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Sometimes, Uncle Luke came to visit when Dad wasn't home.
There were plenty of times when Dad wasn't home, or when Mom wasn't home, or when neither of them were home and Ben was entrusted to Threepio's tender care. Uncle Luke might visit at any of those times. But Ben remembered the times when Dad wasn't there and Uncle Luke came to visit Mom.
The significant visit that ensured Ben's attention to all repeats took place when Ben was twelve. At this advanced age, he considered himself too mature to follow Uncle Luke around like a pet, as he had done on every previous occasion. (He still felt some resentment that he was now clearly too big to sit on Uncle Luke's lap). Therefore he tried to act only normally enthusiastic that his favourite uncle had come to visit, even though his stomach was fluttering even worse than it normally did around Uncle Luke, especially when he gave Ben his customary hug.
They all sat at the kitchen island - and Ben always remembered that kitchen in that year's apartment on Chandrila, with its green, silver and white colourscheme and cloud-level view of the city - and Mom and Uncle Luke talked about what they always talked about in front of Ben: Ben's schooling, Mom's work, Dad's latest adventures in refitting racing engines.
There was dinner at some point, prepared by TL-54, the chef droid who'd been with them for as long as Ben could remember. The sky outside darkened and the Chandrilan skyline became illuminated with blue and yellow lights. Eventually, they all went to bed.
Ben had never slept well: Mom and Dad had stories about their ceaseless attempts to get him to sleep even as a newborn. When he was little, he'd sucked his thumb. Now he did other things.
He took his pillow and hugged it tightly between his thighs. Then he rolled over onto his stomach. He rocked back and forth, and let himself dissolve. There were flickerbirds outside his window, asleep in the cover of the climbing boola; a grass-eater was passing by on buzzing iridescent wings.
Down the corridor, Mom and Uncle Luke made sighs and soft, wet sounds.
He didn't hear it with his ears, but with the Force. The sound - not a sound, a feeling - crept into his mind. The feeling was hot and smelled like sweat and his mother's perfume, and it throbbed. Ben couldn't see what was happening in the room at the end of the hall, but he knew what Mom and Uncle Luke were doing.
It was suddenly stifling under the covers. Ben's skin prickled and his head swam. He rocked more fiercely against his pillow, driving his hips forward - like he knew Uncle Luke was doing down the hall.
He didn't have to think, after that. Movements in the other room grew frenzied, and Ben was swept along with them. It had never felt like this before: the fierce sweet ache, the onrushing wave, the convulsion. Ben shuddered and breathed hard into the top of his pillow - and then, just like he'd wanted to, he slipped into a deep but turbulent sleep.
He came down to breakfast the next morning to find Dad back, and the three of them all chatting and eating. He hesistated, suddenly mortified in case they could tell by looking at him - if Uncle Luke could see in his head - what he'd done last night.
But Uncle Luke's face was guileless when he told Ben not to loiter in the doorway - he was a growing boy, surely he was going to help his uncle finish this? And, because Ben was indeed a growing boy and more or less constantly hungry, he did. He kept his attention on his food and not on anybody else, because Mom's robe was gaping open a little and he could see a tiny red mark on the curve of her breast and he knew, he knew that Uncle Luke had put it there.
After that, it became an obsession. Every time Uncle Luke turned up, Ben was torn between trying to stay up late to listen to the grown-ups talk, and wishing for them to go to bed. He was still getting older and bigger, and his understanding of what they did was growing. He'd known about sex, of course - everybody knew about that, from the primary school sex education if nothing else - but this was more than sex. This was why people had sex.
When Uncle Luke wasn't there, he listened to his father and mother. It had been hard, at first, to listen in - perhaps because he had to think about it and do it deliberately, it seemed more taboo. But once he did, it was almost as good.
He also developed the habit of coming to chat with Mom while she was in the bath. She liked long baths to relax after Senate meetings, with clouds of floral steam. Ben would perch on the closed toilet lid and hand her things when she asked for them, and they would talk.
Normally she stayed in the deep tub covered up to her neck, with only her knees poking out of the water; but sometimes she'd move or the water would clear, and Ben would clearly see the tops of her breasts, the hint of a nipple. Sometimes he had to draw up one leg to hide his reaction.
