a steep diagonal. The healers did not mention if bacta could lessen its raised pink and silver coloring, and Obi-Wan was not vain enough to ask. 

But this morning, one week after—after, he’d woken up in the Halls of Healing for the last time, gathered his meager belongings and returned to the quarters he shared with his master, wondering how much he’d have to drink to erase the memory of that night completely from his head and who would take care of him wasted and sobbing and heartbroken. 

Not Ahsoka, whose snarling face Obi-Wan could still see imprinted on the backs of his eyelids. Not Vos, who had enough reasons to be upset with him as it was.

Certainly not—well.

That was then, only this morning.

And now Obi-Wan is a Jedi Knight.

Because he had thrown himself in front of a Sith’s blade. For the elected body of the Senate, for the Chancellor-elect.

At great personal cost. 

At tremendous personal loss.

The Chancellor must have been referring to the injuries Obi-Wan sustained in his defense. He must not have realized the accuracy of his words, what Obi-Wan had given up in the span of only a few moments.

With great difficulty, he separates himself from his friend and looks out of the crowd of well-wishers, stretching out to clasp Knight Tachi’s arm in thanks.

Once, when he was much younger and prone to dream of such things, he’d wondered which Knights and Masters would receive the notification of his ceremony and come to witness it: perhaps Jocasta Nu, the Archival master librarian who Obi-Wan spent much time around; perhaps Knight Sezih, who spent two standard weeks shipwrecked with Obi-Wan on the lesser moon of Acheo, when Obi-Wan was only fourteen and prone to both spats of foolhardiness and spats of hormonal acne indicative of his age. 

Perhaps Master Skywalker, though even in his dreams, Obi-Wan tried not to linger on this name. He knew already what a dangerous, disastrous thing hope could be. But he knew if the man were to attend his Knighting ceremony, he would stand tall and broad-shouldered, pin Obi-Wan with his cerulean blue eyes and rakish grin. He’d call him Knight Kenobi, he would wrap his arms around him. 

But Obi-Wan had thrown himself in front of a Sith’s blade for the elected body of the Senate, a great personal cost and tremendous personal loss, and so he doesn’t need to look to know that Master Skywalker is not among the Knights and Masters who have come to watch his Knighting ceremony.

He knows he is not.

He wonders if the master destroyed his comm when the notification of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Knighting ceremony came through. He wonders how the master felt when he saw that his almost-padawan and almost-lover became a Knight. 

But then, he doesn’t have to wonder for long. 

It is incredibly difficult to forget that look of naked, devastated hatred that Master Skywalker had thrown at him as he leapt over the side of the balcony to chase after the Sith, Obi-Wan’s spilt blood still drying over his hands. He wonders if the master has managed to wash his hands clean of the stain of it yet.

He hopes he has not, but he knows intrinsically that if it were up to Master Skywalker, he would never get the chance to ask.

Life continues forward in fits and starts. 

Obi-Wan’s arm, knicked by the Sith’s blade, is sore and tight, the muscle wounded and in need of retraining despite the bacta soaks he’d endured in the Halls of Healing. There is nothing for it but to retrain the muscle as it mends, so he begins to take to the training salles diligently as he waits for the Council to request his presence in their Chambers. He knows instinctively he will soon have a mission of his own.

After all, they are only a year from the end of the war. The galaxy is still in shambles, especially those mid-Rim wartorn planets where the majority of the fighting had taken place. There are still groups of people unable to return home because their homes have been turned to ruin. Force, there are still Sith wandering about apparently—though Obi-Wan has been reassured that the Sith who attacked the Chancellor-Elect has been “dealt with”.

All of this is to say that Obi-Wan, like all padawans Knighted since the beginning of the war, does not expect nor get the traditional period of rest and celebration that comes once a padawan’s braid has been severed. 

Eventually, one week after his Knighting ceremony, he gets a mission from the Council. 

To be fair to the Jedi Council, they do seem quite apologetic when they call for him and hand him the datapad loaded with classified files. But it’s just—

“Skills, you have developed,” the Grandmaster says, bowing his head, ears flicking back and then forward. “In terms of peace and prosperity you thought, when gripped by war, the galaxy was. Strong with the Living Force, you have always been—rooted in the future, your thoughts are. Peace, we still need. Peace, you can still bring us. Skills, Knight Kenobi, you have developed. Suited for war, few Jedi were, yet suited for its aftermath, you are.”

“I understand, Master,” Obi-Wan replies, though truthfully, he doesn’t. He understands what it means though, of course. It means he is to be sent out to the stars to once more barter peace and loyalty to the Republic from planets that have every reason to turn him away.

At least he is only expected to be the mediator between two different warring factions, he thinks later as he listens to a programmed voice read aloud the contents of the first file while he moves about his new quarters, simultaneously packing for the mission and unpacking his boxes of personal artifacts the droids had delivered this morning from his old master’s quarters.

He’d meant to do his own packing, of course, had even planned out an afternoon for it. Master Qui-Gon would have to move out of their quarters himself, now that he no longer had a padawan, and Obi-Wan had thought that perhaps they could sort through the common area things together. After all, there were several items he thought they could both argue ownership for. The candle holder they’d found in a flea market on Ubeena while trying to escape detection by pretending to be a father and son out shopping; the citrus zester that had been given as a gift from a visiting planet dignitary after Qui-Gon rather facetiously disclosed that the pair of them simply adored the taste of her planet’s main export, lemons, and often ate them as one would an apple. 

Of course, protocol indicates that every gift or trinket received during a mission becomes the property of the master, not the apprentice, but Obi-Wan had almost looked forward to squabbling over the trophies accumulated during their shared life, now at its end. It would feel at least normal, to bicker with his master, to think of twelve different uses for a citrus zester on the spot in order to win it from his master’s protesting hands—as if either of them have any use for it at all.

In Obi-Wan’s mind, the idea of packing up his quarters alongside his master had been an opportunity for a return to normalcy that he desperately needed, especially after these last few weeks.

But Head Healer Vokara Che had stepped in first and sent a short missive to Obi-Wan and his master to say that “since Knight Kenobi insists on taxing his still-recovering body through exercises at the training salles, it is our recommendation that droids be utilized in the upcoming pack-out of Living Quarters 326.98, as the dual strain on his body of both saber training and weight lifting may send him several steps backwards in his recovery.”

Unwilling and unable to give up his lightsaber training, knowing that a mission from the Council was imminent, Obi-Wan had deferred packing up his room to the droids, recognizing that their assistance would be wholly better than allowing his master into his rooms and running the risk that he would…discover some of Obi-Wan’s more…privately personal items.

But now that the droids have delivered his things, all five boxes, it is up to him alone to unpack them and store his items away in his new quarters.

At least the Council has given him such interesting listening material, he thinks rather drolly as he moves a clean tunic from one open box to his traveling bag on the dining table.

“Initial reports indicate that the Foaw faction of the Freniae planet has been building its volunteer forces to support an aggressive attack on the Niael faction, which makes up roughly forty-two percent of the planet sentients and seventy-seven percent of its eligible voting base. Two years ago when approached by the Galactic Senate, the Freniae planet voted to join the Republic and forfeit control of two moon bases to the elected body in exchange for safety and security. The vote was ninety-seven percent in favor of joining the Republic, yet a closer examination of the numbers indicate that the majority of Foaw peoples did not vote, and tampering with the cast ballots may have greatly aided a positive response.”

Obi-Wan has been tasked with de-escalation of the conflict, before the conflict can actually begin.

He has never packed for such a mission by himself, and his fingers hover over his traveling bag, struck with sudden doubt and indecision.

Should he bring armor? What sort of message would that send? Is he expected to leave it behind? How can he, after years of wearing it?

Would it be too transparent if he were to ask his old master? Of course he’s packed for solo missions before, but never his own solo mission. Never one where he is a Knight. 

“Further intel suggests that the two moon bases bartered and traded were primarily used by the Foaw as a way of transportation from Freniae to Foalon, a nearby planet that was once the homeplanet of all Foaw before severe change in environmental biomes made it inhabitable. Additionall—”

The automated reader pauses itself when there’s a loud and sudden knock on the doors of Obi-Wan’s quarters. 

Obi-Wan lowers his third cream colored tunic and turns towards the sound with a frown. He isn’t expecting anyone. Quinlan was pulled off-planet a few cycles ago for a mission on a Core world he could not openly talk about. Qui-Gon would never drop by unannounced. Come to think of it, Obi-Wan isn’t even sure his old master knows where his new quarters are.

But such information is technically public and accessible, should one commit themselves to looking. He can see his old master doing so. After all, they had a tradition of drinking a cup of mazii tea before each and every mission, a habit that started the eve of their very first mission as master and padawan, when the then-thirteen year old Obi-Wan had not been able to calm his nerves enough to fall asleep.

The knock comes again, and Obi-Wan drops his tunic back into the box. His master looking up his new quarters and dropping by unannounced because he means to hold Obi-Wan to tradition despite the ways that things have changed sounds just like something Qui-Gon would do, and Obi-Wan finds himself touched by it.

“In a moment!” he calls out, stepping away from the half-unpacked box and making his way to the tiny kitchenette area. One of the first things he’d procured was a tea kettle of his own, wandering through the Coruscanti markets with a hood up and a crutch under each arm so as to make the journey bearable.

He flicks the fire of the stove on and sets the kettle on top of the open flame. Even if his visitor is not his master, he is a Knight now, and he thinks Jedi Knights probably offer their every visitor a cup of tea, even if he cannot offer them a comfortable place to sit quite yet, his things spread out on the standard couch, table, and set of chairs.

But as a guest to a newly Knighted Jedi’s quarters, surely they wouldn’t be expecting such—

“Oh,” he says when he hits the panel by the door and it slides open to reveal someone who is decidedly not his master.

Nor anyone he thought he’d see at his door.

The shock loosens his tongue,  as well as his hand on the edge of the door. “I—what are you doing here?”

Ahsoka ducks under his outstretched arm, the tips of her montrals brushing against the bottom of his sleeve. “They really assigned you a mission already?” she asks forcefully, sounding angry.

“Yes, do come in,” Obi-Wan says dryly. He stares out at the empty hall for half a second before closing his eyes a beat longer. Alright. 

Okay.

When he turns around, it’s to find Ahsoka glaring at him with her arms crossed over her chest. “You got a haircut,” she says, sounding rather accusatory. 

Obi-Wan blinks. “Yes, that’s what they tend to do upon one’s Knighting ceremony. Thank you for noticing.”

Ahsoka’s scowl worsens, like she thinks he’s being purposefully obtuse. But then, he is. “Your hair is—shorter. All of it.”

The words that he thinks of saying next stick in his throat. I kept remembering your master running his hands through it as he pressed me up against the wall and stuck his tongue down my throat, and I’m trying not to think of him at all anymore, so I cut it all away.

He doesn’t say this, of course. Perhaps he would have a month ago, but he’s tired of treating his words like weapons and aiming them towards the people he cares for. Even if a good amount of him thinks rather strongly that Ahsoka would deserve it.

“I wanted a change,” he says instead. “I think it suits me.”

He doesn’t, but he thinks admitting to that isn’t a vulnerability he’s going to show to Ahsoka. After all, he remembers the way she cut so achingly into all his vulnerable spots the last time they spoke. No, for her—to her—he likes his haircut. He thinks it suits him.

He raises his hand to tuck his padawan braid behind his ear out of habit and instead winds up just brushing against bare skin. “You did not come to see me because I cut my hair.”

She works her jaw as if trying to dislodge the words from between her teeth. For a moment, she looks so much like her master that Obi-Wan turns his head away, looking out over the mess of his new quarters until his heart unclenches.

He realizes quite suddenly that he does not want to do this right now. Perhaps one day, maybe, in a few months, once the bleeding wound in his chest has cauterized and when he has firmly re-commited himself to the path of a Jedi Knight in more than name. Perhaps when he has successfully let go of his love for her master and his hurt at her hurt, then they can talk about haircuts and—and the weather as friends would when the silence must be filled. Then she can visit his quarters unannounced and as if they were her own. Perhaps then she can have a mug that is hers in all but name stored in his cabinet and she can have opinions on the throw pillows he will buy for his sofa.

But right now, it is too soon; the hurt is too fresh. Obi-Wan has only just cut his hair and moved into his new quarters. He is not ready for visitors and he is not ready for Ahsoka and the way she is standing, hunched in on herself with an arm wrapped around her middle and an angry expression on her face, as if she had been the one gutted their last meeting.

“Ahsoka, I—”

“They truly gave you a mission?”

They speak in tandem; at the same time, the kettle begins to whistle shrilly. Obi-Wan closes his eyes in an attempt to center himself. He so hates when the Force works so obviously against him. 

“I would love a cup of tea, thank you,” says Ahsoka.

“Of course they gave me a mission; I am a Jedi Knight,” says Obi-Wan.

They stare at each other, impasse reached. But the creche master raised him to be polite, and his master never taught him otherwise and he doubts that Master Skywalker taught Ahsoka the same. “Have a seat,” he grits out through his teeth, and Ahsoka obeys, perching herself on the edge of the couch.

He makes their tea with short jerks of motion. Black for him, a dash of cream and a spoonful of honey for her.

That is also the nature of friendship, of course: making their tea to their preference even when you are spitting mad at them—keeping the vial of their preferred kind of honey in your cupboard even after you have moved quarters, even when you do not know how to forgive them.

He puts her cup down in front of her so roughly that some of the liquid spills over the side and onto the low table in front of the couch.

“You were in the Halls of Healing two weeks ago, Obi-Wan,” Ahsoka says, sounding as if she has taken the time that he was busy with the tea to practice her most reasonable and grating tone of voice. “Surely you are not ready for a mission on your own! You almost died— ” 

“But thankfully, as you pointed out, I was in the Halls of Healing  The healers were able to heal me, so that now I am ready for a mission. As is their duty.”

Her hands become fists on her thighs before she tucks them around her cup and raises it to her mouth. Her eyes skitter around the room before landing back onto her tea. “I thought you were dead,” she says, and the cup shakes. Her hands are shaking. “When I saw you at first on that balcony. You were—still. There was blood and you were so still. And the smell. Force. I haven’t been able to eat cooked meat since. My master would be thrilled if it weren't—” she cuts herself off.

Obi-Wan blinks. He hadn’t—well. “I didn’t realize that…you found me that night.”

Ahsoka nods once, a sharp, jagged motion. She puts the cup down on the table, only to pick it up again seconds later. “You were out of it,” she says. “I thought you were dead. Then I saw your eyes move, and then you passed out and then I really thought….”

The cup goes down again. This time, it stays where she’s put it, and she folds her hands on her lap.

“I thought you left,” Obi-Wan hears himself say. “After the—garden. I thought you went back to the Temple.”

“I was going to,” Ahsoka admits. “But then I felt my master’s pain, like he’d…I was worried. I thought somehow, maybe, he’d been injured. In our training bond, it felt like he’d been…I don’t know. Gutted. I followed it and found you.”

Obi-Wan takes a sip of his tea because he doesn’t have anything else to do with his hands. Either Ahsoka had felt her master’s pain at seeing Obi-Wan in pain, or she had felt the pain that Obi-Wan’s confession had caused him. 

She’d felt her master’s heart breaking.

“Ah,” he says, and pushes the thought away from him, forcing it into the Force because it’s too heavy to hold otherwise. “Be that as it may—”

“You don’t only need two weeks to recover from that!” The words burst out of her, and then they keep coming as if some dam has finally ruptured, her hands twisting in her lap, knuckles whitening. “They can’t send you out! You need to—recover and rest and—you’re not ready, they can’t seriously think you are, you almost—I thought you were dead!”

Obi-Wan opens his mouth and then closes it. “I’m fine,” he says, even though that’s not particularly true. He’s…

Fine. He’s fine.

“That’s not enough,” Ahsoka says fiercely. Her hand lands on his arm. “You’re—”

“Surprised that you care one way or another if I’m being honest!” Obi-Wan snaps, jerking himself so roughly away that his tea spills over the side of the cup and onto his skin and lap, staining his robes. “Fierfek,” he curses, from the burn and the inconvenience and everything else as well. He stands and puts his cup on the table. His tunic will have to be washed properly, nothing for it. At least now he has a reason to request for Ahsoka to leave.

Perhaps the Force is looking after him after all.

“Of course I care!” Ahsoka is on her feet now as well, fists hanging at her sides.  “You’re one of my best friends, Obi-Wan! I would be devastated if you died! Not to mention, my master would be—”

“He would not have an opinion,” Obi-Wan cuts her off before she can finish whatever she thought he will not survive hearing her say. “He would not care one way or the other—”

“Are you joking, Obi-Wan? Anakin would be beside himself. He’d—lose himself if you died! I felt his pain that night when I found you—I thought he was wounded fighting the Sith, but when he came to the Temple, there wasn’t a scratch on him! His pain was from seeing you in pain—”

“It was not,” Obi-Wan snaps. “If you felt his pain, it was because of what was said between us before the Sith ever showed up. I promise, Padawan Tano, I told him exactly what you wanted.” And more than you knew, he adds silently, damningly. “Please, I have packing I must do. For my mission. Thank you for stopping by.”

“I was wrong!” She steps forward and catches his hand before letting go of it just as quickly, as if realizing how much he does not want to be touched by her. “I’m sorry, Obi-Wan, alright? I was wrong and I was selfish and I was hurt and–and confused, and I took it out on you, but I was wrong.”

“You weren’t though,” Obi-Wan cuts in calmly. “Your reasons were selfish, but you were not wrong. Master Skywalker kissed a Jedi padawan. The differences in our ranks alone, should anyone else have discovered us, would have seen him expelled from the Order at the very least. And—” he swallows sharpy, working his jaw. “And there is no room in the Jedi Code for the sort of attachment we were cultivating.”

Ahsoka shakes her head so hard that her montrals twitch with the effort. “No, Obi-Wan, listen. He’s been—he’s not been my master since that night. I never wanted to hurt him—”

“So just me, then,” he says, barely able to muster any more hurt. “That was fine.”

“No,” the padawan’s hands jump up and worry at the last bead of her padawan chain. “No, of course not, but—but I didn’t think it would be like this, Obi-Wan, he’s…I don’t know him. He has started taking secret missions from the Council, and when he is at the Temple, he is distant and silent and our bond is always blocked. I didn’t really think—that you would break his heart—”

I didn’t really think that you held his heart, she does not need to say for it to be heard. 

Obi-Wan runs a hand over his shorn hair, fighting the urge to tuck the ghost of his own braid behind his ear. “Are you here to convince me not to take this mission because you are worried for me or to convince me that I should make nice with your master—the same way you convinced me I should hurt him?” 

Ahsoka’s skin flushes darker and she wraps her arms around herself. “You shouldn’t take this mission,” she snaps. “And…and if you wanted to…if you still wanted to be with Anakin, then…you should. And I’m sorry for everything. Really, really sorry.”

“You do not have to be sorry,” Obi-Wan mutters, focusing his eyes on a spot just to the left of the tip of her montral. “You were right. Maybe for all the wrong reasons, but…”

The breeze of the night shifting the strands of his hair, the sizzling pain of the cut, the feeling of the metal of the shirt melting into the wound from the heat of the lightsaber. Anakin’s face, manic and dark and afraid and there, refusing to leave. Refusing to leave him despite the threat at large, the sith and the chancellor, despite Obi-Wan’s own pleas.

“We could not be Jedi and…and be together. It is not the way of the Jedi. We are better men as we are now.”

Ahsoka shakes her head, but the fight has fled her as much as it has fled Obi-Wan. “Anakin isn’t,” she tells him, and Obi-Wan watches her go.

Everyone from the younglings to the Jedi Temple guards knows how Master Anakin Skywalker captured the last of the Sith. 

He had followed him to the lower levels of Coruscant, a streak of righteous blue chasing after two twin beams of red. The fight had consumed an entire city block, neither the Sith nor the Jedi caring for the damage they caused to the people around them. The Chancellor had been recovered relatively unharmed and unconscious on a park bench by a member of the Coruscanti police who had mistaken him for a drunkard and come to evict him until he recognized the ceremonial robes Organa wore.

Master Skywalker’s fight had not been about the Chancellor at all. It had been with the Sith, though no one could understand why the man had abandoned the Chancellor to take after the Zabrak.

Either the Sith or Skywalker had taken out the security holos in their fight, so no one really knows how it ended. Speculation runs wild, rushing in like flood water to fill the cavities of missing information. How did Master Skywalker corner the Sith? Did he fight to the death? Did the Zabrak surrender? 

All anyone knows is that near dawn, Master Skywalker returned to the Temple, covered in blood and holding the head of the Zabrak in one hand, the Sith’s saber in the other. 

All anyone knows is that he dropped the Sith’s head in the middle of the Council chambers and then walked halfway across the Temple to the doors leading to the Halls of Healing, where he stood still as a statue for four whole hours.

Everyone knows he did not go in. Everyone knows he turned on his heel and walked back to the Jedi Council and demanded an off-world mission from them, to begin immediately.

Nobody knows why.

Nobody thinks to ask Obi-Wan.

This is, probably, for the better.

“Jedi Knight Kenobi,” the Senator says, looking down her snout to peer at the datapad in front of her. “Can you please explain to our committee how it came to be that Planet Freniae has left the Republic?”

Obi-Wan shifts on the hard seat of his loaned pod. It floats several feet below the pods of the one hundred senators that have elected to join this committee into the Freniae investigation, which has been ongoing practically since he returned from his first solo mission a week and a half ago.

