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Obi-Wan does not realize he's gone somewhat overboard in the gift department until it’s too late. Anakin’s thirteenth birthday is today, and instead of the singular (but deeply thoughtful) gift that is customary for such an event, he is positively swimming in trinkets to give his apprentice on the eve of him officially becoming a Padawan.
It’s embarrassing, frankly. It reveals very much about Obi-Wan that he does not wish to reveal. Namely, that he still carries the wounds of his own thirteenth birthday, when Qui-Gon presented him with a simple rock while his other fellow Padawans’ Masters all bestowed them with rare, expensive items of great value and symbolic weight from faraway lands. The rock was connected to the Force and had come in handy for a mission—but that was not the point. The point was that Qui-Gon never gave Obi-Wan any indication he loved or cared about him, and the indifference had carved great wounds into Obi-Wan that he, to this day, still tends in silence. Which brings him to the next issue: in addition to shedding light on his own still painful inferiority complex, this deluge of gifts he’s stolen away also sheds light on Obi-Wan’s troublesome affections for Anakin Skywalker.
Masters are not supposed to love their Padawans. Qui-Gon was doing nothing wrong in denying Obi-Wan the attention and validation he so craved, and Obi-Wan knows it is a weakness to dote on Anakin the way he does. To spend the entire year leading up to his thirteenth birthday buying him gifts each time he was off-world, seeing every marketplace through the lens of Anakin’s desires. There was a spike of guilt each time he did it—but he did it all the same. Justified the act of collecting things to give Anakin by reminding himself that the thirteenth birthday is a weighty ritual, it deserves more thought than Qui-Gon gave it all those years ago.
Plus, Anakin already felt singled out by his peers, othered and rejected, so there was no harm in Obi-Wan providing him with more than what he had in his own youth. Anakin is special, after all. Precious, not just to Obi-Wan but to the galaxy itself, and Obi-Wan tries not to berate himself for treating Anakin differently than he might treat another boy. Loving Anakin differently than he might love another boy. Anakin is different—he requires a different set of rules, and most days Obi-Wan allows himself the freedom to forge them.
But it all seems like a glaring betrayal of the Code, now, as he stares down at his hidden dresser drawer full of tenderly wrapped gifts, acquired on so many planets across so many months: a beautiful woven cloak from a merchant on Ord Mantell with highlights the same dark blue as Anakin’s eyes. A brand-new, state-of-the-art droid toolkit. A pack of gold embossed Sabacc cards from a renowned artisan on Batuu. They are all very personal gifts, and the sheer number seems excessive to Obi-Wan now that the time has come to present them. But there is nothing to be done about it in this moment—Anakin is on his way over to receive his gifts, and Obi-Wan must give them. He briefly considers picking the most appropriate and continuing to hide the rest in here for subsequent birthdays or other occasions, but even that is too much, too telling. Jedi are not supposed to have many possessions—and furthermore, Obi-Wan does not want to be reminded of the ways in which his love for Anakin bleeds far from its designated constraints every time he opens this drawer for a tunic.
The doors hiss open, and Anakin bounds in, crosses the room, and vaults on his knees into Obi-Wan’s bed. It is not an unusual entrance for him—in the last year or so, Obi-Wan has abandoned much of the usual propriety in Jedi Master/Padawan relationships and allowed his dynamic with Anakin to shift into something more like casual intimacy. It started as an adaptation out of necessity: Obi-Wan realized Anakin often spent his nights sneaking off and scouring the Coruscanti underground for illegal races and competitions to enter into, and there was no form of discipline or reprimand that worked to stop this behavior. At first, Obi-Wan tried to train himself to forgo sleep for meditation so that he could keep a more watchful eye, but the task of replacing one for the other proved to be far too time-consuming and advanced for him to master quickly, and he needed an immediate solution to keep Anakin from getting himself killed. So he was forced to implement other means: what did he want, when he was a boy acting out for attention?
Love was the simple, shameful answer. Affection. In fact, Obi-Wan is certain that if Qui-Gon had offered him the slightest bit more reassurance when he was young, he might have grown into a more adept knight, more capable of meeting Anakin’s needs. Instead, he is the atrophied, exhausted man he is now. Capitulating to the whims of a very powerful boy, so much so that he has grown to find comfort in that imbalance, rather than resentment.
Love is easy to give where Anakin is concerned, as it turns out, and it solves many of their problems. Anakin now spends his nights with Obi-Wan instead of in the Padawan dormitories with the other boys, and it has been months since a fight broke out or he escaped to go race. He is too busy soaking up Obi-Wan’s attention, trading stories late into the night like brothers might. Most of the time, this feels like an improvement upon old habits and prior risks. But the more convoluted Obi-Wan’s feelings become, the more he fears they are drifting toward something dangerous. Attachment is the word, even though he still calls it a million other things in his mind to avoid the terrible implications: heart strings coiling like vines, the comfort of idle touch, Anakin’s Force signature like a heartbeat, steady enough to plot a ship's course by. It’s easy to forget who is the Master and who is the Padawan, when they grow close and twine together, like roots of the same unstable tree.
