and isn’t it fine losing your mind? | obikin new girl au | 3.2k words | cw: cheating.
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Obi-Wan’s palms are sweaty.
He remembers his first time teaching high school: the way his mouth had felt so dry that his tongue had kept sticking to its roof, his heart stuttering against his ribs as his brain had kept chanting a canon of don’t screw up don’t screw up don’t screw up and you’re not ready you’re not ready you’re not ready, and how inadequate he’d felt standing in front of a bunch of hormonal teenagers whose education he’d been responsible for.
He remembers his first time teaching college: the nervous flutter of his heart and the thrill of a new challenge coursing through him as he’d stood in a lecture hall full of students who’d been looking at him with expressions ranging from boredom to curiosity to disinterest to open leers, and even though he’d still felt like he was flying by the seam of his pants, there had been excitement, too.
But despite the nerves, his palms had never been sweaty.
“Come on, guys,” Anakin is saying to the giant sliding door separating the living area of the loft from the hallway to the bedrooms. His voice carries an odd tone, something that’s difficult for Obi-Wan to pinpoint but that sounds deceptively like desperation. “This is stupid.”
“This was your idea,” Ahsoka’s muffled voice answers. “Now kiss!”
Anakin makes an irritated sound as a chant of Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! erupts behind the door, and Obi-Wan wipes his palms on his pants while Anakin isn’t looking.
They’ve ended up here playing a game the rules of which Obi-Wan still—in his second year of living here—doesn’t really understand; though in his defense there doesn’t appear to be a comprehensive set of rules to begin with. They always appear to be made up on a whim. Every time he’d asked Anakin to explain them, he’d gotten an exasperated roll of eyes and a wave of hands with the promise that Obi-Wan would get it once they played the game.
Maybe the answer is even simpler: He’s too old for this.
In moments like these he wonders what possessed him to move into a loft with a couple of twenty-somethings who refuse to play anything by any sort of standard rules, defying everything Obi-Wan has ever lived by and understood.
It’s as bewildering as it is infuriating and inspiring.
Now, though, it’s terrifying. His palms are sweaty.
Anakin whirls around to him, the bright red petticoat he’d donned over his jeans for some reason at some point during the night swirling around his legs, and there’s a faint flush across his cheeks when he fixes Obi-Wan with an accusatory look on his face. “Why did you throw up a two?”
Obi-Wan doesn’t splutter. “You told me to.”
Anakin throws his hands up and the flush spreads down his throat to his exposed chest. He also lost his shirt some time during the game. Though why, Obi-Wan couldn’t tell if his life depended on it. Again: rules.
“I said not two!” He huffs and scrubs a hand over his face.
“Apologies,” Obi-Wan says as something curdles in his veins. It’s acrimonious and biting, and if he looks at it too closely, he might lose his mind, so he pushes it away and rubs at his jaw a little too hard, the discomfort a welcome distraction.
Anakin chews on his bottom lip as if he’s trying to think up ways of how to get out of this. He probably is. His girlfriend is behind the door and it’s one of the rare nights where she’s letting loose, too, drinking and laughing with her head thrown back, dressed in nothing but one of Anakin’s shirts. Of course he’d rather be kissing her.
But Padmé is behind the door and Obi-Wan can pick out notes of her voice as she chants with the others, and Obi-Wan wonders if she’d still be doing it if she knew just how badly he wants to shove his tongue into her boyfriend’s mouth. Or other places. That he doesn’t think about.
Right.
It doesn’t do good to dwell on things he can’t—and shouldn’t even want to—have. Anakin is twenty-four and his roommate. Anakin has Padmé. Padmé who Obi-Wan has mentored and who’s his friend.
Anakin is his friend, first and foremost, and Obi-Wan refuses to be—isn’t—some dirty, old pervert lusting after a college kid who has the world at his feet and the sky as his limit.
He almost startles when Anakin claps his hands. “We can do this,” Anakin says with the uniquely cocky self-assurance of a twenty-something. “It’s just a kiss. No biggie.”
No biggie. Obi-Wan repeats it over and over in his head like a mantra. No fucking biggie.
Anakin lifts up the hem of the petticoat to fish the phone out of his jeans pocket. Obi-Wan briefly wonders who the petticoat even belongs to because he knows for a fact that it’s not Ahsoka’s and he’s never seen Padmé in one. It does nothing to distract him from Anakin’s pebbled nipples, seared into his mind, even when he’s not looking at them.
