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“Ahh the great Jedi knight, Ahnakeen Skywahlker,” the Leroulian ambassador gasped at him and reached for his mechno hand to shake vigorously.
Anakin forced a cheerful smile and tried not to grimace at the feel of his prosthesis being yanked up and down in a too frantic handshake vigorous enough to clack his teeth together.
“Honored to be here, ambassador,” he answered dutifully, ever mindful of how Obi-Wan would act in these political negotiations, how much better suited his master was for a mission like this.
The Leroulian ambassador, with violet ears perked up like a loth cat, peered over his shoulder expectantly. “And where is the Master Kenobi, surely, he is here too?”
Anakin blinked and tried not to feel slighted even though he wanted Obi-Wan here more than any ambassador in the whole damn galaxy. “I’m afraid not senator, he is tied up with…ahh…other negotiations in the outer rim.”
Maybe negotiations could mean drop kicking Seppie droids’ heads off their necks on Felucia, from a certain point of view.
“Ahh but I did not realize the Open Circle pair went anywhere without the other half!” The ambassador said, all earnest wide eyes and perked up ears.
“Ahh,” he said, a little unsure now. “I’m afraid not, ambassador. I am sorry to say it will only be myself to assist you.”
“Not at all! Not at all!” The ambassador exclaimed. “I mean no offense, I merely expected one always with the other!”
One always with the other?
Anakin reached for a jogan fruit, ducking under the low hanging of the stall’s draped roof. A hurried whisper and skuttle in the force caught in his peripheral and he paused, glancing aside to catch sight of two youngling girls staring at him with bugged out eyes.
“Hullo,” he ventured, amusement tugging at his mouth despite his attempt at Obi-Wan’s serine, Jedi façade.
“Hullo,” the smaller one echoed, eyes ridiculously round. “You’re the Jedi Knight, Anakin Skywalker, aren’t you?”
“That’s me.”
It might have surprised him anywhere else, being recognized by children too young to really know politics or war heroes, but on Coruscant, even in the lower markets, the younglings knew the clothes of the Jedi. Since the Battle of Coruscant he found himself being gaped at in wonder by many children. Padmé, when they still spoke and spent what little stolen moments they could together, told him the reality of how Coruscanti children viewed he and his master. Two twin starfighters sent to save them all.
Nearly all, they could not save the Chancellor, but Coruscant at least still stood free of Separatist invasion.
“Is Master Obi-Wan Kenobi not with you?” The little girl asked, curious eyes searching behind him for the phantom figure of his master.
He cocked his head and fought a smile. “Afraid not, little one. He’s far from here fighting Separatists right now.”
She frowned. “But I thought you always fought side by side.” Her voice pitched high and upset. “You never go anywhere without each other!”
This again? He crossed his arms against his chest and quirked an eyebrow. “We can’t fight every battle together, little one, we lead separate legions. Most of the time we’re on opposite ends of the galaxy.”
Her expression slanted wholly horrified and she grabbed the arm of her equally horrified companion. “You can’t break the open circle!” She wailed through the market, loud enough draw glances from the crowd worming around them.
What in the Sith’s hells?
Stars above. Anakin raked sweat laden curls from his forehead and heaved a shuddering sigh. It never felt right to lose men this late into the war. It came less and less now, fewer casualties and fewer battles lost, but the losses came all the same. Ever since the Battle of Coruscant the tides of war had changed. The Separatists were losing, one small increment of the galaxy at a time, but they were hard one increments, paid for with his men’s blood.
The HoloNet liked to act as if the war already won, but men still died, innocent people still suffered. And selfishly he felt, he stood alone in a war he had paid dearly for too. He had lost his padawan, his wife, the Chancellor, his men, and in many ways his master too.
He gazed out the viewport of the Resolute at the stars smearing by at lightspeed and sighed against the transparisteel. Another battle won, more men dead, another month alone.
The force prickled at the back of his mind, a whisper that precluded Captain Rex walking around the ship’s corner with Fives and Kix in tow. Rex held a datapad between the three of them as they walked, all talking over each other and jostling Rex in the ribs to look at the pad better. The moment Rex glanced up and caught sight of Anakin his expression froze, and he clicked off the datapad at lightning speed to salute stiffly.
