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29/08/00 The Phantom Menace Rating: NC-17 Disclaimer: All things Star Wars belong to Lucas & Lucasfilm. If they were mine, I'd be rich, but they aren't, and I'm not getting any richer. Peace, man, no copyright infringement is intended. Sex disclaimer: Boys doing it with boys, man, and it's a beautiful thing. Some places, the Man'll tell you to cover your eyes. But unless it'll besmirch your sweet innocence, or you're just not down with it, I say read on and peace and love to you! Notes:
Not a character piece at all (gasp!). Yes, we're working strictly with visuals here, so I hope you'll forgive me for the weirdness. For Master Ruth,
who was kind enough to notice that I was naked.
Leaving Marks
The first three hours were fascinating. He'd been absorbed by Obi-Wan's stillness, and by the long, bare line of him. He was buried somewhere deep in meditation, where it mattered to him not at all that he was naked and stretched prone on the single woven mat that graced the studio floor. Other than Obi-Wan's body, there was little enough in the room. An incense burner on the floor an arm's length from his head. The flat dish and the ink pooling in its centre. The brush. The calligrapher. A layer of thinning light that lifted the red shades out of Obi-Wan's otherwise nearly colourless hair. Just the hair on his head left, now. He'd knelt on that same mat and systematically shaved the rest of his body with a too-sharp blade that shouldn't have been brought anywhere near the thin skin on his lower belly. Those same compact hands had wrapped around the razor's grip with shocking steadiness while he extended one leg and then the other, stripping away hair and dead skin. Over his chest, under his arms. Deep into the fleshy crease where his legs met. He'd rinsed, after, and carried the bowl to the doorway. Hurled the water out into the sudden flare of light with a quick, sharp snap of his wrist. And stood immobile in the doorway for so long that Qui-Gon thought that some trick of the light must have cut through the mirror on the opposite wall and exposed him where he stood watching. But then Obi-Wan had only shaken himself and looked back over his shoulder for a moment. And when he turned back, he didn't focus on anything in particular. The calligrapher finished his brushstroke and paused. Tilted his head and then nodded. Measured Obi-Wan's shoulder blade with both palms, then picked up the brush again. Traced a long, curved line and constructed the shape of the next character around it. Qui-Gon watched
them from behind the mirror.
The next two hours were hypnotic. Supper was outdoors, in the courtyard around which the palace complex was built. Torches shone on the reflecting pool in the near-dark, and insects sparked around them for single instants.
Too many people. Dozens of courtiers, and in such a small space they felt like thousands. Layers of moth-thin robes fluttered against one another on long, pale bodies. Dark eyes flashed on him. Someone caught his arm, and for half a minute he was sure he was about to be seduced, but the steady hand only led him to his place at the table and settled him there, then disappeared back into its deeply green sleeve and vanished back into the crowd. Then there came a soft whistle, and everyone sat, and Qui-Gon was suddenly absorbed by the silence. An instant earlier, he had been the only silence: a dark-clad man with unadorned skin in the midst of a delicately-painted multitude. Now he could pick out each individual's breath. The few people about the Emperor, at whose elbow Qui-Gon currently sat, had chairs; everyone else had simply sunk to their knees, so that each marked a perfectly-chosen point on the yard's perimeter and faced the reflecting pool. Another whistle, and servants with torches lit up another layer of the night. He was aware of it the instant Obi-Wan stepped into the yard. That same bare skin, but carved by the black writing and illumined by moments of red and gold. Obi-Wan turned slightly, and came down on one knee to greet the first guest. Strange fingers touched his padawan's naked body. They picked out one particular character and traced it, then rose from his offered thigh to touch his forehead, and then his lips. Obi-Wan nodded, and rose, and stepped over to kneel before the next guest. So around the circle. Obi-Wan offered himself to everyone, and no one let him go without touching him. Too intimate, those fingers. Qui-Gon was always going to remember Obi-Wan kneeling before the luminous woman whose plum-coloured hair caught the torchlight and cast bruising shadows on the exposed patches of his skin. How she drew him into a deep bow so she could touch his