Chapter Text
Obi-Wan heaves a heavy sigh at the sight of Anakin’s smiling face as he enters the small room, bag clutched in both of his hands. “What’s this then?” he asks, moving to prop himself up against the pillows.
Anakin scowls at him. He knows he’s not supposed to be doing that sort of heavy lifting by himself yet. When he tells this to Obi-Wan, the man lets out a noise so offended that Anakin has to rerun his words in his mind to make sure he hasn’t just said something incredibly derogatory about Obi-Wan’s favorite Vojaaball team or something on par with that sort of insult.
“I’m sitting up in bed,” Obi-Wan protests. “Surely I’m allowed to do that! It’s been two days!”
“No,” Anakin decides, putting his package down on the small table at the foot of Obi-Wan’s bed and using his free hands to fuss with the pillows behind the Jedi Knight’s head. “No, you’re not allowed to do that. Not when I’m here to help you!”
Obi-Wan glowers. “You are taking this far too seriously, Anakin. Yes, fine, I’m injured, but I am still a Jedi Knight, one who is fully capable of moving about a bed unassisted!”
The tightness of Obi-Wan’s voice, the sharpness of his consonants, the dull flush across his cheeks, the way his eyes flash to steely gray as he stares down Anakin…it all makes Anakin want to swoon, give up and give in, and give Obi-Wan anything he may want.
But he can’t.
The love of his life is looking at him like he’s some sort of deadly enemy, some lowlife pirate who’s taken him hostage, but Anakin can’t even care. He can’t.
Because he’s looking at him. He’s awake and he’s alive and he’s looking at him as if all he can see is him.
And sure, fine. The room’s decorated in three tones of gray and nothing’s on the walls, no art, no windows outside, no holonet—so it’s not like Obi-Wan has anything else to look at.
But still.
Anakin could get dangerously used to the weight of Obi-Wan’s eyes on him like this, even when the man is trying to dance across his last nerve, treating his recovery like it’s a game, like it’s something Anakin could ever be convinced to slack off.
“No,” Anakin says again, more fiercely, trying to swallow down all the words and feelings bubbling up his throat. A part of him is furious that Obi-Wan is acting so blasé about this whole thing, as if Anakin hadn’t—as if there weren’t several long seconds in the not so distant past where Anakin had thought he’d lost him. Forever.
And a part of him wouldn’t trade these moments for anything. He—he has this need, burning in his chest, a frantic, heated sort of need that eggs him on, insisting that he needs to prove himself to Obi-Wan, that this is the perfect opportunity to show the Jedi Knight just how well Anakin can take care of him.
He spent his whole adolescence and much of his childhood carefully tucked under Obi-Wan’s wing, glued to his side and protected by the other’s kind words and gentle hands. He was his best friend and his confidante, the one who would stay late to train with him in the salles when he’d beaten all his peers, the one who would lie to Qui-Gon about Anakin falling ill with a bad case of Lofu flu when he was really just experiencing his first hangover, the one who guided his small hands over the letters in their scuffed up book of Everybody’s Basic until Anakin had memorized their harsh lines.
But now Anakin is twenty-one, almost twenty-two, and as much as he’s enjoyed traipsing after Obi-Wan, content with the knowledge that no harm would come to him so long as Obi-Wan Kenobi was beside him, he thinks it’s time that Obi-Wan realizes the same thing,
He thinks it’s about time the same thing starts being true.
“No,” he says firmly, shaking his thoughts away and focusing on Obi-Wan. “No, because even accomplished Jedi Knights need help sometimes, and I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you.”
Obi-Wan blinks at him, looking slightly startled. “Ah,” he says. “Alright.”
Anakin grins smugly, turning back to the bag he’d left at the end of the bed. “Good. Now that we’ve sorted that out, I brought paints.”
“Paints?”
“Yeah, there’s a commissary on the first level. Food, toys, and paints. So we can do some painting while we wait for your cell counts to level out again.” He takes a palette from the bag and dumps small tubes of paint over Obi-Wan’s blanket. “I got us a few actual canvases as well, but they’re small.”
Obi-Wan now looks vaguely flabbergasted. “I—I don’t know how to paint, Anakin. Can’t we just go back to playing Sabaac?”
“Oh, you think you know how to play Sabaac?” Anakin teases. “Bold words from someone who lost every hand we played yesterday.”
“Oh, that’s rich! How quickly we forget! And who do you think taught you how to play?”
“A Nuqakie that Qui-Gon and I picked up one mission. Four-day transit time from Cuelan to Cresil and that wasn’t much else to do except unlearn all the terrible rules you taught me when I was twelve.”
“Those terrible rules were straight out of the Galactic Guidebook On the Game of Sabaac!” Obi-Wan protests in a very indignant tone, but there’s a smile pulling at the edges of his lips and a lightness in his eyes.