“General,” Rex said, eyes round. Fives looked as if they were being court martialed or held at blaster point while Rex tried to surreptitiously tuck the datapad behind his back.
“Rex,” he said slowly, “what’s on the pad?”
“Just a bit of gossip, general,” Kix answered smartly, the only one of the three who didn’t look ready to puke in his blacks.
“Uhuh,” he said, holding direct eye contact with Rex who looked ready to break into a sweat at any given moment. “What’s the gossip, Rex?”
Fives muttered, “for fuck’s sakes, captn’ just give him the kriffin’ pad.”
“It’s really not important, general!” Rex said, panic edging his voice a little squeaky.
Anakin raised both of his eyebrows and crossed his arms against his surcoat that still smelled of ion and blaster fire. Kix sighed and yanked the datapad from Rex’s hands and held it out with a martyred expression.
“We’re very sorry, general,” he said, all contriteness in his grimace. “It wasn’t any of our business.”
“What wasn’t your business?” He asked idly, clicking on the datapad to a Channel One HoloNet article.
TWO IS ENOUGH, its headline read, KENOBI AND SKYWALKER
A video clip played on a loop beneath the headline from the Siege of Mandalore. He hadn’t even noticed the film drones at the time, he often didn’t during the heat of battle with the force screaming in his veins. The clip looped over and over of he and Obi-Wan on that bridge, charging through the smoke with their sabers lit blue and brilliant against the smog. At the time he remembered the exhaustion and desperation, but in the footage all he saw was their synchronous movements and the twin looks of hardened steel across their faces.
Kenobi and Skywalker has become a single word. Though this is the end of the age of heroes, it has saved its best for last. Since the start of the war HoloNet features of this twin Jedi pair and their operations against the Separatist enemy have made them the most famous Jedi in the galaxy. Across the Republic in words or pheromones, magnetic pulses, tentacle-braids, or telepathy, the message is always the same when the Open Circle fleet comes. Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.
But who are these Jedi who protect the Republic, and who are Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker outside of the glories of battle and the twin blazes of starfighters over the orbital mirrors of Coruscant? Kenobi would rather talk than fight, but when there is fighting to be done, few can match him. Skywalker is the master of audacity; his intensity, boldness, and sheer jaw-dropping luck are the perfect compliment to Kenobi’s deliberate, balanced steadiness. Together, they are Jedi hammer that has crushed Separatist infestations on scores of worlds.
This is Obi-Wan Kenobi. A phenomenal pilot who doesn’t like to fly. A devastating warrior who’d rather not fight. A negotiator without peer who reportedly prefers the quiet and meditation. Jedi Master. General in the Grand Army of the Republic. Member of the Jedi Council. This is Anakin Skywalker. The most powerful Jedi of his generation. Perhaps of any generation, or wo we are told. The fastest. The strongest. An unbeatable pilot. An unstoppable warrior. On the ground, in the air or sea or space, there is no one even close. He has not just power, not just skill, but dash: that rare, invaluable combination of boldness and grace. He is the best there is at what he does. The best there has ever been. And he knows it.
The great Negotiator and the Hero With No Fear, they make a mighty, inseparable pair. Interviews or any firsthand knowledge of the two come rare and exclusive and when the HoloNet does garner access, both men always answer the same when asked about the other half of the Open Circle, that he is proud to be the other’s best friend.
But are these two mighty pillars of the Republic only friends? Years of galactic HoloNet footage, years of witnesses, and years of military analysists all answer the same, that these two men are insuperable, never parted from the other. Wherever Kenobi goes, Skywalker follows, whenever Skywalker flings himself into the throng Kenobi is by his side. The Open Circle always fly, fight, and live side by side, no matter the corner of the galaxy.
“Anakin loves him dearly,” Senator Amidala of Naboo, a close friend of both men, is reported to have stated. “He would throw himself to the ends of the known universe to stay by his side. And perhaps the great Master Kenobi would not admit it, but he feels much the same I think. You will never have one without the other.” But is it just friendship, merely the tender love of brothers in arms?
