#voluntarily?

Obi-Wan feels silly for having his arms crossed. It's not like this is a fight. They're not fighting. They're telling each other their secrets. They're telling each other their dreams, their hopes, their feelings. It's not a fight, but Obi-Wan feels like his crossed arms are the only thing holding his body together.

Anakin doesn't look much better. He's staring resolutely down at the carpet between his feet. He's sprung for a nice hotel room for this. He's also sprung for a double, probably so Obi-Wan doesn't feel pressured.

All Obi-Wan feels is love for this man, hopeless, endearing, enduring love.

But Anakin is right. Love is one thing. A kiss in a classroom with an audience is one thing.

Attempting to rearrange their entire lives--that's another thing. There are people at stake. The twins. There's more here than love. There's so much that can go wrong.

Anakin knows that too, that's why he hasn't looked Obi-Wan in the eye since he stuttered out his own version of I'm in love with you.

That's why they're here in this nice hotel room, thirty minutes from home. That's why they're doing this here and not in the house, so if this doesn't--if they can't--if they decide not to--

Then hopefully they won't think about this moment every time they step through the front door.

If they stand on the precipice and decide to walk backwards, to not fall off that ledge, then they still need to be able to return home. They still need to be able to look each other in the eyes.

Obi-Wan’s said his bit. Obi-Wan’s said everything he knows how to say. I’m in love with you, for a start. You have given me more than I have ever thought I wanted, let alone needed. But the truth was I needed all of it. I still do. I have a home now. That’s priceless. There’s no equivalent that I can give you in exchange. Everything I am and will be and have become is already yours. Because I love you and I had not even noticed because it just made sense. Loving you has always made more sense than not loving you.

Not in those words, of course.

But Obi-Wan’s said his bit, and Anakin’s said his too, and now there’s no more secrets.

There’s just a decision to make.

Obi-Wan uncrosses his arms and sits on the end of the bed next to Anakin, two feet of space between them. “So then,” he says.

“Do we?” Anakin finishes the thought, half-turning towards Obi-Wan to throw him a sad little smirk.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan admits. “Do we?”

“Is it bad that a huge part of me wants to say. Let’s do it. Damn the future?” Anakin asks with a huff of a laugh.

“Of course not,” Obi-Wan reassures him, reaching across the bed to rest a hand on his knee. “I would say that I understand the impulse. Damn the future. I love you. You love me--” he says these words wondrously. He still can’t quite believe they’re true, that Anakin means them the same way Obi-Wan does. “Let’s move in together.”

Anakin shoots him an incredulous look and lets out a genuine snort. “But I know...we shouldn’t do that.”

Obi-Wan fights his every impulse to retract his hand from Anakin’s knee. He knows the words have a certain truth to them. He knows what Anakin’s thinking of. He knows he has a point. It still hurts to hear. “We need to talk about it,” he says diplomatically.

“Talk about it?” Anakin sounds hurt. “Why? We both already know. What if--what if we were to--to date, to try and make this work and then we can’t? Obi-Wan, the twins love you. They love you. They’re--you’re their other parent. They need a stable home environment, they--if we--if we try and we can’t do it, then what happens to them? What happens to you and them?”

They’re worries that Obi-Wan has thought of himself ever since the kiss this morning. But it feels different to hear them in Anakin’s voice, to hear them spoken out loud. If Obi-Wan and Anakin dated and then broke up, they probably couldn’t continue living together. Obi-Wan tries to imagine living with Satine in the months following the divorce papers being signed, but he can’t.

He knows people do it. He knows himself well enough to know that he wouldn’t be able to. If Anakin were to break up with him--the only way Obi-Wan can imagine their relationship ending--Obi-Wan would need months if not years before he was able to look him in the eye again. If ever, actually.

If Anakin were to break up with him--to hold everything Obi-Wan is in his hands and cast it aside for something else, like Satine had, like...like his father had, then Obi-Wan would not be able to see him everyday without breaking down into tears and begging him for a second chance, for a detailed list of all the things that he did wrong, all the things about himself that were so wrong that no one can stand to stay for long.

“If,” Anakin says, breaking the silence when it’s clear Obi-Wan isn’t going to say anything. “If we try and then you...you leave, I don’t--”

He stops himself and clears his throat, shaking his head and looking down at his hands. “Obi-Wan, it’d break my heart.”

Obi-Wan stares at him for a second, confused and mouth slightly open. Anakin sounds as if he’s operating under some serious misconceptions.

As if Obi-Wan would be the one to leave. Obi-Wan can’t imagine there’s anything Anakin could ever do in order to make him want to leave. It’s Anakin. Seven months ago, before Obi-Wan even realized he was in love with the man, he’d gotten wine drunk with Padme Amidala and asked her quite insistently how the fuck she could have turned Anakin down, not once--but twice.

It’s Anakin.

And if...if Anakin is half as sure as he sounds that the only way they would ever break up is if Obi-Wan decided to leave, then...then maybe it’s worth jumping off that precipice. Damn the future.

But Obi-Wan thinks maybe this future won’t be so bad at all.

It’s a strange kind of numb bravery that has him moving his hand from Anakin’s knee to his palm. “Anakin,” he says quietly, and he feels as if he’s watching this happen from someone else’s point of view. Surely this isn’t Obi-Wan Kenobi about to put his heart firmly and resolutely into another’s hands. Not after last time.

But the truth is, it’s been there for years already. It’s about trust. It’s about trusting Anakin to always think that Obi-Wan could leave and never entertain the possibility that he could.

“Anakin,” he says again, until Anakin looks up at him from beneath his lashes. It’s suddenly not enough for him. He wants closer. He wants his turn to kiss Anakin and mean it.

He leans slowly in, raising his other hand to tilt Anakin’s chin up to meet his mouth. He’s giving Anakin plenty of room to move away, but Anakin doesn’t. Anakin stays.

Maybe it’s time they start giving each other more credit for that.

He feels his eyelashes flutter closed just as his lips touch Anakin’s so carefully it’s hardly a kiss at all. Butterfly wings have more substance than this kiss, but Obi-Wan would not change it for the world. Anakin needs to know they can go slow, that they can be gentle with each other. Anakin needs to know that Obi-Wan will never hurt him.

Anakin needs to know that--

“If I were capable of ever, ever leaving you,” Obi-Wan murmurs, pulling back until their lips are just brushing with every word and opening his eyes just enough to see the perfect picture Anakin makes like this, “I would have done so when Luke was going through that phase where he insisted upon only eating orange foods.”

Anakin’s eyes flutter open in shock and then the words register, and the meaning behind them does as well. Slowly, a sort of breathless smile breaks across his face.