It’s truthfully the swiftest the Senate has moved probably since its conception, and if Obi-Wan did not have one hundred pairs of eyes examining him like he is some hostile, bug-like specimen, he may even feel proud.

As it is, he feels rather nauseous.

“The Senate’s understanding is that the Jedi Council assigned you to this mission due to a past history of capable and efficient negotiations,” the lead Senator drawls. He has been told her name, but he can’t think of it right now. “You were tasked with preventing an incursion of the Foaw faction against the Niael population.

“In my defense,” Obi-Wan leans forward to say, “there was no incursion. Technically, I prevented it.”

“Knight Kenobi, please do not interrupt this hearing. When it is time for you to speak, we will allow you to do so. Further outbursts may result in disciplinary action.”

Obi-Wan sits back. His leg is jittering so fast he half wonders if his entire pod is shaking. 

“Three point eight weeks after your arrival and subsequent black-out of communications, the Freniae prime minister—newly elected, may I add—sends an urgent notice to this Senate announcing that it will be withdrawing from the Galactic Republic, effective immediately, due to an internal, planetary-wide vote led by the Jedi Representative, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Obi-Wan folds his hands in his lap and then decides that this makes him look too unfriendly. How friendly is one supposed to be in front of a Senate committee?

One of the pods hovering near the front belongs to Senator Padmé Amidala. Before his pod had ascended to hang as it is in the center of the cavernous chamber, he’d seen her talking with a shadow in the space beside her own pod. 

He’d thought he’d seen a flash of golden curls as the shadow turned away, but he can’t be sure. He cannot feel anything in the Force. The Senate Guards had put him in Force-dampening cuffs for the duration of his testimony. Ostensibly, this is for safety—or fairness-–or equity. He isn’t quite sure.

He hasn’t been Force-cuffed since he was taken as a prisoner in the war. 

Not since Zygerria. 

His mouth is dry. It’s all so very ridiculous. The hearing. The Senate. The cuffs. The timing.

The truth is that some Senator, bored or perhaps just stupid, had leaked the statement from Freniae, announcing its withdrawal from the Republic. 

Alone, perhaps this would have been fine, but a disgruntled member of the Niael faction on Freniae had also released a clip of Obi-Wan speaking to the planetary congress and to its registered voters, wherein he may have insisted that it was both the duty and the right of the planet to decide in a just and fair way, without the shadow cast by war and deesperation hanging over their heads, if they believed in the Republic or if the original treaty tying them to the galaxy as a whole needed to be re-examined and rewritten. 

Perhaps this holo would not have caused this much fuss, if it and the statement from Freniae had not been picked up and tied together by a holonet newsite known for scandal and exaggeration. Separatist in the Jedi? The headline had read, and the Senate had, unfortunately, taken notice.

He hasn’t been in Force suppression cuffs since Zygerria, and the weight of them on his wrists makes his throat tight.

Is that why he’d imagined golden curls slipping back into the shadows beside Amidala’s pod? His hindbrain feels as if it is in trouble and so it is crying out for the one person who has always saved him?

If so, his hindbrain needs to catch up. Anakin Skywalker will never care to rescue Obi-Wan again.

“It has barely been a year since the end of the war,” the senator who had called this hearing says rather accusingly, as if she thinks that Obi-Wan should have worked harder to end the war sooner. 

A tickle of anger that cannot be his flexes in the air, so powerful and pointed he can feel it through his Force suppression cuffs. The strength and familiarity of that fury steals Obi-Wan’s attention and his breath away, and his eyes dart past the rows of senators in their pods, searching for something in the shadows below them, even as he tries desperately to tell himself that nothing is there. The anger is his own or at best, a memory of the rage Master Skywalker is capable of.

But you cannot see anything in the darkness, his cruel mind whispers to him. You cannot feel anything with the cuffs. Master Skywalker could be right below you, and you would not know. 

No, he thinks. No. There’s no reason for Anakin to be here anyway—no motivation. Quite possibly, Master Skywalker avoids the places he thinks Obi-Wan will be. Force knows that’s what Obi-Wan has spent the last two months doing.

“You may speak now, Knight Kenobi,” the senator snaps, shaking him from the grip of his thoughts.

But he’d seen blond curls, golden in the dark shadows. But—he’d seen them beside Senator Amidala’s pod, hadn’t he?

Perhaps Master Skywalker has found his way back to Senator Amidala’s side. Perhaps he no longer thinks of Obi-Wan at all. Perhaps he is merely frustrated that her presence and attention is being taken up by something he cares so little about. It is more likely than anything else Obi-Wan can think of, save for the simple fact that he has ached so terribly for Anakin over the last few months that he is hallucinating his presence when he is simply a memory.

“Knight Kenobi,” one member of the Senate committee barks, and Obi-Wan tears himself out of his mind’s spiraling thoughts.

There’s a sharp pulse of fury in the air once more. Obi-Wan holds his breath for a moment, then releases it when nothing more changes around them. No Master Skywalker bursts from the shadows to save him.

The Force suppression cuffs itch.

They should have put Obi-Wan in a pair of these during his training sessions with Master Skywalker. He never used the Force when he was training in hand-to-hand contact, but he’s just now remembering that there is an incredibly vast difference between refraining from using the Force and not being able to feel it at all.

It’s disconcerting. It’s distracting. It feels as though a part of himself has withered away into nothing. He should have asked Master Skywalker to put him in the cuffs for their sessions.

He should have done a lot of things differently.

“Knight Ken—”

“You are correct, Senator,” he leans forward to say, hands shaking. He forms them into fists, just as Anakin had taught him. “We are hardly a year from the end of the war; of that, you do not have to remind me.”

You of all people do not have to remind me, he wants to say. He should say. He doesn’t say.

He shifts and places a hand on the rim of the pod to steady himself. “And I do not have to remind you that the Republic has spent the last several years making ill-advised and short-sighted decisions because of the shadow of the war hanging over our heads. As I was out there, fighting against battle droids, you were here—making those decisions.”

The anger pulses around him once more. It’s almost comforting. If he could feel it more precisely, if he could wrap himself up in it, he would. As it is, it may as well be some figment of his imagination.

He clears his throat. “In trade, in negotiation, in diplomacy, we pressed when we needed to pull back. We demanded when we needed to bend. But as you said, Senator, the war is over. We cannot keep making decisions as if we still have a great enemy out there among the stars. The Separtists are not our enemy, because we have already won the war.”

The lead senator’s nostrils flare. “This Senate body is not on trial presently, Knight Kenobi.”

“I was not aware that I was either, Senator.”

Adya, that’s her name. From the Inner Core planet Kussol IV. The average height of a Kussolan is roughly three feet tall. Adya is no exception, though her posture and pod make her loom over Obi-Wan’s own pod. She could so easily pass as seven feet tall.

“You are not, Knight Kenobi,” Senator Amidala states, pushing her pod forward with a stern look at Senator Adya. “We are simply trying to ascertain what happened, why Freniae voted to leave the Republic and what mitigation methods we can develop from these lessons learned to prevent the same thing from occuring in the future.”

Obi-Wan ducks his head and weighs his words. “The Freniae planet sending notice of their withdrawal from the Republic was avoidable,” he says. “But only if they had voted to remain.”

“Knight Kenobi—” 

“I arrived on Freniae to find a powder keg ready to be lit. Two years ago, the Republic had been fighting a war. We needed access to the resources on Freniae and the space lanes around it, and we made sure we received the support we needed from the planet, despite the glaring inequalities of the vote to join our ranks.”

Obi-Wan feels cold all over. They had taken his traveling cloak upon his arrival, and his tunics do little to protect him from the chill in the air. Perhaps the chill originates from the same place as that burning rage. He forces himself not to peer into the shadows below again. It would do him no good. He knows already he will not be able to find anything there.

“After two weeks of official investigation into the original vote and not a small amount of reconnaissance into the strength of the forces of the Foaw army marching to the capital city, it was determined by the Niael-majority government to recast the vote. Both the vote concerning membership of the Republic and the vote that created that Niael-majority government.”

Senator Adya does not look happy, but it’s not as if Obi-Wan personally had much to do with calling for a new vote. He’d only suggested it. And offered insight into the numbers of the Foaw forces.

With an insolent smirk threatening to tug at his mouth, he adds, “As it turns out, Senator, when there is war on a person’s doorstep, new avenues of negotiation open wide.”

The anger in the Force has abated. Instead, there is a new, fierce, and just as intense feeling of pride pulsing around him. 

It cannot be. He is trapped in his own longing.

He takes a steadying breath and flexes his hands. The pride may be worse than the anger. At the very least though, it proves that Anakin is not hiding in the shadows at all. 

He would not be proud of Obi-Wan. 

It is a good reminder, and he stands, clasping his hands behind his back as he does so. It reminds him of how his master would stand after being berated by the Jedi Council for his latest misstep on a mission, right before he told them simply that he’d been following the will of the Force and there was nothing more to it.

He tries to adopt the same tone now. “There is a tenet of Jedi teachings that I pride myself on observing. It is the tenet of letting go, senators. We let go of all that we are afraid to lose so that every loss we experience is survivable—so that it does not feel like a loss at all.”

Thankfully, there is no one else in the galaxy who understands jusst how much of a hypocrite he is. He has never observed the Jedi tenet of letting go in his life. He had to rip himself away from his attachment to Anakin, and even now he tends to the wound like a faithful wife tends to the hearth while waiting for her husband to return.

Letting go. He feels as though he could laugh until he began to sob. Letting go. Oh, if only. If only he could. 

“I would urge you to attempt to observe the same principle when and where you can. If the Republic fears letting go of its planets so much that those within its boundaries cannot live with its stifling and strict attention, you will find planets slipping out of your grasp in droves. There will be no enemy to fight against to win them back.”

Obi-Wan pauses. His throat has tightened inexplicably. “There will be no winning them back,” he says. 

“Do not fear letting go so much that you call Senate investigations after each legal, democratic exit. Do not fear it at all. Numerous planets joined or renewed their commitment to the Republic during the war. Now that we are experiencing the beginnings of an era of peace and rebuilding, our first course of action should be to offer aid where we can, entice those planets to stay now that the threat of the Separatists is gone. We should not and cannot react with fear or hostility to any who decide to leave—and any person who decides to help them.”

He opens his mouth to say something else, but his attention is caught and held before he can. The pride in the Force is gone. The anger is as well. 

There is nothing there at all, if there ever was in the first place.

The Coruscanti Star runs an article the next day with a rather unflattering picture of Obi-Wan splashed across the front page. Below it: “The Separatists Are Not Our Enemy”: Kenobi Konnection to the Chancellor Kidnapping?

Obi-Wan knows this, because Quinlan Vos comes back early from his mission to read it aloud to him.

“That had context,” he cries exasperatedly as he throws himself down onto Quinlan’s couch. Because of all the mess that’s followed his first mission, he hasn’t gotten around to finishing up his unpacking. His quarters are a mess, three boxes half-empty and his travel bag still lying discarded on the table.

But Quinlan’s quarters—these he can visit and it feels as if nothing at all has changed. There, by his head, the vivid blue stain of a cocktail on the cushion. Ahsoka had spilt it once when they were watching a holo film that had scared her. And if he opened up the cooling unit, he’s sure he’d only find those tiny bars of cheese that Quin loves to snack on even though they hold no nutritional value at all. On the ceiling, there are burn marks from a drunken lightsaber juggling competition. The plant Qui-Gon Jinn gave Obi-Wan on his sixteenth birthday that he then regifted to Quinlan on his twentieth is still on the window ledge, as dead as it was three years ago. 

“Oh, I can assure you I watched your context,” Quinlan collapses down on the chair next to him. “After all, it’s not every day you get to listen to your best friend bitch at someone else for forty-three minutes and thirty-seven seconds straight.”

Obi-Wan throws a pillow at him, though it’s not very effective as he doesn’t care to lift his head to aim.

“The Council supports me,” he mutters. “Master Fisto said he was proud.”

“Was this before, after, or because of the bitching?”

“Ha ha,” Obi-Wan says. “Master Windu was asked for comment and he said he personally had more interest in another pending Senate investigation—the one involving Senator Wraeth, the actual Separatist.”

“Wow, you became the Council’s darling quickly once I was off Coruscant.”

“There’s something to be said for getting away from a bad influence—”

“You say that, but no inter-planetary holonews site has ever accused me of fraternization with a sith.”

“Fraternization with a si— I was stabbed!” Obi-Wan sits up in his indignation. “I almost died!”

He probably hadn’t really actually almost died. It’s unclear.

He certainly hadn’t been—been fraternizing with the Zabrak. That’s not unclear.

Quinlan does not volley back a remark of his own, and this is strange enough that Obi-Wan lifts his head to make sure his friend has not spontaneously fallen asleep or perished.

He has not, but he doesn’t look content either. He’s slumped over in his seat, playing with the end of one of his dreadlocks, a distant look on his face.

“Which isn’t your fault,” Obi-Wan adds helpfully.

Quinlan doesn’t smile, expression twisting into something unkind. “That’s nice of you to say,” he mutters, dragging a hand over his chin. “But I left you to get a drink and the next thing I know, some senator is telling me someone’s decapitated Padawan Kenobi.”

Obi-Wan sits up on the couch, eyeing his friend. “Greatly exaggerated,” he points out. “It was little more than a papercut.”

It was easily the most agonizing pain Obi-Wan has felt in his lifetime, of course, but he doesn’t need Quinlan to be worried about it. Or worse, guilty.

“Wouldn’t have gotten hurt at all if I had been there,” Quinlan says rebelliously.

Obi-Wan thinks that a lot of things probably wouldn’t have happened that night if Quin had been there, but so far he’s managed to avoid telling Vos about the kiss he shared with Master Skywalker, his fight with Ahsoka, and his final betrayal of Anakin.

He knows that Quin more than anyone deserves to know, but some part of him needs to keep that night private and secret. It doesn’t matter that Quin had been right about it all. 

Perhaps that just makes it worse.

“Come on,” Obi-Wan forces himself to roll his eyes. “You know the Galactic Court of the Republic has found that Wraeth’s inclusion of me into his silly Victory Day plot was impulsive, spontaneous, and a sudden deviation from the plan. No one knew he would place me on the balcony. Not even the Sith!”

“I left you for a drink,” Quinlan repeats himself, and Obi-Wan throws his hands into the air.

“And I antagonized a man into a murderous rage; I think he would have wanted to kill me regardless of where you were standing!”

That is what the Galactic Court has determined, at least: Senator Wraeth of Planet Norr had, apparently, been spearheading a quiet, insidious campaign against the Republic for several years. 

They had yet to find any concrete evidence that he had been working with the Separatists and the Sith, but it was assumed he was not capable of constructing or carrying out the Victory Plot by himself. Which, Obi-Wan is sure, is the polite way of saying that he had one role in the whole scheme and he fucked it up.

Wraeth had been, as far as anyone could tell, supposed to lead the Chancellor-elect up to the balcony himself, where the Sith would be waiting. It was supposed to be a simple hand-off, but Wraeth had deviated from the playbook. He’d stumbled upon something else he hated just as much as he hated the Chancellor and the Republic.

The Jedi, and perhaps in particular: Obi-Wan.

This was when, the authorities believe, Wraeth took action alone. He was never supposed to approach Obi-Wan, never supposed to get him up on that balcony. He was supposed to remember that Obi-Wan was a Jedi and Jedi were highly trained and dangerous. 

Wraeth had thought that the Sith would kill Obi-Wan, then the Chancellor. It had been personal, a decision formed from his resentment of the Jedi and of Obi-Wan’s work in particular, the perceived losses his planet had suffered at the hands of Obi-Wan’s negotiations. 

Quinlan’s lips turn up into a slight smile. It feels like an accomplishment. “You have been known to inspire such a reaction in those around you.”

“Haha,” Obi-Wan says, kicking at Vos’ thigh with the heel of his foot. “I do not.”

Vos grabs at his foot and tugs his seated form roughly forward, so that his upper half slips and hits the edge of the couch he’s sitting on. 

Obi-Wan gasps out in pain at the jostling of his torso, and Quinlan’s face changes into an expression of deep regret and apology, releasing him immediately.

Obi-Wan winks before easily maneuvering himself back into his previous position. “Just playing around, darling. I’ve been fine for weeks now.”

“Oh, I see. You were demonstrating your ability to inspire murderous rages in the people around you,” Quinlan throws him a rude hand gesture and uses the Force to levitate a basket of boonaberries closer to him. He tosses one at Obi-Wan, even though Obi-Wan is allergic and this would qualify as an assault.

“Are you trying to kill me now too?” Obi-Wan asks theatrically, flicking the projectile away from him. 

“Are you kidding?” Quin asks. At least he is laughing now, guilt either released into the Force or stowed away temporarily. “Everyone in the galaxy saw what Master Skywalker did to the last guy who tried to kill you. You’re probably the safest person in this galaxy, the next, and the one far, far away!”

Obi-Wan’s throat tightens and he looks away.

That was, of course, the thing that Wraeth did not account for. He lured Obi-Wan to the balcony, directed the Chancellor-elect there as well, commed the Sith to give the Zabrak their exact location. He hadn’t realized that Master Skywalker would be there as well.

But how was Wraeth supposed to know of a Jedi Master’s attachment to an apprentice that wasn’t even his own? How was he supposed to know Master Skywalker was too paranoid and jaded from a long and hard life to go anywhere without his lightsaber? How was he supposed to know that Obi-Wan would see a threat to the Chancellor and throw himself in harm’s way?

Vos pops a boonaberry into his mouth. “I mean,” he says when Obi-Wan does not reply for several long moments. “We all know now that Anakin Skywalker would stop at nothing to save—”

“The life of the Chancellor,” Obi-Wan finishes quietly and firmly, finding his voice even though it’s raspy and thin.

Vos blinks at him, boonaberry hovering before his face. Obi-Wan holds his stare, willing his Force presence still and silent, his face blank and unreadable. 

“The life of the Chancellor,” his friend repeats, and even though his eyebrows raise and his tone is incredulous, nothing more is said on the topic.

Perhaps because Obi-Wan changes it rather viciously and abruptly, hauling himself off the couch and dropping into Quin’s lap.

“Wanna fuck?” He asks, method tried and true. Quinlan’s hands flex on his waist, though he doesn’t pull him closer or push him away.

Finally, his thumb rises to press against the divot just below his mouth. “Your chin is dimpling more than your dimples, my friend,” he tells him, not unkindly. Obi-Wan frowns and leans down to try and capture his thumb in his mouth. “No, Obi,” Vos says, and his grip on him changes, becomes as firm as his voice. “I don’t need to know what happened, but I’m not going to be a stand-in for Skywalker.”

Obi-Wan tenses at this and tries to move away, like an animal instinctively scared of a predator in its habitat.

“No,” Vos says again, and his grip changes. He tugs him forward against his chest, fighting Obi-Wan’s resistance until it bends to his will. “Just—let’s just do this, alright?” he mutters, wrapping his arms securely around Obi-Wan and holding him tight. “Just for a bit.”

The fight seeps slowly out of Obi-Wan’s muscles until all that’s left is lassitude and remembered agony. He turns his face into his friend’s neck and just breathes.

 “Wasn’t trying to use you as a stand-in for him,” he mutters softly an unknowable amount of time later. “You’d be a shit substitute anyway.”

“I’m much more handsome,” Quinlan agrees, and his fingers keep stroking through his hair gently.

The Jedi Council, to appease the grumblings of the Senate, assign a sort of monitor to Obi-Wan. 

It’s unnecessary to the point of offense, but it is also the only stipulation the Senate has for him to continue his Jedi work unaccosted by Senate hearings. 

The Jedi Council as a whole looks regretful and a touch embarrassed by the whole thing, but Obi-Wan understands the politics of it all. The Council’s hands are ultimately tied by the Senate; the war has left everyone on edge so the idea of planets leaving the Republic courts suspicion and distrust immediately; the sensational holonet news certainly does not help.

And so when Obi-Wan is assigned a mission by the Council, another Knight or Master is assigned to mind him. The Senate, in all of its infinite wisdom, had left the requirements for this monitor vague. It is to be someone older, who has more experience as a Knight or Jedi Master, who can provide guidance and wisdom that the newly Knighted Obi-Wan may be lacking.

Obi-Wan privately thinks that if the Senate wants to make him a padawan again, they should just braid his hair and send him back to his old master’s quarters themselves. He doesn’t say this though, and his silence is rewarded with one Quinlan Vos assigned as his monitor .

At least for three missions in a row, until the Council realizes exactly how much property damage Obi-Wan and Quinlan can do on a peaceful diplomatic mission when they put their minds to it.

Then a different Knight is called in to accompany Obi-Wan on his missions, a sour-faced Togruta who cannot be baited into a smile or lured into Obi-Wan’s bed.

Obi-Wan is thinking that he’ll be stuck with Bazo forever until, four months into being a Jedi Knight, he is called in front of the Council to accept his next mission, and his Togruta friend is glaringly absent.

“Requested a padawan, he did,” Grandmaster Yoda tells him, ears flicking back in either amusement or irritation. “If assigned babysitting duty, he would be either way.”

Obi-Wan barely hides his scowl. He is almost twenty-three years old. He isn’t a youngling.

A fact Bazo would know if he had taken Obi-Wan up on his offer to fuck him.

“Does that mean I will be allowed to embark on my next mission alone, Masters?” Obi-Wan asks, hands held neatly behind his back and eyes held wide and open, guileless and innocent and the picture-perfect Jedi.

“No, Knight Kenobi,” Master Windu says, but at least he sounds apologetic. “It means we’ve chosen another Master to accompany you.”

