a pro daydreamer

“Apologies,” Lord Kenobi replies. He’s sitting on a side table, probably a Genovian antique worth more than his entire life, long legs crossed at the ankles in front and arms crossed over his chest. Does the man ever wear anything that isn’t a suit? At least he’s left off the jacket this time, but that might even be worse. All Anakin can see is his bare forearms, flexed as they are in that position.

All he can think about is the ball from two nights ago. It had been Anakin’s twenty-first birthday celebration, a coming of age in Genovia that could not be swept under the rug. That was how Qui-Gon put it, though Anakin still thinks his grandfather simply adores having a reason to throw a party.

He’d been warned beforehand that the guest list was mostly princesses and ladies and duchesses, women and girls looking to win his favor and eventually his ring. There weren’t many single, handsome, titled men these days—for good reason, of course, but still.

He’d been warned, but he hadn’t been prepared. After an hour and a half of dancing, he’d taken refuge in the linen closet off the main hall, several rooms away. He’d just needed space to breathe unperfumed air, to clear his head, to remember that he wasn’t just Ani anymore, the poor kid from San Francisco with the shit haircut he loved. He was Anakin Espa Tatoin Set de Shmison, Prince of Genovia.

And that meant dancing with women in ball gowns and long nails that pinched at his arms when he tried to leave before they were ready to see him go. That meant being a piece of meat, to be studied and measured by people he had no interest in.

But how can he say that?

Single, handsome, titled men are supposed to be straight. They’re supposed to be interested in women. And if they’re not—if they’re interested in men as well, that has to be an afterthought. That has to be a shameful secret, hidden away while they parade their beautiful wives around the world.

And single, handsome, titled men who aren’t interested in women at all? Who have only ever wanted to love another man openly and ardently? Who went to the San Francisco Pride Festival at the age of twelve and bawled in the streets at the realization that he wasn’t alone in feeling this way? 

Those don’t exist. Ani cannot exist, not if Anakin, Prince of Genovia is supposed to.

So he’d needed a second to remember, to get his head and his story, well. Straight. And he’d ducked out of the room, into a linen closet just for a few moments to breathe.

That’s all he’d had. Just a few moments. And then the door had opened and someone had closed themselves in with him.

Anakin had opened his mouth to protest—because, really, this was all very indecent, there was hardly any space between their bodies. If Anakin moved a single half-step forward, his entire front would be brushing along a—a very firm chest and broad shoulders, nice arms covered by a dark blue suit.

He must have swallowed his tongue there for a second, and it had given the strange man an opening. “Hello, darling,” he’d said, tone a low hot murmur very close to his ear. “Sincerest apologies for barging in like this, but I wanted to give you this.”

In his hand had been a champagne flute. For the first time, Anakin had followed the line of his arm up to his shoulder and then to his face. The man was gorgeous. His beard was neatly trimmed to the lines of his jaw, his eyes pleasantly crinkled on his smile. His hair had been styled, but several pieces had been falling out and they hung over his forehead.

“I heard it was your birthday, princess,” he’d teased in that same low tone, the lilting accent of a native Genovian coloring his words. “And I know in America they never celebrate twenty-first birthdays without a bit of alcohol. What do they call it again? When they go to different bars all in the same night for the sake of getting wasted?”

Getting wasted had never sounded more appealing than it did in that voice. “Twenty-one run,” Anakin had replied, taking the champagne from the man’s hand. “Usually it’s with harder stuff than champagne though.”

The man had smiled. “Champagne is the chaser, if you want.” He’d opened his jacket to pull out a silvery flask, shaking it slightly so Anakin could hear the liquid sloshing around.

And well. Many people had told Anakin many things throughout the course of his life but definitely since he became Prince of Genovia.

But no one had ever told him not to accept drinks from attractive strangers in cupboards.

They’d stayed there for at least an hour, talking in hushed tones and swapping the flask back and forth, champagne mostly forgotten. When Obi-Wan—his name was Obi-Wan Kenobi, what an amazing name—had complained about it being slightly cramped with both of them sitting opposite each other, Anakin had—Anakin had climbed into his lap and wrapped his arms around his neck.

