Braid | Obikin

4.

I slap my palm on the console twice, on my flight back.
My wife should've been curing, not lecturing me. My Master... I don't know what he's doing to me, but he must stop, right now.
I wait in the silent hangar for fifteen minutes, breathing slowly inside my cockpit.
Even Padme saw through my shields, tonight, I better pray Obi-Wan is asleep.

At home, my wishes are granted, and I must convince myself I'm relieved he's not up.
Lonely nights have always been difficult, to me. Pitch black, imperturbable desert skies used to make me feel like the last person alive on the planet.
Coruscant's shiny skyline and relentless traffic should bring some comfort. Instead, they only sharpen my forlornness. No loving eyes reflecting a kinder image of myself, when everybody's asleep, nothing to sway me from the hideous things that sleep inside my chest.

I fold the blanket Obi-Wan let behind, fighting the instinct to dip my face into it, but end up staring at his door switch.
The Force could deepen his sleep and give me a glimpse of his dreams.
I could even sneak into his bed like I threatened. Under the sheets, all will have his warm scent. I'd drag his arm over me; it would be heavy and cosy.
He'd found out he's been hugging his all grown-up Padawan only waking up.

Force. I live on the cusp of making something stupid.
I had hoped my marriage to fix me. On the opposite, conquering my wife only got me set for the next goal.
The war gave me the final blow; it raised the stakes at high speed, brutally revealing the precariousness our world. I learnt I fear for my Master life, and it is my responsibility. It brought my trials forward, remarking our days together are numbered.
On top of these, our battlefield successes made the Council forget all their concerns over our attachment, and we have been sticking together since Geonosis.

As a result, I'm failing my Master, hurting my wife, and being dishonest to them both. Still, the more I consider stepping back for their own good, the more I cling to them.
I couldn't renounce to Padme and trapped her in a lie.
It's not too late, though, for Obi-Wan. I will profit from the severing of our training Bond to distance myself, even though the idea of destroying the last thing that ties us together gets me sick.

Tonight, without reason, I threw away an evening with him and night with my her. I can still save the few hours left before dawn; all I have to do is go straight to bed.
Perhaps, I will wake up a different Jedi - one that doesn't fuck his wife dreaming of being fucked by his Master, to begin with.

Anyhow, I already slid his door open.
Out of sudden scruple, I resolve to skip sleep induction and just cross the room as quietly as possible.

Obi-Wan sleeps on his belly, hands buried under the pillow.
The wrinkle between his eyebrows isn't there. The sheets expose his pale shoulders. His eyelashes tremble when I cautiously sit on the bed.

I know his skin by heart, where it's smooth and where rough, the place and size of every freckle and mole. His scars are mapped inside my mind; I was there when he got most of them, and can tell the story behind the others.
I know the shape of his toes, the colour of the hair of his pits and groin, and where his back is sore.
If you come to learn this much of someone, along with all his quirks and habits, how in the Galaxy are you supposed not to form an attachment?
Nonetheless, too many details are still to unveil; what keeps him awake at night, when he last cried, who he kissed first. The taste of his mouth, what turns him on, how his moans sound.
These gaps of ignorance sting, as only erasing them would finally make him mine.

Immobile, I listen to his Signature. There's a peculiar, dry sorrow, in it, a lonely sickness I only hear when everything is still - another part of my Master I delude myself is mine alone, something else to be addicted to.