Skywalker is reported to often grow incensed on the battlefield when Kenobi is in danger [embedded Net footage: Clip 361Skywalker levels battlefield to protect unconscious Kenobi] and while the older and more subdued Kenobi is less reactive, even the great Jedi Master is reported to dote on his former apprentice. [embedded Net footage: Clip 242 Kenobi grasping the back of Skywalker’s neck at intergalactic dinner :both men smiling wide and blushing:]
Is it intergalactic romance that drives our heroes? Is it the forbidden and passionate love of these Jedi comrades that fuels their devotion and renown on the battlefield? Is it—
Anakin clicked off the pad and thought he might pass out right there in the halls of the Resolute. He handed the datapad back to Rex, who looked paler than his armor.
“Is this the first one?” He croaked, prickling with cold sweat.
“Sir?” All three men parroted back at him; eyes wide like a Tooka caught in a speeder’s lights.
“Is that the first article like that? I’ve been getting odd questions for months now when I’m spotted without Obi-Wan, how long has the Net been posting articles like this?”
“Weellllll…” Fives said, “it’s not just articles…general..sir. It’s HoloNet battle footage and security footage too.”
“But there’s more,” he forced past the feeling of a vice around his throat. “This isn’t the first article?”
“No general,” Rex answered stiffly, at full attention now, “just the first time it’s been the number one intergalactic headline.”
“Oh Sith’s hells,” he bolted for his quarters.
In the privacy of his own bunk, he allowed himself a few minutes to hyperventilate and pinwheel horror and fear and bewildered loss into the force with abandon. He braced both hands, one flesh and one gloved, against the durasteel wall and took ragged, whistling gasps of air that didn’t calm the panic thrumming through his very atoms.
What was the temple going to say? The Council? Force be damned what was Obi-Wan going to say to him? What had Padmé been thinking, talking to a reporter like that? He thought they parted, not on wonderful terms, not even well, but he never thought she would shove a knife in his back like this.
“I’m sorry, Ani,” she had said, expression anguished and with tears escaping down her cheeks. “But you know we made the wrong decision—we were so young. I cannot keep asking you to choose between the Jedi and me. And I cannot choose between the Senate and you. And besides—I do not think—well I think there is someone else you would have chosen if you were allowed, and I cannot live with being your second choice.”
He had fought her, viciously, cruelly even. But she was the first to realize, the first to point it out to his face. He loved him—loved Obi-Wan. Selfishly and wholly, not as a master, or a brother, or a friend, though he was all of those things to him. He loved him as his other half; the broken, shattered parts that filled the cracks of his soul.
Kintsugi, they called it, mending the breakage with gold. He was stronger for it, for his love, no matter how selfish it was.
And now the entire fucking galaxy knew.
He moaned into his hands and wrangled back the want to take his saber blade to something. The war had burned joy and peace and easy laughter out of him. It had burned out parts of his humanity too, his hope. And yet Obi-Wan always tried to spark any joy or peace possible in him, in something small as a smile. They liked to play pretend that the war hadn’t changed everything, most of all them.
But the war had changed everything. And now the godsdamned HoloNet was going to finish the job.
The articles didn’t stop, or the news coverage, or the questions across the entire galaxy on every planet between. He at least understood them now. Where is Obi-Wan? Why are you alone? Where is the other half of you?
At night in his bunk between cleanup missions and battles, he flipped through news page after news page, backlogged for months. Are Kenobi and Skywalker in love? Are they soulmates? Questions abounded of torrid romance and stolen moments, of affairs and battlefield kisses, of threats to leave the order after the war. HoloNet battle footage speculated over their synchroneity and ability to move and weave as one. Friends could not know one another so well they said, brothers did not love so ardently and so openly, not even Jedi.
Look at the way Skywalker gazes at him, the articles said. Can you believe how soft eyed and pretty Knight Skywalker goes when he looks at Kenobi? Asked the message boards and Jedi forums, filled not with fringe enthusiasts but billions of Republic citizens. Stars but their devotion, Net reporters said to cam, stars but their obvious adoration. Look how Skywalker worships him, look at how unJedi, how attached, how kriffing besotted.