And they’d laughed and Anakin hadn’t heard anything of what Obi-Wan said because he’d been too distracted by the way the man’s hands felt on his waist, and he’d felt so tired that he’d tried to curl up on him and go to sleep right there, face pressed against his neck so that all he could smell was Obi-Wan’s perfume, so strong at this part of his body that it almost drowned out all memories of the perfumes of the women at the ball.

The thought had woken him up. The ball. His ball. He’d been languishing in a linen closet for ages while his ball was going on. Unacceptable. Deplorable.

Obi-Wan had been shocked to feel him scramble up and away, shocked to watch him scrub a hand down his face and over his hair.

“No, no, I have to go,” Anakin had warbled when Obi-Wan’s hands had reached out to catch his own, bring him back to his lap. “No, I can’t—I’m not Ani, I have to be—I’m Anakin, Prince of…Anakin has to…he can’t like you, he has to go—he has to go dance with girls.”

Obi-Wan had stood up and looked at him with such kind, sad eyes that Anakin had thought he would cry if he had to see anything more. He’d turned to go, but Obi-Wan had caught his wrist, pulled him back and into his arms for a crushing and achingly quick hug. “You can have both,” he’d whispered in his ear. “I promise, Anakin. You don’t have to choose between who you are and what your duty is.”

Anakin had shaken his head sharply once, fighting the urge to cry, because he couldn’t. He couldn’t be both. Obi-Wan didn’t understand. Obi-Wan was just a lord. He didn’t understand that as a prince—he was expected to marry, expected to give heirs, expected to—

He’d left the closet but had been unable to get the words of the lord out of his head. Three dances later, he’d seen Obi-Wan standing on the sidelines of the room, next to a severe looking old man, hands clasped behind his back and legs indecently set apart.

You can have both, Obi-Wan had whispered. But was that true? Could it really be true?

It had been liquid courage that had made him cross the room to stand before Obi-Wan as the strings of the last song died. “Can I have this dance?” He’d asked, like an idiot, a tipsy, smitten child. And that’s exactly what Obi-Wan had treated him as, looking quickly at the old man next to him before he’d looked back at Anakin with an eyebrow raised in derision.

“I don’t know,” he’d said, lilting voice carrying so far the palace guards at the mouth of the driveway probably heard. “Can you?”

Anakin had flushed so red, it was a miracle he hadn’t simply burst into flames. But he’d wanted Obi-Wan. He’d wanted to be held and to hold the man again. Something about being around him made him feel safe and looked after. Protected. “May I?” 

And Obi-Wan, the man who had chuckled so deeply into his hair in the linen closet not even an hour ago had turned his head. “I believe someone more suiting your tastes is waiting over there,” he’d said, and Anakin had followed his gaze to spot a young woman clutching at her matriach’s hand, staring at him with stars in her eyes.

“I do not,” he’d said, and he’d sounded unsure, he knows he had. He’d broken and whispered almost furiously between them. “I hoped I could have both.”

Obi-Wan had taken a pointed sip of his champagne flute. “And I hope that with age, your naivety will meet its end. Happy birthday, my prince.”

And then he’d bowed, and then he’d left with that old man, and Anakin had been able to hear the whispers around the ballroom. He’d been so embarrassed, he’d been so angry—

And now Obi-Wan Kenobi is here, leaning on a table and looking at him consideringly as if he has any right to his time or his fucking—side table after what he’d done. He’d humiliated him, after letting him be vulnerable with him.

Worse, he’d—he’d given him hope. And then he’d taken it all away. He’d been a right dick, and Anakin despises him, an opinion that will never change.

“I’m not expecting visitors,” he tells him in a clipped manner, striding by. If he cannot turn around and leave, he will walk past and not engage. There—the grand staircase. He will go up a flight, perhaps two, and then into a random room full of things that can hopefully be broken without costing Genovia a fortune, and he will have a tantrum. “I’m much too busy today.”

“Are you?” Lord Kenobi asks. He says it like it’s a question he already knows the answer to. There’s the sounds of the man getting up, standing straight, and following him, but Anakin is walking much too fast to care.

He does care, however, when the files behind his back are plucked from his hands.

“Looking for a wife, are you?” Kenobi asks rhetorically, thumbing through the files.

Anakin whips around, hand already outstretched, but Kenobi ducks away. “Give those back,” he demands, stalking after him.