It makes him frown to think about it too much, and it’s Anakin’s birthday, so he should not be frowning. He lets his uncertainty bleed into the Force to be whisked away instead, then turns to his apprentice. His Padawan.
Anakin’s face is bright, expectant, and it makes Obi-Wan’s heart swell too magnificently for his self-recrimination to touch him, in this moment. “Goodness, aren’t you transparently eager?” he says, lifting an eyebrow as he removes one gift—the biggest—from the drawer. “Have you completed your part of the ritual?”
Anakin makes an impatient sound in his throat but sits back on his heels obediently, folds his hands into a polite steeple in front of himself. “Yes,” he says. “Do we talk about it before the gift giving, or…” He trails off, cocking his head, expression pinched in a way that tells Obi-Wan he would very much like to skip any further contemplation in favor of presents. Of course he would—he’s thirteen. Obi-Wan had been the same way when he was a boy, despite all his efforts to conceal it, control himself, pretend he was more mature and indifferent. Pretend it did not hurt, how little Qui-Gon cared.
Deep down, Obi-Wan loves Anakin’s lack of pretense, and that love flutters hot and sick in his gut. “We can discuss your meditation after the gifts, if you so wish,” he offers. “I worry you might burst otherwise.”
“Gifts, plural?” Anakin says, because he is very clever.
Obi-Wan sighs, and sits. “Listen, Anakin,” he says gently. “I’m afraid I have something to confess. But you must not tell the other Jedi Masters….or your fellow Padawans. It is something between you and I.”
Delighted by the prospect of secrets, Anakin wriggles closer, eyes wide. “Cross my heart, Master,” he promises.
Obi-Wan studies his flushed face, considers the best way to phrase this. It’s always a struggle—Anakin is terribly smart, and terribly perceptive, but more than that, he is connected to the Force in a way that makes him emotionally intelligent well beyond his years. Obi-Wan can rarely fool him, so he has to find the balance between honesty, and vulnerability. “On my thirteenth birthday, Master Qui-Gon presented me with a gift that was very humble and small. Now, as an adult, I can easily recognize its value—and recognize the lack of value in extravagance. But I was thirteen, just a boy. And so I was disappointed.”
Anakin’s eyes flash, his cheeks coloring a shade darker. He cannot fathom a version of Obi-Wan who was like him: impertinent, needy, emotional. It visibly stirs him to imagine such things, to see them as more similar, than different. “You were? You?”
“Yes, even me,” Obi-Wan promises, smiling. “And as your birthday approached, I did not want you to experience that same disappointment as I did. So. In addition to the gift Qui-Gon presented to me,” he says, reaching into the drawer and finding his old rock, which he offers to Anakin. “There are a few more gifts as well. Perhaps too many—I fear your peers would be envious if they found out, so remember. If anyone asks you, use discretion?”
Joy courses across Anakin’s face, bare and glorious, and Obi-Wan’s gut clenches up. Maybe he didn’t even do this for Anakin at all—maybe it was for himself. His wounded, withered thirteen-year-old self. He has hardly a moment to contemplate the possibility further, though, because instead of taking the rock from Obi-Wan, Anakin flings his body off the bed to fiercely embrace him. He is so solid and his grip is so tight that Obi-Wan is left breathless. He drops the gift he has in one hand and the rock from the other, letting them tumble into his own sheets so that he can touch Anakin—smooth fingers through his shorn hair, down his back to cup the familiar shapes of his shoulder blades.
“You are the best Master there is,” Anakin mumbles against his chest. “Not just the wisest or the strongest but—but the best.”
Obi-Wan’s Force signature goes all wobbly, melting into Anakin’s how it always does when Anakin is this close and the lines between them muddy. He bends down, closes his eyes, buries his nose and lips in Anakin’s dirty hair, and inhales. He loves the way he smells—like motor oil and danger, like the daring, sun-salted boyhood Obi-Wan never got to indulge in. They stay that way for a long time, Anakin’s gip never losing an ounce of tenacity, Obi-Wan’s eyes growing wetter, his smile wider, more helpless, like a crack in the earth the whole city could fall into. “Don’t you want to open your presents?” he murmurs into Anakin’s hair.
“Right,” Anakin says, peeling back, an enormous, lopsided grin on his face. He tumbles back into Obi-Wan’s bed, scoots up to the pillows, and settles into them expectantly. “I’m ready,” he says.
Obi-Wan’s heart pounds, like he is giving something more than gifts. Giving truths, giving blood, giving up.
—-
When he imagined this day, Obi-Wan thought Anakin would be impatient. Ripping the wrapping off in eager fistfuls, moving from one gift to the next without pause, racing because he is always racing. But as it turns out, he is quite methodical about the whole process: he unwraps each gift carefully, eyes wide and bright as he turns it over in his hands with loving prudence, studying every detail, telling Obi-Wan exactly how badly he needed a new circuit fuser, or how grateful he is for such a warm cloak since his desert blood still makes him run cold inside the temple.
