His hatred had been like an impenetrable wall, unchanging and immovable.

His love had ebbed and flowed, drowned out by his anger or his irritation, coming in great waves when he was in a fine mood and resembling a desert’s drought when he was upset.

But his hatred had always been unshakable once assigned. The very first time Obi-Wan saw it in Anakin’s eyes when he looked at him, a year after he left the Order and the last time they'd seen each other, he’d known for a fact that he’d lost him. That the love had dried up and gone and that it would never return. It’d felt like watching Anakin leave the Temple all over again, like a hand clenched around his heart squeezing and squeezing and squeezing.

So he hopes that Anakin has chosen not to attend Bail’s retirement party. Oh, he knows that Anakin’s wife is here, and he has already downed two flutes of sparkling wine to prepare himself for the sight of her looking resplendent across the ballroom, but he hopes that Anakin has chosen to stay home instead of wasting an evening fawning over a man he never liked in the first place.

Besides, someone should look after the children. They’re nine now, Obi-Wan knows. If they are anything like Anakin was at that age, they must need constant supervision. And he has already seen Senator Amidala once tonight from afar, knows that she is here amongst the party-goers.

He tightens his grip on his fourth flute of wine and turns his attention back to his conversation partner. 

It is rather rude to be so preoccupied in the midst of a conversation with another, but Obi-Wan is an old man now and a war hero. He’s allowed to get away with much more these days than he could in the past.

“Yes, I admit the Jedi Order still has far to go in order to rebuild itself,” he says, mind torn between the small talk and the drink in his hand. These sorts of conversations are easy to have. Yes, the war took a lot out of the Jedi Order. Yes, we are still working through the damages and the trauma. Yes, it’s been ten years since, but sometimes it feels as if it was only yesterday. Yes, sometimes it feels as if I am still fighting.

And then—

Then the woman he is talking to grows bold. She rests her hand on his forearm, the one that is holding the flute of wine, and steps closer.

And in the Force, there is a rumbling of pure, visceral hatred, the sort Obi-Wan has only ever felt in the air a few times.

The sort that is achingly, distressingly familiar.

He turns his head, even though he knows he should not look. He knows looking will take him out at the knees. He knows he may never recover if he looks.

He turns his head and he looks anyway. There, across the room, standing to the left of a load bearing pillar is the drawn and furious face of Anakin Skywalker, ex-Jedi, ex-padawan.

Obi-Wan’s first thought is that he looks older, though he realizes a moment later how absolutely inane that is. Of course he looks older. It has been nine years since he really talked to him, eight years since he last saw him, and he has tried to avoid any news or photos about the man at all. In his mind, he is still as he was in those days and months following the end of the war. But logically, he knows that the time has passed, that not even the Chosen One is immune to aging.

Anakin’s hair is streaked with shoots of silver. It’s short now, cropped close to his head though still curling as much as he lets it. His face is worn, wrinkled in different, unfamiliar places. He is wearing finery befitting that of a senator’s husband, the color of a midnight sky.

It is strangely comforting to see him dressed in the same colors he has worn since he was a youngling in Obi-Wan’s care. If he were wearing white or, or green or pink, then Obi-Wan isn’t sure he’d be able to recognize him at all.

“Are you quite alright, Master Kenobi?” the woman asks, words filtering in through the static noise in Obi-Wan’s head. 

No. Of course he is not alright.

Yes. He is better than alright. He feels as if his head has broken the surface of the water he’s been trapped under for the past nine years. He feels as if the sight of Anakin Skywalker is a sip of water when he’s on the brink of dehydration.

“You know actually I am not sure,” he tells her, which is overly personal and not at all what he’d meant to say. But that is what the sight of Anakin Skywalker does these days. It throws him off, makes him loose-tongued and off-centered.

Fuck, he thinks once, viciously. 

“If you’ll excuse me,” he tells her, carefully separating himself from her touch and taking a step away. She looks disappointed almost immediately, and Obi-Wan should care about the image he’s making, how impolite he is being, but he has bigger concerns right now. 

Anakin Skywalker is here. 

“Enjoy your evening,” he adds as he raises his flute of wine to his lips and drains it in one go. “Unfortunately, I’m going to go get incredibly drunk.”

“Uh,” the woman says, but Obi-Wan is already gone. He can’t—he can’t stay. Not in this room, not under the weight of Anakin Skywalker’s stare.

Thank the Force he started the night by giving his congratulations and warm regard to Bail. If things turn sour, he’ll be able to slip away with only minimal rudeness.

And, if he’s being quite honest, things have already soured beyond the point of salvation.

But instead of leaving—instead of slipping out the room and running back to the Temple, tail between his legs, he stays. Inexplicably, he grabs another flute of wine from a passing server and retreats to a balcony.

Fresh air will sober him up, he thinks, even as he downs half the flute. 

He should leave, he thinks, even as he stays.

He should leave—but he cannot bring himself to. Anakin is here and it’s Obi-Wan’s worst nightmare and it’s the only thing he’s desired for the past nine years.

Barely a minute passes before the balcony door opens behind him. Obi-Wan keeps his eyes pinned to the city-scape around them.