A month later he marched into the primary hangar of the temple, battle worn and exhausted from an entire legionary campaign to sweep Separatist unification from the mid rim. Since the Battle of Coruscant, campaigns had stretched longer and longer. This far into the war the temple felt the loss of so many comrades, and the Grand Army of the Republic felt the loss of its generals. They limped on, but the war crawled from such intense losses on both sides.
He had not stepped foot in the temple in months, certainly not since the rumored news articles began to spread on the HoloNet. He dreaded reporting to the Council, but he dreaded seeing Obi-Wan most of all. His master had been entrenched in the outer rim on planetside sieges the entire duration of his campaign, cut off from outside contact, and most importantly cut off from the HoloNet. But the day of reckoning loomed closer.
The Council though, as it happened, did not wish to discuss the rampant HoloNet tabloids and vivacious rumors spreading across the galaxy over their two most well-known Jedi Knights.
“I know you have just returned to Coruscant, Skywalker,” said Master Windu, exhaustion set deep and bruised purple beneath his eyes. “But the Senate has ordered for your deployment along with the 212th legion to Kashyyyk to aid the clone divisions already stationed with the native Wookiees. The Separatists have thrown the full might of their army at the planet in hopes of claiming the hyperspace junctions.”
“Is Master Kenobi not still entrenched in the Outer Rim?” He asked, equally exhausted. In these past months, in what they all hoped to be the final stretch of the war, he had lost his bite with the council. Many of the seats sat empty now, devoid of their masters permanently, and with so few of the Order left, no one held time nor the spiritual strength to anything more than finish what they must.
Old wounds still ached, tender and festering if he looked too hard. He had forgiven no one for Obi-Wan’s faked death, nor for Ahsoka leaving. But he was an expert at ignoring festering wounds, many ran deep and gouging, and if he could shut away thoughts of his mother and Tatooine, he could certainly push aside his fury with the council in the face of galactic military victory.
“Master Kenobi, victory on Felucia, he saw. Arriving soon at the temple, he is.”
“We hope,” Master Windu sighed, aching faintly of weariness in the force, “that this may be the last campaign you both will see. With Felucia and Mandalore won, Kashyyyk is the last Separatist foothold in the outer rim.”
“We will see it done,” he answered with a resoluteness he did not feel.
Obi-Wan reeled him in by the shoulder for a grappling, tight hug on the bridge of the Negotiator. He wanted to fight it, to fight the way his chest tugged and ached to be yanked in and gripped tight. But wrapping his arms over Obi-Wan’s shoulders to hoist him into a too tight, too fierce hug, was really the easiest thing in the galaxy.
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said when they pulled away, looking weary to his marrow and thinner than Anakin remembered. “It is so good to see you, my friend.”
“And you, master. One last campaign for the Open Circle ehh? Something to really give the HoloNet to talk about.”
He immediately wished to shove his entire well-worn boot into his too big mouth. Something to really give the HoloNet to talk about??? Fucking hell Skywalker if he hadn’t heard about the articles before he was sure going to ask now, wasn’t he?
But Obi-Wan merely laughed, wide mouthed and bright enough to crinkle his eyes at the corners. Even exhausted they still sparkled playful and blue. Never mind he was graying at the temples and looked a decade older. Sometimes he still looked like the same man with a braid on Tatooine.
“Since when have you kept up with the HoloNet?”
“Since everyone in the whole Republic won’t shut up about us,” he croaked, feeling caught and strung thin and wishing he could throw himself out an air lock.
“Ahh,” Obi-Wan grinned even harder, wide enough to bare all his teeth in that alarming way he did sometimes when something truly amused him. “Have your men been gossiping as well? I’m afraid it’s all the 212th have been able to talk about, I fear an entire planet’s currency might be wagered in one way or another.”
“They’re betting on us?”
“Don’t look so affronted, padawan of mine, you’ll give an old man a complex.”
Obi-Wan’s grin slanted crooked and charming, and Anakin realized, with a full body flush of flustered horror, that it was the one he used to flirt with. Thousands of articles, of interviews, thousands of hours of cam footage, millions of comments, they all flashed before his eyes echoing what he had read again and again for months. Gods you can see it in his eyes that he loves Kenobi. Look at Skywalker’s eyes when he smiles at him, stars look at the open affection, the adoration on his face.
