Work Text:
Closeted Liaison
by Sue
O
Knocking back more, he sublimated...
The mesmeric atmosphere surged and pulsated, throbbing as he was. Free falling amid brazen partyers, he relished the raw, risqué music pumping life into the club, the same place her would-be assassin had ducked into, seeking refuge. The stormy showdown with Anakin loomed, and he swilled more Nabooan grog. "H-hey, y-yeah! Good t-times!"
A churlish Corellian was making a suggestive play for a sapphire blue Twi'lek. The sultry head turner had no interest; her language usage was poetry. Obi-Wan, slurred, "That's telling him!" Did she need defending? Where was his lightsaber, oblivious to its hanging at his side. He began pantomiming laser swordplay.
"Thank you, Jedi," the elegant female extended. "What's your name?"
"Obi--"
"I saw her first," the Corellian yammered.
"And that's as far as it goes, the Twi'lek said, snubbing the 'vulgarian.' She extricated herself from between the lout and the paladin, game for what was being played across the room.
"Women!" the gasbag smuggler lambasted. "Back home, we know how to deal with her kind." A hard shove was the instigator's way of parting company as he stalked off, questing easier, less prickly prey.
"Wonderful, gorgeous woman!" Obi-Wan hooted. Clumsily, he jabbed fingers against his mouth. "Shush!" In his pied mind rippled: 'And you're still thinking about her!'
You bet he was, drunk, or sober. If Obi-Wan drank from now until the Clone Wars ended, all the swill couldn't blot out Naboo's former illustrious Queen and the current Senator of the Chommell Sector from his mind. The practice session had been a fiasco. They'd behaved like children, fighting over who Padme smiled at more. Why, at him, of course!
Unsteadily, Obi-Wan's hand reached for his empty shot glass, raising it to his lips, throwing his head back. Disgusted, he barked at the seedy Bothan barkeep, "More!"
Telling the debauchee to--'Go Sith himself,' he signaled for the club's bouncers to come earn their pay.
Using his shot glass like a gavel, the lovelorn Jedi banged it loudly upon the bar top. "Are you deaf? More!"
"Mean drunk, ain't ya?" Catering to the rowdy wasn't club policy. This regular was nuisance non grata. "You've had enough, Jedi," was all Kenobi got.
"Less l-lip--more Nabooan grog!." He hoisted a leg atop the counter. "Now!"
The Bothan hurled Obi-Wan dagger looks.
Champing to add more verbal kindling to the harangue, he cast about, looking for the obnoxious ignoramus shouting his head off.
The bouncers were coming...and so was someone else whose appearance was abruptly a shocking epiphany.
"Obi-Wan?"
Her voice hit him like rampaging banthas mowing him down. She'd headed off the burly muscle for keeping the peace.
"Are you..."
He gawked at her aphrodisiacal anatomy through bleary eyes refusing to fixate. "Pad--"
"All right?"
She'd never looked more ravishing, just for him, decked out in gauzy-sheer white flummery, Hoth ice-blue sparkles shimmering in her delectable curls of rich chocolate. She was the Light Side in all its virginal beauty. He tuned out the club's racket.
"Come to rescue me from myself, have you?" he rakishly breezed her astonished way.
"You need rescuing?"
"Maybe..."
Anakin was meeting her for a nightcap. Then, it was back to her, well now their apartment, for some needed married couple alone time. Coruscant would soon be her full-time home; commuting was for the insane. Anakin liked this club too, for a rendezvous, their little secret, like their marriage, although it seemed Obi-Wan was going to be privy to their getting together for this occasion.
She'd been here with Obi-Wan too, when Anakin had been away on his own missions, for needed unwinding after particularly rough Senatorial sessions.
This was a first, though!
"You're good enough to eat," Obi-Wan slung at her, his big, blue eyes smoldering. "B-be my wife?"
Her eyes popped. Bewildered, and embarrassed for him, she stared, knowing how wrong this was. Padme conveyed that kicking Obi-Wan out wouldn't be necessary; she'd assume full responsibility for him.
"Obi-Wan?"
"...L-last time I checked." He hiccupped.
"You're tanked, dear..."
"J-Jedi mind trick, darling."
"O...kay." She remembered a joke he'd told her the time he'd rescued her from another of the Chancellor's bombastic, lengthy lectures, in his private office, decrying the evils of holonet piracy.
Obi-Wan steadied himself against her, nictating. Oh, this was going to be a dashing Padme fantasy. He caressed her cheek. "W-wanna have s-some fun?"
