Meditations
by WriteStuff (Writestufflee@Mindspring.com)
Archive: Certainly on M&A. Others please request.
Category: Q/O
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Explicit sex between two hot guys. If it's not your
cup of tea, leave the pot for the rest of us. No spoilers.
Disclaimer: The characters are George Lucas's, bless him for
having such a fevered imagination, even if it's not as fevered
as mine. I should be so lucky as to make any money from writing
stuff that's this much fun to write. Unfortunately, I'm not.
Note: Story # 9 in the Warrior's Heart series. Since I'm not
keen on serials, I promise to keep the stories complete in
themselves, sans cliffhangers. If you want to read them in
story order, as opposed to the order I wrote them in, here it
is:
1. Rightful Owner
2. Crime and Punishment
3. Ecstasies
4. The Anger Exercises
5. The Geometry of Desire
6. Close Shave*
7. But for Grace
8. Give and Take
9. Meditations
10. Master & Apprentice**
11. Nomenclature
12. A Simple Twist of Fate (Not a Songfic)*
13. The Fear Exercises*
I. Ghosts and Possessions
II. Solitaire
III. Exorcism
IV. The Padawan Teaches the Master
14. Epilogue: Emancipation
*Not yet posted. Patience, Padawans.
**Note change of story order.
telepathy in //.
Summary: Qui-Gon & Obi-Wan contemplate a sudden change in
their relationship.
Feedback: The more I gets, the more I writes, so if you like
what you read, please feed the writer.Warning: Proportion of
writing to feedback may increase exponentially, unless I go up
in flames shortly.E-mail only, please.
I: Evening
Qui-Gon:
My knees hurt when I do this now. They've hurt for some years
and still I do it, like every Jedi, sit here once in the
morning, once at night, sometimes in between when the need
arises, clear my mind and truly think. Sometimes there are no
thoughts at all, only the peace of being immersed in the Force
and seeing the way. Sometimes there are only thoughts and no
peace, or little of it. Sometimes one leads to the other.
Tonight I'm looking for peace and finding only an endless
stream of thoughts and images and turmoil in my heart. Tonight
I have a great deal to meditate upon--and my knees hurt.
The theme for this evening's meditation, Master Jinn, is "Be
mindful of your desires."
Last night, Obi-Wan and I went together to the gardens, not to
meditate, precisely, but to make love as a meditation, to
cleanse the gardens of sadness and pain and death with our own
joy. I was not, I confess, sure we could do it. More precisely,
that I could do it. We have known one another for seven years,
yet we are such new lovers that passion still rides us as we
ride each other, so I expected it to be difficult. But
everything was different last night. Everything. My padawan, my
lover, was solemn and serious as he can be, and yet it was
plain he had lost nothing of his enthusiasm or desire for me,
and that reined me in. We made slow and careful and very ardent
love to cleanse the gardens, but something more than ardor rode
us both. Wishes and unspoken hopes and an unspeakable need rode
us last night, rode me. I cannot say what rode my lover, only
that it did so to a better end than mine.
I have wished, all my life, for what I had last night, for a
coupling where I would join with my lover through the Force and
he or she would do the same with me, the two of us annealing
our hearts together, seeing one another as we truly are and
love growing greater for it. I tried for years to share that
with Mace, only to find it built a great emptiness between us
instead of bringing us closer. Last night I was granted that
wish, for just an instant, matched heart to heart by the
generosity of a young man who loves me so much he would follow
me to any hell. Obi-Wan cried out for me and I answered as I
always have, in hope, then, wondrously, as no other lover has,
he turned that offering back to me again, effortlessly. We
poured everything of ourselves into the Force together, binding
us inextricably. I came inside him, he following upon the
moment and it left us both senseless, Obi-Wan unconscious and
me--
Me it left emptier than I have ever been before.
Careful what you wish for.
