"Anakin--" the snarl is immediate and predictable, but Obi-Wan doesn't toss him out of his lap and onto the ground, which Anakin thinks must be a win. Which Anakin thinks is as good as a flag of surrender.
"That's not what you called me," Anakin says because he thinks maybe he should lay all of his sabacc cards out on the table. His knees slot naturally, perfectly around Obi-Wan's hips, and his master's hands fall to his waist. His grip on him is tight to the point of pain. Anakin relishes in it, the ache of it. He'll get bruises. Good. That's good. Obi-Wan had ordered--intimidated?--an entire tank's worth of bacta to heal Anakin of his other bruises and scrapes. It feels right that Obi-Wan should add his own now to the newly bare canvas of Anakin's skin.
"Padawan..."
Anakin rests his mech hand on Obi-Wan's chest and tangles his fingers in the short edges of his hair. "Closer," he murmurs, tipping forward until there's hardly breathing room between their bodies.
Obi-Wan's eyes fall shut as if he is in a great deal of pain. But--his mouth opens. Just slightly, almost as if he cannot help himself. Almost as if he is tasting the air for Anakin's scent. Maybe he is. After all, Anakin must not smell right. He must smell like chemicals, like bacta. He hadn't had the chance to wash off in a sonic between receiving the report from Rex and storming to Obi-Wan's quarters. If Obi-Wan had laid a claim to him by scenting him all those hours ago against that cliffside on Craul, it's most certainly been covered up and washed away.
But Anakin is a good mate. In fact, Anakin can be the best mate Obi-Wan could possibly want. He lets his head fall back further, highlighting the bump in his throat and its vulnerable tendons and what must be his racing pulse, and uses his hold on Obi-Wan's hair to push him closer until his nose bumps up against the edge of his jaw. He can't fight the shiver that rushes through him at the sensation, nor can he fight the way he can feel his body begin to respond to this position he's manipulated them into.
It's not his fault. Obi-Wan's beard feels indescribably good along his skin. It had all those hours ago too, but it's different now. It's different now that he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Obi-Wan does not view him as his pup who he must scent for his own protection. That any claim Obi-Wan leaves on his skin, he is not leaving out of some parental sense of duty or platonic weakness he cannot curb. Mate leaves no room for platonic. It leaves no room for parental.
"Why do you test me so?" his master murmurs, though it sounds more like a groan.
@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.
keeping with the kenobi-skywalkers, chapter twelve
(aka obi-wan kenobi-almost-skywalker and the no-good, very-bad pta meeting)
chapter audience rating: g
chapter silliness rating: 8/10
word count: 3.5k
thank you so much to the person who donated to my ko-fi and asked for a wine party au ficlet in exchange!! this fic takes place the morning after obikin's first meeting (and after they've fucked) - i hope you enjoy!!!
(also btw i'm still doing fic trades for donations on my ko-fi because it's really stupidly expensive to get my laptop fixed and i need it for school stuff as well as fic stuff but im flat broke)
The first thing Anakin notices when he wakes up is the pleasant ache in his muscles along his back and in his thighs. It’s the sign of a good night, that feeling, and Anakin can admit it’s been a while since he’s felt it.
He wants to roll over on the disgustingly soft mattress, languish in the warm morning light wrapping around his bare shoulders, tangle his legs in the sickeningly plush duvet, and sleep for several more hours. It’s what he deserves after all he did for the owner of this bed last night.
Or, all he let the owner of this bed do to him last night. Whichever.
But he can’t, because the moment he cracks his eyes open to peer across the expanse of the mattress, he realizes that he’s alone, the other side of the bed gone cold.
The lack of Kenobi makes Anakin wake up all the way, one part indignant and another part…worried. Or, not worried, really, but something like it. His chest gets tighter as he scans the large room for signs of the other man and comes up empty. Doesn’t Kenobi know the first thing about sleeping with someone? You don’t let them wake up alone, unless you’re just an incredible asshole.
Which, well, Anakin knew Kenobi was, but he’d thought maybe Kenobi knew the basic etiquette of fucking someone.
He’d certainly pretended to last night, at least, after all the other guests had left and it was just Anakin and Obi-Wan sitting on the white patio furniture by the pool. It’d been almost a masterclass of unnecessary seduction, the way Kenobi had taken the wine glass from Anakin’s hand and set it on the table by his elbow; the way he’d slid closer, thigh to thigh, and tucked a loose bit of hair behind Anakin’s ear; the way he’d rested his hands so lightly on Anakin’s waist when he’d given the urge to swing himself into Obi-Wan’s lap….