"Depends," she humored.
"On w-what?"
"Anakin. I'm meeting him."
"Here?"
"Uh-huh."
If ever a man desired to self-destruct, Obi-Wan was that sap. The kindest thing she could do for him now was run him through with his own lightsaber. Wherever it was...
"Moons! Why see him?"
Raising her voice to be heard over the rhythmic blare, she replied, "We miss each other."
"What?"
"We haven't--" She flushed when he possessively seized her waist, jamming her up even tighter against him, but not seeming to mind. "Seen each other in ages."
That wasn't his concern. "I'm b-buying."
"When Anakin arrives."
That really irked. "No, now!"
"Fine..."
"What're you drinking?"
"What're you?"
"Na-boo-an grog."
"By the smell and feel of you, you've had plenty." His giggling was all over the place; Obi-Wan giggling was stimulating.
"Would you like to feel more of me?" he dangled, uncharacteristically off-color.
"This will do..."
"For now?"
Getting him off his feet, sitting him down, was better than propping him up against herself. Obi-Wan was chiseled muscle through and through, too heavy for standing with him, bearing his weight like this. "Are?," she directed to the Bothan.
"Tables and booths, full up. Look around."
Padme did, dismayed; it was all wall to wall congestion under this roof.
"Lay him down."
But, where? The apartment was out of bounds, the Temple even more so. She wasn't showing up with Kenobi, crocked, the definition of dereliction. She'd never expose him to scandal, disgrace, and possible expulsion from the dictative Order.
"Lay me, Pad-me," Obi-Wan piped up, an invisible hand seemingly responsible for jerking his head up by his mat hair, licking his lips."
"What's on these premises?"
"Privacy lounges, above this, Princess." His look was pure sly. "Discreet, secluded, tasteful décor--pricey." He breathed new meaning into the word conspiratorial. "Rent by the hour? The entire night?"
"How much?" Sequestering Obi-Wan was wisdom in action.
They haggled over price until the Senator from Naboo paid her Rcredits down...
"Need help with your Jedi scum, dragging his sorry ass to your...love nest, Princess?"
"How, DARE--NO!" Her bearing acidic, Padme was the essence of dyed-in-the-wool dignity. "We'll manage."
Clucking, the Bothan pulled on his maned feline chin. "How's it the scum always wind up with the best-looking fems?"
O
The tiny suite, looking out on an amalgamated wall of permacrete and durasteel, was a decorator's worst nightmare. Padme imagined the eclectic members of the Nubian Design Collective gagging on the siren fuchsia color schemes backdropping the hit-or-miss placement of chinchy furniture. Obi-Wan sort of liked the garish potpourri of bad taste, declaring that the room was the nicest he'd ever seen, before making a mad dash for the 'fresher.
Padme needed a holocam for recording such superb evidence when Obi-Wan whined tomorrow with a killer hangover. Loopily emerging from the 'fresher, he studied her fondly. His eyes flitted over to the slab being palmed off as a bed, launching himself for it. Reaching it, he collapsed.
Padme had to contact Anakin, but without a comlink that'd be hard; she'd forgotten hers. Should she return to the club for Anakin, she debated, or watch over Obi-Wan? Anakin wouldn't like not knowing her whereabouts. She'd have to deal with him sulky, surly and spiteful.
Poor Obi-Wan...he probably wasn't used to drinking this much.
Okay, she'd make the foray quick.
"P-Padme? He struggled to raise his leaden head off the pillow. "Pad-me?" He sounded vulnerable, as though everything he feared was swallowing him.
"Here, Obi-Wan."
"T-thought y-you left me..."
"I was going to find Anakin."
Silence engulfed the stuffy room. "I'll try with t-that."
At the bed, Padme pressed the back of her hand into his perspired forehead. Worry lifted her eyebrow. "You're very warm. How do you feel?"
He closed his eyes. "Strange. I can't sense Anakin."
"Maybe he hasn't arrived yet."
"No, it's n-not that. I can't feel the Force, only a void. No Force, no a-ability."
Padme stroked his forehead. "We'll go to the healers, then."
"No," he contended, "i-it always passes..."
"Always passes? What? This isn't the first time...you've gotten drunk?" Her face fell. "On purpose?"
Not looking at her, "N-now y-you know..."
"But, why?"
"It helps with..."
