Chapter Text
Anakin rolls over to look at the empty side of the bed. Obi-Wan’s side of the bed. He pouts and fishes his phone from the mess of sheets to check the time. He’s been waiting for Obi-Wan to come up from the club for hours. It’s almost three in the morning.
He wracks his brain trying to think of a reason that Obi-Wan would be ignoring him so cruelly. There’s no election, Obi-Wan’s won almost all of them already. And he doesn’t think they’re fighting or anything. He’d remember if they were fighting. Mostly because he’d remember getting fucked either before or after or during. Also because he’d definitely remember the intense weight of Obi-Wan’s eyes on him and all of his attention focused on what he would call his pretty bird being unruly.
Anakin rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling consideringly, as he twists his wedding ring around his finger absentmindedly.
Maybe he should start a fight. It would get him Obi-Wan’s attention, after all. And it would probably get him railed into the mattress too, if he plays his cards right. It’s too late in the night to find anyone to flirt with--unless Anakin orders a pizza and flirts with the delivery guy. But no. All the closest places that are open twenty-four hours know better by now after a few too many times Anakin’s done the same thing while arguing with Obi-Wan, just to make his mobster lose all sense of control and also his train of thought.
It’s a bit underhanded of him, and he almost invariably feels a bit bad afterwards for manipulating his husband like that just to win an argument. But he’d mentioned it to Rex and Cody once and the brothers had laughed so hard Cody had cried, so Anakin figures it’s okay.
But no, the pizza wouldn’t work. Every pizza guy just leaves the pizza by the door now. Anakin’s pretty sure their apartment is the only place in Coruscant that gets round-the-clock contactless delivery without having to check the box.
Sometimes they even get free pizza.
Anakin could just refuse to do something, that could work if Obi-Wan thinks he’s being unreasonable. But first he’d have to be told to do something. And he’d have to stop his traitor body from automatically starting to do it. It’d be pretty transparent if he paused halfway through dropping to his knees.
Actually, it’s kind of a dick move to make Anakin unable to sleep alone and then have the gall to not come to bed at a reasonable time. Anakin can’t sleep anymore without being wrapped around and up in Obi-Wan Kenobi, and that’s the other man’s fault.
He swings his legs up and out of bed, dragging himself up to his feet. He’s wearing what he typically wears when he’s waiting for Obi-Wan, a pretty lingerie set--white this time--but it’s cold out and he doesn’t particularly want to go traipsing around the club in his underwear.
He throws on his dressing gown and ties it loosely, and it’s when his wedding band catches in the glint of the lowlight that he gets an idea. A sure fire way to make Obi-Wan angry enough to pay attention to him.
He slips the ring off his finger--forcing himself to ignore how absolutely strange and wrong it feels to part with it after wearing it for almost a whole year--and leaves it on his nightstand. “Anakin Kenobi,” he murmurs to himself as a reminder that even without the ring he’s still Obi-Wan’s.
He’s still Obi-Wan’s, but he’s a bit huffy that the man has decided to abandon him for so long.
By the time he gets into the elevator, down all the stairs from the second level of the club to the deserted dancefloor and past the bar, he’s gone from huffy to pissed. He shouldn’t have to go and retrieve his husband from his work just so he can hold him in his sleep. His husband should have been doing that hours ago!
The door to Obi-Wan’s office is cracked open, and light is spilling into the darkened hallway. Anakin hesitates against the wall when he hears voices-- two --from within.
“Boss,” Cody says in a voice Anakin’s never heard him use before. Timid. Worried. “Obi-Wan. Obi, are you sure you want to do this? You know how your husband can get--”
Anakin inhales sharply and presses even closer to the wall, straining his ears for Obi-Wan’s response.
When it comes, it’s in a soft but firm tone. The kind of tone Obi-Wan uses when instructing Anakin to stay in the position he put him in. “Why don’t you let me worry about my husband.”
There’s some shifting of clothing, then the sounds of a chair scraping back. “If he finds out, he’ll kill me-- and you,” Cody protests.
Rage, white-hot and all-consuming, bubbles up inside of Anakin and his lips are already pulled back into a snarl. What are they doing. Why don’t they want him to know. Why is his mob boss talking with another man at three in the goddamn morning, like Anakin hasn’t been upstairs needing him for hours now?
Fett’s right about one thing. Anakin is going to kill him if he’s somehow decided to let his Obi-Wan touch him at all.
