"YIN AND YANG"
By: Princess Sassafras
Part IV- Are One
Notes: I'm very sorry to those of you I promised that I would have this part done by last weekend! I've been having…ahem…medical problems. I won't nauseate you with the details. Especially since it might ruin your appetite for this yummy chapter. Did I say yummy? You heard it! And there is at least one more on the way! Please review.
Princess S.
Anakin's hands ran tracks of exquisite fire down Obi-Wan's face and neck. His lips sent a delicious shockwave through his frame. The older man was aware of every tender stretch of skin that was being touched by any part of Anakin. Not even in the most intensive muscle-wracking training had he felt so alive. Jedi had to possess great awareness of their bodies, to be sure, but never had he experienced such…shivering hypersensitive bliss…at what his own body could make him feel. It was a buzz, a quick thrumming throughout the whole of him.
Anakin felt much the opposite; he did not feel as if he had a body at all…he felt as if he had been launched from it like a sizzling star. His every nerve was on fire, but he was less aware of that than of the sensation of flight. Joy, rapture, release, but an all-consuming need to explode across what he felt was the naked expanse in him, that black beautiful nothingness that waited only for his own bright bang!
As Anakin touched, kissed, moved more and more quickly, his blood ever-faster pounding, Obi-Wan melted almost beneath him, under the drive of that intensive heat.
"Anakin…" a whispered plea, a tender allowance.
"Obi-Wan…I'm not sure I know what…" He breathed into the corner of the other man's mouth, another burning kiss threatening even as the last one lingered. And, in truth, Anakin did not know. He knew what he wanted…to never come down, to continue whirling farther up and up towards the apex of this new brilliant emotion, to leap ever higher from sensation to sensation until…what? I'm not sure I know what…will happen then!
"Should we stop…Anakin?" A tendril of apprehension stretched out amidst rapture, and pleasure, and whirlwind fire.
Should we? Blue eyes shone like the lowest, hottest part of candle flame. I don't want to.
Neither do I, but this can't be safe.
Neither are we. We are not safe. Our lives are not safe! Why should this be any different?
Why should it be any different? It isn't; it's all the same; this is meant to be; it is the very will of the Force. The Force, like a mighty river, the greatest current of which seemed to propel them onward, not allowing them to rest on the bank or pull back upon the rock, but jettisoning them forward in a great whorl-dance. It made Anakin want to laugh with pleasure!
Obi-Wan quivered against him, still uncertain. So long he had shuttered it away or clung to the shore just long enough to still his quaking heart. It ached to sever his ties to anything solid, to surrender him to the ebb and flow, to release him to be tossed about like any other wavelet or line of frothing rock-stirred foam.
Freedom.
Freedom.
The Force is freedom…despite governments and laws, despite the Jedi Order…it disproves all vows…all but one. Obi-Wan remembered the vow he made long ago, the one that was deeper even than the promise he made to serve the Order, the one made only to the everlasting Force. And if the Force, as it proved itself to be, meant Freedom, then Obi-Wan would break all else to take the path it had laid out before him. Even unto Expulsion, even unto Exile…and he knew he could survive all of that, and more, if the man in whose loving arms he was bolstered…would follow him there.
Anakin felt Obi-Wan's life energy rush towards him like a great tide as he let go of his fear. All of the held back apprehension, love, hope, wonder and joy washed over him in a shuddering wave.
They embraced it as they embraced each other, rocking with the force of it, releasing themselves into it, and nearly drowning in it. Even kisses slowed as they clung to each other, merely breathing each other, lost in the feeling of it. Anakin still kissed Obi-Wan's neck as they rocked, over and over, whispering in between, "This is everything, everything, everything…"
A cutting sliver of sunlight across their faces did not pull them completely from their place in the void, but it did cause their eyes to fall open, and they suddenly remembered where they were, and when in Time it was. Time is an ugly man-invented thing.
Obi-Wan's hand gentled Anakin's dark curls. The younger man's strong human hand was still clenching and unclenching in the fabric of Obi-Wan's pale tunic, his leather-bound hand of steel still balancing the weight of their entire bodies, as if they were the round bell at the bottom of a pendulum, and that Hand was the stem from which they hung.
Their breathing changed its pace, returning to something more normal. Anakin did not remove his face from the crook of Obi-Wan's neck, did not detach his lips from the skin there. If any one had been behind Obi-Wan's back at that moment, any enemy or friend, they would have seen two smoldering eyes peering at them over the pale shoulder of the older man, eyes glinting beautifully and dangerously bright in the dazzling rays of the Naboo sun. Almost possessive. Almost.
"Anakin…we have to go."
A sigh against his neck and the tightening of the powerful muscles in Anakin's arm and torso alerted Obi-Wan to his reluctance, no, resistance.
"Oh, Anakin…I would give nothing more than to stay here with you…forever, but—"
"Then stay." There was even the barest hint of a whine in the young man's otherwise completely mature voice.
"We cannot! No matter what we have decided, it must not interfere with our immediate lives…until we have a plan."
"But you remember, don't you, that plans never go according to plan."
"Anakin, please don't joke."
"I'm not, I'm very serious."
"I see." Obi-Wan smiled and, relenting for a moment, buried his face once more in thick curls that smelled of leather and linen and residual battle smoke, and something deeper and softer and more human.
A sigh in his ear, "Obi-Wan."
The way Anakin all but whispered his name made his spine turn to rubber, made the hairs all over his body stand alert, and made his breath bury itself in his stomach. It made his every nerve throb with tingling energy, made it rush out from the core of him to the tips of his fingers and toes. He sighed. "Must you…must we?"
"Yes."
Suddenly his head was being tilted back gently but forcefully. Suddenly warm, full lips were pressed against his, and strong hands were running furrows through his hair. The kiss was long, and sweet, and delicious. When Anakin finally pulled away to stare into intensely dilated gray-blue eyes, Obi-Wan smiled reluctantly, licking his own lips. "I did say…you would be the death of me."
Anakin's answering smile bordered on wolfish.
"But Anakin, we must, we truly must, make some sort of appearance today. Together or separate. Soon."
"I know. I only wish we didn't have to."
"It changes nothing. We will see each other at the end of the day's duties. And we must concentrate on what we are doing! We cannot let these new emotions cloud our perceptions of reality…of what is going on around us. If we do, we will never be able to make this work. We will be lost, my love, in the space between two worlds. One which is Order created, and the other…here."
Anakin said nothing, only looked deeply into Obi-Wan's eyes, and smiling a little sadly, nodded his head. "I concede."
"Well," said Obi-Wan teasingly, "At least I still win at some things."
They took their time getting up, still very close to one another. When they were standing by the doorway, Anakin took his former Master's face in his hand, and his eyes turned serious. "We will meet at dusk, here?"
Gray-blue eyes crinkled at the edges, telling for a moment of their age. "We will meet then, here."
A kiss, and they were parted. But only physically…for their minds held the link they had created with astonishing resolve, and they were never alone.