Obi-Wan is there when he returns, the clouds outside ribbed in pink the same shade that the last traces of Padme’s lipstick had been. He’s making a cup of tea when Anakin slides in through the door. “Late night?”

“I’m in love,” Anakin says.

Obi-Wan doesn’t even stop stirring. “Congratulations. And who is it?”

“It’s a secret,” Anakin says.

“Good luck,” Obi-Wan tells him.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

1988

Anakin thinks that he falls in love with Padme Amidala within thirty seconds of meeting her.

There are posters of her everywhere, plastered to the windows and doors of what seems like every building in the city - her head tilted to the side, stage makeup artfully smeared over half of her face as she poses. Tatooine is a desert city, and usually, nothing happens here - certainly not the usual first stop for an up-and-coming pop star who’s taken the world by storm, and so everyone’s talking about how the one and only Padme Amidala is coming into town to start her tour.

By chance, Anakin sees her walking down the street, flanked by several bodyguards one morning when he’s on the way to the garage. Anakin nearly steps into a pothole when their eyes meet across the street, a fleeting moment that he can’t get out of his mind for the rest of his walk to work.

At the garage, he listens to his boss complain about how the traffic’s going to be backed up tonight because of all the outsiders flooding the streets to attend some girl’s concert. There’s a spot of grease on his arm just above his glove that he rubs at idly, considering, and then Anakin goes to make one of his coworkers work tonight’s shift for him.

It’s a really stupid idea, and he knows it. But he’s got a friend working at the concert venue, and so it’s easy for him to slip into the back of the venue, wait after the concert with his hands in his pockets, leaning against a wall and forcing a look of nonchalance on his face.

Obi-Wan would call him an idiot if he knew what Anakin was doing, which is fair most of the time, but Anakin knows how people work, and he’ll be fine if he can just fake it through the next bit. If he looks like he’s supposed to be there, that no one will question his presence too much, and then he can maybe have thirty glorious seconds of Amidala’s attention on him.

When she sees him, she has a remarkable way of keeping her face blank of any surprise at seeing him there. There’s a tendril of hair escaping from her ponytail, and with the makeup mostly scrubbed off, she looks nothing at all like the posters. She’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. He tries to keep a cocky grin on his face, but he finds that at one tilt of her head at him, it’s all wiped away, and he’s laid bare.

“I don’t think you belong here,” Padme Amidala says.

“Probably not,” Anakin says, trying not to look as stunned as he feels, “What gave me away?”

“You’re not one of the dancers, to start.”

“My name’s Anakin,” Anakin says, “Is your name really Padme?”

“Why are you here, Anakin?”

“I’m a big fan,” Anakin says, mustering any courage he has to stay still under her gaze. “I - well, I wanted to meet you.”

“You don’t look like one of my fans,” Padme says, still looking cautious. She’s not calling her bodyguards to throw him out, either, so he’ll take it as a win, as he watches her tuck a piece of hair back behind her ear, leaves her hand there like she couldn’t care less that he’s watching her. “What do you want, then?”

“Would you get a drink with me?”

One of her perfect eyebrows raises. “How old are you?”

“Or we can get dinner,” Anakin says, “Anything you’d like.” He’s aware that his palms are suddenly clammy, then, and he jams them in his pockets as if to hide the way that every second he spends here, he feels a little more shaken. 

Padme regards him, waits an unspeakably long time before she says, “You’re not a stalker, are you?”

“No,” Anakin insists, though he’s suddenly aware that hanging out near her dressing rooms is exactly what a stalker would do. He adds, a little too fast, “You don’t have to. But I didn’t want to miss my chance.”

Padme stops tugging at her earlobe - a gesture from years of wearing heavy earrings, he’ll eventually learn, and not at all a nervous gesture like it would be on anyone else - and says, “You’re a strange boy, aren’t you?”

He takes it as a compliment then. (Years later, she’ll tell him that it wasn’t, but she’s glad he thought it was anyway.) Anakin says, “I know a place around the corner from here. No one will know to find you there.”

For whatever reason, Padme says, “Give me five minutes.”

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

And so over greasy french fries, at the diner that he goes to for breakfast sometimes, they talk. Padme wears huge, dark sunglasses the entire time, and she keeps on glancing around like she expects half a dozen photographers to jump out, but soon her attention is on him, and only him, and it’s like he’s staring up into the sun.

Her reservations about him seem to ebb away, and Anakin listens to her talk about the tour, her best friend who she hasn’t seen in weeks, the manager who stops her from going out like this, about how she loves strawberry ice cream. He asks her how she went into performing (“My mother,” Padme says, “She was an opera singer before she had me.”) and how she can wear those huge hair ornaments without getting headaches on stage (“Practice. Why, do you want to try one on?”).

She asks him about his life, too, appearing genuinely curious about learning more about him, then. He tells her about how he’s studying to become an engineer, because he’s always been good with his hands, and it all comes to him so naturally. How he hates living close to a desert, but he hates the cold even more.

It gets into even more personal territory, then. She wants to start a foundation one day, Padme explains, for her own causes - get into lobbying politicians, because she sees that there is so much in the world that she wants to change for the better. Anakin, who has never harbored such grandiose plans for his own life, feels nearly embarrassed as he can only tell her stories about him and Obi-Wan, then about his mother, though she doesn’t seem at all disappointed at those. Anakin nearly spills an entire cup of coffee down his front when he makes her laugh for the first time, a story of how he’d persuaded Obi-Wan to enter in a street race for him, directing him on how to drive from where he was crunched down in the backseat.

Time flies away as they share pieces of their lives. They’re chased out by the waitress at closing time, not having noticed that they were the only ones left in the diner.

Anakin walks her back to the hotel where she’s staying, sneaking in through a back entrance when they see that there are cars pulled up in the front, people waiting to catch a glimpse of the pop princess.

In the darkened alley, not yet illuminated by the sun starting to rise, Padme leans in, kisses him on the cheek. “I had fun, Anakin Skywalker,” she says, “Thank you,” and she’s gone before he realizes that he doesn’t know if he’ll ever see her again.

He finds the diner napkin in his jacket pocket, that she’d borrowed for their walk back. In pencil, there’s a number scrawled on it, handwriting surprisingly messy. Anakin memorizes the number right there before he heads back home.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Obi-Wan is there when he returns, the clouds outside ribbed in pink the same shade that the last traces of Padme’s lipstick had been. He’s making a cup of tea when Anakin slides in through the door.

Anakin leans against the wall, listening to the rattle of the ancient refrigerator he keeps on meaning to fix, the shuffle of Obi-Wan’s footsteps on the vinyl flooring. He has to ground himself because the past twelve hours feel like they’ve been some bizarre, wonderful dream.

He comes into the kitchen at last. Obi-Wan’s hair is messy, and his voice is slightly hoarse like it usually is in the morning when he asks him, “Late night?”

“I’m in love,” Anakin says.

Obi-Wan doesn’t even stop stirring. “Congratulations. And who is it?”

“It’s a secret,” Anakin says. He’ll tell him if he asks, but it’s Obi-Wan, and he knows he won’t.

He leans against the counter, then, watching as Obi-Wan methodically extracts the teabag from his cup, dumping it into the metal sink with a soft thud.

“Good luck,” Obi-Wan tells him.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Obi-Wan is his best friend. He thinks, sometimes, that he and Obi-Wan might have gravitated toward each other because they both carry a kind of loneliness in them that’s only eased when someone else understands what it’s like to lose everything. They clash at times, argue often, and people are usually skeptical that they’d tolerate each other, let alone live together - but it works because at the end of the day, it’s the two of them against it all.

They’d met when he was a kid. Anakin had been trying to get into the apartment building while his mom was working the late shift at the hospital. He’d miscounted the number of windows from the ground, and he had ended up climbing into the downstairs neighbor’s living room, right when he was just sitting down with a cup of tea on his couch.

He didn’t call the police on Anakin, though, and instead had inquired if the schools around here taught children how to use grappling hooks, or Anakin took it upon himself to try to give people heart attacks. Anakin had liked him instantly, mostly because Obi-Wan had helped him break into his mother’s apartment next, even though it had been the price of his grappling hook and the promise that he’d buzz up to him to be let in instead of trying to scale the side of the building if it ever happened again.

(It did, the next week because Anakin wanted to know if Obi-Wan would keep his promise. He did.)

Shmi had liked him, the eccentric young man who’d helped her carry groceries up the stairs on the weekends, who didn’t mind if her ten-year-old son trailed behind him while he picked up trash off the side of the road because she thought he was a good influence on him. And he was - even though Obi-Wan was objectively weird, and he definitely made it clear that he thought that Anakin should find someone his own age to call his best friend, he was always there for him, and he seemed to like to have Anakin around.

(“Your license says Ben,” Anakin asks him, “So why don’t you go by it?”

“There already was a Ben Kenobi at the union,” Obi-Wan explains, ever patient, “He’s an old man, but they didn’t want the confusion. I guess I just took the name up for everything else, too.”

“You don’t look like a Ben.”

“And I look like an Obi-Wan?”)

Obi-Wan had been raised across the country in some kind of - in Anakin’s words, not his -  semi-cultish hippy sanctuary, where they all wore long robes, grew their own food, and taught children how to fight with wooden staffs to protect the world from evil one day. He had let those stories slip on occasion, like how he’d picked up his strange accent because his father had been one of the sanctuary’s elders who’d come from overseas, and raised Obi-Wan among a group of other adopted children.

Anakin learned about him from those stories, like why he hates it so much when Anakin kills the cockroaches who creep into the building because he believes in all lives being inherently precious, or why he’ll open a window even in the dead of winter because he can’t stand feeling like he’s trapped inside anywhere, likely because he’d spent the first fifteen years of his life living in a tent.

For a long time, Anakin thought that Obi-Wan must tell everyone about his life, what with the ease in which he answers his probing questions. Until one day, he’d been talking to a neighbor and mentioned Obi-Wan in passing, and the neighbor had gone, “Mr. Kenobi? The kid’s a hermit. No one ever hears from him around here - you mean you talk to him?”

Anakin never met Obi-Wan’s family because his father had died in a horrific car accident along with the other elders, before they’d met. It turned out that the hippies had been collecting money to fund an entire generation of child warriors or something, and so without anyone else but a handful of children who’d been whisked away to foster care to claim it, Obi-Wan had become incredibly wealthy overnight, only in his early twenties, and yet with nothing or no one in his life anymore.

So he’d moved to Tatooine to pursue acting, of all things. Obi-Wan was pretty good, too - he’d only been in the city for a few years by the time they’d met, but had already scored a few auditions for local productions who had liked the way that he could be thoughtful one moment, intense the next. He’d give Shmi and Anakin free tickets to his shows, and Anakin would watch in fascination as Obi-Wan would become someone else for two hours, captivating everyone in the room.

When his mom had gotten sick, Obi-Wan was there for him. He organized the funeral, eventually, and he had let Anakin sleep on his couch when the grief grew too much to bear alone, sit with him in silence for hours when Anakin felt like screaming with rage at the universe, only the sound keeps on getting trapped in his throat. He’d helped him get legally emancipated, and when Anakin had graduated school a year early, he’d given him the money to fix up his mom’s car.

Anakin spent an entire summer with grease under his nails, channeling his rage into doing something. When the car had finally been up and running, he’d been a little closer to normal. Obi-Wan knew what it was like to lose everything, and Anakin owes him everything. He knows he’ll spend his life making sure that he’ll live up to that.

So he makes sure that Obi-Wan eats semi-regular meals and sleeps occasionally, drives him to auditions and call-backs, holds the script while Obi-Wan frantically memorizes his lines. He shows up to the plays he performs in, whistles entirely too loud when he bows along with the rest of the cast, much to the grumbling of the people seated around him. Obi-Wan’s eyes always find him in the crowd, and he smiles right at Anakin, every time, even though he can’t possibly see him in the dark.

Obi-Wan’s going to become famous, he knows. One day, he’ll leave this strange life of theirs behind - but until then, Anakin will hold onto it as tight as he can.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Maybe he should’ve told Obi-Wan about Padme from the start. Maybe if he had, they would’ve avoided a lot of what happened eventually. But he certainly didn’t have the foresight then, and with how everything played out, he’s not sure how much it would have changed.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Anakin calls the number on the napkin the next night, and he’s surprised that it’s Padme who picks up directly.

She gives him the rest of her tour schedule over the phone - the hotels she’ll be staying at. She’s going all over the country, but Anakin scribbles down the names and dates so that he can call her whenever he can.

