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Ahsoka shrugs artlessly, head coming to rest on her upturned palm as she leans on the table. She’s four drinks in, Obi-Wan thinks, but it’s not as if he’s really been counting. This is supposed to be a celebration—her celebration. Friends don’t count how many drinks their friends have had, not when they’re supposed to be celebrating the fact that one friend has just returned from her first solo mission, alive and well.
Planet she’d been sent to also still alive and well, ostensibly.
So Obi-Wan isn’t counting because he’s celebrating. But he is noticing. Usually Ahsoka never orders more than two rounds before she’s requesting a cup of water from the serving droid. Something to do with her master’s disapproval, or mandatory early morning meditations, or the way that her master’s disapproval regarding excessive drinking seems to always translate into early morning meditation sessions.
Obi-Wan doesn’t know. He’s never really asked, has in fact built vast swathes of his life around the longterm goal of thinking about and asking after Jedi Master Anakin Skywalker as little as possible. It makes the whole thing easier to bear, really. If he just—doesn’t let it linger in his mind, doesn’t entertain the maybes. Like they’ll disappear eventually, given enough time, given enough distance.
Though like many other areas in his life, his attempts so far have resulted in fuck all.
He reaches blindly for his drink and takes a larger sip, clutching his cup in between his hands like an anchor.
At least Quinlan is here next to him, a long line pressed up against him within the confines of the booth—perhaps a much better anchor than the drink. At least certainly a better friend than Obi-Wan.
“That’s a long face for a padawan to wear so soon after her first solo mission,” Quin points out, leaning forward to knock his gloved hand lightly against Ahsoka’s elbow. She gives him a doleful look, markings around her eyes seeming to droop downward from the force of her frown.
Quinlan leans back in his seat, glancing at Obi-Wan in confusion. Obi-Wan shrugs. He’d thought Ahsoka’s mission had gone well. She’d seemed happy enough when she’d met them in the Temple’s Eastern Entrance Hall this evening. Maybe she’s just the kind of person to go maudlin and bitter after four drinks. Obi-Wan can’t quite remember if he’s ever seen her like this.
“We’re celebrating,” Quinlan adds, stretching out the syllables of the word until it sounds like a question. He lifts his drink up into the air, faux-toast, and then takes a swallow. “To Ahsoka,” his elbow jams into Obi-Wan’s side and Obi-Wan jerks his arm into the air as well.
“Congratulations,” he says, and he means it. Thank the Force he can mean it, can appreciate the leaps and bounds Ahsoka has taken towards her Knighthood, her future, even while the bitterness of his own stagnation weighs down his heart. He’d be a failure of a Jedi padawan if he couldn’t; worse still, he’d be a terrible excuse for a friend.
He clears his throat and summons the table’s datapaad towards him with a flick of his fingers. He’s a great friend. He’ll order Ahsoka another round—and himself one as well—just to prove it.
“Rude,” Quin mutters, breath a familiar exhale against Obi-Wan’s neck. He grabs the datapaad from his lax hands.
“You’re a Knight now, Quin,” Obi-Wan tells him. “You can’t be seen letting Jedi padawans buy you drinks, it’s unseemly.”
Quin’s mouth screws up into something that’s half-pride, half-exasperation, even as he straightens his shoulders, a new instinct he can’t help. He wears his Knighthood well. Obi-Wan is happy for him, has heard only some of what he did during the war and knows the honor was overdue, that maybe no one deserved it more than his friend.
“I’ll show you unseemly,” Quinlan mutters, canting his head toward Obi-Wan to hide his mouth from Ahsoka, even though her wrinkled nose says that she’s definitely heard him anyway. Obi-Wan shoves back against him, biting at the inside of his cheek to control his smile.
Many, many things in his life remain the same, even after the war that changed the galaxy. Not all of them are bad though. At least there is still Quinlan at his side, in his space like he belongs there, leaning away only to grab the newest round of drinks from the serving droid and pass them out after stealing a sip of each.
“What?” Quin says, defensive, his latest drink clutched in his hand on the far side of his body. “I’m testing for poison. Really, you should be thanking me.”
“The war has been over for the better part of a year now,” Obi-Wan points out. “Who do you think is lurking in the shadows and trying to poison wayward Jedi padawans these days?”
“You can never be too safe,” Quinlan replies pompously, wagging his finger in his direction. “I would hate to have to tell Master Skywalker and Master Jinn that their padawans are in the Halls of Healing because I let them be poisoned.”
Obi-Wan rolls his eyes, losing the fight against his smile which he’s sure was Quinlan’s mission from the beginning. There’s something incredibly comical about the mental picture of Qui-Gon and Master Skywalker in the Halls of Healing, stoically listening to Quinlan describe some poisoning attack or another that have landed both their padawans in the wings for a night. Master Jinn would probably be placid and reassuring in the face of Quinlan’s hypothetical stress, if he were even on planet in time to show up anyway.
And Master Skywalker—Obi-Wan doesn’t know. Certainly, the man would be livid to find his padawan injured, but Master Skywalker’s rage rarely materializes as more than silent glowers and crossed arms that manage to convey his absolute disgust and disapproval. At least, from what Obi-Wan has seen. During the war. Barring one or two special circumstances. That he doesn’t want to think about right now.
So instead he turns to share a commiserating look with Ahsoka, friend and fellow padawan. But she’s not even looking at them, her eyes focused instead on the chunks of ice floating around her cup as she stirs her straw listlessly.
Obi-Wan blinks. He looks back at Quinlan, who shakes his head furiously and elbows him in the ribs with a nod back in Ahsoka’s direction. But Obi-Wan is far underequipped to lead this charge, and if the war taught him one thing, it’s to never start a campaign you cannot see yourself finishing. He tries to convey this to Quinlan with his eyes, but either one of them or both of them is too drunk because his message falls into the gap between their bodies and all Obi-Wan gets is a harsh kick to the back of his knee.
“Ow, kriff—” Obi-Wan yelps. With a glower that could maybe rival Master Skywalker, he looks at his other, better and kinder friend. “Ahsoka—”
“I think Barriss is going to leave the Order,” Ahsoka blurts, putting her hands flat on the table and blinking at them with watery eyes.
Obi-Wan opens and closes his mouth. He can feel Quinlan next to him, suddenly still and quiet and probably searching for his own words, though he’s not confident that Quin will be able to find any helpful ones.
“How…sure are you?” he asks, which really isn’t much better, but Ahsoka isn’t exactly getting their best after waiting until they’re five drinks in to drop such an announcement.
She sniffs and rubs at one of the markings beneath her eyes. “Really, really sure,” she says, back to morose, as if the confession has taken all of the energy out of her.
“Because…” Obi-Wan trails off, folding a question into the length of his pause.
“I went around to her quarters as soon as I got back, cause–she wasn’t answering any of the messages I sent while I was away, and usually we talk, you know, not all the time, but a lot—”
Obi-Wan blinks and then frowns; of course he knows about Ahsoka’s crush on Barriss. He uses his eyes and his ears, after all, and only a complete recluse married to the Jedi Code would have no idea that Ahsoka had a serious ongoing infatuation with the newly-Knighted Barriss Offee.
He just hadn’t realized they were friends as well, though the only person he can blame for that is himself. For all the things they talk about, for all the nights they’ve spent huddled together on their masters’ starships making sense of tragedy and victory and those days where they couldn’t tell the difference, Obi-Wan never probed too deeply into her love life.
Oh, sex is a topic well-tred among the three of them, an inevitability when two of the three regularly fall into bed together for no other reason than sheer boredom and a desire to feel good. Sex is easy to talk about, to joke about amongst friends. But feelings—Obi-Wan has always shied away from that sort of conversation with Ahsoka instinctively.
Afraid, probably. That she’d turn the question back on him. That she’d take one look at him and know.
So he knew—knows—about the crush and its enormity, if only by measuring the shadows cast by Barriss’ absences. He hadn’t realized they talked enough for Ahsoka to go looking for her when her comm went quiet.
“And she said,” Ahsoka is saying, playing with the wilted straw leaning up against the side of her cup, “she said that she thought it was best that maybe we don’t…” her hand rises, gestures weakly like some dying thing. She punctuates the non-sentence, non-explanation with a large gulp of her drink, and Obi-Wan feels like a terrible friend. His chest hurts from the feeling, from the guilt of it. For never asking. For never wanting to talk with her about this, about the thorniness of love one knows they shouldn’t feel as deeply as they do, just because he was afraid she’d—she’d…
Quinlan pushes a cup towards her, a silent offering Ahsoka takes him up on in a heartbeat. A moment too late, Obi-Wan realizes that it’s his drink that’s been sacrificed away—he shoots Quinlan a dirty look, but the man doesn’t even have the decency to acknowledge him, eyes on Ahsoka and eyebrows curved inward then upward in an expression of empathetic sympathy.
“Cause our paths were going to be different,” Ahsoka adds, making a face at the taste of Obi-Wan’s drink before taking another sip anyway because she’s always been a dirty little opportunist. “She said she talked to Luminara about…I don’t know. Something. She wouldn’t tell me. Just said that it wasn’t fair of her to keep pretending otherwise, not when she felt that…her time with the Order was drawing to a close and mine wasn’t.”
Obi-Wan blinks. Well, that definitely does sound as if Barriss is planning to leave the Jedi Temple in short order.
She wouldn’t even be the first to consider such a thing. The war has been over for several months at this point, immediate aftermath fading into the New Way of Doing Things. And every week it seems that another Jedi, another padawan has turned their resignation into the Council and left the Temple life behind them.
It’s just never before been someone Obi-Wan really knew. And he supposes it still isn’t, because as much as Ahsoka and Barriss apparently chat daily, she’s never spent time with all of them together. And outside of a few missions during the war, Barriss and Obi-Wan have had little chance to talk without Ahsoka there at all.
But Ahsoka’s pain is obvious, and Obi-Wan feels a faint bruise of it against his own heart. “Kriff, Ahsoka,” he says, reaching across the table and grabbing her wrist. “I’m sorry.”
She gives him a thin, small smile and a smaller shrug. “It is the way it is,” she mutters, though even a fool could see her heart isn’t in it.
“Still,” Quin shakes his head and leans back in the booth, crossing his arms with a sigh. “It’s a loss.”
He doesn’t say anything else, but then he doesn’t need to. They’d hoped, at the end of the war, that they’d be done with losses.
How naive of them.
“Maybe this is just...momentary doubt she has to work through,” he suggests, giving Ahsoka’s wrist another squeeze and then letting go. “I mean, she’s a new Knight. Who would want to leave the Order after being Knighted?”
It’s all Obi-Wan wants, to be Knighted. To finally be a Jedi Knight. He can’t imagine getting that, receiving that honor and holding his braid in his hands and then just—walking away. That is not how his want works, not how his desires run their courses.
(They don’t run their course, that’s the kriffing problem more often than not. He wants and he doesn’t stop wanting—doesn’t know how.)
But Ahsoka is shaking her head vehemently, almost before he’s closed his mouth. “I think this is it,” she says. “Barriss isn’t the kind of person to deliberate like that. She wouldn’t say anything if she wasn’t already sure.”
Quinlan hums, picking up the datapaad and fiddling with it, gloved fingers tapping around the sleek edges of its case. He must be drunker than Obi-Wan thought; even with gloves on, he’s never been the sort of man to fidget, too wary of getting into the habit of touching objects and slipping up when his fingers are bare.
“Just because someone leaves the Order doesn’t mean that they’re dead to us,” he points out, rubbing his thumb along the corner of the datapaad. “The Jedi are an Order; we’re not a cult. Your paths diverge when you allow their separation.”
Ahsoka’s hands squeeze around her—Obi-Wan’s—cup, head bowed over it like if she stares long enough, answers will melt out of the ice. “She’s made her opinion clear on the subject,” she says. “I’m not gonna—hound her, if she doesn’t…if there’s nothing…if all we’ll have is what we already had…then fine.”
She downs the rest of her drink in one swoop, pushing her—Obi-Wan’s—glass away from her and eyeing the datapaad in Quin’s hands like it’s made of precious gemstones.
Obi-Wan knows what this is, of course. Drinking away one’s feelings is not exactly a strategy that Ahsoka has just invented on the fly—Obi-Wan’s had a hundred brutal hangovers from attempting the same plan, sure that this time the alcohol that numbs the pain will blanket the ache until it’s buried once and for all.
It never works, but he thinks he’s inclined to let her try. If only because the results may differ, depending on the feelings. The pain.
