Master Apprentice
Archive
Riptide
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Archive: on the M_A website if they actually want it,
Category: Angst, AU
Rating: R (implied relations, crude innuendo)
Warnings: somewhat morose and depressing
Spoilers: Mention of an AOTC character, but not needed to understand story nor will it tell much about the film
Summary: Sequel to "Needed". Glimpse of Qui-Gon's life without Obi-Wan, approximately 6 years post-TPM.
Series: well, there are three now in the same universe, so I guess that might make it a series. These are all prequels to a larger fic I have a mental block on tentatively titled "Against All Odds". The sequence is as follows thus far:
Enthusiasm ('are you masturbating' challenge)
http://www.masterapprentice.org/archive/c/challenge.html#enthusiasm
Needed
http://www.masterapprentice.org/archive/n/needed.html
Rip Tide
(here)
Against All Odds
(in progress)
Feedback: would be most appreciated at ms_nawilla@hotmail.com
Thank you to all who have responded to "Enthusiasm" and "Needed". As always, you're enthusiasm is needed. ;)
/marks/ indicate italics, (internal monologue or telepathy).
Rise.
Fall.
Rise.
Fall.
Like the ceaseless tides, his lover breathed within the circle of his arms, steady and calm. Slowly, his own body unconsciously attuned itself to the rhythm and joined it.
Rise.
Still wrapped in dreams, his hands drifted over the slender man draped across his chest, feeling the strength of taut, toned muscle over bones made for finer things than their harsh line of work.
Fall.
Skimming up along the smooth skin of his lover’s back, he turned his head into his pillow, catching their mingled scents in the bedclothes. A night of passion traced into the bed linens. A distinct smell he could recognize even in sleep.
Rise.
He took a deeper breath, trying to capture it, as one hand drifted up to fondle the soft down at the nape of his neck, the other drifting back down the strong spine.
Fall.
A soft, sleeping sound against his neck. His hand drifted into soft, silken hair. The long strands tickled at his fingers, the delicate gossamer threads kissing his knuckles. Time for a haircut again. Past time.
Rise.
He both loved and hated to do it. Loved to run his fingers through that flame-kissed mane, trying and often failing to prevent himself from turning basic hygiene into an extended caress. Hated to crop it all short, clipping out highlights that could catch the last blaze of sunset, the first rays of dawn, or the glow of an intimate fire, in either a deep barren autumn wood, or the most luxurious ambassador’s suite. He knew. He had seen it in on a thousand missions on a thousand worlds.
Fall.
On a thousand faces. . . since . . .
Since . . .
Rise.
He stretched as best he could with a lithe young man sprawled over him, half-pinning him to the bed. While his lover had never been vain about his body, and his efforts toward reaching his physical peak had been driven by professional need and not the pursuit of lust, he wondered if the keen mind in this sleek body ever realized his effect on others.
Does he realize his effect on me? Does he know that the mere thought of him after all this time can . . . time?
Fall.
His lover grunted as he shifted in his sleep. He twitched in response, as an unfamiliar odor wafted toward him. He sensed no danger; perhaps it was some vile form of breakfast on whatever Sith-damned planet they were on this time.
Rise.
His lover shifted again and turned his head, raking his collarbone with morning stubble. Somewhere in his half awake haze he made a mental note to find out when his young bedmate had decided to razor shave in lieu of depilatory cream and to convince him to change it back. While he wouldn’t mind a nice trim beard after the knighting ceremony, the post-cream stubble was much less rough . . .
. . . when is the ceremony? . . .
Fall.
His lover grunted against his neck again, and he frowned in concern. This was rather unusual behavior. They had spent the night in passion and mornings were reserved for serenity. Not the Jedi serenity they wore like masks all day, but the calm peace that came from sleeping in each other’s embrace through the small hours until day and duty called them to part. Another grunt.
Rise.
The odor grew stronger. Another grunt accompanied more restless shifting
Are you feeling ill Beloved?
Even as he started to fully wake, his other hand snaked up toward his lover’s face, searching for signs of fevered distress. His eyelids fluttered as he reached along their deep bond.
Fall.
He fell.
He had walked along their bond and then he just fell into the nothingness of space. No ground beneath his feet. No braid beneath his hand. No mind to link to.
Nothing.
He gasped suddenly, red-hot pain through his chest, and his world shattered. The scent of their love, the scent of his lover burned away into the smell of disinfectant and bacta. A shrill alarm screamed in his ears. He couldn't breathe.
His mind scrabbled for purchase, seeking the Force, a bond, anything. His chest constricted painfully, a bacta and synflesh rod traversing it failing in its masquerade to be real muscle and bone.
"Where are you?!"
"In the shower Master. I’ll be home soon."
Anakin.