“Why are you talking to me?” he says, the third time she’d picked up the phone to answer him. Padme didn’t have a concert that night, and someone like her, she’s probably skipping something to talk to him, he thinks, something warm growing in his chest at the idea that she wants to talk to him as much as he waits all day to hear her voice.

“You’re not like anyone else I’ve met,” Padme says. He listens to her breathing on the other end of the line for a moment, before she says, “I feel like I’m meant to know you.”

Into the receiver, cradled against his ear, Anakin says, “I get it.”

Maybe it’s because so much of their time together is in fleeting moments that it grows so quickly, a wildfire around them. Anakin drives ten hours to catch her after a show, once. She flies overnight despite her manager’s best efforts to stop her so that she can tell him happy birthday in person.

He tells her things that he’s never told anyone before, not even Obi-Wan. About how when his mom had died, he had considered getting in the car and driving as far as he could into the desert, because the world had seemed meaningless. In turn, she reveals everything she’d wished she could run away from, too. Fame is not everything she wanted, and there are people in her life who she knows are trying to control her - talking to Anakin, Padme says, feels like she’s taking control of her life for the first time.

That’s how their relationship starts - stolen moments, whenever they’re in the same city, nights and mornings where time is precious. It’s their little secret, and for a while, that’s enough.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

If Obi-Wan notices how he’s racking up the long-distance phone bills, he doesn’t say anything. He knows who Padme is, of course, because everyone does, but he doesn’t know who he is to  Anakin. He probably wouldn’t even believe him if he were to say, hey, you know the top-selling female artist in the country? We talk every night on the phone about the things we fear and want, and I think she’s the one for me.

Obi-Wan plays one of her records, once, when Anakin comes home after a review session. He sees Anakin stop dead in the doorway, ask, “Is everything all right?”

“I didn’t know you listened to this kind of thing,” Anakin says, listening to the steady guitar thrumming, Padme’s voice floating everywhere like she’s here, too.

“I thought I’d give it a listen,” Obi-Wan says, flipping the sleeve in his hands, examining it, “Her voice is quite lovely. You know her?”

Oh, he does. “Not really my thing,” Anakin says, “It’s nice, though.”

He doesn’t see much of him anyway, because Obi-Wan books a recurring role on a prime-time television show, one that has him traveling to and from Tatooine for filming. Obi-Wan makes a point to come back whenever he can - he leaves his precious plants in the apartment, giving Anakin strict instructions on how to water them in his absence, as well as his books, the single framed photograph that he has of his father.

Anakin’s driving him to the airport, once, and maybe because he’s getting out of the car soon and won’t see him for the next two weeks, but Obi-Wan asks him, “Are you doing all right?”

“Peachy,” Anakin says, stifling a yawn, because even though he’s got the cash for it, Obi-Wan always books super cheap flights way too fucking early in the morning to be thrifty about it. And this is a little ritual of theirs, even though he complains about being Obi-Wan’s personal taxi, he wouldn’t dream of letting him go by himself.

“You would tell me,” Obi-Wan starts, and Anakin’s brain is too exhausted to process the way that he’s looking at Anakin - the way that he’s tired mostly because Padme could only talk for a few minutes and he’d stretched the cord all the way to his bedroom so that Obi-Wan wouldn’t hear, and he had felt too restless to sleep properly for the rest of the night - “If something was going on with you, right?”

Between Anakin’s inability to process complex emotions at five in the morning and Obi-Wan’s hesitance to be outright about anything, it goes over his head. “‘M fine,” Anakin says, hitting the dashboard when that rattling sound comes back, that he knows he’ll need to look at some time this weekend. “Just tired.”

They pull up to the drop-off curb, and Obi-Wan hoists his battered suitcase from the trunk. His hand lingers on Anakin’s shoulder when he pulls away from his hug, and he says, “Take care of yourself.”

“Same to you, old man,” Anakin says.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

It’d happened on the two-year anniversary of his mother’s death. Halfway through sharing a cigarette, on the fire escape of that shitty apartment they’d shared, Anakin had pressed his mouth to Obi-Wan’s.

He could blame it on hormones, on grief, on the way Obi-Wan’s thigh had pressed against his as their legs swung in the air. Though he knows that if he’s being honest with himself, the sun had glinted off of Obi-Wan’s auburn hair from where it was perfectly coiled around his shoulders, and Anakin had felt the intense desire to see if he could feel the curl of Obi-Wan’s mouth against his own, what he tasted like, and he had moved as he could no longer hold himself back.

It had been a dizzying sensation, feeling Obi-Wan’s sharp inhale, his mouth parting automatically under his. But then he had pulled back, so carefully, and he had said, “We'll forget that happened,” like Anakin’s heart wasn’t in his throat at that very moment, realizing that whatever it was that he felt for him, it wasn’t just - well. It wasn’t just a fleeting moment, not for him. 

But Anakin could take a hint. So he’d made some excuse on getting something to drink, to stand in front of the rattling refrigerator until he could collect himself and go back out.

Obi-Wan had gone to bed early, claiming that he had to be up early for rehearsal even though Anakin knew it was a lie. Early the next morning, while Anakin was still awake and tinkering with the broken heater just to have something to do with his hands, Obi-Wan came out rubbing his eyes and complaining good-naturedly of the life of an actor that he has to get up that early.

They didn’t talk about it.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

1989

Two months after he turns nineteen, he kisses her for the first time.

Padme has flown into the city to do some interview for a fashion magazine but lets him know that she’s free for the rest of the day, until she has to take a red-eye to Paris. Obi-Wan’s gone for the rest of the week, and there’s no one else who would notice when Anakin skips his afternoon classes and goes to meet her.

He’d whisked her away in his car, both of them escaping the camera flashes. She takes off those sunglasses as soon as she’s able to, and Anakin rolls down the windows, sees her dark hair flutter all around her like a bird taking off in flight, her eyes closed like she’s savoring the dry desert heat on her skin.

He takes her out of the city. They’re both sitting in his car, overlooking the canyon on the outskirts, where no one else is around.

“I missed you,” Anakin says, swallowing back what he really wants to say because he doesn’t want to scare her off. He stares out the front glass of the windshield when she doesn’t say anything at first.

He’s nearly startled by her hand on his, soft and cool. “Me too,” Padme says, and her thumb presses just above his wrist. “More than I should, I think.”

“I want you,” Anakin says, suddenly, turning his head to look at her. She’s still sitting in her seat, and he wants her as close as can, then, with a sudden intensity that pangs through him. “Don’t you feel the same?”

“We can’t tell anyone,” Padme says, and her mouth twists down slightly, unhappily, because they’ve had this conversation before. “I can’t put you through that - “

“But I can handle it - “

“I don’t want you to have to,” Padme tells him. “It’s not fair to you. You’re so young,” so world-weary at all of twenty-four, “And I don’t think you know what you want.”

“I love you,” Anakin says then, desperate that she has to know. “I know I want to be with you. I want to have you in any way you’ll let me - I want you to have me.”

“I love you too,” Padme answers, “But what can we do about it?” but his heart’s too busy singing to take that in, because she loves him, she loves him, she loves him -

Anakin unbuckles his seatbelt, and he leans in, nearly all the way until his face is so close to hers that he can see up close, how her irises have an even darker ring around them. “It’s enough for me,” he says, “Anything you want, anything, you can have it,“ offering his heart on a platter to her. “I’d follow you anywhere.”

“Anakin,” she manages, and he’s not even sure which one of them moves in, at last, until they’re kissing.

The roaring in his ears comes back, only it’s different from anything else he’s experienced before, as his mind whirls that he’s finally doing this. Padme’s mouth is soft under his, and when she gently puts a hand on the side of his head, he puts his hand over hers, keeping it there.

The kiss turns deeper, headier, and her tongue slipping along his lower lip, her fingers tugging him in closer, the moan that she gives when he brings his other hand to touch the side of her neck to keep her there.

“Ani,” he thinks he hears her say at once point, maybe because they are still out in public, and the windows are starting to get foggy, but he’s too busy being consumed by her to do anything else than press his forehead against hers, breathe in as deep as he can, as her hands weave themselves into her hair.

One of them pushes back the car seat, and then she’s on top of him, distracting in a rush of heat. When she puts her hands on him, he has to stifle a sob into the curve of her shoulder, kiss the base of her neck while he feels her clench down around his fingers. It’s awkward in the cramped space, messy, and yet it’s like he’s found another home, here, the way that she ducks her head to kiss him even when he’s lost in the sensation of her.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Both of them are a sweaty mess in the backseat, after, and the silence stretches out as they both collect themselves. Padme happens to catch his eye, then, and they both start giggling, any nervousness evaporating just as quickly as it had developed, as Anakin presses a kiss to her forehead, holding onto her as tight as he can.

A little while later, Padme says into his neck, “I wish my life was normal. That we could do whatever we want - that I don’t have to think about heading back to all of that right now.”

The idea comes to him as easily as it is to breathe. Anakin lifts his head enough to say, “What’s stopping us?”

“You’re sweet,” Padme says, but she can’t see the considering look on his face. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m serious,” Anakin says, “What do you want to do?” Padme turns and stares up into his face, reading his expression. He says, “Because I have an idea.”

The sun is dropping in the sky outside, and she runs her thumb over his chin. “Let’s hear it, then,” Padme says, and Anakin matches her smile.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

“Is this a crazy idea?”

“You’re the one who came up with it. Do you want to leave?”

“No,” Anakin says, as he takes her hand. “I really don’t.”

He takes her in, now, as if he can memorize this moment. She’s wearing a pale blue dress that reminds him of cool water, fluttering around the tops of her thighs, those sunglasses back on. He sort of wishes he was wearing something other than jeans and a tee-shirt, but she doesn’t seem to mind, and so neither does he.

They’d paid the officiant more than enough money so that he barely bats an eye when Padme signs her name with a practiced flourish, holding Anakin’s hand the entire time. In all, it takes barely half an hour.

They go into the building as a secret couple, and they come out husband and wife. Anakin has to duck behind a fake pillar when a couple recognizes her, hiding while Padme signs the back of their marriage license - out of everything - and he has to wait to rejoin her to go back outside.

They go back to her hotel, where she calls her manager and orders them to book her for a later flight, that something has come up.

The weight of what they’ve done seems to sink in, then. Very quietly, Padme says, “Do you regret it?”

Anakin wonders what Obi-Wan would think, that he’d gone and gotten himself married. “No,” he says, “Do you?”

Padme kisses the back of his hand in response. Neither of them have rings, and he finds himself fixated on their bare hands then. She must read his mind because she presses her lips to the flat bit of skin above the joint of his ring finger next.

“I have another crazy idea,” Padme says, speculatively glancing around the room. “Do you have a pen?”

There’s a needle and thread in the complimentary sewing kit, and Anakin watches as she breaks open the pen he’d had, soaking the threat and needle into the ink, before sterilizing the whole mess with one of the tiny liquor bottles from the minibar.

Anakin takes a swig from the champagne bottle as she gets to work on his, first. He watches Padme very carefully tattoos a tiny heart on the underside of his ring finger right there on the bed. It hurts, but he distracts himself by watching the small wrinkle between her brows as she concentrates.

He does hers, next, and she flinches even less than he did. The heart on her finger comes out a little lopsided, but Padme says, “It’s perfect,” smiling up at him so brilliantly, smears of ink still on her fingertips.

The bottle gets knocked to the ground soon after, and Anakin laces their fingers together on the mattress. He traces up and down Padme’s spine as she fights to stay awake because she’ll have to get up soon to go - but he greedily takes in this moment, for as long as he can.

It’s still their secret, but it feels so much more than that, now.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Obi-Wan has a break in the middle of filming, and he comes back home. He’s grown the start of a beard, and his hair’s gotten even longer. Anakin grins so hard his face hurts when he sees him, says, “Were you really acting, or did they pay you to teach yoga to everyone on set?”

“Very funny,” Obi-Wan says into his shoulder, clasping the back of Anakin’s head affectionally. Some girl stops him on the way out, asks for his signature on the back of a receipt, during which he valiantly ignores Anakin’s waggling eyebrows over her head.

To boot, there’s a huge billboard with his face on it on the way back from the airport. Obi-Wan very nearly takes the car and leaves him after Anakin insists on pulling over to ogle up at it, shout to people going by underneath it, “You would not believe who I have in the car with me!”