He glances at Quinlan, who’s already looking at him in turn with one eyebrow raised as if in question. They’ve done this for each other a hundred times, let one go wild and cut loose while the other stayed sober enough to keep an eye on things. It feels like penance of a sort, to do it now for Ahsoka who has never hurt like this before. Or whose hurt has been carefully kept from his view.
And really, it’s not actually a sacrifice at all, not in the grand scheme of things. Better to be here for Ahsoka now than to worry all tomorrow morning if she’s alright. Better he keeps an eye on her over Quinlan, if only so Obi-Wan knows he’s done everything he can. And Quinlan’s probably far better suited towards the carefully casual work of drunkenly asking a drunk person about their feelings.
Quinlan at least doesn’t have to worry that he’ll get too wasted and accidentally confess to being in love with Ahsoka’s Jedi master.
So there’s that.
Obi-Wan spares a forlorn glance towards his empty glass at Ahsoka’s elbow, the melting ice cubes within it still stained with the luminescence of the liquor. “Get us another round, won’t you, Quin? And a water for me.”
Quinlan’s responding smirk is far too self-satisfied, but before he can say anything else, Ahsoka looks up from her cup, eyes alight with the spark she gets when she has decided on a plan of action that most everyone in their right minds would call ‘bad’, if not ‘terrible’.
“I want to go dancing,” she declares, planting her hands on the surface of the table and standing. “Where do you go dancing down here?”
She directs this question straight at Obi-Wan, which is fair if a little blunt. After all, Obi-Wan is far from the only padawan who has routinely taken advantage of his master’s wandering attention to sneak away from the Temple to the seedy underbelly of the Coruscanti lower levels. Though maybe no one else has made quite a reputation for it as he has.
“We’re not too far from the Space Cadet,” Obi-Wan says slowly. “It’s alright.”
Cadet’s fine, a typical Coruscanti club with a dance floor spanning six different levels and all the dark corners one could want to get themselves lost in. The bouncers at the door look the other way if you’re pretty enough, even if you’re fall down drunk. It’s free besides—though most places Obi-Wan’s ventured into since the end of the war haven’t made him pay a dime the moment they catch sight of his padawan braid. A perk of being a Jedi in the new landscape of the galaxy after the war.
“It’s too early for Cadet,” Vos points out with a wave of his hand. “If you want to go out, Ahsoka, we should go to Blue Milk.”
Obi-Wan wrinkles his nose automatically. “Blue Milk is never good,” he tells Ahsoka. “Trust me, Quinlan has terrible taste.”
“Don’t insult yourself like that, friend,” Quin says, clapping his shoulder. “And don’t listen to him, ‘Soka; Obi-Wan’s favorite places to dance are ordered by how many free drinks he usually gets there, not about the actual music. It’s because he can’t dance.”
“I also consider how often someone’s tried to sell me death sticks, thank you,” Obi-Wan sniffs. Ahsoka’s expression changes, going considering in a way that he doesn’t like. “Not that I’ve ever taken anyone up on the offer. Or that you will either tonight.”
It’s a bit of a threat, bit of a warning. Obi-Wan likes to think of it as healthy boundary-setting, which is important to do on nights like these.
“Also,” he says as the serving droid returns to their table laden down with two twisted glass cups filled to the brim with sloshing golden liquid and one steel tumbler of water, “I’m a great dancer.”
Ahsoka bites her lip to stop herself from smiling—Quinlan is nowhere near as kind. “You are many things,” he disagrees, passing Obi-Wan his cup of water with a flourish. “A dancer is not one of them.”
“Cheers,” Obi-Wan says dryly, raising his new cup into the air. “To honest friends.”
If the words sound off, no one calls him on it. Quin’s shoulder brushes against his, reassuring. Constant. Ahsoka tips her glass back, cheeks flushed a darker orange from the heat of the bar and the alcohol and whatever else she has kept within her, bundled up tight.
No one’s going to call Obi-Wan out for being a hypocrite.
Probably because even if he’s a liar, he’s a damn good one.
“Dancing,” Ahsoka demands the moment she slams her cup down onto the table. Her eyes flicker between Quin and Obi-Wan, furrow between her eye markings as if to warn them that she will not be distracted from this mission. “Where?”
Obi-Wan hesitates. Technically, the decision should fall to him given that he’s the one who will have to corral two drunks back to the Temple in one piece. And, well. Blue Milk is never good, but it is the closest club to the Jedi Temple via public speeder routes. And Ahsoka doesn’t sound like she’s looking for a good night—she sounds like she’s just trying to figure out how to get through this night so she can tackle the one after it and the one after that. Obi-Wan knows a thing or two about that.
“Blue Milk is never good,” he stresses to Quinlan, who’s already grinning at him like he’s been able to read his mind.
“They have music, they have drinks, they have heavy pours and people desperate to dance with a pretty boy wearing a padawan braid,” Quin scoffs, tugging at Obi-Wan’s braid before flicking it over his shoulders. “Or beads,” he adds for Ahsoka’s sake, turning to give her that same smarmy smile he’s worn every time he’s gotten his way since they were crechemates.
“That’s good enough for me,” Ahsoka says. She peers into her glass consideringly, then raises up in her seat to try and peer into Vos’s.
Obi-Wan passes her his water. He’ll spend the speeder cab ride from the bar to the club expelling the rest of the alcohol in his system, which he knows Ahsoka and Quin won’t even think of doing. “The first rule of going out dancing is that it’s a long foot race, not a short sprint,” he tells her. “Drink the water.”
She wrinkles her nose at him. “I know that,” she protests. “I’m not a youngling, Obi-Wan. I just finished my first solo mission.”
There’s a smile on his face; he can feel it pulling at his lips, but he thinks maybe it looks more like a grimace. “Okay,” he says. “So actually the first rule of going out dancing is less arguing. Drink the water.”
Ahsoka scowls back at him, but she drinks the water.
“You wanna know the worst part?” Ahsoka asks. It’s more of a shout. The music in the club is deafening, and she has to lean all the way into Obi-Wan’s body just to fit her mouth up to his ear.
Which really makes the shouting unnecessary, but no one can control the volume a drunk person chooses to speak at, especially not the drunk person themselves.
Most of Ahsoka’s weight is balanced on Obi-Wan’s shoulders, and he wraps an arm loosely around her waist to stabilize her. Quinlan’s somewhere on the dancefloor, though if he’s struggling through the crowds back to them or lost in the noise and the energy, Obi-Wan doesn’t know.
“I couldn’t even enjoy my mission!” Ahsoka tells him. “Because I just knew there was something wrong! And me and Barriss, we never—we weren’t exclusive or anything, we weren’t anything, but—you know how many times I was propositioned on Belrandu? Twice! By really, really hot people, Kenobi, really hot people!”
“That’s nice,” Obi-Wan says, and Ahsoka shakes her head vehemently.
“It was terrible,” Ahsoka corrects, fangs pressing into her lip. Her padawan beads glint like slivers of diamonds in the club’s lighting. “Because I didn’t want them, I just wanted her.”
Obi-Wan swallows and tightens his grip on her waist. He doesn’t know what to say. He knows exactly what she means. He’s battled that feeling for years. It doesn’t go away, but he’s gotten much better at ignoring it. Like exposure therapy. The more you let people touch you, the more you inundate your body with the sensations of stranger hands, the less it’s likely to remember that it’s only ever really wanted one touch.
Theoretically.
“And I don’t know when that’s going to stop, wanting her,” Ahsoka continues even though her conversation partner is about as talkative as one of those statues in the Jedi Archives at the moment. “What if it doesn’t?”
“Oh, Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan whispers. “It’s—it’s alright. You don’t have to…” he trails off, unable to find the words to finish the sentence. Be like me, he thinks about saying. Sleep with everyone who looks at you twice.
But the good thing about being drunk is that nothing sticks with a person longer than a few seconds, because alcohol is the most impervious kind of armour. It just poisons you from the inside out. Ahsoka’s eyes slide off his face and land on something over his shoulder.
“Quinlan’s back,” she tells him, patting his cheek clumsily as she unhooks herself from his hands. “I’m gonna go dance some more.”
Obi-Wan twists back in his seat to watch her carefully. Quinlan’s there to catch her the moment she hits the edge of the dancefloor, wrapping his arm around her neck and tugging her out of the way of a massive, stumbling Twi’lek.
There’s a cup in Quinlan’s hands that he passes over to Ahsoka in the lurching seconds between the change of songs. Her nose wrinkles, but she drinks it down without flinching which means it’s probably just water.
Secure in the knowledge that Quinlan’s got her, Obi-Wan turns back to the small table in front of him. It’s tucked into the back of the club, surrounded by velvety couches and other hightop tables where people of all kinds are chatting over each other and the music. At the table next to him, two young-looking humans are kissing each other with the kind of unabashed ferocity that only dark corners of clubs can bring out in someone.
Obi-Wan takes a very small sip of the colorful drink in front of him. It’d been Ahsoka’s, or maybe Quinlan’s.
There are eyes on him. He can feel them burning into the side of his face, and his first instinct is to tense up. To ready for attack. But the Force is calm around him, swirling like a gentle stream’s placid current.
When Obi-Wan glances to the side, carefully, he’s met with a smirking stranger’s face. Another club-goer, someone looking for a cheap thrill, someone who’s decided he’d rather fuck than drink whatever problems he has away.
Not a danger. Not a Separatist. Not someone who looks at Obi-Wan with intent to harm.
What a stupid thing he has to convince his brain of. It’s a symptom of the war, Obi-Wan knows. A lingering side-effect, a cornerstone of The New Way of Doing Things.
Survival is funny like that. It’d taken him only a few weeks to learn how to move through the galaxy in a way that kept his back against the wall, his head low, and his vulnerable parts protected. But it has been months now, since the end of it, and Obi-Wan’s body still tricks itself into seeing threats around every corner. It’s proven to be a stubborn thing to unlearn.
On the table in front of him, Ahsoka’s discarded comm rings, and Obi-Wan’s attention jumps away from the rest of the club-goers to stare at it.
Skyguy the display screen reads.
Obi-Wan’s eyes dart to the dance floor and then back to the ringing comm. Ahsoka and Quinlan have moved further away, pushed by the heaving crowd onto the dancefloor proper. And Master Skywalker is calling his padawan.
How disappointed would he be if Obi-Wan were to pick up instead? Would it be better to let the comm-call ring itself out and pretend that he hadn’t heard it over the screeching of the music? Obi-Wan can’t remember the last time he talked to Master Skywalker for longer than it takes to say a hello in passing.
Or—he can, and that’s part of the problem. He hasn’t talked to Master Skywalker since the war. Since Obi-Wan found himself in over his head and Master Skywalker swooped in to save him. Just thinking about it makes his skin crawl with residual mortification and the awful sense-memory he hasn’t been able to shake even after months of trying: hands on his throat and star-bursts behind his eyelids and the smell of stale fear-sweat in his nose as the unfamiliar and unshakable weight of a stranger intent on killing him pressed over and on top of him.
But survival instincts are funny things. Sometimes, they prompt you to fight and sometimes they make you freeze up, and sometimes they push you to run right back to the last place you felt safe.
So Obi-Wan picks up Ahsoka’s comm link and accepts the call, voice only.
“Ahsoka, where are you, do you have any idea what time it is?” Master Skywalker demands, voice a deep growling no-nonsense sort of tone. It makes Obi-Wan’s mouth dry.
“Um,” Obi-Wan says. Actually, he doesn’t know what time it is. They could have been here for hours or for minutes. Late. He knows it’s late. “This is Obi-Wan,” he says. Then, quickly, in case Master Skywalker doesn’t know: “Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
Master Skywalker’s response is a sharp intake of breath and then nothing.
“We’re still out celebrating,” Obi-Wan tells him, twisting around again to find his friends on the dance floor. “I’m sorry, Master.”
And he is. It sounds like Master Skywalker’s been very worried about his padawan’s whereabouts over the last several hours, if he’s up at this time and trying to get in touch with her. Obi-Wan’s sorry for making Master Skywalker worry like that.
But he’s not sorry enough to end the call and drag Ahsoka back to the Temple just because her master was a little worried. Not when he knows that Ahsoka needs this. Wants this. And technically, they are celebrating. Ahsoka’s just come back from her first successful solo mission. Did Anakin call her every night she was gone then, too?
It sounds incredibly overbearing. But then—all Obi-Wan has to compare it to is the way his master has treated his padawanship, and overbearing isn’t a word Obi-Wan thinks anyone’s ever used to describe Qui-Gon Jinn.
“It’s late,” Master Skywalker finally says. “Where are you, Obi-Wan?”
