Chapter Text
are you happy?
Life was easier. Life was easier.
did you forget how miserable you were before
Obi-Wan had forgotten what it was like before them. It was easy, he fell back into it with the ease of someone falling back to sleep.
He sleepwalked to work; he made fifty prints of the piece he had cut of Padmé, then he stared at his sketchbook and felt nothing. He sleepwalked to the kitchenette and drank coffee, cold, because he forgot it amidst his staring. When he wasn’t working in his studio, he sat with his wife.
It had been so long since he had spent time with her. She’d become a villain in his eyes, something aside and other from the woman he had married, the woman he had loved once. Time with her, though, was good. He learnt about her again. He came to appreciate everything she did for them.
I hope ur happy
When he went home, he cooked enough for the two of them and ate standing at the counter. He used expensive ingredients, rich flavours, pasta, wine. He no longer took honey in his tea.
Sometimes he would go entire days without looking at his phone. It was refreshing. His eyes had become square whilst he was with them; waiting on texts, waiting on facetimes where they could look at each other’s rectangular, tired faces.
Life was easier.
do you think about us
There was no more sneaking around. He made Satine smile and sometimes they went to bed at the same time and woke together. They were a couple, and he had been driving a wedge between them. It had been unfair of him.
There was no more lying.
There was no more stress.
There was no more—
We miss you
There was no more—
I hate you.
There was no more joy.
No more pleasure no more bliss no more—
Obi-Wan was sleepwalking.
Life was easier.
Life was easier.
Obi-Wan sat in his studio at his work desk. He wasn’t working on anything; he hadn’t worked on something new for a while now. Instead, he was staring at his phone, shoulders hunched over.
Anakin unsent a message
He rubbed his thumb along the edge of his phone, eyes boring into the words on screen. God, how he missed them. Obi-Wan missed talking to them, he missed hearing their voices. He missed the way Padmé laughed and the big doe eyes Anakin would make at him when he wanted something, and Anakin always wanted something.
Obi-Wan missed the press of their lips, and the security he felt when he had one of them in his arms… or even better, when he was sandwiched between them.
He missed having a place he could be happy.
No matter how much he tried to delude himself, Satine just wasn’t… it anymore. They had their moments but, that was all.
What had Anakin wanted to send him? What had he wanted to say? Anakin didn’t unsend ‘I hate you.’ but he unsent the most recent message? What could be worse than hate from Anakin?
Obi-Wan knew he should just block Anakin. His life would, actually, truly, be easier if he did. The problem with that idea, was that if he blocked Anakin, then how would he know when Anakin was thinking about him?
This message – the unsent message – had been sent late the previous night while Obi-Wan was asleep. He would have seen it if he’d been awake; he’d have known what was more terrible than ‘I hate you.’
To him, nothing could have been worse. Obi-Wan’s fingers hovered over the screen, the keyboard displayed and ready for him to damn himself.
Should he admit to Anakin that, no, he wasn’t happier? That everything Anakin had been saying was true?
How was Obi-Wan to leave a twenty-year marriage?
Obi-Wan glanced over to his water glass and very seriously considered dropping his phone in it. Somehow that was easier than blocking Anakin.
Padmé had not texted him since the breakup, but she’d always been the more sensible one. Obi-Wan appreciated it as much as he hated it: the silence from her. It was probably her influence that made Anakin delete the message.
Obi-Wan felt obsessed in a way he’d never felt before. Sure, before, he could think about them and not feel consumed by it. But now, he had no space in his brain except for space for them.
It was stupid and unfair, but his mind was busy with them.
Obi-Wan had left them. Obi-Wan had walked out and ended it all and yet he felt tormented.
It was worse, he thought, because he saw them everywhere.
Saw Padmé on the cover of Vogue; the photos that she’d shown them, blushing after days at a photoshoot with her old friend. Her big brown eyes and smooth white face paint; the accentuation of her top lip, two perfect dots of red on her cheeks. Red was her colour. He bought a copy but didn’t read it, gazed at the cover, and threw it in a park bin a block away from where he’d gotten it then went and fished it out later like she wasn’t everywhere; on every newsstand and every bus stop.