I've been given such a great gift, to know this man this way
and now all I feel is--what? Turmoil, not peace. Need, not
fulfillment. Greed. Jealousy. Fear, not contentment. Such a
great fear of losing him now. And that fear will undo me as it
nearly did in the garden, send me down the same path Leth Astl
took. If not for Obi-Wan's gift of his bottomless love, I would
have taken the first steps already. How I've used him.
"Wise enough are you to love your own padawan?" my master asked
me. "Learned from your mistakes have you?" He knows me so well,
better than I know myself, if I were not too proud to admit it.
Oh yes, My Master. Of course I've learned. Selfish old
fool. I've learned nothing, except, perhaps, that I am not fit
to be a master, especially not Obi-Wan's , nor fit to be his
lover, and that it is too late to cease being either.
Obi-Wan:
I can hardly sit still. I couldn't manage to sit in the same
room with him and have a calm heart and mind, so I've come out
to the balcony in the cold air to clear my head. I'm not at all
sure I can do anything but think about him, when I should be
trying to clear my mind and settle my heart. There are times,
and this is one of them, that we're like radioactive elements:
bring us close enough together and there's no stopping the
reaction. Especially after last night and this morning. I never
thought that what happened to us in the gardens was possible,
that sex, even with someone I love as deeply as I love him,
could be so powerful. Powerful enough make me lose
consciousness, powerful enough to reduce my serene,
imperturbable master to uncontrollable sobs.
I'm not sure, in fact, that it was the sex at all, though I
haven't asked him his thoughts on the matter. We haven't
discussed what happened between us last night and this morning,
haven't even mentioned it, which I find disturbing. He said
everything would be different afterwards, and it is, but not
the way I thought. Nor the way he thought either, from the
looks of it.
All day he's been restless and distracted, pacing through our
rooms, long fingers touching things absently, stroking objects
and furniture the way he strokes my skin, as though he needs to
touch me and can't. I've caught him looking at me at odd times
during the day with an expression somewhere between grief and
longing and it chokes me. I've never seen him like this, unable
to concentrate or focus, tongue-tied, distant, clumsy in the
katas to the point of nearly injuring himself and me before he
stopped, stammering and apologizing, and actually fled the
room.
I wish he would say something, but I know he won't and I can't,
because it's not my place to question him. I'm only beginning
to understand how harsh the constraints on us are, how hard it
must be for him. Lovers or no, there's still a barrier between
us, and I suspect neither of us know where the boundaries lie
quite yet. But I thought that, if anything, what we did last
night would bring down some of them. Instead, it seems only to
have built another.
I don't understand how or why, because so much opened up for me
last night. For just that one moment, I think I finally saw and
felt, in a way I never have before, what he's been trying to
teach me all these years of our connection to the Force. It
bound us together and then released us again, and it was
glorious to be with him in the whole web of life, to sense
everyone and everything around us through and with him. Better,
though, to see him and know he's everything I thought he
was, and more, and different at the same time, and full of
human faults, though no less admirable or desirable for them.
Just a taste of it, that's all we had, but it was enough.
Enough to make me want more. More of him, more of us together,
more of that confluence. I don't understand why he's like this
now. How could we come away from what we had last night feeling
so differently? I've never felt so complete and he just seems
shattered.
Perhaps it's nothing to do with me. I don't know my own master
as well as I like to think. I saw so much of him last night
that I didn't know was there, that longing I never would have
guessed at, all the old pain I hadn't imagined, and something I
never would never have dreamed of in Qui- Gon Jinn: self-doubt.
But he is a very private man, not to say secretive, and there's
a great deal he shields me from or shields from me, even now.
He maintains a certain careful distance, a reticence I don't
dare breach, as I would not have dreamed of entering his room
without his permission before we were lovers. Tonight, it's a
wide distance, when it should be anything but. I don't know how
to bridge it, how to bring him close again. How to tell him
that whatever it is, I'm here, that all he has to do is ask me,
touch me.