Obi-Wan seems content to slump onto the couch as soon as he gets back to the apartment, closing his eyes and exhaling. Putting his keys down, Anakin lets his eyes linger just for a moment on the open sprawl of his legs before catching himself. He says, “You’re not falling asleep on me, are you?”

“I’m beginning to forget why I missed you,” Obi-Wan says, his eyes still closed.

“You can’t get enough of me,” Anakin tells him, shoving his feet out of the way so he can sit on the couch too. “So where are we going tonight?”

“Tonight? I’ll have to make myself leave this couch for my bed.”

“Come on, when’s the last time we went out for a night on the town?”

“The last time we went out,” Obi-Wan says, his voice dry, “Oh yes, that’s right. We ended up stranded ten miles away from the nearest living being because you decided to enter a drinking competition and bet my car on top of it all - “

“All right, all right,” Anakin concedes quickly, “Mistakes were made all around. You’re famous now, though, so we have to celebrate!”

“I’d like to celebrate by being home for once,” Obi-Wan says, but his eyes do open. “God, I am famous, aren’t I?”

“Fame looks good on you,” Anakin says. “Come on, first round’s on me.”

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Obi-Wan relents, and they head to a bar where neither of them is on the do-not-serve list. Anakin buys Obi-Wan an old-fashioned because it’s the only thing he drinks at places like this, and a beer for himself.

Meanwhile, Obi-Wan is stopped three more times by people who recognize him from the television promos. The fourth time, he says quickly, “Oh, I’d love to talk about it, but my friend looks like he needs my help - you see, he’s an awful lightweight, yes, can’t take him anywhere without supervision,“ and he yanks at Anakin’s arm until he’s stumbling, pulling him into the grungy bathroom with him.

The door closes, muffling the music of the shitty cover band outside. Anakin watches Obi-Wan’s head fall back against the empty stall, the tension releasing from his shoulders now that it’s just them. “It’s all so strange to me,” he muses, “People think they know me all of the sudden. I suppose that’ll be my life for a while, won’t it?”

Anakin brings his own hands up to run through his hair, feeling flushed, and leaving them there. Maybe he shouldn’t have had that second beer. “You’ll get used to it,” he says. “You’re Obi-Wan Kenobi, all right? You can do anything.”

Obi-Wan smiles, then, a small thing utterly unlike the look on his face out there or on any billboard, and about a million times more charming. “You always know what to say,” he says, “Even if you insisted on dragging me into this hellhole.”

“Hey,” Anakin says, “You’re the one who dragged me into this bathroom. It’s disgusting.”

“Better in here than - what is that?” Obi-Wan asks, suddenly, and Anakin realizes he can see the tiny tattoo on his finger from the way his fingers are splayed toward him. “On your hand. When did you get that?”

He lowers his arms. “Uh,” Anakin says, as Obi-Wan seems to take the opportunity to grab his hand to study it before he can think to hide it from him. The lie comes too easily. “One of my friends from the university, we all got way too drunk one night, you know how it is.”

“Your friends,” Obi-Wan echoes, both of them looking down at the slightly blurred outline of the heart.  Anakin curses in his head.

“Yeah,” Anakin says, hating that he has to lie about this - about Padme, his wife, with Obi-Wan. His giddiness from earlier disappears, then, and he swallows. “Like I said, way too drunk. Lucky that it didn’t get infected, you know?”

“Well, at least it’s not from a girlfriend,” Obi-Wan says, entirely missing the way that Anakin stiffens at the gesture because he lets go of his hand at the same time. “Matching tattoos cursing the relationship, and all that.”

He means it as a joke, but it strikes exactly wrong. “Right,” Anakin snaps, “Because you’re the expert on those.”

“Anakin?” Obi-Wan says, sounding confused, and he forces a much more relaxed expression on his face to hide the sudden tension that he feels. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” Anakin says, pushing up off the wall so that he can turn away, hide how he needs to swallow to hide his tight throat. “Hey, let’s go somewhere else - what about that place on second street?”

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

It’s one of the very few things he and Obi-Wan don’t talk about, that kind of thing. Though Anakin knows enough from working at the garage that friends talk about the girls they’re fucking on a regular basis, it just doesn’t come up. Obi-Wan never talks to him about it, and he doesn’t ask Anakin about who he’s calling late at night all the time either.

He knows that there’s something going on between Obi-Wan and Satine, an actress who he’d met on set. Obi-Wan is most reluctant to discuss her for whatever reason, and the few times that Anakin has met her has done little to shed light on that particular situation.

(“She doesn’t seem to like me very much,” Anakin notes once, and Obi-Wan frowns.

“She doesn’t know you,” he corrects, and he changes the topic before Anakin can ask anything more on the subject.)

He suspects that Obi-Wan has a similar kind of situation with Quinlan, a photographer who works at the theater, who touches Obi-Wan a little too long sometimes when they’re having dinner at the apartment. But when he tries to ask Obi-Wan about him, the man shuts down that line of conversation even faster, despite Anakin trying to make it clear that he in no way judges whoever Obi-Wan shares a bed with, even if he thinks that Obi-Wan could do a lot better than Quinlan, who smirks at Anakin like he’s in on some secret.

Maybe that hippie sanctuary had some funny ideas about sex that had imprinted on Obi-Wan. He knows he’s got his ideas (Anakin's tagged along to enough free love lectures and protests at this point that he knows where Obi-Wan falls on those things) but it’s just as likely that he doesn’t want to share that private part of his life with Anakin.

Which is fine. Anakin’s keeping his own pretty fucking big secret from him, isn’t he?

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

“I’m going on a world tour next,” Padme says, her hand carding through his hair. She sounds distant, when she adds, “They want me to fly out starting next week.”

They’re in her hotel room once again, and the door had barely been closed before Padme’s hands were yanking his shirt off despite Anakin’s mouth already on her neck, both of them ravenous to touch each other for the first time in weeks. He already feels a bruise rising on his ribcage from where she’d backed him up against the door, both of them forgetting about the doorknob, not that he minded when she’d gracefully sank to her knees and he’d nearly given himself a concussion on the wall.

(Not that he will ever look at that first time in the car unfavorably, but now that they’ve gotten familiar with each other, that their bodies are starting to remember each other, it’s so, so much better.)

Anakin pulls back a little, as she continues, “It’s going to be nearly a year - they’re saying thirty countries minimum. Then my contract is up with the studio - and I don’t know where I’ll be, then.”

“A whole year,” Anakin says, processing this. He rolls over to stare up at the ceiling. “Okay.”

“I know it’s going to be a long time,” Padme says, quietly, and he realizes that she’s breaking the news to him like she’s expecting him to have a meltdown over it. “I know it’s not what you want to hear - “

“I’ll follow you,” Anakin says, just as easily. There’s no hesitation in the way he considers it - he’ll have to figure out something with the apartment, but the school can be put off, his boss at the garage never really cared if he was there or not. He’ll have to tell Obi-Wan, but other than that - “I’ll go on tour. It’ll be an adventure, right?”

Her fingers go still on his head. “I can’t have you do that,” Padme tells him, though, “It’s not right, not when you have your life here - “

“I can make the change,” Anakin says, stubbornly. Maybe this whole concept is coming entirely too easily to him, but he injects the conviction his voice anyway. “We’re married, Padme, but we barely get to see each other. What’s so wrong about wanting that to chance?”

“We knew that it would be tough, for now,” Padme says, nearly painfully soft. “I don’t want you to stop your life for me. I won’t let you.”

That stings. He pushes up in the bed, the sheets falling from his legs, moving away from her. “What, so you don’t want people to know you married me?”

“I didn’t say that,” Padme says, then with a frustrated exhale that has him moving around to face her, “I have sponsors who - well, it won’t look good to them, that we got married so quickly. But more importantly, I don’t want anyone to start tearing into your life, either, because that’s what will happen once they find out. You don’t know what it’s like, to have that level of scrutiny over everything you do.”

“So we just keep us a secret for the rest of our lives?”

“I didn’t say that. I have a contract, and obligations to follow their rules for now, and those don’t go away. Clovis is trying his best to get me out of them, but it’s going to take time.”

Anakin scowls. He can’t help but snipe, “Oh, well, as long as you have Clovis around, you don’t need me, is that it?”

Padme pushes herself up on her elbows. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’ve seen the way he hangs around you!”

“He’s not - you know what, you know you have nothing to be jealous about,” Padme tells him, two growing splotches on her cheeks, “I wish you would just get that through your head - “

“And I wish that you weren’t pushing me away!” Anakin explodes. Someone hits the wall connecting to their room, then, and he grits his teeth so hard his jaw hurts. “Padme - “

“This was a mistake,” Padme says then, and her entire shoulders are heaving like she’s barely keeping in her anger too. Then, in a lower voice - “What if all of this was a mistake?”

A cold feeling goes over Anakin’s entire body then, instantly worse than any anger he felt before. “You don’t mean that. I - we love each other, right?”

“I love you,” Padme says, and she sounds so sad that something inside him twists nearly painfully tight, “But it’s not just about that.”

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

She leaves him in that hotel room, slipping out with her suitcase and a hat over her head to hide her face, as he stays paralyzed there, feeling as though his heart’s been ripped out of his chest. Anakin’s eyes feel like they’re burning red-hot with tears, as he pushes blindly by people in the street in an effort to get home, not really noticing anything else in his haste to be anywhere but that hotel.

Obi-Wan’s out when he gets to their apartment. There’s a note on the table that says he’s meeting someone for dinner, he’ll be back tomorrow, no need to worry.

Anakin spends about ten seconds in the dead-silent space before he’s seizing his latest project, a mockup of an engine he’d been tasked to build, and he hurls it right against the wall.

The subsequent crash and the pieces flying everywhere do unfortunately little to soothe what feels like a hurricane building in his chest. Anakin sinks to the ground, holding his head, and he stays like that for a long time.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

“You’re a handsome kid,” the man says, eyeing him, then says, “You want to be on the cover of a magazine?”

“Not interested,” Anakin tells him, and moves to go, but he’s stopped with a hand on his arm.

He thinks about wrenching it off, only the man says,  “Think about it,” writing something and pressing a card into his hand. “There’s a gig we need someone who looks like you for. Easy money, yeah?”

He’s in no mood to go to his lecture, nor does he want to go back home to face Obi-Wan - or worse, sit by the phone and wait for Padme to call. He’s not even really sure why he goes there in the first place - maybe because he’d felt like he was free-floating, and the slightest push at that moment sent him down that path.

So Anakin goes to the address he’d been given that very afternoon, mostly because he needs something to distract himself with. He can always use the money, after all, and the man had been pretty insistent that he’d be perfect for it.

There are other people, far more handsome and well-dressed than he is, all standing around in a waiting room and pretending not to consider each other. Anakin, who couldn’t give less of shit on whether or not he got the job, gives someone his name and spends the entire wait staring a hole into the wall opposite of him.

He’s still glowering when his name gets called, and then he’s brought up in front of a table of three people. One of whom sets down a clipboard and eyes him for about thirty seconds, before asking, “You ever model before?”

That’s how he gets his first job. Anakin shows up to the shoot - for a local fashion magazine, of all things - with a surly look on his face, and someone hustles him into expensive-looking clothing. He gets paid more than he would make in a week stripping parts off stolen cars, all by standing against some brick wall with his hair pushed high above his forehead, looking where people direct him to do, following the directions without any issue, and feeling dead inside the whole time.

He blows his first paycheck buying drinks for everyone at the bar that very night. He doesn’t bother leaving a message for Obi-Wan back home - he’s probably out with Satine or Quinlan or anyone else who’s worthy of his attention tonight - and he’s not in a mood to tell him what’s wrong, either.

Anakin is still in the bar when that song of hers comes over on the radio. It’s not the one that he usually hears, the one that made it big first, but the slower, sadder one, one that shouldn’t be playing at one in the morning at a dive bar when he’s trying to forget things like how her lower lip had wobbled when she’s said goodbye.

Someone bumps into him from behind, a casual mistake. Anakin whirls around, and he’s in a fight before he knows it, his fist hitting flesh with a satisfying smack.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Obi-Wan picks him up from the holding cell the next morning. His arms are crossed in front of his chest as he watches Anakin slink out a little past six in the morning, evidently having posted his bail. He’s wearing a pale grey suit, the fine material stretching over his shoulders, looking like he belongs somewhere important and not fixing Anakin’s mistakes for him.