“Stop it,” Anakin snapped at him, ears burning bright red.
“But Anakin, I am the ultimate Jedi, is that not what the articles credit you to say?”
Pure mortification bubbled up his throat and bloomed hot and blotchy across his skin. He cast his eyes to his own boots and blinked at them, unable to look his master in the eye. He had said that, and much more, when that stupid reporter had caught him tipsy and loose tongued outside of a lower-level bar after the Battle of Coruscant.
What he really said, on live holo even, was, “Obi-Wan’s learned to relax. He smiles now, and sometimes even jokes, and has become known for his wisdom and gentle—gentle humor. Being named to the Council came as a complete surprise; even now he gets astonished by the faith the Council has in him, and the credit they give him—which is ridiculous.
Greatness was never his ambition, he simply wants to perform whatever task he is given to the best of his ability, to a fault. He’s respected in the order for his insight and his skill—as a warrior. He’s become the hero of the new generation of padawans, not me, he’s the Jedi their masters hold up as a model. He’s who the council assigns to the most important missions, he’s modest you see—and centered—and always kind. He’s the ultimate Jedi.”
He wanted to throw himself down a trash chute the next day when he saw the interview trending, this was much worse. He never knew Obi-Wan saw the stupid interview.
Obi-Wan sensed his boiling horror and his smile softened to something quieter and more intimate as he tugged at their bond, worn thin and frayed from mutual grief and trauma.
“It is really so good to see you, Anakin.”
His shoulders sagged and he answered with his own soft smile, despite the way it always made him feel gutted open and put on display now. “And you, master.”
Three rotations later saw them under the worst droid led assault either of them had seen in the entire four years of the war. The Separatists had deeply entrenched on Kashyyyk and while the skeletal deployed divisions and the mighty Wookiee warriors put up an incredible fight, the entire force of the standing Separatist army was a difficult thing to face.
“Our most difficult predicament is the fighter docking stations and ion cannon turrets they have built into the wroshyr trees,” Obi-Wan said, leaning over the holo terrain map spread between them. Rex and Commander Cody, along with several officers and Wookiee commanders, all watched with arms crossed and sharp eyes.
“We cannot destroy the trees and we now lack the ammunition for an aerial assault on the stations and locked turrets, so Anakin is going to lead an expeditionary force with a platoon of our Wookiee friends through the local tunnels built into,” he tapped a marked woshyr closed to him, “tree Alpha.”
Commander Cody shifted, his mouth pressed thin and tight. “General, are those tunnels not blocked with assault shields, it will take days for General Skywalker to break through the tunnel blocks and reach the canopy.”
Obi-Wan stroked his beard and then tapped the holoscreen, flitting through pages of schematics and tech blueprints outlined by Anakin and several legionary technicians. “The assault shields being used in Alpha tree’s tunnels are drawing power from mobile power cells implanted into the tree’s root system. Captain Nyrkar is confident those power cells can be easily demolished by his company, with the aid of a few of our men.”
Anakin watched the tactical meeting unfold with half his attention turned towards the holomap, and the other half caught like a broken holopuck on the article he read mere minutes before the meeting. He sometimes felt grateful there was no one left close to him to be worried about the obsessiveness with which he scoured the HoloNet for any article or news footage that even breathed about the Open Circle.
They all hedged and rumored and hinted at this or that, all backed up by heresy and battle footage clips or rare recordings of them both at negotiation dinners. But a new interview surfaced, though not of himself, rosy cheeked and openly enamored with his master. He nearly spat caf across his datapad when he saw it, notoriously close-lipped Obi-Wan half smiling at the wobbly camera footage from a reporter obviously following him on foot.
“General Kenobi!” The reporter had exclaimed, holocam jerking with excitement. “Everyone says you and Skywalker are inseparable! Is it master and apprentice or brother and brother now after all these years? Rumors on the Net are that it could even be something more?”