“Out,” Obi-Wan says, and Anakin makes a cut-off angry noise. “We’re keeping an eye on her, I promise,” he adds. “Quinlan and I won’t let her get in trouble or anything. We’ll get her back safely.”
There’s a crackle on the other end of the call. “Vos is there,” Anakin says like he’s testing the words. It makes Obi-Wan almost roll his eyes because whatever vitriol exists between Master Skywalker and Quinlan Vos has never once made sense to him. If Master Skywalker is skeptical of Quin just because he thinks he drags his padawan into too many scrapes or poorly planned adventures, then really, Master Skywalker should also dislike Obi-Wan. After all, most of their worst scrapes have been Obi-Wan’s idea in the first place.
And the thought of Master Skywalker disliking him the way he makes little effort in hiding his dislike for Quinlan is—well. It’s not worth thinking about simply because it hurts. “Quin’s here,” he confirms, raising his hand to rub at his chest like it’ll soothe the ache that’s tightening his lungs. “It’s just me and him and Ahsoka, Master.”
“It’s late, Obi-Wan,” Master Skywalker says. He doesn’t sound happy, but he also doesn’t sound like he’s planning to storm down to the lower levels to find them either. “It’s still dangerous in Coruscant for padawans, the war just ended—”
“You don’t need to tell me that,” Obi-Wan interrupts, running his hand through his hair and tugging at the end of his padawan braid. “I know, Master. I know the war’s over.”
“Then you should know that there are probably thousands of people in the lower levels who’d jump at the chance to hurt a Jedi,” Master Skywalker snaps back. “So—”
“We’re being careful,” Obi-Wan replies, because they are. They are and they’re allowed to have fun and it’s easier to think about his irritation than it is to think about the way his heart’s racing and his mind keeps stuttering back to Ahsoka’s words from earlier: I don’t know when it’s going to stop, wanting her. What if it doesn’t?
What if it doesn’t?
What if it doesn’t?
Obi-Wan swallows. It’s difficult; his throat feels too tight. “We’ll be back in two hours,” he tells Anakin, who is just worried about his padawan. Who is just worried something will happen to Ahsoka. He’s a good master. That shouldn’t feel like a knife to the gut, but it does every time he’s made to face the fact that Anakin Skywalker is a good Jedi Master.
Just not to Obi-Wan.
“Obi-Wan,” Anakin starts to say, probably about to pull rank, probably about to say you’re just a padawan so you will listen to me.
But before he can, a stranger’s hand lands on the table next to Obi-Wan’s wrist. It’s the same man from before, the one who was looking at him only a few minutes ago. Maybe another drink gave him the confidence to approach; maybe he’d had to fight through the crowd to arrive at Obi-Wan’s side.
It’s not exactly a welcome distraction.
“Are you here alone?” the man asks, leaning forward into Obi-Wan’s space. Ostensibly to be heard over the music, but his hand moves from the tabletop to the back of Obi-Wan’s chair, boxing him in.
“Uh, no, I’m not,” Obi-Wan tells him, lowering the commlink to his chin to try and drown out the noise. “I’m here with friends, they’re over there.”
“Not very good friends if they left a pretty young thing like you all by yourself,” the man leers. His face isn’t unattractive, and neither is his body or the smell of his cologne, but the words are. His confidence is.
And Obi-Wan isn’t here tonight to find someone to fuck. And even if he were, he wouldn’t be doing so on a call to a Jedi Master.
On a call to this Jedi Master.
“No, thank you,” he tells the man, shifting forward in his seat so the man’s fingers narrowly miss the end of his padawan braid. “Not tonight. I’m—talking with someone.”
“Not a very good boyfriend if he lets you come down this way, all unattended. Should be more careful with his things,” the man nods at the commlink in Obi-Wan’s hand, but he at least takes his hands away. It sounds more like a parting shot, and less like a declaration of intent to keep fighting.
Obi-Wan would sigh in relief if he weren’t too busy flushing bright red at the implications. At some stranger calling Master Skywalker his—his boyfriend.
He raises the commlink back to his ear after the man saunters away. He’s half-hoping Master Skywalker has disconnected the line, taken Obi-Wan at his word that they’ll be back at the Temple within the next two hours and hung up the commlink when he realized he’d lost Obi-Wan’s attention.
But of course the Force has never been that kind to him.
There’s static and the sound of breathing on the other end of the comm. Then, Master Skywalker says in a voice that’s all command, “You get half an hour to get back here, Obi-Wan. Or else I’m going to go out there and find you two and you don’t want that to happen. I can promise you that.”
Obi-Wan exhales. “But it’s a twenty minute—”
“Half an hour, padawan,” Anakin orders. And then he disconnects the call and Obi-Wan’s left to stare down at the sticky table, Ahsoka’s darkened commlink in his hand and chaos raging through his mind.
If it were any other Jedi Master demanding this of him, he’d obey immediately. Probably. He’d probably obey immediately, collect Quin and Ahsoka and step outside of the club to hail a speeder cab to get them back to the Temple. It’s—kriff, it is late, nearly three in the morning. They’d been out for hours already, and Obi-Wan is nearing his limit. He wants to be home already, back in the Temple and in his bed. He wants to fall asleep so he can wake tomorrow morning—in a few hours—and sit down with Ahsoka and talk, really talk about her feelings.
Even if all his reasons for avoiding the topic have just made themselves abundantly clear.
His excuses don’t matter though. Not if they get in the way of being there for a friend who needs him.
But.
But.
It’s not any other Jedi Master. It’s Master Skywalker. It’s Anakin. And Obi-Wan’s relationship with Anakin Skywalker is—it’s complicated. It’s cumbersome. It’s difficult to make sense of. If Obi-Wan had to choose one place in the entire galaxy he felt the safest, he’d probably say by Anakin Skywalker’s side. If he had to name someone he’d love to cut out of his memory, he’d probably say Anakin Skywalker. If Obi-Wan were held at blaster point and forced to confess the name of the person—the only person—that he’s ever felt a deep, abiding, romantic love for, the kind of love that breaks the Jedi Code and makes a mockery of the Order and hurts to hold to one’s chest, he’d probably choose the blaster over the truth.
But if he had to pick, he’d probably say Anakin Skywalker.
He taps his finger along the surface of the table, music and strangers swirling around him.
A very large part of him, the part of him frozen forever at thirteen years old and still waiting for Anakin Skywalker to call him in front of the Council and give him a padawan braid, wants to disobey. Wants to send Anakin a message that says two hours, wants to stay out for three more because Anakin Skywalker has no say over how he chooses to live his life.
He’d had the opportunity. He’d let it pass him by, and Anakin Skywalker is not Obi-Wan Kenobi’s master.
But he is Ahsoka’s master.
And this is a tension between Ahsoka and Anakin, not Obi-Wan and Anakin. It’s important to remember that. It’s important to remember that Obi-Wan only heard Anakin’s thinly-disguised threat because he picked up the comm meant for Ahsoka. Because Ahsoka is Anakin’s padawan, and Anakin is worried for her safety. Worried that someone will hurt her or that she’ll find herself vulnerable and in some sort of trouble that she can’t defend herself from. And he doesn’t trust that Obi-Wan will be able to protect her.
Why would he? The last time they really saw each other during the war, Anakin had had to save his life, ruining the mission objective and jeopardizing the lives of all the clone troopers and Jedi involved in the Zygerria operation. He’d had to pull Obi-Wan out of harm’s way, literally drag him out from beneath his attacker’s body and hold him up in his arms as he pushed his way out of the room. And even after that, the entire trip back to Coruscant, he’d hovered around Obi-Wan. Seen the nightmares, seen the panic and the useless survival instincts that couldn’t have saved him against the other prisoner but couldn’t be reasoned with in the aftermath.
Of course when Obi-Wan says Quin and I can keep her safe, Anakin Skywalker doesn’t believe him. He thinks very little of Quinlan for reasons that will never be Obi-Wan’s to hear; he must think even less of Obi-Wan’s ability to act in any way like a capable Jedi Knight.
For a terrifying moment, the table in front of his eyes blurs.
He takes a deep breath, then he takes another. Then he goes to find Ahsoka and Quinlan to take them home.
By the time the speeder cab pulls up to the edge of the Temple gardens, Ahsoka is mostly asleep against Obi-Wan’s shoulder, mouth open and wet patch forming beneath on his tunic. She’d been against leaving, of course. But she’d also been quick to quiet down and shut her eyes when the cab began to move.
It’s a two-person job to get her from one side of the Temple to the other. It’s probably a three-person job to make the trip quiet enough not to wake anyone else, but Obi-Wan tries his best.
“We can crash at mine,” Quinlan mutters when they’re almost at the door to Ahsoka’s rooms. “Don’t think I want to risk Skywalker being up and in his quarters at the moment. Not nearly drunk enough.”
Obi-Wan hesitates because he’d made Ahsoka and Quin leave the club without ever telling them that Master Skywalker called. It didn’t feel important at the time. It didn’t feel like something he had the breath in his lungs to say.
“Pretty sure he’ll be awake,” he finally mutters back, shifting so more of Ahsoka’s mostly dead weight rests on his shoulders. He’ll probably bring this up a few times before the month’s over, depending on how she feels tomorrow. But then, Quin’s carried him back to his quarters in worse conditions before. This is just what happens sometimes.
“Fuck that then,” Quin decides. “We’ll put her on the couch, we can take the bed. Give her some water, send her off in the morning.”
“No,” Obi-Wan says. It’s too quick. Maybe not for anyone else, but this is Quinlan he’s talking to. He focuses on his feet as he admits, quietly, “He called Ahsoka’s comm back at Milk. I talked with him. He’s definitely expecting her back. Ten minutes ago.”
When Obi-Wan risks a glance sideways, Quinlan’s eyes are narrowed in consideration. But all he says is, “Huh.”
The door is at the end of the corridor; then it’s only a few meters away. Then it’s there.
“I can take her in,” Obi-Wan whispers. He knows the code to Ahsoka’s quarters, they both do. The same way Ahsoka knows the code to theirs. Obi-Wan’s never used it before, has been strident about what he allows himself. But this is extenuating circumstances.
Quinlan’s eyebrows shoot up. “Alone?” Maybe he means to whisper back, but the problem with drunk people is that no one in the galaxy can control their volume.
The door in front of them slides open and Master Skywalker is suddenly there. His face is a cold mask, brow set heavy over eyes that sweep from Quinlan to Ahsoka to Obi-Wan and then back to Ahsoka.
At least he doesn’t look like he’s about to start yelling. But Master Skywalker’s anger, when he gets really, really angry, is the cold kind. Less eruption and more frostbite.
Obi-Wan shivers.
“Knight Vos,” Master Skywalker says, voice pitched low. Because of the environment around them? Because if he gives into the urge to speak at a normal level, he’ll begin to shout? “Thank you for escorting my padawan back safely. You may go.”
Quin blinks at the dismissal, mouth twisting together into his default expression: a smirk. “Of course, Master Skywalker,” he replies, stressing the title and shifting out from beneath Ahsoka’s arm. “C’mon, Obi-Wan. I think he’s got it now.”
“No,” Master Skywalker says curtly. “I’ll need Padawan Kenobi’s assistance. And his explanation.”
The words make Obi-Wan want to crawl into his skin and hide out there, even though he’s never thought of himself as a coward. They also make his heart begin to beat in double time, the idea of being alone with Master Skywalker sending lightning down his spine.
Ahsoka makes a groaning sound against his ear, nudging at his head with the edge of one of her montrals.
Alright. Relatively alone with Master Skywalker.
Quinlan’s got his mouth open, probably ready to defend Obi-Wan or say something unhelpful that he thinks will help but will in fact make things worse. It’s always one of the two with Quinlan.
But before he can, Ahsoka groans again and her head falls forward, away from Obi-Wan’s neck. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” she mumbles, and the warning is enough to break the tension that has descended over the corridor.
“Go,” Obi-Wan tells his friend, stepping away from him and closer to Master Skywalker, who’s quick to take Ahsoka into his arms like it’s the most natural thing in the world to stabilize his padawan’s form with a hand braced on her back and another one carefully on the back of her head. And she relaxes into his hold, strings cut, the way padawans trust their masters to see them to safety no matter the circumstances.
“Obi-Wan,” Quinlan says, part-question and part-warning. He looks between them, like he wants to protest but can’t figure out what grounds he’ll speak on. Half of a spymaster’s job is instinct; Quinlan’s always had good ones.
But Ahsoka makes a noise, like she really is going to be sick in the middle of the corridor, so Obi-Wan claps his hand onto Quin’s shoulder and says like a promise, “Talk later, alright?”