He found that he was greedy, avaricious, a collector: of sights, sounds, smells. His memory of Mom leaning over to tuck him into bed so her robe and nightgown gaped to reveal her breasts was worn and faded like a much-handled holo; the smell of goldflower bath salts was unbearably erotic; and the sound of his mother's sigh made him think of nights he'd heard the same noise.
But he was also secretive. He hoarded these feelings and memories, always adding to the store, but ever-watchful lest somebody should catch him at it, catch him out. He watched under lowered eyelashes, and was forever on edge in case somebody should notice where his gaze was directed.
Things changed a few years later, when he was sent away.
He had wondered, sometimes, whether part of the reason he'd been sent off to live with Uncle Luke was that they'd noticed - but his occasional bouts of uncontrollable destructive rage were, he had to admit, more likely; or the way people couldn't seem to keep their minds closed around him, and Mom and Dad never understood that he wasn't doing it on purpose.
So, he went to live with Uncle Luke, to learn to levitate things only when he meant to and stop being so angry all the time.
This meant he couldn't talk with Mom while she was in the bath, which was bad. On the other hand, it also meant that he didn't have to worry about Mom (or, stars forbid, Dad) noticing that he couldn't keep his eyes on her face.
Because adolescence was cruel, he rapidly developed a new problem.
Uncle Luke had bathed naked with the other boys on Tatooine, all of them sharing bathwater to conserve moisture, and worked stripped to the waist when the wind was low. Of course he wasn't self-conscious to strip naked in the showers with his nephew. Surely they'd shared a shower once or twice when Ben was small - some dim childhood memory - but the sight of his uncle turning away to soak his hair in the running water, revealing that his tan did not extend past his waist, was still profoundly shocking to Ben.
He got hurriedly into the shower before Uncle Luke could ask him why he'd come over shy, and prayed the whole time that he wouldn't get an erection. He would have counted tiles, but the walls were only earth.
He had been apprehensive of a dormitory sleeping arrangement: he was simultaneously eager to make friends, and well aware that forced proximity would not commend his presence to the other students. The individual 'cells' provided him not so much with room for his personal effects as a space to rage in private, a kind of protective cage.
He spent two sweaty nights caught between the crushing need to sleep after so much mental exertion in the Force, and the memory of Uncle Luke's body as he'd turned away, the outlines and shapes, the feel of his skin imagined so vividly under his clumsy hands.
On the third night, he learnt what Mom and her brother did when Uncle Luke was too busy to visit.
He was dreaming of starships. He was on a stranger's ship, except it was the Falcon with a few extra rooms, including his second grade classroom. He had to get them out of port, but there were endless nonsensical delays that he nonetheless agreed to. It was a very strange and frustrating experience, and he wasn't completely sorry to rise out of the dream to the edge of consciousness.
Across the corridor, something was pulsing. Something hot uncoiled. Ben reached out, anticipation so high his legs trembled.
It was Mom and Uncle Luke, again - only Mom wasn't at the Praxeum, she couldn't be, and Uncle Luke was there, but Ben knew exactly what they were doing together. The Force was vibrating, throbbing between them, as they made love to each other while planets apart.
What did Mom look like right now? Was she awake in the empty marital bed? Was Dad snoring right next to her as she tried not to wake him? Or was she making love to Dad at the same time as Uncle Luke used the Force? Ben had to shove his hand down his sleep pants at that last idea.
What did Uncle Luke look like right now? Ben envisioned him on his hands and knees on the mattress, his ass rising and flexing as he thrust back and forth into thin air. He'd hang his head and bite his lips and pant, body rocking back and forth, and Ben could so easily come up behind him and put his dick inside him.
He rolled over and let the fantasy take him, immersing himself in the wet sounds and sighs of his mother and uncle and imagining himself in there too, fucking Uncle Luke while Uncle Luke was fucking Mom. He shoved his face into his pillow like he was trying to smother himself and imagined that it was their combined scent he was breathing in. He fucked the mattress, grabbing the headboard for leverage and feeling hot tears spill out of his eyes.
He came when they came, the hot dissolving onrush of pleasure making him cry out, muffled, into his pillow. They loved - they loved -
He lay awake in the hours until dawn, so fearful he was almost sick with it, fearful of getting caught out - but not guilty. And slowly his fear abated, when nobody came.