Obi-Wan had turned and flashed a first startled, and then half amused grin. “Anakin is my dearest friend. I did train him, but we are long past mere master and apprentice now I think, after all these years. I see so much of my old master in him, and in fact he’s taught me so much, training and fighting beside him for so long. He’s unlocked something in me—molded me to be the Jedi my master said I might be someday.”
No one was in his bunk to see him rewatch the clip over and over again, but he still burned, and not just with embarrassment from his own lack of restraint.
The meeting ended and soldiers, all bone weary, filed out the ship’s command room so that only he and Obi-Wan still stood over the holomap.
His master stroked his beard and eyed him in the partially dimmed lights, dialed low for the holo on full display. “Something about our plan bothering you? I will admit I am not particularly thrilled with sending you with such little aid into the tree but—”
“No—” he interrupted, voice entirely hoarse, “no—it’s not that. I am sorry for being distracted, master.”
Obi-Wan’s eyes softened with worry, and he rounded the display table to lean against its edge by Anakin’s side, pressing them shoulder pauldron to shoulder pauldron. Anakin could not feel his heat through their armor, but Obi-Wan burned in the force against him, hot as a coal even with his shields high.
“We are so near the end, I think,” Obi-Wan murmured.
“I can feel it in the force, a precipice.”
Obi-Wan hummed and they leaned against the display in companiable silence for several long minutes until Anakin worked up the nerve to force the words he wanted to say past the barricade of his own teeth. But these words had stewed and boiled and burned to magma inside him for years, and if he didn’t say them now and something happened, here at the very end of this war, he might grieve himself to insanity over what ifs and maybes just as he did for everyone else he loved.
“How is life going to retain any semblance of normalcy or peace after this?” He finally came to, woven hints at what he really wanted to spit out.
Obi-Wan chuckled. “Is that not one of our core tenants? You and I both know all things change and all things end and that the only permanent thing in this universe is the very nature of impermanence. How could life be the same when the past no longer exists, merely our memories of it.”
“Obi-Wan,” he grumbled, voice curling whiny and petulant despite his best efforts, an odd note of normalcy even here.
His master’s shoulder shook against his from a silent laugh. “I do not know, Anakin—truly. I tell myself that all things are in the force and so somehow within that we will find peace again, but I am unsure of many things in my old age.”
Anakin rolled his eyes and scoffed. “You can quit the old man routine with me, you ham it up enough for the HoloNet.”
He felt, rather than saw Obi-Wan tilt his head at that, and though he did not know why, something in his gut tightened in anticipation, like a snake coiling up ready to strike. A thrum of adrenaline unspooled in his veins and despite himself he felt his pulse kick up to a thready hammer in his throat.
“You do seem to keep up with HoloNet so much these days,” Obi-Wan said, tone careful and neutral, evaluating.
Anakin replied wryly, regardless of the way his heart was beating a bruise into his ribs under his skin. “We do feature in most of its content.”
Obi-Wan tilted his head even more, and while he refused to turn and meet his glance, he felt his master’s blue eyes on his profile. “Anakin,” he said softly. “What did you see?”
Anakin took an unsteady breath that somehow caught on all the jagged pieces inside him. “Have you not seen the way they talk about us?” He asked, equally as soft.
“Hmm, of course I have. Does it bother you, the speculation of us? I know billions of sentients assuming you are taking up with your old Jedi master who raised you is not ideal—”
His words tripped over themselves as they tumbled past his lips, tremulous and shivery on his shaky breath. “No I—I—I don’t mind.”
Obi-Wan went perfectly still beside him and then said, nearly inaudible. “Oh.”
Anakin’s pulse kicked up another notch, so it felt a Nabooian fighter was kicking back exhaust in his chest. Stars, his hands shook against the display and every inch of him tremored.
“I don’t mind, master,” he said plaintively, finally looking over to meet Obi-Wan’s eyes.
Before his stomach could even swoop from the nerves of his confession Obi-Wan straightened from the display and then pushed between the space of his splayed boots to stand nearly chest to chest with him.
Anakin’s eyes rounded and he blinked and tried not to breathe so kriffing loud with Obi-Wan merely inches away and certainly close enough to hear the way he panted through parted lips. And then Obi-Wan raised a hand, slow and gentle to drag knuckles against his jawline and then to catch the pad of his thumb against the curve of his bottom lip.
