#playmaker au

He closes his eyes and intentionally hangs his gun holster on the hook next to his jacket. “What did Luke take, baby?” “Nothing!” Luke cries. He sounds just as distraught as his sister. Anakin exhales slowly through his nose before turning around and crouching down. One twin immediately comes within the circle of his arms. The other hangs back, looking distrustful.

Which is probably why Leia will be the one to inherit his criminal empire when it’s time. 

“What did you take, Luke?” he asks his son, hefting him up into the air as he stands. “And whose fucking baby is that screaming?”

There’s muted movement from the other end of the long entrance hallway, and then Obi-Wan Kenobi rounds the corner, arms full of a baby swaddled in a yellow blanket. Its face is red from crying, but it’s seemingly more content now. A pacifier has been stuck in its mouth at least.

“Yours,” Obi-Wan says primly, adjusting his hold on the baby.

Anakin squints at him and then down at the child. “Well that’s a fucking lie, sweetheart,” he says, taking a cautious step forward. Leia skitters to duck behind his leg.

Smart girl. If Obi-Wan thinks—what, that Anakin slept with a woman a year ago while on a business trip—who knows what the boy is capable of? After all, Obi-Wan values loyalty above all else. 

“Cause I don’t remember anyone else in my bed but you,” he adds, eyes examining the play of shadows and emotions across Obi-Wan’s face. The other man’s hair is up in a loose bun. He’s wearing the remnants of a respectable suit. He doesn’t look like a boy who is planning to cut his losses and run out of Coruscant tonight.

Not that he’d get far, of course, but he certainly doesn’t look like a man who is planning to try. 

“If people are only yours by blood, does that mean I’m free to go?” Obi-Wan replies archly, turning his back to Anakin and marching into their living room. 

Anakin watches him go, speechless. 

He crouches down on the ground again and carefully places his son back onto the floor. “Luke, baby, Leia,” he says, unable to take his eyes off of the empty doorway. “Go upstairs.”

“Make him give it back, Daddy,” Leia says, tugging on the edge of his shirt. “I don’t like it.”

“Mhm,” Anakin replies. From what he’s seen so far, he isn’t much of a fan either. “Go.”

They go, and Anakin allows himself a few moments to stare after them consideringly. One day, eventually, he will need them to be something more than well-trained puppies. He will need them to be something even more than attack dogs.

But that is a conundrum for a later day. Now, he stands on his feet and follows after his boy, who he can still hear gently murmuring in the living room. 

He leans against the doorway. Obi-Wan does not look as if he is going to throw anything at him or harm him bodily in any sort of way, but one can never be too sure with him. It’s part of the reason Anakin finds him so fascinating still after all these years.

But then, his little mouse has never so far stooped to physical violence. That’s more of Anakin’s beast.

“It’s not mine,” he says. It’s best to state these things clearly. “I want it out of the house. It’s upsetting the children.”

Obi-Wan does not look up from the baby in his arms. Its eyes are closed now, expression lax and trusting. The pacifier is still in its mouth. “She’s mine,” he murmurs, thumb rubbing over the skin of its cheek.

Anakin stills, half a step forward.

It’s two offenses in one blow. Obi-Wan’s attention is solidly on something not Anakin, when Anakin is speaking so directly to him. And if Obi-Wan says the baby is his, then he’s implying that he slept with some woman a year ago during one of Anakin’s business trips.

The image the sentence puts into his head has Vader roaring to the surface of his mind between one blink and the next. “If you think I would not hurt an infant for the crime of representing a past dalliance of yours, you are gravely mistaken,” he warns, hand clenching into a fist at his side. “So speak carefully, little mouse.”

“Monster,” Obi-Wan says, keeping his tone light. Keeping his eyes away from Vader’s face. He carefully raises the baby up and tilts his head down until he can rub his nose ever so gently against the baby’s own tiny nose.

“Yes,” Vader says stiffly. “So get rid of it or I will.”

Obi-Wan finally looks up at him. His eyes are blue steel.

Fuck, Vader hasn’t seen him look this stubborn about anything since he was tried in criminal court for the murder of Savage Oppress.

