@daisy-stardust requested a ficlet set in the cheating au in exchange for a ko-fi donation (ty ty ty ty <3) so this is 3k, set four years or so after obi-wan and anakin begin sleeping together behind their wives' backs
Obi-Wan’s been tense since the moment his secretary knocked on his door to inform him that a Set Starkiller has requested an appointment at the end of the day.
He’d told her to schedule the man in, of course, before requesting she leave early for the day, and she’d given him a bow in response, and they’d both pretended they didn’t know that Set Starkiller was Anakin Skywalker and that Anakin Skywalker could meet with Obi-Wan Kenobi whenever he wanted.
It’s just a strange time, a break from their established tradition. When Set reaches out to schedule time in Obi-Wan’s calendar, it’s usually for lunch meetings. Usually for the purpose of arranging a lunchtime tryst in the relative privacy of Obi-Wan’s office space in the Stewjoni Institute.
At the end of the day, Anakin usually must pick the children up from their school on the days he isn’t tied up in late-night gallery shows. He usually ferries them home to their high-rise apartment building in the newer, shinier area of Coruscant. He usually fixes dinner and—presumably—greets his wife with a kiss the moment she returns from the Senate.
Usually, at the end of the day, Anakin has no time for his affair, for Obi-Wan.
Except for those times where Obi-Wan bullies himself and his family into the mix: suggesting outings to the opera to Padmé during recesses between bill amendment proposals, sending her holo-bulletins for the latest, hottest restaurants in the newest up-and-coming district of Coruscant. Places she should be seen, and who is Obi-Wan if not someone she should be seen with as her mentor in the Senate? As her confidante? But it may send the wrong message, open them both up to nasty rumors should they be photographed alone together at a dinner place. So really, Obi-Wan should check with his wife, to see if she is free. And if he is bringing his wife, then surely Padmé can bring her husband.
And Korkie enjoys the area, likes the spicy food from the Outer Rim that’s so in vogue at the moment. If Obi-Wan brings his wife, his child, and Padmé brings Anakin, then surely they should bring the twins too. The twins, who light up around Obi-Wan, who fight between themselves about who gets to sit next to him at the table.
But usually, Set Starkiller does not schedule appointments to see Obi-Wan during the evening. The evenings are usually reserved for his family, which Obi-Wan tends to allow him to believe does not include Obi-Wan’s family as well.
So the fact that he’s strayed so far from their usual, established pattern, makes Obi-Wan feel tense and hot all over from the moment his secretary alerts him to the request and then through the rest of the day.
Thankfully, if nothing else, Obi-Wan has beaten into Anakin an appreciation for punctuality over the last four years, so at the turn of the hour there’s a knock on the door.
Anakin enters without being told he can, because of course he does. Because this is Obi-Wan’s office and Obi-Wan’s space and whatever is Obi-Wan’s is Anakin’s as well. It’d be presumptive and irritating if Obi-Wan hadn’t spent the last four years trying to instill such beliefs in the other man.
Obi-Wan stands, but waits for the door to slide shut behind the man before he speaks. “Darling,” he says, striding forward until he’s close enough to touch the other’s elbow. “Has something happened?”
Anakin’s hair, usually such a beautiful and precise mess of curls, looks like he’s been running his hands through it all day. There are dark shadows under his eyes, bruises imprinted over golden and flawless skin that Obi-Wan’s spent cumulative hours pressing his lips against.
“There are pictures,” Anakin says. Perhaps it’s supposed to come out strong, like a statement, but his voice cracks, and he rubs a hand over his mouth instead, turning away from Obi-Wan’s touch—no—and looking out over the cityscape through the one-way windows behind his desk.
Obi-Wan blinks at his back. He’s still clad in the conservative, high-necked starchly-white uniform he prefers for working in the offices atop the art gallery. It’s jarring to see him wearing such colors; he usually prefers dark clothes, black and brown leather. Night-sky blue and deep, bruiselike purples. The white looks good on him, but then most things look good on Anakin Skywalker.
It just also makes him look that much more like a stranger.
“Pictures,” Obi-Wan repeats when his mind catches up with the conversation. “Of what?”
