4th Skin

by Tem-ve H'syan

Title: 4th Skin
Author: Tem-ve H'syan tem-ve@gmx.de
Pairing: Q/O
Rating: NC-17
Archive: yes please - MA and my site, anyone else just ask first

Warnings: I am told this could be squicky for those of you with snake phobia, although it doesn't actually involve any snakes or other beasties.

Notes: Written for the 2004 Con*Strict zine; in best Tem/Con*Strict tradition, this is one of my weirder ones. But then, who says that Obi-Wan is your bog-standard human when it comes to anatomical details or specific Kenobi growing pains? And we all know Qui-Gon loves him anyway...

I've set the datapad to voice mode. No, the monotone sing-song of its synthetic speech algorithm is anything but pleasant, never mind anything but accurate. If I wasn't reviewing the Joldew lands' history as opposed to trying to brush up on any of the languages spoken there, I would spend considerable time being at a complete loss as to what my datapad was trying to tell me.

But it's the only way for the time being. Even back-lit, the display just isn't strong enough to penetrate the veil of a pair of corneas that have already disengaged themselves from the rest of the eye, leaving me to feel my way with the Force, and increasingly insensitive fingertips.

At least this shouldn't last much longer.

I'm not comfortable being confined to my sleeping-alcove at the best of times, but at the moment even I wouldn't trust myself in the rest of the world. Putting on clothes would be a problem already - at times like these, anything heavier than a thin bedsheet would be seriously awful. Even now I'm feeling like I'm bruised all over every time I get up to eat or relieve myself. And no, I'm not. If I could see myself in the 'fresher mirror, I would see perfectly unbruised skin.

Skin that's about to burst open. I have stopped oiling this morning.

At least it's not happening on a mission, that's one good thing. The early signs were noticeable enough for me to secure a stint of sick leave, and the sneaky delightful silly person who still calls himself my Master only told me a fiveday later that he had all but mind-tricked Knight Eren into putting him on the substitute teaching roster for the pre-Padawan groups. In other words, he would be around to look after me, knowing full well that I wasn't expecting him to, and doing it just because. Or just despite.

Still, arguing with Qui-Gon Jinn when he's determined he's doing the right thing is an impossibility. And if that means having that monotonous synthesised drone occasionally replaced by a deep voice animatedly reading out the various international squabbles of the Joldew lands as if they were the stuff of legend, then so be it. Also, I suspect he's sneaking painkillers in my drinks, though I can't be bothered to pull him up short for it. Tending to a shedding Padawan is not something your average human Jedi is used to, so it's forgivable really.

At least this should be the last time.

I don't remember the first time really, though I'm sure the crèche dutypeople do. Especially Master Ti, then Padawan Ti, who had ferried me to the healers' station upon the insistence of the other Knights and Padawans on crèche duty. They had urgently told her that human anatomy wasn't supposed to behave like mine was doing - she recounted the story to me years later, and to this day I've been meaning to find out if Togruta smugness expresses itself in a slight blush of the headtails, because that was certainly what she was sporting when the healers agreed with her that what my anatomy was doing was perfectly normal after all, at least for people of my subspecies.

Beyond that, I don't remember much about it - the whole affair melted into the blur of amazing new experiences, odd sensations and small hurts that makes up every Jedi's childhood. All that was left was the impression of a blush on Shaak Ti's headtails, and probably some uninhabited skin.

The second time I do remember - I must have been, what, eight, nine years old? Still short for my age anyway, and yet definitely too large for the skin I'd been in since the last shedding. I hated being ill, being confined to a deserted children's sickbay with nothing at all to do. They weren't yet giving the young ones multimedial datapads at the time, and reading plain ones was out of the question, not just because of the state my eyes were in but because of the state the healers would get into if they'd caught me straining any part of my body, which, to their minds, appeared to include my brain.

I recall Bant visiting me once or twice, after she had managed to find out where on Coruscant I had disappeared to. She still teases me occasionally about how I really looked best just after I'd shed. None of that icky hair, you see, she would say, and make us both laugh. At the time, of course, I would have gladly retreated to a Temple full of Mon Calamarians until my hair had grown back. The constant taunts from a certain white-haired initiate were not exactly helping me in building up the serenity we Jedi would take pride in, if we bothered to entertain pride.

