Breath

by Jane St Clair

02/10/99

Rating: NC-17

Spoilers: TPM

Codes: Q/O, romance, moving towards AU

Archive: Master_Apprentice, otherwise by permission only

Feedback: Please, please, please! 3jane@chickmail.com

Summary: Mostly dead. Mostly dead we can do something about! On Naboo, after the war, Obi-Wan is ready to demand an answer. Sequel to "Carefully Everywhere Descending."

Disclaimer: I wish they were mine. If they were, I'd be able to live as I wished, leaping from tree to tree as they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia! I wanted to be . . . a lumberjack! (Seriously, all things Star Wars belong to George Lucas and Lucasfilm, no infringement is intended, no profit made. The story is mine, though, so be kind to me.)

Sex disclaimer: When I was under 18, I thought I was terribly sophisticated, but now that I'm older I know that I'm not. And I don't think you should be, either. So if you're under 18, you'll just have to wait to read this. And if you're over 18 but are bothered by the idea of m/m sex (yeah, slash) . . . well, I wash my hands of you. You may be offended if you read this story. But, on the other hand, the shock might be good for your world view. Just something to think about.

Note: Obi-Wan's meditations are adapted from the Buddhist text, the Dhammapada. Neither my changes (minimal) nor my use of the text in this work is intended to be disrespectful.

those years contained a lot of breathing, and I am not young.
in all those years you are not the first
to take my breath away, but you are
the first to give it back.
          -- from "politics and sex (1): breathe"
   by Candas Jane Dorsey

Deep silence.

He remembered other times that he'd woken slowly, raising his head finally from a lover's chest to catch as much as he could of the rising light. The smell of his partner's body had always been the first thing to register with him. Even before he reached out with the Force in that split second that confirmed identity, the smell would be on them, on him, on the bedclothes and the pillows. He'd spent a few dawns like that, pillowed against close friends, reaching to the flat grey that seemed to colour the first light on every planet he'd visited. For the first minutes, there would be no colour at all. Then it would seep through, and he would be able to distinguish his skin's subtle tones from his partner's. Only when he was steady and breathing, and it was fully morning, would he lay back down and bury his face in that chest, feeling for the steadiness of breathing and the heartbeat that would rise like a Force pulse under his cheek.

They weren't really blankets, around him. It was only his own robe, pulled close, but he'd slept under it before. The floor against him was frighteningly cold. He almost wasn't breathing; his listening had become more important. He was going to be able to recognize the first sound. Until even the silence made him shakingly nauseous and he started to talk.

"I never told you about my first lover. A woman. Her name was Hanen. We were on Altisyne, you remember, to negotiate between the dockers' union and the merchant traders, and you gave me the night off. I met her in cafe where I was reading. She was . . . I don't . . . she was older than I was. She asked me what I was reading, and I told her, and she started an argument with me over it. Something small, the significance of an essayist I liked. I wasn't dressed as a Jedi, you understand. She ordered us dinner. We were still arguing when the owners began putting up chairs for the night, so she invited me back to her rooms. I don't think we ever stopped talking. Her flat was very old-fashioned, not heavily furnished, and I remember that nearly everything was painted white. I was curled up on her bed and explaining my opinions on the value of autobiographies, I think, when she leaned over and kissed me. I was very surprised, but she was . . . fascinating, and it felt good. And then she settled me back against her pillows and made love to me. I never did anything more active than kiss her."

He felt the corner of his mouth twitch. He wondered how much guilt he should feel that he couldn't immediately remember her eye colour or the depth of her loveliness. "A year ago, I passed her in a space port. I was travelling with you. She stopped me and gave me a coloured glass drop, and kissed me on the mouth. It took me almost a minute to realize who she was, and I was surprised that she recognized me at all. You shouted something to me and I turned to answer you, and when I looked back, she wasn't there."

Very faintly, he could hear the metal workings of the hangar. Voices distantly and hands touching things.

"I didn't shape my entire life around you. Even a year ago I had other lovers. I know you know that. I remember coming in after sunrise with someone's face paint still all over me, and you only raised you eyebrows and jerked your chin at the bathroom. And you handed me tea when I came out and we carried on that day just as if I'd slept in the same room with you all night."

