I'm begging on my hands and knees for more Twilight au, and those are words I never thought I'd say! Anakin being able to resist compulsion, and Obi-Wan seeming instantly obsessed, and poor Shmi! Pretty please 🥺🙏
hey!! sure! here's some more!
(2.5k)
Having a sheriff for a mom sucked a lot when he was a kid growing up in a small town. There was probably nothing Anakin was rebelling against more at eleven, at thirteen, at seventeen than the rule of law his mother represented.
All things considered, she was pretty good at separating her home life from her worklife. It was Anakin who was bad at respecting the separation, Anakin who couldn’t keep son out of delinquent. There’s only so many times he could be pulled out of wreckage and bars and buildings with Keep Out No Trespassing signs on them before he got The Sheriff at home and out in public.
He’d hated it growing up and had come to grudgingly respect it later and in fits and starts. His dad dying had, terribly and ironically, helped a lot. His mother had had a stroke just before and then Anakin had been faced with the possibility of being an orphan, and the terror of that had mellowed him out.
Sorta.
He still hates a lot of things about his mother’s job. Especially the fact that she’s the sheriff of a very small town.
And when people talk, she listens.
The thing about small towns is that everyone’s always fucking talking. And other people are always fucking lsitening so they can talk later. One big fucking community, which means when Anakin comes home from his weird doctor’s appointment with Dr. Kenobi, a few hours later because he took a detour biking along the edge of the seaside cliffs just to spit in the good doctor’s metaphorical face, Shmi Skywalker already knows more than Anakin ever planned to tell her.
Like, for instance, “Sheila says that Dr. Kenobi thought it would behoove you to spend some time at the local library volunteering.”
Anakin pauses, backpack half-slung off his shoulders. He hangs his stuff up slowly, careful to keep his tone very light. “Did Sheila say what I told him after he said that?”
His mom’s silence is very loud.
“I don’t want to do i—”
“I asked the new librarian about it on my way home from the station. She thinks it’s a wonderful idea. Apparently we used to have a program like that in the forties but it died out during the war.”
“Mom, come on—”
“It’ll look good on resumes, saying you created and supported a local reading program.”
“Yeah, but I’m a bit too old to be applying for babysitting positio—”
“It’ll look good for me as well,” Shmi says in her sheriff voice. “Elections are coming up soon. It’ll be good, if my kid was involved in the community.”
Anakin’s glad that his back is still turned to the living room, where his mom is sitting. “Are you gonna run again?” he asks, paying special attention to his tone this time.
“Why wouldn’t I?” his mom replies. “I’ve been sheriff for a decade and a half.”
Anakin lets his eyes fall closed for a second, knowing that his face can’t be seen. This is how they end up half the time: Shmi’s ardent belief that she is invincible, going up against Anakin’s desperate desire for her to be so.
And they just don’t talk about it. As if they’re actually in agreement.
He knows how this is going to shake out.
“Do you have any plans tomorrow?” His mother asks.
Anakin’s eyes remain closed. “I guess so,” he says.
—--------
Mrs. Kenobi—call me Satine—is sort of scary up close. She’s tall. She glides between bookshelves. Anakin’s never met someone who glides before. And she’s so intensely, incredibly, blindingly perfect that Anakin would rather be anywhere but in her vicinity. There’s something incredibly unnerving about the symmetry of her face, the sharpness of her cheekbones. She’s obviously an absolute knock-out, just drop-dead gorgeous, but it makes Anakin’s skin crawl and his heart beat fast, but not in a good way or a normal teenage boy way.
Anakin tries to keep the unease off his face as Satine leads him through a tour of the library, a gentle hand on his forearm. That’s another thing Anakin doesn’t really like. She’s wearing satin gloves. He doesn’t know anyone who wears gloves anymore.
It’s just all a bit…unsettling.
“I put in a few words around the school yesterday afternoon,” Satine tells him. They pass by the mystery section, the fantasy section, and take a hard right into the young adult section. The shelves are smaller here, and Anakin feels rather stupidly gigantic as he and Satine walk through them. “To some parents picking their children up after school. They agreed it would be good exposure to bring them to the library for an hour or so of reading before supper.”