“Yeah, and then I became the second person ever in the history of the galaxy to play Sabaac by the rules,” Anakin points out, taking his customary chair next to Obi-Wan’s bedside. “But I was just an innocent child, thinking that was how you were supposed to play it!”
Obi-Wan loses the fight against his smile and it breaks across his face like a beam of sunlight, like embers sparking into flame, like the rarest of flowers blooming under moonlight. Whatever. “Dearheart, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you were the only person in the entire galaxy that played Sabaac by the rules.”
Anakin stares at him, not understanding this for the longest time until it clicks in his mind. “You—you cheat at Sabaac? And you still made me—Obi-Wan!”
“I had to be a good role model to you,” Obi-Wan says like he’s trying to sound apologetic, but his shoulders shake with his laughter. “Oh, you looked up to me so much.”
Anakin feels his face flush. “Yeah, well,” he mutters, smirking in spite of himself as he opens a tube of red paint and squeezes it into one of the dips on the palette. “I don’t do that anymore, do I?”
In the air around them, Obi-Wan’s Force signature curdles around itself, retreating from where it had been brushing against Anakin’s own powerful presence. When Anakin looks at him in curiosity, the light has dimmed in his eyes, and he looks…unsure. Strikingly fragile against the stiff white of the pillows he’s leaning against.
“Because I’m taller than you now,” Anakin says. That’s all he’d meant. He grew up. Obi-Wan has to have realized that. “Can’t look up at you anymore, can I?”
“You seem to have switched the prepositions,” Obi-Wan replies, but he straightens his shoulders, as if throwing off something unpleasant. “Now what is all this paint then? How do I do it correctly?”
Apparently, there is no way for Obi-Wan to paint correctly. He’s shockingly terrible at it, and Anakin hadn’t thought he could be bad at anything.
“This is pointless,” Obi-Wan finally declares, throwing down his tiny brush into the wet paint on his canvas.
“No, it’s not,” Anakin replies, glancing away from his own canvas to look at Obi-Wan’s. “You’re doing really well. I love your—uh.”
“It’s supposed to be a flowering tree.”
“Huh.”
Obi-Wan huffs out something in Mando'a that’s probably incredibly insulting, and Anakin grins.
“Well, it looks a lot like lava,” he says, putting his brush in the cup of water next to his hand so that he can focus on Obi-Wan instead. “Look, the uh. The tree could be a volcano, and all the, um, flowers, they’re like lava and fire. Oh! You know that planet we crash-landed onto when Qui-Gon had too many Ewok mushrooms and flew us where the Force led him? What was it called?”
Obi-Wan glowers from him to the painting and back. “Mustafar,” he mutters.
Anakin snaps his fingers. “Mustafar! It looks exactly how I remember Mustafar looking!”
“You were concussed at the time if I remember correctly,” the Jedi Knight says, and Anakin pouts. He’s trying here. It’s not his fault he didn’t realize how bad Obi-Wan would be at painting. “Hardly in your right mind.”
Sith’s hell, this is supposed to be a relaxing activity, but the monitor beside Obi-Wan’s bed shows that his heart rate is as high as ever.
“Well, I like it,” Anakin declares, tossing his braid behind his shoulder and flicking his wet brush at Obi-Wan’s sullen form. “It’s just as good as mine.”
“What is yours?” Obi-Wan asks, bending forward to blink at Anakin’s canvas.
“Meadow,” Anakin replies proudly, pushing the canvas towards Obi-Wan. “See?”
Obi-Wan looks at it consideringly. “And—what are those? Eopies?”
It’s Anakin’s turn to scowl. “No, that’s you and me.”
“They look like they’re mating.”
“We’re holding hands. Asshole.”
Obi-Wan laughs at whatever expression must be on Anakin’s face. “Oh, dearheart, no need to get stroppy, I can see it very well. This is very good, you’re quite talented. I especially like that my head is on fire.”
“You talk a lot of poodoo for someone who can’t paint a tree—”
“Nonsense,” Obi-Wan declares, taking his paint-heavy brush and flicking some of the red at Anakin. “I was very clearly recreating our time spent on Mustafar.”
Anakin lets out a cry of outrage, and Obi-Wan grins at him, looking gorgeous and mischievous and somehow younger than he should.
The shadows under his eyes are mostly gone, a healthy flush on his skin. Anakin doesn’t want to take all the credit for Obi-Wan’s recovery, but it’s been two days by his side so far, and Obi-Wan looks so much better than he had at first.
It’s wonderful, the healthy sheen across Obi-Wan’s cheeks.
Anakin has spent most of his life with the Jedi Order, learning how to serve the galaxy selflessly, learning how to hone himself into a protector and a warrior and a negotiator as needed.
