Chapter Text
“Anakin–”
“Yeah?”
“Do you, by any chance, want to fuck my wife?”
Obi-Wan doesn’t even look up from his phone as he says it, in the same, mildly disinterested tone he uses for instructions like ’Take the next exit’ or ‘Let's start with his ring finger’ so that it takes a moment for Anakin to register the question. Then he does and it’s only the fact his reflexes have been honed by years of drag racing that keeps him from crashing the car immediately.
Oh god. Oh shit. This is it. This is how he dies.
Look there are just things you don’t do as a member of the Jedi Family if you want to survive. Anakin knows this. He’s grown up in the Jedi since he got caught boosting Qui Gon Jinn’s car at nine years old.
In case you’re wondering? Stealing the car of the head of the Jedi? Definitely up there on the list.
You’d think he would learn.
He hasn’t.
And okay, he hasn’t even thought about taking another Jedi’s car since he was nine. But he’s pretty sure that when it comes to that list he was talking about … wives are right there at the top.
Not that he’s stupid enough to actually attempt such a thing.
First of all, Padme Naberrie would be out of his league even if she wasn’t married to the most powerful crime-boss in Coruscant.
Second of all, Padme is married to the most powerful crime-boss in Coruscant. And the most ruthless. Anakin has watched his boss take men apart, piece by, excruciatingly painful, piece for no other reason than Padme disliked the way they smiled at her. He likes his limbs intact, thank you very much.
Third, it would just be pointless. He’s spent the last six years of his life driving Obi-Wan Kenobi, ever since he got his learner's permit, long before Padme came on the scene, which means he has had a front row seat to their entire marriage. Knows everything from the way Obi-Wan’s voice softens when she calls, to the way Padme bites her nails bloody when he gets picked up by the cops. He knows the sigh of contentment Padme makes when Obi-Wan pulls her feet out of those sky high designer heels and into his lap, and the peaceful look that comes over his boss’s face when she falls asleep on his shoulder.
And he knows other things too, things he wishes he didn’t, things that haunt him as he lays alone in bed at night, shamefully playing them over and over in his mind like an erotic form of personal torture: Things like the tempting line of hair that that runs down Obi-Wan’s abdomen; the alluring curve of Padme’s bare back. He knows how right his boss’s hand looks sliding up the pale exposed skin of Padme’s thigh to disappear beneath the abbreviated fabric of her dress, and he knows how perfect hers looks wrapped around his cock. Anakin knows exactly how Obi-Wan’s voice turns wrecked and desperate when his wife slides to her knees to suck him off; and he knows the way Padme laughs and goes languid when he does the same for her.
And Anakin may not know much, may still be too quick with his fists, too hot with his temper, and the absolute worst liar in the Jedi, but he knows what want looks like, what love looks like.
He should. He has, after all, been intimately acquainted with the sight of it on his own face for years. It greets him in the morning and says good night to him when he goes to bed and mocks him every time he catches sight of himself in the rearview mirror.
Pathetic.
But it’s not like he’s ever going to do anything about it. Even if he could. Even if wouldn’t be death sentence. Even if that sly knowing smile Padme sometimes gives him when she catches him watching them meant something. He could never betray Obi-Wan like that. He loves the man.
He loves him.
Which brings him to the real problem.
It’s not really Padme he wants.
Or at least it’s not just Padme he wants.
And there are just– There are things you don’t want as a member of the Jedi Family.
But then Anakin has never really been that good a Jedi.
Maybe if Obi-Wan hadn’t always been so incredibly kind to him, so impossibly beautiful. Hadn’t taught him to spot a mark and lift a wallet and figure a vig in his head. Hadn’t once pulled him out of a bare knuckle scrap with a captain’s son twice his size, cleaned him up, made him apologize, drove him home in silence and then come over every night for two weeks to teach him all the different places he could target to take down a larger opponent. (“Don’t fight if you don’t have to. But when you do, you do it to win. Fast and hard. Make the next one think a little harder before they come for you.”)
But he’d done all those things. And Anakin had idolized and adored him.
Maybe if Qui-Gon hadn’t been gunned down when he was fourteen. If Obi-Wan had risen up the ranks like normal, instead of thrust right to the head of family with a war on his hands at the exact same moment Anakin had needed someone to cling to.
But he had been that too. Becoming progressively more distant, more impossibly out of reach as he took the Jedi in hand, brought the factions in line with a brutal efficiency that made even the most hardened Knights, the most seasoned Masters take notice. And all the while Anakin, frustrated by the loss of his mentor, and so desperate to get even a fraction of the man’s attention back, had begun to act out in progressively more self-destructive ways. Drag racing, and drinking. Getting in fights, and ignoring orders, anything to make Obi-Wan take notice.
Until finally one night at fifteen Anakin had been so desperate he’d followed Obi-Wan to a meeting with Maul, and everything changed.
He can still remember how it felt to stand there in the shadows of that warehouse, and watch, transfixed as the center of his world carved a man nearly in half. Feel himself get hard. Discover things about himself he didn’t want to know.
Still maybe if Obi-Wan hadn’t been hurt. If he hadn’t turned, and stumbled, if there hadn’t been so much blood, if Anakin hadn’t been too concerned for the other man’s survival to care about the consequences when he stepped forward out of the shadows on instinct to come peel off his shirt and shove it into the knife wound.
“You’re hurt.”
“It looks worse than it is. You’re not supposed to be here, Anakin.”
“You can scold me later. Tell me what to do.”
“How much did you see?”
“That’s not important.”
“Anakin–” Obi-Wan had caught him then, one bloody hand slipping into his curls tugging his head back, forcing him to look at him as he repeated the question, turned it into a quiet command and Anakin’s whole world tilted on its axis.
“All of it. I saw all of it. Now please just– Tell me what to do.”
It changed things between them. That night. Those words. (”Tell me what to do.”) Become the cornerstone of their relationship. And for years it was enough. Enough to ride beside Obi-Wan day in and day out. To be the one he trusted, the one he depended on. Whatever Obi-Wan needed, Anakin became: Driver. Bodyguard. Killer. Turned himself into a weapon just for the privilege of being wielded and counted himself fortunate.
And then came Padme.