Interlude
They sit together in the same room, silent and outwardly
companionable, but there is a tension in the air that has not
often been there before. The older one fidgets and paces with
an uncharacteristic restlessness, rising repeatedly from his
chair for tea, for paper, for a stylus, for this, for that; the
younger one, sprawled on the floor with an unconscious animal
grace, watches him surreptitiously, darting a glance up now and
then from his datapad and calculations. Neither of them speak,
but there are words hanging in the air like moisture, waiting
for the right conditions to coalesce.
The tension is almost a third living thing in the room and
speaks not only of words unuttered but of a deep love between
them and some hurt one has given the other. There is no
animosity or anger in it, for neither of these two would allow
themselves such feelings. What is present is constraint and
uncertainty on one's part, need and stubborn denial on the
other's--and a certain forbidden amount of amorphous and shared
fear.
Eventually, worn down, the younger one yawns and rises and puts
away his study materials, tidies the room and walks behind the
older one's chair, where he sits with a frayed and ancient book
on his lap whose pages he has not turned in hours. The younger
man touches his shoulder affectionately and the older man
starts.
"Sorry, love." He leans down and kisses the top of the other's
head. "Didn't mean to make you jump. I'm going to bed."
The older man reaches up and touches his face. "Good night,
Padawan. I'll be in soon."
But it is some hours before he enters the darkened room and
joins his lover in bed, and the young man has fallen asleep,
waiting for him. He slides between the covers carefully, trying
not to wake the young man, and lies some distance from him,
turned away, as though they are strangers sharing a bed, not
new and hungry lovers.
Beside him, across the vast distance of unwarmed sheet, the
younger man wakes out of his light doze, puzzled at the absence
of embracing arms. He is usually the one to turn away in his
sleep where the other cuddles up against him through the night,
nuzzling his neck, his ears, the spot where his braid begins,
whatever is within reach and appealing. The feel of lightly
scratchy beard and warm breath against his shoulder or neck or
cheek or the top of his head is so familiar now that he finds
it hard to fall or stay asleep without it, as it has been
tonight. The lateness of the hour and his very light doze have
left him sleepy, and the nearness of his lover, aroused.
Fatigue tugs at the older man, too, but he knows he will not
sleep, wonders why he bothered to come to bed, except that he
craves the presence of his padawan. Part of him wants to hold
the beautiful young man, fit the shape of his long, lean body
to the shape of the more compact one beside him, breathe in the
scent of his warmth and desire, feel the texture of skin change
beneath his hands as they slide over every surface. Another
part recoils, not so much from that contact itself, as from the
need that drives the desire for it. But it is a need he cannot
master, finally, and he starts to reach for the younger man,
only to find himself already being embraced from behind.
Nestling up against his master's long, smooth back, the young
man inhales deeply, smelling the faint reminders of soap and
incense and the tantalizing scent of skin unique to this man he
loves--clean like the air after a rain with a hint of male musk
that grows so much stronger when they sweat together in
workouts or sex. He would know this man by that smell anywhere,
were all his other senses deadened. Nothing conjures up memory
or desire like the faintest trace of it in a room, on clothing
or sheets. So often only that slight stimulus makes him hard,
as he is now.
A stubbled cheek rubs against the older man's shoulder, fingers
brush the hair from his neck, and warm breath spreads across
it, followed by soft lips. One arm slides around him, one hand
comes to rest over his heart, fingers stroking his nipple,
making him shiver, sending a jolt through him. The lips move
down his neck, across his shoulder, nipping gently. It brings a
moan into his throat, one that comes out a growl. He reaches
back, pulls the young man hard against him with a handful of
ass, knowing he is leaving fingermarks, feels a stiff cock
pressed against the small of his back, knows he wants it inside
him, stretching him, filling him, hurting him. Making him
whole.
Sensing what he wants, knowing his lover that well now, the
younger man pulls away a little and strokes the skin above the
cleft in his master's ass in slow, lazy circles. He's rewarded
with a shiver.
Bucking back against him, the older takes the younger's hand,
sucks and licks the fingers and lets him go, breathing harshly
in anticipation.