“Occupied,” he says, even though he knows who it is. Even though he knows the word is useless. Anakin will not leave until he wants to.

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin says. Just his name, just three syllables.

Obi-Wan downs the rest of the flute. “Anakin,” he says, closing his eyes for a moment to gather himself before he turns to look at him.

Oh, he wishes he could blame the alcohol for how beautiful he finds him, but he knows that’s just some dark and twisted part of himself, some sinful and perverted aspect of his soul he has never been able to scrub clean.

“How are you?” He says, because he cannot let Anakin speak first. If he lets Anakin speak first, there will be a diplomatic incident, surely. If he lets Anakin speak first, Anakin will control the conversation—Anakin will tear through all of his shields and land on his sorest, most vulnerable spots. “How are the children?” “Do you even know their names?” Anakin spits back, eyebrows drawn dark and heavy over his expression. His face is flushed. He must have been drinking as well. “How old they are? Do not ask after my children as if you care about them at all, Obi-Wan—I know you don’t!”

“Luke,” Obi-Wan says. “Leia.”

Oh, he wishes Anakin were right. He wishes he didn’t know a damn thing about them, about him, about the life he lives now. One completely separate and void of Obi-Wan. 

Anakin probably does not notice his absence. After all, he has a wife, two children. A part-time job, if Bail can be believed. He wonders if he still meditates facing the wrong way, back to the sun, and suddenly his heart feels so tight he can hardly breathe through the pain.

Anakin sneers. “Whatever,” he says and reaches into the folds of his robes to pull out a silver flask. He raises it to his lips and takes a swig, rubbing a hand over his mouth when he’s done, capping it and sliding back into his robes.

It is the alcohol that loosens his tongue, Obi-Wan knows it. Obi-Wan understands that he has had too much to drink tonight to be standing before Anakin Skywalker now, that anything that comes out of his mouth will be something he regrets in the morning.

But does it really matter? How could it matter? Anakin Skywalker was his whole life for a decade and a few years, and then he left. And now a decade has passed. In five years, he will have spent longer missing him than he spent loving him. What does a few words matter now?

Obi-Wan has already lost everything. He is already made of regret.

“I don’t know why you insist on acting so hatefully,” he says. “You left.”

He means, of course, that if anyone should hate anyone here, it is Obi-Wan’s right to hate Anakin.

Impossible, as it were, but his right. Anakin left.

Obi-Wan asked him to stay.

“You kissed me,” Anakin spits back.

And yes, alright. He kissed him as well.

His fingers itch for another flute of wine. Perhaps a swallow of the flask in Anakin’s robes. Anything. Anything to dull the white-hot ache of this conversation. Anything to escape these consequences.

“Nine years ago,” he says, quietly. “It’s been nine years, Anakin.”

Let it go.

He hadn’t—he really hadn’t meant to kiss him. It had been—a foolish mistake, something that had happened late at night, a few months after the end of the war, and they had been in Obi-Wan’s quarters, drinking and talking and Anakin had said something about leaving the Order, and Obi-Wan had said something about him staying, and Anakin had said, Padmé is pregnant, and Obi-Wan—Obi-Wan had kissed him.

A foolish mistake, made only survivable by the way that, for a handful of precious seconds, Anakin had kissed him back.

Before the yelling, the hatred, the anger. The leaving. Before all of that, Anakin had kissed him back.

“I have already apologized, Anakin,” Obi-Wan whispers, exhausted, and his eyes cut away from Anakin, turn back to the city. “I have thought of that moment countless times–-and I cannot begin to explain what came over me, what I was thinking at the time.”

He just—he hadn’t wanted Anakin to leave. Had thought that perhaps if he could—if he could give Anakin himself in all the ways one person could devote themselves to another, then maybe it would be enough. Maybe he would stay.

A foolish hope, one that Obi-Wan should have known better than to entertain even for a moment.

“I have thought of it too,” Anakin says. He clears his throat. He lurches forward, unsteady on his feet. His hand comes into contact with Obi-Wan’s arm, glove on sleeve. Thank the Force for the layers still in between them.

“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan murmurs, and the truth is that he means it as much as he does not. He is sorry for taking the brotherhood and friendship between them and shattering it. He is sorry that he kissed Anakin, that he hastened his leave.

But he is not sorry for knowing how his lips felt against his own. How he tasted.

Obi-Wan is a lonely old man, despite the family he has surrounded himself with at the Temple. Despite his new padawan that he has been training for the past eight years. Despite the trips he takes to see his retired men, Cody and the 212th scattered across the galaxy. Despite all the ways he fills his days, all the people he meets and talks to and trains with, he is still lonely. There is still a hole in his heart, a space that Anakin used to occupy.

“I have thought of it every day since,” Anakin says, repeating himself in that way drunkards do when they have forgotten they already started the same sentence a moment before.

“I’m—”

“It has haunted me,” Anakin says. His voice is sharp and angry and Obi-Wan wants to close his eyes and shy away from it. Obi-Wan, who has faced down Separatists and sith lords and blaster fire, wants to turn tail and hide. Retreat. Retreat.