“Chosen one, we have,” Grandmaster Yoda cackles. “Fulfills the Senate requirements, he does. Keep you in line, he might.”

Now Obi-Wan really does scowl, a bad feeling blooming in his gut. “I assure you, Masters, I am perfectly in line with the Jedi teachings and philosophies,” he begins to argue. “The Senate is—”

Before he can finish his thought, the doors to the Council chambers open wide.

The first thing he feels is the Force signature, achingly familiar and equally accursed. It rushes to fill the room like a tidal wave even before the man steps foot past the doors.

Then he hears his voice. Deep and weighted, a drawl. “Masters, I apologize for my tardiness, I was—”

Master Anakin Skywalker stops talking the moment Obi-Wan lifts his eyes from the floor to meet hs gaze. His lips, soft and pink, slam shut as he stills where he is in the mouth of the Council  Chambers. He has cut his hair too, Obi-Wan notices. It is shorn on the sides, a mess of curls on the top of his head.

Perhaps he could not stop thinking of Obi-Wan’s hands gripping and twisting at his hair, the same way Obi-Wan had felt the ghost of Anakin’s fingers pulling at his locks until he cut it all away.

He is beautiful, Master Skywalker is. He is beautiful and closer than he has been to Obi-Wan in months. The last time he locked eyes with Master Skywalker, he’d broken both their hearts. 

He’d torn the man to shreds.

Master Skywalker’s nostrils flare as he looks back at Obi-Wan. His gaze skitters across his face, lingers on his chest as if wondering where his bloody wound has gone.

He tears his eyes away. His Force signature disappears from the room as he slams his shields up over his mind even as he straightens his shoulders, flattens out his expression into cool indifference. 

Obi-Wan holds his breath. He half-expects Master Skywalker to turn and leave, but the man just opens his mouth, standing where he stopped.

“You requested my presence, Masters. I can wait outside if you have not yet finished your meeting with Knight Kenobi.”

“Meet together, we will,” Grandmaster Yoda says, curling his claws over the handle of his gammer stick as he observes first Master Skywalker and then Obi-Wan. “A guide, young Kenobi needs for his next mission. Chosen you, the Council has.”

“I decline,” Master Skywalker says immediately, tersely. “Thank you.”

“On what basis do you decline, Master Skywalker?” Master Windu asks, raising both of his eyebrows as he rests both of his hands on the armrests of his chair.

Obi-Wan’s eyes jump to Master Skywalker’s face, heart leaping into his throat. He hates him now, but surely—he wouldn’t tell the Council of the bet—it would incriminate himself to do so. Surely he does not resent Obi-Wan so much that he would risk his own future with the Jedi.

But maybe he could leave out their kiss, mention only Obi-Wan’s deplorable behavior, mortifying seduction attempts.

Master Skywalker’s jaw works furiously, his expression livid, as if he is at war with himself. “I already have a padawan to train,” he finally says. “I will not take Kenobi as another.”

The words were crafted to hurt, and they push between Obi-Wan’s ribs with deadly accuracy. He looks away, eyes falling to the floor. All of ten and three again, hearing the Council regretfully inform him that he would be sent to the Agricorps—

“You didn’t care much about having a padawan when you very recently embarked on a month long mission you requested the Council send you out on,” Master Windu points out, looking as though he is quickly developing a headache.

“Yes, and now I will need to make up for that missed time—”

“Padawan Tano wholeheartedly approves,” Master Fisto interrupts Skywalker firmly. “We spoke with her earlier this afternoon.”

“She does not—”

“You do not have the option to decline, Master Skywalker,” Master Windu tells him, holding up a hand to silence any further protests. “You are being assigned a mission to complete on behalf of the Jedi High Council. You will complete it.”

Master Skywalker looks murderous.

“Masters,” Obi-Wan steps forward, hands raising to clasp each other within the safety of his large sleeves. “I believe Knight Vos may be free and able to accompany me on this missio—”

“No,” Master Skywalker snaps, his voice sharp like a blaster bolt as he cuts through Obi-Wan’s words. “No. I’ll do it.”

His nostrils flare once more as the muscles of his jaw bunch up and release. His shields shake with the force of his fury, even as they hold strong.

A bad feeling wells up in Obi-Wan’s stomach, making him feel nauseous.

“I’ll escort Knight Kenobi on his mission,” Master Skywalker sneers slightly as he spits out the words. “Send the information to my datapad if you would. I must attend to personal matters before we leave.” 

And then he really does storm out of the chambers, cloak whirling behind him. He is a storm given human form. He has left Obi-Wan in ruins, sliced him up all over again and then tossed him aside to bleed out in front of an audience. 

Obi-Wan swallows with great difficulty and spreads his hands in front of him as he feels the curious stares of the Council focus on him.

“I’ve been told I inspire those sorts of feelings in those around me,” he says weakly. 

At least no one came at him with a lightsaber this time, though Obi-Wan isn’t quite sure Master Skywalker won’t when they’re stuck on a Jedi ship together in hyperspace for Force knows how long.

Force. 

Force.

Chapter Text

Near dawn, Obi-Wan finishes unpacking his belongings from the boxes the droids had left with him. 

It’s been such a long time coming that it feels less like an accomplishment and more like a chore shamefully and finally completed. All his clothing is carefully hung once more on different hangers in a different closet but in the same order. His meditation mat is placed beneath the window of his sleeping quarters, so that it may be warmed by the sun each morning while he makes use of it. And there, on the counter of his kitchenette: the citrus fruit zester he would never use, though it had touched him to discover it neatly packed into his fourth box of items.

He’d walked back to his new quarters in something of a daze after he’d been dismissed by the Council. They’d promised to send the files regarding his next mission over to his datapaad—nothing classified, nothing particularly dangerous. Nothing even particularly involving the war, as if the Council was trying to give them both a break from the ghosts of the conflict. 

As if they knew that the very last thing Obi-Wan and Master Skywalker needed was to be surrounded with more reminders of the war.

Obi-Wan had sat on the couch as soon as he’d gotten into his quarters, hands resting palm-up on his knees as his eyes tracked the shadows chasing the light across the floors of his living room. An unknown amount of time had passed before his datapadd lit up with a notification of files received from the Jedi Council.

At the sound, he’d stood as if not fully in control of his body. He’d stood and decided he needed to do something with his hands.

And so he began to unpack his belongings properly. He could not look at the datapaad; he could not think about his upcoming mission with Master Skywalker; he could not think of Master Skywalker’s face, stony and resentful in turns as he looked at Obi-Wan from across the scant distance of the Council chambers.

He could not stand to know anything more, so instead he dove into the task of unpacking his belongings with a zeal that did not match his actual countenance nor the time of day as he whirled around his quarters as the sun slipped away and darkness fell over Coruscant.

He finishes unpacking only a few hours before dawn. His quarters are neat and tidy, boxes collapsed down into pocket-sized expandable cubes to be delivered back to the quartermaster tomorrow. 

His hands are sweaty and his chest aches, healed shoulder still slightly stiff.

Anakin hates him so much, he’d been willing to let the entire Council see it on his face. The memory of Anakin’s love feels like a half-remembered dream. There was no love on his face today. No love in his Force signature. No quiet pride or damning desire. Only rage and hurt, as if the wound Obi-Wan dealt him all those weeks ago was still raw and bleeding, like he’d torn it open every night.

Good, a very small and incredibly childish part of Obi-Wan whispers. He hurt me first.

It’s a terrible thought, of course. Master Skywalker had not meant to hurt Obi-Wan when he was a boy. He had been…careless. Callous, maybe. Neglectful, though even that feels like a harsh word. He’d been an adult, a young Jedi Knight, caught up in his own affairs. He had never made an actual  promise to Obi-Wan, and so no promise was broken. He’d never lied to him, not actually. 

Perhaps Obi-Wan had thought. Perhaps he’d hoped. Perhaps he’d smiled with polite but obvious disinterest at the Knights and Masters who came to watch the Initiates spar because he believed so resolutely that Master Skywalker would take him as his padawan learner that he did not have to make nice with any other Jedi Master. He had been confident that he already had his future master.

But Master Skywalker never gave him his word, and so he never truly broke it either.

Obi-Wan sits down on his couch and calls the datapaad to him with the Force, flicking open the first file containing the mission summary the Council has sent him.

It is requested that they leave the Jedi Temple by midday tomorrow at the latest. The Council apologizes for the short notice and shorter turnaround, but the request came in rather suddenly and needed the proper amount of vetting and deliberation, given that it was a request for Obi-Wan’s services in particular for Jedi representation at a time-sensitive event.

Obi-Wan stares unblinkingly at the digital time on the upper left hand corner of the datapadd’s screen. The Council had sent this to him hours ago, just before latemeal. 

It’s now far past midnight, dawn’s pink light flooding the room. 

They will be expected to leave for planet Vutta sometime in the next five hours in order to make it to the Vuttal harvest celebration as the crown prince’s honorary guests.

Obi-Wan sets the datapad down and stares into nothingness. He should sleep. He should meditate. He should look in the mirror and practice what he is going to say to Master Skywalker. He should take a sonic shower. He should brush his hair and dig out a vial of perfume. He should write down all the things he wants to tell the other man. He should pack for the trip. He should pack everything he owns up again in his boxes and leave the Order.

He should read every file he can find on Vutta. This is a childhood dream and a teenage fantasy rolled into one, after all: being assigned a solo mission with Master Anakin Skywalker. 

He feels hollow inside, like he has swallowed a huge cavernous nothing and at the same time like his insides are shrinking and curling around themselves.

A gleam in the corner of his eye catches his attention. It’s the first rays of the rising sun hitting the string of beads tied along his padawan’s braid. He’d found it tucked into the bottom of one of his boxes, surely packed roughly by one of the droids who could not understand its importance.

He blinks at the line of golden-red hair lit on fire by the soft light of the sun.

He’d meant to give it to his master the very afternoon it’d been cut, but his mind had been his enemy that day and his memories of the ceremony and the time after are blurry, as if they belong to a half-remembered dream and not reality.

He blinks once more. 

Better late than never, he decides, standing and tossing the datapaad to the couch.

Or, early as it were.

Master Qui-Gon Jinn has always kept rather odd hours, at least as long as Obi-Wan has known him. Obi-Wan has rather vivid memories of the man’s quiet footfalls around their quarters just before sunrise, sounding like a stampede of bantha during his most hungover stupors, and the Master had unknowingly put a stop to a fair amount of fooling around that would have occurred between Obi-Wan and Quinlan Vos, just from being awake and moving about the common area when they were sure he would be either asleep or away.

So Obi-Wan is hopeful when he knocks on his old master’s new door. It may be too early for a social call, but surely former padawans are allowed to visit their masters outside of the proper hours of visitation. Surely his master will have changed his quarters but kept the entrance code the same. Surely—

The door slides open, and Master Jinn stands on the other side of it, dressed simply in his nightrobes though with the air of someone who has been up for hours. 

Master Jinn’s eyes travel over Obi-Wan’s face, probably still flushed from his walk over here, and then down to his messily tied robes before his gaze drops to the padawan braid in his hand. His eyebrows go up, creating wrinkles across his forehead. 

“Hm,” is all he says.

“Master?” Obi-Wan says. He takes a step forward and then just as quickly steps back, suddenly unsure if he should intrude upon his master’s new quarters. After all, he’s never been here before. What if Master Jinn’s rules have changed?

“Are you not going to come in?” Master Jinn calls over his shoulder as he leaves the doorway to walk towards his kitchenette. “Only, I felt you in the Force dithering outside for the last five minutes, so I put on the kettle for a cup of tea.”

“I wouldn’t want to impose,” Obi-Wan says rather half-heartedly. After all, he is already within the confines of his master’s quarters, unclipping the backs of his boots and sliding them off his feet.

His old master does not even bother responding, which is probably for the better. As he moves around the kitchenette, Obi-Wan allows himself to take in his master’s new quarters. Truthfully, they look much the same as they had when Obi-Wan had lived with him. Plants hang in carefully fashioned baskets from the ceiling, and the furniture is covered in earthy hues of brown and red. 

It is cluttered but neat in its way: a stack of datapaads are haphazardly piled on the narrow table by the window, a discarded cloak is thrown over the back of a chair. An old, thick blanket Obi-Wan recognizes from his nights spent feeling sick or morose and curled up in its softness has been draped over the couch. 

But there are comforting spaces of emptiness still amidst Qui-Gon’s ordered chaos. Places which would be filled with Obi-Wan’s own belongings, had he not been Knighted. His school bag would fit perfectly on the seat of that plush chair. His meditation mat could lean against the side of the wall, just next to Qui-Gon’s.

Something in him relaxes as he catalogues the similarities and the differences, and finally he allows himself to drop into a chair at Master Jinn’s dining table. 

A moment later, his master is passing him a mug of tea, and he drops the padawan braid on the tabletop so he can accept. 

As one their eyes fall to its coiled length, and Obi-Wan puts down his mug as well without taking a sip. “I, uh,” he clears his throat. “I meant to give this to you,” he says. “After my Knighting ceremony. I didn’t mean to—hold onto it. I just—forgot.” 

Qui-Gon looks amused now, mouth quirking up on one side. “From what I remember of that day, you looked as if someone had struck you hard over the head and then set you out to dance.”

Obi-Wan scowls automatically. “Yes, well. A warning would have been nice,” he mutters, taking a sip from his tea. It’s slightly flowery and sweet, one of Qui-Gon’s rarer blends.

The smile hovering on the edges of his old master’s face takes hold as he raises his own cup to hide behind. “And risk ruining the performance? I quite enjoyed it.”

It’s of no use bickering with Qui-Gon over this, and it’s too early to really muster the energy for such a thing anyway. Most padawans knew their Knighthood was approaching weeks if not months before it happened. They took their written tests, then they took their physical Trials.

The Chancellor of the Galactic Republic and Chief Commander of the Grand Army did not step in and request their Knighting out of the blue.

“Anyway,” he says pointedly, pushing his braid over to Qui-Gon. “I meant to give this to you then. It’s yours, Master. Thank you for the opportunity to be your apprentice. To, ah. Learn from you about the Force and my place in the galaxy.”

It’s an awful thanksgiving, but truly they have never been the pair for overly emotional speeches. The thought crosses his mind that perhaps he should kneel and offer up his padawan braid like some High Republic Knight offers up his saber for his lady’s use, but the ceremony would make the both of them uncomfortable, and the floor looks hard and unforgiving. Perhaps if Qui-Gon had a nice rug beneath his table.

So instead, he pushes the coil of his padawan braid across to his master, who takes it into his large palm and thumbs over the bottom-most bead. Master Nu had seen that bead granted to him after Obi-Wan spent an entire month on a besieged Mid-Rim planet, coordinating the smuggling and protection of the planet’s historical archives as the Separatists closed in.

“I must admit,” Qui-Gon murmurs as if to himself. “I did not expect to see this again.” 

Obi-Wan blinks and then tucks his hands into his lap so he doesn’t cross his arms over his chest in offense. “I wouldn’t have forgotten forever,” he says mulishly. “If you have to know, I only recently finished unpacking the boxes the droids filled for me. One of them dropped it in.”

One of Master Jinn’s eyebrows goes up, and his amusement in the Force seems to grow, though it becomes laced through with something much heavier. “I never said that you would forget it,” he says, settling it gently on the table in front of him. 

It takes a moment for Obi-Wan to realize what Qui-Gon is implying: that he thought, when Obi-Wan did not immediately give him his braid, that Obi-Wan had taken it to someone else. Given it to someone else.

“Master, of c—”

“There is much said to Masters and Knights when they decide they would like to choose a padawan to train,” Master Qui-Gon says lightly. “There is much we are warned about. A padawanship can be terribly impacted by a master who discovers too late that he does not want to train a padawan he has committed himself to.”

Obi-Wan’s mouth is somehow both wet and dry at the same time, his stomach impossibly tight and empty and yet full and bloated too.

“Not much is ever said about padawans who are assigned a master they did not want. What impact that can have on their padawanship.”

Obi-Wan is glad his hands are hidden in his lap because he thinks that they’re shaking. “Master, I did want you to be my master—I was thrilled to be told that you had agreed to teach me.”

Qui-Gon levels him with a look; it’s not unkind, though Obi-Wan almost wishes it were. 

It makes him feel horribly transparent, the perhaps belated realization that it was never the shameful secret Obi-Wan thought it was: how much he wanted Anakin Skywalker to take him as his padawan, how wounded he was when that did not happen. Even his master knew. 

The mortification settles heavily in his gut and mixes with the hurt already there, the anger at Anakin for hurting him then and hurting him now, still, when he should be nothing more than a memory of an almost, a childhood embarrassment declawed by age and time.

“Then why did you take me on?” Obi-Wan hears himself ask, voice wavering slightly as the embarrassment and pain and anger inside of him loop together and turn into fury. “Why did you ask the Council to train me if it was so obvious that I—that I thought….” he trails off and settles for clenching his hands into fists and then relaxing them back into open palms. 

No wonder he has never truly spoken of this to anyone, not then and not months ago, when Master Skywalker had him pressed to the doors of his quarters. The words simply won’t come, not even when he tries to force them out.

Qui-Gon looks at him steadily, damningly quiet.

“Tell me,” Obi-Wan demands, placing one of his hands on the table as if about to stand. But where would he go? And why would he leave? He is staring at someone who may just have the answers he’s been searching for for a decade. He will not leave until he knows.

Qui-Gon finally looks away, back down at the braid between them. The early morning light filters through the window, lighting up the red-gold of his hair until it looks like it’s burning. “You were a pleasure to teach, Obi-Wan, and I believe you will be a strong and capable Jedi Knight. Much better than me in many regards. And I believe that your best qualities are innate ones that could never be truly taught to you, no matter your master. You possessed them as a youngling in the crèche, as an Initiate after.”

Obi-Wan holds his breath. For what, he doesn’t know yet. His old master sighs and leans back in his chair, rubbing slightly at the wrinkles by his temples. It is quite early. Something about the light slowly trickling through the room makes Qui-Gon look older than Obi-Wan has ever seen him. It’s disconcerting, allowing himself to notice the white streaks through his master’s gray hair.

“The Force did not gift her Son a particularly easy path to walk,” Master Jinn says abruptly, eyes distant yet speech slow, as if he’s measuring every word carefully. “Anakin was born a slave on the Outer Rim, powerful beyond measure and yet powerless in ways you and I can never truly understand. And when he was just a boy, I took him from his mother, his home planet...but yes, his chains also.

“As a youngling, he shone in the Force. It was the very first thing I noticed about him, that Force presence. So bright that it was easy to ignore the beginnings of Darkness shrouding it. His anger, his attachments. His pride. The Council saw, of course, but when they told me not to take him as my apprentice, I ignored them because he was such a bright boy. The Chosen One, from the Force itself.”

“I do not care about Anakin Skywalker’s boyhood, Master,” Obi-Wan says, rubbing his hand over his thigh, a newly nervous habit he’s picked up in the last few months. “I asked about mine. ”

Qui-Gon blinks at him and tilts his head.

Obi-Wan flushes pink but holds his stare, grasping his fury with both hands in an attempt to keep it alive. Of course he cares about Anakin Skywalker’s childhood, about any and all insights Qui-Gon Jinn can give him now that they are talking about the thing they have apparently both spent years pretending was not lurking invisible in the room between them. 

But he should not care so much. He knows he should not care, not about Master Skywalker. Not now. Not anymore.

“How can I tell you the end if I do not explain the middle? The beginning? Surely you know the fundamentals of story-telling by now, padawan.”

Obi-Wan scowls. His annoyance and anger suddenly become a lot easier to keep alive. “Fine.”

“He was bright in the Force,” Qui-Gon says again. “Very bright, even as his shadows grew with age. He was always powerful, but now he could use it and hone it. He was no longer a slave, no longer had a master he had to kneel for and abide by. His power honed his pride, which in turn brought out his hunger for more of it. For everything he grew up thinking he would not be able to have.”

“You sound as if you are telling the story of a Jedi turned Sith, Master,” Obi-Wan interrupts before he can help himself and before he can talk himself out of it. “Master Skywalker is a respected war general and Jedi Master. He has never Fallen.”

“But he came close once, years ago,” Master Jinn shakes his head. “When his mother died, she almost took all of his brightness with her. In his pain and his fury, his Force presence seemed to have burnt itself down into nothingness. As his master, I did not know how to support him best, save for pushing him to focus on his Jedi duties and tasks—to find relief in meditation, in assisting with late meal cooking, in assisting with crèche duty. ”

Obi-Wan blinks when Qui-Gon falls almost pointedly silent. “Alright,” he says after several moments pass. “So you made him do menial labor for a while. And since Master Skywalker didn’t Fall, I’m assuming something about mopping the refrectory floors pulled him back into the Light.”

Qui-Gon’s face twitches the way it does whenever Obi-Wan says something that makes him want to roll his eyes even though he feels as if he shouldn’t in front of his young apprentice. That, too, has remained the same. “Alright,” he repeats and rubs over his mouth as he studies Obi-Wan. “Alright. Let me say it plainly then.” 

This, of course, would be much appreciated.

“I do not know when my apprentice met you, Obi-Wan Kenobi, though I have often thought about it the way one does when the present is rather hazy, the future particularly blurred, and the past the only thing that can possibly offer clarity.”

Obi-Wan almost jolts from the sudden inclusion of his name in Master Jinn’s story. In Anakin’s story.

“I can only surmise that you met once, a few times before you became an Initiate at least, perhaps much more—Anakin certainly stopped trying to shirk his crèche duties all of a sudden.”

“You think his, what, association with me…caused him to not Fall?”