Anakin highly doubts it will be, but Satine hasn’t really asked him.
She sweeps past his figure and pushes open a pair of double doors with a flourish better suited for a Russian tsarina hosting an elaborate ball than a small town librarian showing off a small, cramped, and dusty room filled with padded seats and threadbare rugs.
And then, as if she has been waiting to put the last nail in the proverbial coffin, Satine adds, “A few students from the local high school will be here as well.”
“Sorry,” Anakin says, “are you saying I’m going to be reading to high school students? Can’t they do that themselves?”
After all, Anakin went to high school here. Academics hadn’t been too rigorously challenging, but they’d taught the fucking basics.
Satine raises one perfectly plucked eyebrow in his direction. “They’ll be volunteering as well.”
Oh. Right.
“It looks good on their college applications,” Satine waves a hand through the air and the words linger there. Anakin looks out the rather dirty window, jaw clenching. “I’ve already chosen a handful of books I think the young ones will enjoy.”
Anakin, committed to his fate, pads over to the titles placed carefully ontop of a short, stout side table.
“Peter the Rabbit,” he reads off the top. “Peter Pan. Alice in Wonderland. Treasure Island. The Prince and the Pauper—look, you’re the librarian here, but don’t you have anything written this century maybe? Harry Potter, even.”
“These are classics,” Satine tells him, her nose raised into the air as if she has encountered something particularly foul-smelling. She turns away, presumably to return to the front desk so she can welcome half the fucking town inside the library so Anakin can read them fucking Anne of Green Gables and become a better person.
“These are fucking boring,” he mutters to himself, flicking the cover of the first book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz open. Publication date: 1900. “I’d rather be in Kenobi’s office getting lectured at.”
There’s a sharp noise of disapproval from the doorway, and Anakin’s head snaps up to see the tail end of a very heated look from the librarian before the door closes behind her.
He shivers, alone in the emply room, and it takes several long minutes for his heart to settle back into its normal pace.
—----------
After the fourth kid sneezes, Anakin closes his book with a snap and stands from the very small chair they’ve got him sitting on. “Come on,” he tells the cluster of children he’s been assigned to. “We’re getting out of here.”
“Are you kidnapping us?” One of them, a snot-nosed kid who’d started the sneezing says, rubbing at her cheek beneath her glasses. “Cause mommy says that’s not allowed.”
“I’m not kidnapping you,” Anakin snaps back, barely holding in his natural follow-up to the sentence which is of course, I don’t want to be around any of you in the first place. “Also, just for future reference, you shouldn’t ask if someone’s kidnapping you after you already start following them.”
The girl scowls and reaches up her hand to hold onto Anakin’s.
For the love of Christ.
“We’re just going to go into the main part of the library,” Anakin tells his children, all six of them. “They have windows out there.”
They have windows out there and they also have parents. Parents who absolutely should be doing other things with their lives and precious hour of extra freetime.
Parents who are clustered instead around the library’s front desk as the town’s newest librarian holds court.
“Is reading time over?” one of the kids asks him, turning his head to look up at Anakin.
Anakin thinks about it. “Do you want reading time to be over?”
The kid thinks about it back. “Yeah,” he decides. “You don’t do the voices good.”
“It’s a boring book,” Anakin tells the kid. “Voices aren’t going to make it better.”
“Voices always make it better,” another kid says. “They make everything better.”
“Oh look,” Anakin says. “Is that your father?”
He gestures vaguely towards the cluster of drooling middle-aged somethings focused on Satine.
The kid peeks around his thigh and then shakes his head. “No,” he says. “That’s Dr. Obi.”
“Dr. Obi!” The kid holding Anakin’s hand says, and she lets go.
Anakin gets a bad feeling about this, a feeling that only doubles when he turns around to see Dr. Kenobi sauntering towards him, hands tucked into the pockets of a long dark jacket that makes him look even more pale than he already is.
He scowls automatically as the man gets closer. “Dr. Obi.”
Dr. Kenobi spares him a look that’s far too amused for Anakin’s pleasure before he crouches down to the level of the kids. “Hello there, young ones,” he says, opening his arms to accept a hug from the traitor of a girl Anakin’s just spent thirty minutes reading to. “Are you eating all your vegetables? Even the brussel sprouts?”