Anakin, distinctly aware of how Obi-Wan’s taking in the cut on his eyebrow, the bruises on his knuckles, says, “Aren’t you going to yell at me?”

Obi-Wan shakes his head, slowly, and somehow that’s worse than getting shouted at for his dumb mistakes.

“How long has it been going on?” he asks him, later, sitting in the passenger’s seat of his own car. He’d let Anakin drive them both back, even though he hates Anakin’s driving - he always grips on the edge of his seat, white-knuckled whenever Anakin takes too-sharp turns around the corner - because he knows that it steadies him.

Before he can even open his mouth, though, Obi-Wan says sharply, “And don’t say that you’re fine, because I quite literally just picked you up from a police station. Something happened.”

“It’s not important now,” Anakin says, staring out the windshield.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Obi-Wan says, in a much kinder voice, “But you shouldn’t keep it all bottled up, either. Would you tell me?”

“There’s nothing to bottle up,” Anakin tells him flatly. “She left me, I reacted badly. That’s it.” He wonders if somewhere, Padme’s putting together divorce papers. If she’ll call ahead or he’ll just get a nasty surprise in the mail once day. He has to stop at a red light, and his hands move restlessly over the wheel, fiddling with the gearstick.

“It might seem like the end of the world,” Obi-Wan says, and he’s probably trying to say all the right things, but it’s not what he wants to hear right now  - “But people come in and out our lives, Anakin, and we can’t begrudge that some things run their course - “

“You think I don’t - you don’t need to tell me that!”

Obi-Wan’s hand lands on his, nearly startling him into slamming on the gas. “Anakin,” he says, quietly, “Look at me.”

Anakin risks a glance over, but there’s no pity on Obi-Wan’s face, at least. “I don’t know your… exact situation, with this girl,” he says, “But it’s not the end of the world. You’ll recover, and it won’t feel be so bad one day.”

“Yeah,” Anakin says, turning back to face front, “Sure.”

Obi-Wan lets out a loose breath, mostly through his nose. “Can you humor me, for once in your life, and believe that I know what I’m talking about?”

Anakin wonders if anyone’s ever broken Obi-Wan’s heart before. (For a fleeting second, he wonders if he knows that he’s definitely broken other’s hearts before). “Impossible,” he says, managing a weak smile ahead of him. “The day I listen to you - it’ll be the end of the world, isn’t that what you always say?”

Obi-Wan, not saying anything more, lets go of his hand. The light goes green, and Anakin continues to drive.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

At home, though, he can tell that Obi-Wan is hiding something.

By the time Anakin takes a fast shower, getting dressed again in clothes that aren’t reeking of sweat and whiskey, he’s still in that suit of his, wandering about the apartment like he has nothing better to do.

He knows how Obi-Wan gets squirrelly, unable to stay still, whenever there’s something that he doesn’t want Anakin to know about or otherwise uncomfortable about. (For an actor, he’s frankly awful at lying to him, at least). Anakin lets him putter around the kitchen, taking an unreasonably long time making them both coffee - not tea, another warning sign - before he decides to ask outright, “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Obi-Wan says, dumping entirely too much sugar into Anakin’s cup, the way he likes it. “Should we go over to that diner for breakfast?”

“Just tell me whatever’s on your mind,” Anakin says, forcing cheer into his voice, “Come on, if it’s good news, I could use it.”

“All right,” Obi-Wan says, slowly setting down the spoon and turning to face him. Whatever he expects him to say, it’s not, “They’ve renewed the series.”

“That’s great,” Anakin says, relief pulsing through him. It quickly goes away, though, when Obi-Wan’s face doesn’t change. “And you’re happy about that, right?”

“And they want me to move out there,” Obi-Wan says, “So they can film the entire season. Full-time.”

He reads into the silence that stretches out at this revelation. Away from Tatooine. Away from him.

“Oh,” Anakin says. He moves to stare at the mugs, then, still steaming on the counter. He repeats, “That’s - you know, that’s really great.”

“Anakin - “

“You’re leaving today,” Anakin realizes, then, seeing the situation for what it is. The nice suit, it’s the one that Obi-Wan wears on the plane. He’s not going back to bed, because his suitcases are probably packed up right now, waiting for him to pick them up and leave easily. “You - are you going to be late, then? I don’t even know where my car is, but I can drive you in yours - ”

“Never mind that,” Obi-Wan says, studying him with a maddeningly even expression, “I think I should stay here for a while. Whatever’s going on with you - “

“Nothing,” Anakin says, through his teeth, “Is going on with me.”

Finally, something close to pity comes across Obi-Wan’s face, at last as he’d expected. “You’ve clearly had some kind of breakup, with someone important. You don’t have to talk about it with me, but I’m not just going to let you wallow in it - “

“You said it yourself, people go in and out of your life all the time,” Anakin cuts in, coolly throwing back his earlier words, and seeing him wince as he says it. “I’m happy for you, I really am.”

“Really,” Obi-Wan says, flatly, “Because you look quite the opposite.”

“I’m just surprised,” Anakin says, and his jaw aches from keeping it in, as he had in the hotel room. “How long have you known that you were going, then?”

He meant to ask it as a casual side, trying to hide the way that his fist clenches at his side beyond his control. But Obi-Wan hesitates, for a split second - and Anakin knows him well enough that he can read into the pause.

First Padme, now him.

“Oh,” Anakin says, then heavily, “Were you just going to go, then, if you didn't need to come to bail me out? Just left another one of your notes for me?”

“You know that’s not - “

“You should go now,” Anakin says, slightly too loud, and Obi-Wan flinches like he’s been hit. “I wouldn’t want to ruin your plans. Thanks for picking me up.”

“Would you hold on - “

“It’s fine,” Anakin tells him, and he dodges Obi-Wan’s attempt to stop him from brushing by him. “Have a safe flight, Obi-Wan. Try to call sometimes, won’t you?”

Obi-Wan seizes his upper arm, though, before he can slam the door in his face. “Look at me,” he says, curtly. Even though Anakin’s been several inches taller than him for years, he manages to tug him away, his forearm pressed against his chest, Anakin’s back against the wall. “Anakin, look at me.”

Anakin scoffs, refusing to look at him this close, half-heartedly struggling in his grip. “Anakin,” Obi-Wan repeats, his voice at odds with the way that he’s staring up intently into his face, as if willing him to listen, “You don’t ruin anything.”

“Would you let go of me?”

Obi-Wan’s arm moves back, but he doesn’t move away from Anakin. “I will, when you actually listen to me,” he says, too calm, in contrast to how Anakin can feel the flutter of his too-quick heartbeat against his chest. “I’m not going anywhere, not really. I’m not going to leave you - ”

The words cause something in him to twist painfully tight. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Anakin tells him, seeing Obi-Wan’s mouth curl unhappily. “You have nothing keeping you here. Why should we pretend anything else?”

Something hurt flashes across his face. “Why would you say that? When have I ever made you think that I don’t care about you?”

If he’s too stubborn to see what will come, then Anakin will just have to make the first push, then, won’t he? Rip off that particular bandage. So Anakin lets his eyes slide down Obi-Wan’s face, to his mouth, meaningfully, keeping them there.

It’s not fair, but it's effective. Obi-Wan falters, then. Anakin says, “That’s what I thought.”

“That - that has nothing to do with you - “

“Seems like it does,” Anakin says, and he leans in even closer like he’s been dared to. Maybe it’s because being this close makes him feel like he’s teetering on the edge of a cliff, how he can feel Obi-Wan’s fingers dig into his shirt. Maybe he thinks it’ll make him let him go, finally.

Only it backfires because then he feels Obi-Wan’s shuddering breath against his mouth, and he realizes, belatedly, that it’s not a matter of lack of want on his part. He sees it in his eyes, the way his pupils are huge, then. Anakin doesn’t have to kiss him to realize that it wasn’t an issue of reciprocating - or at least, it’s not now, not with how he’s looking at Anakin like that, and it sends lightning down his spine - too late - to realize this.

“We can’t,” Obi-Wan says, his voice tinged with something wild, “You - you are more than ten years younger than me. I knew you when you were a child - "

Anakin leans in, impossibly close, and he sees Obi-Wan’s eyes widen. “I’m not anymore,” Anakin says, then like he’s twisting the knife in his chest, only it hurts him too - “I think you know, that, too. So what’s stopping you?” and his lips graze the very edge of his mouth.

He’s gone too far, he knows, the moment he does so. Obi-Wan yanks his arm away from him like he’s been burned, and there’s a betrayal in his eyes, then - whether it’s that he’s voicing it out loud, or he’d use his feelings like that against him at this moment, he doesn’t know.

“Yeah,” Anakin says, bitterly, “That’s what I thought.”

This time, he doesn’t stop Anakin from going into his room. He throws the door shut so hard that the entire apartment seems to shake around him, and the sensation doesn’t seem to subside, either, not for a long time.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

He tries not to listen, but the walls have always been thin. He can hear the thunk of something heavy moving from Obi-Wan’s room - his bags, probably filled with his precious books, then the door opening and closing.

He thinks he’s left, only then the front door opens, again, and the footsteps lead all the way up to Anakin’s room.

“The apartment will be yours as long as you want it,” Obi-Wan says, finally, through the door, and Anakin closes his eyes, pretends like the last two days never happened. “Anakin, I’m - would you just come out here, so we can talk?”

He doesn’t say anything, and so Obi-Wan leaves at last.

(It hurts as much as Padme leaving him, earlier, and even worse, that’s what may be clues him into the whole situation, first.)

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

He makes it through twenty minutes of his next programming class. It all just seems so - so meaningless, Anakin thinks, that he decides he can’t do it anymore. He stands up, and he walks out of the room, to the bewilderment of his professor and the other students. He doesn’t look back.

He’s missed enough shifts at the garage at this point that he doesn’t even bother showing up there, either. So with nothing better to do, Anakin digs out the business card that he had received, and he goes to the other address on it, printed on the front as the headquarters.

Mace Windu is a stern-looking man, not at all what he expected, sitting behind a glass desk with his fingers steepled under his chin as he regards him. Anakin says, “So how does this all work?”

“This?” the man asks, with raised eyebrows.

“Modeling,” Anakin says bluntly, “One of your people sent me on a job a few days ago. I want more, but I want to know how I do that.”

“I represent our clients here to designers and other agencies,” Windu says, his eyes still hard, “Including modeling jobs, in exchange for a commission for what they are able to book.”

“You think I can cut it?”

“Maybe,” Windu allows, “But it’s not just about looking good in a picture. We only take people willing to commit, who’ll show up. So what do you want, kid?”

Anakin smiles, and it feels like it’s stretching his face open. “My name is Anakin Skywalker,” he says, “And I want to be unforgettable.”

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

He takes small jobs, then, that barely cover his bills. But most importantly, it keeps him busy, and Anakin throws himself into the world of modeling. He doesn’t have to think about Padme or Obi-Wan.

(He doesn’t get any divorce papers in the mail, but Padme doesn’t call him, either. He catches the occasional news article about her wildly successful tour, and wonders of an alternate world, when he followed her anyway.)

He meets Quinlan Vos again, of all people, shooting for a motorcycle advertisement in Tattooine. The man looks the same as Anakin had remembered him, and he recognizes him when Anakin comes up and introduces himself.

“Skywalker,” Quinlan says, his eyes sharp on him. “Didn’t expect to ever see you here.”

“You talk to him much?” Anakin asks, very casually, during a break. It’s too hot to be wearing this leather jacket for so long, but he finds he’s putting off going back to get out of it for a bit, to ask him this.

“Who, Obi-Wan? Not in months,” Quinlan says with a shrug, then looks at him again, carefully. “You mean you haven’t?”

“He left town a while back,” Anakin says, careful to keep his voice light. “Haven’t seen him since.”

“Interesting,” Quinlan says, in a way that he doesn’t entirely like, but he leaves Anakin then to go adjust one of the lights, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

It is, admittedly, a lot more work than he’d expected. Part of his contract stipulates that he can’t go out drinking or do any drugs before shoots (a rule he usually sticks to), he can’t change his hair, get any more tattoos (his makeup artist despairs whenever she has to cover up the tiny heart on his finger), or do anything that’ll be unfavorable by the agency’s standards.

The small jobs turn to bigger jobs, ones that pay really well. It’s not long before Mace Windu brings him in to draw up an actual contract, one that’ll ensure that he gets paid a ridiculous amount of money, to start, and one that means that people start to recognize him on the street now, ask him for his autograph, especially after the perfume shoot he does which lets him buy his first Corvette, a splurge that had very briefly made him feel something other than empty.