“No,” Obi-Wan says succintly. “She’s ours.”

This more than anything gives Anakin pause. “What.”

Obi-Wan raises to his feet and deposits the baby into a crib a few feet away. How had Anakin missed the fucking crib? When did Obi-Wan have the time to find a fucking crib?

“She’s our baby,” Obi-Wan says, running his hand along the edge of the crib. His head comes up and he gives Anakin a hard stare as if daring him to disagree. “She’s ours or she’s mine.”

There it is.

“You’re handing out ultimatums like that now, sweetheart?” Vader asks, stepping into the room and prowling towards his husband. “Think that’s smart, little mouse? Think you can threaten me like that? Think you can do that with no punishment?”

“Yeah,” Obi-Wan murmurs. His voice is rough. He moves to the outside of the crib, hands grasping the edges and body turned to face Vader as he approaches. “Because I’m serious, Anakin. I’m not going to give her away. I want her. You’re going to let me have her.”

“And its parents?” Anakin asks, boxing Obi-Wan in against the crib. “Its actual parents?”

“She’s adopted.”

“Did you steal it from an orphanage, Obi-Wan?” Anakin’s eyebrows fly up at the very idea. He still has to coax his little mouse into doing things of even a slight criminal nature half the time. His little mouse hates sitting on Anakin’s lap during his meetings, hates all the trappings and police tape that comes with being a mob wife.

It’s his past. It’s his sheriff father. It’s the talons of Qui-Gon Jinn’s ghost still sunk deep into his soul. It’s all of that shit, and despite it all, Anakin loves him. As much as a man like him, a man like Vader can love.

Obi-Wan’s flash away for a second. It’s an admittance of guilt. His cheeks begin to flush red.

“No,” he says and hesitates, pink mouth torn open. Anakin’s face breaks into the beginnings of a smile. His hands fall to rest on his waist. What’s going to come out of Obi-Wan’s mouth next will probably be the best confession he’s heard all day. “I stole her from her stroller.”

Anakin’s mouth falls open. 

“Excuse me?”

Obi-Wan’s chin juts up as he frowns at Anakin. “I stole her from her stroller. Her parents left her unattended. And–I wanted her.”

He isn’t sure if his eyebrows will ever lower. “You wanted her.”

“I wanted a baby,” Obi-Wan says very clearly. “The twins are old and they hate me now. I wanted a baby again.”

“The twins are not old,” Anakin replies automatically. “They’re ten. They’re children.”

His little mouse’s lips stay curled in a stubborn moue of defiance. 

“They don’t hate you,” he adds. “They adore you, baby. You know that. What they hate is that thing,” his hand gestures over Obi-Wan to encompass the crib and the baby. “Leia begged me to make you give it back.”

“Oh and how would that go?” Obi-Wan sniffs, looking haughtily down his nose at Anakin, as if he weren’t the one who just stole a fucking baby in broad daylight. “Oh, so sorry, I didn’t mean to take your baby, I just tripped and fell and it landed in my grocery cart by accident.”

“You stole a baby from a grocery store?” 

But Obi-Wan’s eyes are narrowed in consideration and a second later, he’s changing tactics. His hands slip from their defensive position on the crib’s edge, run up the length of Anakin’s arms to rest on the sides of his neck. His eyes go half-lidded. His mouth gets all glistening and wet. “Daddy,” he says.

“No,” Anakin says. “You can’t fuck your way into a baby, Obi-Wan—”

“I thought that’s how most couples got a baby,” Obi-Wan points out.

“You can’t banter your way into a baby either, fuck, Obi-Wan—”

“I can,” his boy says confidentally, pushing up against Anakin’s hips. “Because I really want a baby. And I already found a baby. Her name is Rey.”

“No, don’t name it, you’ll get attached to it—”

“I love you,” Obi-Wan murmurs. He pushes forward and stands up on his toes so that he can rub his nose along the line of Anakin’s jaw. “I want to raise a child with you. Just you and me, she’ll never know another parent. Don’t you want to raise a baby with someone you love? Someone you trust? You’ll never have to kill me. You know I love you—every part of you.”

Unlike your first wife, goes unsaid. Unlike the mother of your children.