Directions clear, he circles the ring of muscle with one wet
finger, gently pressing for entrance. There's more than the
usual resistance before he's inside that tight, hot space,
stroking skillfully. He props himself up on one elbow and leans
over the older man's shoulder, watching his face in the dark,
until they are almost impossibly entwined like two fish
spawning. He loves this feeling, loves the intimacy, the
reaching inside his lover to touch him in secret places that
make him shudder and moan. But that physical intimacy is only a
small part of loving the man beside him and tonight he wants
more.
So does his partner. He presses back into his lover, and turns
his head, bringing his mouth to the juncture of shoulder and
neck above him. His teeth clamp against flesh and sinew in a
burst of hot breath, and then there's a cry from the young man
as he bites down hard. A second finger pushes into him, echoing
the hurt, and they thrash against each other, making the bed
rock. But it is not enough. Not enough to fill the emptiness.
Not enough. //Not enough.//
He feels the bite distantly, though he knows it will hurt
later, glorying in its possessiveness, in the sense of
belonging it gives him. Not given to bragging, he finds it
quietly gratifying to be marked and seen as such in the
changing rooms. At first, his lover's ferocity frightened him,
but he's come to expect and need it now, and it sends the same
kind of thrill through him that his master's hands on him
would. And he knows what else it means, without explanation.
More. Harder. Hurry. //Not enough.// He reaches down and
spreads his lover without further preparation.
The young man thrusts his hard cock into him savagely and it
hurts enough to bring tears to his eyes, sending a vicious burn
and ache along his spine, down his legs and through his pelvis.
He lets go of his lover's flesh, tasting blood, licks the
tender skin now moist with sweat and his own saliva, and bucks
against his lover, pushing him painfully deeper, another growl
escaping him. His lover drives into him harder and faster and
there's another long moment of burn and ache before his own
endorphins kick in and all he wants is more.
They move against each other fiercely, the young man's breath
harsh and hot against his own shoulder, his braid swinging in a
wild arc as he thrusts. There's a keening hum in the younger
man's throat as he nears his own climax. He reaches for the
older man's cock and stops his thrusts with a little
involuntary grunt and shudder, stunned, finding it flaccid.
II: Morning:
Qui-Gon:
On your knees, Master Jinn. On your knees until you get it
right. Until you know what to say, what to think, how to feel
again. How not to hurt the man you love.
It wasn't your fault, love. It wasn't you. You were so gentle
with me all day yesterday, Obi-Wan, after our return from the
gardens, touching me as though I might fly apart. Touching me
constantly, to reassure me of your presence, your love. Though
I nearly maimed you in the practice rooms, you took the blame,
apologizing, claimed you weren't paying attention when we both
knew the fault was mine.
Then I let you make love to me last night, when I had nothing
in me to give. What a fool. What a disaster. What a perversion.
I imagine you sitting here on my lap, Padawan, your young and
beautiful body joined to this old flesh as it was only hours
ago, and just the thought makes me hard, as it should have last
night. Of late, it also makes me incredibly sad, and that,
perhaps, is what went wrong.
Not that I regret for a moment loving you, or regret a moment
of our loving over the past tenthyear. You've brought me such
joy, Obi-Wan. I wish I could show you how much. I wake in the
morning with you beside me and feel as though I've been reborn,
given another life. And perhaps I have. Perhaps it's not too
much of an exaggeration to say that you've saved me from
becoming old and lonely and humorless--and bitter. I've said as
much and gotten only a look of incredulity from you, as though
you cannot imagine me being any of those things, but the seeds
are in me and had already begun to grow in my heart before we
became lovers.
Oddly enough, it was when I first realized I loved you, desired
you, that they began to take root. You were 19, coming into
your manhood with a vengeance, awash in hormones, beautiful, at
the peak of fitness, singing with life force and power even
when you were standing still. I would stand beside you and feel
your presence in the Force like lightning hunting for ground.
At times it would make my hair stand on end, yet you were
unaware of it. You could not yet see what I do in the Force,
are only now coming to know it as I do, but I knew that ability
was in you. No other lover I've had has shared that gift with
me and, ultimately, that lack tore Mace and I apart. So seeing
that possibility in you only made me want you more.