shoulder blade. How he straightened at her touch, and accepted the brush of face and lips, but instead of standing as he had before, reached out and stroked the bleached forelock that didn't quite touch her face. Only when she'd accepted his touch he straightened and moved along the line. He'd touched or been touched by everyone before he brought himself to stand before the Emperor. Terribly graceful for one so naked. He would have to be perfectly aware of himself to move so precisely. The knowledge of the width of his shoulders, the length of leg and arm, the narrow twist of his pelvis, was carved onto him as precisely as the calligrapher's work. There were wind chimes striking somewhere in the depths of the palace. He remembered seeing them earlier: ragged bits of glass on gold thread, strung up to shatter the silence of unoccupied rooms and drive out any unfriendly powers who might choose to inhabit them. The first time he'd encountered them, Qui-Gon had been aware of the dangers of silence in this place, but he hadn't been aware of how all-encompassing it could be. He was afraid to breathe. He was watching the Emperor. Who came out from behind the table and caught Obi-Wan's chin when the younger man would have tried to kneel. He ran one long finger over the brushstrokes marking Obi-Wan's left arm, then held him by the shoulders. Turned him around at arm's length. Inspected the long muscles that were offered up to him, and only after that the overlaid writing. "Well, young Kenobi, are you ready?" Very faint smile and a flash of eyelid as Obi-Wan looked down. "I am." The Emperor turned away from him, then, and swept his hands down to the table. Raised them again and they were full of purple sweeps of cloth. "Jedi Master Jinn, as the one hundredth guest at my banquet of the New Year, I offer this one to you." Qui-Gon didn't understand at first, but he accepted the proffered fabric out of reflex. Once it was in his hands, he was able to separate it into three lengths of heavy silk ribbon, each about five metres long. Twisted it in his hands and looked at the Emperor in the hope that the man would give him some clue as to what he was supposed to do next. Torches again, on the other side of the reflecting pool. He was aware suddenly of the wooden frame that had been erected at the courtyard's gate sometime between when Obi-Wan had entered and that moment. Of the iron torch brackets on either side. Of two hundred expectant eyes on him, and Obi-Wan's calmer ones. Soft laughter in the Emperor's voice. "He's beautiful, Master Jinn. Don't you want him?" He did. Desperately. When Obi-Wan opened his stance and let his arms fall back, Qui-Gon looped a sash around each wrist and dragged the younger man back across the courtyard to the frame. Let Obi-Wan settle before he looped the first sash over the top bar and raised his padawan's arm level with his head. Then wound the ends around the bar and down around that pale arm, until it was lashed from wrist to shoulder to the cross-beam overhead. Ragged ends trailed down until the torch flames almost lapped at them, and at a different moment he would have been shocked that Obi-Wan was still so unafraid. When he went to the other side, he found Obi-Wan's arm already raised, and the hazel-blue focus that the younger man trained on him was utterly unafraid. Only after Obi-Wan was secured did he dare step back and finally look clearly at the markings that covered that bare skin. He ran a finger down his apprentice's right pectoral, tracing lines until he gradually deciphered the character. It was a language he'd needed to learn for this mission, but he'd been rushed for time, and his fluency was questionable when he wasn't perfectly focussed. Even with the hours he'd had to watch this work of art being created, he hadn't realized what the calligrapher was writing. Obi-Wan must have been narrating almost ceaselessly through those hours. The marks on his chest narrated his first kiss, and the characters that slid down to his belly were an account of that first hot, tearful night when he'd made love with a boy who'd been his bitterest rival only a pair of years before. Brief and awkward and very sweet, that first encounter, and the memory of it had hardened and turned brittle since that lover's death only a short while later. Anger and longing marked in gold around his navel. Lost virginity detailed in red. Other lovers were written on his arms and legs. The first girl, one night after a diplomatic party. Both of them in the cold dampness of the garden, her on top of him and both of them almost buried in the foliage. The long, tight kisses she'd laid on his hips and thighs. The marks they left. The jagged arc his teeth made in the