“Okay,” Anakin says, stepping closer to Obi-Wan as he unlocks his phone and opens the camera. He lifts his gaze to meet Obi-Wan’s eyes. “Just…pucker your lips.”
Obi-Wan blinks at him. “Pardon?”
Anakin rolls his eyes half-heartedly and waves his free hand in an undefinable gesture. “And don’t close your eyes. That would make it weird.”
“Me closing my eyes would make this weird?” Obi-Wan asks dubiously, kinking an eyebrow, and watches with mild amusement as Anakin pinks up.
“Just—” Anakin huffs and raises his arm, camera pointed at them, and says with a rough note in his voice, “Let’s get this over with.”
“So romantic,” Obi-Wan teases with a light-heartedness he doesn’t feel.
“I am, shut up,” Anakin says, and then surges forward and plants his lips on Obi-Wan’s.
The kiss is as short and dry and unromantic as a peck on the lips he used to get from his mother as a kid and still it raises all the hairs on Obi-Wan’s body, sweeping through him like electric current and making his skin tingle.
No biggie.
Anakin withdraws quickly without meeting his eyes and immediately sets to sending the photo to the others as proof. He bangs on the door.
“Okay, we kissed, you can let us out now!” he hollers.
“Our kiss,” Anakin says as he tries to pull open the door to no avail and the petulance in his voice reaches whole new levels.
Obi-Wan loses his mind at his use of our. He closes his eyes and inhales counting to four. It’s not better than screaming but he’s forty years old, he has some composure.
“That’s not a kiss,” Aayla comments. “It’s you two duck-facing at each other.”
Kit snorts. “Yeah. We’ve seen Obi-Wan kiss and it’s always at least R-rated.”
Quinlan whoops and Cody groans. Someone catcalls.
Obi-Wan looks at Anakin in time to see his eyes skitter away, lips pressed tightly together and eyebrows slanted downwards. Poor boy. He shouldn’t be spooked into thinking Obi-Wan is going to ravage him.
“Anakin—”
Padmé’s pearly laughter rings through the air. “Come on, Ani, you can do better than this,” she teases. “Kiss him like I taught you. Kiss him like you’d kiss me.”
Anakin ducks his head with red ears. The small crowd behind the door cheers. Ahsoka makes an exaggerated retching sound.
Something roars inside Obi-Wan. Something dark and ugly and jealous. It claws at his throat, writhing and thrashing, making it hard to think beyond the unbidden images of Padmé guiding Anakin through how to kiss her, how to kiss, how to make it good, how Anakin would react to her praise—beautifully, Obi-Wan is certain, and hates it—and he forces himself to suck in a breath and keep his hands to himself so he doesn’t pull Anakin to his chest to—to—to overwrite Padmé’s claim on him.
Padmé’s laughs and laughs and laughs, unaware of the effect her words have on Obi-Wan.
For a brief, scorching moment, Obi-Wan wants Anakin to kiss him like he’d kiss Padmé and see for himself if he’d like that; if the way Padmé likes to be kissed is anywhere near to how Obi-Wan likes to be kissed. Wonders if Anakin would return to Padmé and kiss her like Obi-Wan showed him how to kiss.
It’s a dangerous train of thought. Obi-Wan folds his hands behind his back and breathes in deeply, smothering the wildfires of his unwanted and unwelcome jealousy that burns right through his bones.
It’s pointless to entertain such fantasies. Obi-Wan doesn’t like and doesn’t want to kiss people who don’t want to kiss him.
It’s clear beyond a doubt that Anakin doesn’t want to kiss him. He’s not going to push it. The last thing he wants, in fact, is to make Anakin uncomfortable.
“Anakin,” he says, softly, and waits until Anakin lifts his eyes to look at him. “There’s no need for us to kiss like that. It’s just a stupid game.”
Their friends have started up their Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! chant again but Obi-Wan ignores it and focuses all his attention on Anakin, tracing his eyes over the planes of his face. It softens the riot of emotions inside him to something achingly deep but sweetly tender.
Anakin scowls at him. “Yeah,” he says after a beat and then looks away, scowling deeper. “Duh.”
Obi-Wan huffs out an indulgent laugh at Anakin’s irreverence. “I’m glad to know that we’re on the same page about this.”
When Anakin looks back at him, there’s a determined glint in his eyes, and Obi-Wan moves to step closer to the door, only stopped when Anakin says, “I’m not a chicken.”