“Of us,” Anakin says, whirling around to stare down at him, eyes narrowing in anger.
After four years of feeling the burn of this man’s anger and knowing it is an essential aspect of the burn of his love, Obi-Wan is not moved to ire of his own. He crosses his arms and leans back against the edge of his desk. “There is no need to get angry at me, Anakin. I assure you, I did not hold the holocamera.”
It’s not an inaccurate statement, but it’s definitely also not something that Anakin appreciates if the scowl he throws him is any indication. Anakin’s hand runs up and into his hair, tugging at the curls as he frowns at Obi-Wan, waiting.
Obi-Wan gives in. He always does, when it comes to Anakin. “Pictures of us,” he says. “What are we doing?”
It’s not optimal, of course, and Obi-Wan’s pulse is already hammering beneath his skin at the idea of some holo-pap capturing an unsavory picture of the two of them out in Coruscant. After all, Satine may know of their relationship, but Anakin has carefully kept his wife in the dark. If a holo-pap caught them…kissing, it could be ruinous.
For Anakin’s marriage, of course.
But for Obi-Wan and Anakin’s relationship as well.
After all, blaster to his head, Obi-Wan isn’t sure what Anakin would do should his wife find out about the affair tomorrow. Would he beg her to stay with him? Would he promise never to speak to Obi-Wan again? Would he call it all a mistake, a lapse of judgement, a drunken mistake that only happened the once?
Eventually, Anakin will have to choose. Obi-Wan knows that, maybe better than Anakin does. He knows himself, knows that he will not be satisfied with only the crumbs of Anakin’s attention for long. Not when he knows that Anakin needs him. That Anakin wants him. That his children love him the same. One day, Obi-Wan will make him choose, but it will only be when he’s sure that he’ll be the one chosen.
And that’s not today. Not yet.
“Last week,” Anakin tells him, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. “When we were leaving the Outlander.”
Obi-Wan’s eyebrows furrow before they raise. Last week, they’d gotten far too drunk at a dancing club in the lower levels. They’d stayed longer than they planned, and the night had ended with the two of them stumbling out the door, arms around each other, and into a taxi-speeder back to Obi-Wan’s private accommodations.
“Alright,” Obi-Wan says carefully. He drops his arms, taps his fingers along the edge of the desk. “I must admit that I don’t remember us doing anything particularly…scandalous that night.”
Like kiss. Obi-Wan remembers wanting to kiss him, so badly it hurt to look at him sidelong. Obi-Wan remembers wanting to wrap his fingers around the leather cord around Anakin’s neck—his necklace, the japor snippet that was Obi-Wan’s—and pull him in so he could taste the alcohol on his lips right there.
But he hadn’t. Even as drunk as he’d been then he’d known that he couldn’t. That as much as Anakin was his, he could only be his in the shadowy corners of the club, the absolute privacy of his apartments.
Anakin shakes his head in a sharp jerk, plunging his hand into the folds of his tunics and pulling out a handful of colored flimsi paper that he slaps down onto the desk next to Obi-Wan’s hip.
The pictures.
Obi-Wan studies them with a pursed mouth, mind racing.
They’re not scandalous, really. The holo-pap had not, in fact, caught them kissing. He hadn’t even caught them in a position that could be construed as scandalous. Their hands are, for the most part, visible, though Obi-Wan has an arm wrapped low around Anakin’s waist, hidden from view of the holo camera by the dark cloak he’s wearing.
Obi-Wan blinks and looks closer, trying to find whatever hidden message has made Anakin so upset.
But they’re just photos. In one, they’re leaning close together, heads nearly touching as they whisper. Obi-Wan can’t quite recall what was said, can just remember the feeling of Anakin’s hair brushing against his temple as he said it. In another, Obi-Wan is leaning against the club’s wall, deathstick lit and pressed between his lips as Anakin watches him from—alright, perhaps too close. His head is resting against Obi-Wan’s shoulder, face upturned to keep him in his eyeline. In the last picture, Obi-Wan is mostly out of view, negotiating a price for a ride with the taxi speeder. Anakin’s slumped back against the wall, head tilted back against the brick but eyes on Obi-Wan’s bent form. His lips are curved into a slight smirk. It’s heated, possessive, carefree and arrogant.