And he’s never felt like he’s been given a purpose as serious and tailored to his capabilities as this mission. The Jedi Council had basically given him free reign to devote himself to Obi-Wan Kenobi and his health and his happiness.
Anakin’s been preparing his whole life for this sort of mission. He thinks maybe, privately, that he was born for this, that the Force crafted him for Obi-Wan.
It’s a really nice thought, and he lets it fill him, lets it fill his Force signature. All the certainty he feels in this moment, looking at Obi-Wan who is looking at him in turn, paintbrush grasped uselessly in his hand as his eyes darken in response to the shift of emotions in the room.
“You hold that like you hold a lightsaber,” Anakin murmurs, buoyed by the feeling in his chest and the slight flush of Obi-Wan’s cheeks. “And you’ve got paint on your cheek.”
“I don’t,” Obi-Wan denies. Which accusation he’s denying, Anakin doesn’t know. Probably both. But one of them is at least very easy to prove.
Anakin pushes himself up from his chair beside Obi-Wan’s bedside and leans forward, rubbing his thumb along the line of Obi-Wan’s cheekbone, where the man’s got a streak of yellow paint. He doesn’t do much more than smear it, but—but it feels somehow monumental.
That Obi-Wan lets him.
That he’s allowed so close, close enough he can see the way Obi-Wan’s lips part from the touch.
The heart monitor beside Obi-Wan’s bed begins to beep louder, registering the spike of his heart rate, and Anakin leans back immediately, concerned.
“Oh shit, Obi-Wan,” Anakin says, even as Obi-Wan tries to shuffle away from him in the bed, turning his scarlet face away. “I’m sorry, I should have asked before I touched you like that—did…did Roge—”
Because Obi-Wan is only bedbound because he’d been kidnapped, injected with a wasting disease—maybe tortured, maybe worse. Anakin doesn’t know. Obi-Wan is keeping his lips shut tight about what happened, which means Anakin doesn’t know.
“No, nothing—” Obi-Wan coughs and adjusts his position on the mattress. “No, I apologize. I am quite fine. I didn’t expect it—but no, nothing…untoward occurred between Roge and myself, nothing of the sort, dear one.” His cheeks are fiery red, save for the smear of bright yellow. He’s not looking at Anakin. Anakin can’t shake the feeling that he’s done something wrong, that he’s ruined something still fragile.
“Will you tell me about it?” Anakin asks, forgoing his chair completely to sit beside Obi-Wan on the bed, taking one moment to relish the press of Obi-Wan’s thigh against his lower back before he carefully walls off the feeling in order to focus on the Knight before him. “Please,” he adds.
Obi-Wan swallows; Anakin watches the bob of his throat and tries to convince himself he only feels hungry because he skipped lunch to buy Obi-Wan his stupid paints.
“There isn’t much to tell,” he replies, and suddenly it’s Knight Kenobi speaking, not Obi-Wan. “I was fooled into letting my defenses down, captured because of it, and held for a few days before I was injected with the virus. Roge really was a fine host. Incredibly apologetic about the whole thing, really. Practically a day at the Coruscant Spa compared to my time with Maul.”
Anakin stiffens, throat suddenly tight at the reminder. Maul. Maul had taken Obi-Wan right from underneath his nose only a few years ago. A duel between Qui-Gon and Maul had left the man hobbled and with a grudge strong enough to fuel a thousand planets. Obi-Wan had borne the brunt of that fury.
Finding him had been Anakin’s first solo mission as a senior padawan. It’d also been the worst day of his life.
He doesn’t even try to stop himself from turning around and tugging Obi-Wan’s upper half into his arms roughly.
“You don’t—” he mutters senselessly, mouth moving without conscious thought as he crushes him to his chest. “Force, Obi-Wan, you—you almost died! Do you understand that? Really understand what—what that would do to me? What losing you would do to the galaxy?”
There’s a huff of laughter that sounds only slightly strained as Obi-Wan’s arms slowly wrap around him as well. “My continued existence is hardly a matter of galactic importance, dear one.”
Anakin doesn’t say anything, pressing his lips to the soft strands of Obi-Wan’s hair. He doesn’t say anything, but he thinks it. He can’t stop the words from unfurling in his mind, cementing there with certainty. I’d make it a matter of galactic importance, he doesn’t say because the thought of saying it scares him more than the thought itself. The things I think I might be capable of if you were taken away from me….
“It is,” is what he finally says when he pulls back. “To me, it is.”
Obi-Wan’s eyes jump across his face before falling to his lap, unable to hold eye contact for long. “Ah,” he stutters, silver tongue tied up in knots.
Anakin holds his breath. This is as close to a confession as he’s ever managed to come. And suddenly, every other half-formed thought and fully-swallowed sentence rise into his mouth unbidden.