skin of her shoulder when he bit down. One-night stands were detailed on his back. Quick, shadowed gropings behind a bar on Mallastaire, hours sweetly passed with a near-stranger in a spaceport on the Outer Rim while all flights were storm-stayed and his Master was long asleep. Twenty-four years old, and his apprentice was most certainly no longer a child. Obi-Wan watched him steadily while he read all this. Qui-Gon realized only gradually that he'd been moving his lips while he did it, like a child who had just barely learned to read. There was no judgement in those shallow-water eyes, though. Only curiosity and something deeper that was going to steam fiercely when it finally broke open. Chimes from the dark places still cut the stillness, but he was learning to drown them out. They were less important than the hollows and secrets of the body he'd been given. The rattle of glass only eased the silence while he sank to his knees and stroked his tongue out and along the still-soft flesh of Obi-Wan's penis. Hot and salty, and he wasn't sure how much of the smoke-taste colouring his mouth was the ink and how much was Obi-Wan. He bent in deeper, took that flesh in his mouth and sucked. Stripped the ink off gradually and found the real taste of the younger man underneath and buried himself in it until he could feel the dramatic flex of Obi-Wan's stomach muscles against his forehead and realized that his lover was moaning and gasping for breath. Qui-Gon straightened, then, and faced him. "Say no and I'll stop." He was aware vaguely of the ink-smear at the corner of his own mouth, but couldn't bring himself to tongue it away. "Yessssss." Barely a breath. No man should be offered anything so beautiful and then be expected to resist it. He bent in and took that mouth. Kissed it as hard and as deeply as he could and was gratified to realize how wide Obi-Wan's lips were spread under his. One of his hands had wrapped around the hard, wet flesh between those legs; the other was finding the releases of his own clothes so that he could step out of them if he ever chose to step back. He wanted to be perfectly naked for this. Even in the thin chill, he was sweating, and the moisture from his body might be enough to smear the accounts of earlier lovers recorded on his apprentice's skin. Qui-Gon pulled back, finally, long enough to drop his robe and tunic, and to slide around behind this body so blatantly offered to him. Strange that he would be so much less threatened by the anonymity of the acts on Obi-Wan's backside than he was by the lost intimacy of the front. These characters he could accept and work around, kissing bare skin where it was offered. The base of Obi-Wan's neck. A palm-sized bare place halfway down his spine. The intimate flesh where the spine ended and his hips spread slightly open. A divot on each side where buttock and thigh merged. His heels. The inside of one knee. Fragments of something Obi-Wan had wanted were written around those bare spaces, but they never coalesced into anything other than longing and the faint, chilling loneliness that marked a Jedi's adult life. He was reaching by now with his fingertips as much as with his mouth, and the soft, animal sounds that Obi-Wan made were growing more distinct. The shaved scrotum when he touched it was almost a separate living thing, and he would have loved to examine for the better part of less desperate night. Qui-Gon let his touch slide back after that to the small, tight place where his lover's body opened to him. Traced it for long minutes while Obi-Wan panted and gasped and sobbed wordlessly. Pressed a fingertip inside only when he'd satisfied his sense of touch regarding the exterior. Obi-Wan was slick inside. He must have prepared in the time when he'd been out of sight. Almost too much to think of the pale line of Obi-Wan's body twisted around while he reached behind himself to stretch and slick his own hole. Soft gasps in the empty studio room. He would have loved to see that. Both hands spread Obi-Wan, then, and Qui-Gon pressed a single kiss to the younger man's anus before he rose again. He was going to remember Obi-Wan's lost breath for the rest of his life. Fire-heat brushing his skin while he stepped out of his leggings and pressed himself against Obi-Wan's back in a gesture that was half demand and half pure comfort, offering warmth and security within a master's arms. Obi-Wan accepted it willingly. Leaned back into the offered embrace with a perfect acceptance that Qui-Gon would have to be so careful with. He could break the trust this man had in him so easily. He would have liked to slick himself as well as Obi-Wan, but nothing came to hand. Only when he raised his palm absently to