Quin doesn’t look satisfied, but he also doesn’t look like he’s going to push the issue. When Master Skywalker turns to half-carry, half-drag his padawan into their quarters, Obi-Wan follows him and Quinlan doesn’t stop him.
The doors slide shut behind him, automatic and only foreboding if one already feels a tiny sense of doom.
“Get a glass of water from the cabinet, would you?” Master Skywalker directs, pushing Ahsoka into the hallway that leads to the two sleeping quarters at the far end of the room.
Obi-Wan goes. There’s a line of plastoid dishes lined up in the cabinet closest to the cooling unit. He grabs a tall cup but lingers on the sight of an eclectic group of glassware on the row above. They’re different colors, different shapes. Some look older than the rest, clear glass gone foggy with time and wear. Souvenirs or gifts, maybe. A collection started by Anakin when he was young or by Ahsoka once she became Anakin’s padawan?
He shakes the thought from his head and reaches back into the cabinet to grab a deep looking bowl.
Just in case.
By the time he pads into Ahsoka’s room, Anakin has her sitting up in bed, shoes off and eyes unfocused as she looks around. “Oh good,” she mumbles. “Does this count as early morning meditation, Master?”
Anakin’s mouth pinches together, but it’s not enough to stop the fond smile from curling his lips up. “Oh, not in the slightest, Snips. You’re gonna be in the salles before sunrise for the next two weeks at least.”
Ahsoka sighs, despondent, before she notices Obi-Wan. “Obi-Wan,” she crows, suddenly delighted in the way that only drunk people can manage to be. “Hi, Obi-Wan.”
Obi-Wan carefully doesn’t look at Master Skywalker, even as he draws level with him to pass Ahsoka the water. She makes a face but drinks it all without pause. She passes the empty cup to her master without even looking at him, and Obi-Wan really doesn’t want to see what Master Skywalker’s face looks like. The Force around them is filled with Anakin’s exasperation, tempered by the sort of fondness one must feel for drunken friends who have made their way safely home.
“That was good,” Ahsoka tells him placidly. “I needed it. And I’m glad we did it.”
For a moment, Obi-Wan can’t tell if she’s talking about the water or the dancing or the drinking. Then he decides it doesn’t really matter. He hopes she means all of it. “Good,” he says. “That’s good. Uh, sleep on your side, alright?”
He bends down and places the bowl on the floor by her head.
She nods, watching him with dazed eyes before pushing herself down into the nest of unmade blankets on her bed. Master Skywalker stands up and Obi-Wan steps back. That happened quicker than he’d expected; he can probably still make it over to Quinlan’s quarters before he falls asleep. Sleeping on his couch sounds better than sleeping in his own quarters. His master hasn’t been on-planet in two weeks.
Ahsoka shifts onto her side obediently, eyes already closing like it’d taken serious effort to keep them open all this time. “Obi-Wan,” she calls, voice a smooth-sounding slur. Obi-Wan hesitates at the doorway and turns around. In front of him, Master Skywalker pauses too with his hand on the lighting controls.
“Don’t leave the Order,” Ahsoka mumbles, voice lifting up into a whine. “You can’t. I’ll be so sad.”
Master Skywalker tenses and then straightens, shoulders a sharp line totally at odds to his fondly exasperated posture from before.
“Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan mutters, tucking his hair behind his ear and flushing. It’s a baseless comment, of course. Ahsoka’s gotten her wires crossed. It’s not Obi-Wan she wants to beg to stay; but the person these pleas belong to is already as good as gone.
Obi-Wan has no intention of leaving the Order, not ever. Ahsoka probably knows that sober. But when a person’s lost one thing, it’s almost natural to look around at everything else they have and wonder what else is close to slipping through their fingers.
It’s not a very Jedi-like way to grieve, but then Ahsoka is drunk and she’s safe and she’s warm in her bed with her Master watching over her. And she’s young and she’s hurt and she’s not much of a Jedi right now, not in this moment. So Obi-Wan doesn’t tell her not to worry, and he doesn’t tell her to give her feelings regarding Barriss’ departure to the Force. Instead, he says, “You know it wouldn’t mean our paths diverge,” because Quin was right, earlier. The Jedi Order is not a cult. Maybe it’ll offer Ahsoka more comfort to know that Obi-Wan would never dream of cutting off all contact from her the moment they no longer shared a home than it would for her to know Obi-Wan has no intentions of ever leaving the Jedi.
A moment passes; then Ahsoka lets out a snore in response.
Obi-Wan’s own lips curl up in a smile, unable to bite it back. At least she’s fallen asleep on her side. And she’s had plenty of water to drink.
And hopefully her master won’t actually wake her up in a few hours for morning meditations. Surely Master Skywalker isn’t that heartless.
He’s halfway across the living area of the quarters, slipping his shoes back on in a desperate bid to leave before the Jedi Master recovers enough from his sudden bout of silence to ask questions or demand explanations.
Of course Obi-Wan Kenobi’s luck has never been that good.
“Obi-Wan,” Master Skywalker says. There’s a dozen different commands and censures in the word alone. Obi-Wan’s body stops on instinct. “Come here.”
Master Skywalker is leaning up against the wall of the archway leading to the sleeping rooms. His posture is deceptively relaxed for how tense and frenetic the Force feels between them. It looks off, feels wrong, but Obi-Wan can’t put his finger on what’s more strange: the man’s languid stance or the heated frenzy of a Force signature in the air around him.
Still, Obi-Wan moves towards him. It’s automatic, like giving into a planet’s gravitational pull.
“We were being safe, Master,” he mutters, crossing his arms over his chest. It’s the closest he’ll get to what he really wants, which is to wrap them around himself completely. But that’s definitely not happening. “I know it doesn’t look like it, but—”
“Ahsoka could hardly walk on her own,” Master Skywalker points out, one eyebrow arching up as he pushes himself out of the hallway and into the living room proper. “That’s hardly my idea of responsible.”
“I didn’t say we were being responsible,” Obi-Wan is snapping back before he can stop himself. “I said we were being safe.”
“I would be very grateful if you’d explain the difference to me, Padawan,” Anakin replies, and there’s an edge of steel in his voice, in the line of his jaw when he stalks around the kitchen counter and places both his hands on the plastoid top. “Because the way I see it, your safety is your responsibility. Always, but especially when you decide to spend half the night and all your credits at some lower level bar doing who knows what. With who knows who.”
The dismissal in the words, the casual condescension that makes Obi-Wan feel like a youngling again, makes sparks leap through his chest. Ire roars into life, past the shame and past the discomfort. “You underestimate me, Master, if you think I’m spending any credits on the drinks I’m served in the lower levels.”
It’s the wrong thing to say in the same way that pressing one’s foot down on the accelerator when flying into oncoming traffic is the wrong thing to do. Master Skywalker’s lips go white with displeasure. On the countertop, his fingers curl into white-knuckled fists for a moment before he must force himself to relax.
Obi-Wan feels a pang of guilt followed quickly by another flash of defiance. He knows, logically, that Master Skywalker must have been worried when Ahsoka did not return home at the time she usually would have. She never stays as late as Obi-Wan and Quinlan do. Her master must have worried. The war has just ended for him as well.
But—on the other hand—Anakin Skywalker is not Obi-Wan’s Jedi master. If Ahsoka has to answer to his displeasure, then that is the way of things. Obi-Wan, however, doesn’t have to sit here and listen to Master Skywalker express his displeasure towards him.
His master is currently off-planet, and Obi-Wan is twenty-two years old. A senior padawan with a war under his belt.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” Master Skywalker mutters, stooping to grab something from beneath the counter. When he straightens, he’s holding a clear glass bottle half-full of amber-red liquid.
Obi-Wan opens his mouth and closes it, watching in silence as Master Skywalker walks to the same cupboard Obi-Wan’d gotten Ahsoka’s plastoid cup from and pulls out two of the shorter glass cups.
“Here,” Master Skywalker says, pouring himself a generous glass and then giving the other glass about half as much. He stoppers the bottle but leaves it out, rounding the counter and holding out the second cup.
“Is this a trap?” Obi-Wan asks, taking the drink from him gingerly. It smells strong and smokey, like bottled blaster shots.
“No,” Master Skywalker says. He sits on the armchair by the other end of the couch, leg crossing over his knee. “This is a free drink. I thought you were used to those.”
Maybe the tone should make Obi-Wan bristle, but he can’t. He’s too distracted by the picture Master Skywalker makes now that he's finally allowing himself to look at him. The man looks…tired, but his eyes are bright and calculating as they’re fixed on Obi-Wan. His hair is messy, the result maybe of a few hours spent tossing and turning in bed or a few hours spent running his fingers through it while he waited for word from his padawan.
It’s not productive, thinking about Anakin Skywalker in bed or with fingers in his hair. Usually Obi-Wan is better than this. Usually Obi-Wan is kinder to himself than this, but usually Anakin Skywalker is not lounging before him with bed hair and half-lidded eyes, thin sleep robe covering his naked chest and sleeping trousers tied precariously around his waist the only things keeping him decent.
It’s devastating, to see him so soft. He almost needs Master Skywalker’s fury back, just to be able to cope with it.
“We were being safe, Master,” he hears himself say instead. He looks down at the cup in his hand, swirls the liquid around in its confines. He has the stupid, useless urge to explain his thought process to Anakin, like it’ll net him a good job, Padawan. Like if he just finds the right words, organizes his actions in the right way, Master Skywalker will tell him he’s proud.
The muscles in Master Skywalker’s jaw work, lips tight and eyes heavy, like he’s carefully choosing words he won’t bring himself to say out loud.
For one wild, impulsive moment, Obi-Wan wants to ask him if he heard Obi-Wan reject that man in Milk. If Master Skywalker was listening on the other end of the comm, if he knows that Obi-Wan had made choices tonight. To be safe. To come back to the Temple—because Anakin asked. If he understood how that when Obi-Wan says we were being safe, he means that all of his decisions tonight have fallen on a razor’s edge where they could have gone either way, and yet he’s here anyway.
“Is she…okay,” Master Skywalker finally asks, bringing his glass to his lips and taking a sip. He doesn’t look away from Obi-Wan once, doesn’t even blink, and it makes him feel like he’s caught the attention of a great beast of a predator.
Obi-Wan shifts on the couch seat beneath him, rolling his own glass between his palms. “She will be,” he says, hesitating. He doesn’t want to betray Ahsoka’s confidence by telling her master anything she wouldn’t tell him herself, but he doesn’t know what Ahsoka wouldn’t tell Anakin. He’s spent years keeping his nose and eyes and mind carefully out of the inner workings of Ahsoka’s relationship with her Jedi master. She calls him Skyguy, for Force’s sake. Talks about him with the irreverent and easy confidence of someone who feels absolutely comfortable with another’s placement in their life.
But do they talk about things like Barriss? Do they talk about the war?
“Hm,” Master Skywalker hums. Another sip. He uncrosses then recrosses his legs. It must be nearing dawn, Obi-Wan can feel the heaviness of exhaustion pulling at his shoulders and his eyelids.
But now that he’s here, sitting in front of Master Skywalker, he doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t know what he wants. He still feels like he did following Anakin into his quarters; how felt at the club, at the bar beforehand. Like he’s balancing on a razor’s edge, and one decision could have him tumbling over the side into something safe and comfortable, or something dangerous.
“Everything’s changing,” he tells Master Skywalker. He doesn’t think he means to. The words just slip out of his mouth. “After the war, I think we thought—we could go back. To what it was like before. But we can’t, and it’s—it’s sad.”
They can’t because who they were before the war were children, and there’s no going back to being a youngling once you’ve left the creche. No going back to being an Initiate once you’ve been chosen as a padawan. No going back to believing in the invincibility of your Jedi master once you’ve seen him shot and bleeding on a smoke-filled battlefront as his troops fall around him.
Obi-Wan shakes his head once, sharply, trying to dislodge the thoughts. He takes a large sip of the drink Anakin’s poured for him; it’s liquid fire down his throat, and it takes all of his willpower to choke back his instinct to cough.
Across from him, Anakin leans forward in his seat, discarding his glass on the small table next to him so he can tangle his fingers together between his knees. “What do you mean, Obi-Wan?” he murmurs. The question is all soft pressure, his voice a low rumble that soothes just as much as it demands.
Obi-Wan shakes his head again. His stomach burns, Not enough food, maybe, for the harder liquor. Too tired or too dehydrated or too hyper-sensitive to the way Master Skywalker’s gaze feels resting on his face. He drinks again, if only to get a moment’s reprieve from Master Skywalker’s unrelenting focus.
