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.
Boo hoo.
Note: This is now officially a series, though with no formal
title to it (suggestions welcome). 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, "Rightful Owner" comes
first (no pun intended); then "Crime and Punishment"; "The
Anger Exercises"; "The Geometry of Desire"; "But For Grace";
"Nomenclature"; then "Master & Apprentice." Qui-Gon's
failed apprentice, Xanatos, from the YA *Jedi Apprentice*
series (great stuff!) is mentioned here: I don't own him,
either. However, if anybody'd like to sell me Qui-Gon, slightly
used or otherwise, I have a platinum card waiting to be broken
in. A trussed-up Obi-Wan wouldn't be amiss either. Home
delivery requested.
Thoughts in italics (or */*); telepathy in //.
Summary: Obi-Wan contemplates the meaning of the word "master."
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.
Our last quiet night together before our next mission and you
sit there with a quaintly archaic book on your lap when it
could be me. Just look at you: I've been doing astrogation
problems all night and am fed up to the teeth with numbers and
symbols, but you've been sitting for hours, as still as you are
now, with one long leg crossed over the other, and a large,
blunt-fingered hand spanning from temple to the hinge of your
jaw, almost meditating, never tiring of the words on the page.
You and your words.
They're very important to you, words. Time and again,
negotiating treaties, I've watched you struggle to be precise
and exact and choose the ones with just the right shade of
meaning. It's what makes you such an excellent mediator, among
other things. You're almost lawyerly in your ability to hammer
out detailed prose that offers the concessions and compromises
that will hold together peace agreements and resolve trade
disputes or define boundaries and specific rights of law. And
yet I know also--as few but your closest friends suspect--that
you are also a poet, constructing intricate edifices of finely
drawn images, built with words. Had you a more worshipful
padawan, I have no doubt your concise and pithy lines would
soon become unofficial teaching aphorisms. But you have shaped
me, in your image, to be wary of aphorisms, even your own,
Master.
Master. Now there's a deceptively simple word. Two syllables.
Plain Basic, not a fancy derivative of a dead language like
"padawan," that comes from the Old High Gibberish root "patar,"
"to seek," and so on and so on and so on until I'm dead asleep
or past caring. Linguistics. Yawn.
Such a simple word, with so many different meanings: Adept.
Teacher.
Owner.
Connotation, as you would say, is everything.
I don't know which meaning best fits you now. You are truly an
adept of the Force, Master Jinn, one of the most powerful and
wisest, trained by another adept with 800 years of knowledge
and experience, much of which you absorbed. You are the finest
of swordsmen, a warrior deeply attuned to the living Force.
Your abilities make me the envy of any number of padawans who
have dreamed or still do of being your apprentice; I've
actually come to blows with one over it.
And I could not want for a better teacher, a kinder or more
rigorous or more demanding one. You drive me hard in my
training, always expecting improvement, always giving what's
needed to achieve it, handing out praise only when it's
well-deserved, but encouragement always. You know your own mind
and expect me to know mine, not to agree with you blindly, but
I must also know when to follow instructions without
hesitation, when to obey you without question.
Another deceptively simple word, "obey."
Children obey. Subordinates obey. Apprentices obey. Slaves
obey. Lovers, however, might or might not.
Which am I, to you?
Seven years I've been your padawan--a word that encompasses so
many states--growing into manhood under your wing. It took me
almost that long to begin to understand you and your
understated, quirky sense of humor and how deep it runs--how
much life amuses you; or your dignity that looks so much like
cold aloofness; or the adamantine sense of right and wrong that
guides you, sometimes contrary to the Council, and makes you
fearless in your defiance; the patience that comes to you so
naturally, and makes you the best of teachers; the tenderness
that runs under your skin like the blood in your veins, how you
bleed when anything near you is wounded or in need.
And the passion that drives you. Even after seven years, I
didn't suspect the depth of that, or its heat. Even now that we
are lovers, I know I've only warmed myself in its coolest
flames. It spurs you relentlessly from mission to mission,
world to world, doing what you were trained to do, to protect,
defend, to keep peace, to make and enforce it where you must,
and to do so while mindful of those you serve, all the while
watching out for the welfare and training of your padawan. And
in bed--well, in bed your passion is another creature, Master.
In bed, Master Jinn, I sometimes fear going up in flames with
you. I dream of that on occasion, lying beside you: our bed in
flames. It's one of my more obscure and uninterpretable dreams,
clearly not the past, only metaphorically the present, possibly
the future in some way I don't understand. There's always a
pall of grief over it, so I haven't examined it in my
meditations. If it means disaster for us, I don't want to know
it. Call me a coward, but I've had enough of that kind of
prescience lately, and am content to leave it to Master Yoda,
who has the wisdom in his age to look into the future and know
when and how to change it. Instead, I obey your admonition to
be mindful of the present moment, especially the moments you're
touching me, the moments I want to stretch into one unending
Now.