By the time the third shedding hit, we were both fresh Padawans, and I was in the middle of a growth spurt that would very nearly have shut Chun up for good. Alas, it wasn't to be - of course I had to be engaged in a sparring fight with him and Reeft when the first crack sprang open quite unexpectedly and had me crashing to the floor clutching my buttocks and looking very stupid indeed.

But at least I no longer hated being off sick. Coming to think of it, I really needed the rest, and even with my Master leaving the door open so that he could check on me every hour or so and puttering around noisily in his room in the intervening fifty-nine minutes, I managed to catch up on some much-needed sleep.

It was only when I found that Master had not only procured a velvet cap the exact colour of my hair, but also preserved the Padawan braid and affixed it to the inside of it 'at least until you've enough hair on your head to weave it in again' that I realised what I had let myself in for in going after Master Jinn. You either didn't have him at all, or you had all of him, and no two ways about it.

Four years down the line, I still have him, although it would not be truthful to claim that he doesn't have me in equal measure. Quite regularly, if I may be so bold.

Ahem.

Anyway.

So this is how much there is of me. Four sheddings are standard for my species apparently, and given my age and hormonal status there is little point in denying that I have reached my adult size. Which means I will eternally be a head shorter than my Master, at least until he starts crumpling with old age... and that is a long way off yet.

I will also have to be partially re-biometrised yet again - although the fingerprints don't tend to change massively, one or two out of ten are usually different from the last set, and I would hate for some innocent humanoid to be apprehended and reprehended for my nightly raids on the cold-storage rooms just because my fingerprints clearly don't match the ones on my file.

Ah, stop it, Kenobi, you're being facetious.

Actually, I'm close. And trying to distract myself from the increasing discomfort of being stuck in a skin that is by now not just too tight and too hot but also dry and prickly and almost completely numb. By the time I'll be ready, and able, to look in a mirror again, I'll be a clean slate once more, for the last time in my life. It feels absurdly like a fresh start, like some strange kind of virginity, to know that all my physical scars will be erased, and that I (and Master. And the biometry people.) will have to get used to a whole new set of marks of recognition. The mole just above my mouth may be gone in just a few hours, and maybe I'll have one on my nose to make up for it.

I reach up to stroke the bridge of my nose, just to check it's still there -

Ow. Shouldn't have done that. Here I go. Feeling the air touch the new skin for the first time is the oddest of sensations, almost a burning, along a tear that starts somewhere at the back of my shoulder and, by the feel of it, goes all the way to my hairline. It's hard to tell because the pain of torn skin isn't there. What's burst open is now merely a tenacious array of dead cells, and the real skin is breaking through the crack, new-born nerves ready to fire at will. I touch it gingerly with my other hand, causing the other armpit to split as well, as if my decision to stop applying oil this morning had made my old skin want to leave me at the nearest convenient moment.

Well, the 'convenient' bit is debatable, of course.

It is moist, too-soft and feels swollen to my nerveless fingertips in their gloves of cracking skin. Very soft and extremely sensitive. Still, feeling it begin to breathe in its tentative, tingling way is a heady sensation. In a few hours it would be hardened and dried enough to be as tough and resilient as the previous one, the fourth skin, had been all these years, but for now I am grateful that all I am surrounded by is the still air of my alcove and a light sheet covering my legs.

And the presence of my Master who of course doesn't stand a chance of sneaking in even when I am temporarily blinded, and yet he has the cheek to try. He switches off the datapad, and I would raise my eyebrows at his silent entrance if my eyebrows were actually still under my command. Instead, I murmur, "It's started."

He 'hmm's thoughtfully, then I feel a pair of fingers trailing carefully over what used to be my face, feeling their way towards where the taut shell is cracked open, revealing thick, almost colourless skin that will darken to its accustomed colour once all the excess water in the burgeoning cells has been re-absorbed. Yes, I have read about it dozens of times, I know all there is to know about humanoid shedding. However, I have only consciously gone through it twice, and three times is by no means enough to make it an everyday occurrence. This is only my fourth skin peeling off me, after all.

"Would you like me to turn you over, Obi-Wan?"

Unthinkingly, I make a start at doing so myself, feel the skin tearing right across my upper back, connecting the two previous rifts and sending a line of wet fire across my back. "That would be helpful, yes," I grit out. "Get a good look at things for me, will you?"