“I like brussel sprouts,” one of the kids reports sounding proud, and that starts a cacophony of opinions about brussel sprouts from all around Anakin.
“Wow! One of mine just absolutely hates them,” Dr. Kenobi says. “She refuses to eat them, so you’re very brave, Michele.” He lets go of the girl and turns his golden-brown gaze up to Anakin. “And what does Mr. Skywalker think?” he asks, raising a hand for Anakin to take. It’s very obvious he’s asking for a hand up and Anakin is obeying before he thinks about it. He snatches his hand free almost too soon, but Dr. Kenobi doesn’t even have the grace to lose his balance and fall over.
His hand is like ice in Anakin’s, and Anakin stuffs his fingers into the pocket of his jacket automatically a second later.
“Do brussel sprouts help with circulation?” he’s biting out before he can stop himself. “Cause you may need some then.”
Kenobi’s head tilts very slightly to the side as his eyes catch and hold onto Anakin’s. “Oh?” he asks lightly.
“You’re cold,” is all Anakin mutters in return. He swipes his other hand against the back of his neck. “”S poor circlutation, isn’t it? Something in your diet maybe?”
Dr. Kenobi blinks at him and then breaks into a wide smile. “I can assure my diet is very…circulation-mindful,” he says. “Blood health positive.”
Anakin’s mouth thins into a line. He guesses that’s what he gets for trying to give health advice to a doctor, especially a doctor like Kenobi who just so happens to be devastatingly attractive and also smart.
And also an asshole. And also married.
Speaking of which. “Are you here to fend off your wife’s admirers with a scalpel?”
Kenobi’s eyebrows raise. “Young ones,” he turns his head away from Anakin, down to the children.
The strangest feeling breaks of Anakin the second Kenobi looks away, almost as if a strange pressure he hadn’t even realized had been building was suddenly dissolved.
The very small beginnings of a headache begin to thrum in his temples.
“Young ones, it’s time to find your parents, isn’t it?” Kenobi says, and like fucking magic, the crowd of six children around Anakin disperse, children swarming away from him towards the group of adults surrounding the front desk.
“Can you teach me how to do that?” Anakin blurts out, even though he’d meant to ignore Kenobi now that he doesn’t have to make nice in front of small kids. Not that he was really making nice in the first place. But now he definitely doesn’t have to.
Kenobi gives him a half-smile, eyes heavy-lidded. “It’s a special sort of skill that takes, above all else, much practice.”
Anakin scowls. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Does Kenobi think he can’t commit himself to something even as mundane as a fucking commanding persona? Does he think he doesn’t have it in him to be–-
Kenobi’s eyebrows go up again. “Has anyone ever told you that you are exceedingly defensive?”
“You’re extremely nosey,” Anakin snaps back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Don’t you have better things to focus on right now anyway?”
He gestures loosely towards Satine, who has started playing with one of the mother’s bracelets as the other woman stands and looks at her rather dumbfounded.
Kenobi follows his gaze and then lets out a huff of laughter. “Satine can take care of herself,” he says, even though it hadn’t really been Satine that Anakin was worried about.
He’s about to open his mouth to say so when Kenobi turns back to him. His eyes are piercing, a dark, captivating sort of gold.
“Do you find my wife beautiful, Anakin?” he asks.
Anakin blinks. His headache is getting worse, which is probably down to what can only be a trick-question fashioned to look like a grenade lobbed at his feet. “I don’t think there’s a good answer to that,” he mutters, rubbing absently at his forehead. “What the fuck.”
“An honest answer is a good one,” Kenobi says lightly. “Tell me honestly.”
The words feel pulled from Anakin’s stomach, and he’s opening his mouth before he realizes it.
“No,” he says.
Kenobi’s eyebrows crinkle together. “No?”
Anakin curses his stupid impulse control. “She’s beautiful,” he adds quickly. “Really. But…it makes me uncomfortable.”
Kenobi’s lips purse, and then there’s something like disappointment in his eyes as he examines Anakin. “Ah yes,” he murmurs. “I’ve been told my wife can make countless young men feel rather uncomfortable. It’s normal in men your age, Anakin. Sexual ar—”
“Uncanny,” Anakin blurts out. He doesn’t mean to, but he also doesn’t want to listen to Kenobi trying to lecture him on fucking arousal in the public library. When it’s not even relevant. “She’s so beautiful, it’s uncanny.”