All the while, Obi-Wan watches him. Watches him thumb through each Sabacc card, watches him wrap up in the cloak, fine stitching bringing out the storminess in his eyes just like he knew it would. He watches him, and watches him, heart aching as he thinks, I have never loved like this in the whole of my life. And Obi-Wan knows it’s not a fatherly love—he has never had a father, and neither has Anakin, so how are the two of them supposed to fashion such a thing? Brothers, maybe. But even that feels ill-fitting—the closest thing Obi-Wan has ever felt to what he feels for Anakin Skywalker is his love for the Force. The way it runs hot and true through his veins, carrying him, absorbing him as he is being absorbed, as certain as night follows day, death follows life. Loving Anakin is essential. It is fundamental. Obi-Wan used to stop himself from feeling it, but since then, he’s learned it’s too vast to be stifled, so he lets it surge inside of his body, crashing against the inside of his ribs as waves might against the shore.
Anakin even loves the rock—he lies on his back and holds it up, studying it with knit brows and a placid expression. “It really is special,” he says, smoothing his fingers over the fine lines of sediment through the smooth bulk of it. “And it belonged to Master Qui-Gon, before you?”
“Yes,” Obi-Wan says, reaching out through the mess of discarded wrapping paper to smooth his fingers down Anakin’s Padawan braid, where it lies strewn across his own pillow. “You were his apprentice, too, however briefly. You could think of it as his gift to you, as well.”
Anakin rolls over to face Obi-Wan, close enough that his breath gusts out sweet and warm as he exhales. “This—all of it. It’s so great. I love it,” he says, looking very overwhelmed. “You know, I didn’t have much stuff when I was a slave on Tattooine. And then, moving here…well. Jedi don’t think much of possessions, either. And I just…,” he trails off, swallowing, and Obi-Wan’s heart picks up in his chest. “It just means a lot to me.”
“You mean a great deal to me,” Obi-Wan murmurs, because that is the whole point, really. This birthday, these gifts—none of it is about the material possessions Qui-Gon did or did not give Obi-Wan when he was a boy. His long-standing grief is the result of not having been wanted, or chosen. He was only Qui-Gon’s Padawan by happenstance, never special enough to catch his eye the way Xanatos or, later, Anakin did. He spent much of his years training under him feeling like a burden, like he had to prove himself, like he had to work twice as hard to get half as much respect as any other apprentice. And he never wants Anakin to feel that way. He wants him to know with certainty that he is wanted. Chosen.
Anakin’s eyes are watery, and he sucks at the inside of his mouth so that his cheek hollows out, how he always does when he is fighting tears. You may cry, there is no shame in crying, Obi-Wan wants to tell him, but his voice feels stuck in his throat, silenced by his own vulnerability. Instead of crying, though, Anakin resolutely sets the rock down on Obi-Wan’s bedside table, before rolling back over and shuffling closer so that their knees brush. “Master Obi-Wan?” he says very seriously.
Obi-Wan nods, studying him. The slack plush pink of his mouth, his knit brows, always so worried, so sincere. He looks young because he is young, but there is also an ineffable wisdom in the lines of his face, as if he is so much more than a boy of thirteen. Obi-Wan wants to reach out and thumb those troubled lines to smoothness, but instead, he keeps his hands where they are, tangled idly in the gather of sheets between their bodies.
“I love you,” Anakin says then. And he has said it before but never like this. Like a confession, small and vulnerable and scrubbed raw. “Do you love me, too?”
“Of course I do,” Obi-Wan says gently, even as his stomach is clenching, flipping, swooping. Love is a far vaster thing than attachment, it encompasses compassion, goodness, light. All that a Jedi should be. But the way they are talking about love, now—he knows it’s different. Anakin’s raw worry is resonating within their Force bond, pulsing like blood in the vein, and his own signature rises up to meet it, to twin around it hotly. Not like a father. Perhaps like a brother, but even then—not quite. His hands begin to shake, teeth chattering.
“Will you say it to me?”
“Say what?” Obi-Wan asks, though he knows, he knows, the knowing a creeping thing, heart strings coiling like vines.
“That you love me?”
He is so close. Obi-Wan is dizzy with it, the heat from his body, the blue of his eyes matching that cloak he hand-picked from hundreds of similar ones, holding each up to the light to match the color most accurately. Anakin leans forward, presses their brows flush. “Just say ‘I love you.’ Like my mother used to, ‘I love you, my boy, my son, my Ani,’ something like that.”
Obi-Wan closes his eyes. It will be easier to grant Anakin’s wishes that way, and he has not even considered the possibility of saying no. “I love you so much, darling,” he breathes. Then, “Anakin.” Because it is his favorite word, because it is everything, because he has never been able to bring himself to shorten something so lovely into a half-self.