Qui-Gon chuckles and tugs away the sheet before gently turning me on my stomach in a Force-assisted manoeuvre that has the back of my neck peeling free completely as my head flops down on the pillow.

"Looking perfectly fine to me. Pure pink Kenobi, if I may say so."

I groan at the witticism. Making a face doesn't quite work yet, although I find that underneath I can already move my cheeks minutely. His fingertips are still examining the edges of the tear, and I hear them more than I feel them, sliding across the stretched dry parchment that used to be my skin.

"I think it's about ready to come off. Would you...?"

"Certainly, Obi-Wan. Say something if I'm hurting you..."

"Keep going as long as I'm not screaming," I say, shivering involuntarily at the brush of his fingertips across the moist young skin at the back of my neck. I imagine I can even feel his breath as he bends over me to peel away the cracked and dried scalp. Having his warm blunt fingers touch my ear is a potent sensation under normal circumstances already, but now his gentle fumbling with the reluctant patches of former skin lodged in those tricky whorls is almost too much. I force myself not to squirm as the kiss of air -Qui-Gon's breath - takes possession of more moist swollen surface, and raise myself up on my elbows to allow him to continue.

It comes off in a relatively large piece, and I find myself blinking at what looks like the inside of a mask, then squinting my eyes shut, wincing slightly at the sting of air on raw nostrils, making me want to sneeze. I feel Qui-Gon gently picking at bits of skin stuck around my eyes, then when I open mine again all I see is his. Bright blue and smiling, smiling with all those little laugh lines that I know I won't have for a while again. I won't even have eyebrows. Or lashes. And still, he looks at me as if I was the most desirable thing he has ever seen, a face full of warmth and earnest concern and full of all the little ravages of time I would never wish away from that face: the greying beard and the stubble, the too-light lashes, the small scar across the bridge of his nose and the lines around his eyes.

Now is the time for me to start acquiring all these, for keeping this time. And become a little more like him with every passing year.

"Your eyes look larger like this. Larger and brighter. You've almost gone silver here, Padawan." The tone of slight amusement in his voice is unmistakable. Haven't I always teased him about the grey strands in his mane, and hasn't he always, with a tone of mock wounded pride, contended that they were silver? He is definitely getting his own back now.

"As long as I'm not reverting to baby blue, Master, I think I shall be all right. I won't aspire to copying your eye colour. Although I feel quite a bit like a baby at the moment... hairless and helpless, so to speak."

"Far from it, Obi-Wan. Far from it. You merely look all new... all right, and you've shaved your head. But there is no way anybody in their sane mind could describe these noble masculine features as babyish." He chuckles, stroking a fingertip over the cleft in my chin, leaving behind a trail of fading sensation. "You're already beginning to dry," he informs me, "and you appear to have acquired a new pair of moles - tiny ones, mind." He taps my right cheek and the middle of my forehead to illustrate.

"Qui-Gon? Kiss me."

"Are you sure?"

My eyebrow-less frown must be quite intimidating or at least commanding, though I would be kidding myself to think it takes much to make Qui-Gon kiss me. He leans in warily, brushing his lips against mine, and gives quite a satisfying startled grunt as I kiss back fervently, willing the burning feeling of his mouth being crushed against mine to be a pleasant one, and oh, but it is.

Lost in the slow delicious kiss, I barely notice his hands have started... undressing me again, as it were. My chest is half-exposed already, and when I break the kiss, I realise I will be able to see my new skin, my last skin, with my own eyes for the first time. When I break that kiss. Not now. It feels too good, too right and firm and deep against the sharp little pains that mark the revealing of yet more swollen new skin eager for breath. I gasp into his mouth as he pulls my nipples free from the crumpled too-tight shell that had held them, and then I gasp again as he bends down to lick the pain away.

Fresh raw Obi-Wan... you taste delicious.

I sigh, not quite sure whether in exasperation at this all-too-obvious joke or whether in pleasure as the sting fades away under his insistent licks, giving way to a small throb that is beginning to spread through the rest of my body, making certain parts feel very uncomfortably confined indeed.

He reads my squirming right, though, and makes quick work of most of my arms and the planes of my stomach and back, laying the old skin on the sheets next to where I am now sitting up on the bed, trembling slightly.