Without you, the galaxy wouldn’t make sense to me. You have given me purpose and passion, drive and direction. You have taught me all those things our master tried, just by embodying them yourself, and I love you for it. I love you for it but also for the way your eyes crinkle up in the corners when you smile and the way you know you can’t cook for shit so you always clean up after I cook for you, willing to take half of any burden I lay at your feet. I love that you know all the complicated rules for Sabaac and you never cheat when you’re playing with me, even if you're a fucking liar about it. I love that you’re terrible at tying knots so none of your shoes have laces, and I love that you know exactly how I take my caf, which sort of music I want to listen to when I’m working with mech-tech, which sort of food I’m in the mood for when we go out for lunch based solely on my expression—do you know those are dates? Do you know when we’re walking down the streets of the lower levels of Coruscant, it takes all my training and all my fear to not reach across and hold your hand?
Obi-Wan coughs slightly and shifts away from Anakin, red still highlighting his cheeks. “Ah, I. I believe my physiotherapists should be arriving shortly. We should clean up before they arrive.”
A team of six Soraalians had been assigned to work with Obi-Wan to stretch and massage his limbs and body during his bed rest to prevent bed sores and muscle wasting, a holdover from his time with the Maarvi on the other side of the planet.
When Anakin had first arrived, he’d tried to insist that he take over some of these duties. After all, the Soraalians were small. Anakin alone could complete the task within a few hours.
But Obi-Wan had put his foot down, as well as he could while bedridden. He’d pointed out quite firmly that these were trained professionals who knew exactly how to stretch his arms and legs and rub feeling back into them to prevent damage. Anakin had never done more than the basic levels of healing, finding the subject not to his liking and himself not well-suited to it, so there was a chance he'd unknowingly hurt Obi-Wan accidentally.
Anakin had thought rather sulkily that if he’d known he’d one day be faced with a situation where he could be trusted with rubbing down Obi-Wan Kenobi’s biceps and thighs, he probably would have specialized in the healing arts.
He stands reluctantly and takes his exit as agreed upon previously—apparently the Soraalians found his capacity to loom and glower off-putting, as Obi-Wan had said.
When he returns four hours later, he looks through the window into the room to see that Obi-Wan has fallen asleep, curled up on his side with his face towards the doorway.
He or perhaps one of the Soraalians has hung up their two paintings above Obi-Wan’s bed.
Anakin’s chest feels tight and warm, so warm that he’s sure that he’s somehow swallowed Mustafari lava and it’s burning him from the inside out.
“You’ve been itching at your beard,” Anakin points out a few days later. “I could trim it for you if you’d like.”
Obi-Wan blinks and brings his hand up to his bearded cheek. His Force signature buckles for a second, collapsing in on itself with something that it takes Anakin several seconds to register as shyness.
This only serves to buoy Anakin forward. “I’ve never done it before, but it seems simple,” he says. “It’s getting a bit overgrown too, you really need—”
In response, he’s thrown a very dirty look. “I hardly think I should be letting you trim my beard if I’m bedbound, dear one,” he says. “My bed would be covered in short hairs. Uninhabitable, really!”
Anakin pouts. He’d rather liked the idea of running his hands all over Obi-Wan’s face, being trusted to hold something so sharp and dangerous so close to his throat, maybe even hearing praise at a job well done.
“Am I truly that ugly to look at as I am?” Obi-Wan asks innocently, blinking wide, bashful eyes at Anakin.
“No!” Anakin is quick to say. Maybe too quick. And maybe too squeaky. “No, of course not! You’re—you’re very nice! To look at!”
“Thank you,” Obi-Wan replies after a beat of silence. “Ah. That is. You’re also—” he cuts himself off and looks away, folding his hands primly in his lap. Anakin is so far on the edge of his seat that he may fall out any moment. “Hungry?” Obi-Wan looks back at him. “It’s almost lunchtime, isn’t it? I would quite love a bowl of sqabush soup from the refectory if you’d be amenable.”
Anakin has no other choice but to go because the truth is, he’s sort of hungry too.
They’re out of sqabush soup. Instead, he takes two bowls of bluiqal soup back to Obi-Wan’s room and a nice chunk of bread.
One has to wait for bluiqal soup to become cold before eating it, as is tradition. The healing center’s soup takes forty-four minutes to cool completely.
Obi-Wan’s blush lingers on his face for forty-three and a half.
The Soraalian healers have decided that to take pressure off of Obi-Wan’s shoulders and the backs of his thighs, he must spend the next two days resting on his stomach.
Obi-Wan is less than enthused.
Anakin can feel it in the Force, Obi-Wan’s frustration at his situation, the way he wants to buck and throw off the control. His emotions feel like a wind whipping about itself, spinning itself into a hurricane as Obi-Wan lays on his front with his head buried in his arms.