He yanks the door open further and storms into the room, arms crossed over his chest as his eyes find Obi-Wan and Cody. The two mobsters are standing close together behind Obi-Wan’s desk, and they’re bent over it, staring down at something. Their arms are brushing.
It’s intolerable.
“Daddy,” Anakin snaps out and his husband’s head shoots up to look at him in tandem with Cody’s.
“Darling,” Obi-Wan is around the desk in an instant, closing the distance between them and taking his jaw firmly in his left hand so that his wedding ring digs into his skin. “What are you doing out of bed, pretty bird? You have a final tomorrow."
Anakin ignores this, even though it’s true. “What are you doing.” he demands, because that feels much more important. His eyes leave Obi-Wan’s face to glare at Cody still behind the desk. Cody’s looking at him all strange too, like he’s sad or something. If Obi-Wan weren’t squeezing his jaw so tightly, he’d bare his teeth at him. How dare he take Anakin’s husband away from him.
He tries to take a step closer to look at the desk and whatever’s on it, what work would be so serious as to take Obi-Wan away from his side, have him pressed so closely against Cody.
“No,” Obi-Wan reprimands, forcing his gaze to meet his again by squeezing at his jaw. His other hand trails up to slip in between the folds of Anakin’s robe and map out the lace of Anakin’s waistband. “Bad pretty bird. It’s work.”
“I should know,” Anakin argues, hating the idea of being left out of a secret, especially one that involves Obi-Wan. That involves Cody. “I’m your--” enforcer, he wants to say. Means to say. “Husband.”
An unidentifiable emotion flashes across Obi-Wan’s face, there and gone the next second. On anyone else, Anakin would almost call it regret. Or fear. But Obi-Wan doesn’t know those things.
“It’s a surprise, pretty bird,” Obi-Wan finally murmurs, ghosting his lips across his cheek and then lingering there. “For your graduation, baby. You don’t wanna ruin your surprise, do you, darling?”
Anakin pouts, but it soothes that beast inside of him to know that this, too, is for him. That Obi-Wan loves him enough to give up some time with him in order to plan a graduation surprise for him.
But still.
“I’m gonna fail my last final tomorrow if I don’t get some sleep,” he tells Obi-Wan, pushing his head further into his mob boss’s hold. “And then I’ll have to repeat the semester and you won’t get to give me my surprise and you won’t get to see me all thankful for it.”
Obi-Wan’s eyes darken and it would look almost like arousal if Anakin weren’t intimately familiar with what Obi-Wan Kenobi’s arousal looked like. “Then you should go to sleep, pretty bird,” he croons, the hand on his waist slipping down beneath the lingerie to run over the curve of his ass in direct contradiction to his words.
“I can’t,” Anakin breathes. “Can’t alone anymore. You’ve ruined me.”
This sort of confession should make Obi-Wan kiss him hard and smug like he always does when Anakin alludes to knowing just how much Obi-Wan has messed him up for anything but his love anymore.
But this time Obi-Wan just drops a single kiss onto his temple and slides his hands off Anakin, who gapes at him in disbelief. “Oh, darling, I wish I could, but this is very….time sensitive. I have to--”
“Go to bed, Obi-Wan,” Cody interrupts him from behind them. Both turn to look at him, but he doesn’t look up from where he’s studying a piece of paper at the desk. “I’ll…get a few things ready and then turn in too. Skywalker isn’t going to…graduate in the next six hours, boss.”
He looks up and smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Maybe he can’t believe he has to work on something for Anakin at three in the morning. Maybe he can’t believe Anakin’s come and stolen Obi-Wan’s attention away. The thought brings a mean little grin to his face. “Come on, daddy, you heard Cody.”
But Cody doesn’t even groan or roll his eyes, which might just be the weirdest thing about tonight. His eyebrows furrow, but before he can comment, Obi-Wan is clamping his hands on his waist and leading him out of his office in front of him.
“Yes, I did,” Obi-Wan mutters into his ear, licking at the thin skin behind it before turning Anakin’s head so he can bite at his lobe. Anakin’s thoughts go fuzzy when Obi-Wan stops them at the mouth of the hallway just so he can grind against his ass teasingly. “How am I to say no to both my second and my pretty bird?”
“Can’t,” Anakin mumbles, arching back into his husband’s touch. “Was so lonely, daddy. The bed was too big.”
“Mm,” Obi-Wan pushes them into walking again, through the deserted club and up into the elevator. “And did you come looking for me, baby, or would you have taken any man to bed with you had I not been in my office?”