“I think you certainly helped, padawan. After all, there is a reason beyond simply practicality why we instruct our older padawans to serve as the crèchemaster’s aides. After being rather sequestered and coddled in the Temple for most of their lives, padawans experiencing the galaxy for the first time–-its evil, its pain, its injustice mixed in alongside all of its better qualities—can feel a sort of…soul shock. The uncomplicated Light of a youngling’s Force presence and understanding of the galaxy can be the best medicine for that sort of lingering shock, can stop it from developing into jaded darkness.”

“So it wasn’t me,” Obi-Wan says, leaning back in his seat and barely resisting the urge to cross his arms. “It was just the fact that I was a youngling—”

“I have already told you that my padawan came to me with Darkness already creeping through his Force signature. That he had not been coddled and protected to the level that the Temple younglings had been as he grew. Do you not think that upon arrival at the Temple I did not enroll him in as many crèche aide sessions as I was able? Before you were even born? ”

Obi-Wan blinks away the rather comical image of a child-size version of Master Skywalker, scowling fiercely and in his foreboding way, as he’s made to change younglings’ diapers and read them stories to help them to sleep.

Qui-Gon’s lips quirk up slightly, as though imagining the same thing. “The younglings did not take to him,” he admits. “And he did not take particularly well to the younglings at that. The crèchemaster at the time thought that my apprentice frightened the babes more often than not, which is where I believe those innate qualities of yours I mentioned before come in.”

“What, my charm and wit?”

Now his old master really does roll his eyes. “I was referring to your careless disregard for your wellbeing and reckless urge to embrace anything you sense could be dangerous.”

Obi-Wan is quick to scowl, though it’s not as if he hasn’t heard similar statements from his master in the past. His master, his troops, his friends, the Council….

“As I said, there is no way I can ever know when exactly my apprentice first met you, or how many meetings it took before he began to nurse an affection for you. I can certainly guess the how and why of it, knowing both of you the way I do. Anakin after his mother’s death was hurting and wild with it, and my best attempts at offering counsel must have felt like attempts to leash him in and reprimand him for not being the Jedi he should be.

“And you, like all younglings at that age, were a bright focus of pure, uncomplicated Light, a youngling who possessed a curiosity and bravery that meant you were not put off by my apprentice’s moods at the moment when what Anakin needed most was simple acceptance.”

“I remember meeting him,” Obi-Wan admits, even though everything he’s heard so far sounds terribly outlandish, verging on absurd. “In the Archives. I snuck out of my crèche clan’s sleeping quarters, and he was napping in one of the aisles. I was…seven, I think. Someone had…insulted me, and I wanted to know what it meant. Stars, I haven’t thought about that in ages.”

Qui-Gon holds the pair of them in silence as he takes a sip of his tea before setting it down on the table before him and looking at his hands, his interlocked fingers. “It is not unusual for a senior padawan to take a liking to a young Initiate or older youngling. In fact, it is encouraged, though not outright. Naturally occurring friendship and mentorship paves the way for a rather simple and easy padawanship, all told. That is why Masters without padawans and young Knights who may in a few years take a learner often help teach the Initiate classes in their own primary skill set: history, duelling, negotiation.”

“Master Jinn, I mean no disrespect,” Obi-Wan says stiffly as he interrupts him. “But you need not tell me this. I know.” 

He knows all about the light and fragile bonds young Knights can form with Initiates, how often these unofficial bonds lead to sturdy training bonds—lead to padawanships. He’d seen it happen to others in his age group. He’d thought—he’d thought—

He clears his throat and stands from the table to walk closer to the window and look out its clear pane to the Temple courtyard below. “I know why Masters help train Initiates in their Jedi fundamental lessons, Master.” He uses the Force to summon his tea mug to rest between his palms. “That is not the question I asked you.”

“Did I fail to teach you patience, padawan, or did you forget it upon your Knighting?” Master Jinn shoots back, both eyebrows raised. It makes Obi-Wan flush quickly and look away, fidgeting where he stands, shame, embarrassment and bitter indignation warring inside of him. 

“I am due to fly out to planet Vutta in four hours, Master Jinn. My Council-assigned companion this time around will be Master Skywalker, and I would know the truth now before that mission. If you are feeling pressed for time, Master, it is hardly my fault. You have had years.”

Qui-Gon is silent for another beat before he relents. Something shifts in the Force, and Obi-Wan’s eyes fly to meet his old master’s.

“It was no cause for concern to the Council or to me when my former apprentice took interest in your training; I would go as far as to say that I was relieved. Something had worked, and to me it felt as though suddenly he was closer to the Jedi Order than ever. He must have been, if he was courting the idea of a padawan, a future here in the Light.”

Obi-Wan swallows harshly, trying to read in between the other’s words even as their meanings shifted in his mind. One truth is unshakable though: Master Skywalker had decided not to choose him. 

He was not enough. Something was wrong with him, he’d done something to make Master Skywalker reject him. He’d been too slow or stupid in his sparrings or in his lessons. He’d had some small defect, some fault the then-Knight had found impossible to ignore. He’d—

“But once his…affair with Senator Amidala came to light, the depths of it, the Jedi Council feared that his interest in your training was the beginnings of another attachment for him—and that he would not be able to train you in the way that you deserved should he take you as his padawan.”

“The…” Obi-Wan takes a step forward, and his hands come up to rest on the back of his abandoned chair, mug discarded on the windowsill. “The Council thought that?”

Qui-Gon dips his head. “And in the end, Anakin agreed. At first, I believe he thought…well, that if he broke off contact with the senator, he would be able to take you as his padawan, but the Council did not think that was enough repentance. They worried he was simply choosing between attachments—casting one aside to deepen the other.”

“And that’s not the Jedi way,” Obi-Wan says faintly. “Do you mean to say when I was an Initiate, if—if it were up to him, if the Council had not…not intervened…Anakin—I mean, Master Skywalker wanted to train me? Was going to?”

He gave up the senator to do so? He gave up his affair with Padmé Amidala to be Obi-Wan’s master, and the Council thought the sacrifice not good enough?

He speaks before Qui-Gon can, and his voice shakes only slightly. “All these years, I never understood it. Why—why all of my peers became padawans before I did, why Anakin did not want me, what changed, what I’d done. No one told me! I have—” he scrubs his hands down his face, exhaustion warring with an awakened sort of grief, as if a limb has fallen asleep and he must stretch it out. “I have carried the not-knowing with me for years, master. The pain of it!”

“Then I have failed to teach you the Jedi tenet of letting go just as surely as my apprentice would have,” Master Jinn says with a shake of his head, and Obi-Wan wants suddenly to scream.

“I was a boy!”

“And a Jedi Initiate who already knew the Code by heart,” his old master counters, before his face softens. “I do not think the Council realized how much training Anakin had already begun to give you. How difficult you would find it to allow another Master to show interest in your training. I’m not sure if you know,” he says rather dryly, “But you are quite obstinate when you put your mind to it. You felt, I can only assume, that you already had a master. You did not care to practice or perform for any other Knight or Master, even when Anakin did not call for you—”

“I was waiting,” Obi-Wan snarls, hands squeezing the back of the chair to keep them from shaking. “I didn’t know, no one told me—”

“As I said, padawan, I do not think the Jedi Council realized that you would be so stubborn as to turn away from any other potential master in search of the one they’d already ruled as not suitable to take on a learner at all. They did not intend for your Initiate-ship to toe so closely to the path of the Agricorps.”

Obi-Wan’s hands tighten and then release the chair. “Alright,” he says, slowly and carefully, taking the complex knot of emotions threatening to choke him and shoving it down. “Alright,” he says again. “So then. So why am I a Jedi Knight, Master? Why am I not a farmer? Because I don’t remember you watching us train or teaching us lessons. I don’t think I really knew what you looked like until you called me forward in front of the Council to cut my hair. Why were you my master?”

It is properly morning now, golden light puddling in the room. Qui-Gon Jinn looks much more tired than he had only an hour ago. The deep lines on his face make a part of Obi-Wan want to go fix him another cup of tea, but that’s not what he needs right now.

“I enjoyed having you as my padawan beyond measure,” Qui-Gon says slowly, as if trying to force the words through the air and into Obi-Wan’s throat. “You must know that.”

“I sense a however brewing,” Obi-Wan mutters before he can stop himself. He deserves the cutting eyebrow raise Qui-Gon bestows on him.

“However,” his master allows, rather reluctantly, “I did not imagine myself taking another padawan after Anakin became a Knight.”

“He is rather exhausting, isn’t he?” Obi-Wan quips, licking at his lips to distract himself from the tiny suckerpunch this admission delivers to his gut. He had asked. He had asked .

“I seem to have a habit of choosing that sort, yes,” Qui-Gon’s lips quirk up, and they share a slight smile for a moment before he continues.

Obi-Wan, using foresight his masters always bemoaned him for not having enough of, takes his seat once more, hands resting against his thighs.

“You were to be shipped out to the Agricorps imminently,” his master recalls, eyes slightly distant. “I believe in the morning. I did not know of this yet, of course. Perhaps I knew who you were, but only through the lens of Anakin’s perspective. I knew that the Council had forbidden Anakin from taking you as his padawan in the aftermath of the senatorial scandal. I knew he resented the decision as much as he had come to accept it. Not, I think, because of some latent and powerful regard for the edicts of the Council, but because they’d managed to convince him that you’d be better off with another master. That he would only hurt your future by taking you as his learner.

“It was early morning, perhaps closer to dawn when he came to my door, holding his padawan braid and looking as if he’d just seen a legion of Sith—before that was commonplace, of course,” there’s another smile at the corner of Qui-Gon’s mouth. “Tell me, Obi-Wan, have you ever heard the adage that history may not repeat itself but it has been known to rhyme?”

Obi-Wan flushes even as he scowls. “Yes, master,” he says stiffly.

Qui-Gon takes a sip of his tea even though it must be cold by now. He must simply be trying to drag the agony of the waiting out. Perhaps it is a feeling he enjoys lingering in.

“Anakin must have heard that you were to be sent to the Agricorps, because he hardly let me speak at all before he gave me what I can only describe as a, ah. An ultimatum. A rather pithy list of demands."

“You make it sound as if you were in a hostage situation, master,” Obi-Wan says. “Not talking with your former padawan.”

“It certainly did not feel like a simple conversation,” Master Jinn replies placidly. “Especially as he started by saying, if I recall correctly, If you do not take him as your padawan, I will leave the Order by nightfall, to hell with your prophecy and your Order.”

Obi-Wan is suddenly very, very glad that he chose to sit down, as he thinks these words would have knocked him to his knees.

“A declaration he followed by showing me his padawan braid, telling me he had taken it back from his now ex-wife, and declaring that he would give it to me as proof of his commitment to the Jedi. If, and only if, you did not set foot onto that transport shuttle.

“I do not have the gift of seeing a Shatterpoint in the Force around a being the way Master Windu does, of course, but I like to believe I am observant enough to be able to see when I am in the middle of one. And my apprentice had never felt more unstable, more untethered. And more serious. I had no doubt in my mind that he would leave the Order should you not be assigned a Master. What he would do, what he could be capable of, what could happen if he stepped away from the path of the Jedi…I could not tell. Nor could I take the risk.

“You can imagine then, padawan: negotiations were short.”

Obi-Wan enters the hangar bay in the same daze in which he’d left Qui-Gon’s quarters, in the same daze in which he’d packed for the journey. His thoughts ricochet against one another, dull and sharp in turns, unignorable and yet indecipherable. 

Anakin wanted to train you.

Anakin never stopped wanting you.

Anakin left his wife for a chance to train you. He would have left the Order if you weren’t given a Master.

Anakin had a wife. He didn’t have an affair. He was in love with her. That’s why he was never around when you went looking for him. He was with his wife.

His wife that he left in order to show the Council that he was willing to give up his attachments for the sake of you. For the sake of training you. 

But it doesn’t matter. He couldn’t train you anyway. The Council would not let him. The Council feared his propensity for attachmment. The Council told him it was too late. They nevere told you anything. He never told you anything. He got another padawan three years after he made Master Jinn take you on. The Council let him train her.

But he wanted to train you up until the day he couldn’t. Maybe past that.

And now it doesn’t even matter. 

You made sure of that.

There’s a sudden trill of beeping as Obi-Wan’s legs carry him solidly into a rather unmovable durasteel object. He blinks out of the storm in his mind to look down at whatever he’s run into.

An astromech rolls itself backwards and twirls the dome of its head around, row of lights across its front lighting up as its chirps increase in frequency. They’re standing in the shadow of a ship Obi-Wan’s subconscious had told him was Anakin’s. He’d made his way there across the hangar bay with eyes unseeing, operating purely on autopilot as his thoughts tore themselves to shreds in his mind.

Only to bump into perhaps the galaxy’s most aggressive droid, one he recognizes as belonging in all but name to Master Skywalker.

“I apologize,” Obi-Wan tells the R2 unit, feeling quite ridiculous. “I was lost in my thoughts.”

The droid rattles off another series of high-pitched beeps, retreating another few feet until it bumps into the edge of the ramp. The contact makes its dome roll around once more. “Uh,” Obi-Wan says. He’s never understood droids, the same way some people cannot relate to loth-cats or delta-dogs. Is the astromech unit angry that Obi-Wan has walked into it? Is it trying to tell Obi-Wan he has the wrong ship? But he would know Anakin’s ship anywhere. The Twilight is quite distinct after years of belonging to the same man—and a man who takes great pleasure in modifying ships and leaving his mechanical mark on his machines at that.

“I’m sorry,” he tries again, “I do not speak droid.”

The droid makes a rather offensive string of noise, but before Obi-Wan can try to piece together a response to that, a new and familiar voice sounds from above, one that raises every hair on Obi-Wan’s arms and curdles his Force signature because of how cold it is. The tone carries all the ice and chill of Ilum, and none of its hidden warmth. “He says you’re late.”

Master Skywalker leans impassively against the doorway of his ship, on the very edge of the extended ramp. His hands, both gloved, are clasped in front of him, his shoulders thrown back and stiff. His eyes pierce Obi-Wan where he stands, pinning him there. His hair is slicked back, as harsh as his expression. 

Every one of Obi-Wan’s thoughts rush against each other in a bid to leave his lips. 

You wanted—

You married—

You never said—

That night, I lied—

Qui-Gon said—

I never knew—

I lied and I love—

What comes out is none of these half-formed, half-jagged shards of thought. 

What comes out is: “I apologize if you received different briefing materials than I did, Master Skywalker, but my file indicated that the Council supported a departure by mid-day. As it is currently half past ten in the morning, I would hesitate to call myself late, though you are certainly early.”

He shuts his mouth as soon as his mind catches up with his tongue. He’d not meant to say that. He’d meant to say anything else. He’d meant to be deferential, to squeeze himself into the shadows of the mission and accept whatever cutting words Master Skywalker had to give him. He’d half-convinced himself he could take it all. He’d half-convinced himself that the truth didn’t even matter at this point. It was done. There was no taking it back, no easing the wounds of the past, not when they were still so fresh and raw.

Much like knowing that Master Skywalker had always intended to take him as his padawan, had fought for him, what good would confessing his lie do for the man? Make him confused? Partially alleviate his hurt? It would not change anything. It would not bring the gentleness back into Anakin’s eyes. Obi-Wan had burnt it out of him. 

He purses his lips slightly in regret. That wasn’t being deferential. That wasn’t being agreeable. 

That, a voice that sounds exactly like Quin whispers in his head, is a perfect display of your ability to inspire murderous rages in those around you.

Sure enough, the ice in Anakin’s expression has melted when Obi-Wan looks up at him once more. His eyes are all fire. It’d taken so little to break through that cold exterior.

But Obi-Wan isn’t sure the inferno is better than the chill.

Master Skywalker’s nostrils flare before he turns on his heel and disappears inside his ship. The droid beeps shrilly—and perhaps pointedly—at Obi-Wan, moving its dome in obvious dismissal before rolling up the ramp after its owner.

Obi-Wan is given little choice but to follow. The Council has assigned him this mission. The Senate has assigned Obi-Wan a minder. The Council has assigned Master Skywalker to mind him. 

And Obi-Wan has spent most of his life yearning to follow Master Skywalker even without an order to do so. Even when Master Skywalker himself has not asked him to do so.

He boards the ship. Seconds later, the ramp hisses into movement, locking him in.

He’d plotted the route from Coruscant to Vutta in his quarters after leaving Qui-Gon's. The only way to the planet will take four and a half days of travel, as there is no direct hyperspace route given the sector’s thorny population of asteroid orbits and zeal for post-war security. 

Four and a half days.

The quiet lock of the ramp sounds like the clang of an old-fashioned prison door as it seals him in with a man who can only be described as an injured, half-feral predator.

Obi-Wan counts to ten.

He always wanted to train you. He always wanted you. You did nothing to cause him to hesitate. It wasn’t ever you or your action.

But now it is.

He releases his breath and turns around. He’s in an empty cargo bay, steps pressed against the wall on the left leading to a narrow second level that in turn will lead to the cockpit where surely Anakin is already settled. He knows that through the doors straight ahead, he’ll find the sleeping quarters, three of them neatly laid out in a row. Ahsoka always claimed the room in the middle, as it had the best window—though that only ever really mattered when the ship was at a standstill. 

The room on the right, Obi-Wan has always had to share with other padawans when Master Skywalker took many of them at a time on low-stakes, closeby missions. But he’d still always thought of it as his room.

He goes there now, feet somehow both quiet and yet deafeningly loud in the stillness around him. The cot of the bed is already pulled down from the wall, and the mattress is covered by a blanket.

Obi-Wan pauses in the middle of shrugging off his pack and stares at the made bed. The rooms are small enough on The Twilight that during the day, the bunks are pushed up and folded back against the walls, locked away in a compartment in the wall so to allow optimal space for moving about. 

To have the bed out and—and made up with blankets means that Anakin pulled it out. Anakin put sheets on it. Anakin knew which room Obi-Wan would take, which room he’d always taken.

Obi-Wan swallows, hand tightening and loosening on the bag’s strap.

He always wanted to train you, his mind whispers. Maybe he never stopped paying attention to you.

It doesn’t matter though, Obi-Wan thinks over and over again. How long he held Anakin’s attention and affection does not matter because he had tossed it away. He had torn it into pieces.

But you did not toss your devotion to the side when you thought he betrayed you, some part of himself points out, sounding smug and terrible and so very seductive. You hurt and you hated him but you still held him in high regard as a Jedi and a man. You thought he decided he didn’t want you, and you still dreamed of him touching you the moment you discovered that another's touch was the best thing your body could feel in the entire galaxy. You still found new ways to want him, even when you thought he didn’t even want you as his padawan.

The wanting does not go away just because the hurt exists. Not if he truly loves you the same way you’ve spent most of your life loving him.

You broke his heart and he made you your bed. The least you could do is tell him why. What was that last step of the plan? Be honest and direct? What do you have to lose now that you’re a Jedi Knight and you’ve already lost him?

Obi-Wan probably could have stood there forever, paralyzed as his thoughts crash against one another in an endless loop, if it weren’t for the jolt of the ship being geared into motion. His hand flies out and catches himself against the wall as the ship shudders through flight warmup before disengaging from the hangar bay’s mechanical grips and lifting off. 

If nothing else, the sudden flight knocks him from the spiral of his thoughts, and after a few seconds to get his bearings once more, he pushes away from the wall and out the door of the quarters. 

He deserves to know why, he thinks on repeat as he strides out back into the empty cargo bay and up to the smooth metal steps leading to the cockpit. He deserves to know why at the very least, even though it may hurt me to tell him and know as I speak that it will not change anything.

It is cold on the ship, and Obi-Wan finds himself incredibly grateful he’d thought to wear his traveling cloak aboard. It keeps him warm with the added benefit of hiding his hands, which have begun to shake as he pushes himself up the stairs.

Chapter Text

Master Skywalker’s back is to the door of the cockpit, but he must hear Obi-Wan arrive because he tenses all over, gloves tightening on the controllers in front of him. Coruscant spreads out before them as the Jedi master guides the ship into the tide of air traffic heading up into Coruscant’s atmo.

Obi-Wan swallows and steps into the cockpit. It takes more courage than it probably should to walk forward and take the co-pilot seat on Master Skywalker’s right. Anakin Skywalker, after all, is just a man.

But that is something Obi-Wan isn’t quite sure he truly believes. Master Skywalker has always been more to him. Hope. Comfort. Almost-Master. Betrayer. Savior. First love. Only love.

Anakin’s nostrils flare as Obi-Wan sits, and the astromech unit behind his seat beeps inquisitively. His plush mouth is in a tight line, his eyebrows furrowed.

Obi-Wan knows what his lips feel like against his own. He knows the taste of his teeth.

“You are not needed here, Knight Kenobi,” Master Skywalker says, face carved from stone and eyes like flint as he stares forward. “Perhaps your time would be better spent brushing up on your Huttese.”

The unexpectedness of the reprimand startles Obi-Wan into once more saying something other than the confession he has been biting back for months now. “My Huttese?”

Master Skywalker’s expression flashes as his eyes dart to Obi-Wan and then back to the skies. They are four levels of traffic away from the streamline that will get them to atmo. Master Skywalker could fly this stretch in his sleep. Obi-Wan could fly this stretch in his sleep, he’s done it so often. As a Jedi Padawan sent on missions across the galaxy, one is taught the ways to leave home as much as they are taught the way back.

“Did you read the mission briefings, Knight Kenobi?” Master Skywalker asks with a tone so sharp that Obi-Wan feels cut to shreds just from hearing it.