The photoshoots, the ads, all the other jobs - they take him out of Tattooine, to the rest of the world. If someone had told him at sixteen that he’d be traveling on a plane most weeks, going to the next gig, he would’ve laughed at them. It opens up a whole new world to him, one that he would have never seen coming, but he takes in stride.

A few weeks after that, Anakin moves out of the apartment, because something sets him on edge every time he looks at the empty bookshelves, the lack of teacups cluttering the sink. He tries calling Obi-Wan exactly once, and when he doesn’t pick up, Anakin sets down the phone, and he doesn’t try again.

He doesn’t leave a note, either.

He can afford a much nicer apartment now. It’s in a brand-new building, in a section of the city which is nothing like the old place. The realtor is enthusiastic about all its new perks - “That’s right, that’s a king-sized waterbed in there!” - while Anakin trails around the too-large rooms, all of them eerily quiet.

He dreams of ink-smeared skin, of flashing blue eyes, of dark and reddish hair mingling together in the sunlight - but the dreams slip away when he wakes up, and he wouldn’t dare let himself hold onto something as tenuous, either.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Ahsoka Tano is the daughter of Plo Koon, one of the partners for the talent agency. She’s all of sixteen years old, with two bright blue-and-white buns on the top of her head that wobble when she plops down across from him in a chair, while Anakin’s waiting outside the office for a meeting with Windu.

With the utmost authority, she informs him, “You’re the highest-earning model at the agency.”

“Thanks,” Anakin says, after a long pause when he wonders why Plo’s daughter is cornering him like this.

“It’s just a fact,” Ahsoka says, “But it means whatever it is, you’re good at what you do, so I knew I needed to talk to you.”

Anakin raises an eyebrow. “You want to be a model?”

“I wanted to be an actor, once,” Ahsoka says, “But I know that it’s much more likely that I’ll have - what, twenty years, at most, before everyone thinks I’m too old for anything. It’d be even worse if I was a model - no offense.”

“None taken,” Anakin says. “So what do you want with me?”

“I’m going to do my own thing for a few years,” Ahsoka says. There’s an unholy gleam to her eye as she lays it out for him. “I’m going to go to university, then to law school. Then I’ll become the best contract lawyer in the city, and then you’re going to want to hire me by then.”

Anakin considers her and then holds out his hand. “I believe you,” he says, “I look forward to it.”

“Anakin Skywalker,” Ahsoka says, “You’d better.”

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

He hears about how Obi-Wan Kenobi is rumored to have signed onto the latest installment of this wildly popular spy movie franchise, one that will undoubtedly make him into a household name if the news is true. Anakin hears about it at the agency, because apparently they’ve been trying to poach Kenobi for years, and there are rumors that with such a contract, he’ll be looking for new representation.

Anakin longs to call him up to ask him if it’s true. If he’s finally found his footing in his fame, or if he feels adrift as Anakin feels, sometimes, adjusting to his life. It’s deeply ironic, he thinks, that they’re both experiencing something similar, and yet have never been so far apart.

He doesn’t call him, though, out of pride or stubbornness, he’s not sure. He wonders how it could have fallen apart so quickly, how something he had been so sure of had broken apart just like that.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Whoever he expects to see when he answers the door of his new apartment, on a rainy Thursday night, it’s not Padme Amidala in the flesh.

His heart leaps into his throat. Her dark hair is wet like she walked through the storm to get here. She doesn’t even have those sunglasses of her on, even though any of his neighbors could open the door and recognize her - recognize either of them, staring at each other like they’ve both seen a ghost.

Before he can say anything, though, Padme blurts out, “I saw you on the cover of a magazine.”

Anakin’s reply is not much better, though. “I - they take photos of me now. Shouldn’t you be in Corellia?”

They blink at each other for a few, long, moments, before she says, hesitantly, “I wanted to see you. Can I come in?”

“Of course,” Anakin says, too fast, nearly whipping open the door so that she can pass by him. Her hair smells faintly floral, like that expensive shampoo she adores so much, and he has to close his eyes for the briefest moment as he lets her in.

He follows her into the apartment, feeling the urge to wring his hands as she looks around the apartment. It’s clean, mostly because he’s rarely there and yet still hires someone to come in and vacuum every week, but it’s not really what he’s nervous about, is it?

“It’s nice,” Padme says, fingertips trailing over the empty mantle, looking out to the floor-to-ceiling windows on the far side of the living room. She’s being generous because Anakin knows that it doesn’t look like a home, not at all. “Does Obi-Wan live here too?”

Something closes in Anakin’s throat, as he leans on the back of the couch. “No,” he says, “We don’t - we haven’t spoken, lately.”

Padme looks over at him, sharply. “What do you mean?”

Anakin shakes his head, minutely. “Padme, what are you doing here?” he asks instead. If she’s come to deliver the final blow to their relationship, their marriage, then he thinks he’d prefer to get it out of the way now, before he can have something stupid like hope bubble up in his chest that she’s here, now.

She doesn’t pull out that dreaded manilla envelope, though. Instead, she brings her hands in front of her, clasps them together, as he waits. “I was tired, at the start of the tour,” Padme says, right off the bat. “And then I realized that I missed a few of my monthly cycles. So I took a test - “

Anakin blinks, manages to get out, “Are you - “

“No,” Padme says, quickly, letting go of her hands. “It was a false alarm. But it got me thinking about you, about us - the last time we spoke, I made you think that I didn’t want you by my side, and that was wrong of me.”

“Look, we don’t have to - “

“Let me say this,” Padme says, gently interrupting. “Please.” She swallows, and for once, she looks just as vulnerable by the declaration as he felt. How he feels, standing in front of her even now. “What we have, it could never be a mistake, as long as we want to be together. I want to be with you. I want this to work - and I came here to see if that’s why you want, too.”

Anakin closes the space between them. He wants to pull her close, to kiss her, but he thinks that maybe not talking is how things got cracked in the first place. “I’ve missed you so much,” he confesses, “I want us to figure it out too, whatever that means.”

Padme smiles at him, tentative, and as brilliant as a rising sun. “I don’t want to miss my chance at us,” Padme says, echoing what he’d said to her when they first met. He sucks a surprised breath, as she takes a step closer to him. “I brought you something, in case you say yes.”

He watches as she reaches into her purse, and she pulls out a small velvet box. “We never got this far,” she says, opening it to show him its contents.

He’s nearly rendered speechless for the second time that evening. “Though I was supposed to get those,” Anakin says, blinking down at the two gold rings nestled in the fabric.

“Maybe only we should decide what we’re supposed to do,” Padme tells him, as he touches the larger one. “If it works for us, why shouldn’t we?”

“You - I love you so much,” Anakin says, nearly fervently, looking between her and the rings.

He wants so badly to say yes that it hurts. But then he remembers. He finds himself stepping back, Padme’s eyes tracking him as he takes a deep breath, preparing himself. “There’s something you need to know,” Anakin says, because he can’t start this again, not if he wants to be honest with her about everything, “About Obi-Wan.”

The words die in his throat, though, for a moment, at the terrifying possibility of voicing his feelings out loud. “You love him,” Padme says like it’s that simple.

“It’s not just - “ and Anakin swallows because he doesn’t even know how to voice how the way that he missed her, the way he’d missed Obi-Wan, has made him realize how he feels like he’s strung between the two of them. How he can’t envision a future without both of them - only he can’t have both, can he? And how can he promise her all of him when there will always be a part of him yearning - “It’s not that easy.”

“Anakin,” Padme says, again, and he realizes he’s been staring off between them, silently agonizing. “I understand.”

“I really don’t think you do.” Anakin can’t make himself look at her, as he says, “Nothing ever happened between us, but if it had - I know I wanted it to be like that. Like us.”

Her hand comes over his, then, and she steps in close. He braces himself - “I’d like to meet him, sometime,” Padme tells him, “If you love him, he’s important to me, too.”

Anakin laughs, then, a little desperate. “I haven’t talked to him in weeks,” he says, “Pretty sure he hates me.”

“He doesn’t,” Padme says, “Not if what you’ve told me about him is true.” Her fingers fold into his, and she says, “Whatever happens, I’ll be there for you. Do you trust me?”

Anakin closes his eyes as she lifts herself on her toes, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Always,” he vows, and he means it.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

1990

“Anakin Skywalker,” the reporter says, “You’ve had quite the meteoric rise to fame. Can you talk a little about what the last year’s been like for you?”

“Well, to start, I got married,” Anakin says, letting a smirk come across his face. “Can’t complain about that. And yes, I did this shoot for this little fashion magazine. Made the front cover, too, which I was pretty proud of.”

The reporter laughs. “You’ve heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen,” as Anakin looks right into the camera, “He should be pretty proud, being the first man to be on the cover of Vogue. Everyone wants to know - what’s next for Anakin Skywalker?”

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Anakin resists the urge, even after all this time, to flinch away from the makeup artist who’s trying to scrub the last bits of makeup off of his face. “I can get it,” he says at last, “Really, I’ve got it,“ as he persuades her to give up control of the wipe. “Great. Thanks.”

He’s got dinner reservations with Padme tonight, at some bistro where she knows the head chef, who will let them go in the service door because the two of them going out nowadays usually means shutting down the block, with so many people wanting to catch a glimpse of them. It’s been a long year of getting accustomed to having people know who he is, and on top of it being known as Padme Skywalker’s husband.

Checking the time on the watch, Anakin nearly misses the man who’s waiting for him outside of the dressing room. “Shit,“ Anakin swears, bumping into him, “Sorry - “ and then he stops, dead in his tracks, upon seeing who it is.

“Hello there,” Obi-Wan says, leaning against the wall.

And Anakin -

Anakin says, dumbly, “You cut your hair.”

A smile teases the corner of his mouth. “Very astute of you to notice,” Obi-Wan tells him. His beard is shorter, too, neatly cut against his jaw, with a new streak of pale hair just under his mouth. Anakin forces his eyes up as he adds, “They say it’s in style, but I believe you would know more about those things now out of the two of us.”

“You’re here,” Anakin says, still caught on this, “You’re - why are you here?” He probably sounds accusing, because that’s all that can seem to leak out from his voice, from the surprised-joyful-anxious mix that’s building in his chest.

“I was in town,” Obi-Wan says, and his tone just a little too light, “And I thought I would stop in to see an old friend.” There’s a tension in his posture, then, as if he’s ready to flee, though, probably because Anakin still looks like a deer trapped in headlights. “If he’s not too busy, of course. I’ve heard he’s gotten quite popular.”

“Oh,” Anakin says, “You mean me. I’m popular now.” Holy shit, he has got to get it together.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan says, gravely, “I suppose you’ve stayed quite humble, haven’t you?”

Anakin gapes at him, and then before he realizes what he’s doing, he’s hitting him in the arm. “You’re one to talk,” he says, “Did they accidentally add a couple of zeros onto that movie deal of yours everyone’s talking about? I can’t believe anyone would pay you that much.”

He wonders, for a split second it’s too much. But then the corners of Obi-Wan’s eyes crinkle, and just like that, it’s like the last year and a half never happened. “That’s before the residuals, too,” he says, glancing around like it’s a secret between the two of them.

That’s how for the second time in his life, Anakin realizes, finally, that he’s in love.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Padme is putting on her lipstick in the mirror of their bedroom when he gets home, already wearing a red dress that slides off the top of her shoulders. Anakin kisses the top of her head in greeting, then watches as she swipes away a near-microscopic smudge at the very corner of her lips, concentrating.

It’s not been an easy road, the last year, but he thinks that if it’s allowed them to build this life together, it’s worth every struggle. He and Padme have been going to a therapist, one highly experienced in being discreet and dealing with other high-profile clients.

At first, Anakin had been more than a little resistant at the idea of going, especially once they had everything out in the open between them, but she’s convinced him that it was important for them to build a strong foundation for their lives together. (She was right, of course, and Anakin realizes every day that he is an astoundingly lucky man to have someone who could see that without that kind of guided help, they probably would’ve crashed and burned by now). It’d turned into him seeing someone on his own time, too. That’s an even slower work in progress, but he thinks he’s slowly starting to work through some of his own issues at least. 

“You seem distracted,” Padme notes, capping the lipstick at last. “Do you want to stay in tonight?” 

“No, that’s fine,” Anakin answers, then aiming for casual and missing for a mile as he says, “I saw Obi-Wan today.”