His tone is dark but…there’s something hidden behind it, something Anakin can’t put his finger on.
“Would you have waited for daddy like a good boy, or would you have filled my place with the first available man who would have you?”
The elevator stops at their floor and Anakin pushes out first so he can turn to look at his mobster with wide eyes. He goes to frame Obi-Wan’s face with both of his hands, but he doesn’t get even halfway there before Obi-Wan’s hand grasps onto his wrist with an iron grip. His left wrist.
Anakin has exactly one second to remember that he’d taken the ring off on purpose for this exact reaction from his husband, before he catches sight of the expression on said husband’s face. He hasn’t seen him look this dangerous since a target had gotten in a lucky knife strike along Anakin’s stomach.
“Pretty bird,” Obi-Wan croons, “Darling. Anakin.”
“Daddy, it’s not—”Anakin starts to say, tugging at his wrist as if that’ll make Obi-Wan let him go.
“Where’s your ring, baby?” Obi-Wan asks softly, hand coming up to stroke along the base of Anakin’s naked fourth finger. “Why did you take it off, pretty bird? Did you not want anyone to know you were mine? How lonely have you been these last few hours without me, baby?”
Obi-Wan pushes him roughly towards the bedroom, the door still open from Anakin’s hasty exit.
“Am I gonna find the sheets all rumpled and smelling of sex, pretty bird?” Obi-Wan murmurs in a dangerously even voice as he puts him up against the doorframe. One hand is still clutching at his wrist, but the other has rucked up the bottom of his dressing gown and found its way to the crease of Anakin’s ass. He nudges Anakin’s legs into falling apart so that he can ghost his thumb over the furl of Anakin’s entrance, as if…as if checking he’s not been recently fucked.
It would be offensive, degrading even, if not for the way his husband’s eyes have not left his face. They’re trained on his own with such intense concentration and heady, dangerous desire that Anakin has to push forward and push back, to submit to this examination while his head falls down to rest on Obi-Wan’s shoulder so that he can mouth over his mobster’s neck greedily.
The truth is, he’s still loose from the fuck they’d shared in their living room after dinner, so when Obi-Wan teases the first knuckle of his index finger at his entrance, it slips in.
“Yours,” Anakin mumbles, even as Obi-Wan tenses against him. “Took it off cause I wanted your attention, daddy. You weren’t here,” this is said reproachfully as he breaks away from Obi-Wan’s hold to get through the door and cross the room to fall back onto the bed. His legs spread automatically for Obi-Wan to settle between, but his mobster surprises him again by not following him immediately.
Instead, the man makes a big deal of slowly and casually taking off his jacket and cufflinks and unbuttoning the first two buttons of his shirt.
“Put it on,” he commands in that tone of voice that commands absolute obedience. “And if you take it off again, I won’t touch you for a week.”
Anakin’s never scrambled across a bed so fast before in his life. He’d left the ring, all sapphire and gunmetal silver on his bedside table.
It’s not there.
He freezes up on his hands and knees on the bedspread. His ring isn’t there. How could it not be there? He left it there, right before he left.
He moves to kneel up and stretch over the nightstand to look on the floor around it. Maybe it had fallen off, maybe he’d bumped the table with his hip while he was leaving and hadn’t noticed, too excited to get to Obi-Wan.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
But it’s not on the ground either.
His heart in his throat, he turns back to his husband, who has paused in rolling up his shirt sleeves to look at him. “It’s not here,” Anakin says faintly. “I don’t understand. I put it right there.”
“It’s gone?” Obi-Wan asks slowly, carefully, dangerously, measuring out every syllable. “You lost…your ring?”
Anakin’s eyes well up with tears. Obi-Wan’s going to be mad, he’s going to be so disappointed. And not even in the fun way. He’s going to punish him and Anakin’s going to deserve it, Anakin’s never done something this awful, how will everyone know he’s Obi-Wan’s if he doesn’t have his mobster’s ring to show them? What if Obi-Wan is so mad he refuses to get Anakin another one? What if his daddy doesn’t want anything to do with him now that he’s gone and–and–and--
He doesn’t realize his breathing is coming out in high-chested pants of panic until Daddy’s arms are wrapped around his shoulders and his face is being pressed into Daddy’s neck while the mobster soothes him achingly gently, a hand threading through his curls and another stroking up and down his spine.
“Hush, pretty bird, baby, you got yourself all worked up, didn’t you?” he murmurs. “I thought that was daddy’s job.”