Obi-Wan balks. “Okay,” he says slowly. “At no point in time did I assume you were.”
“Good.” A smirk steals across his mouth, roguish and alluring. “Then let’s just kiss and give the people what they want.”
Obi-Wan’s brain grinds to a halt and for a second, he fears he’s having a stroke. “Fine,” he hears himself say and it sounds—nonchalant. As if kissing Anakin for real wouldn’t drown him in his desperate wish to have him all for himself when he so absolutely can’t. Shouldn’t. Won’t.
“Fine,” Anakin echoes, slapping the word between them with something that sounds like pettiness, and turns fully toward Obi-Wan.
They’re standing close enough that Anakin’s body heat sears into Obi-Wan’s exposed forearms; close enough that even though there’s only an inch or two height difference between them, Obi-Wan has to tilt his chin up just a tiny bit, and it’s so heady and tantalizing that Obi-Wan has to wet his lips. Anakin’s eyes track the motion.
A tiny crease appears between his brows and he flicks his eyes up to stare at Obi-Wan. “What are you doing?”
“Pardon?” He raises a hand, smooths it over Anakin’s hair before settling at the base of his neck, and almost comes undone when Anakin shivers beneath the touch.
Anakin’s gaze grows tempestuous and he retreats a half step. “Are you trying to prove a point?” he asks, sounding accusatory.
“And what point would that be?” Obi-Wan returns mildly. He retracts his hand carefully but doesn’t move away any further. Something is simmering in the air between them, though it’s impossible to pinpoint what it is. He keeps his own desire neatly folded away; there’s no need for Anakin to be confronted with it.
Anakin makes a frustrated, aborted noise. “You don’t need to be PG-13 with me,” he huffs with a roll of his eyes, insolent beyond belief. “I won’t break. I’m not a kid.”
“No, but you are a brat,” Obi-Wan answers without thinking and with a slight shrug.
“So you’ve said before,” Anakin scoffs and narrows his eyes. “Now will you please kiss me?” He says it like he’s throwing down a gauntlet between them.
“Darling, I’m trying.” He moves in again, his fingers drifting softly along Anakin’s jaw.
Anakin shifts, restless. “Like you would kiss—like you’d kiss Quinlan,” he says. There’s an edge to his voice that sounds very close to petulance but it’s not. Obi-Wan knows how Anakin sounds when he’s petulant, has dealt often enough with it to hear the distinction. And this is not it. But it’s impossible to place.
Suddenly, he doesn’t want to kiss him anymore. He takes a breath, the beat of his heart hard against his ribs and loud in his ears. “I can’t begin to fathom what you thought I was trying to do, but now I really don’t want to do this anymore.”
It sounds—too suggestive and he only barely holds in a wince.
Anakin groans and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. Dropping them, he says, “Just kiss me!”
“I’m really not in the mood anymore.” He needs to stop talking.
“If you were before, you’ll be again.” Scratch that, Anakin needs to stop talking. “I’ll be quiet, I promise.”
Oh, how Obi-Wan hopes not. But—
“Anakin—”
“Kiss me.”
Obi-Wan feels like he’s rapidly losing control of the situation, irritated and spread thin. “Anakin—”
“Come on, Kenobi, just kiss me already!”
“No, not like this!”
It spills out of him unbidden, desperate and raw, and Obi-Wan freezes when the words drop between them.
Anakin blinks big, blue eyes at him. “What?”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Obi-Wan clears his throat. “No, I—”
Anakin’s gaze grows laser-sharp and Obi-Wan feels stripped bare beneath it, winding the threads of himself tightly around his fists to keep from unraveling.
“What does that mean?” Anakin asks quietly, knifelike and piercing. “Obi-Wan, what do you mean?”
“Nothing,” he says, steady and calm, over the erratic beating of his heart and the storm that’s raging in his head. “I’m—let’s not make something out of this that it’s not.”
He steps away and to the door.
“Obi-Wan.”
He’s probably imagining the desperate note to Anakin’s voice when he yanks the door open to be met with a crowd of surprised-looking faces.
Quinlan is the first to speak. “I see no signs of debauchery.” He arches an insufferably smug eyebrow.
Obi-Wan has the mild urge to smother him.
“Debauchery wasn’t on the menu tonight,” Obi-Wan replies smoothly, and Quinlan laughs, the dick. “We kissed. Game over.”
They all stare at him expectantly. He shrugs. “Anakin sent you the picture.”