She turns around in her vanity chair. “You talked to him?”

“He came by the studio,” Anakin says, sitting down on their bed and feeling like his emotions can finally bubble out, now that it’s just the two of them, “He wants to take us out to dinner sometime.”

Just before they decided to come forward with the news of their marriage, before they had made the headlines everywhere, he’d thought about reaching Obi-Wan again to tell him himself. Only in his effort to get his new number, he’d reached a brick wall in the form of a very insistent personal assistant who had told him that Mr. Kenobi was too busy being in the middle of some foreign country on set, and he’d have to leave a message if he’d want to talk to him. Anakin had given up, then. And maybe it wasn’t all bad - Obi-Wan’s face hadn’t betrayed anything when Anakin had mentioned having to get back to his wife today, so maybe it’s fine?

(He’s still going to have to tell him exactly when he got married. The official story they gave to Padme’s publicist is that they got married six months ago, in a nice, close-knit ceremony that they had photographed to publish in a nice magazine spread. The rings that Padme had picked out hid their matching tattoos.)

“And what do you want to do?” Padme prompts him.

He wants Obi-Wan to meet Padme - to have, even after all this time, what he thinks are the two most significant people in his life to meet. But the possibilities are endless, and he knows he can’t control what they think about each other if they’ll even like each other -

But maybe the past year and a half have taught him that he doesn’t need to fear that loss, not before it happens if at all. “I’d want to see what happens,” he says, then, “Maybe… tomorrow?”

“I can do that,” Padme says, and she rises from the seat. “Unzip me?”

Anakin leans forward to help her slip out the dress, very interested in where this is going, now, but she’s deftly leaning out of his hands sliding low on her hips. “Not now,” she says, though she stays between his legs, “I’m getting changed if we’re not going out tonight.”

“We’re not?”

“You don’t look like you’re ready to face the public right now,” Padme tells him. Anakin catches a glimpse of his face in the vanity mirror, and she may have a point. “Do you want to cook or order food?”

“I’ll cook,” Anakin offers. He’s recently started to go through some of his mom’s belongings, tucked away in cardboard boxes he hadn’t gone through in years. In them, he had found several handwritten recipes of hers that he’s been trying out. It lets him feel like he’s still connected to her, and honestly, there’s something relaxing about cooking that he didn’t consider.

“In a little bit, though,” he adds, because Padme still hasn’t gotten dressed yet, and he uses his foot to tug her in by the ankle. She laughs as he pulls her down onto their bed with him, and they forget about dinner for a while longer.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Anakin is utterly unprepared for when they arrive at the diner, and Obi-Wan is already there, wearing a dark blue suit, a shirt that’s half-open on his chest like - like he’s some kind of movie star.

It doesn’t help that he’s probably rented out the place for them, given that they’re alone except for a few waitstaff floating around. There are flickering candles on the table waiting for them, faint music playing in the background as the maître d’ takes their coats and guides them to the table.

His knees feel like buckling, and Padme puts her hand on the small of his back. He can see Obi-Wan glance at the gesture, and Anakin wonders if it’s too late for him to leave, maybe feign some kind of significant but short-term illness -

“Ms. Amidala,” Obi-Wan says, coming forward and kissing her on the cheek while Anakin looks between the two of them, “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“Technically, it’s Ms. Skywalker,” Padme says, but there’s a warm look in her eye, unlike any other time Anakin’s seen her meet someone new as they part. “But you may call me Padme, of course.”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan says next, and there’s a moment when he wonders if Obi-Wan is going to press a kiss to his cheek. But he just clasps Anakin’s elbow, and he says, “I do hope you’ll enjoy this place.”

“Looks great,” Anakin says, trying not to sound as weak as he feels.

Fuck.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

But dinner is easier than he would have guessed.

There are a few awkward moments, of course, toward the start - stilted silences that follow Anakin or Padme recounting something from early on in their marriage, and Obi-Wan had given a much smaller kind of smile as if acknowledging how long that it’s been that they’ve spent time together like this.

But then Padme and Obi-Wan find out that they share several mutual friends, and Anakin watches as they start to grow more comfortable with each other. Padme compliments his choice in wine - something fine from Naboo, that launches a discussion that they both are clearly passionate about, while Anakin tries to follow to the best of his ability.

The conversation shifts into projects they’re working on, then, as Anakin describes to Obi-Wan the plans that Padme has for her future foundation, while she watches him fondly, interjecting occasionally to clarify some point when Obi-Wan looks interested.

“I’m glad you both found each other,” Obi-Wan says, at last,  holding up his glass of wine. He looks right at Anakin, and he says, “To your marriage. May it bring you both the greatest joy.”

“Thank you,” Padme says, in a softer voice. Anakin can only look back at him, wordless until Obi-Wan turns to look at Padme, too. She says, “And to old and new friends as well.”

Obi-Wan clinks his glass against hers. Anakin has to make himself pick up his glass, do the same for both of them.

Padme excuses herself to use the restroom before they go. She briefly resting a hand on his shoulder before she leaves them. Without her there, Anakin feels that peculiar nervousness surface again - one he thought he would never feel with Obi-Wan, but then again, so much has changed.

But maybe it hasn’t.

Obi-Wan says, “You look happier.”

“I think I am,” Anakin says, then steeling himself for the next part, to what’s been on the back of his mind the entire dinner, because he has to know: “Why did it take such a long time for you to reach out?”

“I didn’t think you wanted to hear from me, especially when you moved out without telling me,” Obi-Wan answers. Well, he deserves that. Then he adds, “It was easier for me to think that I should just stay away.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Anakin says, the truth nearly catching in his throat. “I thought you hated me.”

“I could never hate you,” Obi-Wan says, the look on his face nearly unbearable. Anakin fiddles with the edge of the table cloth, searching for his next words. He’s learned that, too, the value of considering his words, to let others have the same chance.

But then it’s Obi-Wan who asks, “It was Padme, wasn’t it, all that time ago?” He doesn’t sound upset, just curious, even as Anakin finds it even more difficult to meet his eyes. “The one who ended things with you, just before I left.”

Anakin concentrates on the tablecloth. “It was. We - before she went on tour, we got married. She didn’t want me to give up everything to follow her, and I reacted badly. Thought that she didn’t want me around either. First her, then you, really weren’t my best moments.”

His attempt at a joke falls flat. He can hear Obi-Wan’s exhale. “Right,” he says. “Well, I suspected something - not marriage, of course, but I have to admit that I knew about her for a while.” At Anakin’s head jumping up, he says, “I may have overheard some things you did not intend me to know. It’s not exactly a common name, either.”

Anakin gapes at him. “And you didn’t think to say anything?”

“I tried,” Obi-Wan says, so solemn than any fight dies in him, “But you didn’t want to talk about it.”

That’s true enough. As much as Anakin searches himself for any kind of resentment that Obi-Wan hadn’t pushed more, hadn’t told him that he knew - he knows that it would’ve only backfired. He says, “So you just let me hide it from you?”

Obi-Wan gives him a faint smile. “I’ve never let you do anything. You’re the most stubborn person I know. It’s something I - value about you because it means you hold to your convictions, to what you deem important. Even though it’s most irritable at times, like when I’m trying to get you to admit that you could’ve probably used a lot more emotional support in that time.”

“I wanted to tell you,” Anakin says because Obi-Wan starts talking any more about emotional support, because he might actually scream, “But I didn’t know how.”

“It’s in the past, now,” Obi-Wan says, and his forgiveness is a balm on a deep wound only now starting to heal. “At least on my end, if that helps us.”

“Yeah,” Anakin says, studying him in the candlelight, “It’s all in the past.”

He vaguely wonders what’s taking Padme taking so long, but with none of the earlier urgency. Draining his glass, Anakin says, “Who would’ve thought, that we’d be here like this.”

“You mean that you’re married?” Obi-Wan asks him, “Or that I can’t get milk at the shop anymore without getting recognized by the cashier - or the fact that you apparently have a modeling career?”

“What can I say, people like how I scowl,” Anakin tells him, and the smile on his face grows bigger.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

“You know,” Padme muses out loud when she’s undoing the complicated pins from her hair that night, and Anakin is half-dozing on the bed, still dressed, “There was something I found surprising about Obi-Wan, still.”

He shifts his head a little to the side. “Mhmm? What’s that?”

“I’d seen photos of him, of course,” Padme says, dropping a pin on the vanity table, “But he’s really so much more attractive in person, isn’t he?”

Anakin jolts fully awake. “What?”

“You look tired,” Padme says, sounding absolutely innocent and not fooling him one bit, “Why don’t you go to sleep?”

“Padme!”

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

So Obi-Wan comes back into his life, and it’s fine.

Really.

Despite all his efforts to be more considerate of why and how he expresses his feelings from therapy, Anakin knows he has to move on, even after he’d confessed to Padme about him, despite how she gives him more and more significant looks whenever the topic starts to come up because he has to get over it.

“Shouldn’t you be - “ and Anakin makes a wild gesture in the air because she’s just wrangled a frankly embarrassing confession about a dream that had made him wake up hard and gasping for air like he’d been running, “ - I don’t know, jealous or something?”

(He thinks he would be, if Padme was the one to tell him that she had a dream of Obi-Wan going down on her, that beard scratching the inside of her thighs as he holds open her legs until she knew that her hips were going to be aching the next day -

Well. Maybe, maybe not. That’s beside the point, all right?)

“No,” Padme says, serenely, utterly at odds with how she’s rocking down on him, because apparently discussing Anakin’s sex dream did something for her, and this whole thing is definitely doing things to him, “I’m really not,” and Anakin nearly bites down on his tongue with the next easy, slow pass of her hips, like she could do this all day.

After, he says, “I don’t - it’s not just about sex.”

Looking ever-patient, Padme says, “I figured."

“And it’s not something that I just can bring up with him,” Anakin says, “I don’t want to wreck things between us, not when it clearly freaks him out to think of me as anything other than platonic.”

“Ani,” Padme says, “I haven’t known him as long as you have, but I can tell that it’s not all platonic for him.” And while Anakin reels from that, she says, “If he’s not willing to consider his feelings, then it’s his loss. But that’s his issue, not yours.”

But Obi-Wan doesn’t really want him in that way, he knows, or at least nothing beyond what was probably an instance of physical attraction that had clearly horrified him enough to stay away for nearly two years.

He can have the man in his life as his best friend once again, and that’s enough for him - it has to be. Anakin can’t begrudge him for how he feels, he just has to learn how to live with those feelings. Maybe one day, he won’t feel like he’d edging around a ticking bomb. Maybe one day, they’ll joke about it.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

The one downside to having Obi-Wan over to dinner for more nights than not during the week is that he and Padme really get along, which both brings him an indescribable level of happiness, that the people he loves most in this world are good friends now, but it’s also quite devastating to Anakin’s ego because they both have born witness to his less dignified moments in his life.

“So he yanks the camera from him - “ and Padme has to break off for a moment, snorting in a way that she usually only does in private, “ - and he says, right, ‘If you’re going to invade our privacy like this, at least get my good angle’ - and the look on that man’s face!“

“Anakin, tell me you did not say that,” Obi-Wan says, looking so comically aghast that Padme laughs again, even harder.

“It sounded better in my head,” Anakin defends himself, only for both of them to laugh, then, “At least he stopped taking photos of us!”

“Oh, he did,” Padme says, “Especially after you started taking photos of him in return. I wish I had thought to do that before.”

“You’re welcome, you’ve been inspired,” Anakin tells her, and she puts her hand on his thigh in return. “They’re vultures, honestly, and I will not be shamed for standing up for myself.”

“Absolutely,” Obi-Wan says, now with a straight face, “It would be absolutely horrible for someone to get a bad photo of you,” and both he and Padme break into, in Anakin’s opinion, a bout of incredibly juvenile laughter.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

One spring afternoon, Anakin comes back early from a meeting with Mace Windu to find that Padme’s already in the apartment, sees her discarded shoes near the entrance - a quirk of hers that means he’s developed quick reflexes when he first comes in because he’s come close too many times to wiping out on a pair of Versace heels.

They’ve put together another contract for him to go over, and because his personal lawyer’s kind of a sketchy guy - Padme’s been trying to get him to switch to hers, says that Sheev gives her a bad feeling - and he’s taken off the rest of the day to go over it himself. He sets down the papers on the front table and goes to find her.