Anakin keens because it is, he wants it to be, he wants to be worked up and fucked up and fucked and he wants his ring back, he feels awful without it absolutely stripped bare. “Daddy,” he whimpers, latching onto his broad shoulders and pulling him closer. “I’m sorry, I don’t know where it is, I–I put it right on the table, right in the middle, I didn’t wanna take it off, I want it back, I’m yours.”
“You can be mine without the ring,” Daddy tells him softly, pausing his hand at the base of his spine and slipping further down to grab at his ass. “You are mine, ring or no.”
“I want it though,” Anakin pants wetly, even as the panic starts to recede and arousal takes its place. “I need it.”
“Hm,” Daddy hums consideringly and Anakin braces himself to be asked why he took it off if he needs it so badly. But instead he’s just lifted up and off his mobster and laid on the bed. A few nudging, gentle touches is all it takes to get him to wriggle out of his dressing gown to lay bare in front of his daddy and his daddy only.
Obi-Wan’s eyes rake up and down his form, taking in the bright clean white of his lingerie. Anakin stares up at him with wide eyes, begging for him to move, to tell him what to do, how to earn his forgiveness, how to be his prettiest bird.
Obi-Wan’s hand falls onto his chest and strokes over his lace-covered nipple consideringly. “We should have you tattooed, pretty bird,” Daddy mutters, watching the rapid rise and fall of Anakin’s chest. “So you know you’re mine. Always. A claim you can’t lose or take off. Hm. What do you think, baby, what would you get for me?”
“Anything, daddy,” Anakin promises hazily, shifting his hips trying to convince his mobster to touch him again. “Whatever you want, please.”
Daddy chuckles as he pats at Anakin’s flank. “You’d say anything like this, baby, wouldn’t you?”
“Anything,” Anakin agrees with a smile because he made his mob boss laugh, he did that. That was his chuckle. Anakin makes his daddy happy.
“Stay,” Obi-Wan commands, and Anakin lets himself sink into the mattress. He’s going to be taken care of now. Obi-wan will take care of him.
“Okay, daddy,” Anakin says, mostly so he can say daddy again. He likes the way it sounds on his tongue and the way each repetition makes his husband’s breathing pick up. His cock is probably twitching like crazy in his pants, and Anakin wishes he’d strip like Anakin had, wishes he could see all of Obi-Wan’s muscles and scars. Instead the man goes to the closet, bending down to fish something from their special box and his eyes are drawn to the pull of fabric over Obi-Wan’s ass.
It’s been months since Obi-Wan has let Anakin fuck him and the last time he’d come so hard he’d passed out for a second. He’d been hoping his daddy may let him again, just as a graduation gift. After all, it’s not every day one finishes their master’s degree.
Maybe it’s part of his surprise. Or maybe Obi-Wan will be so proud of him that he’ll let him, just let him roll him over and fuck him proper instead of insisting that he stay on his back so Obi-Wan can ride him.
Not that Anakin doesn’t absolutely love that. But he wants to show his daddy how good he can be. He’s been working on it
When his daddy turns back around, Anakin snaps his gaze back up to meet his eyes somewhat guiltily, but Obi-Wan only smirks slightly. “Kneel, pretty bird,” he tells him firmly in the tone Anakin loves and that his body obeys without question.
He kneels up on the bed and wriggles to the very edge of the mattress until his husband’s hands are almost on him. He’s holding something, but Anakin doesn’t see it until Obi-Wan tilts his chin up with one hand and makes him look through his half-lidded eyes.
“Oh,” he breathes out as he studies the pretty dark lace collar Obi-Wan is holding one end of. There’s a subtle thin ring of metal in the center, but his eyes are drawn to the lace edges, the way he knows they feel on his throat.
“Take it, pretty bird,” Obi-Wan instructs and Anakin fumbles to remember how to move his hands. “I want you to put it on yourself. I want you to show me how much you want to be mine.”
Anakin nods eagerly. He can do that. Sure, his daddy’s always been the one to tie his collar on, but Anakin can do it too. The lace strings aren’t that thin.
“Stop,” Daddy’s voice rings out sharply, and Anakin freezes with the ends of the collar in both hands and looks up at him with wide eyes. Why does he sound disappointed? Daddy said to—so Anakin was—
But Daddy sits down on the other side of the bed and slips off his shoes, keeping the rest of his clothes on and sliding himself up against the headboard of their bed.