“I mean the war’s over, but it’s still—here. A part of us. And we’re still—losing people. They’re still leaving, and no one’s told us how to cope with it, what to do. Everyone just—buys us drinks at the clubs and pays for our, our meals, and tells us about their family members and friends who became casualties, you know, the ones we couldn’t save, the ones who got caught up in the crossfire, as if we didn’t too, as if we were supposed to be there, like that even makes sense—”
He thinks, distantly, he’s probably tripped straight off that razor’s edge and landed firmly into uncharted danger.
But it’s like he can’t stop it. Stop himself. The words feel tugged out of him. Like they belong to Anakin already, like they’re not meant for Obi-Wan to keep to himself. Maybe it’s because Ahsoka’s dead-asleep in her room and the weight of the war is for once an easier weight to explain than the weight Obi-Wan feels on his chest when he thinks about all the ways he’s been a shit friend to her lately. Maybe it’s because of the drink. Maybe it’s because his own master is back out in the galaxy, overseeing the breakdown and repurposement of a Separatist droid factory in the Outer Rim, and Obi-Wan has no one else to talk to about this.
Maybe it’s those damned survival instincts, thrashing to life inside of his chest, begging him to confide in a person who’s made him feel safe before, like because Anakin Skywalker could save his life on Zygerria, he’d also be the perfect person to foist this tangled mass of feelings upon.
He shakes his head again. He’s getting tired of the motion, of trying to banish the thoughts only for them to come around again like clockwork. Drinks help, usually. But this time when he raises the glass to his mouth, Master Skywalker’s hand fastens around his wrist and stops him.
Obi-Wan blinks; he didn’t see the man move, but suddenly, he’s there in front of him, sitting on the edge of the small table in front of the couch, knees slotted in between Obi-Wan’s and bare hand on him like this is something they do.
He can’t remember the last time Anakin Skywalker touched him.
But that’s a lie. He can. It’d been after Zygerria, in those amorphous waking hours in hyperspace where nothing had seemed quite real or solid beneath his body, no matter what he did with it or where he put it. Then Master Skywalker had touched him, broad hands on his shoulders, around his ankle during meditation, threading through his hair to push his face into the warm line of Anakin’s neck when he’d woken up in the middle of the night, shaking and terrified.
It’d reminded Obi-Wan of being a youngling at the time. Not necessarily the touches themselves, though it had been impossible to shake the feeling that Obi-Wan was not being touched so much as being handled, but the weight of Anakin’s focus on him. It’d felt familiar. He’d spent years in the creche and as an Initiate under the careful, assessing eyes of Anakin Skywalker. Years with Anakin at his shoulder gently correcting his lightsaber form, years in front of him on a meditation mat pushing himself through the motions of reciting the Jedi Code.
Obi-Wan’s life can be understood in phases, based on whether or not he had Anakin Skywalker’s attention, his touch. First, a youngling in the creche who made a new friend in Knight Skywalker and carried that knowledge in his chest like a miniature sun. Then, an Initiate, ten and eleven and twelve years of age, traipsing through the Temple in search of Master Skywalker when he was nowhere to be found, only settling into a gravitational orbit when Anakin oversaw parts of his training the way all Knights and Masters are encouraged to do before they select a padawan learner.
Then, a padawan. Apprenticed to someone else and unable to bear the sight of Anakin Skywalker, not even in his peripherals. Mortified to even be in the same room as him when he’d so clearly misread every moment of camaraderie between them, mistook Skywalker’s kindness for intent, misunderstood his place in Skywalker’s daily life. But he’d been so sure, and that was the hardest part. Thinking so completely that Master Skywalker would become his master, that his attention and his care and his kindness meant something, meant that Obi-Wan was special, was important to him, only for his thirteenth birthday to roll around, only to pack his things for a life in the Agricorps, only for Qui-Gon Jinn to deign to train him, and for Anakin Skywalker to flow out of his life completely like he’d never been there at all—
And then, the war. And the war. And the war.
And now, this. This touch, small in scope but steady and sure. Master Skywalker is leaning towards him, sitting on the edge of the caf table, but it feels as if he’s surrounded him completely, encircled the whole of him the way his fingers have encircled the bones of his wrist.
Stilling his movements. Demanding his attention.
When Obi-Wan was twelve years old, he’d begged Anakin to lend him his lightsaber so that he could practice his forms with a real blade. And Anakin, back then, it’d felt like if Obi-Wan asked enough times, the Jedi would give him anything. Like his serving of dessert in the refectory; like an unredacted copy of his latest off-planet mission; like his real, actual lightsaber, kyber crystal humming from within its durasteel cage in a quiet, familiar-feeling hello.
There’d been about five minutes between being handed the blade, powered to low, and Obi-Wan scorching his forearm. He’d barely registered the pain of it before Anakin had been there, gripping at his wrist and turning his arm out so he could see the injury. So he could catalogue it, ascertain how seriously Obi-Wan had hurt himself.
He remembers the way tears had pricked at his eyes, even all these years later. Not because of the pain—it hadn’t been a terrible burn, just a lick of heat he hadn’t been prepared for—but because of how embarrassed he’d felt at the very idea that Anakin Skywalker was seeing him so…weak. Laid bare.
It’s strange, how a person can feel both twelve and twenty-two at the same time. For no good reason except that maybe it’s just been so long since he was last on the receiving end of Anakin Skywalker’s heavy attention, the backs of his eyes start to burn.
“Obi-Wan,” Master Skywalker murmurs. Just his name.
The Jedi Master looks tired, strained. There are new wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. A new scar on his jawline that Obi-Wan’s never noticed before. Gently, like Obi-Wan is still something that must be handled with care, Master Skywalker pushes the hand holding his glass down, until it’s resting in Obi-Wan’s lap.
Master Skywalker’s eyes rove across his face, focused and too much—it is too much. It is too unexpected, too sudden. Half of him wants to press forward into Master Skywalker’s arms, crawl into his lap like he’s a youngling aching to be held and chosen and wanted. That desire is complicated, dangerous, because Obi-Wan isn’t a youngling anymore, and the ache he harbours for Anakin Skywalker has grown fangs and claws in the intervening years. It’s a dangerous thing, something he cannot be trusted around.
He’s balancing on a razor’s edge, but it’s like he’s forgotten what’s the safe choice and what’s the dangerous one, mind and stomach and heart and instinct warring within him so ferociously he thinks maybe he should be worried about falling apart at the seams. He feels like maybe he already is.
He watches Anakin swallow. His throat bobs with the movement. Anakin’s jaw is clenching and releasing again. Chewing over his words.
“Sal-Euin Brunseki is set to be released from the Halls of Healing today,” Anakin finally tells him.
His hand is still on Obi-Wan’s wrist, but the touch is light now, almost absent-minded, like Anakin’s just forgotten he’s touching him.
As if that’s something that’s possible to just—get used to.
Obi-Wan wets his lips and says, honestly, “I don’t know who that is.”
“Not important,” Anakin says, waving his hand—his other hand, his free hand—through the air like he’s batting away Obi-Wan’s concerns. “Just a Jedi Knight. Usually works on extended missions with the Agricorps, deployed back to Coruscant about a year ago to work on—I don’t know. One of the gardens here, I think.”
Obi-Wan blinks. “That’s nice,” he says, because he can’t think of anything else to say.
Anakin blows a breath and ducks his head for a moment. The ghost of a smile stretches crooked and thin across his face when he looks back up him through the thick fan of his eyelashes. This, paired with the way his thumb has started dragging over his pulse point, is devastating. “Impatient padawan,” he murmurs, a scolding so gentle it’s almost a caress. “The point is—he was injured two days before the end of the war.”
“Not so nice,” Obi-Wan says, because he has to say something or else his lungs are going to forget how to work.
“Impertinent too,” Anakin comments, a rumble of a hum that spreads like fire through Obi-Wan’s stomach. Impatient, impertinent: Master Skywalker is far from the first person to call him these things. Far from the first Jedi Master, even.
But the way Anakin says them, they sound like compliments.
“Sorry,” Obi-Wan mutters, mostly on instinct, and Anakin squeezes his wrist lightly.
“My point is if Knight Brunseki is only now being discharged from the Halls, months after the end of the war, then perhaps there’s something to be said about the way some wounds heal quickly while others linger.”
Master Skywalker’s voice is far too soft. Obi-Wan can’t stand it. He can’t stand how desperate he is to hear him again.
“And it says nothing about our character or our strength or our constitution,” Anakin adds. “To carry the weight of this.”
Maybe Anakin is practicing what he wants to say to Ahsoka. It’s the only thing Obi-Wan can think of, the only reason Master Skywalker could have to sound so earnest, to sound so concerned and just be talking to Obi-Wan who is nothing more than his padawan’s friend.
Or maybe Anakin looks at him and sees a youngling in need of careful touches and constant coddling.
Obi-Wan thinks maybe that’d be worse. And not just because he loves Anakin Skywalker to the brink of his own detriment, over and over again, but because Obi-Wan already feels as if he is—too young. Too far behind his peers. Too lacking in something fundamental that the rest of the senior padawans have. Too thin-skinned. Too wounded.
That everyone else can see that is a nightmare senario he tries not to think about during the day; that Anakin Skywalker can see it is—untenable.
He cuts his gaze away from Anakin, working his jaw as he stares over his head, toward the front doorway. He could leave, probably. If he could force himself to just move, then he could leave.
But it’d just be—running away. It’d be a retreat, a bid for survival, and there’s no way Anakin wouldn’t see that for what it was. And Obi-Wan’s spent years now trying desperately to pretend that he’s no more affected by Anakin Skywalker than he is by any other Jedi in the Temple; he cannot slip now.
“Obi-Wan,” Master Skywalker says, intent. Calling his attention back to him.
And of course it works, which is maybe the most shameful thing about the whole night. Of course all Anakin Skywalker has to do to have Obi-Wan’s undivided attention, despite all the hurts he’s dealt him that litter the path behind them, is just—ask for it. Just kriffing say his name.
“What did Ahsoka mean,” Master Skywalker says, a low demand. A demand all the same.
Obi-Wan blinks at him, eyebrows furrowing. His mind feels slow, like it’s navigating around obstacles it doesn’t know how to conquer. Ahsoka? Obi-Wan can’t remember what she said, what Anakin heard, what could have made him look like this, part interrogator and part war general.
Master Skywalker’s eyes darken at his pause, sudden impatience shining through. “She said you have decided to leave the Order.”
Obi-Wan frowns. That’s not what Ahsoka had said. Was it?
His hesitation seems to be all the answer Master Skywalker needs though, because his face flickers through a handful of emotions Obi-Wan can’t read before the man withdraws his hand—no—and pushes himself off the table to fall back into the armchair. He picks up his discarded glass and tips it back into his mouth, throat a long line that Obi-Wan can’t look away from.
“That would be unwise beyond belief,” Master Skywalker finally says. His voice is short now and gruff, softness bled out somewhere in the distance between them. “And not something I’d expect from you, Obi-Wan.”
Obi-Wan scowls, teeth grinding together. What does Master Skywalker know? Why does Anakin even care?
He’s not—there’s no universe where Obi-Wan would willingly leave the Order. He’d figured that out about himself years ago, when he’d been thirteen and facing down the Agricorps and biting at the inside of his cheek to try and stop himself from crying on the transport deck like a youngling. He’ll stay in the Temple all his life, given the choice. He’d never leave it.
But there’s a very small part of him that nudges him to stay quiet, stay noncommittal. He doesn’t understand Master Skywalker’s reaction, the way his presence in the Force has gone heavy and angry, a roiling storm in the air around them that Obi-Wan hasn’t felt to such an extent since—well. Since Zygerria.
He doesn’t know why. But he doesn’t say anything. The Force flexes around him, something warning pulsing through the air, but he ignores that too. He wants to know what it matters, to Anakin Skywalker. If he stays. If he goes. Clearly it does, but Obi-Wan doesn’t understand it.
“You have made good progress towards your Knighting, Obi-Wan,” Master Skywalker says, and Obi-Wan finishes the rest of his drink even though it makes him want to cough and splutter. “Qui-Gon is certain you’ll be asked to complete your Trials soon.”
He stands. For a moment, he thinks—he really is going to walk out that door, shoes or no shoes.
But he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. His stupid, kriffing survival instincts are fighting to keep him locked in Anakin Skywalker’s orbit, despite the fact that it’s Anakin that’s killing him right now.
Instead, he stalks to the kitchen unit and uncorks that same bottle of drink, pouring himself another measure. Two.