He hasn’t said anything to Anakin, not for two hours, and Anakin can be ignored by a lot of people, but he doesn’t like being ignored by Obi-Wan.
He sets aside the Sabaac game he’d brought to play and pulls out a datapaad instead, flipping through his saved files until he finds one that may be of interest. To Obi-Wan, at least.
“The Jedi High Council term of the late 2000.100 era was defined by the strength of its numbers. While the current Council as of writing in 7956.110.5 is limited to twelve outstanding Jedi Masters, this is a relatively —”
“What is that?” Obi-Wan interrupts, turning his head to look at Anakin without picking himself up on his arms.
“I downloaded a bunch of history texts I thought you might like,” Anakin says, placing his thumb on the last word he read aloud so as to not lose his place. “I figured you probably didn’t have a datapaad handy here, and you’d get tired of playing games and painting. So there’s about five books on the Jedi Order’s history, written by civilians who were given Council permission to explore some of our ruins and sit in on a few of their meetings. And—well. You can’t read it for yourself like this, not without straining your neck and spine, and it’s not like you can watch a holo either even if I found a projector, and apparently Demystifying the Mystic: An Exploration of the Jedi Order Through Time Volume 1 was a bestseller.”
Anakin can’t help wrinkling his nose at this. He’s tried to read this before, but found it to be pointlessly dry and dull. He’d seen copies of Volumes two, three, and four in Obi-Wan’s quarters, however, so he knows Obi-Wan likes the author. And this isn’t about him right now. It’s about Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan, whose Force signature is finally starting to feel less prickly as he adjusts his body more, turning to fully face Anakin as much as possible while still complying with the healers’ orders. “That’s very considerate of you, dear one,” he says. “But I’m sure there’s something on that datapaad that would appeal to you and to me.”
“Um,” Anakin stutters, flustered at the soft expression Obi-Wan is sending him. “Yeah, I mean. I put some stuff on here for me to read during transit, but Obi, I’m not sure—they’re fiction, not—”
“Nonsense,” Obi-Wan interrupts him, still with that same soft look in his eyes that Anakin finds particularly distracting and convincing. “I like a good fictional novel as much as the rest.”
Anakin flushes. “I really don’t care about reading more on the Jedi Order, I think this history stuff is really fascinating.”
It’s a terrible lie, and Obi-Wan knows it as well as Anakin. “I would much rather you read something you find interesting, darling,” Obi-Wan murmurs, eyes sliding into slits as he makes himself comfortable. “As the part I will find most compelling will be the sound of your voice.”
Obi-Wan is lucky Anakin doesn’t drop the datapaad and break it with the way his hands spasm on the paad. He fumbles with the device for a second, uncertain as to what he should do, but knowing already that he will do whatever Obi-Wan wants him to do.
“I, um. Okay,” he mutters, looking up just in time to catch Obi-Wan’s considering look before it flickers into an unreadable mask. “Um.”
He flicks out of the history text and pulls up the first book he’s tucked away in his sub-folder.
“I haven’t started this one yet,” he mumbles, “but it was recommended for me by the algorithm. Um. It’s called. The Jedi Knight Who Loved Me.”
He can feel Obi-Wan’s eyebrow raise even though he doesn’t look up from the paad. “I must say, I haven’t read a lot of the fictional takes on the Jedi Order,” he murmurs. “I’m intrigued.”
Anakin doesn’t think he’s ever blushed more. “It’s uh. It’s a romance.”
“I’m listening."
“Right,” Anakin clears his throat. “Um. The stage was set, everything in place for the opening scene. Even I was in place in the rafters, ready to hurl myself down as soon as the curtains drew open.
‘Alright, Junyla?’ A familiar voice whispers behind me. When hands touch the fastenings of the harness on my back, tugging at a few of the wires, I know better than to flinch. After all, this would be the third night in a row I put my life in the mechanic’s hands, and Alic has not failed me once.
But this night feels different than all those before, every dress rehearsal, every after-hours practice. Tonight, the Jedi is in the audience. Luc’ala had told me that the Jedi had collected the tickets I left for him in the side entrance's office, that he had slipped into the back of the playhouse, hood up and unassuming.
But it was as if I could feel his presence, as if I too were Force sensitive.”
“Stop laughing!” Anakin snaps, clutching the datapaad to his chest. “This is the climax!”
“By my count, dear one, our poor Junyla has had seventeen climaxes so far,” Obi-Wan points out, hiding his smile in the corner of his elbow. “Chapters 2, 5, 6, 7, 8—”
Anakin is sure that the blush on his face is never going to go away. “Well, this is the most important part of the story!”