It was knowing I could not have you that made me lonely, and
knowing why that made me feel old and humorless. What
foolishness, I told myself, to even wonder if this young man
would vaguely entertain the idea of wanting you. Having found
the partner I had been looking for all my life and to be faced
with your loss before even having a chance would make anyone
bitter. You were glorious: handsome, powerful, gifted, wise,
alive to the Force, whole, unscarred.
And then I discovered that you loved me. Our first kiss was
lightning, and I was the ground. I'm still scorched by it,
electrified by you.
I am so lucky, Obi-Wan, so lucky to have found you, so lucky to
be loved by you. I am almost afraid of how lucky I am. I don't
know if it comes only from being wary of such happiness after
so much loss or because some of your prescience has touched me
as our bond has grown, but I wake sometimes at night in a cold
panic and reach for you as though you were already gone. I've
borne such losses before, but this might just undo me. And it
cannot.
You act as if the 35 years between us is nothing but a well of
experience to draw upon, and it is that. You've never asked
what lovers I've had or how many, guessed at only one of them,
but you're eager enough to make use of what knowledge I've
collected from them, a willing pupil as always. But that time
between us is so much more than simply experience, my love. I
have scars not just on my body but in my heart and spirit as
well, and all of them make me who I am, just as yours will
shape you. Each injury, physical or otherwise, takes something
from us, no matter how well we heal. Were you older and more
experienced yourself, you would know that, and it is something
I cannot teach you. Only time can.
I am not the man I was and it's this that makes me sad now. If
I could have come to you before--oh, before Mace and I hurt
each other so, before I learned how to shield myself so well
from killing, before I took Xanatos as my padawan, before his
turning cut me to the core, before I had to kill him, before
such darkness touched me--we would be so different together.
Even so, it's not my youth I miss, nor my scars that I regret,
it's my responsibilities that make me sad.
What I regret is being your master when what I want is to be
only your lover.
Obi-Wan:
We sit in separate rooms again, my master in the cold air of
the balcony this time, and I on our bed where we made love
again last night. Where I thought we were making love. Where he
apparently thought we were doing something else. Where it
turned into something . . . base, and a little foul. I don't
know what it was. Where we fucked.
Where I fucked him.
I thought I gave him what he wanted. Apparently, it wasn't
enough, or wasn't the right thing, or something I can't fathom
was wrong. I thought he wanted me, wanted it hard and fast and
ferocious the way he was biting and bucking against me. I've
still got the marks of his teeth on me, surrounding the worst
bruise he's ever given me. And there's blood on the sheets;
we've never done that before. When I reached for him, thinking
he was as close to coming as I was, he wasn't even hard.
No explanation. No laying of blame, either, but no
reassurances. "Finish it," he said. But of course I couldn't,
after that. He tried to hold me, but it didn't feel--I
couldn't- -
I didn't want him holding me. Not after that. Not after he used
me that way.
Used me. And for what? Certainly not pleasure. But I feel used.
It's not much blood, but still . . .
It's not like he was out of control. He wasn't. He knew exactly
what he was doing, what he wanted from me.
There's blood on my pillow, too.
Part of me wanted to go sleep somewhere else, my own bed, the
couch, anywhere but in the same bed with him. I haven't felt so
empty since I was thirteen and he turned me away. It feels
almost exactly the same, like I'm being punished--
Oh. Oh shit.
Punished.
Idiot. That's what he wanted. He wanted me to hurt him.
He wanted me to hurt him. He wanted me to hurt
him. He wanted punishment. From me.
Oh. All the Sith hells.
Shit.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Now I don't know what I feel.
A little sick.
Hurt. Used. Empty. Totally confused.
I know I love him. I know he loves me. I don't know what's
happened to us, except that everything's changed somehow, and
not for the better, since our night in the gardens.
When I woke this morning, he was already out on the balcony.
He's been there for some time now, on his knees, and I still
don't know what he's thinking. I've never seen him wound so
tightly before, or so silent. He's become a closed book to me.