“Come here, darling,” the mobster summons him, and Anakin obeys because what else in the world is he supposed to do? He straddles Daddy’s thighs and looks at him questioningly. “Good,” his husband tells him soothingly, and Anakin lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
“What are you doing?” Anakin hears himself ask in a voice hardly recognizable as his, it’s so high with nerves and anticipation and the desire to be able to meet Obi-Wan’s needs, to be able to please him. What do you want me to do?
“You’re going to sit all nice and pretty in my lap, baby,” Obi-Wan tells him easily, leaning over to his little bedside table and pulling out their lube. “And I’m going to finger you open for my cock. And when I’ve got three fingers in your greedy little hole, you’re going to put on your collar and show daddy how much you love being his. Alright, pretty bird? Can you do that, darling?"
Anakin nods, and his fingers tighten on the collar. “‘M still wearing my panties,” he points out all faux-shyly, the fabric stretched tight around his arousal. “They’re getting all wet.”
The position they’re in makes it quite obvious when Obi-Wan’s cock twitches at his words, and Anakin grins coquettishly down at his daddy, who narrows his eyes back up at him.
“Let daddy help with that,” Obi-Wan murmurs, pulling something out of his pocket. It’s his knife. Anakin’s breath catches in his throat when he flicks it open and rests the sharp edge against his thigh, so close to his cock that it could take just a slip of the hand to maim Anakin forever.
They both stare down at the silvery glint between them. Obi-Wan groans low and long when Anakin pushes up into the knife’s pressure. Not enough to break the skin, but enough to say I trust you, Daddy.
“My best pretty bird,” Obi-Wan murmurs, even as he slips the knife further up his thigh until it’s cutting into the delicate lace of his underwear. “I love you.”
Anakin moans back and nods and wishes for a moment that Obi-Wan would cut him, that he’d get to see his blood on his hands, and know that that was Obi-Wan’s as well. Everything.
Everything.
His daddy makes quick work of the rest of his panties, but he at least looks regretful to cut off the lacey bralette. There’s a second’s pause, as if Obi-Wan is fighting with himself, before the knife glances off his skin and cuts a thin line diagonally across his pec.
He gasps at the suddenness of the pain and trains wide eyes on Obi-Wan’s face. Obi-Wan, who is watching blood well up from the cut with something like fascination dancing in his eyes. “You didn’t flinch,” his daddy murmurs in awe, the tone going straight to Anakin’s head and muddling his thoughts until it takes actual concentration to remember how to open his mouth and respond with actual words.
He whines out and presses forward, back into the knife that Obi-Wan’s moved away. No, he can do it again if he wants, if that’s what he wants, it’s what Anakin wants. No, he didn’t flinch. He’s been shot on two different occasions (a total of four times), he’s broken his hand on some hit’s face. He’s turned over onto his stomach and let Obi-Wan turn his ass bright red. A small cut is nothing compared to what he can take.
But it’s not about the cut or the pain.
“I would never,” he finally finds the words he wants. “Not from you.”
Obi-Wan growls and his eyes fall to half lids as the knife presses back against Anakin’s skin, gentle, gentle, gentle, and then sharp diagonal in the other direction, a long, uneven ‘X’ over his heart.
Anakin can’t help the moan that tears out of his throat at this and Obi-Wan must not be able to handle hearing it either, because a second later, he’s on his back on the bed, and there’s a thunk of the knife hitting the floor and skittering from the force of the throw.
His daddy crawls on top of him and wrestles the collar out of Anakin’s slackened hands. “Mine,” he snarls down at him as his fingers make a mess of tying it around Anakin’s arched neck. He thumbs over his adam’s apple and presses in, just slightly, just enough to make Anakin keen at how good it feels. A calloused finger slips beneath the collar, his daddy checking its tightness to make sure it’s not hurting him.
“I was gonna do that,” he whispers dazedly, petting at the collar, already feeling out of it just at the knowledge that he’s Obi-Wan’s, that he’s lost the ring that ties them together, but his daddy remembered another thing Anakin can wear to announce who he belongs to.
His daddy is so smart and he’s his, he’s all Anakin’s and he will be forever and ever.
He sighs out breathily when Obi-Wan’s mouth falls to the right side of his chest and tongues at his budded up nipple. “Daddy, please,” he moans, arching his hips to rub them together. “I need you in me, please.”
“I need to be in you,” Daddy agrees in a rough voice, licking at the lines on his chest before he grabs Anakin’s head and pulls him into a filthy kiss. He can taste traces of his own blood on Daddy’s lips and that’s almost enough to make him come, almost enough to make him satisfied to writhe against Daddy’s pants leg until he comes and stains Daddy’s nice shirt with blood and cum.