Obi-Wan thinks he must have read the mission briefings. Or at least skimmed them. Maybe? His memories of the previous night are blurred by his sleeplessness and subsequent exhaustion. If Huttese is to play a significant role in this mission, he cannot remember it.

It’s certainly not the most fortuitous beginning to their mission.

Master Skywalker takes his hesitation as what it is: admittance. “Then perhaps your time is best spent reading about your mission, Knight Kenobi. Its outcome will, after all, be only a reflection of your capabilities as a Jedi Knight. I am only here to monitor and translate as necessary.”

So the Vuttal people must speak Huttese. Is that why the Council chose Anakin to accompany him on this mission after so many years of denying Obi-Wan this?

Obi-Wan says nothing, turning his face to watch the Coruscanti traffic flow beneath and around them. There are many things he wants to say, many things he will say now that he is here, sitting next to Master Skywalker for the first time since that night. There are no witnesses; there are no distractions. There are four and a half days spread out before them, and Obi-Wan has a list of things he thinks he has the courage and the duty to say. All of them crowd the tip of his tongue. None of them make it past the drawbridge of his teeth—he must think of their proper order first. He must measure his every breath before he releases it. 

Anakin does not seem keen to give him the chance, because the second he opens his mouth, a reasonable I believe we should talk about that night, given that when I told you I felt nothing for you I was lying through my teeth sitting on his tongue, the Jedi master speaks first—and faster, lips twisted up into a sneer. “Which in truth baffles me, Knight Kenobi, as I remember an Initiate who told me he wished to learn Huttese fluently before he turned twenty. What happened to your studies? Too many extracurriculars?”

The question and the venom behind it knocks the planned script of words from Obi-Wan’s mind. “No,” he replies automatically, stiffly. “I was assigned a Jedi Master who hailed from Coruscant instead.”

Anakin’s nostrils flare once more and he shoots him a dark look, which Obi-Wan returns tenfold. Anakin is the Jedi Master between the two of them. He should not be the one acting like a child. He should be stoic and proud, hurt and heartache given to the Force where it belongs.

Instead, what small amount of his Force signature not behind his shields is reeling with his fury and his pain still, after all these months. He is a mirror of Obi-Wan’s own grief, his own heartbreak.

He shouldn’t be. Neither of them are acting the way good Jedi should. They are acting like Initiates, like civilians. If it were anyone else beside him, Obi-Wan would be capable of giving his emotions to the Force. He would be capable of rooting out this attachment and sending it back into the Force. If he’d never met Anakin Skywalker, he’d be an exemplary Jedi. One worthy of being a Knight. One worthy of the title.

But he grew up twisted around the seeds of this attachment, nurturing it and feeding it until it became an integral part of himself. There would be no ripping it out at its roots without taking some undefinable yet integral part of Obi-Wan with it.

And staring at Master Skywalker’s profile, he wonders for the very first time if the same thing cannot be said for the Jedi Master. If this is how he would react if Anakin had rejected him so brutally, digging into the roots of his attachment and pulling it out viciously.

The thought makes guilt grow heavier in his chest.

“Look,” he mutters into the stillness, scrubbing both hands over his face as he turns fully to face Anakin. “Look, that—that wasn’t what I meant to say. Not—not at all.”

“You should be careful with that silver tongue of yours,” Master Skywalker says, eyes fixed straight ahead. 

The words strike Obi-Wan as if they were a lightsaber’s blade. Anakin had said something similar that night, voice playful, eyes warm. That delivery could not be more different than the way he says those words now, as if Obi-Wan is a stranger. 

No, as if Obi-Wan is an enemy Sith met on the battlefield.

It shakes something loose from his chest, his throat, his heart, his mind. “I know you hate me,” he blurts out, moving his eyes away from Master Skywalker’s face so he does not have to see his expression. “I know it’s even—it’s even deserved, but there is something I must tell you…about that night. When the Sith attacked—there is something you must know, though I know it has little chance of changing the way you feel—”

“No.”

Anakin’s voice is resolute. Firm. Bordering on indifferent. 

“No, Knight Kenobi.” Master Skywalker’s eyes stare ahead. They are so close to atmo now, just one ship in a long line of them waiting to accelerate into space. Is it a kindness to use his given name? Or a new sort of distance? “We will not talk of it. Not of that night. Not of any of it.”

“But—“

“No,” Anakin murmurs like a caress. Their ship speeds up, changes lanes to overtake the craft in front of them. “No. For the duration of this mission, Knight Kenobi, you will not speak of that night. Neither will I. You will be a stranger to me, and I will treat you how I would treat any new Knight. As I am a rank above you, you will refer to me as Master Skywalker as you must. We will not converse outside of the demands of this mission. We will have nothing in common to discuss. No past. No future. Do you understand?”

Obi-Wan hears himself inhale, feels the air fill his lungs and then leave them just as quickly in a long exhale. Master Skywalker’s words are fast and easily spoken despite the chill in his eyes. He has thought of his script just as often as Obi-Wan has thought through his own. He is prepared. 

The bed making means nothing. Obi-Wan was wrong to think it could have. Anakin has already washed his hands of Obi-Wan. He has already sutured the wound. The injuries left are only bruises—only internal bleeding. 

Only—only—

How dare he want to pretend that Obi-Wan is a stranger to him? How dare he try? As if everything between them can be ignored if they simply put their minds to it. As if it will not fester. As if it is so very easy and simple to cut each other from their lives, to walk separate paths as simple strangers—as if Obi-Wan has not been looking up to Anakin Skywalker for most of his life, even during those moments he struggled to meet his eyes. 

“No,” he hears himself say before he even realizes he has decided to speak. 

They are so close to hyperspace, and the closing distance lights a fire under his skin. He has the sudden unexplainable but incredibly certain feeling that if he does not say this now, when Master Skywalker is held captive by the task of flying, he will never be given another opportunity to say it at all.

“I’m sorry?” Master Skywalker sounds dangerous. His shields slip, his Force signature expanding to fill the space around them. His fury becomes tangible, suffocating. “No?”

“No,” Obi-Wan says, wetting his lips. “No, Anakin.”

And of course Anakin would be in favor of ignoring it all, of pretending it did not matter and did not exist. He could have told Obi-Wan at any point that the Council had passed down a decree barrng Anakin from taking Obi-Wan as his padawan. He had not. 

He had not.

“Do not call m—”

“We tried doing things your way,” he interrupts, reinforcing his voice with confidence he isn’t sure he has. Anger, yes. Confidence, only perhaps. Only if he focuses on the current moment and not on the absolute truth that nothing will be changed through his words. Anakin has committed to separating their paths with an intensity that Obi-Wan only ever saw from him on the battlefield, and so they will be separated. 

Nothing is going to change the mind of someone as stubborn and injured as Anakin Skywalker. But Obi-Wan has a duty—a desire—a damning sliver of hope that forces him to open his mouth anyway.

“We tried doing things your way,” he repeats, more to give himself time to order and organize  his thoughts and less because he thinks Anakin is ignoring him. No, Anakin has been as still as a predator about to pounce since the moment Obi-Wan spoke up. “And look where it got us!” 

He means, of course, Look what happened when we kept secrets from each other about our relationship. Look how bruised I became. Look at what you did to me.

“I would hardly say we are here because of my actions—” Anakin bites out, so furious that he pulls his eyes away from the ship’s front to glare at him.

“You never told me!” The words burst out of him, careful organization of his thoughts thrown aside as his anger surges up like bile into his throat. “You should have said you wanted to train me! You should have told me the Council denied you! That they rejected the offer! Instead of just letting me think you were rejecting me for a fucking decade!”

If you had just told me you wanted me, that I was wanted, even just as your padawan, I would not have been so surprised to find out years later you loved me. I would not have spent so much time in other people's beds, trying to prove to myself I was desirable. I would not have been so blind to your desire because I would have known it was possible for you to want me, that there was something here you could want. But I didn't because you never told me.

But he does not say this out loud. He doesn't know how, and at the words he does say, Anakin’s Force signature retreats from the air around them as if Obi-Wan has locked a Force suppression collar around his neck. His voice is mean and scathing when he replies, “And I should thank them for it, knowing what you’ve become! I owe them gratitude and my old master a thousand apologies for forcing you on him, but I dodged a blaster shot, not taking you as my padawan!”

The words are designed to wound. They are designed to kill, and they hit against all of Obi-Wan’s sorest spots with unerring precision. His throat has never felt tighter. 

So this is how it feels, to be well and truly rejected by Anakin Skywalker. The hurt he’d nursed for so long as a youngling is a flickering candle compared to the raging fire of this new wound.

He’d known what he was doing, the cost of it, when he broke Anakin’s heart that night. He’d known that he would be trading his love for his hatred, that he was throwing himself off the pedestal of Anakin’s regard.

He’d thought he’d already paid the cost over the last few months; he was wrong.

This is the cost: watching Anakin do his best to raze him to the ground and loving him still, loving him more than he could ever hurt him.

And being so fucking angry beneath it all that it’s hard to keep it contained. His hands are shaking; he hides them in his sleeves.

He wants to say a thousand things, hurl his own insults at the man, make him hurt. Make him bleed . He does not know his soft spots, but he spent years as a soldier—he knows how to throw grenades until something connects.

He shivers with the temptation. He opens his mouth—

He gives his anger to the Force.

“No,” he tells the both of them, rubbing his hand over his thigh to massage the stiff muscle. “No, alright, we’re not going to—you’re not—” he blows out a breath and wills his voice to remain steady. “I’m going to tell you what I need to tell you, and you will listen to me. Anakin Skywalker, you will listen to me.”

Anakin sneers, and his tone shifts, changes into something more condescending. “You may finally be a Knight now, Obi-Wan, but Knights do not command Masters about—”

“I lied!” He pushes the confession out in the space between them. He doesn’t want to hear what Anakin has to say. He’s not sure he’ll survive it; he’s not sure he’d be able to give anymore fury to the Force. “That night! I lied!”

Anakin goes still; even his Force signature freezes in place, an ocean iced over. 

“I lied about not feeling anything for you. I was lying, but I just needed you to leave and you weren’t leaving and the Chancellor was gone and you needed to find him and I needed you to leave me! So—so I thought of the thing I thought would hurt you the most—and I said it even though it wasn’t true, Anakin. I—I’ve always….”

He peters off. The words feel impossibly heavy to say. He loves him. He’s always loved him maybe, and the way he did changed as he got older. Became more serious, more all-encompassing. 

But he never truly thought he’d say it aloud. Not like this. 

They are even closer to the hyperspace jump point high above Coruscant. He is running out of time. He is losing him by the second. Is this how it feels to fly into a black hole? Is this how Anakin felt when he pushed his hands up against the wound of Obi-Wan’s chest after the Sith’s blade tore him apart? Did his heart make a home in his throat the way Obi-Wan’s has? Did he feel the seconds as they rushed by? Did he count them?

“It was a lie?” Anakin asks finally, hardly any inflection in his voice at all. “All of it?”

“Yes, I—"

“The bet too? Your wager with Vos? A fiction invented in the moment to force me from your side?” The Jedi Master spits out the word bet; his lips curl into a sneer with the word Vos.

Obi-Wan’s mouth runs dry. “I didn’t—it wasn’t…”

“I would have the truth from you, Obi-Wan. You seemed so eager to tell it.”

Obi-Wan can’t help but flinch. He’s not a coward though, so he turns his head. He looks at Master Skywalker’s profile. “I didn’t lie about the bet,” he admits softly, and Anakin’s shields around his mind waver, cracks appearing along them in the Force as his fury thrashes against his mind. “But I misled you on its—”

“So you fancied yourself so good at seduction, you even seduced yourself. Congratulations, I suppose.” His tone is cold again. “Does it count as a successful seduction if I only kissed you before the game was over? Is that sufficient then? I’ll put in a word for you with Vos if you need it. Force knows I would have fucked you apart on my cock had my padawan not interrupted us. I would have had you over the balcony if the Chancellor had not arrived.”

The words churn something in Obi-Wan’s stomach. “Stop it,” he says, voice shaking. “Stop it, you’re being horrible—”

“I’m being horrible?” Anakin’s face snaps to his, eyebrows drawn down to match his scowl. “You and Vos made a game of me—”

“It was never a game —”

“Will you leave the Order now that you are healed and your duties done? Will you—”

“No! There was no reward, alright, there was no winning— it was—we were drunk when we made it—”

Anakin’s derision grows heavier in the Force, and his shields fully fall as he bites out, “Pity. I think I’d prefer it if you did leave.”

“That’s more your style than mine,” Obi-Wan snaps back, pressing his nails into his thigh and relishing in the pinpricks of pain that flash through his mind. “And it wouldn’t change anything anyway—I could be freezing to death on Hoth, and—”

“And I would not care—”

“—and I would still be in love with you!” Obi-Wan yells, shocking himself into silence at the final confession slipping loose from around his heart and out into the open. He blinks.

Anakin’s face is frozen into a sneer as if he has been put into carbonite. He can’t even tell if he’s breathing, he’s so still.

And Obi-Wan loves him so fiercely. So foolishly. 

He raises his hands to swipe messily at his eyes.

He’s crying. He doesn’t even remember when he started. 

He’s gotten this far though, so he looks away from the frozen tundra of Anakin’s face and pushes himself further. “I’ve been in love with you for years. Before the bet. Before the—balcony. Before the Force-damned war, I was in love with you.”

Anakin has not moved. He hasn’t even blinked, so Obi-Wan presses forward, pushing his advantage before Anakin finishes whatever complicated equation he is calculating in his head and remembers that Obi-Wan loving him does not change the past, cannot take away his wrath and his wounds.

“The bet was…it wasn’t anything. But then Vos found out I was in love with you, and he knew I was never going to do anything about it, and he said that he would tell Ahsoka how I felt if I didn’t try to follow through on the bet—and I knew she’d tell you, and that terrified me, you knowing. You were never supposed to know. About any of it. I’m sorry. I’m so—” his voice fails him, and he drops his eyes, turning his head away from Anakin’s gaze. His face feels as if it’s on fire, the mortification and shame rising to stain his cheeks .

When he finally speaks, his voice is rough. Low. Dragged over rubble as it leaves his mouth. “What exactly are you sorry for?”

Obi-Wan swallows and dares to turn his head back to meet Anakin’s gaze.The man is staring at him with wet eyes and an unreadable expression.

The truth is, of course, that he’s sorry for a lot of things. The bet. The lie. The love. Telling Anakin about it all. Hurting him. Loving him through it.

The crackle of the ship’s comm system answers Anakin before Obi-Wan can.  

“Ship Twilight, calling code 501-SS893, do you copy? You have been cleared for hyperspace, Twilight. Engage. Over.”

Anakin does not move. “What are you sorry for, Obi-Wan?” 

What does it matter? What would it change?

Obi-Wan is sorry that he acted on his feelings. He’s sorry for the sparring matches. He’s sorry for the Victory party. He’s sorry for coming to Anakin’s quarters late at night and catching the man by surprise. He’s sorry that Anakin loved him back, once, and he took that love and shattered it on the ground. He’s sorry that he loves Anakin—he’s sorry he loves his place in the Jedi Order more, that he put is duties above his love and that he would do it again if he had to.

Instead of saying that, any of that, he shakes his head and looks away. “That’s all,” he says quietly. “All I needed to say.” He swallows and forms the title and the name with all the politeness and distance he should feel towards someone who is nothing more than a friend’s teacher. “Master Skywalker.”

After all, they’re strangers now. That’s what Anakin had told him. That’s what Anakin wanted. 

“Obi-Wan—” Anakin starts to say, but the comm lights up once more.

“Hailing Ship Twilight, calling code 501-SS893. Twilight, you are cleared for hyperspace. Please engage.”

Anakin’s Force signature flares with ire as he shifts in his seat and turns away, flicking on his comm unit with more force than necessary. “Copy, control. Engaging now. Thank you.”

A moment later, the ship shudders as Anakin throws it into hyperdrive. The man’s broad shoulders lift with the force of his inhale and exhale, and Obi-Wan is quick to stand now that the man is distracted and his eyes are no longer pinning him in place. 

He should leave. Nothing good will come if he stays.

Perhaps if he’s the one that leaves Anakin Skywalker, it’ll hurt less. He doesn’t know. He’s never tried it.

Anakin’s voice stops him mere inches away from the door. “Your shields are up,” he says. Obi-Wan turns to look at him, and the man has not moved at all. His hand is still wrapped around the lever he pushed to engage their hyperdrive.

“What?”

“Your shields are up and you’ve lied before. You’re an accomplished little liar actually. The closest thing the Jedi Order has to a politician of its own, that’s what all the Masters say about you. Our very own little representative in the Senate.”

Anakin turns finally, though he does not stand or even turn fully. He looks over his shoulder at him, just one eye and a quarter of his face, the swoop of his nose, one thick eyebrow. Pink lips that Obi-Wan will never kiss again.

“So how do I know you’re telling the truth now, Obi-Wan? How do I trust you? Even then, how can I trust that the same thing would not happen again—you weaponizing your love for the sake of your duty? What sort of love is that?”

Obi-Wan can feel his lip quivering as he stares back into Anakin’s dark eyes. Familiar anger wells up inside of him. How dare Anakin not believe him. Question him. Doubt the love he’s been carrying around like a stone on his chest for the last eight years. 

“If you wanted vows, you should not have left your wife, Master Skywalker,” he spits out and turns to leave before the man can say anything more.

At first, Obi-Wan thinks that avoiding Anakin on the Twilight is going to be easy. After all, Anakin has shown just as much of an interest in avoiding him, and they really do make a good team when they put their minds together. 

At first, Obi-Wan is quite sure that he will not run into Anakin until it is time to land on Vutta, and he is proven right for the remainder of that first day and into the next morning.

So around the ship's early morning cycle, He uses the fresher, collects food from the small kitchenette and takes it back to his bunk to eat it. He’d done the same thing for yesterday’s latemeal. 

The Twilight is a moderately sized ship, neither uncomfortably small or gratuitously large, and it’s possible to hear Anakin moving about in his cabin and the common areas. So it’s incredibly easy to avoid him, and at first Obi-Wan thinks they will not speak to each other at all until the mission forces them to do so. 

At first.

But then Anakin appears halfway through Obi-Wan washing his dishes. It almost gives him a heart attack to turn around and see Master Skywalker leant against the doorway, eyebrows furrowed as he watches Obi-Wan move about.

“Force, Anakin!” Obi-Wan snaps, putting a hand to his chest. “Make a sound, would you?”

Anakin’s eyebrows raise; he looks horribly unimpressed. Right. He’s only supposed to refer to him as Master Skywalker.

“How long have you been standing there, Master?” Obi-Wan asks, turning around to grab the clean plate and shelve it.

“Did Ahsoka know?” 

Obi-Wan drops the dish into the sink by accident. He swings around to stare at Anakin, mouth hanging open slightly. “I’m sorry?”

“You said Vos knew about your…wager. Did my padawan?”

“No, of course not,” Obi-Wan says immediately. When Anakin doesn’t reply outside of raising his eyebrows again—damn him—he elaborates, a memory of Ahsoka’s murderous face when she did find out flashing across his mind. “She never would have gone along with it. Ah—she was angry enough when she…uh. Caught us. Kissing.”

Anakin’s mouth flattens out into a straight line. “Ah,” he says, before he turns and leaves just as suddenly as he’d arrived.

Obi-Wan blinks after him. 

Around the time Obi-Wan takes his latemeal, Anakin appears once more, stripped to his undertunics with mechanical grease covering his hands. He must have found something to fiddle with. Obi-Wan just hopes it’s not the ship itself when it's currently hurtling through hyperspace.

“When did it start?” the man barks out in a rather rude impression of a healer asking after a patient’s symptoms.

“What, my crippling aversion to loth-cats? I suppose it started when I was a babe, as I have a vague memory of one climbing up into my crib and—”

Anakin’s nostrils flare. “The bet. Your wager. When did it begin.”

Obi-Wan drops his eyes and his faux-innocent demeanor. He decided after that first question hours ago about Ahsoka that if Anakin has questions about the bet, about the last few months, answering them is the least he can do.

After all, the very last step of the plan has always been to be honest and direct.

“Do you remember…the morning that Quin and I came to your door? And we went to the refectory together. To talk over my Trials?”

Anakin jerks his head into a nod, eyes narrowing.

“It, uh. The night before. Morning of? We came up with it when we were properly plastered, after Ahsoka left.” He taps his fingers along the top of the counter. “Wrote it down, promptly forgot, and then Quin wouldn’t let it go.”

He is surprised that it is easier to talk about now than it was yesterday. Maybe because he already knows that this changes nothing. Now, he is just recounting facts, answering questions like Master Skywalker has assigned him a book report. He has already said his apologies; he has confessed his love; he has begun quietly within the confines of his room to tend to his wounds and make peace with their permanence.

Answering Anakin’s questions, he is just talking of the past.

At this latest truth, Anakin is silent. His Force signature is carefully locked behind his shields, so it’s impossible for Obi-Wan to understand how Anakin feels about this latest revelation.

He turns his eyes back to his plate of food, appetite waning rapidly.

“Did you even want to learn to fight hand-to-hand at all?” The question is loud and so sudden that Obi-Wan is taken completely by surprise.

When he swings his head up to stare at Anakin, the man is scowling with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. He looks so indignant that Obi-Wan barks out a laugh before he can stop himself.

“Oh, um. Well, no. I just—wanted to spend time with you, and that was the first thing I could think of.” Anakin screws his mouth up, and Obi-Wan hurries to add, “but it helped actually. Knowing how to fight without my saber. It made the memories easier to bear…because I knew I could defend myself if that were to happen again. Zygerria, I mean.”