They both stood like that, frozen and looking into the other’s wide, blue eyes, with Obi-Wan pressing him back against the display and dragging skin along his parted lips.
“Master,” he whispered, a benediction on his tongue.
Obi-Wan’s eyes which were always sharp, always piercing, looked lambent as starfire in the dim light. Anakin felt the warmth of his breath fan across his damp, riven mouth and fought the white iron spike of want down his spine. But his master stood like that, still and with a searching expression in the labradorite of his eyes as he dragged his thumb, syrupy and slow back and forth against the curve of his parted lips.
Another shock of heat jolted his stomach at the thought of pushing forward to take that thumb into his mouth. He wanted to beg for it, wanted to sob with his master pushing between his parted thighs and looking as if he may want him too.
“What did you like about all those articles so much?” Obi-Wan murmured.
He dug flesh and durasteel fingers behind him and felt pulled taught on a wire, spooled tight enough to snap in two. His chest rose and fell, sharp and obvious from his unsteady breathing.
“The way you talked about me, master,” he admitted, embarrassment twisting in his gut.
“Oh? What else?” Said Obi-Wan, sharp eyed and nearly pressing his thumb past the seam of Anakin’s lips.
He realized his cock was hard and pressed down the left side of his pant’s seam, covered by his tunic and surcoat, though his stomach still turned over on itself with shame. He swallowed thickly and his master’s eyes tracked the workings of his throat.
“The way—” he gasped around Obi-Wan’s thumb brushing against his tongue, “the way they describe how I look at you.”
“And how do you look at me, Anakin?” Obi-Wan breathed against his cheek, lips close enough to feel the warmth on his.
Anakin closed his eyes and sighed, the words a burning, exquisite relief. “Like I love you, master.”
Obi-Wan surged against him and they met, open mouthed and gasping. His master’s beard scratched against his cheeks, his chin, and he couldn’t care less with the slick feel of his lips against his, his tongue against his. Obi-Wan cupped fingers against his cheeks and then wound hands into Anakin’s curls to tug him forward and slant their mouths how he wanted.
Anakin moaned against his tongue and then felt the jagged surge of want from Obi-Wan in the force, sharp edged and urgent. With a quick jerk of the force Obi-Wan pushed him back so that he was fully seated on the display and fitted himself between his parted thighs.
Anakin gaped at him and fisted his surcoat between his fingers to yank their mouths back together though Obi-Wan knotted fingers in his curls to tilt his jaw so that teeth caught against throat and tendon instead.
“This needs to be quick,” Obi-Wan murmured, teeth scraping against his jaw.
“Won’t be a problem,” he gasped out a laugh with his throat bared and his cock aching against his pants seam. Somewhere still in the back of his mind disbelief echoed back and forth, laced with a surety that none of this real.
And yet Obi-Wan sucked frantic bruises at the hinge of his jaw and caught warm, flesh fingers in his hair, and he smelled so familiar, so comforting, and long engrained in Anakin’s very soul something in him screamed finally.
Obi-Wan smiled with that errant lock of hair in his eyes and dug searching fingers into the meat of his parted thighs and Anakin felt so terribly smitten at the charming sight of him all he could do was smile helplessly back, soft eyed and wide mouthed just as every holo article accused him of.
“What do you want?” Asked Obi-Wan, all fondness and darkened, glinting eyes.
“Anything,” he tugged Obi-Wan forward by his surcoat and sucked a breath between his teeth at the feel of their hips meeting and his master’s body heat against his cock. “Really—anything you want, anything you’ll give me.”
Obi-Wan’s face bloomed into that old, familiar flirtatious grin. He pushed his thumb playfully against Anakin’s lip again and laughed with a roguish half smile crinkling his eyes. “Anything I want? That’s a long list I’m afraid, darling.”
Anakin squirmed at the word darling directed his way for the first time and whined indignantly, even while laughing, “Obi-Wan.”
Obi-Wan stilled and looked him in the eyes with a look of terrible fondness, even as he reached between Anakin’s legs and drug fingers along the hard line of his cock under the layers of his tunics and pants.