“Uncanny.”
“Yeah, like. Monstrous.”
Kenobi’s mouth falls open, pink lips parted in what looks like honest surprise.
Anakin’s own eyes widen as it hits him that he’s just called Kenobi’s wife a monster to Kenobi’s face.
“Shit,” he says. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m going to go.”
He throws a look at Kenobi, whose eyes are lit with something a lot like interest and then across the library to where Satine’s head is turned, cocked, and eyebrows up high on her forehead, as if she’s just heard everything he’s said.
He decides rather immediately that he’s going to take the backdoor exit.
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「いかないで」
arataka reigen/reader angst and fluff
vent
× × ×
You're leaving again.
'It's just a short trip,' you'd assured him. 'I'll be back in a week.' 'I'll be back before you know it.' 'I'll be safe.' 'I won't die.'
He knows you'll be alright. He knows you'll be safe. He knows you'll be back in a week. He knows you won't die, but he can't— he can't get those horrible, horrible thoughts of you dying in unimaginably terrible ways out of his head. He knows you'll be okay, but he can't stop thinking about why, how, you might not be.
The two of you sit on those cold airport chairs, the metal chilling his skin. He holds your hand in a bruising grip, his knuckles white. He breathes hard, struggling to keep himself from crying. He shouldn't cry. He shouldn't cry.
Your suitcase sits in front of you as you scroll mindlessly on your phone, not paying attention to him. It's so cold. The steel of the chair is so cold. The air-conditioning is so cold. Why are you so cold to him right now?
Your hand is warm. Your thumb caressing the back of his hand is nice. You're nice. You're warm. You shouldn't leave. Why do you need to leave? Don't go.
He hears the words of the airport attendant over the speaker, announcing that the last flight of the day was prepared to be boarded. He panics, a tremor coming to his hands, his eyes growing wet and glassy with tears. He blinks them away before you can see.
You switch off your phone. You get up and off the chair, taking your luggage in a hand and beginning to walk off. His hand slips from yours, and he scrambles to follow.
He's too slow. He's too slow to follow you.
He stares at you as you walk. He stares as that god forsaken bag rolls across the smooth marble floors, making a sound so grating and horrid it makes him want to rip his ears from his head.
He shouldn't cry. He wants to stop you. He wants you to stay. He wants to say those words, he really, really wants to say those words.
'Don't go.'
As the doors slide shut, hiding you from view, he can't hold it in anymore.
He falls to his knees, burying his head in his hands. He cries, he sobs, he begs you to stay, knowing that you aren't here anymore, knowing you can't hear him.
He knows you'll be back. He knows you'll be fine. He knows you won't die. He knows you'll be safe. He knows you'll be fine when you come back. He knows when you'll come back.
Do you not like him? Do you hate him? Why do you have to leave?
He knows why. He can't come along. He wishes, he begs to whatever god is merciful, but none of them listen.
You're leaving again.
He knows he shouldn't cry. He really, really shouldn't cry, but he still, so selfishly, wants to say those words to you.
'Don't go.'
It's so cold. Why is it so cold? Why is the airport so empty? Why is it so dark?
Why can't you stay?
He dries his eyes, leaving the airport. The night is cold, silent, as if judging him. He's being so childish, crying and worrying over a week-long separation. He shouldn't cry.
The floor seems to swim and shift underneath his feet, as if trying to knock him to the ground. The night is falling apart. His vision is blurry. His head hurts. His hands shake. His knees tremble.
He boards the bus, sitting down on the cold plastic seats. He shouldn't cry. He shouldn't cry.
He checks his messages excessively, looking at your empty chat for hours, staring at the illuminated words on the bright screen.
'I'll be back soon!'
He imagines watching you lying down in a hospital bed. He imagines watching you pass on. He imagines your funeral. He imagines your gravestone. He imagines feeling the rough stone underneath his fingertips as he caresses it. He imagines bringing flowers to your grave. He imagines bringing your favourite food to your grave. He imagines crying at your grave. He imagines his tears wetting the soil. He imagines how lonely he'll be without you.