And it still smelled like ozone and blood. The skin-edge that was metal on metal. The body against his.

"I've loved you since I was a child. You know that too."

He knew what he must look like, a small, stocky man curled like a child's toy against that rangy body. He had only left once, for a handful of minutes, to retrieve their discarded cloaks and make up this pretense of a bed.

"Please, Qui-Gon. I need you to breathe."

If he reached up with his mind just a little, he could feel the night, black pitching into a few lights, then a hundred, a thousand.

He shifted himself up just enough to support the big face with both hands and kiss it, then settled himself again against the uninjured shoulder.

A million billion stars. Nebulae. Origins.

He was aware of it the instant the big heart under his palm started beating again. He wasn't prepared for the small shifting of his own body as the chest under him recommenced breathing. The shock was a heavier one than he would have expected, and he found himself shaking for long minutes, long enough to assure himself that the breathing would continue. And then buried his face in his Master's shoulder and slept.

A touch on his shoulder, too delicate.

"Jedi Kenobi."

Amidala. He knew the smell of her, velvet and white musk, traced it with a fragment of Force-thought. He pushed up to face her the way he would have the light, easing carefully away from the body against him, and showing only his face. When he gave her his attention, she reached out a hand and brushed his temple. He must have had a bruise there, because he flinched away from the pain automatically, and she pulled back.

She was still in her bare-faced handmaiden guise. When she was fully painted, it was too easy for him to forget that she was a little girl, but Anakin had latched onto her as someone safe, who was nearly of his own age. He knew intellectually that she was beautiful, but the eyes on him were a child's eyes, and he only wanted to hide from them. He'd killed something awful, and he'd been terribly angry when he'd done it. Some small part of him was gibbering from the power of that emotion, but the largest part of him was simply exhausted. In the first seconds after Qui-Gon's death, he'd poured so much energy into his Master's body that he'd been honestly shocked that his own heart had continued beating.

He could feel Qui-Gon at the fringes of his mind, a distant, living force. As he gradually oriented himself, he became aware of the simple palace room, the bed under him, his own belly-down sprawl on it. Even more slowly he realized that he was bare to the waist and that his shoulders ached horribly. Reflexively, he arched up, stretching the muscles and working blood and Force energy through them.

He hissed a little as the worst of the pain eased, and gathered himself. By gently twisting himself he was able to sit cross- legged while still covering himself with the sheet. If it was possible, he wanted not to shock the queen further. From that position he bowed to her as best he could.

"Highness."

"I'm sorry, Jedi Kenobi, I didn't mean for you to get up," she said softly. A pause. "How do you feel?"

If he hadn't been so tired, he would have generated a diplomatic answer. As it was, he couldn't generate anything more distinct than, "Hurts."

"The healers thought you must have fallen. Your whole back was bruised."

She half-reached to touch him again, then withdrew and buried the hand in a fold of her robe. For half a minute, Obi-Wan was mystified. Only when he realized that she was nearly scarlet did he glance down and realize how nearly naked, and how much older he was than the girl in front of him. While her eyes were averted, he pulled the sheet more closely around and under himself, and drew his knees up against his chest so that he was a little more concealed, at least.

With her face still lowered, Amidala said, "Anakin would like to see you."

Her presence suddenly struck him as odd. There was no reason, if they were safe, for her to move about as a servant. "I am honoured at your presence, Highness, but does the Queen carry messages now?" It was as much a query as to their situation as it was a tease.

"I go where I want, Jedi Kenobi. The healers were reluctant to allow Anakin in, but they did not quite have the courage to refuse the queen. I told Anakin I would see you."

She raised her eyes, then, and looked him over frankly. Obi- Wan had rarely been appraised so openly, even in port city taverns. The look lasted only a handful of moments, and he would almost have thought he had imagined it if not for the fragments of adolescent lust that he could feel in the space between them. His sense of it must have showed in his face, because she laughed gently, breaking off the emotion. The expression she turned on him afterwards was extraordinarily mature, and it occurred to him that he liked this girl very much. He wondered how many years it would be until she would turn that expression on Anakin, and how many more it would be before the boy recognized the preciousness of it.

