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There is something deeply, intrinsically, wrong about Anakin Skywalker.
It cannot be unlearned, cannot be tempered, and most certainly not controlled by the ignorance of the Jedi Council. They’re too weak for it, far too unequipped, to ever come close to being enough for a boy like Anakin - who had shunned even the first Master’s naïve and presumptuous attempts at a bond. Qui-Gon was not prepared, could never have been, for the sheer intensity of this boy. The aura of otherness that crashed off of Anakin in frothing waves. To say Anakin was darkness would be a lie, but neither was he the paragon of righteous light the Council demanded of him. He was, in the purest sense, the exact balance that The Force commanded.
A boy that seemed to shine just a little too bright, with eyes too seeing for such a young child. From the moment Obi-Wan first met him, first felt the tendrils of Anakin Skywalker reaching into his mind, he’d known that nothing would ever be the same again. Felt it down to his very marrow that something had drawn him to this boy by design. As if, perhaps, he’d been born already belonging to Anakin Skywalker.
Years ago, at the beginning, Qui-Gon had frowned at the sight of nine year old Anakin absolutely refusing to give up his clinging grip on Obi-Wan’s hand. Small tanned fingers held snugly in his own, he’d been a delicate little thing that looked like a strong breeze could’ve blown him down - but the uncanny dart of his summer blue eyes left one feeling flayed apart. Not simply seen so much as dissected, like an insect pinned beneath glass. Their Master, or rather Obi-Wan’s for Anakin never once accepted Qui-Gon as his own, attempted to force them apart. Chiding the boy against forming attachments, in a voice fairly threatening. Disappointed.
Anakin had held fast to Obi-Wan’s hand, peering up through the fall of his shaggy bangs, and defied the pretentious demands as surely as a river wears stones smooth. “I am not a slave anymore, you don’t own me.”
Qui-Gon’s wry disappointment turned to Obi-Wan, a scowl on his face, as if somehow his own Padawan devised this behind his back. “Show Skywalker to his rooms, we will speak on this later.”
He knew that meant being in trouble. It felt, in Obi-Wan’s miserable acceptance, that he was always in trouble these days. That trouble would not stop now, not where Anakin was concerned. Part of him knew that this would happen, not so much premonition as it is knowing the way Anakin behaves after only a short few days together, so he is still awake – like some animal part of his brain has been waiting in anticipation, when the door to his room creaks and Anakin quietly slips inside.
The boy is an inky blot in the darkness, too much somehow. As if the darkness around him is even more pitch than the rest of the room - the same way he seems nearly luminous beneath the sunshine. They don’t speak, Obi-Wan just shuffles over in bed and holds the covers up for the boy who carefully crawls underneath. Qui-Gon shares this same room, as all Masters do with their Padawan's, and will be…unhappy when he finds Anakin sneaking in to sleep with Obi-Wan.
Attachments.
Yes. He is attached to Anakin. It is clear in the way he holds an arm out, waiting every night for the boy to take his rightful spot at Obi-Wan’s side, so he can hold Anakin close in the dark. To soothe the nightmares that frightened other children when Anakin’s night terrors seemed to shake the very foundations of the building until he was forced awake. At times the fear would leak out of him as he slept, stirring the other children into tearful bouts of ill rest and now they are thankful for the boy escaping to Obi-Wan every night. He hushes gently and he hums quiet tunes into the sweat-damp crown of the boy’s hair.
Anakin frets at the length of his ginger hair, wrapping small fingers around the braid that falls long over Obi-Wan’s shoulder. “Can I keep it, when it’s cut?”
“Yes.” Because he spares no thought for the concept of Qui-Gon wanting it for himself, as many Masters do in fond remembrance of their time spent together. Qui-Gon won’t want to remember him, he thinks.
The Council tries to reason with Anakin, insisting he stay in his own bed and that one day he will mature out of this neediness.
Anakin cannot be stopped. Not unless he wants to be, and therein lays the groundwork for what Obi-Wan should’ve seen coming. Should’ve seen it in the way Anakin stood before the Jedi Council and refused to be parted from him. To have their attachment stretched thin. Refused returning to the creche like a good boy. Refused Qui-Gon and every other Master who came after in some attempt to domesticate a force of nature. Anakin is not an oil painting one might hang in their gallery, something to be quietly admired for the delicate brush strokes of his beautiful face or the fierce blue sky of his eyes.
They want to collar him, but a leashed tiger is no more a housecat than the eye of a storm is safety.