Well, not every newsstand, not every bus stop.
Anakin was on the rest. Moving billboards and posters, tv ads and billboards the size of buildings.
Obi-Wan remembered him mentioning an ad, but they’d never talked about what it was, not really.
What a way to learn that your ex had actually become a brand partner with Calvin Klein than to watch, horrified, sat in a glass office with your wife as slowly, piece by piece your exes nearly naked body is wallpapered to the billboard behind.
What was worse was that if Obi-Wan looked close enough – which he didn’t, he really didn’t – he could see a hickey on the side of Anakin’s ribs. Sucked there by Obi-Wan as Anakin rode his cock.
It was hardly fair.
When he wasn’t thinking of them, he was being texted by Anakin; when he was thinking of them, the torture would only continue when he saw Padmé’s still face break into laughter on the side of a bus stop, or Anakin, casually, leant against a sports car in white boxers that—
Obi-Wan missed them.
I threw your stuff in the trash today
It was nighttime and Padmé was downstairs. Anakin had gone to sleep a while ago; tired after his workout or something, but she had lingered downstairs on the couch.
It had gotten dark around her; the sun had set, and she hadn’t moved to turn any lights on.
Her phone screen shone blue light onto her face though as she stared at a contact.
Obi-Wan.
Then she looked at the time. It was early still. 10:30.
The last text they had sent each other was omen.
I’ll be over for the weekend.
I can’t wait
Over a month ago now. Silence on both their ends.
Silence could only last so long.
Her manicure tapped against the screen.
But a text came through first, ‘I can’t wait’ disappearing up the screen, replaced.
Can we meet up?
She replied yes before she even thought.
Then she went to bed and left her phone in the sofa’s crevice.
Anakin was warm when she cuddled up against his back and resolved to tell him nothing.
When Padmé dressed for their… meeting, it wasn’t really a conscious thought of I’m-trying-to-seduce-him and more of a I’m-trying-to-remind-him-of-what-he’s-missing. When she saw herself in the mirror, it felt like she was leaning toward the former.
She wore a dress, though it was a stretch to call it such. Her petite frame helped the red silk slip at least appear a little longer; the lace hemming skimming her mid-thigh, the thin straps framing her collarbones.
In all honestly, it was for sleeping rather than tempting her husband. It was pretty but it wasn’t the most revealing thing they had. It was just… Anakin had worn it too and on his broad frame, it was in decidedly a seduction technique.
In fact, Anakin wore it during their second resort meet up. Padmé brought it for herself, but things between the three of them spiralled into the well of existing only for each other; a place where shame and pride no longer existed. Obi-Wan wanted to see Anakin in something pretty; something “Padmé red”.
Red was her colour, Sabé told her that all the time. And now Obi-Wan did too.
Anakin had blushed but put the satin slip on. It’d driven Obi-Wan mad, and Padmé hadn’t minded sitting that one out, watching as Obi-Wan lathed at Anakin’s nipples through the fabric; at how he’d wanted to fuck Anakin with it on.
Padmé continued to try to convince herself that she wasn’t trying to seduce Obi-Wan for their very regular lunch meet up. Lunch was, perhaps, the least sexy meal there was, anyway.
She was trying to convince herself so much that she’d woken Anakin up with soft words of love followed up by asking him to fuck her from behind. Padmé had gotten it out of her system - she wouldn’t need to seduce anyone.
She’d thrown on a pair of heels and a long jacket and it all looked completely normal.
Until it wasn’t – until their eyes met and she felt desire skitter down her spine.
He shouldn’t have agreed to this. Obi-Wan shouldn’t have said yes to meeting Padme for lunch. He shouldn’t have caved and messaged her first.
It had been surprising when she responded immediately, like they’d both been staring at their phones in yearning. Not only that, but when she’d responded normally, like nothing between them had changed.