“I thought I already told you,” Anakin bites out, expression stormy and tone sharp. “Zygerria will never happen again.”

The forcefulness of the statement coupled with Anakin’s glare shocks Obi-Wan into silence. A beat passes before Anakin must realize what he’s said, what he’s implied, because his face drains to white and then flushes red, and he’s turning on his heel to leave the kitchenette immediately. 

So while at first Obi-Wan thought that Anakin would dutifully try to avoid him as much as he tries to avoid Anakin, this doesn’t seem to be the case. 

Not at all.

At random times during their travel, Anakin appears, barks out a question pertaining mostly to the bet, and Obi-Wan answers as honestly as he can. Anakin listens; Anakin leaves.

This part does not change. He always listens. He always leaves.

Obi-Wan wakes up screaming, hands clawing at his chest, his throat, his face in a desperate attempt to get him off, get him off, get him off—

Suddenly his hands are caught and held in a firm grasp, and Obi-Wan twists his lower body away, trying to free his legs from their restraints so he can kick at his attacker. He needs to get him off, he needs to fight, he needs—

He’s pulled back against a solid chest at the same time that a familiar voice breaks through the panicked haze surrounding his mind.

“—just a dream, Obi-Wan, hush, you were only dreaming. You’re safe, sweetling, you’re not there. You’re not there. You’re here with me, sweetheart, come up for air now, you can come up for air.”

Slowly, Obi-Wan stops struggling, sluggish mind shaking off the last cobwebs of his nightmare. When his body goes limp, one of the hands wrapped around his wrist drops away to stroke at his hair, pressing his face more securely into the bend of Anakin Skywalker’s neck.

He blinks his eyes open into slits as reality crashes down around him. 

Or, he thinks this is reality at least. He thinks he is aboard the Twilight. He can hear the familiar noises of the ship’s machinery chirping away. It was much hotter on Zygerria too; this air is cool against the skin of his arms.

All signs point to this being the waking world, except for the fact that he is currently being held against Anakin Skywalker’s naked chest as the man who despises him whispers sweet words of comfort into his hair and rubs circles over the ridge of his spine.

He’s certainly had several dreams involving Master Skywalker shirtless in his bed, but none of them have involved this much hair stroking.

Well, most of them haven’t.

“Your shields are down,” Master Skywalker says, sounding rather pained himself. His hands have stilled their petting. Perhaps he has remembered his hatred. Perhaps he is wondering how he found himself in Obi-Wan’s bed. Obi-Wan is wondering the same thing.

“You are an impossible man to please,” Obi-Wan rasps back, curling his hands in on themselves. His nose is pressed up against Anakin’s hairline. All he smells and sees and feels is Anakin. When his lips move, they brush against his skin. “Would you prefer my shields down or up, Master?”

Anakin sucks in a sharp breath. “I only meant—I can feel your pain. In the Force. Your terror.”

If the words are supposed to sound accusing, then they have lost the wind behind them. Still, Obi-Wan swallows and forces out, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, Force—” Anakin begins to say before cutting himself off with a rather harsh groan. Even then, however, his hands stay gentle on his skin and in his hair. “I thought you said that learning to fight hand-to-hand alleviated your nightmares.”

“Yes, well. Sometimes I still lose,” Obi-Wan snaps. He thinks for the first time about pulling away. Clambering off Anakin’s lap and back to the safety of his mattress. If he were a stronger man, he would.

But he is so weak. And Anakin’s touch along his back, against his scalp, soothes the lingering terror of the nightmare away. It is horrible in its own way, of course. Being so tenderly held will only prove ruinous later, when Anakin steps away. When Anakin leaves once more.

But he is so weak. And so greedy.

He will not be the one to push him away.

“So the nightmares were not a part of the lie,” Anakin finally murmurs sometime later. Obi-Wan’s heart rate has slowed, his eyelids once more growing heavy.

These words startle him fully awake though, irritation flickering to life in his stomach. “I believe you are giving a drunken, foolhardy plan written up on a bar napkin more credit than it deserves. Or you are giving me more credit than I deserve—I’m really not some clever seductress after your virtue.” He sniffs and then huffs a grudging breath of something akin to laughter, adding, “honestly, faking nightmares as part of a grand ruse so that you would put your arms around me is a better scheme than half of what I came up with.”

Anakin doesn’t say anything in reply, but he doesn’t push him off his lap either.

“All of it was real,” Obi-Wan mutters finally, helpless against the urge to nuzzle into Anakin’s hold. “Except for the parts that weren’t, I suppose. But even then, they were real too in a way. Because I loved you already and even—even the stupidest things I did under the pretense of a foolish wager was just because I wanted you to look at me.”

It’s easier to confess these things, when Anakin’s Force signature is still wrapped around his own, when he is in his arms and he doesn’t have to see his face.

“I was already looking,” Anakin murmurs. “I don’t understand how you could think I wasn’t.” And maybe he finds it easier like this as well, because he draws in a breath and says, “You cannot love me . You would have noticed how much I loved you if you paid me even half the attention I gave you. You must be lying still. It does not make sense otherwise.”

“How could I know, Anakin? Until a few days ago, I thought you willingly refused to take me on as a padawan. I thought you did not want me in that way—how was I supposed to know you could ever want me in any other way?”

Anakin’s hand tightens in his hair. “I thought you knew. That you had discovered the truth of my…feelings for you. And that you and Vos found it a joking matter, something funny; and that your wager was to…to watch me dance to whichever tune you set, to watch me trip after you, and share a laugh about it with Vos afterwards.”

“That’s horrible,” Obi-Wan whispers. “And it’s not true. I’ve been in love with you since I was fifteen years old. I just—I did not think there was anything about me you could…you could love in return.”

“You are wrong,” Anakin mutters in reply. And then, even softer, “I wish you weren’t.”

After all of the blows he has suffered at the hands of Anakin’s cruel words, this hardly registers as painful to hear. It is, after all, a sentiment that Obi-Wan understands.

“Oh, and you think loving you has been easy?” He finally pulls back from Anakin’s hold, raising his head to glare wetly at him. Even in the dark of the ship’s quarters, he can see Anakin looks pale, dark shadows under his eyes.  “My friend’s master, the man who broke my heart when I was an Initiate? A man so handsome and brave that half the Holonet is in love with him? A man who hates me now, who I made hate me? You think I don’t wish I could give this part of myself to the Force and have Her take it?”

Anakin’s face twitches, expression flashing between pain and anger and something much softer. Something much more like longing. “It doesn’t matter,” he decides, his tone that of a man staring down his execution. His hands clench and unclench on Obi-Wan’s body. “It no longer matters.”

His thighs tensing beneath him is the only warning Obi-Wan has that he is about to be pushed off Anakin’s lap. That whatever miracle of this night is ending. 

Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s lifting his hands to grasp around the back of his neck, holding on tightly as he swivels his body around to straddle Anakin’s lap. He will not be shaken off or cast aside. Not when Anakin came here, came to him, came to hold him because he felt his pain and could not stay away.

It does matter.

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin’s voice is rough. His hands have fallen to his waist and they squeeze at it, a first-line attempt to move him away. But Obi-Wan clings.

Anakin has been looking at him, always. Anakin loved him. He’d said as much on the balcony that night, but it feels different now so far away from Coruscant, the Order, their friends and duties. Anakin loved him then, and despite his fury and his hurt, treats him as though he still loves him. Why else would he be here in his bed? Why else would he be holding him so carefully?

Of course it matters that Obi-Wan loves him still. And it matters even more if Anakin can still love him after all the hurt he caused him.

“You have been asking me questions for the past two days, Master,” he murmurs, wetting his lips. “Do you think you have nothing to answer for?”

Anakin’s jaw clenches as his eyebrows furrow. “What would you ask of me?” he says tightly, but he does not make to move him again. His hands relax on his waist, simply holding him.

Obi-Wan swallows.

There are thousands of things he wants to ask Anakin and thousands of things he thinks he deserves to know, truths and history that only Anakin can tell him. Why did he want to train Obi-Wan so much he fought the Council for him? What made him threaten to leave the Order for Obi-Wan? Why did he never tell Obi-Wan any of this? Why did he let him hate him for so many years? When did he fall in love with Obi-Wan? Why did he never tell him anything?

He hesitates, staring sightlessly at Anakin’s lips as his thoughts run rampant through his mind.

He wants to know the answers to those questions, but—but knowing will not change anything. He will never be Anakin Skywalker’s padawan. He is a Jedi Knight now. As much as the unanswered questions haunt him, the answers cannot change the past. Knowing now will not take away the hurt of then.

Just thinking about it now, perched as he is in Master Skywalker’s lap, the hurt has dulled. It is enough to know Anakin always intended to take him as his padawan—that it did not happen as they both planned may always carry a slight sting, but it is so firmly in the past that it cannot be changed. 

Anakin Skywalker will never be his Jedi master.

But if Obi-Wan acts cautiously, treads carefully, he may still be something to him. He may still get to be the love of his life.

“Why did you make this bunk up for me?” he asks.

Anakin’s eyes dart away and he opens his mouth, but Obi-Wan does not give him time to reply.

“Why did you come to my Senate hearing? I could feel you in the Force, watching. You were proud of me. I felt it.”

When Anakin flinches, Obi-Wan relaxes slightly. That had been just a guess—he’s relieved to know he was right. He’s happy to know Anakin was there. That he had not been left to face an enemy alone, even when Anakin was at his most furious with him.

“Why did you come in here and wake me from my nightmare? You called me sweetling. I heard it.”

The fierce blush that stains Anakin’s cheeks is barely visible through the dark of the room, but Obi-Wan fancies that he can feel the heat of it through the scarce distance between their faces.

“Why do you keep treating me as though you’re in love with me when you keep saying it doesn’t matter? Why do you think it doesn’t matter?”

“Because,” Anakin snaps, “because it doesn’t. Because you are a Jedi Knight, and your duty will always come before—”

“You are a Jedi as well!” Obi-Wan interrupts, digging his nails into the nape of Anakin’s neck in sheer indignation. “Your duty should come before me as well!”

“But it will not,” Anakin bites back, low and fierce and angry. “It never will. You are a much better Jedi than I am, Obi-Wan. The Council knew that even all those years ago.” 

“I am a terrible Jedi Knight,” Obi-Wan corrects with a wavering voice. “Because of my attachment to you. But it’s been years, and it’s not going away. It won’t. I cannot cut it out of me, and—and—” one of his hands lets go of Anakin’s neck, brushes over his chin as it reaches up to cup his cheek. His thumb strokes along the end of the scar bisecting Anakin’s brow. “And if it’s the same for you, if you love me despite all the terrible things I’ve done to you…then take me for yourself. We can figure everything else out.”

Anakin’s eyes flutter shut for a moment, lips parting. He must recognize the words, his own, repeated back to him. Force knows Obi-Wan has turned that moment over and over in his mind.

“Tell me you do not feel the same,” Obi-Wan coaxes as softly and desperately as Anakin had that night as he recites the same words. “And the matter is settled.”

“Obi-Wan," Anakin says, a thousand agonies strung through the syllables of his name. His hand leaves his waist to wrap around the back of the one Obi-Wan has left cradling his cheek. “You cannot possibly ask me to just. Love you again—trust you again—after everything.”

But Obi-Wan wants to. 

Obi-Wan wants. 

He ducks his head and looks up at Anakin beneath his eyelashes, bringing their intertwined hands to rest against his own cheek. “I did not have to ask you to love me the first time,” he murmurs, courage and hope thrumming through his veins as his mind flashes through all the moments that Anakin’s love for him has overcome his hurt. Confidence fills his soul as he stares at Anakin and sees what he is, for the very first time. Just a man, as weak and greedy and in love as Obi-Wan is. “I don’t have to ask this time either, do I?”

The words hang in the air for several still seconds before Anakin releases a groan as if he is a wounded animal and surges forward to kiss him so ferociously that Obi-Wan rocks backward from the force of the blow.

Obi-Wan’s hands fly up to grasp at his shoulders with a gasp of his own as Anakin presses up against him. It is nothing like their first kiss in that meditation chamber off the ballroom of the Senate temple. It is harsher than that, teeth and tongue laying claim to him immediately, nipping at his bottom lip and then licking over the hurt as if to soothe it before biting all over again.

Obi-Wan moans the moment he gives ground and allows Anakin further in. He wants everything. He wants to give Anakin everything he could ask for, and he pushes his willingness into the Force, shields lowered so that Anakin can feel it.

Yes, yes, yes, yes he is thinking as Anakin’s tongue swipes against his own and Anakin’s hand grapples with the short strands of his hair, trying to yank his head where he wants it. Yours, yours, yours—

Anakin’s Force signature flares with hunger, and his free hand glides to rest against the small of his back. The simple heavy touch causes Obi-Wan to shiver, arching his back automatically against the sensation.

They separate to pant out breaths against the other’s cheek, but Obi-Wan will not allow Anakin to go far. Instead, he tilts his head and mouths artlessly against the hinge of his jaw. He wants so much. He wants Anakin’s hands everywhere. His lips—everywhere.

He wants Anakin to touch him every place that someone else already has; he wants his mouth to overwrite the ghost of everyone else’s until the only thing his body remembers is that it belongs to Anakin.

He belongs with Anakin.

Anakin’s breath punches out of him as Obi-Wan’s lips seal over his pulse point and suck against the skin.

And Anakin belongs with him. Not with Padmé Amidala or any other pretty senator. Not with Aayla Secura or any other Jedi. He’s Obi-Wan’s. 

“Fuck, Obi-Wan,” Anakin mutters, tilting his head back to give him more room to work. Obi-Wan begins to bite another lovemark on the skin just below. Mine–mine–mine–mine.

Obi-Wan pulls back and bares his teeth at his master. “You’re going to take me tonight,” he declares, eyes catching and holding on to the sight of Anakin’s red, wet lips. “You’re going to give me three of your fingers and put me on my back so I can watch your face as you make love to me.”

Anakin’s lips part as a groan escapes him when Obi-Wan grinds down against his lap.

“Force,” Anakin gets out. His chest is bare and flushed with arousal, his nipples small and already peaked from the pleasure of having Obi-Wan in his lap, Obi-Wan’s mouth on his, Obi-Wan’s hair running through the messy curls on his head. 

Obi-Wan misses his long hair with a pang, but he cannot pretend that there isn’t something devastating about the shorter sides of golden hair, the fall of curls on top. 

“No one’s ever made love to me before, Master,” Obi-Wan whispers in the space between their mouths. “Won’t you be the first?”

Anakin surges up against him at this, the grip of his hands turning punishing as he connects their lips together. His Force signature thrashes with his desire as he pushes his tongue past Obi-Wan’s lips again, intent on devouring him.

It makes Obi-Wan whimper and melt against Anakin’s torso, rutting down like he can’t help it. He can’t help it. He wants Anakin to want him as desperately as he wants him, had had half-formed ideas in his mind of what to say to coax that out of the Jedi Master.

He doesn’t think he realized until this moment that there is no need to coax Anakin into anything. He’s already wanted, past all logic and reason. He does not need to play on Anakin’s possessiveness, his anger, his jealousy. All he has to do to be wanted by Anakin Skywalker is to drop into his lap and say please. 

Anakin’s body tenses beneath his, and it’s all the warning Obi-Wan gets before he’s being lifted into the air, held securely in Anakin’s arms as the man leaves Obi-Wan’s bunk and fumbles backward to the door.

Mere moments later, he drops him down onto the bunk in Anakin’s own cabin. The sheets are twisted beneath him already, as if Anakin had been in the middle of a nightmare of his own before feeling Obi-Wan’s.

It smells so strongly of Anakin that his mouth waters automatically. From within the confines of his sleep-pants, his dick twitches.

Anakin’s eyes are dark as he looks down at Obi-Wan, spread out in his bed. His voice is dark as well when he says, “If you like those clothes, you should take them off now, sweetheart.”

Obi-Wan’s heart jumps, both at the sweet name and at the implication that Anakin will rip the clothes from his body if he does not move fast enough for him. He grabs at the back of his sleep-shirt and tugs it over his head, hands falling to the waistband of his pants just as quickly and pushing them down as well.

He feels incredibly like an overeager teenager about to get his dick wet for the first time, sprawled out naked in Anakin’s bed, hard cock bobbing against his stomach as he moves up against the pillows.

Anakin’s hand lashes out and catches him by the ankle before he can get far, and Obi-Wan freezes. 

“You’re beautiful,” Anakin murmurs, sinking to his knees at the foot of the bunk. The position makes Obi-Wan’s insides quiver, the Jedi master on his knees before him. It’s hard to look at him, but he cannot look away. He props himself up on his elbows to meet Anakin’s eyes.

“Master,” he whines, spreading his legs as much as possible with his foot trapped in Anakin’s grasp.

“I knew you would be,” Anakin mutters, raising up just far enough to press a kiss against Obi-Wan’s ankle. “I knew you would be perfect.”

Obi-Wan nods, arousal flaring at the base of his spine at these words. He would be perfect for Anakin.

The man carefully climbs into the bunk, trailing kisses up Obi-Wan’s calf, up to his thigh. Obi-Wan trembles at the gentle touches, mind whiting out with pleasure from every kiss. “Master, please, please touch me,” he hears himself beg, hands clawing at the blanket beneath him so they do not fall upon Anakin.

“No,” Anakin murmurs, and his thumb strokes across Obi-Wan’s hip. It takes him an embarrassingly long amount of time to realize Anakin is staring at the end of the scar that the Sith’s lightsaber left. His lips kiss the pink line, and when he speaks next, it’s without raising his mouth. “No, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan blinks in confusion even as Anakin’s hands latch onto his hips to hold him down as he moves his lips along the scar. There are others on his torso and his chest from where the loose chains of his shirt melted from the heat of the saber, ugly raised pink marks he’s not been given a reason to feel self-conscious about until now. Until Anakin licks at one of them with the tip of his tongue before sucking carefully at the skin next to it, and Obi-Wan realizes that Anakin is looking at all of him. There is no place to hide. 

It takes three tries to force the word from his tight throat as Anakin forces his upper body in between his spread legs and pushes their chests together. He has found the end of his scar, right beneath his nipple, and he is trading kisses between the tip of the wound and the peaked bud of his nipple like he could be content to do this all night. 

It is enough to make Obi-Wan lose his mind. It is desperately not enough. 

“N–no?” he mumbles, forgoing the hold he has on the sheets so he can clutch at Anakin’s broad shoulders. “What do you mean—no?”

Anakin raises himself up on his own elbows, swaying forward so that his mouth runs up the line of Obi-Wan’s throat and ghosts across his jaw. “You called me master,” he says lowly, tilting his head to nip at Obi-Wan’s earlobe. “We’re not gonna do that, baby.”

“Why not?” Obi-Wan whines—he will rejoin the Force saying that this is because Anakin’s hips rock down against his own, rubbing his still covered cock against Obi-Wan’s naked one, but Anakin pulls back with amusement dancing around the corners of his eyes, like he knows he is only whining because he has been denied something.

“Because if you call me master, padawan mine, I’m gonna need to discipline you like one for all the headaches you’ve given me lately. Which means I’d turn you over my lap and spank you red and bruised before sitting back and making you ride me like a schutta.”

The words shock a moan out of Obi-Wan, and he wants that so desperately, he’s already half-formed the word master on his tongue. 

Anakin’s hand clamps down over his mouth before he can. “Brat,” he mutters affectionately, rolling his hips again. “I know, that sounds good, doesn’t it, darling? Getting your needy little hole filled’s all you’re thinking about right now, isn’t it?” 

Obi-Wan nods and tries to spread his legs wider, tries to tilt his hips up for a better angle. 

“I want that too,” Anakin reassures him, moving his hand down from his mouth to his neck and resting it there carefully. Not a choke, not from Anakin. Never from Anakin. “I’ve been thinking about you riding me since you put me on the mats when we were training. Force, baby, I barely made it to my quarters before I was rubbing my cock, thinking about pulling you down on it. You were so pretty, fuck—”

As if unable to resist, Anakin connects their mouths together in a heated kiss, growling out something that sounds a lot like his name. Obi-Wan’s hands fall from his shoulders to his loose pants, scrabbling at the waistline. He wants them off. He wants Anakin’s cock to brush against his, to push inside him.

“Please, please, please,” he breaks the kiss to mutter, moaning in relief when he succeeds in freeing Anakin’s cock. It’s hot and as big as he knew it would be. “Lemme suck you,” he slurs out, turning his head to try and catch Anakin’s thumb in his mouth. “’m really good at it,” he adds, licking the pad of his thumb. “I haven’t had a gag reflex since I was nineteen.”

Anakin doesn’t like that much. He moves his hand from his throat to his jaw and grabs it tightly in a grip just on the right side of bruising. He doesn’t say anything for a moment—several seconds—working his jaw so furiously that Obi-Wan is half-convinced he is going to spit into his open mouth.

Obi-Wan wouldn’t mind, of course.

But after another long moment, Anakin breathes out, a long, shuddering exhale. “No,” he says and leans forward to press a gentle, chaste kiss on Obi-Wan’s lips. For some reason, this is perhaps even more devastating and toe-curling as the deeper kisses from before. “No, sweetling,” he says when he pulls back, angling his body to drag his pants off his legs until he can kick them to the floor. “One day, I’m gonna fuck your silver tongue and your clever little mouth. And you’re gonna call me whatever you want when you can speak again.”

Obi-Wan nods eagerly and lets his hands trail down Anakin’s body. He’s so fucking beautiful. 