But Daddy seems to know what he’s thinking, the way Daddy always does, because he lifts off of him completely with a firm and resounding “No, pretty bird. You come when I’m inside you.”
Anakin squirms around on the bed until he can prop himself up on the pillows and spread his legs for Daddy to look his full at how wet he’s made him, how much his cock is weeping onto the planes of his stomach. There’s the lube beside him, almost lost in the sheets, and he grabs at it to spread some messily on his own fingers.
“My pretty bird’s a slut, isn’t he?” Daddy mutters as he grabs at his belt and undoes it carelessly. “Desperate to have something inside of him, he’d take his own fingers if it meant he could get Daddy’s cock faster.”
Anakin nods because that’s right, that sounds right, Daddy said it so it has to be right—and he can see himself in the reflection of the windows that the bed looks out on. They face the alleyway, so it’s private enough that Obi-Wan’s never invested in curtains. Quite the opposite. They both enjoy it when he fucks him on his hands and knees on the edge of the bed facing the windows so Anakin can see exactly how he looks clenching and trembling on Obi-Wan’s cock.
There’s a light on across the way, but before the thought even registers and definitely before it turns into embarrassment at someone possibly seeing him like this that isn’t Daddy, Daddy’s hands are there, pulling his two fingers out and inserting three of his own
Anakin moans and tries to spread his legs wider. Nothing fills him up the way Daddy does. He doesn’t even need to pretend to explore Anakin’s body anymore, he rubs right against his prostate on the first try, pressing down until Anakin thinks he can see stars out the window, until Anakin thinks he’s going to come, even without his daddy’s permission.
There’s another glint, the raise of something, and it’s not Anakin who responds. It’s something deep inside Anakin, that beast that had brought him to Obi-Wan in the first place, that knew danger before it knew love, that craved survival before it understood safety. That beast, that thing inside of him, takes control of his body when his head still feels stuffed with cotton and somewhere far, far away from any world that doesn’t involve just him and his daddy.
That beast grabs his daddy with both arms and rolls them off the bed and onto the floor, just as the glass of the window shatters apart and the sound of a bullet being fired from a gun echoes through the alleyway
In the next second, Obi-Wan is shoving Anakin under the bed, and there’s the sound of another gunshot followed by footsteps--Obi-Wan's rapid footsteps away from him. Anakin hurts all over, from the fall, the rip of Obi-Wan’s fingers from his entrance, the cuts on his chest—but his head is killing him, and he needs Obi-Wan to hold him, he needs Obi-Wan here with him where it’s safe, where he knows he’s safe. He feels so useless cowering under the bed, but he looks to the side and he can’t see Obi-Wan anymore, he doesn’t know where his daddy went—why he was left alone, if he’s even okay, if he’s hurt.
That’s when he starts wailing loudly, huge sobs breaking out of his mouth without his permission. He needs to not be here because he needs to find the shooter and kill them for trying to kill Obi-Wan, but this is where Daddy put him so he needs to stay, but he doesn’t know where Daddy is and he hurts, he’s alone, and he’s never felt pain worse than this.
There are more running footsteps back into the room and then the fall of something heavy, which turns out to be Daddy, falling onto his knees. He pulls at Anakin’s hands as Anakin pulls at him, but Daddy wins out and jerks him out from under the bed and into his lap. He stands shakily, either from the adrenaline or Anakin’s weight, he doesn’t know, and takes him through the sitting room, into his office. There are no windows here, but Obi-Wan curls them up together beneath his desk anyway. It’s an impossibly tight fit, but Anakin doesn’t particularly want any space between their bodies.
He’s still sobbing, big desperate gasps of air that can’t possibly be coming from him, not actually. Obi-Wan clutches his head to his neck and presses short, brief kisses to his temple and hair, every part he can reach. His hands offer no comforting strokes, but grip tightly at the skin of his back and sides.
“Pretty bird, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, baby, oh, Anakin, darling—”
“You left me,” Anakin accuses between sobs, bringing up his hands to hit at Obi-Wan’s chest uselessly. Not too hard. He doesn’t want to be left again, but wasn’t he being good? Why had he been left behind?