Not how friends look at each other, perhaps. But not necessarily damning either.
He looks back up at Anakin, who is already staring at him with his arms crossed defensively over his chest.
“I assume these haven’t been published yet,” he says, even though it’s not the first thing he’d like to say. “How did you get your hands on them?”
Anakin works his jaw for a moment before he says, “The Coruscanti Suns’ editor has a youngling in the same daycare as the twins. She gave them to me this morning. Said she couldn’t hold the story, but implied it was just cause she didn’t want to, the sleemo.”
Obi-Wan’s eyes fall back to the pictures. Must be a slow news day. Or perhaps the story is more telling than the pictures by themselves. He tries to think back to that night in the club. They’d danced, but then everyone had been dancing. They’d been—he’d been—so careful not to kiss his partner. But perhaps the Sun found a source, an underpaid server or bartender, footage from one of the serving droids’ memory cards that wasn’t erased properly. Perhaps there’s a story, dangerous and ruinous, lurking beneath these photos.
He sinks back his desk chair and rubs at his forehead for a moment as he considers the pictures before him.
“If she’s giving them to you free of charge and before the story runs, then obviously there’s something she wants more than to see this published,” he tells his lover, drumming his fingers along the armrest of his chair before he picks up the picture closest to him again and studies it. It’s the one of him talking to the speeder driver, the one of Anakin looking at him as if he were a piece of meat to be eaten.
“I don’t know anything about politics,” Anakin says flatly. He moves around the desk until they’re at odds with it between them, deep like a canyon. “She’s wasting her time.”
“Ah, but perhaps she realizes that the other person in these pictures does know a thing or two about politics,” Obi-Wan points out only half as condescendingly as he wants to be. He sets the picture down and taps his own pixelated face. “You, dearheart, are being blackmailed. Congratulations. You’ve taken the first step into your political career.”
Anakin’s scowl is fiercesome and entirely deserved. On the other side of the desk, he begins to pace, movements sharp and frenetic. “Well, what are we going to do about it?” he asks, far too loudly.
Obi-Wan places both his hands carefully on the desk so as to not give into the temptation to tighten them into fists. “My inclination is to let them publish,” he admits, watching Anakin with narrowed, assessing eyes. It wouldn’t do for the both of them to lose their heads. Obi-Wan can’t admit that the idea of this going to print—and the article that must be behind it and must be ten times as damning—makes his chest tighten with worry of his own.
Blaster to his head, he doesn’t know what Anakin will choose—he cannot allow him to make a choice yet. So this cannot be the thing that backs him into the corner. Animals, even predators, act out of instinct and fear when in corners. Everyone knows that.
But it won’t do to say this, any of this, now.
Not when Anakin is already shaking his head, glaring at Obi-Wan as if he’s the enemy here. “No, no way,” he snaps, fists clenching at his sides. “This cannot print.”
Obi-Wan blinks at him, as wide-eyed and innocent as he can look. The truth is that he knows the editor of the Coruscanti Sun, knows that her political chair has been asking for an interview with him for months, has instructed his secretary to decline every attempt the holosite makes to contact his office.
It is a rather heavy-handed attempt at blackmail; but she’s smart to have gone through Anakin. His eyes fall back to the pictures, as if magnetized, and he studies them with a fresh mindset, wondering if there’s anything in his expression that gives away how much of a weakspot Anakin Skywalker has become for him.
“Obi-Wan, please,” Anakin says, begs, really. Begs prettily, rounding the corner of the desk to drop to his knees beside Obi-Wan’s chair. For someone so unused to playing politics, he truly does know how to be as dramatic as the best of them. “Please do something.”
Obi-Wan reaches out, runs his hand through the curls framing Anakin’s face, before grabbing his chin and tilting his head up to study his expression. “You do know that it would be as good as confirming it to her, to stop this story from running,” he points out. Anakin’s eyes are dark but so pretty.
All of him is, really. That’s half of what got them into this mess in the first place.
(The other half being that he’s charming, and whip-smart. Brash and assertive, full of surprises and begging for a firm hand almost as often as he’s raring for a body to take out his anger on.)