"If the healers will permit it," he told her, "I would be pleased to see Anakin as well." His body hurt, but he didn't think he could sleep again, and nothing but that or mediation would heal him.

She stepped to the door and spoke quietly with someone behind it. While she was not demanding his attention, Obi-Wan reached across his apprenticeship bond to his Master. He could feel the man sleeping, just below the surface of consciousness, and barely dreaming. Fragmentary images came to him, but they were only the soft babble of a subconscious mind touching the Force, neither nightmare nor love-dream. He sent his relief across, and something almost answered him, then shifted to a half-dream of reading in the library on Coruscant.

When he surfaced, Anakin was hovering several feet from him, hands behind him and shoulders down. Amidala was there, Obi- Wan could feel her, but she was out of his line of sight, and not immediate.

Obi-Wan extended one hand a little, half an invitation to this strange, small creature whom his Master had adopted. Anakin took it after a long consideration, and used it as a lever to clamber up on the bed facing the older man.

"I blew up the ship." It was a kind of offering, a conversational opening between two people who had little in common beyond the Force and Qui-Gon Jinn.

"Did you?"

"Uh-huh." Obi-Wan smiled a little and cocked his head. It was all the invitation the boy needed; he chattered until the pain rising back up Obi-Wan's consciousness drove him to nearly convulsive shivering.

From the corner, Amidala said, "Ani, we should let Jedi Kenobi rest."

Anakin clasped Obi-Wan's hand in a trader's grip, then added a second hand against the back of it. Obi-Wan added his left hand as well, swallowing the boy's extremity completely for a moment, and then let him go. Afterwards, lying in the half- dark, Obi-Wan contemplated the oddness of that touch and his own aching gratitude that he might not have to train the small being that he only barely understood.

He came in carrying Anakin. The boy wasn't cuddly as Obi-Wan had been at that age, begging praise and attention wherever he could get it, but he was starved for physical affection in his mother's absence, and Obi-Wan suspected that the boy would accept comfort from anyone willing to receive him. There were possibilities inherent in that that Obi-Wan didn't like to consider, but the only thing that had come of that need thus far was a small boy riding Obi-Wan piggy-back through the early afternoon light of the palace.

It still hurt. Obi-Wan's battered shoulders were nearly healed, but the last of the damage only repaired itself at the rate of a normal human body. The twinges were reminders of his own stubborn mortality, something else he didn't want to consider.

Inside Qui-Gon's room, he swung the boy down and watched him go and kneel beside the Jedi master's bed. Qui-Gon spoke quietly to him, then reached out and combed his fingers through the straw-blond hair. Anakin ducked and got up, walked around Obi- Wan and vanished out the door. The door closing behind him made only the faintest of sounds. The two remaining men stayed like that, watching each other quietly while the sunlight angled in the windows and soaked around their legs.

Obi-Wan said, "The Council is here."

"How many?"

"All of them. The thing we killed was a Sith. They're concerned."

Silence.

"He likes you," Qui-Gon said.

"Who?"

"Anakin."

"I should hope so. He's been using me for climbing practice all day. I'm going to be forced to deposit him in the reflecting pond shortly." At Qui-Gon's gesture, he folded himself onto the bed and sat cross-legged.

"That should be interesting. I wonder if he has enough Force control to levitate himself out."

"I don't know. Perhaps I should leave it to the Master as an exercise."

Obi-Wan couldn't remember how long ago he'd gained the audacity to tease his Master, but it had long since become a buffer for the rough edges each of them possessed. His sense of humour was wry and a little dangerous and it was only in Qui-Gon's presence that it constituted affection.

He knew enough of Qui-Gon's body language to recognize the small invitation in the other man's posture. Only a handful of years ago, he would have accepted it instantly and curled himself against that rangy, spiced warmth. A season ago, even, he would have moved close enough to touch. As it was, Obi-Wan kept to his place and quietly, letting slow affection roll across the master-apprentice bond while the light bands on the floor lengthened and finally converted themselves into shadows. By early twilight, Qui-Gon was sitting upright and facing him, nearly meditational.

It was into that silence that Obi-Wan leaned, catching his Master's lips and kissing them, then pulling back and rising.