“Obi-Wan,” Anakin says. A warning maybe.
“I didn’t realize you kept such a close eye on the course of my padawanship, Master Skywalker,” Obi-Wan hears himself say, setting the bottle down onto the counter with a hard clank that probably betrays him, betrays his suddenly shaking hands.
Master Skywalker is certainly looking at him like it has.
He doesn’t want to talk about this, he decides. There’s not enough alcohol in the entire galaxy that will make him ever want to hear Anakin Skywalker’s opinions about his padawanship.
But no one’s told Anakin that because he sounds almost confused when he says, brow furrowing, “Of course I have.”
Of course.
Of course I have.
“And so I know how good you are, padawan. How much you’d be throwing away if you left the Order now—”
“There are a thousand other things I could do with my life, Master Skywalker. Things that would have just as much impact on the galaxy, do just as much good as a Knight—”
It’s stupid to argue. It’s beyond stupid, because Obi-Wan doesn’t even believe a word he’s saying, can’t think of a single thing that would be worth leaving the Jedi Order for. But he’s arguing anyway, pretending. Lying.
All because Master Skywalker’s attention feels white-hot, like a brand over his skin, and if he cannot have him soft, then he’ll take him angry.
“Name one,” Master Skywalker snaps. His voice feels too loud for the stillness of the pre-dawn morning outside the windows. His grip is tight around his empty glass, knuckles white. “Name one place in the galaxy that would deserve to have you.”
Obi-Wan can feel the beginnings of the flush across his cheeks. He takes a sip. It burns less now, the liquor. Either he’s growing used to it or he’s got something to compare the heat to. Anakin Skywalker wins out every time; still and always.
“You’re safe here, Obi-Wan,” Master Skywalker says, pressing the advantage of Obi-Wan’s hesitation. “Outside of the Order, who knows what—”
He cuts himself off suddenly, raking a hand through his hair and glaring across the room at Obi-Wan as if he’s just announced his burning desire to join the Separatist movement.
But Obi-Wan can’t think about that, about what Anakin is forcing himself not to say. All he can hear is what Anakin’s already said and what it confirms.
Of course Master Skywalker sees him as a youngling still, someone to be coddled and kept safe. Someone to be talked about above their heads because they’re not old enough to participate in the conversation. What had he said? Qui-Gon is certain you’ll be asked to complete your Trials soon.
How many nights have the two Jedi Masters spent talking about their padawans like exasperated teachers or—or parents, all the while Obi-Wan and Ahsoka were out in the Lower Levels or practicing katas in the training salles or clawing their way through one of the mandatory classes for senior padawans? How many times has Anakin observed him, weighed and took his measurement without him being aware of it?
His stomach rolls with the thought, and the only thing he can put his hands on to calm it is the alcohol in front of him.
The alcohol which loosens his tongue. Sharpens it.
He isn’t a youngling. Suddenly, that’s the only thing he wants Anakin Skywalker to see. How much Obi-Wan has grown, how much of an adult he is, an accomplished senior padawan—all without Anakin Skywalker’s help.
“It’s not about deserving,” he says, feeling wild with the words. With the bravery it takes to say them.
But it’s not really bravery, is it? It’s more like stupidity. Or the way he gets sometimes, when the night’s late enough and his system’s weighed down with enough alcohol to make the room spin every time he moves his head. Not bravery; more like why not? More like, what does he have to lose?
“It’s about wanting,” he finishes. He leans against the countertop. It seems smart, suddenly, to stay where he is. A kitchen unit and a couch and a table in between him and Master Skywalker. He wants to close the distance between them as much as he wants to widen it. Courting danger is always like that, he thinks. Half of him wants to slide closer, to see what happens, to push his fingers into the embers of fire until he burns from it. Half of him knows all that’ll give him is pain.
“Wanting,” Master Skywalker repeats, tasting the word on his tongue.
“Wanting,” Obi-Wan agrees, tilting his head and wetting his lips. The glass between his fingers feels heavy, and he sets it down onto the counter in front of him. His mouth is dry. When did his mouth get so dry? “Finding a place—people—who want me. Is it so terrible, Master? To want to be wanted?”
There’s a pleading note in his voice he hadn’t meant to put there, and he sounds—kriff, he sounds young and small, which he didn’t want. He wants Skywalker to look at him and see whatever there is about him that other people have wanted in the past, not look at him and see…see some twelve year old little brat, unable to understand that Anakin Skywalker never intended to take him as a padawan.
So he makes sure to blink, nice and slow, rest his chin on the heel of his hand and run his fingers—two of them, just the tips—around the rim of the glass in front of him. “It feels good. Being wanted.”
Skywalker’s eyes flash with something that looks a lot like wariness, and he shifts in the chair. Uncomfortable? Good.
“I’m sure,” Master Skywalker says shortly. His hand taps at his thigh, fingers moving with pent-up energy that expresses itself in an unsteady rhythm. Master Skywalker pauses. Looks at him then looks away then looks back. Like he can’t help himself.
Obi-Wan knows a thing or two about that.
He watches Master Skywalker’s fingers, then he watches his face, the bob of his throat. “I’m sure you’ve got no shortage of that,” Master Skywalker says, finally, like the words have been torn from his mouth without his express permission. Maybe they have; it’s hardly a normal thing, to say to your padawan’s friend.
But Master Skywalker isn’t looking at him like he’s his padawn’s friend either. He’s looking at him the way that man in Blue Milk had looked at him earlier tonight. He’s looking at him the way so many others have over the last handful of years.
Like he wants him.
It’s liquid fire in Obi-Wan’s veins, it’s golden, sweet-tasting poison. It’s just for a second, just a brief heartbeat of a moment, before Master Skywalker’s face shutters, eyes going unreadable and wrinkles between his brow smoothing out.
But it’s enough. Obi-Wan’s done stupider things based on a lot less than one second’s proof of Master Skywalker wanting to fuck him.
He thinks.
Probably.
It’d be easier to be objective about this if his heart would slide out of the conversation and leave the decision making to his mind and gut and alcohol. But of course it doesn’t, because this is Anakin Skywalker, and Obi-Wan learned everything he knows about love from watching him. Even when he hated him.
Perhaps especially then, if he’s being honest.
He’s moving without conscious permission from his brain, but why not? The glass of liquor is in his hand, held loosely like it’s not something precious. The space between their bodies isn’t that much, not actually, not when Obi-Wan is closing it.
Why not? What does he have to lose?
It’s a minor miracle of the Force that when he settles himself into Anakin Skywalker’s lap, the man doesn’t push him off. He’s tense all over, thighs and chest and arms and shoulders frozen still. His Force signature isn’t filled with disgust though, but rather something much more like tightly leashed control. Fraying at the seams.
“What,” Master Skywalker says. It’s not a question.
“This is what I do sometimes, Master,” Obi-Wan tells him, surprised his mouth is working. Surprised he can sound out the words past the tight bundle of nerves in his throat. “When someone gives me a free drink and looks at me like they want to eat me alive.”
He makes a show of getting comfortable, wriggling around on Anakin Skywalker’s lap, thighs spreading around his, knees touching the upholstery of the armchair behind him. His mind is racing. Trying to commit the feeling of this to memory before he’s pushed off and sent away.
Suddenly, Anakin’s hands clench tightly around his waist, fingers squeezing at his hips to hold him still. It would ache, a bit. If it weren’t Anakin.
“Obi-Wan,” Master Skywalker warns. Again, it’s not a question, but then, maybe it’s obvious what Obi-Wan is doing. Perhaps Anakin doesn’t need to ask for clarification.
Obi-Wan bites his bottom lip anyway, raising the glass in his hand up to his mouth and taking a large sip. It’s messy; some of the amber liquid drips down his chin. He watches Master Skywalker track the droplets.
The hunger is back. He wonders if Master Skywalker knows what his eyes are promising Obi-Wan.
He must not, because his voice is low and throaty when he asks, “How do you see this ending?”
Not what are you doing? Not how are we going to do this? Not why are you in my arms?
But how do you see this ending, like the ending is already a given. But also like the happening is already a given.
Something settles in Obi-Wan’s gut, knowledge crystalizing into dangerous certainty. This is going to happen. Anakin Skywalker, for whatever reason, wants him. And so of course Obi-Wan is going to give himself over. Of course this is going to happen. So how does he see this ending?
The truth is, of course, he doesn’t. He wants to tell Anakin that, wants to tell him that in his experience, wanting him has never faded. He can’t imagine finally having him would change anything. Surely this is going to just make the dawn harder to bear.
Obviously he can’t say that. No liquor in the galaxy is strong enough to pry that out of his chest.
His hand rests against Anakin’s chest, half on top of his sleeping robe and half on his bare skin. The Force whirls around them, bucking up and twisting itself into knots. Obi-Wan can’t even tell which part of it is Anakin’s feelings and which are his own.
Anakin’s question lingers in the space between them, but he doesn’t ask it again either. Like maybe he doesn’t really care about the answer.
Obi-Wan shifts closer to him, dropping the glass on the small table next to the armchair so he can wrap both his hands around Anakin’s shoulders. His grip is tight. There’s a bone-deep certainty that he won’t be shaken off, made to leave, but then Obi-Wan’s had bone-deep certainties about Anakin Skywalker before and been proven wrong, so he threads his fingers up and through the ends of Anakin’s hair.
His thumb ghosts along the thin skin behind Anakin’s ear, and it’s like the Jedi master melts into him, shoulders sloping down and hands moving to splay along the small of his back.
The touch, even through the layers of his clothes, makes Obi-Wan shiver.
It feels like some sort of out-of-body experience, being in Master Skywalker’s lap, breathing in the same air. Their faces are close together. He thinks if he just sways forward, just a little bit, their lips will brush against each other.
He doesn’t move. Beneath his hand, he can feel Master Skywalker’s heart racing. It makes him feel light-headed, drunker than the liquor he’d been given.
Master Skywalker hadn’t wanted him as a padawan, ten years ago. But he wants him like this, now. That has to be enough. The way Master Skywalker’s hand runs the length of his spine like he’s something to be caressed, the way his other hand stays low, proprietary at the top of his ass.
“Tell me you want me,” Obi-Wan whispers. He hopes it comes out alluring; all he feels is a sudden curdling desperation in the pit of his stomach. He needs the words, needs something else to hold onto outside of Anakin’s actions. Master Skywalker’s actions mean nothing. “Master, tell me.”
It’s a demand, but Anakin doesn’t do anything, just sits there beneath him, eyes trailing over Obi-Wan’s face like he’s trying to decode him. There’s a tightening between his eyebrows, a flash of doubt. We shouldn’t do this, maybe. Or what in the name of the Force are we doing. Or you’ve been drinking, it’s late, go to bed.
All things that would kill Obi-Wan to hear. Perhaps he really will leave the Order if Anakin opens his mouth and says any of that.
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan says. “Anakin, please.”
Master Skywalker lets out a sound like he’s been kicked in the chest, like he’s in pain, like Obi-Wan’s stuck a vibro-blade through his ribs. “Fuck, sweetheart,” he says, and then he’s tangling his fingers through the long strands of Obi-Wan’s hair and yanking him forward, crashing their lips together.
It’s not a kiss. Or it’s not just a kiss. It’s everything Obi-Wan’s ever wanted and everything he’s always told himself he wouldn’t get. Anakin’s lips are rough against his, chapped and dry and pressing insistently like there’s even a chance Obi-Wan would turn him away.
He opens for him in a heartbeat. Anakin tastes like that liquor, like pure fire. So much better than Obi-Wan’s ever been able to imagine just because it’s real. It’s happening. Master Skywalker is kissing him, licking into his mouth like he’s a starving man, and all Obi-Wan can do is hold onto his shoulders, push into his chest and squirm on his lap like a desperate virgin about to come in his pants.
He feels like it. Perhaps it’s the drink.
But it’s probably just Anakin Skywalker.
Anakin’s mechno hand clamps on his jaw, tilting his face into another angle and tugging him closer without letting up the assault on his mouth. It’s heady, the way Anakin kisses him. All-consuming. Obi-Wan never wants to do anything but this. He was made for this. Made to lick at Anakin’s teeth and give ground when Anakin demands it of him, made to suck at Anakin’s tongue and whimper at the feeling of their mouths connected.
Obi-Wan jerks his head away when he has to breathe. Even then, he only goes so far. The room is spinning around him. He has stars in his eyes. Anakin Skywalker’s lips are red and wet with Obi-Wan’s spit. His attention is focused solely on him, eyes running from his mouth to the flush on his cheeks to his heaving chest and then back to his mouth like he can’t stop himself.