He wants to see him so badly, wants to push him away just so he can have room to look. The air smells of sweat and sex already. He wants to trace his tongue down the lines of Anakin’s chest, over his abs and down to the nest of curls he can feel lining the root of his cock. He wants so much that he finds strangely and suddenly that he’s halfway to tears at the thought that Anakin has not yet let him have.

“One day,” Anakin murmurs like a dirty promise, pressing kisses against Obi-Wan’s cheeks and jaw until he’s shivering from the barest touch and whining out for more, “’m gonna turn you over on your stomach and lick you open until you’re so loose from tongue and wet with my spit I can just slip inside you. I’ll get you a pretty pair of underwear too, something you only ever see the schuttas from the Lower Levels wear. Maybe nice and red, and I can spank you first, yeah? So you’d match. Maybe something lacey and white though, we can pretend you’re virginal, that you’ve never had anything up your hole until your dirty master stuck his tongue inside you and made you wet like fucking girl.”

“‘M wet already,” Obi-Wan mumbles, red and angry cock spitting out more precome at Anakin’s words. “You can—please lick me, I love it, I would love it—”

“But not this time,” Anakin finishes, sounding regretful as much as he sounds amused. It almost makes Obi-Wan sob, but at least he can feel how hard Anakin is panting, how thick and hot and hard his cock is against his own. He’s as interested and as aroused as Obi-Wan is. 

“This time, you’re going to call me by my name, and I’ll call you by yours. Do you want to know why?”

“Why?” Obi-Wan asks dutifully, dropping his hands to fist once more in the sheets as he looks up at Master Skywalker’s hulking form.

“Cause we’re gonna make love, sweetling,” Anakin tells him, pressing the lightest of kisses to his open mouth. “Just like this with the lights off. Under the sheets. I’ll give you three fingers like you asked for and then I’lll give you my cock and we’ll put your legs around my waist so I can fuck you nice and slow while you think about all the dirty things I’ll do to you one day. But not tonight. Not this time, baby. Do you want to know why?”

Obi-Wan lets his eyes fall closed as he gives Anakin a dazed smile. “Because we’re gonna make love,” he parrots back at him. “Cause you love me ‘s much as I love you.”

“That’s good, baby, that’s close,” Anakin smiles. “It’s even true. But no, baby. I’m gonna fuck you on your back under the covers with the lights off because you thought you were seducing a prude, baby. So I’m gonna fuck you like a prude would.”

Obi-Wan wakes up sore and still relatively tired, feeling as if he could sleep for another week at least. He also wakes up alone, which puts him in a terrible mood the moment he realizes why that feels wrong.

Rising from bed hurts, his thighs stretched past their limit after being held apart for so long last night. It would be a good ache, if he were not alone to feel it.

Furious, he grabs the nearest article of clothing, Anakin’s traveling cloak, and storms from Anakin’s cabin to find his wayward bed partner.

He should be hand-feeding him boona berries in bed and massaging his thighs for him after last night. He should be pressing Obi-Wan back down into the mattress and rimming him until he sees stars. He should be kissing sweet nothings into Obi-Wan’s shoulders and chest as they talk about everything they want to and nothing hat hurts.

Under no circumstances should he be—

In the kitchenette of the Twilight, having a quiet conversation with the tiny blue comm-call figure of Quinlan Vos.

At the sight of what Obi-Wan is sure is the most shocking and abnormal event in the history of the galaxy, he draws up short and hovers back in the hallway to, well. To eavesdrop.

“There is no fucking way he only eats vila fruit if the pits have been removed,” Anakin is growling, even as he carefully works a small knife through the seam of a small vila berry, the size of his thumb nail, and working out its mite-sized pit.

“Sounds to me like you’re not really in the position to doubt me,” the tiny figure of Quinlan Vos replies. He must be sitting reclined in a chair, because from what Obi-Wan can see of him, his feet are in the air and his arms are crossed lazily over his chest. “He also only drinks kalamiri juice if it isn’t pithy, so if you only have the pithy kind, you’ll have to strain it before you give it to him or else he’ll bitch about it for hours.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Anakin snaps, glowering darkly at Quinlan. “Unfortunately, I don’t have either pithy or unpithy kalamiri juice on board, as we are on my ship.”

“Hey, you called me, Master Skywalker,” Quinlan gives an exaggerated shrug. “I can’t help it if the answer to the question ‘what does Obi-Wan Kenobi like to eat for breakfast’ involves things not in your pantry. He’s a picky little princess, our Obi.”

Anakin’s face darkens even more, probably at the use of the possessive pronoun. His Force signature rises in ire, and Obi-Wan steps into the kitchenette area automatically.

“You’re talking about me,” he says, eyebrows furrowing.

“Oh, ho, ho,” Quinlan says, turning around to look Obi-Wan up and down. “Look at that, I mean—I knew when Skywalker here called me at four in the fucking morning Coruscant time, but there’s knowing and then there’s seeing, you kno—”

Anakin slams his hand down onto his comm, severing the call.

“Um,” Obi-Wan says, staring at Anakin, who has put on a clean pair of pants and high-necked shirt.

“I thought you would be sleeping longer,” Anakin says. His cheeks are a red that almost matches the red vila berry juice staining his hands.

“I’m an early riser,” Obi-Wan says, which is much easier than saying, and the moment I woke enough to feel that you had gone, I wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep anyway. 

But Anakin deserves the truths that are hard for Obi-Wan to say, so he adds, “And I guess I noticed…that you were gone. So I woke up.”

Anakin’s face does something complicated, but his Force signature stretches out to nudge almost shyly against his own, feeling rosey pink with pleasure.

It almost makes Obi-Wan regret what he must say next, but he has promised to himself at least that he will not lie to Anakin. Not again. “I eat vila berries with the pits in them,” he tells him, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “Like most people do. I, uh. I think Quin was just…teasing you.”

The shy pink pleasure leaves Anakin’s Force signature immediately. He turns to look at the bowl of mangled, pitted vila berries on his right, and then down at his red-stained hands. “I’m going to murder your friend,” he decides.

The surety in his voice makes Obi-Wan huff out a laugh. “What if I lick your fingers clean?” he asks, walking forward until he can wind his arms around Anakin’s waist and rest his chin on his chest. “While riding you in the pilot’s chair? Would you find the mercy to spare his life then?”

Anakin’s eyes go dark. “Baby, if you’re fucking yourself on my cock, you better not be thinking of anyone but me.”

The dangerous vow in his voice paired with the hunger in his eyes paired with the utter mess Anakin’s turned the kitchen into attempting to do a sweet thing for him all makes Obi-Wan shiver as arousal builds in his spine. 

“I’ll grab the lube,” he murmurs, detaching himself from Anakin with difficulty. “Why don’t you clean up a bit here?”

Anakin’s scowl is a playful one. “I go to all this trouble,” he complains lightly as he turns to the berries on the counter. “I wake up early, I get taken advantage of, only to now ordered around by my beloved.”

Because he’s a wise Jedi Knight now, Obi-Wan waits until he’s at the door leading to the bunks before he turns his head back to Anakin and responds. “Honestly, you probably should thank Quin.”

As he knew it would, Anakin’s Force signature flares immediately and perhaps automatically with outrage.

“After all,” Obi-Wan says, laughter and relief and love blooming so forcefully in his chest that it makes him feel giddy. “He was the one that wouldn’t let me back out of our wager.”

“Oh, I see,” Anakin replies pleasantly, flicking a vila berry in his direction. “The boy wants to get spanked in the cockpit.”

“You made an awful lot of promises last night,” Obi-Wan points out.

“And I’ll keep them,” his lover replies. These words come out sounding like another promise. The love in Obi-Wan’s chest threatens to rise up and kill him, so he ducks his head on a nod, turns away, and darts down the corridor. The sooner he can get the lube, the sooner he can get Anakin’s cock back inside him, his hands on him, his voice in his ear whispering sweet things.

A beeping coming from the open door to his bunk distracts him.

He hesitates for a moment, but this specific pattern of beeps means Quinlan has messaged him about something. And knowing his friend has just been on a call with Master Skywalker for who knows how long, Obi-Wan finds himself irresistibly curious about what the man has to say.

Before--as in before everything had changed, before he had that nightmare, before Anakin had come to comfort him, before they'd kissed--he'd left his comm on the small ledge just next to his bunk. He picks up the device and flicks open the blinking message.

The words make him snort, though a pleased flush works its way up over his cheeks as he grins rather stupidly at the comm in front of him. He isn't sure that smile will disappear anytime soon. In fact, he hopes it does not. He hopes the Vuttal festival is a joyful affair. He isn't sure he's capable of anything else right now.

Quickly, he types out a message in response before tossing his comm back onto the unmade bed, already turning to push his way out of this bunk and into Anakin’s room.

He is, after all, on a mission here.

[Comm Frequency 8385.451. recognized as Quinlan Vos, received 09:42]

You’re gonna be married within the year.

[Comm Frequency 2157.012 recognized as Obi-Wan Kenobi, received 09:51]

Wanna bet?

Chapter Text

In Obi-Wan’s kitchen cabinet, two shelves above the honey he keeps stored for Ahsoka and the jar of Alderaanean sugar he keeps for Quin, there is a small pot of spiced caf mix that only Anakin Skywalker prefers. 

It’s his, actually. Unlike the honey and the sugar that Obi-Wan purchased with his own credits and brought into his quarters for the express purpose of being able to serve his friends tea to their standards, the caf had just appeared there in the cupboard one day, brought by Anakin’s hands and stored at a height too inconvenient for anyone but him to reach.

It is as presumptuous as it is possessive, and it doesn’t even make sense really because of the nights Master Skywalker spends in Obi-Wan’s rooms, he very rarely wakes first and with enough cognizance to make them caf, Anakin’s, and tea, Obi-Wan’s.

So the task falls to Obi-Wan, who much prefers it this way if he’s honest. He likes the quiet stillness of the morning, the banality of the task, the way he can linger in the moment without worrying about blaster fire or counterattacks or troop movements disrupting him. It’s purely by rote, the way he moves about his space to make his morning tea. He’s done it so often.

The only change is the caf, and the most inconvenient part of that process is reaching for the jar of grounds kept just out of his reach. He’d use the Force to grab it, but he’s too afraid of giving Anakin that sort of satisfaction should the man come out of his bedroom earlier than he usually does and catch him in the act.

Most days he is able to make both tea and caf and bring it back to his room undisturbed. Most days when Anakin is able to spend the night, he is able to set the mugs onto the small table next to his bed, shrug off whoever’s undershirt he’d grabbed from the floor and crawl back onto the mattress to poke and prod at the sleeping Jedi master until he eventually opens one eye lazily, loops his arm loosely around Obi-Wan’s waist and pulls him into his chest. Most days this devolves into touching and kissing and fooling around once more, and by the time they emerge from the grasp of the blankets and each other, the caf and the tea are almost always long gone cold.

Most days are not every day, of course. Obi-Wan is a newly Knighted Jedi, one that the galaxy has learned to recognize the name of and request for missions across the Rims. Anakin is still Master Skywalker. He is still the Chosen One; the Sith killer; the Hero With No Fear. 

And he is still Ahsoka’s master, too. He still has a duty to her as his padawan, still shares quarters with her, still shares his days with her. Missions, meals, meditations. Obi-Wan doesn’t begrudge him that. Of course he doesn’t.

It’s just—

They are not necessarily keeping their relationship hidden in complete secrecy these days, but they’ve both agreed to keep it out of sight. Those most important to them know, or have guessed, and everyone else need not know at all. 

Which means that as much as Obi-Wan wants Anakin in his bed every night, as much as he wants them to spend every morning wrapped around each other until habit crystalizes into routine crystalizes into the only remembered way of things, he understands the nights that Anakin does not knock at his door. And in turn, he takes missions to far-flung planets in the Mid Rim by himself or with other Jedi Knights when the Council remembers that technically the Senate has declared he should still not be allowed to represent the Republic alone. When he returns to Coruscant, he busies himself with reports and other duties and chores before he lets himself search out Master Skywalker.

But sometimes, perhaps even most days, he wakes early in the morning to Anakin’s arm around his waist and Anakin’s morning breath hitting the side of his face, and he slips out of bed and into the kitchen unit and opens the cupboard to see the caf mix that is Anakin’s favorite. 

And he has begun to realize, time and time again, that this caf is the only thing that belongs to Anakin in all of Obi-Wan’s quarters. The presence of that caf mix is the most possessive Anakin allows himself to become around him, the most overt claim to Obi-Wan that he has staked. Everything else dissolves into nothingness the moment the bruises on his neck and hips fade, the moment that Anakin is called somewhere else or when Obi-Wan is.

Jedi do not lay claims on other Jedi. They do not possess. 

But it rubs raw and incessant against fragile skin regardless, that after years of wanting Anakin, wanting Master Skywalker, the only way he can have him now is in shadow and in secret. The claim he has over him is a half-filled jar of caf mix, too high in his shelving unit for him to reach with ease.

The thought is useless and it is dangerous, but today it is early enough in the morning for Obi-Wan to allow himself to think it anyway: If Anakin had taken him as his padawan, then there would be a bond for the galaxy to see and they would have to acknowledge it, they’d have to—

The war was won two years ago, and Obi-Wan remembers this without prompting almost every day; that is the only reason why he doesn’t tense up when two arms snake around his waist and pull him against a firm chest.

That, and he knows immediately, intrinsically, who this chest belongs to. Who these arms, one durasteel and one flesh, belong to. 

And he has never once really and truly feared for his own safety when being touched by these hands.

“I’m gone for two whole weeks,” Anakin murmurs into the edge of his jaw, nosing at the fragile skin behind his ear. “And upon my return, you cannot even give me one morning where we laze about until first meal’s call.” 

Obi-Wan is twenty-three, almost twenty-four. He has been weak for Anakin Skywalker almost half of his life. He tilts his head to allow the man more room to press his lips up against his skin. Anakin doesn’t use teeth when he kisses him softly there, in  the crook of his neck.

“You volunteered for the mission, Master Skywalker,” he says, trying to keep his tone level. Anakin’s hands ghost under the line of his overshirt, one of them thumbing at the edge of the scar on his hip while the other snakes lower still to stroke over the contours of his thigh.

“Aayla needed a second she could trust,” Anakin replies just as softly, using his hold on Obi-Wan to pull him back into the cradle of his hips. “Of course I volunteered for the mission.”

“Hm,” is all Obi-Wan can say. There are a hundred things he would like to say. A hundred petty jealousies and pitiful laments and valid questions regarding their future–-both as a couple and in the Order. But he doesn’t know what Anakin would say in return, should he voice his gravest concerns, and that more than anything stays his tongue.

He looks again at the caf mix. Its label, faded and in some language Obi-Wan can half-read, stares back, unperturbed. 

“You only call me Master Skywalker when you’re angry at me or horny,” Master Skywalker says lowly, speaking the words directly to the softest parts of Obi-Wan’s body. “Which is it?”

“Do I have to choose?” Obi-Wan replies, purposefully blithe. He closes his eyes and leans back into Anakin’s hold.

The real problem is that, these days, he is used to sure things. He has grown to enjoy the surety that comes with knowing his place in the galaxy and walking his path without variation. 

He was a soldier, so he fought. He was a Jedi padawan, so he trained under his master and knew that one day he would become a Jedi Knight. He was in love with Anakin Skywalker, even when he wasn’t able to admit it to himself, and Anakin Skywalker did not want him back.

Since he turned thirteen, since Qui-Gon Jinn requested to take him as his padawan, his life has been marked by sureties. It’s only now that Anakin has stepped forward from the peripherals to the center once more that the certainties Obi-Wan has built his life on have started to crack.

Where are we going with this? What will it mean when we arrive? What will we lose while getting there? Or have we already arrived? Is this all we will be? What more can we become? What do we stand to gain in the becoming? What do we stand to lose? And do you want it as much as I do, damn the consequences? Now that you have me, do you want me as ardently as you did before? 

When Obi-Wan opens his eyes again, the caf mix is still there. Anakin is so good at slipping into his quarters at night. And every morning, as he goes, he is just as good at collecting every trace that he could possibly leave behind. Every cloak, every datapaad, every bottle and tonic in his morning routine from his toothpaste to his aftershave. All of it, gone. As if he’d never been there at all.

All of it, save for this caf mix.

He wonders, suddenly and unbidden, if the senator Anakin had married all those years ago found herself at times thinking the same thing, staring at the same pot of caf mix.

It is unbearable. It is intolerable. It turns the placidity of this morning into hazardous shards of transparisteel beneath his feet.

Obi-Wan closes his eyes and turns his face away, pressing his nose into Anakin’s neck. It is too early in the morning for this sort of conversation. Anakin has just returned. Obi-Wan is slated to depart on a mission of his own within the next few days.

They have only shared a bed, shared the width of an I love you for a year. Anakin is older, more experienced in relationships. He’d been married, after all. And yes, Obi-Wan is experienced, but this is uncharted space. He should follow Anakin’s lead in this matter. He should not read too much into the things Anakin leaves behind in his quarters and what he takes with him. He should relish in having his own apartments for the first time in his life. He should not want Anakin with him, always. Jedi do not seek possession over things, over places, over people most of all.

But Obi-Wan—Obi-Wan is young. He feels young, at least, even as he brushes his lips against Anakin’s pulse point, even as he turns his body fully into his lover’s embrace and tangles his fingers into the loose linen of Anakin’s sleeping shirt.

Obi-Wan is young, and Anakin Skywalker is the greatest love he’s ever known. Will ever know, maybe. Probably. Hopefully. And he wants more of him. Now and always and it is so selfish and un-Jedi of him that he wants to scream.

“Baby,” Anakin says, sounding suddenly both mystified and concerned and far more awake than he had a second ago, hands sliding out from the low waistband of his sleep pants and up to cup his shoulders. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

When Obi-Wan sighs, it’s a full-body affair. He melts into the firm grip Anakin has on him, pushes himself as close as he can stand. 

Despite the regard and love that they held each other in for years, they almost broke each other’s hearts. They almost did not survive their own becoming, all because they let words fester unspoken. 

Obi-Wan is reminded, not for the first time but perhaps for the most potent, that the silent path is the easiest one. That does not make it the correct one.

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin murmurs, and he cups the back of his head, begins to stroke through his hair. He’s always loved his hair, Obi-Wan knows it. Though Master Skywalker has kept his hair rather short over the past year, he’s watched with greedy eyes as Obi-Wan’s has grown longer and longer, inching slowly back to the length it was when he was a senior padawan. Before the bet. Before, even, the end of the war.

“You only call me Obi-Wan when you’re serious or when you’re trying to get my attention,” Obi-Wan replies softly, pitching forward and leaning his forehead against Anakin’s shoulder.

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin says again, somehow torn between demanding and amused. His hands fall to his waist and then, suddenly, Obi-Wan is being lifted and placed where the empty mugs sat a few seconds earlier, pushed away via masterful application of the Force. 

It’s second nature to wrap his legs around Master Skywalker’s waist, loop his arms around his neck. 

Anakin’s eyes are dark and piercing, like he can get his answers from Obi-Wan if only he looks hard enough.

The problem is, generally he can.

“It’s not enough,” Obi-Wan admits, staring at the line of fabric running across Anakin’s shoulders. He opens his mouth, tries to say more and finds he can’t think of the proper words. 

“Okay,” Anakin says easily even though he must be confused. “What do you need?”

He shakes his head, then shrugs. He doesn’t like this, this version of himself who has everything he has ever wanted and still wants more. And if he can’t like this part of him, how can he ask Anakin to? How can he possibly ask for more when he already has more than ever thought he would? 

There had been a time when the weight of Anakin’s love felt like something heavy and restrictive. Obi-Wan remembers the feeling like something from a nightmare, that whole night of the Victory celebration. He’d needed Anakin to choose something—the future of the Republic—over him, and he’d been terrified at what it meant when Anakin couldn’t.

But here in this early morning, so far away from Chancellors and Sith, saber wounds and betrayals, Obi-Wan looks at Anakin Skywalker and wants, and he cannot believe it could ever be so simple. But he finds that he’s trying to. 

“You’re too good at it,” Obi-Wan finally says, and Anakin blinks, a furrow appearing in his brows as he stares back at him. “At keeping our relationship hidden.” 

Anakin blinks again, and this time his thumb rubs along his cheekbone. Soft, soothing. Worshipful.

“I suppose I have experience in the matter,” he says carefully. Even after a year, even after all the things they have managed to talk about and all the emotions and hurts they have unpacked, they haven’t talked much about Anakin’s ex-wife. 

Obi-Wan’s feelings on the matter of Anakin’s ex-wife are tangled and complicated, half belonging to an Initiate who spent years trying to chase after Master Skywalker’s attention and half belonging to a shameful, jealous lover who isn’t even sure he wants to marry the man and yet is tied up in knots all the same at the thought that his partner loved someone else more. 

“But I thought that’s what we’d decided to do, sweetheart,” Anakin prompts.

Their relationship—it’s—well. Jedi often develop relationships with other Jedi, and so long as the Code remains unbroken, the Council turns a blind eye. And two years after the end of the war for the Republic that tested all of them to the most extreme, neither Anakin or Obi-Wan would be the first Jedi to turn to the comfort of another in order to make it through the night.

But Jedi Masters and newly Knighted Jedi do not form these relationships. It borders on inappropriate. It would be inappropriate if the Jedi Council knew what took place between Anakin and Obi-Wan when Obi-Wan was still a padawan. They are skirting the edges on acceptable, and that is only because they have kept their relationship and its severity—and its origins—shrouded in secrecy.