"The Council are ready to knight me," he said. "They concluded that the death of the Sith was my Test. The ceremony will be held when you are strong enough to attend."

Softly, "Obi-Wan."

"The palace gardens are magnificent," he continued. "When you feel strong enough, come and find me."

The core gardens were pristine, even in the aftermath of the war, as though the invaders had simply had no interest in them. The reflecting pond was here, headed by a piece of crystalline abstract art. Beyond that, a series of hedges created occasional clearings, some suitable for state galas and others only tiny. Almost a maze. On the other side of that was stonework, and rougher parkland beyond.

(O let us live in joy, in love amongst those who hate! Among those who hate, let us live in love.)

What was perhaps more wonderful were the side gardens. These were surrounded by flat-sided, unelaborate wooden fences that rose to more than human height. Little enough vegetation, but what there was, was carefully shaped and set in contrast to large stones and fine gravel or sand, all arranged with an attention to the living Force that a Jedi could admire and even envy. In his time wandering the palace grounds, Obi-Wan had found three such. The farthest out had been neglected, probably for a long time. In addition to the plant life and rock, it held a small, irregularly-sided pool that in the fading daylight had been almost mirror-black. He thought perhaps the space had been created in the time when the Naboo had understood their symbiotic relationship with the water- dwellers of their planet.

(O let us live in joy, in health amongst those who are ill! Amongst those who are ill, let us live in health.)

He came back to this place to meditate. It was after dark, but there was a torch bracket in the garden wall, and even a small flame caught the water and gave him an amazing light.

(O let us live in joy, in peace amongst those who struggle! Amongst those who struggle, let us live in peace.)

He was grateful to be alone. Without Anakin or Amidala, but also with Qui-Gon. The man's presence was intense, to the point that he sometimes wondered if it would devour him. When he'd been a child, that charisma had been something within which he could make himself invisible and be safe; when he'd been a teenager, it had been the focal point of his adolescent lust. In five or six years, Anakin would love Qui-Gon like that.

(O let us live in joy, although having nothing! In joy let us live like spirits of light!)

Obi-Wan's own feelings for his master had been the subject of half a hundred meditations in the last two or three years. He hadn't had any desire to re-live his first infatuation. But this was something else, less omnipresent and less shattering, but felt with all the intensity of his adult mind. And it was love, for Qui-Gon as a person rather than a symbol. As the one who rubbed Obi-Wan's back when he couldn't sleep, but also as a man he was just coming to know, whose silences absorbed him and whose pride would always keep him from taking on a desperate lover.

(If you find a man who is constant, awake to the inner light, learned, long-suffering, endowed with devotion, a noble man -- follow this good and great man even as a moon follows the path of the stars.)

The back of his head tingled a little with the absence of his ponytail. He'd cut it off when his knighthood had become a certainty. The padawan braid was still there; its removal was ceremonial, and afterwards either he or his master would likely keep it. The rest was just hair, a caste-symbol within the temple. It was only the strangeness of being without it that made him unbalanced.

(For hate is not conquered by hate: hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal.)

He could Qui-Gon's eyes on him, the expression in them strange, as though he were evaluating a slightly different person than the one he had expected. Even in the deep stillness of his meditations, Obi-Wan had been able to feel his Master coming, had been totally aware of his entrance into the closed garden. There was no urgency in the living Force around him or in his Master's presence, so he let himself surface gradually, coming back to a full awareness of the space, the water, the small stones, the patterns of light and dark.

"The meditation on joy," Qui-Gon said.

"Yes."

"How did you do with it?"

"Well. Thank you." He rose, stretched briefly, and stood a moment facing his Master. Then stepped past the larger man out of the enclosed space. Qui-Gon extinguished the torch and followed him. Outside, the garden was liquid. The hedges towered over even Qui-Gon and muttered softly in the small wind.

One of Qui-Gon's silences emerged in the course of their walk. By the time they reached the reflecting pool, the stillness had extended to the air around them and the leaves that they passed. It was a stillness reflected in the palace. In the few weeks since they had retaken the capital, the silence after dark had been extraordinary, as if the people were still afraid to surface. Even in the midst of the open celebration with the Gungans, everything had been clean and still again by dusk. Now, a little after midnight, the palace was deeply asleep, and the city beyond it was disturbed only by the punctuating torches.