“I’m reading,” Kenobi says. “Too boring. Too spontaneous. Too cookie-cutter. Not rich enough. Owns a baking show, but only because of her title, you don’t want that sort of artificiality in your life.”

“Ahrt-e-fiss-i-a-lity,” Anakin mocks before he can stop himself. Kenobi looks over his shoulder with a lazy raised eyebrow, and Anakin wants to kill him.

He starts ascending the stairs and Anakin tears after him, tossing the idea of tackling him onto the floor out of his mind before it can completely form. It would be very satisfying though.

“All women,” Obi-Wan concludes as he reaches the top of the stairs. “Anakin,” his tone is…is disapproving almost. “We talked about this.”

Anakin wants to wrap his hands around Obi-Wan’s neck and squeeze. It is quite a feat of self-control that he does not. “Was that before or after you rejected me on the dancefloor?” he hisses at him angrily.

Obi-Wan opens his mouth as if to say something, but he pauses first and tilts his head. Anakin freezes as well when he hears the voices of a couple of maids down the hall.

Rumors have already begun to spread after the disastrous finale of Anakin’s birthday ball. He does not need to be caught arguing with Obi-Wan Kenobi right now, lest he feed more wood into those flames.

Without quite understanding why his actions are so bad, he blindly reaches out to the closest door and shoves both of them inside its opening.

“Princess, we have to stop meeting like this,” Obi-Wan says, pressed solidly against his front, the folders of all of Anakin’s possible wives the only thing keeping their chests from touching. “People will talk.”

Anakin feels his mouth drop open in outrage before he hits at Obi-Wan’s chest. “People are talking!” he hisses. “You—you rejected me! In front of everyone!”

“You weren’t in your right mind, Anakin,” Obi-Wan murmurs, letting himself be hit. Anakin doesn’t like that. Anakin wants Kenobi to fight back. “You were at least tipsy, on your way to fully sozzled. That sort of decision, it needs to be made fully sober. I refuse to take advantage of you like that.”

Anakin stares without seeing at Obi-Wan’s chest, bottom lip trembling slightly despite his best effort. “You were cruel,” he finally manages to say, slapping at Obi-Wan’s chest again. “You were cruel.”

Obi-Wan is silent for several seconds, before he lets out a little sigh. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes. “I am. I—my grandfather was with me, you see. And it would be—if he knew that you held me in high regard, it would be terrible for you. For the crown. And I find myself…opposed to putting you in such a position.”

“Why?” Obi-Wan frowns at the question as if it’s especially offensive to him.

“Because I don’t like thinking about you in distress.”

“Oh, did you not see me after you rejected me in front of—”

“I said, my grandfather was next to me—”

“Oh, well if your grandfather was—”

“I didn’t expect you to do something so public—”

“You got me drunk in a closet and you—”

“I expected a bit more class—”

“I asked you to dance, I didn’t ask you to blow me in the throne room, for fuck’s—”

“Would you?” Obi-Wan is somehow so much closer than before, and Anakin’s hands fall to his shirt for a grip. “Would you ask that of me?”

Anakin falls silent, still. He has no idea what Obi-Wan wants, no idea what the man is after. It feels like all he can do is answer honestly, and the word is on the tip of his tongue when Obi-Wan speaks again. “I would,” he whispers like a secret between them. “If my prince wanted it of me. If I thought my lips wrapped around his length would halt his foolish search for a wife when we both know they’d never be able to give him what he needs—-”

“Can you shut up?” Anakin cries much too loudly, and Obi-Wan grins in the darkness of the closet. “Make me,” he requests teasingly, but Anakin has had enough of being teased by this man. Anakin will not take this any longer.

He sets about making him, yanking him closer to him until their mouths meet. Immediately, Anakin’s eyes slide shut because this is a kiss and he only knows one way to kiss someone: gently, softly.

But he isn’t feeling very gentle and soft towards Obi-Wan right now, and the lord definitely isn’t feeling the same if the way he bites at his lip is any indication. Anakin can’t stop the way he yelps, and when Obi-Wan takes advantage of his opened mouth, he can’t even say he’s surprised.

His yelp quickly turns into an embarrassingly loud moan, and he grips at Obi-Wan’s hair, shoving him back against the wall.

There’s a rushing waterfall of paper, as Obi-Wan drops the files in his hands in order to grab at Anakin’s waist and pull him in, pull him closer.