Suspicion fissioned. The last time they'd danced, at the reception for the Opera's new season, he'd held her so tight, in the haven of his overprotective arms, tighter than he perhaps should have.
"Never having you." The stab of hard reality lanced him. "S-shocked? Horrified, y-your Highness?"
"No one calls me that anymore, not even Anakin."
"Your Highness!"
Numb, tiptoeing around her true feelings for forbidden fruit, it amazed her that till now, she had never screamed his name when making love with Anakin. She caressed Obi-Wan's cheek, her fingers nimbly tousling his soft beard.
"I-I've been a b-bad Jedi"
"No, just a human one."
"I'm a-an idiot!"
"Feel like talking?"
He didn't; he never wanted to stop kissing her. "Stay?"
"Of course."
"All night?"
"If you need me to."
"I do!"
"I will."
"And Anakin?"
"I won't lie, exactly, just exercise my aggressive imagination."
"B-be honest," Obi-Wan enjoined.
"The truth won't make things better between you two, only drive the wedge deeper."
"Lying's wrong, s-so d-don't!"
She didn't need another Anakin, always telling her what to think, what to do, how to do it, as though he was right all the time, incapable of making any mistakes, and she was brainless, hopeless without him. Who did they think they were, remembering...Jedi, more fundamentally...men.
"We're supposed to have a positive influence on people, not negative, like the Sith."
"You're the farthest thing from a Sith there is. Are you allowed to get drunk?"
"I'm coping."
"Coping? Are you kidding me? Risking cirrhosis of the liver more like."
Obi-Wan stroked her with loving, ardent eyes. "Today's been particularly upsetting."
"You let Anakin get to you. He's like a younger brother. You know how they are...the rivalry, the vying for attention. Besides, you're the closest thing he has to a father."
Obi-Wan took her hand, relishing her dainty fingers twining in his downy beard. "W-what do I know? I have no siblings! I'm not a real father."
"He's the only real man he's ever known."
"A real man? Me?"
"If not you, who? Threepio?"
Lying before her craving romance, he just wished she'd kiss him. "A-Anakin is the l-love of your life. Y-you've never hidden it well."
Her beat harder, faster. Did he know about their secret marriage? "Love of my life, huh? Let me think about that. Surely, you know I love you too." She swooned under his scrutiny.
"N-not like Anakin!" His childish wail broke her. "Can't you love me like that?"
Her eyebrows flew up. Her hand tufted his beard.
"Whom do you love more?"
"WHAT?"
"Me or him?"
He sounded possessed. "Do you hear yourself?"
"Me or him?" Obi-Wan hounded. His hands flew to his beard when Padme tried taking her hand away.
"Not happening! Nope, sorry."
"Please!" he croaked. Squeezing the blood out of her hand, unraveling. "See what I do to myself? I'm so lost!"
"No, you're not!" She grasped his hand harder; he clutched back.
He didn't want her pity, but it was better than nothing. He cursed his wretched weakness, Anakin, even the stupid, never-ending war, reaping horrific carnage, breeding treacheries and gouging inane divisions, decimating Jedi and entire populaces alike. "I dr-drink too much..."
"Times are hard."
"Never having you's harder..."
"Obi-Wan, I don't...know what to say, honestly."
"Tell me whom you love more. Me or Anakin?" She held his heart in the palms of her hands.
She thought about her husband and sighed.
Thinking he had his answer, he supplicated, "Why don't you love me the way you love him?"
"Why don't I? You?" Her temperature rose; impulsively, she leveled her face even with Obi-Wan's, hovering above it. She twitched with anticipation and desire mingled with qualms. Her belly was a massive crick. "Who says I don't?" she tantalized, crashing her lips down upon his.
Tickling, she thought.
Their newly-found bravery made them euphoric, free to taste, revel. Padme sank her hands into his damp scalp, greedily, plundering his succulent, grog-soaked mouth. Obi-Wan quaked, his mind blown, her excellence surfeiting him; she was all woman, all passion, all his, if only for this one time.
All too soon for him she gasped, "Air--Obi-Wan, I need--"
"I know what you need," he growled, crushing her. His arms lashed her down, his hands preventing her sugary-supple mouth from slipping away.
She pleaded, more with herself than her incendiary Jedi, who exploded in her veins; she nipped at his jugular. He was molten lava straight from Mustafar. She delved deeper into his bottomless mouth, snaking her tongue along his, seeing how far she could get it down his throat, tickling his larynx.