She’s in the kitchen, and he comes up behind her to press a kiss to the back of her neck. “Hey. Did your meeting get canceled?”

“I canceled it,” Padme says, and there’s an odd expression on her face when she turns to look at him. “Are you just stopping in, or are you done for the day?”

“I’m all yours,” Anakin says, growing more than a little concerned, “Are you okay?”

In response, she puts his hand low on her stomach. “I don’t know for sure,” she says, as he stares, stupefied, between their hands and her face, “I didn’t take a test or anything yet, but I think so."

Joy bubbles up in his chest. “You - how are you feeling? About this?”

“I hope so,” Padme says, giving him a small, cautious smile, “I mean - if I am, it’s going to be a nightmare to coordinate the tour and the album recording with this - but I hope so, Ani, I really do."

“Me, too,” Anakin tells her, unable to hide the grin that comes over his face. He picks her up, then, spins her around in a tight hug despite her squealing, because he can't contain himself any more.

Then he stops, and says, "Oh."

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

He doesn’t even know where he’s going until he realizes he’s heading up the old fire escape, yanking down the rusting ladder like he did when he was a kid. The ladder jams in the same place, and he absently wishes that he had a grappling hook to circumvent it right about now.

The rasp of metal against his palms shakes him out of his stupor, then. Anakin fully realizes that he’s at the old apartment, the one he had shared with Obi-Wan all those years ago, and it comes crashing down around him.

It was been pure muscle memory, once he’d gotten into the car, to go there. They’re having a baby, and the first person he wants to know is Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan should have been there with them, he realizes. He should’ve been in the room when Padme came out with the test, the way she’d been glowing answer enough even before she’d opened her mouth.

Anakin had caught a glimpse of the rest of his life, then - and he comes to the realization that he needs to do something about it. He thinks that maybe it’s the news that he’s a father that gives him the kind of rare courage that he grabs onto now because he doesn’t want to start this next part of their life without taking the chance. Padme had looked at him, and she had said, “You should go tell him,” and he knows she doesn’t just mean about the baby.

He gets back in his car, and he goes to the right address, now. Obi-Wan’s been staying in a rental that’s much closer to his and Padme’s place, which would have been helpful to remember in the first place, but he ends up there in the end.

The doorman, recognizing him, lets him through. He runs up the stairs, no patience to wait for the elevator.

The door opens, and Obi-Wan, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, answers. “Anakin?” he says, looking confused.

“Padme’s pregnant,” Anakin says, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice, “You’re the first to know.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes widen nearly comically large. “I - congratulations, I’m so happy for you both - “

“And I’m in love with you,” Anakin interrupts because he’ll lose his nerve if he’s not right to the point, “So there’s that, too.”

The expression on Obi-Wan’s face morphs several times, too quick to follow. He says, rather hoarsely, “What was that?”

“I drove by the old apartment,” Anakin tells him, because his brain seems to be working in no way in order with his mouth, “Tried to break into it before I remembered neither of us lives there anymore. Luckily, I don’t think anyone was at home.”

“I still own it,” Obi-Wan says, still staring at him. “I never sold it.”

It’s possible that Anakin has done this entirely too quickly, but now that the truth is out there, he finally feels like he can breathe. “Padme knows I’m here,” he adds because it feels like it needs saying, “She knows how I feel. She thinks she knows how you feel, but I don’t. And I don’t want to go any longer without saying that.”

“How I feel,” Obi-Wan echoes, and then he takes a step back. “Anakin - “

“It doesn’t have to change anything,” Anakin blurts out, then takes a deep breath. “But you deserve me being honest, and you know what, I deserve that, too. But if there’s just a chance, just a single chance-"
“This does change things,” Obi-Wan says, still staring at him. “It changes everything, Anakin.”

“Sure,” Anakin says, “Well, then, we can forget this happened if you don’t mind - “ and he’s about to turn tail and flee, only then Obi-Wan’s hand is on his arm, fingers slipping against his skin. “That - okay, these are some mixed signals I’m getting here.”

“Let me clear it up, then,” Obi-Wan answers, and it looks like Anakin isn't the only one who has to seize his courage, “Because I’m in love with you, too. I have been, for a while."

And the way he says it - like it doesn’t shake his entire world. Not like the earth-shattering revelation, it had been meeting Padme, knowing that she was going to be the love of his life so soon - but something assured, a piece that finally slides into place under their feet.

“Oh,” Anakin says, a little faint, “That’s really good.” For someone who made this kind of gesture, he kind of wishes he had a plan beyond staring right back at Obi-Wan, who’s still holding his arm. “And you - mean that?”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, “I mean it. As long as you’re - humoring me, because you have to had known that I felt this way - and I tried not to, because you deserve more than me - and you have Padme -  “

“I’m not laughing,” Anakin tells him, stepping in close so that Obi-Wan has to lift his head to keep on looking in his eyes, “You mean it?"

Obi-Wan searches his eyes. “Come in,” he says, “Because my neighbors are about to be scandalized if we don’t.”

Anakin laughs, and it comes out a little unhinged, a little wild. “I want you,” he says, “I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”

“You clearly haven’t met the old lady across the hall,” Obi-Wan tells him, “She glares at me rather frightfully already,” but he pulls Anakin in at last, and then they’re kissing, more gentle than he could have ever expected, but it's years of swinging around each other and now they're finally colliding.

Obi-Wan’s beard scratches against his mouth, as Anakin breathes in through his nose, exhales against his mouth, and they could kiss for seconds or years, as he loses track of anything past the way that Obi-Wan’s mouth slides against his.

That is until he pulls away with a start. “Wait,” Anakin says, “I have to go. I - my wife is pregnant.”

Obi-Wan nods, his eyes so startling blue up close that it makes him want to pull him in once again,  “You’ve said as much. I’m not going anywhere."

“I’m not leaving without you,” Anakin says, because, obviously. “Come on, go pack a bag. I’ll wait.”

“Isn’t that a little presumptuous?”

“Ha-ha, definitely, would you just do it already?”

Despite his words, Anakin’s unwilling to let him go quite yet, though, or at least until he gets Obi-Wan’s hair sufficiently messed up inside, the top two buttons of his shirt undone when he decides he’s taking too long and he presses him up against the closet.

"Padme," Obi-Wan reminds him when Anakin's hands start pulling at his thighs once more because the bed is right there - "You are the worst."

"You love it," Anakin says, against his mouth, and feels his smile against his.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Padme’s still on the couch when they get back, sipping a glass of water. Her eyes go in between them, as Obi-Wan stops at the entrance behind him. Anakin, a little manically, says, “We talked.”

“I can see that,” Padme says, clearly amused. Her eyes dip down to the wrinkles in Obi-Wan’s shirt, the way that Anakin keeps on licking his lips, “Just talking, clearly.”

Obi-Wan makes a kind of choked sound that Anakin would very much like him to repeat in the future. Then, like he’s remembering himself, he steps forward and says, “Padme, I am so very happy for you."

“And I’m happy for you,” Padme says, rising from the couch. She goes over to Obi-Wan, wraps her arms around his neck. Whatever she says into his ear, Anakin can’t hear. Obi-Wan’s hands open and close at his side’s before he brings them up to hug her back.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

It takes a while for them to start sleeping together, mostly because as much as Obi-Wan assures him that he really is in love with him, it takes a little more time for him to get over his hang-ups on their relationship - their age difference, to start, and his bizarre need to continually establish that he in no way wants to get in the way of his and Padme’s relationship. It seems that there is some kind of battle warring in him between his supposed free-love beliefs and such things in practice, probably because Obi-Wan is a man of contradictions which Anakin knows and loves.

(Anakin thinks at one point that maybe it’s also some uncertainty that Obi-Wan has towards his relationship with Padme, if that’s something that he might be uninterested in pursuing in certain ways. He brings it up with him, at her suggestion. The back of Obi-Wan’s neck had gone a deep, deep red color, and he’d made it quite clear that there was no issue in that regard.)

He can wait, though. If he has to spend the rest of his life convincing him, so be it.

Anakin wakes up one morning, plastered against Obi-Wan’s back. Obi-Wan shifts against him, clearly already awake. He interlocks their fingers, lifts them to press a kiss to Anakin’s knuckles with a mumbled good morning. Padme's gotten up, already - the baby means that she goes to bed earlier and earlier, and she has bursts of energy to write and record in the morning that she claims she needs to take every advantage of - so it's just the two of them.

Out of nowhere, Anakin asks, “You ever think about getting a tattoo?”

Which is how Padme, when she returns home later that day, ends up tattooing another stick-and-poke heart, just like theirs, onto the top of Obi-Wan’s thigh. Obi-Wan had blanched at getting it on his finger, not because of any kind of significance of the location, but rather, it turns out, he has a very low pain tolerance for needles, and he hates to admit it, to boot.

“We could go to a professional,” Anakin tells him, taking in the sight of Padme kneeling in front of Obi-Wan, her stomach slightly swollen. He has to very carefully cross his legs, as he adds, “Or, you know, you could back out of it.”

“Certainly not,” Obi-Wan says, staring up at the ceiling. His face relaxes, though, as he meets Anakin’s eyes. “I’m honored that you’d - fuck, that hurts!”

With her spare hand, Padme pats his other bare thigh in sympathy. “He’s fine, Ani,” she says, “I’ll admit, I really didn’t think I would be doing this again.”

“Should I get some champagne so we can really recreate the memory?” Anakin offers. “Obi-Wan, you’ll just have to drink for both you and her.”

“That’s an idea,” Obi-Wan says, squeezing his eyes shut as she continues, much to Anakin’s amusement. “And this will all be a very touching memory one day, I’m sure, but could you please get on with it?”

“Of course,” Padme tells him, “Deep breaths - “

When it’s over - barely ten minutes later - she stands up. “Perfect,” she says, surveying her handiwork. “You can open your eyes again.”

“Oh, good,” Obi-Wan says, sounding relieved. He looks down, then, and the soft expression that comes over his face really should be made illegal for the way that it makes Anakin want to hold onto him and never let go.

Passing by Anakin, Padme leans up to kiss his cheek, huffing out a laugh for some reason before disappearing into the bathroom. Anakin listens for a moment, but he doesn’t hear any retching, which is a good sign, at least.

He goes forward, at last, to where Obi-Wan’s studying his new tattoo now. “The things you convince me to do,” he says, and Anakin watches as he stretches the skin slightly, the heart moving with it. “Thank you for not choosing something much more complicated.”

Anakin asks, “How sore is it?”

Obi-Wan says, “Not so much any - “ before Anakin ducks down to kiss him mid-sentence. He swipes his tongue over the seam of Obi-Wan’s mouth, channeling every bit of fondness, of love, everything he can into the kiss.

He pulls back, just a little, and says, “I’m asking, here, because I’d very much like to - “

“Not on the couch,” Obi-Wan says immediately, rising and tugging Anakin with him, and oh, they’re doing this, all right, as he stops to give Anakin another long, lingering kiss. “Is Padme all right?”

“I’m fine,” Padme says, leaning against the doorway and watching them, in a way that makes Anakin think that today might not be memorable for the tattoo. “Are you?”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan says, looking back at Anakin. “I am.”

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

That first time - well. It's a time.

Anakin’s actual memory of the event is a little hazy. Somewhere between Padme licking into his mouth and Obi-Wan starting to unbutton his trousers, he thinks he might’ve blacked out a little.

He definitely remembers the weight of Obi-Wan over him not long after, then the way that Padme had pulled at his hair, lightly, telling him, “You’re so good for him, you’re perfect, Ani - “ as Obi-Wan had come with a long moan, and then they had kissed each other. Anakin had stared up at them, distinctly thinking that he now understands what it’s like to witness a supernova.

There are more limbs than any of them are used to, and several moments when they’d been so tangled up together that one of them had to call a break, figure out just how to position themselves so that no one’s hand or foot fell asleep - but they make it work.

Anakin half-lifts his face from Obi-Wan’s chest. “Hey,” he says, in more of a pleasured slur, “We’re doing that again.”

Whether it’s Padme or Obi-Wan’s hand that strokes along the shell of his ear, he’s not sure. “Sleep,” one of them says, and Anakin gladly agrees.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

“Hi, Mom,” Anakin says, “It’s been a while.”

He puts the flowers down on Shmi Skywalker’s grave, steps back to pluck the few leaves that have tumbled down on the grass in front of him, maybe to give his hands something to do. It’s overcast out, cool enough he’s glad that he grabbed his jacket. She loved this kind of weather, always talked about how it made her forget that they lived in a desert.