He kept Obi-Wan’s gaze, though his mouth parted around unsteady exhales more from the erotic notion he had his master’s hand on his cock than any really pressure or friction.
“You really do have a beautiful smile,” Obi-Wan said, looking delighted as he yanked Anakin’s waistband to mid-thigh with only a little help of the force.
“Do I?” Anakin asked, breathy and pitched high as Obi-Wan gripped him in his scorching hand and rubbed his precome into the slit of his head.
“You do,” Obi-Wan murmured, ignoring Anakin’s hiss. “Soft eyed and full mouthed and as achingly pretty as every HoloNet reporter says.”
His thighs shook and he dug durasteel fingers into Obi-Wan’s forearm. “You were never this complimentary when I was younger,” he accused with a thready voice.
Obi-Wan worked his thumb against his slippery head and twisted his fingers, “because you were a brat.”
A shock of heat lanced down his spine and he leaked a long string of precome over his master’s fist with a horrible, girlish noise caught halfway in the back of his throat.
Obi-Wan pressed their foreheads together and laughed against his cheek, bewilderment and throbbing want winding between them in the force. “Stars, Anakin—”
“—Let me feel you, master,” he begged, fumbling clumsy hands down Obi-Wan’s stomach.
Obi-Wan pushed back his surcoat and tunic without question and pulled down his pants just far enough to work his cock through his clothes. Anakin wrapped flesh fingers around him and then held them together the best he could, between the precome and sweat and how kriffing big—
“How in Sith’s hells am I supposed to take you?” He muttered, half wonderment and half incredulity.
Obi-Wan barked out his own incredulous laugh and planted a steadying hand against his hip as he watched Anakin’s hand work their cocks together, sticky with his own precome.
“Have you thought of that before, Anakin?” He murmured, eyes still caught on his fumbling hand and the slick shine of their cocks.
Anakin panted between them and tried not to squirm his hips and ruin the rhythm of his own hand on them. “Of course I have,” he gasped. “I’ve—I’ve thought of it for years, master.”
Obi-Wan’s cock jumped in his hand and Anakin’s pulse skittered in answer, stomach wound tight and familiar.
His master’s fingers found their way back to his hair and he tugged at Anakin’s curls to bring his mouth back to his jaw. “How long have you thought of me inside you?”
His swollen head caught wet and sensitive between the ring of his fingers, and he trembled, pressed tight against his master’s cock in his own hand. “Seven years, eight? Since I was too young to want you.”
“Kriffing hell, Anakin,” Obi-Wan gritted against his skin, a hint of horror in his voice.
“You asked,” he laughed, even as his stomach clenched, so close to spilling between them. “I can’t wait to take you, I’ve—practiced, gotten used to it. I swear I’ll be good at taking you, master,” the words escaped him, desperate, earnest, and unbidden.
“Oh gods Anakin.”
Obi-Wan flared with pleasure in the force and pulsed over Anakin’s fist with an agonized expression. Anakin watched with the air robbed from his chest, as his master’s come smeared over his fingers and cock, creamy and white against his flushed skin.
He came with his lips sucked between his teeth and his own pleasure flashing through the force. It felt wrenched from him, sudden and so painfully sharp all he managed was a weak gasp with the spill of his own pleasure between them.
Insistent fingertips nudged his chin up and he grinned, lax and dumbfounded at the sight of Obi-Wan’s flushed, smiling face. “You must know,” Obi-Wan said, “that I smile at you just the same as you smile at me.”
He blushed up to the tips of his ears and laughed, nervous and bashful. “The entire HoloNet hasn’t gone on and on for months now about how you smile like I do, they might disagree, master.”
“But I do,” he said, eyes blue and crinkled at the corners. “You are the other half of me, so a part of me I cannot imagine myself without you by my side, and I at yours. We’ve just one battle left, Anakin, and change will come after the war, but I cannot comprehend peace without you.”
“Fuck,” he knocked their foreheads together and laughed, fervently holding back tears. “That’s a hell of a pre battle speech, master. Let’s go kick some Seppie ass.”