It doesn’t go unheard.

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin groans, but he tightens his grip on the boy’s waist. “You stole a baby.”

“I murdered a good man for you,” he murmurs, dragging his lips over his. “I murdered a bad man for the twins. I stole a baby for us. Look what you’ve made me. Look what you’ve turned me into, darling.”

Anakin bites back another groan. His little mouse plays dirty now that Anakin’s taught him how. Or maybe that’s always been a part of him. Maybe that ruthless streak, that cunning brutality has always been there; maybe that’s what drew him to the undercover detective in the first place.

“Did you kill the parents at least?” Anakin asks, eyes falling closed. He cannot believe the words coming out of his mouth.

He cannot believe how easily he gave into those fucking blue eyes. 

“That’s your job,” Obi-Wan tells him, pressing a kiss to his lips. For a reward.

“Did you mock up the paperwork to make it look like a legal adoption?”

“Also your job,” Obi-Wan says again, brushing another kiss to Anakin’s face. Anakin’s hand grips the back of Obi-Wan’s hair, holding him close and in place.

“Obi-Wan…”

“I told the twins though,” Obi-Wan says quickly. He hooks his leg around the back of Anakin’s calf, winding his arms solidly around his neck.

“Yeah?” Anakin murmurs, letting his other hand trail down over the small of his back. “How’d they take that, baby?” Obi-Wan is silent. 

“Yeah,” Anakin says. “That’s what I thought.” Sharing their Obi-Wan’s attention? It’s bad enough they have to split it with each other and Anakin. Now there’s an entirely new thing demanding Obi-Wan’s time. His attention. His arms.

Anakin scowls automatically, just thinking about it.

“They’ll get used to her,” Obi-Wan says. His hands tighten on the back of Anakin’s neck. “They’re growing up. They don’t need me as much anymore.” His eyes are wet and big when he looks up at Anakin. He’s almost too tall to pull the move off anymore. “I just…I want to be needed, Ani. You’ve gotten me spoiled on the feeling. And I—I can’t go back to the other way.”

“Baby, of course we need you,” Anakin says, using his grip on Obi-Wan’s lower back to push him pointedly up against his covered cock.

Obi-Wan sighs into the kiss Anakin pushes on his mouth, and when he pulls back, he looks so fucking despondent that Anakin’s patience for anything but wiping that look from his little mouse’s face evaporates.

“Stop it,” he commands, thumbing at the skin beneath Obi-Wan’s eye rather roughly. “Stop it, we’re keeping it. Fine. We’re keeping it.”

“And you’ll talk to the twins?” Obi-Wan’s voice wavers. There’s at least a thirty percent chance it’s genuine emotion. “Tell them that she’s family? And that means they must protect her? Care for her even if they don’t love her?” Anakin’s eyebrows shoot up. Even though he’s been dead three years, Qui-Gon Jinn’s ghost seems to haunt half of Obi-Wan’s deeply rooted ideas and values. 

“I’ll get Rex and Ahsoka to start on the papers,” Anakin mutters, pulling away reluctantly from his husband’s all too soft and willing body—now that he’s gotten his way.

The baby—Rey, Anakin supposes—begins to whine once more.

Immediately, instinctively almost, Obi-Wan flips himself around so that he’s facing the crib, peering into and reaching down.

Out of curiosity, Anakin slots himself up against his back, unable to resist the slightest roll of his hips.

The baby blinks up at him. Her face is all squishy and red. Her eyes are clear, blue still, though Leia’s eyes were blue when she was born. Rey’s fingers dance in the air as she reaches for Obi-Wan plaintatively. 

The twins are not going to be happy.

But Obi-Wan is. He’s incandescent as he allows her to wrap her tiny fingers around his index finger.

“Does she at least have red hair?” Anakin murmurs, fairly plaintative himself. “It’ll be easier to trick myself into loving her if she looks like you.”

“She’s mine,” Obi-Wan replies, looking back at him slightly, hand still tangled with the infant’s. “You’ll love her.”

It still sounds like an ultimatum.

To tease him into fucking him up against the wall the second they get somewhere private. To coax him into such violent need he dismisses his men and has Obi-Wan right where they’re sitting. 