“Oh darling, love, I’m sorry. I had to dismantle the elevator and lock the doors up. Just in case, baby, but we’re safe now. No one can get you, I’m sorry I had to leave you, I just needed you safe,” he murmurs into his hair, only drawing back to move to a different part of Anakin’s head in order to kiss him there. “No one can get you, no one will touch you, I promise, darling.”
The words filter slowly through the fuzziness of Anakin’s mind. How can his daddy not understand that he’s upset that he left, not that he’s terrified for his own safety?
“Sorry, sorry,” Obi-Wan mutters, and his voice is shaking more than Anakin’s ever heard it, and when he smooths his hand back over his hair and presses his face against Anakin’s temple, he can feel Obi-Wan’s wet cheeks.
“Okay, Daddy,” Anakin mumbles, startled to his core by this new discovery. “I’m okay, I’m not hurt.
“That’s not good enough,” Obi-Wan snarls out, and Anakin flinches away from the tone before Obi-Wan tightens his grip on him and softens his voice purposefully. “Shush, shush, no, no, not you, darling, you’re perfect, I swear it, I love you. You’re my best pretty bird, hush,” he keeps murmuring, until Anakin eventually relaxes further into his arms.
He thinks he may drift for a bit, Obi-Wan’s voice small in his head but real, running through how adored he is, how loved, how soft and special his daddy finds him, how he wants to hold Anakin in his arms for the rest of his life.
It’s so soothing, like this, like balm over the burn of what had happened in the bedroom, what it had felt like. Even the beast in his chest is purring that this other monster loves them just as much as they love him.
He comes back to himself at the lightest of taps on the door of the study.
“It’s Cody, sir,” the stranger announces himself, and Anakin has to focus to remember that yes, people other than Obi-Wan and himself exist. “I relocked the door after I came through it. It’s six in the morning.”
Yes, Cody is here. But Cody needs to be here. Someone tried to kill Obi-Wan tonight. And Cody will help Anakin find them and kill them. Because if there’s anyone that loves Obi-Wan even a fraction as much as Anakin does, it’s Cody
“How are you feeling?” Obi-Wan asks quietly, just for Anakin.
Anakin pulls back to look at Obi-Wan’s face in the gloom. He looks like a wreck, like how Anakin feels, but he’s here. He’s alright. Anakin is alright too. “Weird. Um. Vulnerable,” he admits. “My head hurts. I don’t know why. But I’m okay. Naked. But okay.”
“Cody,” Obi-Wan says much louder without taking his eyes off Anakin’s face, “would you be a dear and grab a robe from our room?”
Cody’s silent for several seconds, but he doesn’t say anything before he turns and leaves the room.
“The weird will go away,” Obi-Wan promises, stroking over Anakin’s cheek and staring at him with dark, intense eyes. “Stay next to me today, please.”
“My final!” Anakin realizes with a groan. “It’s in the afternoon. We can–”
“You won’t go,” Obi-Wan says firmly, not in his daddy tone, but in his mob boss tone. “You’ll pass it. But I will not let you out of my sight.”
“You can’t threaten my professor—”
“And I can’t live with the idea of letting you walk onto a city college campus with little to no security at any time,” Obi-Wan argues back. “Pretty bird,” he draws in a sharp breath, voice breaking. “Don’t make me—darling, please. I…feel… vulnerable too.”
Anakin rears back, surprised and suspicious, but Obi-Wan doesn’t look like he’s lying. Anakin doesn’t know what he looks like, except hardly recognizable as his husband. This is not the calm and collected Obi-Wan Kenobi he married. This Obi-Wan has a dark, crazed look in his eyes, like he’s thinking of handcuffing himself to Anakin should he continue to protest. And there’s blood on his shirt, Anakin’s blood. The cuts must have been aggravated so much they started to bleed again.
But it doesn’t even look like Obi-Wan cares about the shirt, which feels like the biggest thing.
“Okay,” Anakin concedes, and Obi-Wan kisses him in reward, just once, verging on desperate.
It’s a bit of an event to get out from beneath the desk, but eventually they manage it. Obi-Wan redoes his fly and belt buckle, but leaves the half-unbuttoned shirt and messily rolled shirt sleeves. He probably figures it doesn’t matter seeing as he’ll have to throw that shirt away anyway.
Obi-Wan meets Cody at the door to grab the dressing gown from his second. “Boss, there’s—”
“In a minute,” Obi-Wan tells him in a tone that leaves no room for argument. He shakes out the robe and approaches Anakin, who steps in it gratefully. It’s Obi-Wan’s, it turns out, falling too short on his legs to be his own. It’s more comforting than his own would be anyway.