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan whispers. Any louder than that, it’ll be a moan. Anakin’s eyes darken, pupil eating up the blue. Obi-Wan swallows the taste of Anakin’s spit, runs his tongue over his bottom lip and says, just for himself, “Master.”
Anakin groans from deep in his chest, and then he’s on him again, jerking their mouths back together with the firm hold he still has on his chin. Obi-Wan wonders if it’ll bruise; he hopes it will.
This kiss is biting, punishing. Anakin nips at his lip and then soothes the hurt of it with a swipe of his tongue, before the pain’s even registered in Obi-Wan’s mind. The next moment, he’s bullying his way back into Obi-Wan’s mouth, a conqueror exploring new territory he already knows belongs to him.
Obi-Wan jerks forward like he’s been electrocuted the moment Anakin finds his padawan braid. He brushes against it with just his knuckles, a careless touch that lasts only a second, and Obi-Wan feels desperate and strung-out. He’s never been harder in his life. Anakin Skywalker is kissing him. Anakin Skywalker is kissing him. It’s messy and gross and beautiful and real.
“Please,” he’s saying the moment they part. “Please, Anakin, fuck me, I want you—”
He doesn’t know if those are the right words, knows he’d say anything to get what he wants if it’s even the slimmest of a possibility.
“Shit, sweetheart,” Anakin mutters, swiping his thumb along Obi-Wan’s lip. He lets out a sound that’s half-sigh, half-groan when Obi-Wan ducks his head down and seals his mouth over the digit. Anakin’s index finger nudges against the corner of his mouth, and Obi-Wan sucks that one into his mouth as well. He wants to be good. That’s all he’s ever wanted, to be good for Anakin, he’s just dressed up in different names and tried doing it in different ways.
Now, with the mechno-sensors of Anakin’s fingers rubbing over the flat of Obi-Wan’s tongue, with Anakin Skywalker staring at him like he can’t imagine ever looking away, he thinks—maybe. Maybe he can get what he wants, like this. Maybe if he’s good enough, Anakin will fuck him, just the once, and Obi-Wan can live off that memory of that once for the rest of his life.
He whines, too loud and too desperate, when Anakin’s fingers stroke along the wet of his cheek and then further, feeling the back of his mouth and pressing into it like he’s testing for a gag reflex. Like he’s imagining how it would feel to fuck his throat for real.
“Quiet, quiet,” Anakin tells him, scolding, but the reprimand loses its power when Obi-Wan forces his eyes open again to look at Anakin’s face.
“You have to be quiet, darling,” Anakin says, rubbing his other hand along the base of Obi-Wan’s padawan braid. He doesn’t pull it, like some people Obi-Wan’s met in clubs like to do, those Coruscanti denizens who get off on fucking a Jedi more than they get off on fucking Obi-Wan specifically.
He just—holds it. Flicks his gaze between Obi-Wan’s mouth and his braid, like he can’t decide which he wants to look at more. His eyes are dark, but in the low light of the room, Obi-Wan suddenly can’t quite discern if he looks angry or hungry. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, so long as he’s looking at him.
When Anakin pulls his fingers from his mouth, they’re soaked with spit. A thin string of it stretches in the gap between them, and Anakin’s eyes go heavy-lidded.
Obi-Wan licks his lips, leans forward in Anakin’s lap until he’s practically rubbing himself along his front. “I’ll be quiet,” he whispers, when what he really wants to say is that he’ll be good.
Anakin hums like he can hear it anyway, and maybe he can. He’s always been so attuned in the Force, Obi-Wan remembers that from when he was little. The way standing next to Anakin’s side felt like being in the eye of a hurricane, but anywhere else felt like wearing the weight of his Force signature like a heavy cloak around his shoulders.
“You’ll be quiet,” Anakin repeats, and his tone is all Master Skywalker. Firm and unyielding, like he’s picking apart Obi-Wan’s excuse for being late and not—not listening to Obi-Wan promise to bite his tongue while he’s being fucked.
It does something to Obi-Wan’s stomach, makes it twist up and flip over itself. He wants to say that he’ll be whatever Master Skywalker wants him to be, but those words are hard to pronounce. It’s so much easier to cant his head forward and press his lips to the hinge of Master Skywalker’s jaw.
His scent is thicker here, whatever body oils and perfumes he wears during the day lingering even now. “Yes, Master,” he murmurs, kissing down his neck. Anakin has made it so easy, wearing only his sleeping robe, something loose that Obi-Wan can ruck up with his hands.
Anakin’s breath sounds labored, pained even as he tips his head back to give Obi-Wan room to explore. It’s not what he wants. It feels like he’s being allowed.
Obi-Wan bites at the thin skin over Anakin’s collarbone, teeth sinking in as the dissatisfaction in his chest grows.
And then it’s a thousand times worse when Anakin’s hand cups the back of Obi-Wan’s hair, threading through his locks and anchoring him against his chest, even as he mutters, “Force, we shouldn’t be doing this.”
It sounds weak and reluctant, a protest built on unsteady foundations. It’s devastating all the same, and it makes Obi-Wan want to cry. It makes him angry, too, though. Furious and defensive, raking his nails down Anakin’s back like he can claw him up. Punish him for giving him this and then daring to even think about taking it away.
“Why?” Obi-Wan whispers, letting go of Anakin so he can grab the hem of his own shirt and yank it over his head. He’d decided to forgo his Jedi robes for a civilian look when Quinlan had invited him out for drinks with Ahsoka. He’s never been more grateful that his civilian outfits have mostly all been chosen with ease of getting out of them in mind. No buckles, no ties. His shirt lands on the ground next to them, and Anakin’s gaze is white-hot and searing as it peruses his chest and then down.
“Obi-Wan,” Anakin says, strained. His hands have fallen back onto Obi-Wan’s hips, but they don’t restrain his movement. “Do I have to list the reasons.”
No, of course he doesn’t. All he has to say is that he doesn’t care about them, about any of them. All he has to do is let his desire for Obi-Wan overrule his common sense and all his excuses.
Obi-Wan feels mean and stretched thin and vulnerable all over again in a way that makes him ache like a bruise. He rocks himself forward into the bulge of Master Skywalker’s cock, still tucked away in his sleep pants, and tries to take comfort from the uncomplicated feeling of his arousal beneath him.
“You’re older than me?” he asks, a breathy whisper. Master Skywalker’s eyes are sharp as they watch him trail a hand across the ball of his shoulder, down his own chest to palm at the muscle there. His nipples have always been sensitive, and he can’t stop himself from letting out a high whimper when his thumbnail catches the bud. It’s like a gift he gives Anakin. “I like that, Master.”
He kisses the bulge of Anakin’s jaw when his teeth grind together.
“I’m drunk?” he asks. His hands fall to the loose strings at the waistband of Anakin’s pants. The heel of his palm rests on that bulge. It’s hard to talk because his mouth’s watering so much. “But I’m not. And even if I was, I don’t need to be drunk to want this.”
Which is sort of a lie, if he thinks about it too hard. A lot of the time, he needs to be drunk to want sex. Or at least to submit to other people’s hands on him. There are exceptions though. Quin, mostly.
And Anakin. Of course.
He wants Anakin all the time.
He pushes his palm harder against Anakin’s cock, applying the sort of constant rolling pressure that he loves. Anakin’s fingers tighten in Obi-Wan’s hair like he likes it too.
“My padawan is in the next room,” Anakin rumbles. His hand falls down, catches and holds Obi-Wan’s like it’ll stop him. It should, but Obi-Wan’s been given a taste of Anakin’s spit and Anakin’s desire and the way Anakin sounds when he’s being kissed, so he isn’t sure nothing outside of being thrown from Master Skywalker’s lap is going to stop him now. "Your friend."
Not even bringing up Ahsoka. Obi-Wan already knows how poor of a friend he is. He doesn’t need the reminder. He’ll let the guilt consume him later, afterwards, when it’s properly morning and the sun is out and illuminating all his short-comings and flaws and mistakes.
Right now, he just says, like a promise, “And I’ll be so quiet.”
It makes Anakin groan, but that may also be from the way Obi-Wan dips his fingers past the waistband of his sleep pants, just far enough to tangle in the wiry patch of his pubic hair.
“We have—” Anakin pitches forward, cuts himself off with a curse that makes Obi-Wan’s blood sing. “History,” he finishes, head knocking back against the armchair’s rest and exposing the long line of his throat.
History.
What a small, insignificant word meant to cover all the hours Obi-Wan has spent crying over this man.
His chest tightens, and it makes him feel mean the way a cornered animal gets mean, claws flashing and teeth bared like he’s capable of hurting Anakin Skywalker in a way that would matter.
“What history?” he murmurs, leaning up in Anakin’s lap so he can connect their lips together again. It’s a short kiss, but it’s heady like they’re dancing along the edge of a cliff. When he pulls away, Anakin sways forward, like he wants to follow him. “I don’t think of you at all, Master Skywalker,” he whispers, pressing another chaste kiss onto Anakin’s mouth.
Anakin’s hands tighten, reflexive. It feels good. So kriffing good that it makes Obi-Wan squirm on his lap, push up into the touch like he’s courting bruises.
The Force fluctuates in the air around them, more storm now than before. Master Skywalker’s face is darker too, the hunger there but drowned out by something else. Something angrier.
Razor’s edge. But neither side is a soft landing and safety feels like a distant concept to him, one that someone else invented. “They’re good reasons, Master,” he says, kissing the words right into Anakin’s mouth. “I wouldn’t blame you if they were enough.”
He would, he thinks. He’d probably—die of embarrassment, sheer mortification, if Anakin pulled away now after having a taste of him and deciding that was all he wanted.
But Obi-Wan doesn’t want to care the way he does, so he makes a point of lowering his eyes and looking at Anakin through the fan of his eyelashes, grinding his hips down against his cock—still hard, still straining—and murmurs, “We can just forget this,” he lies. It doesn’t sound very convincing. “You can put the glasses in the sink and go to bed, and I can get dressed and spend the rest of the night in Quin’s room. If you wan—”
Obi-Wan almost swallows his tongue in surprise. One moment he’s astride Anakin’s lap, grinding down into him because he can’t help it, and the next second he’s in the air, Anakin standing and lifting his weight like it’s the easiest thing in the galaxy.
“Oh,” Obi-Wan inhales, clinging to the breadth of Anakin’s shoulders. The Force is all lightning and heat around them, but it’s gentle against his skin all the same, soothing somehow.
He’s never once thought Anakin Skywalker would actually hurt him, not physically. Not with intent. He hadn’t realized until now, when the man’s face is set in a fierce scowl and his emotions are tangled and sharp like barbed wire in the air around him, but his hands on the seat of Obi-Wan’s ass aren’t tearing into him. They’re holding him up and keeping him close.
“You push, and you push,” Anakin says. It’s really more of a snarl. They’re in the hallway, then they’re in Anakin’s sleeping quarters. The automatic door slides shut behind them, a red light beeping to signal that it’s locked.
Obi-Wan’s heart kicks up at the noise. It’s different here, inside Anakin’s room, where he can’t look to the left and see the door out of his quarters. All he can see is Anakin, all he can smell is Anakin. All he can feel are Anakin’s hands, firm and insistent as they drop him onto his unmade bed and run the length of him. Territory already conquered.
“Unreasonable padawan,” Anakin is muttering as he kneels up on the edge of the bed, shrugging out of his over-robe and leaving him only in his black sleep pants. “Fucking—temptation.”
“Master,” Obi-Wan breathes, and the word is embarrassing because he doesn’t mean to say it at all. That’s just the only thing he can think when he stares up at Anakin Skywalker’s scowling face and hungry eyes. He reaches up, into the space between them, unthinking, just a mess of exposed nerve-endings and desperate desire. “Please.”
“Hush, sweetheart,” Anakin tells him, croons, sweeter now and almost soft if it weren’t for the flash of his eyes. The way he can see the tension in his shoulders. “I’ll fuck you, I swear it. Don’t have to convince me, baby. Was always going to want you.”
The words hit, shunt in between his ribs. A dagger. A saberpoint. A blastershot. A benedicton. “Just want you to touch me,” Obi-Wan whispers, lifting his hips on the bed and shimmying his pants down his thighs. Master Skywalker’s hands join in on the effort, fingers tangling at the waistline of his underwear and yanking them both off in one pull to leave him bare in the low light.
“I will,” Anakin promises him. His attention is divided for a moment, fumbling for something in the bedside table. Obi-Wan slides his foot up the length of Anakin’s thigh. He’s still wearing clothes; this is categorically unfair.