I don't know what to do.
I've lost the way.
A Resolution
It stops his breath to see his young lover like this, sitting
cross-legged in the midst of the disheveled bed, naked and
bathed in morning sunlight, stormy eyes closed, heavy and agile
hands at rest on his knees, back straight, the short red- gold
hair and long braid glowing in the light. His chest rises and
falls easily with his breath, but though he seems at peace,
there are small signs that his own thoughts and feelings are as
disordered as his master's: the vertical line between his
fierce brows, the compressed horizontal line of his lips, the
tension in his shoulders and abdomen that only his master would
notice, does notice and knows he is the cause of. The stray,
unguarded thought his apprentice broadcasts only confirms it:
//I've lost the way.// His own belly tightens.
Suddenly aware of his master's presence and scrutiny, the
younger man draws in a deep, ragged breath, straining for the
control he feels he has just lost. Before he can stop them, two
tears spill down over his face. Sith take his master's timing,
he thinks, struggling. Neither of them move from their
respective positions, he on the bed and his master in the
doorway, but the bond flares between them with shared pain
until he slams his own shields down and determinedly withdraws
into himself. I can't face him like this, he thinks.
Somewhere inside is an untroubled center he needs to find, to
regain his equilibrium. As he would not elsewhere than here in
the Temple, he severs his conscious connections to his senses
until nothing exists but himself and the Force.
He's not sure which cuts him most: his lover's pain or that
he's so quickly barred from sharing it. The young man's
breathing is a little ragged yet, but his control is
remarkable, his master observes with a cool detachment he
despises in himself. So beautiful, another part of him
thinks, one he despises even more at the moment. Marring the
perfection of his lover's body is a large, dark bruise at the
juncture of shoulder and neck, less a love-bite than a
savaging. It makes him wince to see in sunlight the damage he
inflicted in the dark.
Carefully, he sits down behind his lover on the bed, strokes
his fingers over the bruise, feels the scabs from torn skin and
winces again, hates that he had so little control and so much
need. The younger man's shoulder twitches a little under his
touch, as though he were shaking off an itch, but he doesn't
break his meditation. Gently, the older man lays his whole hand
over the marks, closes his eyes and brings the Force to bear on
the injury, accelerating the healing already taking place. When
he removes his hand, the bruise has faded to a pale
greenish-yellow and the puncture wounds and tears are merely
dark stains on the fair skin. He kisses what remains and leans
back, waiting.
The younger man ignores his lover for some time, staying deep
in his meditation, oblivious to the outside world, but finding
only a maelstrom inside. Rarely has there been such an absence
of comfort in his own meditations. He opens himself up not to
his physical senses again, but to the currents of the Force
that flow through and around him, searching those leading into
and from the future for some reassurance. This is his gift, one
his master does not share and only half believes in, though he
has recently sent his apprentice to develop his skill with
Master Yoda. The key, he has been taught, is not to search at
all, merely to focus on the person or thing in question and let
it lead one through the shifting future. He thinks of his
master, focuses on the hot ember of love in his heart and . . .
lets go.
Past and present glide by him in a confusing jumble of images
and the future with it, so he cannot tell one from the other
easily. He sees his master as a young man, short haired and
clean-shaven, side by side with Plo Koon in pitched close
combat at the mouth of an alley, the tight press of attackers
falling back under the combined application of Force shields
and lightsabers until they have cleared a city block's
perimeter around themselves, allowing the huddled group of
women and children and aged behind them to gain the cover of
another building. He sees him some years older, kneeling before
Saesee Tiin in the Council Chamber, shaking violently under the
Iktotchi's hands until Mace Windu rapidly crosses the floor and
pulls him away, into his own arms. He sees a much younger
padawan Jinn with gawky limbs and a long dark braid whirling
with impossible grace through the katas under Master Yoda's
watchful and approving eyes. He sees his master and himself
with a young blond-haired boy and an elaborately dressed woman
aboard a ship. Finally, he sees his lover with hair gone
beautifully silver, worn in a long braid down his back, seated
in the Temple gardens holding hands with another man wearing a
military uniform and a general's rank tabs, and he watches as
they kiss with growing passion and embrace, then separate
enough for him to recognize his own features on the general's
face, considerably older. Then, horribly, he sees a pyre, his
master's body in the flames, looking much as he does now--
There is no further outward sign of the emotions roiling inside
his young lover, nor of his struggle to bring them under
control, and no sense of him in the Force behind his shields.