In the colonnade at the edge of the palace proper, he stopped, a step earlier than seemed natural, so that Qui-Gon's momentum carried the larger man into him a little. When Obi-Wan turned, his Master's robes were close enough to his face that he could have inhaled through the cloth. In the instant after that, Qui-Gon's arms came around him and drew him close, rocking Obi- Wan gently back and forth, undemandingly. He could have stayed like that all night, buried in the Qui-Gon-smell and the layered warmth. It was safe enough in that embrace for him to release the deep concentration of his meditations and lean unthinkingly into the touch. Completely safe for him to lift his face when he felt ready and open his mouth to his teacher's kiss. Simple and very slow. There was a question in the contact that he took careful time to process and answer.

do you want me, Obi-Wan? as master or as a man? is this done for the right reasons?

He could have answered yes instantly, but the intensity demanded some consideration of him. When the caress ended, Obi-Wan pulled back enough to see the face of the person he'd kissed, consciously looking for the man he was coming to realize was under the surface of his hero. Lines around the blue eyes, greying brown hair, and an awareness of both these things.

He stepped back, leaving the embrace and taking only Qui-Gon's hand with him. Moved until the column was at his back. From that vantage, he could see the light across Qui-Gon's face when he raised the palm to his lips and kissed it, then licked the place where his lips had rested. What he gained from that view reminded him of sitting in the garden and focussing on a flowering plant to feel all its small joy in its growth.

"I am not your student anymore, Qui-Gon Jinn. Let me be your lover."

And saw the closed energy of the living being in front of him explode. He had half a second's view of Qui-Gon's pure joy before his teacher's control clamped down, and the view of half a smile before the mystic, mysterious expression reasserted itself.

When he moved away, Qui-Gon followed him, releasing his hand and stepping up to walk beside him so that in the still palace they were only two robed and hooded Jedi pacing soundlessly through the halls. Once he stopped, pressed his open hands to a door so that he could feel Anakin sleeping, comfortably buried in a pile of royal-crested blankets. The boy was already so much the queen's pet, whoever taught the child would have to fight her for his attention.

And finally his own chamber. It was nearly bare: only the bed, a table and chair, and the fire bowls in each corner. The fires hadn't been lit when he'd gone out, but sometime in the night a servant must have come in to stoke them, because the metal braziers all radiated a penetrating and immediate warmth. There was nothing else in the room: no hangings, no curtains, none of the monolithic sculptural art he'd come to associate with the palace's design. Amidala's perception of what was appropriate for Jedi, perhaps. He couldn't begrudge her it, though, not even the curtains: the windows that ran along the one side of his room were nearly floor-to-ceiling, and uncovered they gave an enormous view of the gardens.

Qui-Gon's lips were the most immediate reminder of his presence. A moment after Obi-Wan had stilled, they had settled behind his ear, mouthing the short hair delicately. He went absolutely still in the face of that contact. Qui-Gon's hands came around him, ran up his chest and down to his waist, and he was almost naked before he realized that the touch had some purpose other than to give pleasure.

His bare shoulders were so pale that Obi-Wan was sure he must glow in the dark. Even leaving the pallor of his skin, there was so much Force-energy coursing through him that he felt dangerously electric. And electric was the way Qui-Gon handled him, like something that might give an unexpected static shock. Steady, careful. Grounded. But always with Qui-Gon's mouth on his neck or running across his shoulders, always with Qui- Gon's fingers dipping below the waistband of his leggings.

When he turned himself fully into that embrace, he was already naked. His clothing and boots and all his tools were pooled around him on the floor. Qui-Gon absorbed him, kissing gently along his hairline and stroking the outlines of muscles in his back. So good. He would have been willing to simply climb the man, kiss him breathless, and then allow himself to be taken against the wall. Instead he stripped his Master of everything but his leggings and knelt, kissing the bared flesh of the lower belly and the still-clothed skin that stretched over the narrow hips. So easy to unlace the boots while he was down there, rubbing his cheek against the rough fabric. Even easier to slide the leggings down and bury his face in the dark hair that he exposed.

