Obi-Wan shakes himself. Darth Sidious had been wrong about Anakin. His apprentice was strong and wise. Anakin may have toed the line between Light and Dark at times – hadn’t they all, at some point, in this Force-forsaken war? – but in the end he was a good man.

All the reassurances in the world couldn’t stop Obi-Wan’s mind from conjuring up nightmares of a yellow-eyed Anakin when he slept.

“Obi-Wan?”

Speak of the devil, as they say on Corellia.

“Hello Anakin.”

Anakin sits on the ground next to Obi-Wan. He’s trying to play it cool, but Obi-Wan can feel his worry in the force. Ever since the final fight with Sidious his apprentice has refused to completely block their bond. Obi-Wan pulled his shields as tight as he could one night, trying to hide his nightmares, and had woken to Anakin breaking into his room in a panic.

Anakin had decided that the best thing for both of them was to sleep together after that. Obi-Wan had to admit that it helped. And it was nice, waking up enclosed in Anakin’s arms.

“I was thinking,” Anakin starts and stops. He’s tearing up blades of grass with his left hand. Something is making him nervous.

“A dangerous thing,” Obi-Wan says lightly, hoping to goad Anakin into continuing.

A warm hand grasps Obi-Wan’s and tugs him up into a seated position. Like this, they are face to face, knees touching and hands clasped. It reminds Obi-Wan of how they used to meditate together, when Anakin was young and wild, and couldn’t sit still without the grounding energy of his master. His heart fills with pride for the capable man his apprentice has become.

“I want to court you. Officially.”

Oh.

Anakin had developed a crush on Obi-Wan when he was a teenager. Obi-Wan had assumed he’d grown out of it, until the war. They’d fallen into each other’s beds (and storage closets, and gym showers) more than once back then. It was a way to find comfort and release stress.

In the months since Sidious was killed and peace declared nothing sexual has happened between them. Anakin has been hovering around Obi-Wan, making sure he eats, and rests, and does his physical therapy. He’s been sharing Obi-Wan’s bed, wrapping himself around Obi-Wan and keeping the nightmares at bay, but carefully keeping his hands above Obi-Wan’s waist and never doing more than brushing a chaste kiss against Obi-Wan’s cheek when he gets up in the morning.

Obi-Wan assumed that it was simply the worry of an apprentice for his master. The kind of support two best friends might give each other. With the war over, Anakin would move on.

“No you don’t,” Obi-Wan tells him. He can’t quite meet Anakin’s eyes when he says it.

“Yes, I do,” Anakin squeezes Obi-Wan’s hands. “I love you, Obi-Wan. I thought you knew.”

Anakin may have said as much a couple of times, when Obi-Wan was riding him, when he had Obi-Wan’s legs wrapped around him, when they got each other off with quick hand jobs in a storage closet before meetings.

Maybe he said it more than a couple times, in retrospect. But that was just the kind of thing young men said when they had just had an orgasm, Obi-Wan reasoned.

“You don’t want me. I’m too old for you.”

Anakin rolls his eyes. “You’re not even forty yet. And we’re Jedi, we’ll live longer than your average humanoid.”

“I was your master,” Obi-Wan continues.

“You aren’t anymore. Not for years, now.”

Obi-Wan swallows. “You deserve someone better. Someone who doesn’t have nightmares. Force, Anakin, I can’t go two days without thinking about what could have happened. I still wake up crying some nights.”

He doesn’t say it, but the thought slips through their force bond anyway: you deserve someone who isn’t broken.

Anakin crawls onto Obi-Wan’s lap, cradling his face. “You’re one of the strongest men I know. You’ve been through more than almost anyone else on this damn planet. And still, every day you get up and you go out into the world and you help people.

“The clones have the chance to be more than soldiers, thanks to you. The younglings love you more than their crèche masters, I think. Every Jedi in this temple looks up to you.”

“That’s not – Anakin you don’t need to be weighed down with my issues for the rest of your life. My entire torso is covered in Lichtenberg scars, my shoulder hurts when it’s cold now, and the healers don’t know if my heart will return to normal or if they need to implant a device to manage dysrhythmia - ”

Anakin interrupts Obi-Wan by kissing him. It’s soft and achingly sweet. When he pulls away he doesn’t go far, and his lips brush Obi-Wan’s when he speaks. “Obi-Wan, I don’t need to read your terms and services to accept you. I love you.”

Obi-Wan deepens their kiss, arms wrapping around Anakin and holding on tight. When Anakin pulls back for a breath, Obi-Wan rests his forehead softly against Anakin’s. “I love you too.”

The smile that crosses Anakin’s face is brighter than both of Tatooine’s suns. “Does this mean I can buy us rings and tell the Council that we’re courting?”

Obi-Wan pushes on Anakin’s shoulders until he tips backwards to lay on the grass. Obi-Wan leans down, kissing Anakin again before stretching out next to him, head resting on Anakin’s chest to hear his heart beat. “I suppose it does. Have you thought about rings yet?”

Anakin laughs, bright and clear. “I commissioned two already. They match our kyber crystals.”