Anakin’s breath staggers and catches as he inhales. “Can I ask for one more thing for my birthday?” he murmurs.
Obi-Wan blinks his eyes open, two versions of Anakin swimming in his vision. So many flushed cheeks, pink lips. “All that wasn’t enough?” he teases.
Anakin squirms closer, makes a fist in Obi-Wan’s robes, tracing an index finger over the neatly stitched seam. He frowns. “It was all wonderful, it’s just. There’s something. Something I really, really want. That I’ve wanted for a long time. But I’m finally old enough for it now.”
Whatever it is, Obi-Wan is already poised to give it. I want you. I choose you. You shall never have to go through your life wondering if your Master would rather have another Padawan. You can have anything you desire. It all bleeds into their Force bond, every word lymph-sticky and too raw. Obi-Wan didn’t even mean to say so much, but Anakin does this, he presses up so close that Obi-Wan forgets where he ends and Anakin begins, and their minds fuse into something so messy that he gives to it without realizing it is giving at all. Giving truths, giving blood, giving up. And maybe it isn’t better, in the grand scheme of things, than the underground races or the fights in the dormitories—maybe it's just better for him. Because it feels so good. So fucking good, the thirteen-year-old inside of him grows as greedy and unashamed as Anakin is. “Anything,” Obi-Wan says aloud.
“Will you kiss me?” Anakin pleads.
And it is shocking. A violation because Obi-Wan was already thinking of kisses. It is hard not to, when Anakin’s breath keeps huffing out onto his mouth, and he can taste the terrible boyish sweetness of it, and they are so close, and it is hard to discern anything save for the way the Force is everywhere around inside of them, choking in its truth. It felt transgressive in his own mind, though, so it seems even more so on his Padawan’s lips. “Anakin,” he chokes out, trying to pull away but finding himself unable to. He is stuck in Anakin’s Force signature like quicksand, immobilized. He begins to sweat at the backs of his knees and in the ditches of his elbows, heart thudding madly. “I can’t—I absolutely shouldn’t.”
“You said anything,” Anakin reminds him. “And what is even so bad about it? Your hands touch my shoulder. We lie together at night, sometimes. What makes lips touching lips so different?”
He sounds innocent, but it is far too rehearsed. It’s like he knew Obi-Wan would resist if he asked for such a thing and planned a clever attack in refute. Obi-Wan briefly weighs his options, comes up empty-handed, thinks of his own thirteenth birthday, and digs a shallow grave.
He kisses Anakin—brief, chaste, gentle. Even that makes his gut churn, though—not with disgust but with shame at the utter lack of it. Anakin whimpers.
“Wait, that was too fast, do it again,” he begs, shimmying closer so that their bodies slot together. Obi-Wan comes alive, nerves he didn't even know he had fizzling, the Force’s jaws tightening around the unit their body has become. “Please,” Anakin adds as an afterthought, like politeness matters here.
“No, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, but it is such a lie that he cannot even muster sternness. He wants Anakin’s lips again. He wants—he wants to be Anakin’s mother, maybe. His mother who loved him, who held him, who kissed him and was allowed to do all those things. He desperately wishes to kiss Anakin again, but he knows as his Jedi Master it’s just—it’s absolutely not allowed. He knows that. But Anakin doesn’t seem to care, and he knows that, too: that he will eventually be ground down to dust like ancient rock beneath still more ancient tides. “I’m not going to—”
Anakin takes what he wants instead and slots their mouths together easily.
Obi-Wan does not stop him. He cannot stop him, he’s already grown to accept that Anakin Skywalker is an unstoppable energy. He is inertia, he is the conservation of mass, he is the Force. Obi-Wan is but a man, and so, he reflexively kisses back.
Anakin is also newly thirteen, so he doesn't know what he’s doing. He kisses with sweet, noisy, childish puckers, and for a few moments, Obi-Wan thinks he will just keep planting them squarely onto his mouth until he’s satisfied, and quits. But then, much to Obi-Wan’s subsequent overwhelm, he softens up and lingers.
It no longer feels like a child kissing his mother—Obi-Wan doesn’t know what it feels like, as he has never felt something like it before. But it is terrifying. He reaches out, touches Anakin, smooths a hand down his narrow arm to grip his elbow. He means to push him off, terminate this ritual, but instead he just holds on like Anakin is a buoy and he is lost as sea in his own bed. Wrapping paper crackles around them, and he realizes Anakin is shifting again, moving half on top of Obi-Wan to trap him in the impossible weight of his Force signature, to pin him to the mattress. Then, once he has Obi-Wan where he wants him, he boldly slips his tongue into his mouth.