“Pretty bird,” his husband says in a low voice, “you’re still wearing your collar, darling. Do you want me to take it off?”
“No,” Anakin’s hands fly to his own throat to trace along the collar’s edges. “No, it’s mine. Don’t take it.”
“Alright, alright,” Obi-Wan agrees immediately, smoothing up and down his back. “That’s perfectly alright, you know I love how you look in our collar.”
Something about the words warms a part of Anakin he hadn’t even realized felt cold, and he smiles bashfully at the ground. When Obi-Wan takes his hand to lead him out of the room, he intertwines their fingers.
Cody is sitting on the sectional, some sort of paper in front of him. Obi-Wan guides Anakin to the longer part of the couch, and tucks him up against his side as soon as they sit.
“Two shots,” Obi-Wan says. “The first one into the vanity mirror, and the second into the pillow. On the left side of the bed. My side.”
“Was there any chance of impact?” Cody asks, all business. Anakin can’t help the way the question tears a shiver down his spine. Was there? Had Obi-Wan been close to dying only a few hours ago?
“I was in bed, on top of Anakin, on his side of the mattress. The side closer to the vanity mirror, but that’s still several feet away, and Anakin was rolling us to the floor even while the gun was firing.” There’s enough pride in Obi-Wan’s voice that Anakin presses his face against his neck to hide his flushed cheeks.
“So by the second shot, you were already on the floor,” Cody says, making no comment of Obi-Wan’s brief but unignorable comment about his position. He doesn’t even make a face at Anakin for being all up in his husband’s space.
“Yes,” Obi-Wan agrees. “I made sure Anakin was under the bed, and went to lock the doors, elevator, and contact you. There were no further shots upon my return, though we both could have easily been taken down if the gunman was waiting for us to stand.”
“I never miss,” Cody intones, which is such a weird thing to say that Anakin takes his head out from Obi-Wan’s neck to look at him curiously.
“What?” Obi-Wan says sharply.
“Me, Rex, Jesse, Waxer and Boil swept the building that faces your bedroom. There was a set up on a window opposite yours.”
“I saw him,” Anakin says slowly, eyes staring into the middle ground as he tries to remember. “I was. We were…” he colors and looks to his daddy for help.
“There were several moments in our scene where I was not with Anakin on the bed,” Obi-Wan says. Anakin furrows his brows and mouths the word scene. A weird name for sex. “The target would have had complete unfettered access to either of us, but he waited until we were together again, in the middle of sex, to take his shot.”
“I thought it was…” Anakin trails off again. “Stars or something. A light on in the window. He was watching.”
“Yes,” Cody agrees, and Anakin turns his face completely into Obi-Wan’s neck. The weird feeling grows within him until it’s unbearable. It’s. He feels….
Violated.
He’d been so—and to have someone else, someone not Obi-Wan—see him like that—
Obi-Wan’s strong arms pull him into his lap and he goes eagerly. No one will see him if Obi-Wan is covering him with his body. His daddy will keep him safe.
“He left a note in his…nest,” Cody continues. “One page. On the front it said, ‘I never miss.’”
Obi-Wan stiffens beneath him, and Anakin holds his breath. He needs to get himself together, he needs to be part of this discussion, to work out how they’re going to catch the gunman between him and Cody and all of Obi-Wan’s men. He needs to figure out where he can out his Obi-Wan so that no one can possibly harm him.
“What else.” Obi-Wan says. “I know that face, Cody. What aren’t you telling me.”
“Boss, I don’t think now—”
“What do I need to know?” Obi-Wan’s hands tighten on Anakin’s back, and he forces himself to sit up fully, to turn around and slide back off his husband’s lap. To be his enforcer instead of his pretty bird.
"There's a back to the note," Cody admits to Obi-Wan reluctantly.
“Tell me,” Anakin demands
Cody looks between the two of them and lets his eyes linger on Anakin for a second before he sighs. “Thanks for the ring, but I’ll get him my own.”
Obi-Wan is on his feet in seconds, and Anakin’s quick to follow, crossing his arms over his chest for no other reason than he feels small. And cold.
Cody stands as well, and stuffs his hand into his jacket pocket. “Found it in the nest he made,” Cody says neutrally, pulling something out and holding out his fist.
Obi-Wan holds out his hand, but Anakin knows what it’s going to be before it even leaves Cody’s hand.
In the weak early morning sunrise, Anakin’s wedding band glitters happily in his husband’s palm.