Padme was more reasonable than Anakin, and he’d been hoping just for something to get him by; like an addict trying to get his fix. A smile from her, a mention of Anakin maybe, and then he could try to reconcile his choice to break up with them. He was only a man; he missed them. Padme and Anakin. Obi-Wan missed them with all his being.
This was all his fault. They’d asked to make things official, and he’d said no. Obi-Wan was already married, but now he was completely and utterly miserable. He hated that he hoped they were too, so he wouldn’t be alone in this. Misery loves company.
Obi-Wan stood outside the restaurant – a small, dark bar with a food truck out back, it was by far and purposefully, the most un-sexy thing they could pick. He felt far too calm for his own good. He hadn’t admitted to either of them, and maybe not even to himself yet, but she was one half of his love. This should have been nerve wracking, but Obi-Wan could only feel relief at the thought of seeing her.
He should have known this wouldn’t end up any other way than it did.
Padme arrived in a red dress with heels that still didn’t make her close to his height, and Obi-Wan was floored. The memory of this red dress – of the outfit – hit him so viscerally, it nearly brought him to his knees in front of the restaurant.
Anakin had worn it first — at least that’s how Obi-Wan saw it — as a nightie at Obi-Wan’s request. They’d all been so caught up in each other when they were together, Obi-Wan had asked Anakin to put it on from Padme’s luggage while at the resort. He’d looked beautiful wearing the red silk, lace on its hem and bodice. It looked gorgeous against his golden skin. Anakin had been on the bed, on his knees, pushing one of the thin straps down his shoulder and whispering Obi-Wan’s name.
Obi-Wan had never been so bewitched in his life.
“Padme,” came the breathy greeting. She smiled at him, blinding and breathtaking. Her curly brown hair was thrown over one shoulder.
Obi-Wan shouldn’t have suggested this.
She didn’t hesitate as she stepped directly into his space and wrapped her arms around him. Obi-Wan fought against every instinct to bury his nose in her hair and inhale deeply. No, instead, he wrapped his arms around her small frame and they held each other in a hug for far too long.
“Should we go inside?” Padme asked, a little breathless, when they broke apart.
Obi-Wan held open the door for her. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the dingy inside, but it made both of them chuckle at how dive-y the bar was. They’d accidentally gone to the polar opposite side of the spectrum from ‘un-sexy’ to ‘one night stand in a dive bar’.
That was alright though, because Padme was level-headed and Obi-Wan was a grown man, almost five decades old, and not a horny teenager.
They’d barely made it through their appetizer before the two of them were shoving their way into the restaurant bathroom. They didn’t speak, only shared kisses and moans. Obi-Wan locked the door after them.
Padme stumbled back and then pushed him away. Obi-Wan had a moment to catch his breath before she turned around, bent over the sink and hiked up her dress. Their eyes met in the bathroom mirror.
“I fucked him this morning,” Padme told him. Obi-Wan was already going to fuck her, it was decided when he saw the dress if he was done pretending to be a good man. That, though…
Obi-Wan pushed the dress up further, revealing the red lingerie she’d worn that same night Anakin had worn the red dress for him. They had matched, and now she was here wearing all of it.
He let out a moan that was closer to a growl, undid his pants and pushed them down just enough to pull his cock out. It was painfully hard, and he had to stroke it roughly to relieve the edge.
“Just this morning?” Obi-Wan asked, a little desperate.
“He came inside me.”
Obi-Wan felt unhinged as he pulled her panties to the side and pushed himself into her, moaning at her wetness. He imagined it was a combination of them both; leftover from Anakin and Padmé as she always was, wet and horny for him.
“Fuck, Padme,” Obi-Wan groaned, setting a fast pace. The noises were obscene, skin on skin in their rush to make it quick so they couldn’t think too much about what they were doing. They tried to be quiet; the squelching louder than their moans of pleasure.
“I want you to cum in me too, Obi-Wan,” Padme’s voice was quiet. He reached around to play with her clit, applying the amount of pressure he knew she liked. She was gripping the edges of the sink, watching him. He watched back, overwhelmed at wanting to be with them again. At the thought of his cock being so close to where Anakin’s had been.