It feels good, to be so desired that it’s uncontrollable. To be so desired that the desire must be dealt with, must be whittled down simply by the act of having. Of taking.

Obi-Wan doesn’t feel guilty about how good it feels. It should feel good to be touched. It should be some sort of bonus to the undercover mission that it is sometimes him whose hands shake with the desire to be on Anakin’s skin. It is not something he needs to feel guilty about.

It is not something his father needs to know about either, the way that the son he raised turns into a slut the moment a criminal gets between his thighs.

And luckily enough, right now, Obi-Wan is the sole decider of what Qui-Gon Jinn gets to know. That’s the nature of being the only rat to have lived this long in the Skywalker mob. That’s the nature of being the only rat. Obi-Wan gets to decide what he tells his team and what he leaves out of their quick and hurried meetings when Obi-Wan’s supposed to be on a run.

But—but he was supposed to be the only rat.

He was not supposed to look across the long table laden with food that Anakin uses for his mob meetings and see a face he recognized. 

Obi-Wan’s head is swimming, and his heart is pounding so loudly in his ears that Anakin must be able to hear it too. That must be why he adjusts his grip on him, dragging him further into his arms as if that will make him feel safer.

All it does is drag the hem of his shorts further up his thigh, exposing the lace end of the stockings he’s wearing. All it does is tug the droopy material of his shirt off his shoulder—revealing the strappy red lace of the bralette beneath.

It has happened before—hell, Obi-Wan has dressed like this in front of these men for the express purpose of this happening, of his outfit revealing what lies beneath while he can feign ignorance. Nothing gets Anakin’s hands on him faster than other men seeing what he thinks is only his.

What is only his.

He came tonight wearing the brightest colors of pretty things he owned in order for this to happen because it has been far too long since Anakin last snapped. He has been far too put together lately, far too...distant.

It makes Obi-Wan’s chest tight with anxiety. He has not yet been able to figure out what attracted the mob boss to him in the first place, and he’s spent the last several days wondering if it’s gone. If he’s about to be tossed to the side, ripped out of Anakin’s bed with the same ease he was granted entry.

Or—maybe worse, what if Anakin has made him as a rat? What if he’s to be killed?

What if his father knows that and he thought to send in Obi-Wan’s replacement before he can die? It would be less suspicious, wouldn’t it? 

No. Obi-Wan is being paranoid. Too paranoid. Even if he were to lose Anakin’s attention, he has the twins wrapped around his thumb. Anakin cannot kill him, his children would not stand for it. 

And—it would give him time to figure out what he did wrong, what made Anakin’s eyes stray. He could be better. Figure out how to do better, be what he needed.

For the sake of the mission.

And…there would be no way for his father to catch wind of the mob realizing there’s a rat before Obi-Wan knows. 

So the fact that Quinlan Vos is sitting close to the foot of the table…that he’s here, in this room, as a ranking member of Anakin’s mob….

That must mean that his father does not trust him to be doing his job. That Obi-Wan’s performance has disappointed him somehow, that he hasn’t been enough. He has not given them the information that they need and so his father has found a replacement.

And now the man who used to help Obi-Wan sort his father’s highlighters by color and size is staring at him from down the table, looking at the lines of his lingerie as he sits on the lap of the most dangerous mob boss in the city.

“Well,” Anakin says, tossing his napkin onto his empty plate. “Let’s break so that they can clean up this mess. And then—to business, men.”

The words are met with the thud and scrape of twenty or thirty chairs pushing back from their seats as the owners vacate them obediently. Obi-Wan, just as obedient, stays still. Anakin’s hand has clasped around the back of his neck, keeping him in position. 

“You’re shaking, little mouse,” the mob boss murmurs.

“It’s cold,” Obi-Wan replies automatically, turning his face into his neck. He presses the faintest of kisses there and thinks about ripping the man’s throat open with his teeth, ending all of his problems now. 

“Aw, baby, but you look so pretty like this,” Anakin says, ghosting his hand up the outside of his thigh and resting it just beneath the hem of his shorts. Then, his tone changes, growing lower, darker. Vader.  “The men couldn’t look away.”