Obi-Wan was braced for it, but it still shorts out his brain when it happens. Wet. Scalding. Utterly lacking in grace, in control. Anakin just jabs his tongue in and wiggles it, then withdraws, changes his angle slightly, and does it again. He kisses as he does all things—like he is trying to win a race, prove something, crack the world along a seam and figure out how it runs from the inside out, only this time, Obi-Wan is the world. It should be repulsive, or at least comical, but instead it’s sweet and endearing the way repulsive and or comical things are when you are in love. Obi-Wan finds himself fighting the urge to teach him how to do it right, guiding Anakin as he always does. He reaches up, cups Anakin’ face between his palms, thumbs along his cheekbones. “Slow down,” he whispers, which is not stop, it’s not we shouldn’t, it’s not you’re thirteen, and this is unthinkable. “Open your mouth—only slightly.”
Anakin’s eyes, which are very wet and very black with pupil, flutter shut, and he does as he’s told for once. Obi-Wan kisses those parted lips gently, waiting for something other than the same love he always feels for Anakin to come winding up his throat and choke them both. He waits to be struck down, incinerated. But mostly, he waits for the Force to stop thrumming around them, lapping like waves at the siding of a boat. Sweet, encouraging, reassuring. The Force does not resist him kissing Anakin Skywalker—it does it with him. It flows up through Anakin’s body, kisses him back.
This time, Anakin’s tongue is soft, curious, molten. Like that, Obi-Wan thinks, and Anakin squirms happily on top of him at the praise, like a puppy. He deepens it, licking Obi-Wan’s teeth, seeking out his tongue so they can touch, and, oh, when they do—it’s only then that Obi-Wan realizes how unbearably hot he feels, how many times his stomach has dropped.
This is madness, he thinks then, and Anakin fires a burning no back at him, biting his lower lip as if in warning. It’s good. Doesn't it feel good?
And yes, it feels so good. It also feels terribly wrong. Actually, no, it doesn’t feel wrong, Obi-Wan’s logical mind keeps telling him it should feel wrong, but the sensation itself—the Force’s approval of the sensation—that is all very right. Natural, like Obi-Wan was destined for this, like his body is meant for Anakin to experimentally climb atop of and pry apart and lick inside. Like he exists to teach this boy—be taught by this boy. Because all this: the slick of spit, shared breath, shifting against each other like two tectonic plates while Obi-Wan’s hands roam tenderly up and down the length of Anakin’s back, swathed in the cloak he bought him—it’s all new to Obi-Wan, too. New, and miraculous.
At some point, Anakin pulls back, two spots of red on his cheeks, lips slick and swollen and entirely obscene. He grins. “Wow,” he says, panting. “This is so great.”
No pretense, no coyness. All Anakin, his flashing eyes, something almost dangerous in the black of them as he arranges himself on Obi-Wan’s hips, straddling the breadth and experimentally rocking against his lap. “Do you like me in this?” he asks, smoothing his hands down the front of the cloak. “Or should I just take it off? I’m sweating. I probably smell.”
He does smell, Obi-Wan’s mouth is watering from the way it's cloying the air of his quarters, sharp and pubescent. He wants more, though, wants to feel it under his palms, slicking up Anakin’s skin, wants to taste it. His cock—which he has only just realized with a dizzying shame is very hard—twitches beneath Anakin’s weight at the thought. He clears his throat, tries to think straight, accepts he cannot. “You look lovely in it, but—are you uncomfortable?” he asks, palming down Anakin’s sides to rest atop his hips.
Anakin squirms, thoughtful. “I’m sort of burning up,” he says, hooking his fingers under the bottom hem of both his cloak and tunic. Then, blessedly, he saves Obi-Wan from having to ask for terrible things and pulls it over his head. “I’ll take it off.”
The revelation of his skin happens all at once, so Obi-Wan has no time to prepare for what it does to him. He’s seen Anakin stripped bare before—he raised him, of course, he has—but of course, never like this. Never while Anakin was perched atop him, lips plush from kissing, newly thirteen and demanding things he should not demand but is demanding all the same. He is so golden, muted musculature sitting on his lanky frame with the ease of youth. He will grow broader, soon, but now everything feels soft and natal, and Obi-Wan cannot stop his hands from itching to touch it. Trace his lines, his angles, like a navigator plots a course by stars.
Rivulets of sweat drip down Anakin’s chest, his nipples are pink and drawn tight, and there is nothing at all Obi-Wan can think of at this moment to convince himself that this is brotherly, fatherly, motherly. It is something entirely different. If it was not imbrued in the Force, he would panic. He might panic anyway, but Anakin dips down, brackets him between sinewy arms, and kisses him again, so all he can do is murmur as he's swept into his sway. “I love you,” Anakin says again, bolder this time, tracing the shape of Obi-Wan’s mouth with the tip of his tongue, then lapping at the seam of it like he is drinking milk from a saucer. “I want—,” he starts, and then he cuts himself off, frowning.
Obi-Wan pets his sweat-sticky sides, thumbs over his ribs, loves him, loves him so fiercely in this moment that it wins out over hating himself. “What do you want?” he asks, intending to give it.
