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Archive: Anywhere :)

Category: Humor, Q/O

Rating: R

Summary: My response to The_Emu's "spare me the sight of your genitals" challenge. A grumpy Qui-Gon doesn't fool anybody.

Feedback: Please.

Warnings: Un-beta-d! Impulse piece! All faults are mine.

Disclaimer: These characters belong to George Lucas, and I have borrowed them without permission. But only because they asked me to. Really.

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There was a time when he was subtle about it. He'd brush up against me as we were passing each other, or his hand would linger on mine when he passed me the bowl of mixed greens. His eyes would fasten on me when he thought I wasn't looking, and I could sense him undressing me in what he thought were hidden recesses of his mind.

Then there was the day that we finished 'saber practice and continued discussing his technique as we went into the showers. He didn't even bother trying not to stare. It was almost a relief to close my eyes so I could wash my hair; he was starting to make me feel like he was a starving hunter and I was tonight's prey.

"You're so beautiful," he told me. I pondered drowning myself but recognized that my body would employ Jedi breathing techniques whether I wanted it to or not, and it would probably take several hours to drown myself in the shower.

"Thank you," I said gruffly, trying to sound like the grizzled, grumpy, twice-your-age-damn-it Master that most Padawans would have taken me for.

"Master, would you..."

"No, I would not."

"...oh."

But at that point all pretense of subtlety was gone. He'd caress my hands when he passed the pepper. He'd brush up against me when I made the mistake of coming into the kitchen while he was cooking. He'd think about making love to me while we sparred (which, admittedly, was probably a good distraction technique on his part; I came away from those sessions with more than a few bruises before learning to tune out such images). He stared openly when I went to the showers and made disappointed faces when the leggings came on.

We had just returned to Coruscant from a particularly grueling mission on a planet called Mudflat -- so called because there was hardly a surface on the planet that wasn't flat and covered in mud. The negotiations had been easy enough, but I had spent the last two weeks longing for a shower. As soon as we reached our apartment in the Temple, I began pulling off clothes and making my way to the 'fresher. Obi-Wan picked them up as I went, even following me into the 'fresher to get the last of my squishy, muddy socks. He disappeared with them, and I enjoyed my hot shower even more than I'd thought I would. I came out, wrapped in two large, clean, fluffy white towels, and nodded at him that it was his turn. He'd stripped to his leggings and undertunic, and the look of happy relief on his face when it was his turn mirrored the one I'd had a few minutes earlier. I decided to indulge myself and dressed in a blue silk robe he'd given me on one of my Namedays. After two weeks of wearing muddy, filthy Jedi tunics, I wanted to feel something soft and light and dry and clean against my skin. The robe did the job perfectly. I was just settling onto the couch in our common room with a trashy mystery novel and a cup of tea when Obi-Wan came out of the 'fresher, braiding his lock of hair.

Naturally, the boy was utterly stark naked.

A sigh bubbled up from the pit of my stomach, and I said, "Obi-Wan, it's been a long day. Please spare me the sight of your genitals."

He looked up from his braiding. "I beg your pardon," he said stiffly.

"Do you honestly think I haven't noticed what you're trying to do? Yes, it was a long mission, and yes, it's been some time for me, but no, I do not care to sleep with you. And parading around naked in front of me is not going to change my mind."

"Parading...?" He looked miffed. "I don't seem to recall you ever complaining about my 'parading' before."

"Well, consider this a retroactive complaint, then."

"Then perhaps I should issue my own retroactive complaint for all the times you've stared at me."

A muffled choking noise made its way out of my throat. "Stared? I? I've stared at you?"

"You're doing it now."

"You're stark naked in the middle of our common room!"

"Well, I don't store my spare clothing in the toilet!"

I rolled my eyes at that. "Padawan, would you please dress?"

"Why now?"

"What?"

"Why are you complaining now? Why not months ago when it became obvious that I wanted to go to bed with you?" He was passing 'miffed' and making his way into 'annoyed'. "If you'd prefer I wear clothing at all times when I'm around you, or if you'd rather I didn't act as if I'm attracted to you, then why couldn't you simply say something about it? You act as if I'm supposed to know this already, when you've never seen fit to give me the information you want me to act on. Thanks for the consideration."

"You asked if I was interested in you; I said no. Was that not clear enough?"

"You gave a vague 'no' to a question that I never actually asked, so no, that was not terribly clear."

"Well..."

"And do you know what I think?" Completely unselfconscious now, he sat down on the coffee table in front of me, barely missing my tea. "I think you enjoy the attention."

"What?"

"I think you like having someone half your age lusting after you. I think you enjoy looking at my naked body, and I think you get off on the fantasies I have about you. I think it feeds your ego to know that you're not over the hill just yet."

I was mortified, mostly because he was... well, he wasn't wrong, at any rate. "That's ridiculous," I sputtered.

"It certainly is, but that doesn't mean it isn't true."

"Well, I..."

The annoyance and frustration in his body language melted away. He leaned forward just a bit, and reached out to caress my chest where the sides of the robe met in a V. "I think, sometimes, that if you'd just admitted to yourself that you'd like to have me, and if we'd just fallen into bed when I first developed a crush on you, this all would have ended much more quickly. We both could have chalked it up to a youthful crush; I would have been grateful that you respected my feelings and embarrassed that I actually asked my Master to go to bed with me. You would have been smug about still being attractive, and a bit mortified that you'd proven it with a seventeen-year-old Padawan -- your Padawan, no less." His hand was reaching down to the belt of my robe, and despite my outer bluster, I was making no move to stop it. Well, unless sinking deeper into the couch and moving my arms to the sides of my body could be considered a move to stop it...

"Suppose I say yes now," I told him. "We have sweaty, impassioned sex, and everything goes back to normal?"

"That's the rub, isn't it?" He made short work of the knot in my belt and ran the silk through his fingers, enjoying the sensation. "What's 'normal' now, Qui-Gon? Is it normal that I fantasize about you and you enjoy it? Is it normal that I do my best to attract you and you don't stop me? Would it be more or less normal if we go back to having a completely platonic relationship and don't so much as flirt with each other? And what happens if we really enjoy the sex?"

"I have no idea."

He parted the sides of my robe, and found me hard and waiting for him. He smiled, as if this was exactly what he'd been expecting.

"I don't, either. It isn't too late to tell me to stop, you know. We can still pretend this never happened."

I looked into his eyes, grey now with barely restrained lust.

And realized I had absolutely no idea which way this evening was going to play out.