He only got up when Qui-Gon pulled at him. His Master's hands were big enough that any part of him they touched simply disappeared. Enormous hands turned him and guided him to the bed, settled him on the edge of it. Qui-Gon slid in behind him, settled on his back, and caught Obi-Wan again, pulling the younger man until he was lying on top, cradled by his Master's body. The position didn't demand any effort from Obi-Wan at all. He was held completely; all he had to do was raise his head a little and Qui-Gon could kiss him indefinitely.

He could have stayed like that all night. Desire was steaming in the deeper parts of his body, but even this was more intimate than anything he'd had with this man before. And underneath all his confidence, there was still the child who wanted to be held and kissed. In this night, he'd been kissed deeply three, maybe four times; otherwise, Qui-Gon's lips had only feathered over him or brushed his, sometimes shifting so their noses rubbed. Except for their nudity, there was something terribly innocent in their contact.

He'd spent too many nights like this, hovering on the edge of full sexuality, to accept the gentle and undemanding affection between them now. Obi-Wan reached over his Master's shoulder and palmed the bottle hidden under the pillows, pressed it into Qui-Gon's hand with a look that was more than a request. Faintly, he could feel the Force shifting as Qui-Gon opened the vessel without lifting his second hand from Obi-Wan's back. The oil dripped from the open hand onto his skin. Obi-Wan shifted briefly, bringing his knees to the outside of Qui-Gon's legs and pushing them forward so that he was as spread as he could manage in his current posture.

The push of Qui-Gon's first slicked finger against his anus was enough to shatter his concentration completely. Unable to sustain his kisses, Obi-Wan dropped his head into the crook of Qui-Gon's neck and shoulder and concentrated on breathing while the pressure built, first gently, then very hard, until a single push drove the finger in past the second knuckle. Big, bigger than he'd thought, for all the times that he'd noticed Qui-Gon's enormous hands on him. Even with that minimal contact he was whimpering and trembling.

"Shhh, my Obi-Wan. Relax, it's all right."

He did, gradually. Qui-Gon's finger in him was very still, and the lips pressed against the top of his head were as steadying as anything he could imagine. Finally, the touch shifted just a little, and an almost blinding pleasure ran through him. Riding the crest of that pleasure, he was able to raise his head again and kiss and be kissed.

Qui-Gon stretched him carefully, waiting for a long time at two fingers until Obi-Wan knew he was whimpering for more. Three fingers were unreasonably huge, and they went deeper than he could have expected. Very briefly, a fourth nudged him, and by then he was begging out loud. Qui-Gon withdrew completely, then, and when the fingers came back it was only to oil the younger man thoroughly.

The next time he shifted, Obi-Wan's whole awareness became focussed on the erection rising just behind him. If he'd been a larger man, their position would never have worked; as it was, he could push down just a little and let the crease of his buttocks cradle the hard flesh, and rub against it.

"Oh Force, my Obi-Wan, yes!"

And there was nothing protective in that voice. When Obi-Wan sat up and rose to his knees, the big hands running over him were less careful than insistent. Even in the almost nonexistent light, he could make out desperate lines cutting themselves across the older man's face. He reached with both hands and locked Qui-Gon's in his. The touch transferred enough oil on his skin that he was slick by the time he let one hand go and reached back to lubricate Qui-Gon's erection. He kept his hand there, bracing the too-hot hardness, while he found his balance just above the big body, braced himself, and sank down, impaling himself.

Obi-Wan had never in his life taken anyone this deep. He'd slid his knees far apart, taking his Master so deeply that he was resting against the man's thighs. After that, it was long minutes before he could do anything but tremble, braced against Qui-Gon's hands and holding himself in place with simple will.

It hurt, but he'd been expecting that. His stillness let the pain run through him and dissipate, given over to the Force. What came after it was hot, stabbing pleasure, of being stretched and penetrated, of the love that underlaid that touch. Qui-Gon was whispering to him, words he couldn't make out, but the sound was reassuring. It was that sound that gave him the strength he needed to move, pushing up and letting himself slide down, once, twice.