Anakin blushes, shifts his weight, and rocks his narrow hips into Obi-Wan’s with self-indulgent, determined bucks. He’s tenting the front of his leggings, and Obi-Wan, of course, notices. He tries not to lift his own hips to meet the motion, tries to stay flat, neutral so that Anakin can use him. He knows that doesn't make any of this more acceptable, but it helps him keep the fragile hold he has on a still more fragile peace of mind. Anakin hides his face in Obi-Wan’s neck, huffs and pants there as he grinds, tongue poking out every once and awhile to lick him. “I want to have sex with you,” he finally says, in a messy rush. “I know you'll say we can’t, though.”
Obi-Wan wraps his arms around Anakin’s back, crushes him close, sucks in desperate breaths from his hair. No pretense, never any pretense. It makes this all so much harder to run from or disguise, to have Anakin on top him, rutting into his lap, saying that word sex aloud and destroying any tenuous veneers of brotherfathermother Obi-Wan might have still been clinging to. He trembles to lie in the truth of what they're doing—what he's allowing Anakin to do, as if Anakin is the one who has the power. He knows it should be him—he is the Master, the adult. And yet, it is Anakin’s Force signature pinning him down, Anakin’s weight trapping his body. Anakin, Anakin, who is an unstoppable energy, who is inertia, who is the conservation of mass, who is the Force
“You’re only a boy,” he chokes out into Anakin’s cheek, even though he knows he is so much more. “I cannot, it would be—”
“Really good,” Anakin begs, mouth open, hot and wet along Obi-Wan’s throat. “It would be really really good, because I love you, and you said you love me, and this is what people do when they love each other. ”
Restraint, at this point, doesn't matter. Because Obi-Wan is lying here, slack and aching in his own bed as Anakin humps his hard cock through his pants. This is sex, as far as Obi-Wan is concerned. Anakin is shirtless and glorious on top of him, body flexing, hungry, desperate, taking. Taking what he wants. He is asking for permission, but he doesn’t actually care whether or not Obi-Wan gives it—he will do as he pleases, push until he possesses, because he knows Obi-Wan will eventually cede to him. It is not a question of if Obi-Wan gives up, it’s when.
Anakin mouths back up to Obi-Wan’s lips, kisses them sloppily, all the finesse he briefly acquired in his experiments gone in favor of wild, wanton licks. He just wants to taste, it seems. He’s greedy, aggressive, and Obi-Wan realizes with a dirty surge of horror that he could come like this—under the shifting, grinding weight and spit-messy kisses of a thirteen-year-old boy. Because that boy is Anakin Skywalker, and he does love him with a love beyond all reason. He rubs his hands up and down Anakin’s narrow thighs, lost in the rhythmic bunch of muscle under the fabric, but Anakin thinks he is trying to tug his pants off, so he sits up, delighted by the encouragement. “You want to see?” he asks tauntingly, volleying up to his knees just long enough to scramble from his leggings and underwear, which Obi-Wan notices with a jolt of arousal are wet to the point of translucency where they sling to Anakin’s cockhead. “Look.”
He touches himself confidently, and Obi-Wan’s gaze locks on the shift of foreskin under the proud, certain tilt of Anakin’s wrist, the slick revelation of pink on each downstroke. Anakin is beautiful—perfect in every way, unrepentantly decadent in how he sits astride Obi-Wan like a throne, thighs splayed obscenely, peachy and flexing. Obi-Wan stares, licks his mouth, comes apart. “My goodness,” he breathes. “Anakin.”
Anakin grins, pleased with himself. Then, he boldly lays his hand over Obi-Wan’s erection, palming him through his pants. “Can I see yours?” he asks, biting his lip.
Time freezes, shudders. If there was a line to cross, Obi-Wan leapt over it long ago, but still this transgression feels like something unspeakable. But of course, none of Obi-Wan’s resistance attempts thus far have worked, and Anakin has frayed him to the bone. All that's left is to crack, to give, to fall away and allow himself to be used as a vessel for the Force. So Obi-Wan sucks in a sharp breath, as if he is about to drop beneath the surface of very cold water, then he nods. Yes.
Anakin does not wait to take what he wants. Lets go of himself with trembling fingers before tucking them into Obi-Wan’s waistband and tugging it below the heft of his balls. Obi-Wan gasps as he is so crudely exposed, torn asunder, reduced to trembles by Anakin’s hungry gaze. “Wow,” Anakin murmurs thickly, brushing his knuckles with reverence down the pulsing vein on the underside. “You’re bigger than me…but not by that much.”
Obi-Wan chokes out an almost laugh—it’s all he can do. It’s immediately silenced by the sight of Anakin making a clear spit bubble form at his lips, then letting it drip down in slow motion onto Obi-Wan’s cock in a long string of drool. It is so lewd, so miraculous, so impossibly lovely. Obi-Wan watches, shivers as Anakin rubs the saliva into his skin, eyes wide, hyper-focused as he stares. “I’ve thought about this so many times,” he admits, his own cock twitching, dripping between his spread thighs. “At night, when you would lie next to me—I tried not to, but I thought about your cock, in your clothes. Wondered how big it was. How close to me it was. What it looked like, smelled like. I thought about touching it.”