Because when you touch me, whether you're correcting my stance
in a kata, or rubbing the soreness out of my muscles, or
stroking my cock, I feel more alive, more aware of what you
wish me to feel in the Force than I do without your touch. It's
as though contact with you wakes up another sense in me, as if
your caress opens the valve of a conduit to let your sense of
the Force pour from you into me. When you come inside me,
that's exactly how it feels, like everything you are and feel
is pouring into me. I am the vessel in which you contain your
passion, your emotion, all those things the Jedi code insists
we let go, all the things you've never fully put aside.
Afterwards, when you fall asleep, I see a peace on your face
you never know waking, not even in meditation.
But none of this changes the fact that you're not just a Jedi
Master, you're my Master. That's one of the many terms
of respect a padawan uses, calling his teacher My Master. It's
used in moments of abasement, when an apprentice--or even a
former apprentice--has done or said something insolent or
grossly defiant, usually after a rebuke. Or it's a term of
veneration and endearment. When I say to you, "Yes, My Master,"
I am not just agreeing with you, or acquiescing, I'm giving you
my devotion and ardor in that answer. Were you to ask if I love
you, I would answer, "Yes, My Master."
But you never do. I've told you often enough that I presume you
know by now, and I've rarely questioned your feelings for me
from the first time we made love. Though you don't say it as
often as I do, when you do tell me, it's with all the passion
in you, in words and actions. I've never been so sure of your
feelings as I was when we made a sacred act of love in the
Courtyard Garden and you finally let me inside--not inside your
body, which I've entered before--but inside you, behind
your shields, all of them. Finally, I know who you are. Not
just My Master, not just Qui-Gon Jinn, but all that makes them
both. I saw the awkward, shy, cautious child you were, the
determined and tortured adolescent and the confident young man
he grew into. I saw your pride in your first apprentice
becoming a knight under your guidance and the pain Xanatos
inflicted on you with his betrayal. I saw your hopes for me. I
saw your loneliness, the empty space all Jedi carry in them,
forgoing homes and families for the greater good. And I saw who
fills that space now, for you, and that filled me with a
fierce, possessive joy that matched your own. I saw what you
hold in reserve, what will be mine when we are equals. You
didn't expect the same from me, but I had to return that gift,
to let you know who I am, what you are to me, because there is
so much we don't know of each other, so much of our lives that
occurred before we knew each other.
I turned twenty a few months ago and, not long after, we
finally became lovers. The age difference between us--more than
thirty years--should seem vast, but it doesn't. Years pass for
Jedi as they do for others, but we age relatively slowly--the
one gift we have that offsets our small numbers. At any rate,
I've loved you for so long that I don't even think of how old
you are. I look at you and don't see age but experience
and wisdom. I suspect, anyway, that beneath the grizzled beard
and the long greying hair is a much younger face, that you grew
both hair and beard so you would look like the wise Jedi Master
you are. They add a layer of gravity and help conceal the
amused smile that's so often on your lips, but can't entirely
hide it. In the same way, the stern look you wear so often
can't mask the kindness and warmth in those startlingly blue
eyes, or the desire and hunger there, now that you've unmasked
them to me. And what things that desire drives you to.
Now we come to the final meaning, Master.
In bed, you sometimes touch me like you own me, when we first
lie down together. Your hands strip my clothes from me, then
move over my skin like a slaver's, testing the muscle, the
bones, the ligaments, looking for weakness beneath the scars,
making sure I'm whole and sound and not harboring some sickness
before you use me. No part of me is too private for your
examination and your fingers touch and probe without asking
permission of me, or asking whether I care or want it or find
it strange. It's a role you've played before, and played too
well, not so long ago, before we were lovers. I wonder still
how we got through that mission without me turning on you and
either screaming abuse at you in outrage and shame or falling
at your feet and begging you to fuck me senseless right there
in the slave market. Perhaps if I'd done the latter, I wouldn't
now have ten demerits on my record and be on a halfyear's
probation from the Council. It's not wise to suppress so much
desire.
Usually, it's long before we even get to the bed that you touch
me so. My padawan braid is like a leash to you: tug it and I
can be pulled into your arms. Pull it back and I will expose my
throat to you, submissive and subordinate, waiting for you to
kiss or lick or bite as you choose. The first time you did
that, closed your teeth around my windpipe like the dominant in
the hunting pack, the first time we made love, I knew what you
were doing. It came through clear as spoken words: We may be
lovers, padawan, but I am your master. Later, when I made
you say it, you denied it, but that changed nothing. I still
come when you call. I will always come when you call, even when
I am no longer your apprentice. But there is a distance between
us now that I want to bridge.
As though reading my thoughts--and perhaps you are, as I
haven't been shielding them--you look up finally and your gaze
travels the length of my body as I sprawl on the lounge.
I drop my tablet and stylus on the table and go to you,
kneeling at your feet. You uncross your legs, reach out and
wrap my braid around your fingers, spread your knees, and pull
me between them.
"Padawan," you murmur, lips brushing my mouth, tongue darting
out. "Lover."
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