Groping Padme, he fractured her core, smothering against her lips, "Don't be a dream--be forever!" Her erotic scent drove him crazier, pushing him over...
"We--can't!"
"Yes--I'll be g-gentle. I'd sooner use my lightsaber on myself than hurt you." Absently, he murmured, "Have you seen it?"
She twisted, raising herself up a hairsbreadth from his face. "Seen what?"
"My...w-weapon; it glows."
"You're kidding, right?" She said with a straight face, "Oh, that's good!" She seized the laser sword, holding it up like a trophy. "Here!"
"You're marvelous!"
"I try..." She put it out of harm's way to avoid a grim accident. Obi-Wan dragged her mouth back to his lips with one hand, the other hand tried getting her dress off. Through firebrand lips she pushed, "We can't do this."
He stopped wrestling with her, winded. "All right...we won't."
Tears leaked from her eyes to his face. "I love you too much."
"I love you more." Obi-Wan kissed her tears away, cupping her face. "More than I love myself."
"I adore you, not Anakin. Only you." She breathed in sharply. "If we have sex, we'll ruin everything, and we know that."
He kissed her again, burning the look on her face into memory. "And hell to pay."
"Close your eyes."
"Why?"
"Just close them."
Obedience was instant, and Padme kissed his eyelids, as though he had the power to absolve sins. "Perfection," he praised, fingering her lips, brushing her velvety hair out of her face.
"But, there is Anakin."
"Anakin..."
"There is greatness in him, and goodness. He's very complex."
"And has much to learn about feelings, just as I do."
Padme nuzzled Obi-Wan's nose. "Help him all you can? For me? He tries so hard to be like you."
The side of his finger grazed her soft cheek. "For you, anything, always." His eyes worshipped her. "What are we going to do?"
"What can we do?" Lying against his chest, Padme listened to his strong heartbeat; neither spoke. She pressed her lips to his, and cried a little more. Then, full of emotion, she whispered, "A much lesser, more selfish man, caring only for satisfying himself, would have cowed me. In my eyes, you are the Force."
His heart skipped beats, as true love engulfed him. "You are. Marry me. I mean it. I don't care what happens."
"Can we talk about it tomorrow? You should rest."
After he yawned, Padme settled herself more comfortably in the bed, leaning back against the satiny finished headboard. She invited him to bed down against her, sheltering him in her welcoming arms. "Sweet ones..."
"The sweetest; you're here."
Gingerly, she drew little circles with her fingertips upon his forehead and stroked his hair until they fell fast asleep...
O
It was pitch black, but the rise and fall of Obi-Wan's chest, the tattoo of his heartbeat against her hands reassured her. As though a fog lifted, she became aware that the inkiness was pierced by two fiery ochre orbs targeting them from across the room. A red-bladed lightsaber ignited, hate-filled eyes glowed brighter.
Her mouth was sealed; she couldn't scream. Her eyes were riveted to the phantasm, which descended with the lightsaber slashing. Padme awoke screaming, trembling violently, skin, cold and clammy.
Before she spoke, Obi-Wan illuminated the room softly, using the Force. "It's all right."
"It was horrible!"
"You're safe." He soothed and coddled her through the Force. He knew what she'd dreamt, understood its significance, judging it wiser to say nothing. Gradually, her composure returned.
"He'll kill us."
"He won't."
"He knows we spent the night together."
"No, he doesn't."
"He doesn't?"
"He knows nothing." His words were spoken caresses. He molded a much steadier hand to her cheek, the one adorned with the lovely mole that had him smitten. "Nothing, trust me."
"You're that sure?"
He looked at her and smiled. "Positive."
"But...how?" His eyes held the answer. "You've read his thoughts."
"More like taking preventative measures.."
"What do you mean by 'preventative?'"
"I've never pulled a Jedi Mind trick on you, sweetheart, but this isn't the first time I've used one on Anakin."
"You mean..."
"He doesn't know all the tricks."
"Speaking of tricks, you don't appear to be hung over."
"I'm not." He revealed, "It's a little known fact that Jedi don't get hung over."
"Why's that?"
"Jedi secret." It had something to do with midi-chlorian interaction with ethanol.
"You, and your Jedi secrets...how convenient."
"It's no secret I'm going to kiss you." They did, thoroughly, and left the cramped, fusty room.
His Angel got into a streamlined air taxi, before it took to the cerulean sky; he tapped into the driver to ensure she had a safe trip home, and he rejoiced, feeling peacefully whole.
End