It’d been weird, the sex. It’d been surprisingly gentle, when it happened, nothing at all like Anakin had expected by the way they’d treated each other fully clothed. He’d been the one to initiate, the one to push Obi-Wan into grabbing his hair and tugging him to his knees, manhandle him up the stairs to his bedroom. Kenobi had almost seemed like he’d be content with heady kisses by the poolside, sipping at his mouth like he’d sipped at the wine all night.
But it hadn’t been bad, the sex. Anakin can admit that in the safety of his mind and with Kenobi wherever he is. It had been good. All of it. Even when Kenobi touched him carefully, wouldn’t fuck into him without first opening him on four fingers, wanted him on his back with his legs around his waist instead of on his hands and knees like Anakin had been expecting since he met the man.
It had been good, and Anakin had gone to sleep still vaguely tipsy from the wine with Kenobi’s spit and come drying along his inner thighs and he’d felt fine. He’d felt good. Satisfied, the way only a really good one night stand can make him.
But all of that’s gone now, bled dry and wilted under the morning—early afternoon?---sun, scattered away the moment Anakin woke alone.
It’s just bad etiquette, Anakin thinks to himself as he grabs a shirt from the floor and pulls it on. It’s Kenobi’s, the same dark oxford he’d been wearing last night. It doesn’t fit, too tight in the shoulders, and Anakin doesn’t even try to button it up properly. The idea of stretching out one of Kenobi’s perfect shirts, probably tailored to his weirdly proportioned frame—lithe and muscular, defined chest and narrow shoulders, thick arms, thicker fingers—makes Anakin smile as he finishes dressing and leaves the room.
Kenobi’s house is as big in the daytime as it had been last night, maybe even bigger. Anakin has to take a double staircase down to get to the ground floor. Anakin didn’t even realize grand foyers even existed outside of palaces and movies anymore. To think, a house like this has existed in his town all this time. It’s disgusting is what it is, all this white paint and marble and—and sandstone.
It’d seemed beautiful last night, winding these corridors from the kitchen through the sunken living room, the foyer, then up to Kenobi’s bedroom. Obviously that’d been the wine and the lust talking, Anakin can see that now in the morning light. It’s just a waste of space and money now.
Obi-Wan probably doesn’t even use half this house. Certainly not the elevator.
Anakin’s made a list of twelve cutting remarks he can’t wait to tell Kenobi by the time he makes it to the kitchen.
All of them die on his lips the moment he actually enters the room and sees Kenobi there amongst the luxury, moving about among the appliances like this is his true home. He’s shirtless, clad only in a pair of loose pants that hang on his narrow hips like the only thing keeping them up is a wisp of a prayer. Anakin’s mouth goes embarrassingly dry as he watches Kenobi’s forearm flex as he mixes something in a bowl.
“Uh,” Anakin says, groping around in his mind for something to say. This Kenobi is not a Kenobi Anakin had expected to find. This Kenobi, with his soft, unflattering hair falling into his face, wearing thick-framed glasses and no shirt, humming to himself—it’s not any kind of Kenobi Anakin wants either. “What are you doing?”
Kenobi looks up at him, eyes soft and face unguarded for a moment before it smooths out. He arches an eyebrow. “Making breakfast.”
Anakin glances at the bowls around the man, taking another step into the kitchen and crossing his arms. Kenobi tracks the motion carefully, probably concerned over the state of his shirt.
“What, are you making the cereal from scratch?” Anakin asks, peering at the counter. He wrinkles his nose at the bunch of spinach sitting in one of the sinks.
Kenobi wrinkles his nose in return. “Don’t tell me you actually eat that,” he says in such a snobby manner that Anakin is pretty sure no jury made of his peers would actually convict him if he drowned the man in the yellow sauce Kenobi’s got in the bowl.
“What, should I be pairing it with a sauvignon blanc? A merlot?” The words taste awkward on his tongue, and he’s sure he’s butchering the pronunciation. Not that it matters. To be honest, Anakin’s surprised he remembers these names, surprised he learned anything at all last night. He’d spent half the time staring at Kenobi from various points in the room and the other half making fun of the room full of snobs in his head.
But he’d also apparently spent at least some of that time learning something about wine. Like its types.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kenobi is saying, but he also deposits the bowl on the counter beside his hip and crosses his arms over his bare chest. It’s distracting. “Your average cereal is so packed full of sugar, you’d want a dessert wine.”