Obi-Wan's mouth, he was still almost surprised at the warm wetness that flowed into it. The kiss that followed it was briefer, but he'd been offered what he wanted, and he wasn't about to turn it down. He stroked his erection twice with the newly-wet hand, then breathed. He was too close, really, to be doing this. Obi-Wan's trust wasn't something to be taken lightly, and if he had any sense at all, he would never have considered taking him like this. Soft whimpers in his ear wouldn't have swayed him under other circumstances. If he'd been even half-sane, he wouldn't have twisted the remaining sash around his wrists and across Obi-Wan's belly, and used it as a second grip to brace himself while he thrust in. Obi-Wan let out a single, keening howl. He was so tight inside, so much so that Qui-Gon wanted to go back over the writing on that body and check again what was the last time that someone had done this to him. The only words he could reach now, though, were the ones on those still-thin, broad shoulders, and the only one he could still read was 'trusted'. Fragment of some longer narrative that he couldn't remember. It was less important than the heat of Obi-Wan's body and the depth of his own thrusts into it. Than his lover's whimpers and almost-pleas and the sudden whispered, "love you," that snaked into Qui-Gon's conscious mind. He found he'd already raised his arm and lashed it to Obi-Wan's wrist. Tying the second wrist was harder, and he had to still himself long enough to summon the Force and secure the knot. The trailing end ran over Obi-Wan's shoulder and brushed a gold-tinted nipple every time Qui-Gon thrust. So good, so tight, and he was so close to being part of Obi-Wan, tied to him like this. No hands left to stroke the younger man's flesh, but he could twist inside him, stroke him from the inside, make every hard thrust across the tight knot of his prostate count. Obi-Wan's orgasm took him unprepared. The whimpers the younger man had offered were so soft that Qui-Gon hadn't been truly aware of how close he was. Even while he came, Obi-Wan only panted harshly, offering no particular words. Qui-Gon gripped the hands under his own and thrust again, deep into the slick tightness, and rocked hard. Pushed towards his own conclusion. Never quite close enough to satisfy him, and he knew he was being rough enough that his lover's body would be aching later. Obi-Wan twisted sideways in the last second of orgasm and he found it, finally. Ground his teeth together in an effort to preserve the silence that he hadn't yet managed to crack. He shuddered, hissed, and then relaxed, pressing lazy kisses against Obi-Wan's neck and skull while he waited for his heart to steady again. The Emperor stepped around them both and reached over Qui-Gon's shoulder to cut the older man down. It took long moments for the blood to run back through his arms, a hard pain he hadn't expected. It was something he had to move through while he wrapped himself around his lover and let his hands cross on Obi-Wan's belly. Obi-Wan seemed content enough to hang from his bonds and allow the other man to take the balance of his weight. He was trembling almost convulsively, and when Qui-Gon bent forward to kiss him over his shoulder, he could read Obi-Wan's teeth chattering in the tremors of his jaw. Each ribbon unknotted at a touch of the Force and pooled around their feet, and after that he was able to ease Obi-Wan to the ground. Only a handful of the original characters were still legible. Everything else was smeared, or completely rubbed away. Qui-Gon stroked a blackened thigh absently, coaxing Obi-Wan into real relaxation, and eventually retrieved his cloak to wrap around them both. Chimes from the palace extended his vision, and he was suddenly aware of torches, the reflecting pool, the banquet guests kneeling and watching them. The Emperor was still there, just at his shoulder, staring down. Qui-Gon tilted his head back to meet that dark gaze. He couldn't read the Emperor yet, not properly, and he wasn't at all sure what was contained within that smile. The Emperor dipped
two fingers in the smeared ink of the younger Jedi's shoulder and raised
them to the light, then dropped to one knee and touched Qui-Gon's face
with them. First his forehead, then his lips. Touched his own lips to Obi-Wan's
while meeting Qui-Gon's eyes. Then strode back across the courtyard, seated
himself, and commenced the banquet without waiting for his hundredth guest
to rise. Someone whistled, and servants with torches swept around the perimeter,
changing the light. Fragments of it struck the reflecting pool and fell
back onto Obi-Wan's skin, as sharp as teeth.
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