He sits patiently, having finished his own meditations to no
useful end, allowing his apprentice as much time as he needs.
Finally, the younger man draws in a deep breath and opens his
eyes but doesn't turn around. Instead, he sits very still for a
moment, then shivers and draws his knees up to his chest and
crosses his arms over them, hiding his face in his arms. He is
curled around himself as tightly as possible, as though against
a coming blow.
His master touches him again tentatively, running one large
hand over his smoothly arched back and shoulders. The young man
shivers under the touch but does not otherwise move.
"Obi-Wan."
"Master." His voice is muffled in his arms.
"Please, look at me."
The young man unfolds himself and turns around reluctantly,
unwilling to meet his lover's gaze. The older man takes his
chin in one hand, tilts it up, forcing him to. The younger
man's eyes are the green-grey-blue of restless ocean,
astonishingly beautiful, but full of pain and confusion, and
his gaze soon falls away unhappily.
His master leans forward and kisses him tenderly; his lover's
mouth is warm but unresponsive under his own, not with distaste
or anger but caution.
"Was it enough?" he says quietly when the kiss ends. "Did it
hurt enough?"
His master's face is impassive, but something flickers in his
blue eyes, darkening them for a moment. Anger? Fear? Regret?
"Yes. It did."
"Is that what you've had with your other lovers? Is that what
you want? Because I'm not sure I can give it."
"But you would try, wouldn't you?"
"Yes. For you. Is there a toybox somewhere that I should
acquaint myself with--"
"Enough." The older man turns away, sitting on the very edge of
the bed, hands on his knees, absently rubbing them. After a
moment, he reaches to touch the dappling of rusty stains on his
lover's pillow.
"There's more," the younger man tells him. "But you probably
guessed that."
"Enough, I said."
"Yes, Master." There is no defiance in the reply, but no
contrition either.
They sit in silence for some time before the younger man breaks
it again. "Please, Master, may I speak?" It is a formal request
to broach a subject in which he has no say and less need to
know.
"Of course, Padawan." The reply is equally formal and yet feels
strange here, to both of them.
"You didn't seem to enjoy it very much, Master."
"Enough, Padawan!" the older man snaps.
"So I can't please you now? Is that what's changed?" The young
man's voice is calm and controlled, but there are undertones of
bitterness in it that he cannot quite conceal. "We had that one
moment of complete union and now nothing else is good enough?
So we have nothing? Is that what you did wrong?"
More silence, and impatience, now, from the younger man.
"I deserve an answer, Qui-Gon. You owe your lover that much, if
not your padawan."
The older man exhales heavily, the only outward sign of his own
turmoil, and makes himself turn back to his lover. "Yes, you do
deserve an answer, my love." But not this one, he
thinks. "Not 'nothing.' Less than I want. Less, I suspect, than
you want, as well. Is that true?"
"Yes," he answers in all honesty. "But less than I want of you
is better than nothing at all. Must it be all or nothing?"
"My love, I have waited so long for you, for someone with whom
I could have that unity, that I have run out of patience.
You've far more forbearance than I."
The younger man rises up on his knees facing his lover, takes
the leonine head between his hands, fingers sinking
possessively into the mane of hair, presses a ferocious kiss on
the other's mouth. "What makes you wait?" he says in a voice
the scorches the older man. "Take what you want. Take me."
And he would, he thinks, he would, if this young man were
anyone else. Instead, he takes the kiss and returns it, then
backs away. I don't deserve him. And he deserves better.
"I will do what I must, Padawan. Get dressed. We've a mission
to brief for."
#END#
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