darkforcerising | OPEN POST

He couldn't decide if he loved that soft touch or if it itched. He reached up and brushed his fingers over Anakin's arm, and-

"Can I use them to get out of this conversation?" he asked, dryly.

He grabbed Obi-Wan's fingers and brought them to his mouth.

"No," he said, and pressed a kiss to Obi-Wan's fingers. "Because we are having a discussion about consent and comfort levels with what we do in sex." Another kiss. "And if you don't want to engage in that kind of conversation, then the only alternative is to not have sex."

That is reasonable. That is fair. That is completely logical and sensible. He still takes a moment in deciding whether he's willing to engage that deeply with a conversation about something he hasn't worked out in his own head, yet.

In the end, it's more that it's Anakin that it's sex that makes him sigh and say, "All right. We should try it again and we should have safe-words. Is that where we left off?"

Anakin waited for Obi-Wan to catch up, and then said, “Yes that is. What safe-words would work best for you?”

"...Is there a particular reason you foresee 'slow down' and 'stop' being words we use without meaning?" Because he wasn't sure he did in which case they might be the easiest.

"Yes," but tried not to sound like like he was scolding or condescending. Obi-Wan was new to this. "For example. The differences between 'Don't,' pause. 'Stop,' a command to stop doing something, and 'Don't stop,' a command to not stop doing something, is tonal and speed. Both things that go out the window when you're in the middle of sex. The idea is that the word is so incongruous with what you're doing that it takes everyone out of the moment to quickly stop and reassess everyone's needs."

He was tempted to believe if he heard 'don't' or 'stop' from Anakin he was going to stop anyway, but he was willing to entertain the notion that if something else was in place it wouldn't be as likely.

"Then tell me what works for you."

...Why would he need a safeword?

Anakin thought about a moment, and then he smiled mischievously. "Sand. Sand is my safe-word." Because there's absolutely no way he would ever ask for sand to be introduced into their sexual activity, and if sand was involved, he'd be crying about sand anyways. He couldn't see how this would go wrong.

He grimaces but also laughs. "Good choice." No, there was no potential way for that to in any way become relevant to sex for him, or to be a thing he'd be willing to do even if it was asked for. Not that he could imagine a scenario where Anakin would ask. That made it fairly ideal.

"Now you pick one," he said as he draped himself over Obi-Wan's body. "But you can take your time."

He hummed.

"Is there anything you want talk about specifically?"

He put a hand on the back of Anakin's neck and stroked his thumb along his throat just a little.

Then laughs. "I didn't want to talk about anything generally. I'm fine, Anakin. I'll come up with something. Maybe Maul." That carries levels of unpleasant connotations.

He'd never use it.

Or so he thought for now, anyway.

"No!" Anakin pushed himself back up to look Obi-Wan square in the face. "You will not bring Sith Lords or Sith adjacents into our sex life. I don't support that at all."

He stared pretty hard and narrowly avoided actually flinching at Anakin - not from fear or anything of the sort but just because he was already on edge.

"Okay. Glass."

Anakin took a deep breath to calm down and reassess. He pushed himself up to kneel and sit back on his ankles. He took Obi-Wan's hands.

"Obi-Wan, you're not saying something." Like they could be as enmeshed together in the Force and Anakin not catch something was going on. "Or something is bothering you."

He kissed those hands, because he loved those hands, and the rest of the man that was attached to those hands.

"But I can also tell you don't want to talk about it... Maybe you need some time. So... I'll be here when you figure it out, okay?"

"I'm not-" he began and then stopped, curling his fingers around Anakin's hands and sitting up just a little. "I'm not not saying anything," he said, quietly.

He was fumbling to explain but he wanted to explain.

"It isn't even that I don't want to talk about it, exactly, it's that I'm uncomfortable and I don't quite know why or how to articulate what I'm feeling. I certainly don't know what to do about it. It isn't because you've done anything wrong or that I'm unhappy with you or what we've done, though."

It is, the thing he can't articulate, his growing discomfort with who he is becoming and then this feeling like... an extension of that rather than an extension of himself. It is just an extension of himself, but it's... all tangled up and confused.

Anakin wasn't trying to hide his feelings for Obi-Wan, he just wasn't naming them because he was sure if he came right out and said it, it would scare him too much.

"Why are you uncomfortable around me? We get naked together all the time. I like putting your dick in my mouth and other places in my body. You throw me to the ground when we spar. I've cried in front of you when I've been happy and when I've been sad. I've told you secrets about the stuff in my head I've never told anyone else... So, why are you uncomfortable around me?"

He let go of one of Anakin's hands and lifted his own to curl around Anakin's jaw.

"Anakin, stop," he said, very softly and gently. "I am not uncomfortable with you." There was no effort to hide anything on Obi-Wan's end, either - the love was there, even if he hadn't even named it to himself, or recognized it. "I am uncomfortable with me. It isn't something you're doing or have done, or aren't doing or haven't done. I just have no... framework, anymore."

Okay, that was something Anakin could work with, it was a place to start. "Framework for what?"

He looked, and was, a little bewildered by the question. He wants to say 'everything', and that feels true, but taking it down even one more level: "Me." Identity.

He doesn't... need Anakin to fix it. He just wants Anakin to understand it. If he can understand it himself, it will be a bonus.

Did he understand what it felt like to have the rules of his life turn upside down, inside out, rendered meaningless, and torn apart due to internal or external forces? He'd gone from slavery to living with the Jedi, to being Palpatine's apprentice, to dying, growing up an average person on another planet to then getting all his memories again. So yes, he understood.

Anakin shifted to lay back down and tuck himself back in next to Obi-Wan.

"Back in the Jedi, I tried so hard to understand the rules-" he held up his hand to forestall any sass from Obi-Wan. "I used to think that if I just understood what you all wanted from me, I could get it right. A slave lived and died by predicting what their master wanted from them. It was so frustrating every time I thought I figured out the Jedi, there was either something I missed or the rules changed. I was so focused on those rules, I never developed an internal morality I could live by."

He knew that Anakin understood. It was part of his own resistance to admitting - or fully realizing - that it was any part of his problem, here. It felt wrong. This was not that.

It wasn't a contest, but if it was? Anakin won, by virtue of having far, far more upheaval. Also general trauma.

It did not make him like himself more.

Nor did having Anakin spell that out for him, though it was a quiet kind of thing. Sadness rather than discomfort or distress.

He settled down when Anakin did, and stroked his hair.

"I think I understood them too well. I could never figure out how to explain anything." He is... not going to lose that line between Anakin here, and his student who became Vader right now. He really can't afford to.

Anakin wasn't trying to make this a competition, he just wanted Obi-Wan to know he understood. And he also understood how to get it right.

"It's easier when you learn the rules from infancy. But you can figure it out again, now."

"If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be here."

Here being naked in bed with Anakin. Here being trying to fight the empire with knowledge from Vader and tactics no Jedi would allow themselves near.

Mostly here wouldn't be as simple as lying there stroking Anakin's hair.

"I just don't want you to... suffer because I'm fumbling around."

Anakin inwardly groaned over how much he loved this man. If thi was suffering...

"Obi-Wan, I am fine. I'm not suffering because of you or because of anything. I promise."

Look, when you love someone and don't quite recognize it or know what to do with it and you're having some kind of identity crisis to wade through, that love might express strangely.

He shook his head slightly, though didn't explain if it was at himself or at Anakin. Then just leaned in and kissed him because maybe that expression of the unnamed scary thing was better.

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