His voice is scathing, but it’s like he’s speaking another language for all Anakin understands him. “Well, the average cereal’s about three bucks a box, so unless you’re about to offer me a job or whatever, I’ll stick to my Lucky Charms.”
Kenobi’s eyes narrow and he mouths out Lucky Charms as if the words personally offend him. “Eggs Florentin,” he finally says, which is a nonsequitor and also definitely not English.
“Is that another kind of wine?” Anakin asks, wary. He can’t imagine spinach and alcohol going well together, but maybe rich people have discovered a new level of hedonism.
“It’s breakfast,” Kenobi says. “It’s my understanding that one usually serves breakfast to their partner the…morning after.”
It’s Anakin’s turn to narrow his eyes as he looks from the counter to Kenobi and back to the stove. It looks, to his quite discerning eyes, like Kenobi has decided to make breakfast from scratch. Which is—not what one usually does.
The last time Anakin had had a one night stand, he’d slid the guy a bowl of cereal from across the counter, feeling all fancy that he could offer him either oat milk or regular milk.
“Oh,” he says. He was raised to be polite, but he doesn’t know what counts as polite in this scenario. He so obviously probably shouldn’t be touching anything, and it’s not like Kenobi needs help. It looks like Kenobi’s made his own bread. How long has he been up? How long has he been cooking? For Anakin?
His chest feels weird, and he rubs at it absentmindedly. “Alright,” he adds. “Cool.”
“Cool,” Kenobi repeats, eyebrows raising up again.
“Well, I’ll just—I mean…do you want…?”
Kenobi keeps his face unreadable, arms crossed, unhelpful and snobbish and incredibly attractive all the same.
“Help,” Anakin finishes lamely.
“That looked like it hurt,” Kenobi says, lips lifting like he’s trying to smile but only remembers how to smirk. Anakin sneers back automatically. It’s weird, being around Kenobi. Weirder than any other one night stand Anakin’s ever had.
Mostly because it feels like there’s still a fire burning under his skin, thousands of ants crawling all over him. Mostly because he thinks–he still wants to touch Kenobi. Usually he sleeps with someone and that’s that. It’s out of his system and he can treat them the way he’d treat a roommate, a stranger on the street. But with Kenobi, it’s like his hands are begging his brain to be allowed to touch him again and it’s weird.
“Well, fuck you then,” he says faux-cheerfully, tugging at the edge of Kenobi’s shirt in hopes of stretching it out further and ruining it beyond repair. “I’m gonna take a shower. Still got, you know. Stuff. On me.”
“Please do,” Kenobi agrees, voice tight, turning his back on him as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. “It’ll be on the table in twenty.”
Anakin doesn’t think he’s ever been so summarily dismissed in his life; he’d be impressed if it didn’t send him reeling into a foul mood.
Fine, maybe Kenobi understands one-night stand etiquette, but he definitely doesn’t understand how to be human. How to not be a dick. Treat others the way he wants to be treated and all.
Anakin doesn’t even know where the fucking bathroom is, let alone a towel. And he’s not gonna ask, that’s for sure.
Maybe it’s better if he doesn’t take a shower, he thinks as he stalks away from the kitchen. Maybe it’d serve Kenobi right to have someone dirtied up with dried sweat and come sitting at his pristine table. He’s probably never had to deal with that before. Serves him right.
Two wrong turns take him out to the poolside, where the party had been last night. It looks…well, familiar in a way that settles something in Anakin. Maybe he can’t help Obi-Wan making a fancy breakfast and maybe he can’t navigate his way through this fancy marble mausoleum of a mansion, but this—he knows this. This is what every morning after a party looks like, in the history of the world maybe. There are empty bottles of wine laying about, pieces of litter and dirty plates. Cups still, on the side tables, displaced cushions on the ground, someone’s forgotten sunglasses discarded on a sofa.
Maybe Anakin doesn’t know anything about wine; maybe he doesn’t know anything about making bread from scratch. But he does know how to clean up after a good party.
So he starts doing that instead.
An indeterminable amount of time later, he’s interrupted by a throat clearing behind him. He sits up on his knees, abandoning his effort to sweep under one of the sofas, and turns his head up to look at Kenobi.
“I have people for that,” Kenobi points out, eyebrows furrowed as he stares down at him. There's something considering in his face, like Anakin's genuinely surprised him.