He’s met with a chorus of groans when they realize he means the one of the kiss they deemed inadequate and start protesting, but Obi-Wan is tired and there’s panic simmering beneath his skin still.
“There’s no rule that says it needs to be more than that,” he argues, glad that the apparent lack of rules is in his favor.
Ahsoka looks from him to Anakin with a raised eyebrow. “Anakin said ‘threat of tongue’ when we stipulated the conditions.”
“Prove to me that there wasn’t ‘threat of tongue’ in the kiss,” Obi-Wan says.
“Touché,” Ahsoka concedes, laughing, and raises her beer can in acknowledgement.
The rest of them boo like little children, which should be more irritating than amusing but Obi-Wan shakes his head grinning, despite himself.
As he makes his way to the kitchen, Obi-Wan is certain—by the way his skin tingles and pebbles with goosebumps—Anakin is staring after him. He barely even hears Kit and Quinlan’s heckling cries over the sensation or the others’ disappointed booing, and bites back a sharp rebuke.
He wants to slink away into his room to breathe, quite honestly. He doesn’t.
Instead, he waits until their little party winds down; until Ahsoka and Barriss—who’s endured this night gamely—slip away to Ahsoka’s room, and Aayla promises to get both Quinlan and Kit home without detours. Cody crashes in Rex’s room. Padmé stays over tonight as well, and Obi-Wan does his best not to pay attention to it.
Obi-Wan pads into his room through the deserted hallway, exhausted and relieved. He’s almost at his door when Anakin slips out of his own room.
He feels his confession hanging in the air between them like a haunting. He doesn’t know what to say, so he simply wishes Anakin a good night.
“You could’ve just said, you know,” Anakin says before Obi-Wan turns away. At Obi-Wan’s confused look, he adds, “That you don’t want to kiss me. You could’ve just said that. I wouldn’t have made you. It’s fine. I get it.”
He really, really doesn’t.
Anakin smiles at him, small and soft and—sad, maybe, impossibly. He turns to go towards the kitchen.
Obi-Wan doesn’t think. He reacts to Anakin thinking he didn’t—doesn’t—want to kiss him. (Though how he arrived at that conclusion might forever be a mystery to Obi-Wan.)
He spins Anakin around by the biceps, winds an arm around his waist, threads his free hand into Anakin’s curls and slots their mouths together.
Anakin makes a soft, surprised sound against him but his lips open without hesitation.
And then they’re kissing.
Obi-Wan licks into his mouth hungrily and swallows another little noise Anakin makes, pulls him closer and curls a hand around jaw to angle his head. Anakin opens up so beautifully, meets Obi-Wan’s tongue with his own and sucks on it as he fists both hands in Obi-Wan’s hair, urgent and desperate. Obi-Wan maps the inside of his mouth, hears himself make broken-off gasps as Anakin bites at his bottom lip before soothing it with his tongue.
They both pull back for a split second before crashing back together again and there’s no finesse to it: they bite and suck and lick at each other as if starved for one another, greedy, so greedy, and Obi-Wan drinks in all the beautiful soft sounds that roll of Anakin’s tongue.
The kiss gentles to something sweet and lovely and they separate, just briefly, just for one breath, and Obi-Wan presses one brief, gentle kiss to Anakin’s seeking mouth, and then another.
The world crashes back in between one second and the next, and Obi-Wan releases Anakin reluctantly.
For a moment, they breathe together. Anakin raises his fingertips to his lips and when his eyes find Obi-Wan’s, his pupils are blown wide.
“I meant something like that,” Obi-Wan murmurs, and steps away, toward his room.
Anakin startles when the door to his room opens and Padmé peeks her head out. “Ani?”
Anakin clears his throat once, twice. “Be right there,” he says, voice rough, without looking at her.
Obi-Wan smiles at her and waves. She returns it before closing the door again.
“Good night, Anakin,” he says quietly, and slips into his room.
With his heart beating in his throat, Obi-Wan leans against his door and tries to catch his breath while his mind replays the kiss in an endless loop. He licks his lips, collecting the spit on them, and the ghost of Anakin’s touch sears into them, unmistakable and ineradicable.
He should feel guilty.
He doesn’t. Not for kissing Anakin. Not for kissing Padmé’s boyfriend.
At the core of him, there’s no regret.
Only the question of when he can kiss Anakin again.
Obi-Wan exhales, deep and long. His palms are sweaty, again.