"I'll see you then Padawan." He took a deep breath, faintly amazed that he could, that his chest really had been knitted together again, and that the dream phantoms had faded. "Give your mother my regards Ani." With a gentle mind touch to assure his apprentice he wasn't angry with him, Qui-Gon closed the link. The unfamiliar odor remained.
Rise.
It was time to get up. With a touch of the Force the alarm on the chronometer ceased it's screaming. He tried to move, but a heavy weight lay across his chest and over his legs. The odor grew stronger.
Another grunt, and another. Qui-Gon Jinn closed his eyes against the dawn as the man he had spent the night with rose and fell, undulating against him in his sleep. Finally, as the grunts noticeably increased their frequency and the thrusts became more frantic, he managed to push away his living blanket and escape the bed.
Fumbling into his robe, Master Jinn ran a hand through his hair, cursing silently as his hand became entrapped in a snarl halfway down the back of his skull. Lorn, or Eorkus or that outrageous little Senate aide or whoever the Sith Hell his partner was last night continued to push himself into the mattress, groaning and oblivious to the fact that Jinn had left. He finished with a loud moan that ended in what sounded like a belch, then rolled over, still unconscious. Qui-Gon made a mental note to send out the sheets for laundering, then sat at his desk, his back to the bed.
"You have to get up now. My apprentice will be here soon."
A snort came from the bed. "Why oh Maaaaster?" The Senate Aide. Qui-Gon wanted to kick himself. "Is it his turn?"
He whirled to face Aide What's-His-Name. "Of course not! How dare you even imply I would touch a fourteen year old—"
The Aide had been stretching his naked body on the covers, but the venom in the Jinn's voice quickly brought him back to attention. "Just a minute, just a minute, don't you get all bad-ass at me now. I never met the little tyke." The young man stood and stretched to pop his back. The early morning sun streaming in the window revealed that his lithe form was more due to flabby, untoned muscle than to an exercise regimen. His pale smooth skin, unblemished by scars or time, spoke of long hours of safety and bureaucratic busywork. His emerald hair, dyed in the latest fashion and tousled from the previous night, seemed even more dark in the reddish light of dawn.
More wrong.
Turning away, Qui-Gon gaze settled on the slender crystal case on the corner of his desk. He heard the other man walk up behind him, knee joint popping annoyingly as he tried to lose himself in the light playing on the slender auburn braid within.
"I don't know why you're getting all mad at me anyway. You were the pervert who kept calling me 'Padawan' and I've been on Coruscant long enough to know what that means." He leaned over, blew a lock of emerald hair off his forehead, then reached past Qui-Gon for the box on the desk, oblivious to the Jedi Master's menacing glare. "I'll wear the little braid if you want me too, but not if you're a freak pretending I'm that young and—"
He cut off abruptly as the Jedi grabbed his hand, fast as a viper.
"THAT is not a toy," the Jedi grated out between clenched teeth before letting him go. Aide Anonymous nodded meekly and rubbed his freed fingers. Qui-Gon rose suddenly, his chair moving back with an abrupt bang. "And I'll have you know I've had other apprentices."
A snort to his back followed him to the door. "I'll bet you have."
The Jedi master paused at the door, his serenity already worn into full annoyance, his voice like ice. "The refresher is the first door on the left. My apprentice will be here in half an hour." He waved a hand at his bed partner without turning to look at him. "You will be gone before he arrives."
"I will be gone before he arrives." Qui-Gon continued to the kitchen, setting the kettle to boil and ignoring the sound of the shower starting up. Almost listlessly he stared at his quarters. He and . . . Kennor, yes, that was his name, had made quite a mess in the foyer and living room, but thankfully it consisted mostly of the clothing his current 'flavor of the month' would be taking with him.
Flavor of the month? Try flavor of the week Jinn. He eyes traveled over the unused candles in their holders all over the living room, each made of the wax of musk bees, imbued with a scent hardly suitable for meditation. Turning away he stared into his bedroom, taking note of the various pleasure enhancers: restraints, body paints, lubricants and objects to be lubricated. Lewd pictures and satin sheets. When had his bedroom, his sanctuary from the world, become a den of cheap sensuality?
The kettle whistled and he walked to the kitchen, pouring out a porcelain cup for himself and a disposable one for Kennor. It was the least he could do. He had been rude to Kennor, while the young man had been . . . himself. While he was not going to make him breakfast, the least he could provide was something warm against the chill morning air. You cannot blame him for being himself. Finis tried to warn you. It's not as if you didn't know what he was like before you took him to your bed.
He sipped his own tea and the hot liquid sent a bolus of warmth to his belly and a chill to his heart. What? He stared at the tea tin still on the counter. This was his tea. His favorite tea. He hadn't had this tea in years. Anakin must have picked it up at the stores by mistake.