"If you were to start oiling these again, you might have the makings of a vellum book here, Padawan. Imagine... the poetry of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Knight, written on his own skin."

"Except you are overlooking two tiny details: I am not a Jedi Knight yet, and I don't write poetry. Never mind the fact that I prefer to be written on where I can actually feel it."

"Oh? You'll have to tell me more about that once this new... canvas, as it were, is dry enough to contemplate such a thing."

"Never fear, Qui-Gon. For now, I would be extremely grateful to get out of your precious book material. It's getting very tight in places, thanks to you."

He shakes his head in mock exasperation, then very cautiously peels away the skin of my groin. It comes off just at the root of my penis, leaving him holding a patch of skin covered in curly brown hair that just looks incongruous and amusing in his big hand. We both laugh, and that distracts me enough for him to grip my cock with the other hand and give it a fast and hard squeeze, cracking open the reluctant skin and making me yell in pain, then in relief as the dull bruise-like pressure finally gives way to the burn and tingle of skin expanding, breathing, rising... no, it is not just my skin that is expanding. He has discarded the sheath that was my old skin with a flick of his wrist and is now gently squeezing my thick swollen flesh in his hand, easing the sting as he had done with my lips and nipples, sliding his grip slowly up and down the engorged penis. He is purring. Purring!

"Mmmh. Natural lubrication. A trick you might want to remember, Obi-Wan..."

He squeezes a desperate gasp out of me as he runs his fingers over the crown, teasing away the last remnants of former foreskin, then makes me wish I had enough breath to gasp again as he skins my testicles in one quick motion, discarding another comical-looking hairy thing while I struggle to regain my breath, blurry-eyed with the intense, head-spinning mix of pain and pleasure that is fast bleeding into pure pleasure as my intolerable Master nuzzles my groin, licking everywhere with that shameless warm tongue of his and I can feel the skin flaking off my hands as I clutch at the sheet under me. Naked, so much more naked than ever before. I spread my legs in unconscious reflex as he squeezes one testicle between his lips, tearing a moan from me and tearing the last of the old skin that way, right along my inner thighs in two burning lines converging where he keeps licking and suckling while his hands unerringly grasp at the peeling skin, taking off the last of it down to my feet.

Like a pair of old boots... well, very high and rather tight boots...

Oh, I felt that one. Your imagery sneaking back up on you, Qui-Gon. So you like imagining me in high boots? So do I, coming to think of it. Something will have to be arranged, once this squishy tingling skin of mine has settled down.

Right now it feels more like taking off - raising itself off me in ecstasy, the thick wet throbbing that is centred in my groin spreading to every single nerve ending freshly exposed to the air, to the soft sheets sticky with myself, and to the mind-melting attentions of my Master, my lover.

I let myself fall - it is all I can do in a moment where all I thought I knew about my body is temporarily overridden by a sensation that refuses to be classified as anything I have known before. It is not even an orgasm - it is, well, more... slower, longer than that, and it overwhelms me utterly, sends me flying and screaming and dripping and utterly drains me, a softened sated wreck on sticky sheets, too blissed-out to even lift barely-dried eyelids.

It is good, so good, and I am lying right in the middle of it.

When I awake again, it has already begun to darken outside, and the light conductor under the ceiling barely illuminates the mess I must be. And the faint smile of my impossible Master, sitting there at the foot of my alcove, still fully dressed and looking utterly pleased with himself.

Following a sudden impulse, I tug the sheet up to my chest, a small shiver running through my exhausted newly-skinned body.

"Cold, Obi-Wan?"

"M-mh."

Without saying a world, he levers himself up off the bed, only to lie down on it again, stretching his long warm body out alongside mine as far as he can in the Kenobi-sized alcove. Ah, much better.

Well, mostly.

"Master?"

"Hm?"

"Your all-new Padawan's head is still cold. No hair, you see."

Snorting, Qui-Gon shakes his head, then reaches behind himself to tug the leather tie out of his hair, letting it fall over his shoulder.

"Well, if you're brave enough to come a little closer, I might be in a position to lend you some hair for the time being... provided you don't mind a little grey."

There is really nothing I can say as I nestle my head against his neck, burrowing into the tangled long hair that is so warm and dry and smells of him. Well, maybe there is one thing.

"Silver, Master. Silver."