“I know, but it looks like one” Obi-wan stopped looking at the artifact to look at Maul “Remind me, where did you get this?”
“A guy on the lower levels owns me a favor” he said nonchalantly, one shoulder going up.
“What?”
“Oh, don’t chastise me, Kenobi, I rejected credits for this.”
“Is it... safe?”
“Supposedly”
“Hhmm”
They continued looking down at the bed where the shiny ear-piercing machine was startling against the black of Maul’s robes where he had hidden it and smuggled it into the Jedi Temple.
“Too bad we don’t have-” without a word, Maul threw the package of a needle and a kriffing earring into the bed next to the piercing machine “-a needle and an earring” Obi-wan ended pointlessly with a sight “what else are you hiding in there?” he said pointing at Maul’s robes.
“You really want to know?” he said provocatively with a smirk.
Obi-Wan felt his face go warm.
“I dare you” he snapped.
“What?!” Maul's whole demeanor changed.
“I dare you to pierce your ear,” Obi-wan said with a grin.
“Tha- That's not fair! I dare you!”
“You know the rules, I said it first, you can dare me back until you complete the challenge.”
Maul opened his mouth and closed it again.
He knew the rules well, they made them up years ago as younglings when they started daring each other into doing ridiculous things: eat a spoon of salt, learn teräs käsi, speak like master Yoda for a week, talk to the pretty nautolan girl that used to work at the hangar, do a thousand pushups, train with two lightsabers...
“Damn you, Ke-”
Before he could finish, Obi-Wan kicked him behind the knees making him lose his equilibrium falling straight into the bed with a small groan. Maul tried to turn slightly to push himself up or kick Obi-Wan away, but he was quicker, and force push the zabrak against the pillows, flat on his back. He nearly jumped over Maul, straddling him, and taking his wrists, lifting his arms above his head, immobilizing the zabrak so he couldn’t force push him back.
Maul’s hearts jolted when he saw Obi-wan smiling down at him breathing heavily, cheeks flushed. He probably looked the same, the blush was less obvious, but he could feel his face warm. In fact, all his body felt pleasantly warm under Obi-Wan's. He wanted to groan again but decided to shut up, afraid, that instead, he would moan.
“So” Obi-Wan asked breathlessly with a lopsided grin “left ear or right ear?”
~
“Kriff!”
“Damn you Kenobi, if you just happened to blow my ear off...”
“Don't be ridiculous, your ear is still there, it's just... I didn't imagine there would be so much blood.”
“You did something wrong!”
“No! The earring is there already!”
“Master Krell is going to kill me.”
“Don´t be over dramatic, Maul!” Obi-Wan kept stuffing tissues under the zabrak’s ear. “There,” he said, relieved in his voice and smiling, “no more blood! We did it!”
The zabrak rolled his eyes at him.
“I want to see how you butchered my ear,” he said pushing Obi-Wan softly away so he could stand up and walk to the fresher. Obi-Wan put a hand to his own chest and raised his eyebrows in mock-incredulity.
“You are fine, I'm great at this.”
“Yeah, you should start piercing everybody’s ears, I bet Master Qui-Gon would love it”
Maul listened to Obi-Wan's giggle as he watched himself in the mirror. His ear, of course, was still there. There was a little bit of blood and it kinda swollen but the silver earring on the upper cartilage of his left ear definitely stood out against his black skin.
He liked it.
“Were you nervous?” Obi-wan asked softly behind Maul, looking at him through the mirror.
“What?”
“While I was doing it, you were stiff,” he explained.
“Sort of” the zabrak lied and watched as Obi-Wan reached out and wiped delicately the remaining blood from his ear. Maul tried not to lean over the touch.
“Well,” he said smiling at him, voice low, expression and tone sincere “it was worth it, it really suits you”. Through the mirror, Maul watched how Obi-Wan traced a finger over the black lines marking Maul’s neck. “You look handsome,” he said before smiling again and turning, leaving Maul almost gasping for air.
Savage strikes me as the older brother type to know immediately when Maul starts sneaking around with Kenobi
(And the brother who cooks, cleans, works, does everything because if he ever left the house unattended with Maul + Feral it’d be on fire within two minutes)
the fact that zabraks live until like 180 years old is super funny when you look at maul. at 60 years old he’s basically still in his zabrak thirties, which explains why he’s mellowed out, tired, upset with his youth but accepting of his current lot in life, his back hurts, and he’s changed career paths at least 13 times. all that slaughtering of innocents was just his Terrible Twenties phase.