You can't blame Kennor for not being 'him'.
He took another sip, the mild sweetness of the tea leaves bitter in his mouth. The water shut off in the refresher and he heard Kennor hunting for his clothes. He was doing it again. He was fighting the will of the Force.
Swimming against the riptide.
Years ago he had been on an initiate field trip to Glacen, a beautiful world of blue oceans and yellow sand. There, on the western sea, he and three of his friends had been enchanted by the siren call of the Living Force, by the rhythm of the waves, by the snails in the shallows and the porpoises in the surf.
And then came the riptide.
Without warning that beautiful world had been turned upside down by the sinister current. The three young boys had been swept from the shore, farther out to sea every second and all attempts to reach the safety of the sand had been in vain.
They had tried swimming harder toward the shore, fearing by then that they would be truly swept out into the open ocean and lost forever. That fear had clouded their use of the Force, rendering them unable to signal for help, and after a time, they had been barely able to keep their heads above water. The relentless tide continued to carry them farther away, farther from the familiar rhythm of waves on the shore, farther away from the knights and masters who could help them, heedless of their weakening cries and struggles.
They couldn't touch the bottom anymore.
It had seemed like hours or days before the three knights had reached them, swimming with the errant current to conserve energy, then carrying them through the water, parallel to the shore. Zarrok had panicked, even then. It had gone against all their instincts to go that way, to swim along the shore instead of toward it as the rip pushed them further and further out, to go clearly against the direction they needed to go.
And then, after swimming less than twelve meters, the riptide stopped pulling them. The knights began to swim toward the now distant shore, dragging the exhausted initiates with them, aided by the landward waves. When they reached the berm, Master Yoda had rushed over to wave his gimer stick and assist the healers, while the then Knight Dooku, who had carried Qui-Gon in, explained how to escape a rip. It was pointless to swim against it he had said; the tide was much stronger than the greatest swimmer and wouldn't get tired. The only escape was to outsmart it. To swim through it instead. To ignore the shore where they wanted to get to and to go with the flow until they passed out of it. Passing out of it was much better than passing out in it he had said. And fighting it would lead to just that.
Qui-Gon and Veekis had learned that lesson on the sand, wrapped in towels, and sipping lukewarm tea after they had coughed up all the salt water they could, absolutely certain they had just destroyed any chance they might have had of becoming padawans. Zarrok had learned it the next day in the healer's ward.
And now, after all these years he was doing the same thing. Swimming to the shore against the riptide.
All these years Jinn? Try half a century. Morosely he began collecting the candles and putting the holders away. He stared a moment at the set on the coffee table, each designed to resemble phalluses of different humanoid species. Which is worse Jinn, the fact that they're obscene, or the fact that they're just gawdy? Why did he even have them anyway? They didn't make his lovers any more or less excited. They didn't entice them to come back, to stay. They don't make them forget you're an over-the-hill ogre who never got over the one who got away.
No. He didn't get away. He left. He walked out the door and never came back.
And now he was swimming against the riptide, the vacuum that had been left behind, that pulled him farther and farther away from where he wanted to be.
He entered the bedroom to put away his . . . accessories while Kennor dressed in the sitting room. Stripping off the silken sheets, now stained yet again, he wondered when he had come to this. When simply being himself had become not good enough.
When one special person who respected him had become not good enough.
'When he left you!' his heart screamed. 'When he left and turned his back on you and never came back!' He sank to his knees, obviously in need of meditation before facing another serenity-challenging day with his apprentice.
'It was before that,' his head reminded him. 'You started on this path before that, remember?' The waves had been eroding the sands beneath his feet long before the undertow pulled him out to sea. Before he had woken up alone in the Healer's Ward with a tissue regenerator in his chest. Before the knighting ceremony when he had spent the entire time both anticipating and dreading the coming night when he would bed the guest of honor for the first time in that long cold year that the young man had been away. Before the day he had knocked on the new knight's door to find he had already gone. No, the sand had been eroding long before that final blow, when the riptide tore him away.
'It started when you lost respect for yourself. He had no answer to that. There was no answer to the truth.
"Thanks for the tea chap." Kennor again. "If you can get over your nasty attitude you call me again. You're a little surly for my tastes, but," he looked over Qui-Gon's body, stripping off the robe with his eyes. "You're worth it Maaaster, even if you aren't a morning person." The Jedi narrowed his eyes, and the Senate aide glanced hurriedly at the chronometer. "Well, your apprentice will be back soon and I have to leave before then." The young man swallowed the last of his tea, belched, then gave Jinn a lusty grin. "I'll even grow the Pada-tail if you want me to, well, I'll get a clip on."