Obi-Wan tries to draw a breath, but it stalls out in his chest. He stills, and then immediately tries to pretend that he hasn’t, that his thoughts have flown to Vos, who had been just as surprised to see him in Anakin’s lap as Obi-Wan had been to see him at Anakin’s table. 

“Hm?” Vader continues, as if Obi-Wan has spoken.

“I didn’t notice,” Obi-Wan finally says, sitting back so he can look fully into Vader’s eyes. “All I was looking at was you.”

They’re different from Anakin’s, Vader’s eyes. He would include this in his reports if he could figure out a way to say it that doesn’t make him sound insane. It’s been a long-held theory, that Anakin Skywalker isn’t always just Anakin Skywalker, but no one’s ever been able to have irrefutable proof.

But looking into Vader’s eyes, Obi-Wan knows. Knows it’s Vader who is looking back. Anakin is a dangerous man all on his own, but Vader…Vader is another beast entirely.

One that Obi-Wan isn’t prepared to deal with right now. Not when he is so on edge. When Vos is here. At Anakin’s restaurant. At his table.

Does Obi-Wan’s father really think he has failed so entirely? Does he really think he needs to be replaced? Needs support?

“I need to stretch my legs,” Obi-Wan says, pushing away from Vader’s chest. “I heard you and Ahsoka talking over it, I know this meeting will be a long one.” “My, what big ears you have, little mouse,” Vader says silkily, even as he drops his hands and leans back in his chair. The dismissal is clear; Obi-Wan is being given what he wants.

He gets several steps away before he looks back at Anakin, hands tightening into fists and releasing. 

The man is watching him go, wine glass raised in front of his lips. He hasn’t closed his legs yet, sprawling out on his chair like it’s a throne.

And Obi-Wan is—torn. He needs to track down Vos. He needs to find a place to talk with him. 

But he needs—he needs to stay here, with Anakin. He needs to turn back around and press himself up against Anakin’s chest once more, spread himself over him and make him feel good. So good that Anakin will not kill him nor tell him to leave and kill him all the same.

The shame and guilt that come on the heels of that thought are strong enough to force him to look away, force him out of the room.

He doesn’t get far.

A hand wraps around his arm and pulls him aside almost as soon as he’s exited the wide main room of the second floor of Anakin’s restaurant.

Obi-Wan makes an automatic, furious sound, but the hold on his arm only tightens as he’s pulled further into a dark and quiet alcove, mostly shielded by a marbled statue.

“What the hell are you doing,” the man who has grabbed Obi-Wan whispers furiously, and Obi-Wan goes almost boneless with relief. Oh, thank God it’s Vos.

“Me? What are you doing—” he turns around to face him fully, as much as the tight space can allow. “Did my father send you?”

In the shadows of the alcove, Obi-Wan can barely see Vos roll his eyes. “Probably in his mind, yeah, he did. I got back from one undercover mission, got sent the contacts for another almost immediately, wound up here, where his precious son’s whor—”

“What does that mean—”

“And he should have, Jesus, Kenobi! They told me you were making nice with the mob, wait until they hear you’re grinding up on Vader during his business meetings, what the fuck—-”

“No!” Obi-Wan doesn’t mean to say it so loudly or so vehemently, but he can’t. Qui-Gon was never supposed to know, no one was supposed to know, and now they will, and maybe his father will pull him off the case, can he do that? Would he try? If he thought Obi-Wan was doing a bad enough job, he would. He would take him away, get Detective Secura to arrest him next time they meet for information, it wouldn’t blow his cover, but it would take him away from—

From Anakin.

Obi-Wan can’t let that happen.

He hears footsteps, pointed and loud, coming down the hallway toward them. The break must nearing over, it’ll be time to get back to the real meat of the meeting, the actual mob business now, and then Obi-Wan won’t see Vos again. No way Anakin would let him spend a moment alone with another man—it would look suspicious anyway, if Ben knew this random mobster. Two rats getting cozy under the same roof, it doesn’t look good.

Anakin can’t know. Obi-Wan can’t lose him. He can’t lose him.

He can’t.