“Wasn’t doing anything,” Anakin mutters with a shrug.
It’s hard not to think about the last time he was on his knees in front of Kenobi, just last night. It’s hard not to think about what happened. About how it felt to reach up and untug Kenobi’s belt from his pants, unbutton them and roll his briefs down his hips to free his cock.
Kenobi clears his throat like he’s having a hard time thinking of anything else too, and Anakin’s eyes flash up to his.
The fire beneath his skin is back.
“I’ve plated the food,” Kenobi says. “We can eat out here, if you would like.”
Anakin blinks and clambers to his feet. He wants to ask Kenobi if this is it. If, when they’re finished with breakfast, Anakin will be kicked out the way Anakin’s kicked out all of his own one-night stands at the conclusion of the post-sex meal. It’s the etiquette.
It doesn’t feel like enough.
Anakin wants more of Kenobi. More of his touch, more of his sneers and smirks. He doesn’t have the words to ask for it though. “Yeah,” he says. “I mean, I just cleaned though. So you can’t be messy or spill anything on the cushions or anything.”
Kenobi blinks, and then his face lightens, his mouth tugging up into a smile as he recognizes the same words he’d said to Anakin the night before. “No promises,” he says.
that was supposed to be a ficlet but has turned into 5k and they haven't even actually talked to each other yet. au where due to a clerical error, obi-wan and anakin are accidentally sent on separate missions to the same place and while anakin goes undercover so as not to alarm anyone in the community that the jedi are interested in their outpost, anakin also witnesses what obi-wan thinks is an acceptable way of getting information out of a lead when he's on a solo mission (via sex) and also the last time they saw each other, they got drunk and fucked and then didn't talk about it. so there's that too
“I want whatever the Jedi's drinking,” Anakin says. It’s a bad decision. It’s a bad decision sort of night. “And another for me.”
“Thattaboy, Settie,” Vail encourages, pounding the bartop with his fist as Vendo pours out two drinks for him and Anakin forks over the credits. “Right of passage, trying to bed a Jedi.”
Apparently, the Jedi Temple has spent the last several years at least operating under false assumptions about the reactions that petty criminals have to Jedi coming to town. Which means that apparently Anakin has wasted a month of his life undercover when he could have just swanned in his pristinely beige and white Jedi robes, perfectly styled auburn-gold hair and fucked half the settlement for all the information he needed.
That truth is a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s nothing compared to the one he’s faced with when he turns around and sees that the seat across from Obi-Wan has already been taken by another nerfherder, this one somehow more brash than the other two put together. Maybe it’s because he’s a good deal younger than Obi-Wan, and he hasn’t had the chance to learn patience and subtlety. Or the simple kriffing fact that some people are off limits.
Which means that some people should keep their kriffing hands to themselves and not risk their fingers by reaching across the small table’s sticky surface and tucking a piece of hair behind someone else’s ear when they have no business touching what’s Anakin’s.
That’s Anakin’s master.
Because while Anakin was surviving through long and boring peace talks with the Separatists by entertaining himself with lovesick daydreams of never letting go of his master’s hand and waking late in the mornings to find his master curled up along his back and going on romantic excursions into the Lower Levels of Coruscant and picnicking in the High Street City Gardens and pressing his master down into a bed of expensive silk in the Open Circle colors, suitable for war heroes, Obi-Wan was standing two Jedi down from him with his hands clasped neatly behind his back and thinking, apparently, I should really get another padawan now that the war’s over and such.
Or,
Obi-Wan requests a new padawan after the war's end. Anakin isn't necessarily mad about it. Or, he swears that he wouldn't be if only the new padawan weren't such a Force-be-damned cockblock.
Soul transference, or the act of one's consciousness traveling along a Force bond and switching places with its partner, isn't unheard of among the Jedi. But it does take an unshakably, unspeakably strong training bond for such transference to occur--and so the master-padawan pairs that admit to the experience are separated for their own good, to try and correct the beginnings of dangerous attachment.
The first time Obi-Wan had blinked and opened his eyes in Anakin's body, his padawan had been all of ten years old. They'd both lost too much to lose each other, and so they'd stayed quiet about the experience. And the next one. And the one after that.
So it's not terribly shocking that the soul transference has happened once more in the wake of the Battle of Geonosis.
What is rather shocking is that when Obi-Wan opens his--Anakin's--eyes, Padmé Amidala is standing before him--Anakin. Dressed in white lace, holding his--Anakin's--hands.
Saying her wedding vows.