Mace Windu hates Anakin in equal measure to how deeply he fears the boy, he cultivates this hate the way all self-righteous Jedi do. He tries to wear the boy down with work, with study, and disastrous attempts at isolating him from Obi-Wan. The last was the worst; when they threatened sending one or the other away, to part them by distance too insurmountable for Anakin to physically cross, and the tantrum he’d rained down was that of an Earthquake. Windows rattling in their panes until spiderwebbing cracks threatened to shatter them entirely, the room tilting dangerously as if on an invisible axis only Anakin knew of, and his tearful sobbing that rang discordantly through the hall and echoed in the minds of everyone in all the Jedi Temple.
It was only when Obi-Wan scooped the boy into his arms that the raging storm ceased and eerie quiet rang in their ears. He had left Qui-Gon to the Council, escaping into the hall to wait with Anakin clinging to him tearfully. They fell asleep together on the bench just outside the doors, waiting, with Anakin stretched out across his chest and bundled beneath Obi-Wan’s outer robes as he reclined back. They woke to the judgmental eyes of Council members, to Qui-Gon’s pinched expression.
They don’t try to separate them anymore.
They can’t, especially not when on the very same day Obi-Wan is knighted he takes Anakin on as his Padawan and the Council half wants to send the both of them hurling into a black hole. No one else would take Anakin, or rather no one else could - though a few sickeningly self-assured Masters would be glad to try and wear it as a badge of honor that they could snuff the wild out of Anakin Skywalker.
They’re too ignorant to understand they’re up against a force of nature, like trying to tame a hurricane.
“You frighten them.” Obi-Wan says, not unkindly.
His fingers rake through Anakin’s hair, it’s grown long in the many years since the boy was found in the wastes of Tatooine. Though the weather on Coruscant isn’t nearly as unforgiving, he seems permanently golden and flush faced as if he carries the twin suns with him. Obi-Wan uses the slim end of a wooden pick comb to delicately separate a length of hair behind Anakin’s ear, tying it off for braiding once he’s trimmed the rest.
“You’re intense, clever, and the others don’t know what to do with that.”
Anakin is on the cusp of sixteen and his eyes swim with starlight. It isn’t his fault. He can’t help that The Force made him this way, birthed him to a human mother by necessity but claims him as her own in all else. He is human in only the loosest sense of the word, as if at any moment he could shake off the exterior holding all that Force inside and spread wings. Obi-Wan thinks it is beautiful, he thinks Anakin is imperfectly perfect. He thinks The Force created him to balance the self-righteous purity of the Jedi and the selfish destructive rage of the Sith, but both sides are too busy caring about being right to see it.
The aura leaking off of Anakin is sun-warmed sweetness, the purr of a loth-cat, as Obi-Wan brushes through his golden hair. It’s turning darker at the roots now, as he gets older, and Obi-Wan wonders if some day the boy’s Padawan braid will be a gradient of sun bleached blonde to ashen brown. Anakin and all his attachments, he is not so ignorant as to not know this boy loves him with a singular passion. Obsession and possessiveness. At nine it seemed something fraternal, if not terribly intense, at twelve Obi-Wan could see it was something else - but it was not until Anakin was well into fourteen and their bond turned into a swirling honeyed thing did he finally realize what it had been all along.
“I try not to be.” Anakin frowns, eyes downcast. For all that he is The Force given mortal shape, he is still an adolescent boy that yearns for adolescent friendship. Very few of his peers will play with him and those that do only play under the conditions Anakin ‘not do weird stuff’.
It is the innocent naïveté of children not knowing their words hurt. Obi-Wan cannot be angry at them when it is in their nature to be capricious and the responsibility of adults to teach them better. But it still stings, especially in these moments when Anakin looks so crestfallen and confused. He doesn’t know why the Council is always disapproving, when all he does is be true to the fae thing he is. He doesn’t know why his professors grow uneasy when he earnestly questions the tenets of the Jedi Code. Neither does he understand why his peers are afraid.
“I know, dearheart.” He begins carefully shearing the length of Anakin’s hair until it no longer skirts his slim shoulders, mourning the tufts of gold that pile between their feet, but keeps it long enough to be pulled into a small ponytail. It is not nearly as short as the regulation cropped style typically demands, but he is loath to see too much hair stolen from the boy. “But the only thing you should try to be is true to yourself, to be honest and to be kind in the face of what hurts you.”
Obi-Wan grips a length of blue cord between his teeth as he begins carefully braiding the longest length of Anakin’s hair. It will have to be redone many times as he grows, but it is a calm and intimate moment they both look forward to repeating. It wasn’t this way with Qui-Gon, who only braided his hair once and left Obi-Wan to maintain it on his own - only presenting him with beads to mark accomplishments when the man felt he’d deserved them. When he takes the cord and begins snuggly wrapping it around the tail of the braid, Anakin speaks in a fragile voice.