I’m sorry, he thinks and he knows it’s not good enough but the guilt does not drown out the need burning in his chest. The desire that cannot be controlled.

In the next moment, he’s pushing Vos up against the wall of the alcove, forcing him back with a grunt that’s loud enough that the footsteps outside pause.

Turn.

Just as Obi-Wan presses his lips against Vos’, pulling his own shirt down to look dissheveled. Messy. Like someone has been running their hands over his clothes.

“Oh, now that’s something Vader will want to know about,” Ahsoka Tano says. Obi-Wan rips himself away almost as fast as he pushed himself into Vos’ space.

It isn’t an act when he rubs the back of his hand over his lips. He’d kissed Vos mid-word, gotten the man’s spit in his mouth. He doesn’t like the taste, wishes it was Anakin’s.

“Tano,” he says. “Just making friends.”

Tano’s eyebrows fly up further than Obi-Wan’s ever seen them. “You get all your friends killed, Ben?”

Vos moves to stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder, and the guilt and shame slam into Obi-Wan so suddenly that he almost rocks back from the blow. Vos is eight years older than him; was just fresh from the academy when Obi-Wan was still just a kid left to twiddle his thumbs at the police station waiting for his father to take him home. He’d gotten him take-out before. Coffee. Water. Little games to play with.

And Obi-Wan has gotten him killed.

“A little kiss won’t kill me,” Vos says, clapping a hand to Obi-Wan’s shoulder. There’s a note of bravado in his voice.

“Not quickly,” Tano promises. She raises her hand, snaps it when Obi-Wan doesn’t exit as quickly as she wants. “Come on, Benny. Let’s get you back to daddy.”

“Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan says, taking a shaking step forward. All he can think about suddenly is Vos, a decade younger and relegated to a shitty desk in the back of the station first year out of the academy, shoes up on his files, biology flashcards in his hands as he ran Obi-Wan through the questions.

What has he done?

What has he done?

“Please,” he finally says, stumbling out of the alcove, and when his voice wavers, he’s not faking it. What has he done? He has gotten Vos killed—and for what? Why had he kissed him? He could have—he could have talked to him, he could have begged. He could have explained the situation, why did he have to—

Because there is nothing Obi-Wan can say that will make Tano hold her tongue.

And there is nothing Obi-Wan can do to stay Anakin’s hands. He has murdered people for less. Perhaps this time he’ll murder Obi-Wan too, that way Obi-Wan will not have to live too long with the weight of this guilt.

“Ladies first,” Tano says as she opens the door back into the room. It’s buzzing with the sound of other people’s voices, the movement of them as they find their seats once more.

Obi-Wan walks forward and Anakin’s eyes snap to him immediately. They’re dark and narrowed, as if he already knows more than he likes.

The walk has never been longer to get to Anakin’s side once more. 

He’s pulled to stand in between Anakin’s spread thighs, the man’s hands falling to his waist and pulling him in, splaying out across his hips.

“Mm,” the mobster murmurs, and Obi-Wan’s legs are so shaky that he has to clamber up onto his lap just to avoid falling apart then and there. What has he done. What has he done?

“You smell different, baby,” Anakin says. “What have you been doing?” Obi-Wan wonders suddenly, wildly, if he can smell his fear. If he could see it in his eyes as he approached.

“Making friends,” Tano reports as she drops into the chair next to them. “Tongue first.”

Anakin’s hands still and then tighten. When he speaks, his voice is low and deep and all Vader. “Is that right, little mouse?”

And Obi-Wan—there is nothing Obi-Wan can do save for letting the guilt kill him.

So Obi-Wan nods. He nods and raises Vader's chin with his hand, forcing him to look at him. "I told you I was cold," he said as if he'd been so cold he found another man's body to keep him warm in the minutes he was away from Anakin.

Anakin's eyes are like pieces of ice. There's no warmth in them, but there's a glowing light of something that looks a lot like hunger. Fascination.

It's the same way he looked at him when he first saw him. As if he were intrigued.

The expression makes something that has been wound tight these last few weeks dissolve into nothing. Anakin's eyes promise that there will be no more distance between them. That he has not grown so tired of him that he will be discarded with next week's recycling.