Anakin’s voice turns—darker, wilder. His hand tightens and he tugs, just hard enough that it overbalances Obi-Wan. “I am haunted by the kiss you never should have given me.”

“Had I known you were married, I never would have—”

“You ruined it,” Anakin snaps. “You ruined my marriage!”

“I…” Obi-Wan’s throat clicks, words drying out. “What?”

“We filed for separation months ago,” Anakin says. His eyes are dark; he is holding his arm so tightly that it hurts. “Joint custody of the children, but a formal divorce. Amicable.”

Obi-Wan…Obi-Wan doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know if he can speak at all.

“It wouldn’t have been amicable if she knew though,” Anakin says. He takes a step forward. Obi-Wan gives ground. He does not know how else to fight Anakin. “If she knew what I thought about when I retreated from her touch. If she knew what—who—drove me from our bed every night to walk through our house like a ghost wandering the halls.”

“If your marriage ended over a kiss I gave you nine years ago, then it is hardly my fault,” Obi-Wan says, putting his hand on Anakin’s chest to keep distance between them. When did they become so close? This is much too close. Obi-Wan can smell Anakin’s soap, his sweat. The alcohol on his breath.

“But it is,” Anakin insists, unable still it seems to take his share of the blame and make his peace with it. “It is, because I spent half my life in love with you, then I finally commit to someone else—allow myself to look and love and appreciate someone else’s beauty—and then you kiss me, as if I have not already sworn loyalty to another! As if I could be yours to kiss! As if I still was!”

Obi-Wan shakes his head, unable to do more. “It was a kiss, Anakin, it was—I assure you, I am not such a good kisser that I can be blamed for your failed marriage when it was nine years ago!”

“Then you do not remember it as well as I do,” Anakin murmurs, and now—now the rage has turned darker, heady. His eyes catch and hold onto Obi-Wan’s lips. His eyes are more black than blue. His face is flushed. He is—so handsome. So beautiful still, after all of these years. “Let me refresh your memory,” he says, and Obi-Wan—

Obi-Wan is weak when it comes to Anakin. He always has been. He is so weak. And he needs—he needs so much. He makes a sound, something embarrassingly small and desperate, and then Anakin is kissing him and it feels like being sliced open and like coming home, all at the same time. 

Like how it felt when he returned to the quarters he shared with Qui-Gon after his master had died—a homecoming, but at what cost? A death and a birth, all at the same time. He had lingered in the doorway that first time, unable to push himself across and into quarters that felt both strange and familiar. 

It had been Anakin, a small boy still, who had grabbed him by the hand and pulled him inside.

As their day went on, the paperwork seemed to cause a quiet hush to fall over to the bullpen, other than the small sniffles he would hear to his left. He would look over and see Y/N taking a tissue, wiping her nose. Any other day, he would have thought it was from the high pollen count, knowing how prone she was to allergies. He noticed it.

When they got home for the day, he saw her go straight to the bathroom, turning on the tub faucet and seemingly taking a bath. He would normally brush it off as Y/N wanting to relax-- the day had made her tense. He knew she wasn’t feeling one hundred percent.

Going to bed that night, he saw the way her back faced him. Normally, they’d fall asleep talking about their days-- getting anything and everything off their chests so that they could fall asleep peacefully. But at that moment, he noticed something crucial. They hadn’t talked like that in a couple of days. They didn’t have those heart-to-hearts. She didn’t go to bed with an empty head and clean slate.

He wanted to say something, but he didn’t want to disturb her.

But that didn’t last long. He fell asleep but soon woke up from the soft shaking of her body and quiet sobs that had elicited. He pulled her to his chest, running his hand down her hair as he whispered soft coos into her ear.

“Shh, it’s okay. I’m here. You can talk to me.”

It took her quite a while to calm down, letting her tears wear her out.

“I’m just so tired of it all.”

Kissing the top of her head, he let out a soft hum. “Tired of what?”

“Death. The job. Being too late.”

He knew what she was referring to. They’ve been too late to some of the scenes lately, giving the unsubs another kill. She was tired of constantly being a part of this losing game.

“I know, I know.”

“I don’t want to go in tomorrow. I don’t want to have to see another case file, another dead body, another criminal profile, I just want to live.”

As another burst of sobs wracked her body, Spencer swayed them back and forth. “Then we’ll take the day off.”

She inhaled a quick breath and looked up at Spencer in question. “We?”

“Yeah. We.”

She buried her head into his chest, spouting out continuous ‘thank yous’. “Thank you. Thank you for being here. For knowing what to say and do. Thank you.”

And despite the feeling of satisfaction that should have been coursing through his body at the thought of some weight being lifted from her, Spencer couldn’t help but be upset with himself. He thought he should’ve noticed more was wrong. He should’ve said something sooner.

“I’m sorry for not helping sooner.” The apology was so quiet he thought she wouldn’t hear it, but when her head shot up again, her eyebrows were furrowed and she shook her head.

“No, don’t apologize. I would’ve told you that I was fine. Thank you for being here now.”

He nodded his head in silence, burying his own head into her neck. They stayed there for hours-- up until sunrise, but they didn’t care. They had each other in that moment and that was all they needed.