It’s been a day and a half. Obi-Wan is still laying on his stomach, and Anakin has spent most of the last day reading The Jedi Knight Who Loved Me aloud to Obi-Wan, mumbling through the erotic scenes—which, yes, seemed to make up half the book—and being extremely grateful that his own mortification prevents him from getting hard.
“I believe the most important part of the story was when Knight Caluo stuck his lightsaber up her—”
“Why are you saying these things?” Anakin bemoans, hiding his face in the datapaad.
Obi-Wan’s Force presence is light and full of pleasure, none of the bristly dark anger from before. It’s nice to know that embarrassing Anakin will never fail to put him in a good mood. “Dearheart, I’m only trying to have a scintillating literary discussion on the novel we’re reading—”
“Alic looked at me with wide eyes, rough and callused hands spread out before him in supplication. ‘Junyla, I swear I didn’t know—I needed the credits—it was never supposed to hurt you—’
‘You sold corrupted spice to my sister and she died!’ I shouted back, disgusted with him, with me. ‘I vouched for you to the police, to Cal—’
‘That’s what this is about!’ Alic interrupted me. ‘You’re mad because you love me more than your Jedi Knight, so you’re blaming me for something you know I never would have done if I knew–’
I found my voice gone suddenly, my chest tight with grief and regret. ‘Goodbye, Alic,’ I murmured, turning from the room. I needed to find Caluo before he left. I needed to tell him I had made my choice. I needed to beg him to make his now. The Jedi Order…or me.’”
Readers can return to the love story of Jedi Knight Caluo and Actress Junyla in the next installment, to come this summer: The Sith Lord Who Coveted Me.
Obi-Wan huffs in disgust, and Anakin looks up. “What a poor decision,” he says, shifting beneath his blankets. “Caluo? Over Alic? Preposterous.”
Anakin frowns. “No way,” he replies. “Caluo is the love of her life. He’s going to give up everything for her. He—Alic couldn’t even leave behind his spice ring when she asked him to.”
“Alic needed the credits!” Obi-Wan argues back. “He was saving his credits for a life with her! Caluo abandoning his oath to serve the Jedi Order is nott exactly a ringing endorsement for his ability to commit!”
“Well, Caluo probably already has those credits saved up! And Caluo is a good man! He’s kind, he’s—he’s noble! Well-read! He saved her life and then went to all of her shows. They’ve got more in common—”
“Alic is the better choice,” Obi-Wan shakes his head. “He’s hardworking and earnest, and he has a good heart. He would have treated her right. Junyla started and ended the story dissatisfied with her life and her circumstances, but that’s not Alic’s fault. He’s—”
Anakin crosses his arms. “He’s nothing special. And Junyla even said Caluo was better in bed. That stuff’s important in a relationship.”
Obi-Wan sits up slightly before collapsing back onto the mattress at Anakin’s scowl. “Alic sounded perfectly respectable in bed, Junyla just couldn’t appreciate it because she already wanted Caluo.”
Anakin huffs, glaring down at the datapaad. Truthfully, Caluo’s mannerisms had reminded him of Obi-Wan. The proper and polite way he spoke, his attentiveness, his culturedness, the way his voice was described as a crisp Upper Coruscanti accent.
The choice, in Anakin’s mind, is obvious.
“Honestly, the most interesting scene was when Caluo freed Alic from his holding cell as a favor for Junyla,” Obi-Wan says slyly. “They hated each other so much, that amount of passion would have translated well into the bedroom. Or perhaps the alleyway across from the police station.”
Anakin chokes on nothing, scandalized and incredibly hot under the collar. “Jedi Knights don’t fuck criminals in alleyways!”
Obi-Wan smirks, one eyebrow raised and Force signature turning coy. Almost flirty. “Who in this room is the Jedi Knight, Anakin? Wouldn’t I know better? Besides, you really think Caluo would want to fuck Alic? I got the impression it'd be the other way around.”
Anakin takes his leave very, very quickly after that even though it’s at least five hours before the Soraalian healers are supposed to come around to rub at Obi-Wan’s thighs again.
When the head Soraalian healer pulls him aside that night to show him security footage of Obi-Wan standing from his bed and moving to the fresher within minutes of Anakin leaving, Anakin is disappointed but not surprised.
One should never trust Obi-Wan Kenobi when he says suggestive things like that.
When the footage continues only to show the bastard using his newfound freedom to run through a set of rudimentary katas, Anakin’s disappointment turns into anger.
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about him leaving his bed again,” he swears to the Soraalian healer, eyes locked on the silvery blue figure before him. “Because I’m going to kill him.”
After a two hour interrogation from the Soraalian High Council on Anakin’s murderous tendencies and a vote upon whether or not he should be banned from seeing the patient, Anakin is allowed back into the healing center.