That night, he cries himself to sleep.
× × ×
You look so happy in those pictures you send him.
You're smiling. You're laughing. You're grinning.
You're so much more attractive than usual. You're so much more pretty than usual. Your eyes sparkle so much more than usual. Your hair is so much more shiny than usual. Your smile is so much more radiant than usual.
He stares at the pictures for hours.
He dreads the cold nights. He dreads the lonely mornings. He misses you.
He doesn't go to work all week. He stays at home, sitting in his cold, cold room, the blankets and coats and sweaters and scarves doing nothing. He's so cold without you. Why did you have to leave? You're so warm, and he's so cold. Why did you have to leave?
He doesn't eat, he barely sleeps, just staring at those pictures you sent him. Staring at your happy face, staring at your beaming smile. Staring at you.
Why are you so happy without him? Why don't you seem to miss him? What did he do wrong? Do you not love him? Why do you hate him?
He misses you. He loves you so, so much. He wants you to come back.
He counts the minutes. He counts the hours. He counts every minute you don't message him, and he counts every minute that you do. He counts every minute you call him, and he counts every minute you don't.
Seven more days. Six more days.
He misses you.
Five more days. Four more days.
He misses you.
Three more days. Two more days.
He misses you.
One more day.
He misses you.
× × ×
It's the last day. He's ecstatic, a wide, dopey grin plastered on his face as he quickly showers the first time that week and changes into something presentable. It's all for you.
He runs to the bus when you message that you're reaching soon. He sprints, almost falling over, scrambling up the bus's stairs and settling, shaking, into a cold plastic seat. He's still so, so cold without you. You're so warm, and he's going to be able to feel your heat again.
He stumbles out of the bus, almost falling over as he runs as fast as he can into the cold airport, almost slipping on the cold, smooth marble floors. He sits in the cold metal chair, waiting impatiently. He checks his messages obsessively, watching that live location thing you'd sent him. He watches as your little icon glides slowly across the path. It feels like it goes on forever.
You finally arrive.
He scrambles out of his seat, sprinting towards the doors as they slide open and you slip through. He runs into you, wrapping his arms around you and squeezing, squeezing so hard it pushes the air out of your lungs and leaves purple bruises on your skin.
He holds the back of your head in a tight, crushing hand, running his fingers through your hair. He buries his face in your hair, breathing in your shampoo. He's breathing heavily, and his breathing quickens further when you give a tight hug in return, burying your face into the crook of his neck.
He's shaking, you notice. His grip is tight, crushing, bruising, and he doesn't let go for a long, long time.
When he finally does, though, he lets out a long, slow sigh, his grip loosening a little as he puts some distance in between the two of you, just enough for him to look at your face. He cradles your cheek, his expression calm, calmer than you've ever seen it before.
"I missed you," he says simply, brushing his thumb over your cheekbone. You wrap your fingers around his wrist, pressing his palm to your face as you smile at him. "I missed you too."
Those words make him feel good, make him feel better than he's ever felt. You missed him. You missed him even though you were having so much fun. You still love him.
Your eyes light up.
"I got you a gift," you say excitedly, rummaging through your bag. You pull out a small box, about the size of your palm. He takes it from you almost immediately, ripping the cover off.
It's a bracelet. A small, silver one, elegant chain wrapping around winding branches. Gemstones line the sparkling metal. He struggles to get it on, his fingers shaky and his movements fast, almost frantic.
You laugh in amusement. "You like it?"
He envelops you in a crushing hug again, muttering and mumbling as his grip tightens around you. "I love it," you hear, barely intelligible. "I love you. Oh, I love you..."
He releases you from the suffocating hug, his hands on the small of your back.
"Can we go for ramen now?" He asks, almost begs. He's starving, not having eaten a proper meal for a week. "Please? Anata?"
Your heart flutters at the sound of him using that pet name for you. It's so, so rare to hear him calling you anything other than your name. You don't mind it, of course, but this is a... Pleasant surprise.
You smile. "Of course."
His dopey grin widens as he takes your hand in a bruising grip, leading you out of the airport and to his favourite ramen shop.
He's warm.
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