“Do I scare you, too?”
“No.” He says honestly. “I think you’re a very special boy and sometimes other people wish they were too, so it makes them angry that they are not.”
“I think you're special.” Anakin turns from where he is sat between Obi-Wan’s legs, and rests his cheek on the man’s knee. All earnest sweetness that shimmers in The Force around them, sun glinting off the surface of an endless ocean. “I love you.”
Obi-Wan should not. He absolutely should not say it back, not in the way he knows Anakin means it. A good man wouldn’t, but he already resigned himself to not being a good man years ago.
“I love you too, little one.” He says and presses a chaste kiss to the length of Anakin’s braid.
There is fire in his eyes as Anakin stays sitting on the floor, intense gaze following Obi-Wan as the man begins sweeping the hair clippings. He pretends not to see the heat there, longing written across a too-young face, but Obi-Wan knows what this boy yearns for already even if he pretends he doesn't see.
Obi-Wan didn’t know it at the time, not until Anakin told him of the prying and invasive searching through his mind the Healer had done some years ago, but it is times like this he recalls the unspoken accusations leveled at him. Nothing put to words, of course, but in retrospect the implications had been clear. What was, at the time, nothing more than a routine physical examination had involved the Healer asking an odd series of pointed questions - her eyes holding his own in a strangely ferocious way. As if she sought to pick apart some lie Obi-Wan didn’t even know he had told.
“You’re twenty-five, it would be perfectly reasonable for you to have been sexually intimate.” She’d said in a rather patronizing tone that Obi-Wan thought was merely her mocking his lack of experience. Unprofessional most certainly, but he naively thought nothing else of it.
“I imagine it would be, but as I said before - I have no past or current sexual partners.”
“You spend a lot of time with Anakin, is that right?”
“Oh yes, most of my day.” He thinks nothing of the way he feels the Healer searching through his mind, it is like this often - for Healers are known to be deeply empathetic people prone to reaching out to others It doesn't register to him as invasive, or as her searching for something sordid.
“He’s very…attached to you, Padawan Kenobi. Any idea as to why?”
“Well, I imagine he feels safe with me? Comforted in some way. He is only ten, after all.”
“I see.”
He hadn’t even thought to question the conversation, what she was getting at, until that same night when Anakin came bursting in the room like a lightning storm. Anakin curled himself defensively in Obi-Wan’s lap, leaning into the curve of the man’s arm around his back. He did not speak, but the discontented anger bubbled sticky and black through their bond. The physical Anakin received had gone very differently, was more pointed in its purpose.
“Anakin, I’m going to ask you again. Has anyone touched you in a way that scares you? A way Masters shouldn’t?”
“No.” His grip on the examination table was white-knuckled as he tried not to lash out in a way he knew would disappoint Obi-Wan. He wants to go back, to sit beside him in the garden and listen to Obi-Wan read aloud from boring old manuscripts, he wants to see the freckles on his pale face and the crooked line of his smile.
He wants to kiss Obi-Wan. To be the first for both of them. Would the stubble on his jaw be ticklish or scratchy? Anakin has seen him naked by accident once, when he walked in on the man fresh out of the shower. Obi-Wan is big, even when his cock had been soft and untouched, would he let Anakin try putting it in his mouth? Suck on it until he gets hard and hot on his tongue? Would he le-
“Anakin!” The Healer barked, her face reddened and eyes wide. Shocked. Disturbed. She had scoured the boy’s mind and found no evidence of anything untoward befalling him, but at fifteen years old Anakin’s thoughts projected unbidden the way any young person's would.
He blinked owlishly, then frowned. “Well that's why you shouldn’t poke around other people’s heads without asking.”
Obi-Wan wasn’t privy to the exact shape of his new Padawan’s thoughts, or what the Healer had seen a few years ago when instructed to monitor the closeness between himself and Anakin. What he does know, with absolute certainty, is that Anakin looks at him with ravenous hunger.
There is something deeply, intrinsically, right about Obi-Wan Kenobi.
In the dark, when Obi-Wan’s face smooths out in peaceful rest, Anakin delicately traces gentle fingers across the man’s jaw. Follows the contour of his face and the round of his nose. Even in the pitch of dark, lit only by the ever-glowing flicker of halogen lights from the city below, Anakin can count the freckles across Obi-Wan’s cheeks. The man’s hair is long, nearly touching his shoulders, and Anakin cards his fingers through soft enough not to disturb the deep sleep Obi-Wan has sunken into. He craves this closeness, the heat he can leech off of him and warm his own bones with.
