Chapter Text
"You're late," Anakin hisses, fingers catching and tugging irritably at the sleeve of his robe as he rounds the corner just outside his office where he's been pacing. Obi-wan darts a look to the guard there before focusing on the frantic man before him. "I commed you an hour ago; Leia almost made Typho resign three times just this morning."
"Mm, that's a record for her. And Luke?" Stepping to the side where their favourite alcove curves inward, Obi-wan gently grabs Anakin's shaking hand and tangles their fingers together, thumb rubbing slowly along the thin skin between wrist and palm. They only just parted this morning, Obi-wan savouring the smell of oil and sage on Anakin's sheets before leaving for the Temple with a final kiss to the sleeping man's damp curls. The urge to stay was almost overwhelming.
Anakin sighs unsteadily and brings his own palm to rest against his chest, eyelids drooping. He looks far too tired, the Senate sitting this morning clearly having taken its toll. He'd had to stay up late to help Leia with her young parliament speech too; Obi-wan had caught them still working on it when he'd arrived the night before.
"He disappeared two hours ago to meditate, so we're an hour out from the three-hour limit. I should tell R2 to start scanning the usual places though - he's probably found somewhere new today."
"Did he feel distressed in the force?"
"I don't know," Anakin says miserably, shaking his fringe from his eyes as he looks up at him, the piercing blue rimmed with purple shadows. Obi-wan can't help brushing a finger along the edge of one fragile lid, letting himself cup a flushed cheek. Anakin sways into him, a sigh tumbling into the space between them. The moment of vulnerability joins a cascade of other delicate moments in Obi-wan's mind, limned by an adoration that feels inevitable. "No?"
"Then perhaps we should not worry too much. He's able to take care of himself." Unlike his father, he doesn't say, who even now is rubbing his eyes like a sleepy child and curling as close as he dares, used to Obi-wan's careful maintenance of the safe distance between them. A distance that has been waning recently, with every moment they have stolen together.
"I wish I was better at sensing him," Anakin frets, his palm against Obi-wan's chest rubbing back and forth, the friction on his sensitive skin a distraction. "At sensing both of them. I just can't control it, not the way you taught me. It's always too much."
"Oh, dear one," he murmurs, unable to stop himself from leaning in and breathing against that sharp jaw, lips trailing briefly along smooth golden skin. Anakin shudders against him, hands turning possessive. "You already do more than enough. Even just your presence helps. You're like a star, guiding him back to you. He will always sense you."
Anakin's cheek brushes his, his trembling breath ghosting across his ear. Obi-wan pulls him closer, relishes the way he melts into him like he's unable to do anything else. The way he responds to him so easily is addictive, and Obi-wan feels less and less inclined by the minute to deny the feeling.
"Is that what I am to you?" Anakin asks tremulously, fingers scratching through his beard the way he does when it's just them, lying amidst the cooling sheets of his bed with sweat and musk heavy on the air. "A guiding star?"
Obi-wan feels his mouth twist, familiar guilt and shame rising as he strokes a reverent palm along Anakin's back, grapples with the well-worn admonitions that tell him this surrendering is wrong. Anakin can't sense his turmoil, but he stiffens at Obi-wan's silence, ready to pull away like always.
But he tightens his arms at once, leans back to cup his chin and tilt his face up, heart breaking at the carefully banked hurt in his eyes. The self-recrimination dies swiftly under the possessiveness and affection that floods him, made more powerful with all the nights surrounded by a family's love, by the feel of Anakin wrapped around him. He breathes out and lets himself drown.
"You are," Obi-wan starts, hesitant to finally voice it aloud but aching with it, "You are a blinding light, Anakin. I know I should look away, but I cannot. You are warmth and life and all the good I wish to protect, you and Luke and Leia. You are why I can love and still call myself a Jedi."
Anakin's eyes are overly bright, cheeks stained pink as he gasps quietly and bites his lip around a too-wide smile. Obi-wan's heart almost bursts at the relief in his shining face, as he traces a finger along Obi-wan's temple, stops beneath his eye where the small mole graces his skin. His touch lingers there, reaches up to stroke the rounded shell of his ear. Obi-wan's breath stutters at the look of pure adoration on his face.
"Obi-wan," his beloved exhales, voice strangled. "You're such a sap," the gorgeous imp in his arms grins, leaning forward to brush a slow kiss to his lips, tongue a barely-there graze. Obi-wan's grip turns bruising, pulse heavy under his too-thin skin. "I love you too," he feels sighed into his mouth before he's backed into a wall and made entirely breathless.
"Kark, I forgot about the meeting!" Anakin trips away from him sometime later, hair disheveled and senatorial robes haphazardly thrown over his shoulders. "I'm so late, and - Luke! I have to find Luke before I - "
"Go, darling," he tells him, eyes drinking in the sight of him marked by his teeth, golden skin flushed and glowing with his happiness. "I will find him and bring him home."
"Oh," Anakin breathes, turning to him gratefully, hands running through his hair and going to Obi-wan's own robes, fussing with the collar so that it lays flat. He's shifting from foot to foot, half a step away from rushing off but obviously also reluctant to leave, gaze flying from Obi-wan's face to where his nails are scraping against linen. "And then," he stops, chews his lip, looks somewhere just left of Obi-wan's eye. "And then I'll see you there? At home?"
Obi-wan smiles, body an anchor as he envisions the cluttered space lined with worktables and plants, Leia's padds that Obi-wan smuggled from the archives and Luke's mangled attempts at clay mugs, the smell of tea and Anakin's aftershave and comfort. He presses a hand to Anakin's heart, lets himself love this blinding star of a man with all his being. "Yes, love. I'll see you at home."