He needed this. Qui-Gon's hands holding his, letting him drive up and down until he exhausted himself, then the soft voice telling him not to worry, guiding him into a gentle rocking motion that worked off the strength of his Master's grip. Less urgent, but no less intense. He could feel Qui-Gon shifting deep inside him, could feel the pleasure coursing just under the man's skin. Once, the other man tried to break the grip and reach for him, but Obi-Wan held on, riding a little faster and then squeezing hard.

"Love you, Master. Absolutely."

He could feel Qui-Gon's orgasm rising, and he rode it out, letting the wet heat pulse into him and keeping his motions steady until all the tension was gone from the big body under his and even the enormous hands had relaxed their grip. And even then he waited, just enjoying the penetration until the cock inside him softened. When it slid out of him, he let himself nearly collapse, and dismount, settling beside the slack warmth of his Master. By resting his head on Qui-Gon's chest, he could feel both the man's heartbeat and his steady breathing.

Gradually, one arm wrapped around his shoulders and Qui-Gon roused himself. By that time, Obi-Wan's own cock was achingly hard. He hadn't been willing to spare enough concentration from his partner's pleasure to let himself come before, and the resulting tension had run completely through his body before resettling in his groin. Even now he wasn't prepared to disturb the quiet between them, but he was so hard it almost hurt, and he couldn't help shifting against the warm flesh pressed against him.

Softly, "Obi-Wan, you didn't . . ."

"Don't worry about it."

Qui-Gon snorted. "You are joking." He rolled suddenly and locked his lips over Obi-Wan's, more aggressively than he had all night. "You," he said, "are a terrible tease. Holding yourself in front of me like that and then not letting me touch you." Licked Obi-Wan's chest and belly, circling his tongue around the shallow pool of the younger man's navel. When he shifted again, it was to bring his mouth level with man's erection. Obi-Wan had a half-glimpse of him before he bent and closed his mouth around the tip, and it was so incredibly good, so wet and he needed this so badly . . .

"No!"

Qui-Gon released him and turned to look Obi-Wan in the eye, but didn't raise his head. "Shh, love. What is it?"

"I . . ." And how was he supposed to explain this? "I . . . I love your hands. Could you . . . ? Please?"

Laughter chuffing against his skin. "If it pleases you." Qui- Gon straightened and rearranged them swiftly, so that Obi-Wan was almost completely surrounded by the larger man, with his shoulders cradled and one long leg wrapped around his. Qui-Gon kissed him and reached back out of sight, coming back with his palm oiled into a perfect, slick surface.

Warm, soft lips locked over his and Qui-Gon's tongue slid into his mouth, tracing out the small grooves on his teeth and reaching back almost to the base of his throat. In the midst of that kiss, one enormous hand closed around his cock and began stroking him, at first gently, then gripping harder so that he could thrust into it. Obi-Wan was vaguely aware of his whole body bucking into the touch, twisting so hard that it must have taken the greatest part of Qui-Gon's strength just to hold him down. Fingers on him, rubbing his flesh and then shifting down to roll his balls gently in a big palm. He was crying, he knew he was crying, but any sounds he made were vanishing down the older man's throat.

The kiss never broke off, only shifted occasionally when Obi- Wan twisted hard enough to jar them both. When he came, he came shrieking, and even that sound was lost into his Master's lungs, just air and the moisture of his mouth and the other. He was sticky and shaking and nearly blind from the pleasure, and for a long time afterward Qui-Gon simply held him, still kissing, and stroking him gently. A light stroke across his cock and balls, a careful finger stroking his anus where he'd already been stretched and taken.

They were both a mess, but he didn't have the energy to move, and he was too determined to let his partner go. Eventually, when the last aftershocks had run through him, he simply let himself sleep, clinging to his Master and listening to the soft words the man still poured out to him.

beautiful beautiful love you my Obi-Wan no one has ever been as beautiful as perfect as you are I am not going to leave you, love shh, sleep, it's all right

Strange that even in his sleep, he was counting Qui-Gon's breaths, the numbers sifting through his dreams insistently, like something he couldn't let go of.

Do you love me? I'm insecure. Reassure me at 3jane@chickmail.com