Nights on Tatooine dropped to damn near freezing temperatures, required huddling close to share body heat like animals in a pen. Here, in the luxury of the Jedi Temple, there is air conditioning and heating and a little switch in the apartment he shares with Obi-Wan that lets him adjust both. A luxury indeed. It doesn’t matter either way, he would be here beneath their shared covers regardless. Anakin stretches out, luxuriating against the sturdy body beside him, and noses into the warm nook of Obi-Wan’s pale throat.
He doesn’t think about if this is right or wrong, only that it is good.
The Force quiets, as it always does when they are close and even more so when they are touching. No one in all the galaxy is like Obi-Wan, none but this man can calm the raging thunderstorm inside. There is peace and there is harmony in the lush green fields of Obi-Wan’s mind, the bottomless clear waters that Anakin sinks down into as he reaches through The Force to twine them together - vines of ivy crawling up a trellis. Here, where he can scent the petrichor and remnants of musky aftershave clinging to the man’s skin and breathe in without it scratching like sand in his throat.
The people here, the Jedi, call him The Chosen One in tones both awed and fearful. But it isn’t a gift the way they think. Anakin hears so much; the distant chatter of street vendors, whispered conversations on an entirely different floor of the Temple, the grating rumble of traffic, and worst of all - the secret thoughts meant to stay in other people’s heads. He doesn’t mean to hear them, but it feels as if everyone around him is so loud it grows to deafening pitch with no warning at all. One moment it is all background noise, static making his brain muzzy, and the next he is bowled over by the flap of bird wings and the rush of water in the garden and all of a sudden Anakin cannot be contained. This is when his classmates get scared, when his professors have to call on Master Kenobi to come collect his troubled Padawan.
Obi-Wan’s touch moors him, boats tethered on a stormy sea as the rain and wind knocks them about. Creatures lurking below the deck. The noise, the static, the everything goes abruptly quiet - muffled in this little bubble he shares with Obi-Wan and Anakin can finally think again. It isn’t that Obi-Wan is domesticated, he is just as feral as Anakin, but rather he is serene in ways Anakin envies - aches for. A holy sanctuary in a world too big and bright and loud for a boy like him, who sees and hears and knows too much.
In the dark, when it is just the two of them now, Anakin can let a little of it leak out. Crack open his spine and stretch his bird bones, knowing he is tethered to Obi-Wan down to their very souls. The aching of it has been steadily growing, a building crack of lightning deep down as Anakin dips his legs into the steady cool stream of his soulmate's mind. That is what Obi-Wan is to him, a part of his soul. A little sliver that belongs inside of Anakin as much as Anakin belongs inside of him.
“I love you.” He whispers into the night, headlights flashing through the windows as traffic speeds by and alights Obi-Wan’s freckled face for just a flash before darkness drops over them once more. “I love you, Obi-Wan.”
Anakin loves the only way he knows how, with every inch of his being and the whole of The Force that flows through him. It whispers in a bell-chime voice. Anakin. Anakin. My child. It speaks to him without words, but he knows what it means for this is the language he was born from. A language of feeling everything in an all encompassing dedication, in loving with feral ferocity.
He says I love you because there are no words to say what he truly means. He loves. He worships. He aches.
Later, Obi-Wan will feel profoundly naïve.
In the moment, however, all he's thinking is how much good it would do them both when he catches Qui-Gon in the training room and offers to spar - like old times. Their relationship was never exceptionally close, it was professional down to the letter, though Obi-Wan knows his former Master cared about him in his own way. It was the sort of vaguely paternalistic bond that one might describe with; “I know my dad loves me, but…”. He’s never quite seen Qui-Gon as a father figure, wouldn’t even know what that means considering he was taken by the Jedi so young he recalls nothing of Stewjon, but it is the closest approximation.
Still, he thinks there must be something there between them. Comradery at the very least, right? Qui-Gon catches on that Obi-Wan is alone this afternoon and seems pleased that Anakin isn’t tagging along like a second shadow, as the boy is wont to do, and Obi-Wan stuffs the stinging bite of hurt so deep it nearly drowns.
“Of course, Obi-Wan.” He says, familiar and fond as they meet in the middle of the sparring mat. Their robes and tunics are folded aside so both are in only thin undershirts that billow loosely around them. Bare-footed on the woven mat, and Obi-Wan uses a length of cording crisscrossed at the ankle to keep his trousers from catching.