Jinn stared at him, trying to decipher what in the Dark Side of the Force had possessed him to seduce the green-haired slut in front of him. He's not the only slut here, Jinn.
"That won't be necessary. I'm sure you can find your way out of the Temple."
"Yeah, sure," Kennor nodded, then his grin turned sly. "No goodbye kiss?"
The Jedi blinked, then turned and stalked to the refresher. Anakin would be here soon. "Good day Kennor."
The aide left, mumbling something about how at least Jinn had remembered his name this time. Qui-Gon turned on the water and winced at the empty tube and the small molehill of dissolving personal jelly on the floor of the tub. A large depression in the tube indicated where one of their feet had accidentally discharged it. He would have to check over the rest of the refresher carefully. He would not care to explain if his padawan found restraints tossed behind the commode.
Again.
'It should be obvious why you chose him, even to you,' his mind taunted him. 'Forget about all that mind-healer mumbo-jumbo. You're just trying to replace one whore with another.'
"He wasn't a whore! He—,"
'Are you so sure? Look who raised him after all.'
He wasn't a whore. He was a kind, considerate, respectful lover.
'Was he? You don't even respect yourself, how could he respect you?'
"Those are just rumors. I've never seen him sleeping around."
'You haven't seen him.'
He snapped off the water with a jerk. "He wasn't a whore."
'Ten thousand Jedi can't be wrong.'
Wishing he could jab at the annoying voice in his head, Qui-Gon cleaned up the lubricant in the shower, then made his final check of the refresher and common room before hurrying to dress. As he finished adjusting his sash he heard his apprentice come in the door.
"Master?" the boy asked, as if unsure it was quite safe for young eyes. Not that there would likely be anything he hadn't seen before.
"I'm here Ani," he replied, coming into the common room. "Did you have a good time with your mother last night?"
The boy shrugged. "I guess so Master. She said she knows lots of nicer Senate aides at work who don't sleep with everything that moves that she could set you up with."
Qui-Gon coughed lightly. "Thank you Ani. I'll let her know if I require her assistance."
Anakin shrugged. "I told her you liked the weird ones, but she didn't believe me." Qui-Gon begged the Force for patience while Anakin stared at something just below his face. "Nice hickie Master."
The Jedi master blinked. A former slave for an apprentice certainly kept his life interesting. "I'll have you know Anakin that I took a blow during evening sparring the night before last."
His padawan looked unconcerned and unconvinced. "Are we sparring today Master?"
"No, we may have a mission coming up." Maybe it was time to swim with the tide. "There is some political unrest on Glacen between a group of environmentalists and the planetary government."
"Glacen," Anakin tasted the name a moment. "Isn't that the one with all the beaches?"
Qui-Gon nodded his approval as retrieved the bag he had packed the night before with swim trunks and the only clean, dry towels in the apartment. Kennor used towels like oxygen. "Yes, and I know you got some low marks in your swim tests last term."
"I tried Master, I really did, it's not fair, there—" The padawan flushed red as his master leaned down, a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
"I know, Padawan mine, that there are no swimming pools, much less oceans on Tattooine. I'm not angry with you for your performance. However," he continued when the boy raised his head. "That doesn't mean I will give you permission to drown either." His apprentice's lips twitched, just as he had hoped. "As your master, it is my duty at times to tutor you in areas where you have trouble, be they sabre blocks or the nerf-paddle. It also happens to save me the trouble of swimming out after you later." Anakin wrinkled his nose. "I know you think it's cold now Ani, but everyone thinks that at first. If you stop fighting it so much, you might find you like it."
Anakin gazed at him earnestly. "Did Obi-Wan like to swim?"
Qui-Gon blinked a moment against the sudden pain. "Yes," he rasped after a moment, then cleared his throat when the boy gave him a worried look. "Yes, he did enjoy swimming. In fact, he was the captain of the Temple Diving Team for several years."
"He was a diver?"
The elder grated through the conversation as the pair prepared to leave. "Yes, he was."
"Could you teach me to dive?"
He sighed silently in relief as the door and that tortuous line of conversation ended. "Why don't we worry about teaching you to swim first?"
That earned him a snort. "Are we going to the Temple pool?" he asked finally.
"No, actually. I'm taking you to a training center on one of the Core Worlds near the ocean. Swimming in the Temple Pool is good preparation, but an ocean is very different. Pools don't have undertows and riptides for one thing."
"What's a riptide?" Anakin asked as they boarded a transport for the shuttle station.
Something you want to pass out of, not pass out in.
"Something you should never swim against my padawan," he replied as he passed him a datapad. The teenager grumbled about half of training being reading until his master passed out the ration bars and he began to read about ocean safety in earnest. Beside him his master settled into meditation as the airbus headed into traffic.
It was time to start swimming with the shore.