“Padme’s having twins,” he tells her. “We had a scan last week - twins, could you believe it? She’s got all sorts of ideas for names, thinks that they should both start with the same letter.”

When he used to do this, it would fill him with unbearable sadness, that only the faint whistle of the wind could answer him. Now, he thinks it’s cathartic, to feel like she’s still out there, somewhere, maybe listening in. “I told Obi-Wan about how I felt a while ago,” Anakin says, “And it - well, it’s working out really well. Sometimes I think I’m going to wake up, and it’ll all have been a dream.”

He runs a hand over her name, over the bumps in the stone. “I miss you,” he tells her, clearing his throat, “And I’m never not going to. But I’m doing okay, all right? You don’t need to worry about me, not anymore.”

He'll return here, with Obi-Wan and Padme eventually - and one day, with their children, he hopes - but for now, it's just him in the cemetery. The wind whistles through, and he can feel the sun poking out from behind the clouds overhead, and it's peaceful.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

1991 (and beyond)

"Let me take this,” his agent says when the phone rings, and Anakin nods, glancing at his watch. He’s hoping to be back home soon because Obi-Wan’s just flown in, and he doesn’t like leaving Padme along for too long, recently, not as her due date creeps upon them.

The agent looks over at Anakin, then, puts the phone aside. “Someone named Ben is on the line for you,” he says, and Anakin blinks, “Something about going to the hospital?”

He’s very much surprised when Anakin lunges over the desk to grab the phone from him. “What happened?” he demands, the cord nearly knocking over the water jug, their glasses - “Is everything all right?”

“We’re fine,” Obi-Wan says, his voice tight but measured, “Padme’s water broke, and we’re headed to the hospital now - “

“Shit,” Anakin says, “Fuck! Sorry - uh - “

“Don’t worry about it,” his agent says.

Obi-Wan, over the phone, says, “Breathe with me, dearest," like Anakin's the one in labor. "Can you meet us there?”

“I’ll be there in half an hour,” Anakin tells him, “Tell her that - “ and he passes the phone back to his bewildered agent. "I have to go."

"Good luck," his agent says.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

“You were amazing, Padme,” Anakin says, shakily, still feeling as though he’s about to collapse as he holds his daughter for the first time, “I love you so much.”

“I try my best,” Padme tells him, but there’s no bite in it as she watches him.

Obi-Wan’s already holding Luke, showing him the sunset out of the window, the low rumble of his voice making it over to the hospital bed. Anakin can’t stop running his thumb over the plump curve of Leia’s cheek, over and over again.

Padme’s hand, soft on his arm, snaps him out of his reverie at last. “Did you talk to him?” she asks, low enough so that only he can hear.

“No,” Anakin admits, nervousness bubbling up in him, even though he knows it’s ridiculous to be unsure about it still. “Do you want to do the honors?”

“Anakin.”

“We should do it together, maybe, later when you’re feeling up to it?”

Her hand squeezes his arm. “No,” Padme informs him, “Because I am going to take a nap right now. Because I have birthed not one but two children in the past day - your children, which as much as I love them, is not an experience I’d be a fan of recreating-“

“Okay, I get it, I was there - “

“ - and it’s not like he’s going to say no,” Padme adds, firmly. “Go.”

While she settles into the pillows, Anakin carries Leia over to the window. Obi-Wan glances over at him, his shoulder brushing his. “She’s so small,” he says, that same kind of awe in his voice that Anakin feels as he adjusts Luke in his arms, both of them marveling over the twins, “They both are.”

“Be their godfather,” Anakin blurts out, feeling his heart jump into his throat when Obi-Wan just looks surprised. He can hear Padme let out a slightly too-loud sigh in the background. “Fuck, I mean, I want you to be their father too, and - you’ll probably turn my kids against me, sure, but they’re going to love you so much, and I want you in their lives. So if you want to be their godfather, that’d be great, okay?”

“Did you just swear in front of your children?” Obi-Wan asks him, but he relents when Anakin makes a pleading sound in his throat. “Of course, Anakin - to all of it. I would want to be in their lives, even if you didn’t ask.”

“He did have to get it out, though,” Padme says, from the bed, but her eyes are closed when Anakin shoots a look at her.

“That’s good,” Anakin says, to him, as Leia makes a tiny noise that has him searching her face, even as she remains asleep, “That’s really good.”

Obi-Wan turns down to Luke, giving him a smile that has every bone in Anakin’s body lighting up. “I do hope both of you take after your mother,” he tells him, “I do adore your father very much, but you should strive not to take after him in being quite unable to wrap your head around the security of certain relationships.”

Luke yawns and Anakin’s heart nearly stops. “Hey,” he says, clearing his throat, leaning more against Obi-Wan, “When I said that you’d be turning my kids against me, I thought maybe it’d take place more in their rebellious teenager years.”

“Best to start young,” Obi-Wan says gravely, then again, to Leia, “But if you do, I’ll be around to make sure you know just how loved you are, no matter what.”

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

The famous photo is taken when he and Padme are leaving the hospital, the one that’s on the cover of most magazines the next morning.

Anakin’s holding Luke and Leia in both of his arms, looking utterly besotted with the twins - their tiny, perfect miracles - and Padme is standing beside him, smiling brilliantly up at him. Someone sends a bronzed copy of it to them, which Padme hangs up near the entrance of their house.

His favorite photo, though, the one that he has framed and on his bedside table, though, is another one.

Anakin had taken it, with the 35mm he’d been gifted ages ago by someone, one of the first mornings after they’d taken the twins home from the hospital. In it, Padme and Obi-Wan are on the couch, both of them holding the twins. Admittedly, they look exhausted - Obi-Wan’s head is slumped on Padme’s shoulder, her hair is in an uncharacteristic mess about her shoulders, and the blankets around them are cascading down to the empty spot to the side, where Anakin had been sitting before he’d gotten up and seen them there, to take the picture - but they look happy. In the photo, they’re both looking at him, wearing matching expressions of minor bewilderment. Anakin remembers Padme saying, “Would you come back here, already?” and Obi-Wan already settling his head back down because they’d all slept very little at that point.

It makes something well up inside of him whenever he sees it, even though both Obi-Wan and Padme probably wish they looked a little more photogenic in it. It’s his favorite picture because it’s his entire world, in one frame, and he looks at it whenever he needs reminding of that.

“We could take some nicer photos,” Obi-Wan says, putting his chin on Anakin’s shoulder while he looks down at the print, “Maybe ones where I’m not covered in spit.”

“I like this one,” Anakin says, stubbornly, “And you both look incredible.”

Padme says, “The fact that you can say that means you’re blinded by love, dear.”

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Ahsoka punches him the arm, hard enough that his eyes water. “Ow!” Anakin yelps. “I still have a shoot on Monday, you know!”

“They’ll have to cover it up, then,” Ahsoka says, mercilessly. “You didn’t tell me you were retiring!”

“I’ve got two kids to look after now,” Anakin says, “They really don’t take too kindly to bringing toddlers to photoshoot now, do they?”

“You telling me you can’t afford a couple of nannies, Skyguy?”

“I like being around my kids more than I like being around cameras, Snips,” Anakin says in turn because they both hate each other’s nicknames - and that’s why they use them. “The whole modeling thing wasn’t going to be forever, anyway.”

“What happened to our dream team gig?” Ahsoka demands, and Anakin dodges another punch.

“Lucky for you, I’m incredibly close with some of the biggest names in music and drama,” Anakin tells her, “Who will definitely be needing a superstar lawyer like yourself on their sides.”

“Fine,” Ahsoka says, “Only because your wife and boyfriend are a lot cooler than you.”

“That’s - now, hey, hold on, I am plenty cool - “

“You wear dad jeans, now. How the mighty have fallen, Skyguy.”

“I haven’t retired yet!”

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

“So you really bought a horse,” Padme says, sounding curious, “Just like that?”

“This beautiful Appaloosa who I met on set,” Obi-Wan says, sounding enthusiastic as Anakin looks up at them,  “I haven’t ridden one in years before this film. My father taught me, and I thought I had forgotten, only once I was back in the saddle - it was like I was a little boy again, racing in the wind.”

“That’s lovely,” Padme says, with a smile.

“I don’t know if I trust horses,” Anakin comments, picking up a spoon that Leia had flung onto the ground. “They’re just so big.”

“You’d like riding, I think,” Obi-Wan says, “There’s a certain freedom in it that’s utterly indescribable.”

Anakin smirks, says, “Not my favorite kind - “ and he's pinned in place, instantly, by matching looks of such disappointment. “You didn’t know how I was going to end that!”

“Oh,” Padme says, “We know.”

“I want a horse,” Leia proclaims, as Luke tries to steal a piece of cereal out of her bowl.

“You’ll love this one, darling,” Obi-Wan tells her, looking to her. "I'll take you to see it, along with your mother and brother."

"Hey," Anakin says, "You can't exclude me!"

"Daddy too," Luke insists.

"I appreciate you the most right now," Anakin tells his son.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

“Ugh,” Anakin complains, flipping through the newspaper, “If I read one more article about this cyberspace craze, I’m going to lose it.”

“It’s quite interesting, actually,” Obi-Wan says from across the table, and Anakin hides his eye roll behind the pages, “They say that we’ll all be buying things and talking to each other on this Internet eventually.”

“And we’ll all be replaced by robots too, won’t we?”

“It certainly sounds like a future I’d want, being able to share ideas all over the world,” Padme says, coming to join them at the table. “I’ve been thinking about investing in some electronics companies myself.”

“I’ve done the same with my portfolio,” Obi-Wan says, rather agreeably as Padme kisses his head first, then Anakin’s.

“And since when have you been interested in things like stocks,” Anakin says, nearly accusingly, “Mr. I’d-love-to-retire-to-a-farm-and-eschew-all-material-belongings Kenobi?”

“I have a very good accountant who takes care of those things for me,” Obi-Wan says mildly, pouring Padme a cup of coffee as she sits.

“You’re both going to lose a lot of money,” Anakin tells them both, “And I will be gloating when I have to support both of you for once.”

“I’m with Obi-Wan on this,” Padme says, the traitor, wrapping her hands around the cup. “But we’ll see, won’t we, darling?”

(A few years later, with all the money that he makes, Obi-Wan buys his dream desert ranch in the middle of nowhere, where he can ride his horse all he wants, all in cash as if to make his point.

Anakin would sulk a lot more about it, if only Obi-Wan hadn’t decided on christening the place by fucking him on pretty much every horizontal surface, and then he and Padme had taken turns doing the same in their bed. Anakin likes the ranch a lot more, after that, and is willing to overlook any bruises to his ego as such.)

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Many years later, at Leia and Han’s (second, but now legally binding) wedding, Anakin finally relinquishes his hold on Grogu to Obi-Wan, who takes their grandchild with a big smile on his face. Grogu gurgles happily, and Anakin sighs at the blatant display of favoritism.

The DJ says, “And this one might be familiar to some people in this room,“ and over the speakers, one of Padme’s songs begins to play. Her voice trickles out, melodic and smooth all around them. Across the room, Leia’s head turns, as she mouths, “Sorry, Mom.”

Shrugging off his suit jacket, Anakin says, “Well, the time has come.” He rises and extends his hand out to his wife. “I know the old man over there is a better dancer - “

“Of course,” Padme says, taking his hand.

“ - but humor this one, for a bit?” Anakin asks her. “I’ll try not to step on your toes.”

“For old time’s sake,” Padme says, “I hope you don’t try too much.”

“Grogu,” Obi-Wan tells the child, “I do believe your grandparents have only gotten worse at flirting in time.”

“You’re next,” Anakin threatens, and he presses a fleeting kiss to Obi-Wan’s mouth, before guiding Padme out to the dance floor. It’s one of his favorite songs of hers, one she’d penned when their kids were young. It’s a hopeful sort of love song - and on the album art, she’d put all of their initials together, hidden in an elaborate heart design.

He can see Han and Leia out there, already, the man’s hands entirely too low on his daughter’s waist for his comfort as she laughs into his chest. Din and Luke are there, too, swaying out of sync with the music. He can see his son’s eyes closed as he rests it on his fiancé’s shoulder, a kind of quiet happiness that makes something warm grow in him at the sight.

Anakin puts one hand on Padme’s waist. “We did pretty good,” he says, “For two kids with a crazy idea.”

“Better than good,” Padme says, and she goes up on her toes to kiss him. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”