“It is,” Obi-Wan agrees, gnawing at the soft skin of his lip. “It is, it’s just—you never leave anything here. You take everything with you, and it’s fine, I don’t—I understand why, of course, we agreed—we want to keep this quiet and anyway, you still live in different quarters, with Ahsoka, as you should as her master, so I understand and it’s fine, it’s just—why are you smiling?”

Anakin’s smile grows wider, a veritable grin now as his thumb turns into a rough palm that cups his face. “I don’t know,” the Jedi master says. “I suppose I thought something was truly wrong, and I am relieved to know that it has been this that is troubling you.”

Obi-Wan can feel the force of his frown curve down the corners of his lips. It makes him feel bitter, the idea of Anakin treating him like he’s a small child catastrophizing over thin air, worrying himself silly over nothing much. 

This in turn makes him feel petty. “Some days I look around and I see more remnants of Quinlan Vos in these quarters than I see of you, Master Skywalker. But if you’re fine with that, then I am as well.”

Anakin’s smile flickers out as if doused by a very powerful wave of water. “What, do you want me to move in?” he asks, voice rough and abrupt. Obi-Wan purses his lips to keep himself from smiling and raises his eyebrows. Anakin is nothing if not predictable. Or perhaps Obi-Wan just knows him that well. “I can if you’d like, padawan,” he adds, turning his head sharply to survey Obi-Wan’s sitting room and kitchen as if he can pick apart which items left over the surfaces belong to Obi-Wan and which belong to Vos.

“I know why you can’t, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, again. He reaches up and touches Anakin’s cheek, turning his head back to face him and allowing his fingers to dance over the very tip of the scar there. “Because of our agreement, because of your padawan, because you have prior obligations. I understand, I do. I just—I thought there would be…more proof. Just between us. That you spent time here, with me. That you stayed, that you…lingered.”

Anakin’s hands tighten on Obi-Wan’s waist. He’s back to smiling again, now that Vos’s name is no longer a part of their conversation. “Baby,” he says. It should make Obi-Wan bristle, but it doesn’t. Not Anakin. Not that tone. Not ever. “I seem to remember a padawan who would snap at me in front of my own troops if I left so much as a cloak outside of my quarters—on my own warship.” 

Obi-Wan can feel his cheeks heating, and he looks sheepishly down at the opened vee of Anakin’s outer robe. “In hindsight, I suppose you let me get away with far more than you should have.”

“Always,” Anakin agrees, like it’s a vow. His tone sobers and levels out a moment later, his thumb beginning to stroke Obi-Wan’s cheek once more. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he murmurs. “I thought you liked your space, clear of any of my clutter. And I was worried that someone would visit and think it strange you had so many sets of dark robes hanging in your wardrobe when your color palette is completely different.”

“Who do you think is visiting me and inspecting my wardrobe?” Obi-Wan says, half torn between amusement and exasperation. It’s hard to feel anything heavier, like true ire or frustration, when Anakin Skywalker is holding him close and like he is something precious.

“Mm,” Anakin says and he bends forward, brushes his nose along the edge of Obi-Wan’s jaw and up to the soft part of his ear. “Better be no one in your sleeping quarters but me, baby.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Obi-Wan mutters, but his eyes have slipped to half mast just under his careful touch. “I want your things.”

Master Skywalker raises an eyebrow. For a man nearing his forties, Obi-Wan reflects, he’s quite childish at times.

Obi-Wan shoves at his chest, not hard. “Your cloaks and such,” he clarifies. “Whatever project you’re working on. A spare datapaad. I want—evidence. That you’d be here, with me. If you had no prior obligations. If you just had me.” 

“Done,” Anakin agrees—quick and sure and simple. It’s everything Obi-Wan needs to hear. It’s everything that that single jar of caf mix could not tell him. “I promise you if there is one thing that these past few years have taught me it is that it is so much easier to stay beside you than it is to force myself to leave.”

“Oh,” Obi-Wan says on a sigh, pushing forward until he can tuck his face up against Anakin’s neck. “That’s—”

“Look, alright,” his lover continues, voice picking up pitch and pace now that the former general has thought of a battle plan. Obi-Wan has to huff a laugh. “If you’re sure—” he pauses, an abrupt cessation of speech followed by a hand tightening in the strands of his hair.

Obi-Wan makes a noise of agreement, swallowing down his scoff. Sure? Of course he’s sure. This is Anakin Skywalker. This is Obi-Wan Kenobi.

“It may actually be fairly easy then,” Anakin says. “The start of next week, I mean—I’m moving anyway. I can take half those boxes into the new quarters, and then move half of them here if you’d create room in your wardrobe for some of my clothes, sweetheart.”

“What?” Obi-Wan pulls away. He can feel his forehead wrinkling with the force of his confusion. “Why would you be moving out of your current quarters?”

Anakin pulls back suddenly, and he looks strangely, startlingly pale. “Kark,” he says. “Obi-Wan. Shit.”

“What,” Obi-Wan says slowly. Knights don't tend to move quarters unless they've just become Knights or...they've just finished training their Padawan and no longer desire a double-roomed sleeping quarters. Which, given that Anakin has been a Knight for decades now, must mean.... “Oh. Oh Force, you’re putting Ahsoka up for her trials?”

“Baby—”

“Oh Force, Anakin!” Obi-Wan snaps, shoving him away so he can more clearly see his face. “I’m not supposed to know!”

“Look—”

“No, stop it—you’ve said enough already! Shit, does she know?”

“Uh.”

“Anakin!” 

“I’m confused, Obi-Wan, do you want me to speak or be quiet?” Anakin asks, and he has the nerve to smirk slightly at him, even as he winces.

Obi-Wan shoves at his chest. “You’re the worst,” he snaps, blinking sightlessly at Anakin’s collarbone with narrowed eyes. “Shit, how am I supposed to look at her now? I know she’s going to be Knighted, you know she’s going to be Knighted, but she doesn’t because she can’t, not until the Jedi Council informs her of her Trials—”

“Technically,” Anakin says, “she’ll have to pass her Trials before she’ll be Knighted, so there’s a chance—”

Obi-Wan pushes at his chest again. “Shut up,” he commands. “Of course she’ll pass her Trials, what the fuck, Anakin.”

“Yeah, she will,” Anakin agrees, with the sort of quiet pride that Jedi masters reserve for conversations revolving around their padawans.

Obi-Wan wants to hit him again. “This is awful,” he decides, pushing him far enough away that he can wriggle down from the counter and back onto his feet. “You’re awful.”

“Well, wait a moment,” Anakin says, hand falling to his wrist and tugging him back closer to his body. “Why don’t we pause for a moment and put this into perspective, yeah? Yes, I accidentally told you that Ahsoka’s going to be Knighted in a few days—”

“A few days?”

“—but her Knighting means that I’ll be able to move more of my things here, which you said you wanted. Because I’ll be moving to different quarters anyway.” 

Obi-Wan scowls. “The worst,” he says, ripping his arm away from Anakin’s touch and storming into his room. “I’m not talking to you,” he says over his shoulder as he shuts the door.

But, on his way back out the quarters, fully dressed in his Knight robes, he still storms over to the sofa where Anakin has retired to sulk and kisses him shortly in farewell. 

He’s not a monster or anything.

“Sith’s hells, Kenobi, you’re a monster,” Quinlan Vos whistles out between his teeth, staring at him in betrayal. “Why the kriff  would you tell me that?”

Obi-Wan groans and collapses backwards in the grass. “I couldn’t be the only one who knows,” he defends, squinting up at the tall ceilings of the Room of a Thousand Fountains.

“You weren’t,” Quin replies, pushing at his shoulder. “You could have talked about her fucking Trials all you wanted with your creche-robbing husband.”

“Don’t call him that,” Obi-Wan says, pushing back at Quin blindly. “And anyway, I’m not talking to him right now.”

“Why the fuck would you do that,” his friend asks, some combination of mystified and indignant. “Did you forget what he was like the last time you stopped talking to him?”

Obi-Wan turns his head to glare at Quin. “This is different,” he says.

“Yeah, cause Anakin Skywalker’s just gotten saner in the time you and him have actually been together.”

“Shut up,” Obi-Wan says defensively. When he talks to Quin about Anakin, he’s always at least half defensive, even when he’s rather certain that privately, secretly, Quin and Anakin get along more than they’d ever admit to these days.

Vos holds up his hands in a shrug before dropping down into the grass beside him. “Putting aside the fact that our friend is going to be a Jedi Knight by the end of the week for a moment, I do have to wonder how you got Skywalker to tell you?”

Obi-Wan thinks of saying something blithe like he’d tell me anything, just to derail the conversation for a few more minutes, but there’s little point to it. The conversation will happen. 

In truth, he probably ran to Quinlan first with the news of Ahsoka’s Knighting ceremony in hopes that that would lead to this.

“I asked him to spend more nights with me,” he admits, looking back up at the room’s ceiling. Afraid suddenly, he thinks, of looking at his friend. “I told him that…that I wanted more of him. In my—with me.”

Quin’s quiet, speculative, and thoughtful for a moment. For two. Then, “For the love of the Force, Kenobi, tell me you wanted to say, in my space. And not in your anything else.”

“Quinlan!”

“Because I like to think of myself as the very best sort of friend, but I’ve thought enough about Anakin Skywalker’s sex life to last me the rest of my days, I promise, Obi-Wan. Not another word on the subject if the subject involves you wanting Anakin Skywalker in any more of your places, alright, I swear on the For—”

“Shut up,” Obi-Wan decides, rolling over onto his side so that he can shove his hands into Quinlan’s grinning face. “Shut up, shut up—”

It’s laughably easy, how quickly Vos is able to capture his wrists and pin him down. But then, one of them has been training for the past several years to be the next great Jedi Spymaster. 

And the other has spent the past year being pinned down in various ways with various levels of struggle involved.

They pant against each other for a moment before Quin lets him go and rolls back onto his side. “What’s bothering you then, Obi?” he asks quietly, pushing forward for one last shove against the side of his shoulder. “You ask him to move in, he agrees, and it’s left you with that look in your eyes.”

Obi-Wan scowls. “What look in my eyes?”

“Like you’d let yourself pout if you forgot for one moment you were a respectable Jedi Knight and you think those don’t pout.”

Obi-Wan weighs his options and then turns back onto his side to hit him again. 

A minute later, after they part again, panting and probably bruised once more, Obi-Wan thumps his head down onto the grass once more. 

This time, the silence lingers between them, expectant. Obi-Wan rolls onto his side. Quinlan’s already looking at him. He’s probably been looking at him the whole time. He can wait him out for ages. It’s what makes him such a good spymaster. It’s what makes him such a good friend.

“It doesn’t bother you?” he asks finally, quietly. “That I want him with me, all the time? That I was—relieved, when he said he was moving from his quarters because he could move more of his things into my own quarters?”

There’s something searching in Quin’s eyes. He furrows his eyebrows. “Does it bother you?” he asks.

Obi-Wan weighs the question, thinks about his answer. “It bothers me,” he admits finally, softly, “that I love him too much to be the Jedi I should be.”

“Obi-Wan,” Quin says, and he reaches out, grasps his shoulder and shakes it once, gently. “Do you not understand where this story ends for you, my friend?”

It’s Obi-Wan’s turn to blink, to look confused. “I’m sorry?”

“You will leave the Order eventually,” his friend says, like it is common sense. Like it is the future set in stone. “To be with him, because you will never be able to be with him completely if you stay, and you’ve wanted that too long to be satisfied with anything less.”

Obi-Wan opens his mouth to argue back automatically, but the words don’t come when he needs them to. He shuts it. Leave the Order. Leave the Order?

“I’ve seen this coming for the past year and a half,” Vos adds, like it’s some sort of a competition. “After seeing the way you two are together? The way you are when you have to be apart? There’s no way you’d be satisfied as a Jedi for the rest of your life, not when you could be some married couple doing, ah, aid and recovery work in the Mid Rim or something.”

“We’ve done fine for this long,” Obi-Wan argues, reaching up and rubbing a hand over his mouth. Even as he speaks, he knows the words aren’t as true as he’d like them to be. After all, have they been fine? It has been a year of secrecy and shadows and Obi-Wan has only been made desperate for more of Anakin Skywalker. 

He’d presented the issue to Anakin as one of permanence, or of a private matter between the two of them alone. Of course Anakin could leave more of his possessions in Obi-Wan’s quarters. No one would find them there and find out about their relationship, and Obi-Wan would have something to hold onto, to look at during the days and nights when they were separated that would prove to him that he had not just made everything up in a fit of desperate delusion.

But the hazy future that Vos has created with only a few words—it sounds promising. Beautiful. Simple.

They could leave the Order and still work to create good in a galaxy scarred by the war. They could do so and live together, love together openly and without shadows. They could—they could marry, perhaps, in a few years. They could build a home somewhere out amongst the stars.

Quin nudges him softly, and it’s only then that Obi-Wan realizes he’s been quiet for far too long.

“If I were to leave the Order,” Obi-Wan says, slowly, “how would you feel about that?”

Because Vos’ negative feelings on the matter wouldn’t be enough to hold Obi-Wan back if this slim wisp of a dream of a future crystalized into a path that Anakin would walk by his side, but it would still matter.

To Obi-Wan.

Vos’ negative feelings on the matter would probably be nothing but encouragement to Anakin, honestly.

Quinlan blinks and then a smile blooms across his face, something small and genuine and lovely. “Course it doesn’t matter to me,” he says. “Obi-Wan, I’m training to be the next great Spymaster of the Jedi Order. There’s nowhere in the galaxy you could land that I would not find you.”

He pauses, thinks about it, and nudges Obi-Wan’s shoulder again. “Tell that to Skywalker,” he says. “And make it sound like a threat.” 

Obi-Wan lets out a surprised bark of laughter, nudges him back.

“But not too much like a threat, mind you,” Quinlan adds. “I still remember what Skywalker did to the last guy to threaten you, and I like my head firmly attached to my body.”

“Sit down,” Obi-Wan orders as soon as he’s through the doors to Anakin’s quarters and he spies the man standing by the counter with a glass of golden liquor in his hand.

“I thought you weren’t speaking to me,” Anakin points out, even as he allows himself to be backed up into his own living area, sitting in the lone chair next to the sofa when the backs of his calves hit its seat.

“I’m not, Master Skywalker,” Obi-Wan snaps, crawling into his lap the moment he’s down. 

Anakin’s eyes go dark even as his eyebrows go up. “Angry or horny?” he asks, sounding like he wouldn’t care much if it were one over the other. That makes sense really, when Obi-Wan thinks about it. Furious at him or desperate for him, these days Obi-Wan almost always wants Anakin Skywalker’s touch.

Now though, he grabs the glass from Anakin’s hand and swallows down the rest of its liquid. It burns, but then he’s had a year to get used to the taste of the acid that his lover prefers to drink. He has to admit, it tastes better straight from Anakin’s lips.

Anakin’s hands find their way to his waist and pull him closer so that he’s firmly seated on his lap. “That was mine, padawan.”

“Shut up,” Obi-Wan says and then he kisses him.

He’s never going to get tired of kissing Anakin Skywalker. He knows this about himself for certain. Obi-Wan was maybe even made to kiss Anakin Skywalker. Their lips move against each other with practiced ease, Anakin yielding against the force of Obi-Wan’s need. The glass is plucked from the loose grip of his hand and set on the table beside them a moment before Anakin’s hand claws its way into his hair, twisting around the strands and yanking him closer, kissing him deeper.

Obi-Wan can’t help but melt into the familiar, electrifying press of Anakin around him, can’t help but open his mouth, suck on Anakin’s tongue when he gets it, clutch at his tunics and rock down into him.

He pulls away when he feels the lines of himself begin to blur, the seemingly endless pit of feral need in his chest coaxed awake by the way that Anakin rakes his hand down his back in something like punishment as he separates them.

Anakin’s eyes are all pupil when he looks at him, and he leans back into the cushion of the chair purposefully, spreading his thighs wider so that Obi-Wan in turn must inch closer to him in order to maintain his balance.

It’s all too tempting of a tableau, and Obi-Wan feels himself sway forward automatically, lips burning with the need to kiss him again, conversation be damned.

“Ahsoka’s in her room,” Anakin says suddenly, voice sounding low and lazy as he rests his hand on Obi-Wan’s thigh, palm spread wide and possessive. “Doing some research for one of her classes.”

“Shit,” Obi-Wan says, and Anakin has the nerve to laugh at him as he scrambles off his lap. “Shut up,” he snaps at him again, wiping at his lips with the back of his hand and wondering how kiss-slick they’d look if Ahsoka came out of her room at the moment.

She’s known about them for a while now. She knew about them first, to be fair, and she’s given first her tacit approval and then her actual approval once Obi-Wan and Anakin worked out their issues and actually got together. 

But Obi-Wan has taken great pains to shield the more…graphic side of their relationship from her, out of love or respect or or out of some learned fear instinct, he doesn’t know.

“Wait, just–wait a minute, would you,” Anakin says, and he stands quickly when Obi-Wan strides towards the door, grabbing him—gently—by the wrist and pulling him back into his body. “Are you speaking to me again?” he asks quietly, as if he really truly cares about the answer, as if the answer determines whether or not he chases after him or lets him go.

Obi-Wan purses his lips and averts his eyes, weighing what he thinks he wants to say in his head. He knows that he should probably spend more time thinking about this, debating the positives and the negatives in his own mind before he tells Anakin his thoughts. 

But he wants to trust his instinct on this. He wants to believe in the possibility of something beautiful without picking it apart to analyze its beating heart.

He blinks and suddenly he’s a year and more into the past and he’s just a senior padawan who’s so in love with Master Skywalker he can’t even look at him without feeling his breath speed up.

They’d been like this before, Obi-Wan remembers. Obi-Wan remembers very well. He’d gone to visit Master Skywalker. He’d ended up in his lap. He’d ended up—

“Push me against the wall,” Obi-Wan murmurs, and Anakin’s eyes flash, like he remembers too. Obi-Wan hopes he does.

“Fuck,” Anakin mutters in response and he uses his grip on Obi-Wan’s wrist to pull him into his arms and then up against the door itself. “I ever tell you how much I wanted to kiss you then, sweetheart?” he asks, voice so low that it’s scraping over asteroids. His hand flexes on Obi-Wan’s wrist, squeezes harder as if he can’t help himself. “Only reason I didn’t was because I knew you’d be so good. Too good to let you go again, not with just a taste.”

Obi-Wan inhales sharply, tilting his head back so that it thunks against the door. He keeps Anakin in his line of sight, some long forgotten prey instinct rearing its head. “I ever tell you how much I wanted you to kiss me, Master?” he murmurs, wrapping his free hand around the back of Anakin’s neck and caressing the soft skin at the edge of his hairline. “How safe you made me feel when you put me up against the door and your body, like everything in the galaxy would have to get through you before it could ever touch me?”

“Always,” Anakin murmurs like it’s a vow, and it’s exactly what Obi-Wan needs to hear even though he didn’t even realize it until this very moment.

He tightens his hold on his master and wets his lip and says, “One day, probably at least a few years from now, maybe many years from now, maybe tomorrow, I’m going to want to leave the Order.”

Anakin’s attention is fixed completely on him, blue eyes pinned to his as if Obi-Wan is telling him the secrets of the Force itself. 

“It’s not because I resent the Order or feel like I need to run from it. It’s not that this isn’t enough for me, what we’re doing now. It is. It’s more than I ever thought I’d get, if I’m being honest. It’s—it’s everything. Everything I need right now. But one day, I’m going to want to leave the Order. And—and I thought you should know. And I—I want to know. I guess. I want to know what you would do, if I came to you. And told you that I was leaving.”

He drops his eyes away and then looks back up, almost defiantly, unwilling to give up a second of Anakin Skywalker’s attention when it’s on him so intensely.

“Baby,” Anakin says, and he touches his chin softly, tilts it further up to him.

Obi-Wan flattens his lips and stares back at him. 

Anakin smiles gently, softly. Then, the smile grows across his face until it’s a full blown grin, so wide and genuine that when he leans in to kiss him, he can’t get his lips to pucker properly. He settles for brushing their noses together instead.

“I’d leave with you tomorrow, baby,” he tells him so sincerely that it’s hard to take the words into his chest, to believe them as much as Anakin clearly wants him to believe them.

He cuts his eyes away and asks Anakin’s throat, “You’d miss Ahsoka’s Knighting ceremony?”

Anakin winces, and then gives him a small, rueful grin. “You’d miss Ahsoka’s Knighting ceremony?” he asks, which isn’t quite an answer.

But Obi-Wan knows his answer and he thinks maybe it can apply to Anakin as well: that he’d miss anything in the galaxy if it were his lover telling him he needed to. He’d trust him blind, he’d trust him to the end of themselves, to their very demise.

“Alright,” he says quietly. “Not tomorrow then. After she passes her Trials. Next Taungsday at the earliest.”

“Next Taungsday it is,” Anakin promises and leans forward to kiss him as if to seal the deal. Obi-Wan tilts his head up to meet him easily, eagerly. Foolishly, perhaps. But faithfully, also. 

“Wait,” another’s voice says. Higher-pitched and veering towards genuine indignation. “I’m being Knighted by next Taungsday?”

“Fuck,” Anakin says, eyes flashing open with utmost reluctance.

Obi-Wan knows the feeling. “I think I preferred it when you vomited over my boots,” he tells his friend, peering over Anakin’s shoulder to glare at a gobsmacked Ahsoka. 

“Trust me,” Ahsoka says, pressing the back of her hand against her mouth. “I haven’t ruled it out.”