It reminds him of when he was still Anakin's age, a boy on the cusp between adolescence and teenagerhood, and hoping one of the Master's would find him good enough to pick before he aged out of the Jedi and was sent elsewhere. Qui-Gon hadn't wanted a Padawan at the time, and while the man never made Obi-Wan feel unwanted – he had been acutely aware of the fact he was teetering on the edge of being cast aside. The last out of his classmates to be chosen, and so Obi-Wan strives to make sure Anakin will never feel that way too. Dedicates every last inch of himself to that boy so he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he is wanted and he is loved.
Code be damned.
He spars with Qui-Gon by rote, tuning out all else in the familiar back-and-forth of their swaying motions. One step forward, brace, dart around each other. It’s easy and casual and hardly a strain on either of them - until Qui-Gon catches sight of Anakin on the sidelines. The boy stands among a group of his curious classmates that have gathered to watch, simply harmless spectators. Yet something in Qui-Gon's eyes goes steely, flashes, and Obi-Wan snags on the Force signature of the man’s anger before it can be hidden: there is a lock of copper hair woven into the blonde of Anakin’s new Padawan braid, it is Obi-Wan’s.
There is nothing forbidden about this. No rule, spoken or otherwise, that says he cannot - but it is undoubtedly intimate. Just a little too far in the grand scheme of an already bizarre bond. Perhaps Qui-Gon would have let it go, if it was the only oddity about his relationship with Anakin, but he feels a rising danger in The Force when the man’s eyes flick to the little vial Obi-Wan wears on a leather cord around his neck – normally hidden from sight beneath the layers of his tunic. At a distance it looks almost like a tiny glass jar filled with fine sand, on closer inspection one might guess it to be golden wheat grass - but Qui-Gon sees it for what it is.
A bundled lock of Anakin's hair. The clippings from their first night as Master and Padawan - still sunny blonde and baby soft.
It happens so fast, from one charged second to the next, and Obi-Wan is too slow to dodge the sudden sweep of his former Master’s leg. Qui-Gon takes the casual familiarity of their sparring and turns it vicious. His hits come harder, angry, and Obi-Wan huffs out a hurt breath at the force of it. He has known Qui-Gon harbors reservations about Anakin, about the boy’s fragile stability and his singular obsession with Obi-Wan himself, but he has never turned anger like this on him - no matter how strained their relationship got.
“I yield!” Obi-Wan gasps, arms up and crossed to shield his face as he ducks away, but the other man doesn’t cease. “Qui-Gon, that’s enough!”
A hard swing of the man’s leg sends Obi-Wan skidding across the mat on his back and the shocked voices of young students ring in his ears. Anakin's cry of his name over the din. Something in Qui-Gon ekes out, like air from a balloon, and a look of contrition crosses his face at the sight of Obi-Wan sprawled on the floor - shocked and heaving in heavy breaths. Guilt and resentment war in the shadows of his face, but then Anakin climbs the barrier and drops at Obi-Wan's side to worriedly push the ginger hair from the man's face and Qui-Gon turns away - like the mere sight is perverse.
He is left, watching the hunched figure of his former Master grow smaller until he sees Qui-Gon no more.
“Shh, I’m okay. Don’t cry.” Obi-Wan flinches as Anakin rubs tingling ointment into the smarting bruise along his back. Diligent fingers press carefully into the muscle beneath the wing of his shoulder blades, where he had hit the mat quite hard, and he can hear the little sniffles of the boy trying to hide the scale of his upset. Obi-Wan isn't surprised when Anakin lays beside him on the bed, blue-eyed and pouting.
“I hate him.” Anakin seethes, childish and ferocious.
“I know, little one. But I’m ok and the Council took care of our conflict. Master Jinn is going off-world soon anyway and I don’t imagine we will see each other again for many months.” Obi-Wan omits that he suspects he may not see Qui-Gon for longer than that, not in any friendly capacity. He rolls onto his side, making a valiant effort not to smear the ointment all over the sheets, and cups the boy’s sun-kissed cheek.
Anakin holds his hand there, just in case Obi-Wan thinks of taking it away. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Anakin.” He says, the same as he always does, but today something in Anakin has changed - doubled in scale, and now he refuses to settle for less.
Anakin stretches up the length of Obi-Wan’s body, wrapping his arms around the man’s shoulders and pressing his cheek into the sturdy warmth of his Master’s bare chest. They are flush together and Obi-Wan panics, slides his palm from the small of Anakin’s back and lower still until he is cupping the underside of the his thigh and hoisting him up higher - away from where he knows Anakin would feel him getting hard dizzyingly fast. He is nearly too tall for this now that he is seventeen and strong enough to break away from any hold he does not wish to be in.
But Anakin frowns and makes a bereft little noise, peering up into his face defiantly when he shoves a leg between Obi-Wan’s.