He goes straight to Obi-Wan’s room.
The infuriating man is reclining amongst his bank of pillows, lazily painting one of the pre-drawn pictures Anakin had gotten for him.
“Oh, hello dear one!” Obi-Wan smiles at him. “I must admit, I like these ones much better, they tell me which colors to use for which area by the number on both—what are you—”
Anakin takes away his paints, tossing them carelessly onto the floor and pushing the bed’s table away from him completely before clambering up onto the mattress itself, stradding Obi-Wan’s thighs and leaning forward to glare at him.
The monitor beside the bed begins to sing as Obi-Wan’s heart rate spikes, maybe finally realizing the danger he’s in.
Because Anakin feels dangerous as he glares down at Obi-Wan’s upturned face. The man looks fragile beneath Anakin’s broader bulk. It’s so easy to press him into the pillows, though it’s impossible to know if that’s because Obi-Wan is still too weak to fight him off or if he just trusts him enough to not even try.
“I suppose this doesn’t have to do with my appreciation of Alic as a complex and fleshed-out character?” Obi-Wan asks, only slightly breathlessly.
“Stop it!” Anakin grits out, feeling half-wild, unmoored, directionlessly angry and even more dangerous because of it. His hands close around Obi-Wan’s shoulders, affixing him hard to the mattress. “Stop it!”
“I don’t understand,” Obi-Wan says, looking concerned instead of angry. That’s alright. Anakin is angry enough for the both of them. “Dear one, what has gotten into you?”
Anakin snarls at the worry in Obi-Wan’s tone, the concern lining his face. If he really cared about Anakin and his emotions, he’d follow the Force damned orders from his healers. He’d stay in his kriffing bed and allow Anakin to watch over him. He’d understand that Anakin needs it, needs to be there to see him heal from his latest ordeal, the latest thing he suffered because of Anakin’s inability to make nice, to think before he acts.
“They said you called for me,” Anakin mumbles, hands tensing and relaxing on Obi-Wan’s shoulders. “At your sickest, the Maarvi healers told the Soraalians you called for me and Master. But they chose me to come. They thought you would listen to me. That if I were here, you’d…you’d let yourself get the rest you need, that you’d let yourself heal, that you wouldn't sneak out of bed to practice your katas the second you were alone.”
Obi-Wan’s eyes widen, hand gripping Anakin’s tunics. Good. He understands then.
“I’m failing you again,” Anakin says. “Twice over now. You were captured and tortured because of me—no, it was, Obi-Wan. It was because of me. My actions and words made some asshole want to hurt me, and he was just perceptive enough to realize what everyone else in the galaxy already knows: that the best way to do that is through you—”
“Anakin—”
“And then you’re dying, and you–you call my name, and I come running, praying to the Force it’s not too late, that you’re not going to get more sick, that I can help you—for once in my life, I can help you, that you want me there—and I can’t do even do that! I can’t help you like I’m supposed to! I just—I just keep on trying and trying and you—you won’t let me! Do you know how it feels, Obi-Wan?” His hands grab at the fabric of Obi-Wan’s cloth healing gown and fist into it, wanting desperately to shake him, wanting just as desperately to never touch him in anger. “Do you know how it feels to keep failing the one person you love above all others?”
The words slip out before he can stop them, and as soon as he’s registered what he’s said, he freezes.
Obi-Wan is staring at him with wide eyes, a pretty flush staining his cheeks. Anakin is suddenly incredibly and painfully aware of the way he’s practically pinning Obi-Wan to the bed, using his newly developed muscles to restrict the older man’s movements, his bulkier upper half easily holding Obi-Wan down.
“I—I believe I’m starting to,” Obi-Wan murmurs, and Anakin’s breath catches in his throat, eyes snapping up to hold Obi-Wan’s.
He can’t mean that. “You can’t mean that.”
“I shouldn’t mean it,” the other Jedi corrects, blush growing as his Force signature tinges with a concerning level of shame. “I have tried...incredibly hard not to mean it.”
And yet, still, when Anakin drags his hand up from Obi-Wan’s shirt to cup his cheek, the man leans into his palm, eyes falling half-shut, looking up at him from beneath the fan of his golden eyelashes.
“Say it,” Anakin says. It’s supposed to come out like a challenge, but it sounds more like a plea.
Now Obi-Wan’s Force signature is overrun with reluctance. Reluctance and…longing. “You are a padawan, Anakin. I cannot.”
“A senior padawan,” Anakin argues. “And we both know I’ll be Knighted before I turn twenty-two. I'm the best in my group. There’s nothing left for Qui-Gon to teach me.”
“Perhaps humility,” Obi-Wan drawls, and Anakin huffs out a laugh in response, shaking his head.
