darkforcerising | OPEN POST

"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.

Anakin indulged the kiss for a time, they didn't need to talk... and honestly, he really enjoyed kissing Obi-Wan.

But there was something he wanted to ask. He'd thought about it a bit ago, but then there was the walk, and the sex, and the talk...

He pulled back.

"If we're going to be here for a short break, I want to see Luke again."

"Yes. And may I say I appreciate the lack of needing to send you off on a wild goose chase this time?"

He wasn't sure how often Owen was going to go for this, at all, though. "You know you could... pretend to be Anakin."

"I... am Anakin," he pointed out. "What are we going to tell Owen? That I didn't die? The Empire says I died... It's better for the galaxy if I stay dead."

"You are Anakin, but you also aren't."

He is too damn tired to untangle this now. Way too tired. He has untangled enough for now, thanks.

"Tell him whatever you want. I just think it might be easier to get him to hand over Luke more often if you're doing the requesting. I'll do it this time, though and keep trying as long as you want me to."

Anakin felt that weariness and backed off. Maybe one day he'd tell Obi-Wan why it was better the galaxy never discovered the connection between him and his children, why it was better for them. Or why it didn't satisfying him to think of him not as Anakin - he was 'Anakin' and had all the same desires 'Anakin' had to be a father to his children and it ate at him that he couldn't be. It made him sad to tampen that down but it had been a night already. Some other night.

"Just go get him tomorrow," he said with a kiss and a smile before settling back down.

The Anakin/not-Anakin thing was so complicated for him and he just really, really did not have the energy to untangle that now. There was too much else going on and he was so incredibly grateful to Anakin for letting it go for now.

"I will," he said, easily. "Ideally before it gets hot."

It was the next day.

Anakin held Luke in his lap, before them on the table was a spread of tools and the parts to the humidifier.

Anakin was picking up tools and naming them to Luke and then letting him try to hold it. Most of the tools were too heavy for Luke to hold on his own so Anakin never let go. But he let Luke manipulate the tools as much as he wanted.

Obi-Wan came into the kitchen and Anakin was reminded of why he’d asked Obi-Wan to go get Luke in the first place (well, one of the reasons – Anakin very much wanted to see Luke, too.)

“Obi-Wan,” he said, “I need to grab something from the ship, can you hold Luke while I go get it?”

Obi-Wan needed someone as bright and innocent as Luke in his life right at this moment. To remind him of the good in the universe they were fighting for. Anakin's plan was to get Obi-Wan to hold Luke as much as possible while they had him.

“I’ve taken the power packs out of the tools that have them so he can’t hurt himself.”

Edited 2020-02-18 02:29 (UTC)

He reached out and picked Luke up without hesitation or awkwardness and settled him on one hip. Though he did feel compelled to say, "You know I do have legs and eyes. I could go get what you need for you."

As far as he was concerned, Luke was here for Anakin. Anakin was (or had been?) Luke's father. He was just... there.

"Yes," he said standing up. "But then it would be a long explanation and you might grab the wrong thing and this way, if I go I can find it faster. Just keep teaching him the things he needs to know."

He paused, looking over Obi-Wan holding Luke, and he smiled. Obi-Wan wasn't just 'there,' Anakin intended Obi-Wan to be as much a part of Luke's life as he wanted to be himself.

"You're cute when you're holding him," he said, leaning in for a kiss, and then he was slipping out the front door.

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