“Obi-Wan, please,” Anakin repeats. He presses his face into Obi-Wan’s touch. Relaxes into him. Trusts him. He has a problem; shouldn’t Obi-Wan take care of it for him? Hasn’t that been what Obi-Wan has taught him over the last four years? Of course Anakin came to him immediately with this and made sure to bring with him all of the information that Obi-Wan will need to solve the problem for him.
“Alright, darling,” he says. Gives up, gives in. Because Anakin needs him to. Anakin needs this. Under his hand, Anakin melts in relief, turning immediately to press a kiss against his palm, anger forgotten or burned through as quickly as it was lit. “I’ll get in contact with her.”
“Thank you—”
“Only if you tell me why,” he finishes, and Anakin’s eyes snap to his.
“What do you mean why,” Anakin says, suspicious now. Still beneath his touch but not moving away from him.
“Those pictures are embarrassing, perhaps. Proof of a drunken night out that two men are far too old to partake in,” Obi-Wan says. “And stars, look at me, I haven’t smoked a deathstick in a decade. Hardly a good look for a galactic senator running for re-election.”
Anakin gets to his feet stiffly, jaw working as he glances from Obi-Wan to the holos then back out the window to the cityscape beyond.
Obi-Wan loves this man to the detriment of the both of them, but he’s never met an advantage he hasn’t wanted to press.
“But that’s me,” he says. “And I have a publicity team on standby whose job it is to spin these sorts of articles into a positive. And you, my dear, as important as I know your job is, hardly hold the same seat in the court of public opinion as I do. So. Why is it so important that these holos do not go to print? When all they depict is two men, enjoying a night out like they are reliving their glory days?”
Anakin glares at him, expression surly and rebellious, but Obi-Wan has the upperhand. And beyond that, Obi-Wan wants to know. Obi-Wan wants to hear it.
“Did she say anything else to you?” he asks, adopting a concerned tone. “The editor? Anything to make you think that they have more on us than just this?”
“No,” Anakin snaps. Then, finally: “The photos are enough.”
Obi-Wan raises both eyebrows and shakes his head. Paranoia does not become his lover. “Truly, they are no–”
“She’d know,” Anakin interrupts, rubbing at the line of his neck before tangling his fingers into the leather cord of the necklace around his throat. A nervous habit he started up a few months ago. “She’d look at the pictures and know.”
There is no need to ask who Anakin is talking about. It is not the news editor. Obi-Wan finds that he does not particularly want to hear her name in the sanctity of his office either. “How?”
Anakin’s eyes are burning when he looks at him; one could almost mistake the emotion in them for hatred. Obi-Wan knows better. It seems, finally, Anakin knows better as well, because he says lowly and clearly, “Because that’s how I look when I’m in love with someone and she’d recognize it. And she’d know.”
Obi-Wan’s chest tightens and then expands with the feeling of victory. Of love. Of guilt, but only slightly. Only just. He turns away from Anakin, focuses his eyes on the datapaad on his desk instead of him or the holos. “I’ll make a few calls,” is all he says.
STRAIGHT UP there is a darkness inside of me and i literally can’t stop it from devouring me and every fucign thing around me waaaaait nevermind nevermind. I felt a cramp lol. ok nevermind it’s fine actually we’ll be fine
i have like a half done fic with 1.2k words written and a smau about sylus rescuing you after you've been drugged at the bar. but then i realized he'd definitely take you to a doctor to get you checked out and i didn't want to research what a doctor would do or write transitions between things that happen so its just been sitting there since the 13th. also the dialogue i wrote kinda sucked and i didnt know how to fix it. what do i do with it ?!!!?
Yesterdays work thoughts: Medically accurate seabound. Her sacrifice wouldve done nothing, go die in his arms, loser
Todays work thoughts: Hehe he keeps chickening out asking him bc the moment never feels right. For once he wants to take this seriously and have it be special. Everyone's telling him he's overthinking it, but he just wants to show how much he means to him. He just needs to find the perfect moment--
seeing people like/reblog some Smart Intelligent Analysis Post i made about a pokemon blorbo like NO NO HOLD ON WAIT A MINUTE WE POST GARY MPREG AU HERE