He missed them so much. So, so much.
When he found his release, Obi-Wan pulled out and dropped to his knees behind her. His hands held up her dress still, and he buried his face between her legs, right where his cock had been. Padme’s fingers took over where he’d left off, circling her clit while he ate her out. He pressed a finger inside, pushing out a mixture of their juices, only to lick it up with a desperation that might have embarrassed him if he’d not gone a month without seeing her.
Between his finger and his tongue, she came quickly, and Obi-Wan moaned from the way her body tried to hold him in.
Padme was panting heavily, and she reached behind her to push his head away. Obi-Wan felt dazed when he looked up at her, but she fixed her clothing and turned around, leaning backward against the sink.
She stared down her nose at him. Obi-Wan knew he looked a mess, and a delayed realization that something wet – something not them – was soaking into the knees of his trousers.
Her eyes began watering the longer they went without speaking, but she finally leaned down to kiss him deeply. She licked into his mouth, pressed kisses to his beard, and with a parting kiss upon his lips, she left the bathroom without a goodbye.
Obi-Wan felt bereft with her parting. His knees ached as he stood, using the sink for support, and ignored how he looked in the mirror. He splashed water on his face, making sure to rinse his beard so he didn’t actively look like he was covered in Padme, then he too left the bathroom.
Padme wasn’t at their table, but he still sat down heavily in his seat. The food truck’s server stopped by his table, put down two sets of take-out style food, and left.
Obi-Wan’s eyes drifted to the bar, and he wondered how uncouth it would be to begin drinking at two in the afternoon on a weekday.
It was a strange and horrible thing, getting used to absence.
It felt akin to grief. Like he had to work through the stages until he no longer missed Obi-Wan, no longer missed the life they’d had together – no matter how secret and hidden it had to be. But Anakin was terrible at grief; his emotions too big to fit in his body, too uncomfortable. His bouts of melancholia were difficult to ignore, difficult to rationalise – though he mostly didn’t regret the messages he thumbed to Obi-Wan before his brain caught up with his emotions.
When his mom had died someone had suggested he write her a letter with all his feelings inside. It felt similar; a vent, an outlet, though at least Obi-Wan could see his pain and anger.
Hate was a strong word, but Anakin couldn’t think of something more accurate. Despite it all, there was this warring faction inside of him that knew if Obi-Wan returned – if Obi-Wan even returned a fucking text message – Anakin would get over it. A blip in their relationship that was ignorable in their grand love story. Anakin desperately wanted to get over it. To return to the point that they had been in before Obi-Wan had fucked up in the ultimate sense; before he’d chosen the marriage he’d been ignoring for half a year.
It had always bothered Anakin that Obi-Wan had continued wearing his ring when he’d visited them. A physical reminder of his delusion. Something that, in the end, had chained him.
The front door slammed, and Anakin blinked out of his reverie. It had become dark around him, and outside he could hear the beginnings of storm. The pool would become churned and leafy; the sky a boiling pot of grey.
He was sat on the sofa, and he was wearing one of Obi-Wan’s cardigans. He’d not thrown them away as he’d said he had, but he’d thought about burning them. The scent of the older man still lingered on the collar. Around him, across his lap and over pillows were scripts sent by his agent. Commercials which would sell his hair care routine, his skin care routine, his nail care routine. Commercials for sofas and Levi denim, commercials for cars he’d never want to drive. He’d only looked at them because his agent wanted him to continue on the trajectory that the Calvin Klein ad had put him on, though he was hardly interested in anything. An effect of his depression, his low moods. The only thing that had interested him was something he was already signed up to do: a car magazine with vintage hot-rods.
‘do you want me, or want to be me?’ one script asked, and Anakin didn’t want either.
“Anakin?” Padme called after a moment of fluttering in the hallway; removing her jacket, the squeak of her wet shoes on the tile as she bent to unlace them.
He made a noise of assent, and she walked through a moment later, a worried twist to her mouth.
It made Anakin sit up, paper rumpling with the movement. He shoved the scripts away in a haphazard pile.