“Say it,” he asks again, leaning forward to press their heads together. “I won’t let you out of this bed until you do.”
“And here I always pictured it the other way around,” Obi-Wan murmurs back, lips barely moving. “That if I were to say it, you wouldn’t let me out of your bed at all.”
Anakin inhales sharply at that, anger thrown off to the wayside as arousal slips in to take its place, lapping at his mind like furious waves on the shoreline. “Is that what it would take then?” he asks lightly, rubbing his thumb across Obi-Wan’s cheekbone and leaning back to observe him. “To keep you in this bed so you can rest? Me, on top of you like this?”
“This is hardly conducive to rest, darling,” Obi-Wan replies with a pointed look at where their bodies are most connected, hips snug together. “And need I remind you I could easily flip our positions if I weren’t so worried about the amount of scolding that would follow.”
“Hah,” Anakin says. He’s conscious of the fact that he’s breathing through his mouth now, desire pooling in his stomach and lower too as he stares at Obi-Wan Kenobi, spread out like a feast beneath him.
He knows that Obi-Wan’s banter had been in part to distract him from his request that Obi-Wan say it, name the feeling lurking in his eyes and curling around the nicknames he bestows upon him.
But he also knows Obi-Wan won’t, that he can’t, that he’ll never name the feeling between them as love until Anakin is a Jedi Knight as well.
It’s enough that it exists though, and that Anakin knows he’s not the only one who feels it. He wants to hear those words in Obi-Wan’s Coruscanti accent more than anything else in the galaxy, but he can wait.
Obi-Wan has already given him so much just by admitting to having feelings for him, just by allowing him to crawl into his lap like this.
“I would suck your cock if I thought you’d let me get away with it,” Anakin whispers, trailing his hand down Obi-Wan’s chest to rest on one of his hips. “I’d throw your legs over my shoulders and fuck my tongue into you.”
Obi-Wan’s face turns scarlet. “Anakin!”
Anakin grins, leaning forward as if he were going to kiss him. “I would,” he says instead. “I’d eat you until you were crying from it. Then I’d fuck the tears out of you too, until you’re breathless and full of nothing but my spend.”
“What sort of novels have you been reading?” Obi-Wan mumbles, sounding aghast and heavily, deliciously aroused as he tries to turn his flushed face away.
“You know exactly what sort of novels I’ve been reading,” Anakin barks out a laugh and grips Obi-Wan’s chin to turn his face back to him. “But I’d do it better than any of those characters, fuck you better than the mechanic in the alleyway would ever fuck his Jedi Knight. See, I’d tie you to this bed so you couldn’t leave, yeah? Wrists bound way up here so you couldn’t push me away anymore. I’d take my time, take you apart piece by piece. I’ve been thinking about it since I was eighteen, you know, what I’d do if I had five minutes with you and you wanted me the same way. What I’d do if I had ten.”
Obi-Wan, temptress that he is, tilts his head up so that their lips are almost brushing together when he speaks. “What if you had the rest of our lives?”
Anakin can’t stop the moan from slipping out of his mouth at the very thought, about the possibility that Obi-Wan could love him that much, the way he loves Obi-Wan. “Do I?”
“Perhaps after you’re Knighted,” Obi-Wan replies, and Anakin beams.
Wizard. He’ll be Knighted any day now. And then he’ll get to have Obi-Wan. Best Knighting gift ever.
Until then… “A kiss to tide me over?” he asks, pushing his luck because he thinks there’s a good possibility Obi-Wan will not deny him.
And maybe Obi-Wan would have bent to his will. The man certainly hesitates for long enough.
But before he can, the door to his room bursts open and a pack of Soraalian healers rush in, waving about pages of flimsi and raving about Knight Kenobi’s accelerated heart rate, how this burst of energy from him could set his healing back by weeks.
They freeze when they see Anakin perched on top of their patient.
Anakin and Obi-Wan freeze as well.
“So am I banned again?” Anakin asks at the exact same time that Obi-Wan, the bastard, says, rather indifferently, “I do believe this man is trying to kill me.”
Anakin watches sourly from the hanger bay as a starship carrying Quinlan karking Vos departs the Jedi Temple, heading for Soraal/Maarven on Obi-Wan’s personal request.
His commlink beeps from his robes, and Anakin hurries to pull it out in case it’s Obi-Wan.
It is.
It’s a holosnap of Obi-Wan eating lunch, a simple sandwich of meats and cheese. Anakin can just see their paintings behind the man. To Obi-Wan’s left, in the chair Anakin always sat, is a nametag that reads Jedi Master Quinlan Vos.
Anakin has never felt angrier at an innocent piece of flimsi.
Another communication comes in suddenly beneath the picture.
Think of it as incentive, darling x
Oh, he’s thinking of it as something, alright.