“Anakin.”
He doesn’t stop, but starts rocking against the man’s thigh with purpose and Obi-Wan’s hands fly to the boy’s hips like he means to make Anakin stop. All he does is hold on, hands trembling, as Anakin tries pressing against him at the right angle. Grinding on his thigh without an ounce of shame. It isn't enough and Anakin whines in frustration. If Obi-Wan does this…allows this progression he has known was an eventuality, there will be no hiding it. Whatever vague suspicions have been raised against him will be solidified, made true. Neither Anakin nor himself will be able to hide the liquid gold that drips through their bond, or how The Force oozes sticky as honey with attachments. Love and devotion and wanting.
His choice was made years ago, maybe before Anakin was even born.
“Like this.” Obi-Wan’s voice comes out low and rasping as his hands slide beneath Anakin’s loose pajamas, pushing them down his coltish legs.
Anakin is eager to kick them down, bright spots of fireworks popping between them as The Force bubbles up, effervescent. His hands cup under the boy’s ass to begin rocking Anakin against his leg once more, guiding him in a grinding rhythm that has his hard little cock bouncing. Anakin is hard and pink, and Obi-Wan thinks to try fitting the whole of him in his mouth and that thought must've leaked through between them because the boy's eyes snap up to him sharply and his fingers claw into his hair.
“Is that what you want?” He asks, ducking his head to nose along the golden column of Anakin's throat. “Or do you want this?”
Obi-Wan's hand slides up beneath the boy's thin tunic, rucking it up under his arms until he can thumb at the hard peak of one rosy nipple and it earns him a shocked gasp in return – Anakin arching into the touch, delighting in the ticklish scratch of the man's beard against the softness of his own skin. His other hand dips down between his legs, fingers trailing up the hardness of his cock. A burst of color erupts in his mind, pink and golden like the sunset, and Obi-Wan is certain the whole of the Jedi Temple must be feeling it in The Force too. Anakin turns, tilts his chin up, and clumsily drags them into a kiss with the inexperienced tenderness of a young man who doesn't have any clue what he's doing – only that he wants it.
He lets Anakin kiss, trying to fit the curve of his mouth against Obi-Wan's the right way. Truthfully, Obi-Wan doesn't have much more experience either; he has kissed other classmates when he was still just a teenager, touched and been touched above their tunics, but it always ended with that. The kind of sloppy kisses between fumbling boys hidden behind bookshelves in the library, but he is a grown man now and knows well enough how to make things like this work – even if in practice he has only himself to base it on. So he tilts Anakin's chin with a soft touch and the angle changes everything, letting Anakin open his mouth and lick at the seam of his lips until Obi-Wan obeys and opens for him.
Jedi do not have attachments, they do not have sex or relationships or love in this way.
But Anakin does. He has more love in him than can possibly be contained and it seeps out of him in crashing waves that threaten to sweep Obi-Wan away if he is not careful, but he has become skilled at grounding this fae thing. This boy with his vivid bright aura and the too-muchness that drives everyone else away, Obi-Wan can hold the rapid flutter of his small heart and calm the frantic beat of his wings – make Anakin still until he is not so caught up in the torrential downpour of his emotions. Anakin squirms, licks into his mouth and searches for the taste of him like he means to devour – rocking his hips and digging his fingers into freckled skin.
When Obi-Wan takes the whole of his cock in one hand, the boy keens and messily jerks up into his fist – scrambling at the man's wrist to make him pause. “Master, w-wait! I'm gonna...if you do that...I don't wanna stop yet.”
“What would you like, my sweet boy?” He kisses Anakin's rosy cheek, along his throat, biting softly at the spot beneath his jaw. Knows his own affection is tangling up with Anakin's, knotting up The Force with the sheer scale of it all. “Tell me and it will be yours.”
Anakin holds his arms up, beckoning, and Obi-Wan falls into them. Their foreheads touch, sharing breath and The Force between them. He knows what his boy wants, things neither of them should want for - yet Anakin craves from Obi-Wan as he does the rest of him. Leaving no inch of this man untouched, unseen. He takes the length of Anakin’s braided hair in one hand, thumbs at the crisscrossing hair with delicate reverence. It marks Anakin as his: his Padawan, his little love, his whole world. Just as the lock of his own ginger hair woven in marks Obi-Wan as belonging to Anakin.