“Are you alright, angel?” he asked, reaching for her.
She flopped on the couch beside him and put her head on his thigh. He began to card his fingers through her hair; the rain had left dew on each strand.
“I’ve worn a hundred dresses today,” she said, scrunching her nose. “And I got told off for lying about my measurements.”
“Told off.”
“Like a kid,” Padme agreed, rolling her eyes. “Some of the dresses didn’t fit.”
“That’s the worst,” Anakin said glumly. “Are they able to make adjustments before fashion week?”
Padme nodded, chewing her lip.
“There’s something else,” Anakin said, reading her expression and the little mark between her eyebrows.
“There’s something else,” Padme said. “I do feel… different. My whole body aches.”
Anakin frowned and tried not to think the worst.
“I bought these,” Padme continued, seemingly swerving the topic as she lifted her butt from the couch and pulled two thin boxes from her back pocket. She placed them on the couch and sat up suddenly, unable to sit still.
Anakin looked at the boxed pregnancy tests in front of him and worked his teeth into his bottom lip. His stomach swooped in a mix of anxiety and excitement.
“It’s probably nothing,” Padme said, in a vague warning sort of voice. A voice that asked him not to get his hopes up. “We only stopped birth control a few months ago… it shouldn’t really be possible.”
“It shouldn’t be possible,” Anakin repeated in the same clipped tone, though his mind was spinning and whirling.
Possibility, hope, joy. Something bright and colourful to tide the wave of black depression that had dragged him under the moment Obi-Wan had left. Something they had always talked about, always wanted and something that agreeably shouldn’t be possible. There was a sour tone of guilt, too, if he inspected it hard enough. That they hadn’t told Obi-Wan when Padme had stopped her birth control, that they’d kept something between them that would have affected him if – if he’d stayed.
But he hadn’t.
Anakin quashed the guilt.
They stared at the packaged tests a moment longer, before each snatched one up and raced the other up the stairs.
That morning, Anakin had agreed to filming a commercial for a curl defining mousse and more notably, Levi jeans. He’d been in a good mood, and simultaneously endlessly bored as he sat in the back of a car that was taking him to the one shoot he actually cared about.
It was for a magazine that primarily shot cars. Fast cars, sexy cars, old cars; formula-1 stars, race suits, helmets. They’d asked him a few months back; said they’d heard on the grapevine on his love of all things motor and that they wanted him for a double page spread. He’d been excited at the time, but that had been when Obi-Wan was still around. In the time since, it had become something to look forward to. A beacon that kept him going that was outside of his life with Padme, and for a while it had only been that.
Because everything had been – was – terrible and awful…
Until he’d been given two more things to hope for.
His mind was temporarily preoccupied from his swirling anxieties and anger around the breakup, and instead he was focused on the news.
The wonderful, brilliant news.
Padmé was pregnant. The thought of being a father simultaneously made Anakin experience extreme moments of panic and complete blindsiding ecstasy and joy.
They’d met with a doctor to confirm it.
They’d called him early in the evening after Anakin had rushed out to buy more tests, instructing Padme to drink. There’d been a halo of them; two chalky blue lines on each.
They’d been seen the next day.
The doctor even confirmed the estimated date of conception which resulted in a very hushed and frantic conversation about paternity tests between Anakin and Padmé.
But they’d decided it didn’t much matter, because it was their children and they already loved the babies. Anakin was nearly ready to burst with the news but they were keeping it quiet for now.
For reasons that Anakin didn’t really understand, but he would wait since that’s what Padmé wanted.
He had told someone already… but she made him delete it. It’d been their first real fight since the breakup.
we’re having twins
Nothing mean this time; nothing hateful. Anakin had simply wanted to tell him. It was one of those things where he’d wanted to tell his best friend, or his second best friend because Padmé was his first best friend, and he’d just done it.
Now their messages showed his unsent message, followed by messages his id made him send.
Anakin inhaled deeply, closed his eyes, and then exhaled. He pivoted his thoughts back to their twins.