The word cock is obscene on his young lips, and Obi-Wan’s gut drops to hear it. The weight of what Anakin is confessing catches up to him after a moment of idle, excruciatingly gentle touch: that all those nights spent curled up together, Anakin was dreaming of this. Crossing that line already, at least in his mind. It should perhaps make Obi-Wan feel less guilty about what is happening between them, but it does not. It coils up hot and true with all the other hot-truths inside him. That Anakin is too young, too beautiful, too powerful. That he is destined to give, Anakin to take. That there is nothing he could ever hope to do to stop inertia, the conservation of mass, the Force. “I hope it lives up to expectation,” he chokes out, voice sounding absurdly proper and mortifyingly thin for such a base, dirty thing.
Anakin sucks in a shaky breath, and he does not make it sound base, or dirty, at all. “It’s perfect, better than I even imagined,” he whispers, stroking it, making Obi-Wan sputter with an involuntary gasp. “It’s so—you have so much more loose skin than me,” he observes, shifting Obi-Wan’s foreskin up and down the shaft experimentally. “When I’m all the way hard like this, it sort of—there isn’t so much extra slack,” he explains, touching his own cock to demonstrate. He’s right, the crown still remains exposed, pretty and red, no matter how far down the tip he gathers his foreskin. “But you—,” he slides it down, and it eclipses Obi-Wan’s whole glans, so nothing remains visible. “It makes this little pocket.” Anakin licks his finger, pushes it inside, rubs the very tip of Obi-Wan’s cock there in secret, the vacancy flooded and sticky wet. “I could lick inside.”
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, sharp like stop, stop talking, please, I’ll come right here. He pants, breaths frantic as Anakin touches him, motions very carefully, very discreet, inside Obi-Wan in this place he never even conceived anyone could ever be inside. It’s maddening, and heavenly, and Anakin must think so, too, because he lets out a high, sharp sound and inches forward, ruts his bare cock against Obi-Wan’s in small, nudging motions. “I could fuck inside.”
Cock is one thing, fuck is another. Obi-Wan is scandalized, at the same time he is on fire. “Where did you learn that word?!” he spits out, knowing how absurd it must sound for him to be chiding Anakin for language when he's letting him finger the pocket of his foreskin, stroke the slick slit of his cock in this dirty hole as it leaks precum. Anakin ignores him, expression becoming sharp and singular as he hones in. “I want to touch—want to put mine inside—,” he murmurs, almost to himself. Then he takes both their cocks in hand, dragging them together, humping and grinding and twisting in determination. He’s sweaty-dewy and beautiful, and Obi-Wan can hardly think, it all feels so good—skin, slickness, Anakin, Anakin.
Resolutely, Anakin lets go, then he rolls onto his side and drags Obi-Wan with him, clawing at his hip so that they are facing one another, and he can align his cock with Obi-Wan’s, the tips touching. “Like this,” he explains, tongue pressed into the corner of his mouth, brow furrowed with focus. It’s the same expression he gets when he’s wrist-deep on the severed wires of a droid’s verbobrain, fusing things together, sparks flying. And Obi-Wan adores him, cannot get enough of that sheer brilliance—the way Anakin sees something, wants something, calibrates the universe to make it happen, no matter how impossible it might seem.
He holds his cock in one hand, Obi-Wan’s in the other, tugging the foreskin down to create that little pocket around the tip, only this time, he is right there, so the fold slides over him, too. He whimpers, squirms, hips working as he rocks gently forward in clumsy thrusts, their cockheads kissing together wetly inside that secret pocket. Obi-Wan marvels—they fit together. Anakin can fuck inside him, they can share this strange, nameless space, and it feels wonderful. Slippery and hot and dirty and magical. “Anakin,” he pants, staring down at this place they’re joined, at Anakin’s cock partially disappearing inside his own foreskin with every jerky downstroke. “Oh—Anakin, come there, please, come inside of me,” he chokes out, appalled at himself the minute it leaves his mouth but powerless to stop his crashing, yearning desire for it—he wants the spill, the stickiness, to see the white bubble out and drip down his own shaft. He wants to be painted, he wants—
Obi-Wan ends up coming first, locking up and finishing with a glorious unfettered spasm, mouth open, drooling, beside himself. He cries as he does it, gripping Anakin’s shoulders so tight that his fingers leave bloodless marks when he lets go, and he can see delicate half-moons from his nails above those pale indents streaking as he blinks back tears.
“Wizard,” Anakin says as he stares down between their bodies, at the mess Obi-Wan made all over him, clinging to tan skin in pearlescent ropes like shell glinting amid a strip of copper beach. He drags a finger through it. “You make so much,” he says with awe, before bringing that finger to his mouth, sucking it off.