He knows several words for what he wants, but Anakin blushes beautifully at the thought of saying them aloud. Sex sounds so...clinical, stale. Fucking is a little too naughty and he doesn't want Obi-Wan thinking all he desires is just something that feels good. Making love is the truest of what he wants, but it's embarrassingly sappy and so old fashioned it makes Anakin balk. Obi-Wan must catch the threads of his thoughts, the way he is worrying them over in his mind like a coin between fingers, for he laughs low and fond and dips his cheek against the boy's shoulder. Anakin lets out a little huff, playful indignation, and tugs on the man's hair.
“I want you inside me.” Anakin says bold and unafraid, starstuff on his tongue.
He isn’t stupid, he knows how sex works - has seen enough of Tatooine slavers to figure it out. Could’ve gotten the gist of things on his own, even if he hadn’t already gone searching the holonet when he thought Obi-Wan wouldn’t notice. Which, of course, he had. Anakin knows, but doesn’t. Not really. But he wants to, more than anything in the whole world. He wants to know Obi-Wan in a way that changes them both. That cannot be stolen from them by anyone or anything in the whole of the galaxy.
The bond between them ripples, a stone dropped in a still pond, and Obi-Wan kisses him open-mouthed. Breathes in the stardust from Anakin’s lungs and shares his own in turn, swallows down his gasp when he lifts Anakin’s hips and deposits a pillow beneath him. Obi-Wan does everything with a quiet ease, moving slow enough that if Anakin were to frighten they could stop – but the boy just lets himself be maneuvered and squirms at every touch like he cannot stand the thought of Obi-Wan being too far. Hands slide up the narrow dip of Anakin's waist, calloused fingers pressing into the softness of his belly – a willowy thing with the remnants of soft youthfulness still tempering him. He wonders if one day Anakin will outgrow him, if he will fill out into broad shoulders and firm muscle or if he will remain lithe and petite into adulthood.
It won't matter either way, because Obi-Wan will worship at his feet all the same. Even if it immolates him in the process.
“Anakin?” He murmurs against the boy's round cheek, thumbs pressing into the delicate suppleness of Anakin's belly and sweeping up beneath the jut of his ribcage. Obi-Wan waits until he gets a breathless hum of acknowledgement, pressing a kiss to the hollow of Anakin's breastbone that makes him shiver when the scratch of the man's whiskers tickles. “You must tell me if you don't like something, if you want me to stop. Promise me.”
“I promise.” Anakin's voice comes out halfway between a plea and a whimper, fingers threading through the man's hair, a gentle tug as he arches into the touch. His eyes have gone hazy, tracking movement Obi-Wan cannot see but knows that the boy is able to - it is The Force filling up the room like mist over marshland and swirling around them. He wonders what it must look like, what colors and sounds and shapes The Force is taking, for he can feel the pulsing rhythm of it like the heartbeat of a great massive beast.
A kiss at the inside of his thigh has Anakin bucking up, knees bracketing Obi-Wan between them, as the man strokes slick fingers against the entrance of him. The little jar of ointment Anakin had rubbed into his skin is as good as anything, leaves Obi-Wan’s fingers wet enough that there’s hardly resistance when he presses a careful finger just barely inside. Hardly anything at all, but Anakin chokes on a breath and his hips rise off the pillow seeking more as Obi-Wan bites at the place he has kissed. It doesn't matter how loud Anakin mewls and moans, they can't hide this from anyone now. Needy fingers scramble into the tangle of his hair when Obi-Wan dares to press his tongue to the clear pre-cum dripping down Anakin's pretty cock, feels him twitch against the flat of his tongue and tense up in the fight against cumming faster than he wants to.
“PLEASE.” It's such a pretty, desperate, thing. Anakin's begging, his hips rocking against the finger twisting inside him and Obi-Wan manages to reach just right so he can stroke the pad of his middle finger against that nervy little spot that has Anakin damn near shouting. “Master, please. Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan.”
“Remember what you promised?” He takes his time, slowly slowly sliding his finger free and taking Anakin by the ankle – pushing his leg back to his chest so Obi-Wan can see all of him. If Anakin is made shy by this he gives no indication, only digs his fingers into the meat of his Master's broad shoulder and stretches out long and lithe against the pillows at the headboard.
Anakin looks beautiful like this, a gawky boyish loveliness as he reaches for Obi-Wan with that rush of wild light. The windchime voice of The Force in their minds, almost-words, but Obi-Wan can hear Anakin through it all. Hear the hitch of his breath, the galloping of his little heart, and wishes he knew what this miraculous boy saw in him. What it is this child-god finds so worthy in just a man.
“I promise, Obi-Wan.” Anakin repeats in his mind, more feeling than actual words. I promise you won't hurt me, I promise I won't regret it, I promise I won't leave you, I promise I love you.
