Sarcasm is my only defense

“I’m not the Jedi I should be. I want more. And I know I shouldn’t.”

obikin’s terrible flirting, part two. 

“I married you,” Anakin murmurs tonelessly, running his thumb over the design in the wood. “That’s what reesnee means. That’s what the necklace meant. I thought you were dead. I loved you so much. I thought I’d never see you again. So I married you.”

“Anakin—” it’s the ghost of a word, which makes sense. Two rotations ago, Anakin had strangled him within an inch of his life—with the very purpose of taking his life.

“Here.” Anakin tosses the snippet onto the bed. It lands in Obi-Wan’s lap. “I don’t know what happened to it. Yoda says sometimes things are…fixed. In place. They have to happen. They repeat over and over again. One long loop with no beginning and no end. Like a necklace chain.” He breaks off, voice failing him for a moment.

“Anakin—” an even weaker whisper. Obi-Wan’s hand reaches out to him, the bones in his wrist mostly healed even though Anakin can still hear the sound of them breaking.

He stands and steps away. “There’s not much of a concept of divorce on Tatooine,” he says. “When you’ve got next to nothing, you hold what you can tight. But that’s what that means. Punyoo. It’s our word for weapon. It’s also our word for wound.”

Tears bead at the edges of Obi-Wan’s eyes. Anakin can’t look at him so he looks at the wall to the left of his head.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, the strongest word yet. Anakin’s hands make fists at his sides, but he cannot look at him. He will not. Obi-Wan doesn’t say anything else, as if he wants Anakin’s eyes on him before he continues. That’s not going to happen. “Anakin…” he says like he’s realized this. “Anakin, chopa wateela.”

The dark laugh bubbles up and out of him before he can stop it, and a second later he’s crying because Obi-Wan wants to give him water, Obi-Wan wants to apologize, Obi-Wan is sorry for lying to him, for making him think he died, for deceiving him, for breaking their bond, for wounding him.

But Anakin is a desert. He does not need Obi-Wan’s water. It will not be enough. He dries his eyes and breathes carefully in through his nose and out through his mouth. He looks at Obi-Wan.

The man looks small and frail in his medical bed. Anakin hates him. Anakin loves him. It will not be enough. And Obi-Wan is staring at him, horrified, like he knows it.

“You’re not funny,” Obi-Wan says and closes his eyes because his friend may not be able to tell a funny joke, but he makes a comfortable pillow.

“I’m hilarious,” a hand comes up to stroke through his hair. “And hypothetically, would you want to talk to Skywalker? If he were here? I thought you were avoiding him.”

“I don’t know what I want,” Obi-Wan admits because it’s easy to admit this sort of thing when his eyes are closed and he can feel the sun on his face and the grass beneath him. “I’m kriffing embarrassed as all sith’s hells, but I’m—I’m not good at not wanting him, Quin. It’s like trying to forget the only language I’ve ever spoken. I don’t know if I can, cause like. Then how do I understand the galaxy around me?”

“Force, you get maudlin when you’re in love,” Quin tugs at his braid again and says very casually, “you might want to figure it out though, because he’s coming this way.”

“Still not funny,” Obi-Wan murmurs.

“Just pretend to be asleep, yeah?” Quin says, adjusting his hand so that he’s petting Obi-Wan’s hair, and Obi-Wan lets out a loud snore and turns his head to the side to nuzzle exaggeratedly into his friend’s thigh.

“Knight Vos,” a very cold and distinctly unfriendly voice says, and Obi-Wan freezes.

“Master Skywalker, hello,” Quin’s hand falls against his temple and stills. Obi-Wan tries not to make a face at the dryness of his skin. “Beautiful day out, isn’t it?” “Yes,” Master Skywalker bites out. “I suppose.”

Quin’s hand resumes its petting and Obi-Wan forces himself to keep his breathing steady and slow, even as he can feel Anakin’s Force signature press down around and against his own. It’s oppressive. It’s unignorable. Obi-Wan feels as though he could drown in its vastness, like it’s liable to swallow him whole.

He can’t help the way his own Force signature responds, reaching out timidly to rub against Anakin’s, the equivalent of a loth-kitten batting its paw at a fully-grown and vicious loth-wolf.

The Jedi master responds immediately to the touch, his signature surging forward to envelop Obi-Wan’s like the tightest hug, the heaviest hand coming down to rest against his mind. Obi-Wan cannot stop his mouth from falling open slightly at the feeling. He has brushed Force signatures with others in the past, of course. It’s fairly standard greeting, an easy way to check in with a friend, a method master-padawan pairs use on missions to ensure that the other is safe.

For @hdcandyheartsfest prompt: valentine’s card.

“So?” Harry looks at him underneath dark eyelashes. Draco wants to trace the flush of his cheeks with his lips. “Will you?”

“Harry,” Draco says with a soft laugh. He sets the pink card on the table in favor of taking Harry into his arms. “You don’t have to ask every year, you know. I’ll always be your valentine.”

When Andromeda brought Teddy over to the Malfoy’s the first time, Harry tagged along, all six feet of him sulking with distrust. The Malfoys, once a family, was only Draco now — and Draco lived in a flat so that was where they sat, the four of them, crowded around the round table in the kitchen with their four mismatched cups of tea — Teddy’s exceptionally large in his child’s hands. Harry didn’t say a word but Teddy had mountains to say. He said how he liked his cup with the dragon that chased its tail, said the weather which was too hot, said hi to Draco’s cat. He had more to say the next time, and the next, and the next. He said Gramma Andy couldn’t come today but that was fine. He said he liked Draco’s flat and Draco’s tea, said it was better than Uncle Harry’s which was always stale, said it with his nose stuck up so high that Draco laughed, knowing in that instant this boy was his blood — and when he looked up, he saw Harry was laughing too.

“Uncle Harry doesn’t know how to laugh,” Teddy said to Draco when Harry excused himself to use the loo. “Is that so?” Draco said. Teddy nodded solemnly, his voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “Yeah, he sounds like a troll that swallowed a toad.”

“I hear you talking about me,” Harry said, his voice down the hall but traveling closer. When he re-emerged in the doorframe, Draco saw a different man, a man who didn’t know how to laugh.