Summary: "It might be a worthwhile challenge to put him in his place, but Obi-Wan isn't Anakin's Master, after all." An AU wherein Qui-Gon survives the Battle of Naboo; takes place between Episode I and II. Contains semi-explicit Obi-Wan/Anakin; implied Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan; one-sided Qui-Gon/Anakin. Warning: Anakin is only seventeen here. Title comes from the English translation of the Sanskrit bit of a Robert Graves poem used in "Duel of the Fates" (Google it, it's pretty fascinating). Also, Indulgence Day is a patientalien invention; her 'fic, "Indulgence," is highly recommended.
Under the Tongue Root a Fight Most Dread (and Another Raging, Behind, in the Head)
The Force signature suddenly in the vicinity is familiar, and yet, he's surprised its bearer has sought him out so quickly upon his arrival at the Temple. Almost certainly, skulking unnecessarily about the hangar bay provided the boy with such quick knowledge of his return. In any case, there isn't much for him to unpack, and he's not due in the Council chambers for his debriefing until dawn, so he palms open the door for his visitor.
Anakin's face slides into an easy grin. "I knew you'd be here," he smirks, brushing past the other man; the door slides shut again behind him. "You're such a hermit."
Obi-Wan rolls his eyes. "This is a curious time for you to be wandering about," he observes blithely. "I don't suppose you've lost your way to Advanced Astronavigation now, have you?"
Anakin's gaze wanders the sparse quarters. Lazily, he fiddles with his outer tunics. "I could teach Astronav one-handed. With no sight," he brags.
Obi-Wan doesn't have to point out that this doesn't remotely answer his question. "I won't lie to Qui-Gon as to your whereabouts," he states, and it's meant to sound firm, but one would hardly know it from the widening smile on Anakin's face.
"Fine," the Padawan asserts, and it might be a worthwhile challenge to put him in his place, but Obi-Wan isn't Anakin's Master, after all.
"I'm still taller than you." Anakin utterly dwarfs him, in complete honesty, and has for some time. Obi-Wan likes to think the boy's amusement will wear off around the time he has a Padawan of his own, maybe. "I'm seventeen now, too," he boasts.
Obi-Wan trails behind him, Anakin beelining towards his bedroom, clothing falling to the ground in his wake. Obi-Wan doesn't disrobe, yet. "And what did the newly-seventeen Anakin Skywalker receive for his Indulgence Day?" he queries, and his hands are on his belt now, contemplatively, not reaching to unfasten anything.
Anakin half-turns, his shoulders slumping only just. "Not what I wanted," he frowned. He's very pretty when he pouts, Obi-Wan would have to be blind himself not to notice; and yet, his internal reaction to this newly-acquired knowledge is, he would be ashamed to admit if someone were holding him accountable, a mean, almost victorious surge of glee. Still, he's a Knight now, has been for the better part of a decade, and he's above pointing out that, yes, he still has something to lord over Anakin.
"Sorry," he says instead, and Anakin glowers like he knows what Obi-Wan might say if he wasn't so kriffing proper, because, of course, he probably does.
Anakin's shoulders are broader since Obi-Wan saw him last, the product of months away (his) and another of the boy's growth spurts. He and Qui-Gon probably make a formidable pair, two tall, lanky pillars, side by side, steeped in the Living Force. Obi-Wan always thought he and Qui-Gon were a study in contrasts; as a Padawan, he'd spent years rationalizing his anxiety at not being able to mimic his Master precisely, until eventually, he started to truly believe that it was all right to take his own path. That he'd been forced to take one fork in the road while Qui-Gon, Anakin in tow, took the other was another issue entirely, though he thought that after nearly ten years, he was starting to see the merit in it.
"So what were you and Muln doing all this time?" Anakin has stretched himself out across Obi-Wan's mattress, nude, not quite hard, arms lackadaisically linked behind his head. He wiggles his foot, and it's compulsive, the mark of a boy who wouldn't be able to sit still for more than a minute if the very fate of the galaxy depended on it. Obi-Wan finds it endearing, but now, he shoves at it.
"That's Master Muln, Anakin."
"'Kay, what were you and Master Muln doing? Did you meet up with Quin, uh, Master Vos? Hey, I heard he was on Tatooine a while back, d'you know if he saw my mom -"
"Anakin."
The foot stills, and then shifts, the sole now propped atop the thin, perfunctory coverlet. "Just asking," he frowns. His expression is troubled, and Obi-Wan waits for him to pull himself together. He's even gratified when Anakin's gaze flickers to his midsection. "Are you ever gonna take that off? You've probably had it on for days," he complains.
"Yes," Obi-Wan says dryly, not missing a beat. "I'm probably filthy." When Anakin reaches for his belt, however, he stills, watching him fumble. In truth, his accommodations during the final leg of this latest mission allotted for showers, so he's not as poorly off as he might be otherwise.
His tunics open - it might be from some judicious Force use on Anakin's part - and slide over his shoulders, down his arms, puddling on the floor. He sighs, irritated, to start, and then more heavily, now more of a groan, when Anakin's hand reaches into his pants and plucks out his cock, his fingers curling lightly around the length. It's nice, he thinks, and not even hardly so scandalous because he did things like this when he was seventeen, kind of, and anyways, better him than one of the burly men with the too-big, rough fingers and Force knows what diseases who lurk around the Orange District, and "oh" is the sound he makes when Anakin thumbs over his cockhead a couple of times.