First, all Obi-Wan does is stroke the head of his cock against the slickness of Anakin's hole, rubs there until Anakin is boneless and arching into it and only when Obi-Wan is certain does he push inside. Slowly, delicately, breaching the tightness that has Anakin gasping and clawing into the sheets - head tilted back, pink mouth open around a quiet sob. He pauses, calloused hand soothing from the length of Anakin's calf and up to his thigh where he feels him trembling. Before Obi-Wan can ask if they should stop, Anakin is begging in a shuddering voice.
“More.”
He tries to go slow, to be gentle, inches inside of Anakin with his breath held until all of him is seated in wet heat. Still his dearheart begs for more and Obi-Wan hooks his arms beneath Anakin's legs to pull the boy in with the rough shove of his hips. A drawn out wail slips free from Anakin's lips, but he rocks eagerly with the hard and languid shove of Obi-Wan fucking into him. Drawing out until his thick cock is barely caught inside of him, then rocking back in deep and slow. It's messy, and Obi-Wan regrets the lack of finesse he wishes he had for this, but if Anakin notices he surely has no complaints. Not with the way he keens and groans, toes curling when Obi-Wan lifts him up just a little bit more and his cock shoves against that sensitive bundle of nerves deep inside of him.
“You're so beautiful.” He groans into the delicate skin of Anakin's shoulder, mouthing at the beat of his pulse when Anakin lets out a filthy noise. “My sweetheart, Anakin.”
Obi-Wan reaches between them, lips finding the hard peak of his nipples and takes one into his mouth – teases with his teeth while Anakin shudders and pants beneath him. His body tensing, wound tight as a spring, Obi-Wan's easy in-out, in-out, grind inside him drawing out insistent little whimpers. They aren't going to last like this, Obi-Wan knows. Can feel it in the ever coiling Force writhing around them like a giant serpent, but his boy is asking so prettily and he cannot deny Anakin anything. He is careful in releasing the Anakin's legs, but he goes and locks them around his Master's hips as soon as he is free and pulls Obi-Wan close. Uses the leverage to fuck himself back on the man's big cock with clumsy inexperience, chasing what feels good from the only person he could ever wish it from.
“Obi-wan, Master. It's good, you're so good.” The words sound indecent coming from Anakin's mouth, filthy and adoring in equal measure. “T-touch me again?”
Of course he will, would do anything Anakin asked of him, and readily wraps a hand around the boy's cock. It takes barely anything for Anakin to cum once he does; the swipe of his thumb across the leaking head, a kiss that lingers and lingers until they are breathless, and the contented drag of Obi-Wan inside him – big and hot and so good Anakin can barely think. He cums hard in his Master's fist, thrashes and bucks and wails, and Obi-Wan means to stop, to pull out, but the boy clings to him and refuses to be parted.
“No! No, keep going. Do it inside me. Don't leave me, Master.” Anakin is pink down to his chest, a rosy flush and the wetness dripping from his cock down onto his belly and Obi-Wan can do nothing else but obey. He continues to stroke, slow and delicate with Anakin half-hard, as he takes him. Grows sloppy and rough and desperate, it is fucking and love making and something else – something that feels damn near holy.
“I've got you, love.” He whispers against Anakin's lips, hips stuttering when he cums so far inside of him that Anakin is certain it will never be washed away.
There is a resounding echo, The Force between them strums like a tuning fork struck by starlight, and all at once the frenetic energy wooshes out like wind through an open door. It is quiet, save for their shared breath and the staccato of their heartbeats, but they do not need words to speak. That burst of gold drip drip drips from one to the other, looping between them in an ouroboros with no beginning or end. No one can rip them apart, now. No one can come between them.
Nothing in all of the galaxy.
The whole universe must know that they've done, certainly the whole of the Jedi Temple at any rate. They must know that he has been chosen by The Force's own son, but Obi-Wan cannot bring himself to care. Not when he has Anakin beside him, peaceful in a way he has never been before. His sleep is undisturbed, there is no creeping nightmare to turn him into a fearful thrashing thing as he lays curled into Obi-Wan's chest. He reaches out, wrapping his fingers around the delicate braid that falls over Anakin's shoulder, and tugs gently on it – but the boy continues to sleep. Unconcerned, free.
This must be why they forbid love, Obi-Wan thinks. Because he would burn the world to cinders for this boy, just as much as he would water it until the desert becomes lush and fertile. He does not know that, in another universe far far away, it is Anakin who will turn everything to ash. It doesn't matter, because they are here and they are whole and in this place The Force has given her son a gift – and in turn Anakin has given one to Obi-Wan.
Sunshine dances through the curtains, alights across the boy's rosy cheeks, and Anakin is made incandescent all over again.