Obi-Wan can’t watch. He shuts his eyes, a wave of shame that manifests as sickness washing over him in a sudden deafening wave. The reality of what he’s just done hits him, full force. The tattered wrapping paper in the bed. Anakin naked and sweat shining. The shudder of his own breath. The mattress bowing under Anakin’s weight as he clambers down, arranges the gangly mess of his body so that he is face level with Obi-Wan’s still twitching cock.
Then he puts it in his mouth, sucking on the foreskin hungrily as he reaches between his own narrow thighs to bring himself off—it all happens too fast, too sudden for Obi-Wan to stop it in his delirious, shame-drunk state. Anakin sucking and moaning before that moan tapers off into a sharp, terminal ah! Then there is come on the sheets, his body shimmering in its sheen of sweat as he shudders once, twice, and then goes limp. No, no, no, Obi-Wan thinks in time with his heartbeat, his thundering blood.
Yes, yes, yes, Anakin thinks back in time with his own sharp, nervy sucks. He stays there, nursing Obi-Wan’s spent cock for a long time, mouth the most wonderfully soft thing, gentle and sea-wet. Obi-Wan cannot move, cannot wrench up from the pressure of the Force, so he dissolves one last time, tears crusting into salt on his lashes as he reaches down and strokes Anakin’s hair. “Happy birthday, darling,” he says eventually, because of course, that is what brought him here. Wanting to be a good mentor—it seems laughable, now. Clearly, what he really wanted was to sate the touch-starved thirteen-year-old he once was, give him some boyish, experimental sleepover with the exact sort of peer he got flushed and needy around all those years ago. Confident, handsome boys who took what they wanted without pretense, without apology. I’ll do whatever you want, Obi-Wan would have told those boys, back when he dreamed of being loved, even in an Order that forbade love. I can touch you. You don’t have to touch me back.
Anakin, however, won’t stop touching him—he keeps roving his sticky, demanding hands over Obi-Wan’s thighs, up to his torso, where he pushes under his tunic to make greedy fistfuls in skin. “It was the best birthday ever,” he says when he finally pulls off, lips dark, wet, puffy, smiling. He sounds so sincere, it rips Obi-Wan apart. Brotherfathermother—he is none of these things, he is just another boy, stunted and scared and lonely. Except he is not—he’s a failed mentor, weak and manipulable and in love in an Order that forbids love. “I love you,” Anakin says very sincerely, tilting his head up and resting his wet chin on the point of Obi-Wan’s hipbone.
“I love you,” he says back, because it is true, even if every word stings in his throat.
Anakin frowns. “You look sad about it.”
“I am sad about it,” he admits, combing fingers through Anakin’s sweaty hair as he squirms up, into Obi-Wan’s arms. “Or, worried—for many reasons. I shouldn’t have to name them all, I’m sure you can guess them.”
“The Code is one,” Anakin mumbles. “But those are just rules—we break rules all the time.”
“You break rules all the time.”
Anakin grins, reaches up, cups Obi-Wan’s face, and kisses him fiercely, as if he is proving a point. “Now you do, too,” he says as he pulls away.
Obi-Wan smiles back, but he knows it is feeble, and so Anakin sighs a great sigh and flops back onto the bed in an exasperated flourish. “You know how I was supposed to spend today meditating about my best and worst memories?” he asks, referring to the other integral ritual of an apprentice’s thirteenth birthday. Obi-wan nods, urging him on. “Well. You know what all my good memories were?”
“What?” Obi-Wan asks, tucking himself back into his pants, hands still ever so slightly in tremor.
“They were all attachments. My mom holding me back on Tatooine when I was sick or couldn’t sleep. Making friends, here, finally. And most of all—you. You touching my hair, lying with me like this at night. You. Maybe, maybe loving me back the way I loved you.”
Obi-Wan blinks at him, and remembers—this is exactly what he wanted, when he was this age, too. To be loved, touched, trusted, wanted, chosen. He nods. “And your unpleasant memories?” he asks, because he must know he factors into the pain, too.
Anakin shrugs, settles closer. “Being taken away from my mom—leaving her behind. Getting in trouble with the Council all the time. Thinking they were gonna kick me out, away from you. And you—you not touching me. Back when you would pretend you didn’t care.”
“I see,” Obi-Wan murmurs, reaching out, laying his fingers on Anakin’s wrist, gently kneading into the pulse before bringing it to his lips, and kissing the paper-thin skin there. “So,” he says, mouth ghosting over the thrum of blood in veins. “You are coaxing me to grant you further fond memories, is that it?”
“Yes,” Anakin says, rolling Obi-Wan onto his back again, climbing on top of him, bending down to seal the contract with a kiss. It seems final—but Obi-Wan tests for resistance in the Force all the same. It does not guide him, though, it does not steer him astray. It sits on his chest, it touches his hair, it kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him, with all the clumsiness of a thirteen-year-old boy.
Lost, Obi-Wan kisses back.