"Want me to suck it?" the boy goads, and Obi-Wan refuses to dignify that with a response. Fortunately, maybe, Anakin takes his silence for consent, and his neck arches as his lips part. Obi-Wan's dick bobs as he moves closer towards the edge of the bed, and Anakin still has to stretch a little to reach him, but not so ridiculously now. Still, propped on his knees, his own erection half-lying across his lap, mouth working over Obi-Wan's cock, there's something patently absurd about him, about this, but well, he'd tell Qui-Gon the truth if he asked. He hasn't asked, but if he did, Obi-Wan wouldn't lie.
"Tell me about the first time you and Master Qui-Gon ... you know."
Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow, the lubricated digit he's just pressed into the boy's backside stilling. "If you can't say it, you ought not to be doing it, Anakin," he retorts, and crooks his finger.
Anakin's eyelashes flutter a little. "When you fucked," he emphasizes, and it sounds both filthy and childish coming out of him. If his fingers weren't lightly clutching at the bedding, he'd probably be crossing his arms. "Happy now?"
"Hm," Obi-Wan just says, and then: "Anyway, that's private." He drills another finger into the boy's ass hole.
"Ah." Anakin's pupils dilate. His voice is huskier, not just since the last time he'd come calling, but especially now, with Obi-Wan slowly opening him up. Still, he's unfazed by the other man's excuses. "Tell me anyway."
Obi-Wan is full of long-suffering sighs. "It was after a mission. We were separated for a time during a nasty trade dispute -"
"Like Naboo?"
His fingers thrust suddenly into Anakin, punctuating his irritation. Anakin moans. "Not every trade dispute is like Naboo."
"Mm, okay." Anakin watches him. "How old were you?"
"Old enough." He just wants to preserve the vague satisfaction he gets, however forbidden it is by the Code, from having one over on the boy who otherwise has everything. Scissoring his fingers, he frowns. "Do you want to hear this story or not?"
Anakin's face is slightly pinched. "Sorry," he says. Obi-Wan eases up a little.
"Anyway. We had bathed - separately, stop smirking, Anakin - and were checking one another over for injuries. He'd a nasty welt above his knee, and I suppose my kneeling before him and the rather intimate places I touched went a ways towards what happened next." He uses his free hand to begin jerking Anakin off, palm quickly growing damp from pre-come.
Anakin bites his lip. "More," he says greedily, and he already has so much, this child so gifted by the Force, and so unappreciative of those gifts, besides, but Obi-Wan doesn't stop, though he continues with agonizing slowness. Almost automatically, the boy's hand reaches towards his, but he swats it away.
"Patience, Padawan."
"Ugh." The hand splays anew against the mattress. "You sound just like a Master when you say stuff like that."
Obi-Wan feigns horror. "Perish the thought."
Anakin's face is so pretty when he comes, so very, very pretty, and it occurs to Obi-Wan that he shouldn't be so familiar with this concept, but he is, and when the Force shifts around them and bathes him in Anakin's radiating light, so freely given, he's familiar with that, too, enough to anticipate it and lap it up eagerly like one of those sodding fluff pittins Anakin snuck home from the Outlander. "I suppose turn about as fair play," Qui-Gon had rationalized to him colloquially, and Obi-Wan had basked greedily in his Light, too, and also mentally catalogued all of the new ways Qui-Gon had begun to show his age.
"You never told me what your mission was about."
Obi-Wan shrugs a little. "A team of Jedi was required to catalog a threat implicating several systems wishing to break away from the Republic." Anakin mimes snoring, and he shoves at him a little. "This is precisely why I didn't tell you."
Anakin yawns theatrically. "Not my fault you make it sound so boring."
"Yes, well," Obi-Wan sniffs, "The details of high-handed measures by the Banking Clan and Count Dooku may seem a little dry, but corruption does not often stand up on a chair and shout its presence."
Anakin's expression has changed, though. "Count Dooku," he mutters, and straightens. "Qui-Gon's Master?"
There's nothing in it for him to lie. "Yes."
"Huh." The boy's face is pensive now. "Qui-Gon doesn't talk about him much. He won't talk about his apprentice who fell to the Dark Side, either. I've asked. The only person I can get him to tell me stories about is you."
"Hm," Obi-Wan just says, and then makes a shooing motion with his hand. "Time for you to go, I think," he prompts, and Anakin slides leisurely off the bed. Sitting up, Obi-Wan watches him collect his discarded garments with surprising efficiency. Not for the first time, he loses himself in thoughts about Qui-Gon, his trademark self-preservation, easily maligned as radio silence, his own memories of the early days of Count Dooku's defection, the diminished look of his Master in the bacta tank immediately following Naboo, how Obi-Wan hadn't left his side for nearly a week, and then how Qui-Gon's first words after he'd been patted dry were, "How is the boy?", the implications of a Republic fractured by overzealous political idealism. When he manages to focus on Anakin again, the boy is fully-clothed, his words slightly alarming: "... tell Qui-Gon?"
"Sorry, what?"
Anakin cocks his head. "Do you want me to tell Qui-Gon that you're back?"
Oh, well. "Is that part of tonight's Astronavigation homework?"
"No," Anakin grouses.
"Then, no. I will tell him myself."
It's the boy's turn to roll his eyes. "As you wish, Knight Kenobi," he snorts, and bows, not entirely exaggeratedly, and his braid bobs and there are new beads on it, undoubtedly for reckless piloting and tinkering with 'droid parts found in garbage heaps, but that's Qui-Gon's problem, not his, and then Anakin is gone. These rooms feel strange now - maybe they've never managed to feel quite like home; maybe the fact that Anakin keeps coming back as if there's something here worth finding is the best they're ever going to get - and Obi-Wan smoothes the bedding free of wrinkles before sitting cross-legged in front of the headboard and closing his eyes.