“Please,” Obi-Wan says, like it’s the only word he knows. It works though. Anakin drops the small container of lube onto the mattress next to his hip and then suddenly he’s being pulled up into his arms, legs parting around Anakin’s waist and back held up off the mattress with just the strength of Anakin’s arms.
And then he’s being kissed again, and it’s hard to think about anything but the feeling of Anakin’s tongue, swiping across his mouth. Not so much begging entry as demanding it. Obi-Wan tangles his hands into his hair, arching up into him like a desperate slut. That’s how he feels, aching and hard and needy. The small amount of friction he gets from rubbing his naked cock along the skin of Anakin’s stomach does nothing to stifle his need. Fuck, he needs him.
“Please,” Obi-Wan says, begs, demands, the moment that their lips part, and Anakin is kind enough to hide his smirk in the dip of his neck. “Master, now. Fuck me now.”
It’s urgent. They’re on a deadline, and even if Obi-Wan wants to lengthen the process, take his time and memorize every single inch of Anakin’s skin he gets to see, they have only a handful of hours left. Maybe not even a full hour. It’s lighter outside than it was ten minutes ago, ten seconds ago. Ahsoka will not be asleep forever.
“Please,” Obi-Wan says, and then he keeps saying it like it’s the only word he knows. He says it while Anakin pushes his thighs wide open, spreading him out halfway on his lap and halfway on the mattress, and he says it when Anakin slicks up his fingers and presses the first one against his entrance, and he says it even when he has to look away from the intensity on Master Skywalker’s face, tossing his head back into the pillow and squeezing his eyes against the overwhelm of it all.
Master Skywalker’s whispering words of his own, harsh and guttural sounds that definitely don’t sound like Basic, pressing them into Obi-Wan’s cheek, the dip of his collarbone, edge of his armpit as he kisses and bites at him. Two fingers, then three. Please. Please please please.
“How do you want it,” Anakin mutters, pulling back to take in the tableau Obi-Wan makes on his lap. It’s embarrassing, surely. Obi-Wan can’t see what he looks like, but he feels—sweaty, red-faced, face swollen like he’s been crying. He thinks maybe he’s been crying, but he doesn’t remember when he started. Anakin’s cock juts out and up from the cradle of his hips, flushed dark and wet at the tip. It’s an impressive size; it’s going to stretch Obi-Wan out so much he’ll feel it for weeks. Force, he’ll feel it for ages. The rest of his life maybe.
“Like this,” Obi-Wan breathes, wriggling into Anakin’s grasp just to remind himself that it’s there. “I want it like this.”
So he can see Anakin’s face the whole time. So Anakin has to see his and know who he’s fucking despite all of his nice and pretty reasons. So Anakin can’t pretend later that he’d never wanted Obi-Wan at all.
“Like this, please,” Obi-Wan whispers, digging his heel into Anakin’s back until the man nods, mouth wet and slack. He fists his cock once, twice, to smear the lube over it, and Obi-Wan gets lost in watching the movement. Anakin’s hands are big and rough, and if they had more time, he thinks he’d want his fingers in his mouth again. He thinks he’d want to ride him, slow and easy. Sink down onto Anakin’s length and relish in the burn of it, put his hands on his chest and push himself up and down until they both finish, til Obi-Wan comes all over Anakin’s chest like a claim.
But they don’t have more time. They just have now, and if Obi-Wan is only going to get this once, then he wants it like this. Wants to see Anakin’s face over him, wants his arms bracketing his head, and the whole of his bulk pressing in and around him.
It’s those damned survival instincts. Probably.
“Please,” Obi-Wan says, and Anakin closes his eyes for a moment like he’s slipped into meditation. He angles his cockhead against his wet entrance, hole stretched and hungry and needy. Obi-Wan flexes, tries to push down, push into Anakin’s touch, but Anakin’s hands tighten into durasteel restraints around his wrists.
“You will be patient,” Anakin tells him. Master Skywalker tells him. His voice is low, strained.
“Master, please, I need it,” Obi-Wan says because he’s not above begging, and he feels like something crucial is unraveling inside of his chest the longer he goes without Anakin’s cock fucking him open. Can Anakin still change his mind? Can he still dismiss him, push him away?
Will he?
But then Anakin is pressing forward, cock pushing past the hint of resistance Obi-Wan’s body offers. It’s slow. It’s fucking amazing. It’s so close to what he wants that Obi-Wan has to shut his eyes tight and wrestle with himself so he doesn’t come all over his chest at the feeling of Anakin Skywalker inside of him.
Not—not in love with him. But wanting him all the same. It feels good, like it in another life it should be enough. If Obi-Wan were wiser, if he weren’t such a fool, so greedy, so needy, this should be perfect. Anakin’s hand is clamped tight over Obi-Wan’s wrists, holding them above his head while his other arm holds himself up, bicep straining with the effort. His hips are flush up against Obi-Wan’s ass and Obi-Wan feels so full with it that he can’t breathe.
It’s enough. It’s enough. It feels so good, so good that Obi-Wan’s eyes are hot, a tightness behind them that he can’t dispel.
“Please,” he whispers because it’s the only word he knows when it comes to Anakin Skywalker. Or maybe it’s just the easiest one to say.
He isn’t even sure what he’s begging for anymore. More. Always more.
“Alright, Obi-Wan,” Anakin tells him, shifting and retreating. Still slow, still careful. Like he’s something to be handled. This time, the thought doesn’t hurt as much as it had an hour before. He wants Anakin’s slow and careful. He wants Anakin’s fast and rough. But if he can just get this once, if all he has is this, then he’ll take whatever Anakin wants to give him.
“You can leave bruises,” Obi-Wan says, breath punched out of him and voice breaking over the last word when Anakin begins to move in earnest.
“Hah,” Anakin mutters, less of a huff of laughter and more like an exhale. His head is hanging down between his shoulders as he works up to a rhythm that Obi-Wan can only describe as devastating. “You want that? Want to see the proof that I was here?”
Obi-Wan keens. It’s the words; it’s the way Anakin nails his prostate dead on, shunting his hips at an angle that makes him see stars. “Yes!” he cries, the word forced out of him. Anakin’s grip has loosened on his hands, which means he can scrabble and claw at the expanse of his back, arch into him like they can somehow find a way to be closer than they are now. “Yes, please, fuck me, bruise me—”
Choose me. Love me. Never leave me and when you have to go, take me with you as well.
He bites at his tongue hard enough that the taste of blood fills his mouth, but at least those words stay firmly inside his chest. At least his body doesn’t betray him like that.
“Want everyone to see,” he adds, throwing his head back and crying out when the words make Anakin fuck into him harder.
The smile Anakin gives him is all teeth, a snarl, something dark and unrecognizable in his eyes. “Yes,” he says, leaning down and biting at the column of Obi-Wan’s neck. His teeth are unforgiving. The pressure of them digging into his skin catapults Obi-Wan to the edge of his orgasm, and it’s all he can do to beg. Please, please, please.
Please.
Anakin’s gaze is hot on his face. Obi-Wan can feel it even if he can’t bring himself to look at him. Of course Master Skywalker will not stand for that though. He grips Obi-Wan’s chin and forces it back down, until he’s blinking at Anakin’s flushed face. Beautiful. He’s beautiful and it hurts. It makes Obi-Wan want more. Greedy. He’s always been so greedy. Not for anything else though. Just for this.
Obi-Wan isn’t sure what’s splashed across his face, but whatever it is has Anakin pitching down and kissing him like he’s starving. The pace of his hips speed up as he fucks his tongue into his mouth, and Obi-Wan never wants this to end even as he feels himself drawing closer and closer to the edge of coming.
“Please,” he begs, “please.”
“You want to leave the Order, want to be wanted,” Anakin snarls, curling over Obi-Wan, bracketing him in. So good, never enough, more than he deserves. “But you’ll never find anyone who wants you as much as I do, Obi-Wan, padawan, never.”
And Obi-Wan is coming before he can even realize it, orgasm crashing through him like a natural disaster. “Anakin, Anakin,” he cries out, over and over again, clawing at Anakin’s back and pushing him closer. It’s not a declaration of love. It’s not anywhere close, but then why would it be? Anakin doesn’t love him, not the way that Obi-Wan loves him. But he wants him, he wants him, more than anyone else in the entire galaxy, and that’s not enough but it’s all he’ll ever get.
It’s enough. It’s enough when Master Skywalker shudders and stills above him, hunching over him like he’s in pain. It’s enough when he pulls himself out of Obi-Wan’s hole, sliding his legs up the length of Obi-Wan’s body to straddle his chest, cock in his mech-hand looking so hard it hurts. It’s enough when he comes after only a few twists of his wrist, spurting across Obi-Wan’s neck and chest. Painting him in it. Claiming him with it.
It has to be enough, because it’s all Obi-Wan gets. Anakin’s room has slowly filled with natural light, dawn breaking over the Coruscanti horizon. It’s quiet, still. Anakin falls onto his side next to him, hand carding through Obi-Wan’s hair like it’s the most natural thing in the galaxy.
Anakin touches his chin and guides him to his mouth, and they exchange slow, lazy kisses for a minute. For an hour maybe. For a day.
It feels good, even though each purposeless press of their lips together makes Obi-Wan’s heart clench in his chest. This is nothing but the embers of a dying fire. The remainders of desire.
He lets himself have it for another moment anyway, lets himself bury his hand into Anakin’s curls and nuzzle his nose along the line of his jaw just so he can breathe in his scent there at its hinge.
Pulling away is hard. He thinks—maybe it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done in his life. But he knows if he doesn’t do this, doesn’t push his way off the bed and collect his clothes from the floor, then Anakin will leave first. And that just wouldn’t be fair. Not after everything else.
But the kisses have made him weak. Or perhaps it’s just the natural way of things: you get one impossible thing, so you want another. Greedy, always. But just for this.
“I, um,” Obi-Wan says, whispers, really. They’ve moved back into the living quarters, Anakin meeting Obi-Wan there with a wet towel he drags carefully over his chest. Cleaning him up, like he’s something to be handled. To be cherished.
Obi-Wan’s stomach shifts, clenches, rolls over on itself. He pulls his shirt back over his head and smooths it down. It’s hopelessly creased in the morning light.
Anakin watches him. His face is unreadable, eyes dark and deep and Force signature for once contained. Carefully leashed.
“I usually meditate before breakfast in the Temple’s fourth level music room,” he tells his shoes, once he’s slipped them on. Razor’s edge, but this time he’s giving the decision to someone else. “No one is ever there in the mornings.”
He glances up at Anakin through his eyelashes, feeling selfish and hopeful, resplendent and rotten under his skin.
“If you ever…” he starts to add before he trails off. There are no words. Or at least, none he can bring himself to say. Everything he can think of sounds far too revelatory, far too much like a youngling trying to figure out how to make an older boy stick around a little longer, sure that just with a little bit more time, he’d see how special he was.
Maybe some things you never grow out of, you just get so used to them that you learn to ignore their existence.
“No,” Anakin tells him.
Oh. He hadn’t realized he’d been hoping for something else until it vanishes from his fingertips.
“Of course,” he murmurs. “I understand.”
He does and it hurts. He does, and it’s a line of burning agony that he has to swallow. He turns to go. The ache radiating up his spine and through his legs no longer feels good. It just feels like an ache. Bone-deep, perhaps permanent this time.
“But,” Master Skywalker says, and he’s closer now. Close enough to touch. “If you were to begin to take your early morning meditations in the atrium’s garden room on the twelfth level…I would make a point of visiting. Often. Around dawn.”
“What’s…” Obi-Wan’s mouth is dry. He swallows, tries again. “What’s wrong with the music room? I swear, no one uses it before noon.”
Master Skywalker tilts his head and studies Obi-Wan’s face. When his hand rises up, he thinks he’s going to cup his cheek, maybe grab at his chin again. But his fingers run over his jaw, along his ear and then settle on the line of his padawan braid. “I would have you in the sunlight,” Master Skywalker says. “I would like to see what you look like there.”
“Oh,” Obi-Wan says. The noise is punched out of him, and Anakin smirks down at him like he knows it. His thumb runs along the line of his braid, once and then twice.
“Okay?” Anakin asks. Obi-Wan blinks at him. He isn’t sure what Anakin means specifically, but he has to know Obi-Wan’s answer isn’t going to change. Razor’s edge. But he’s made this decision ages ago. He doesn’t know how to make any other decision, not when it comes to Anakin Skywalker.
“Yes, master,” he says, and he can feel the embers between them flicker, spark. Roar to life until Obi-Wan can't remember ever having felt cold at all.