#masterpieces of complex characterization and twisty moral conundrums

[sunsetofdoom]

HAPPY (LATE) BIRTHDAY SHANNON

I SAID IT WOULD BE DONE BY MIDNIGHT, IT WAS DONE BY MIDNIGHT. BOOM. DONE.

Not that you were, like, awake. But whatever. Sad soppy hotel-room boys take time to write.

So! This is a day-late birthday present for @the-son-of-dathomir, aka one of the best and most intricate Obimaul writers currently active, who allows me to yell at her about my Sad Boys In A Hotel Room ‘verse (the one that eventually leads to Mobitine, if you’ll recall) and yells right back. This is taken about 60-70% from ideas she’s had and flung at me to make me cry.

LOVE YOU SHANNON. HAVE SOME SOFT BOYS.

Obi-wan pried the door handle around with some sense of trepidation. It had been a few months since he’d seen Maul last; since he’d shoved a blanket at him and told him to take it home, to hide it away. Maul’s bright and wide-open eyes had haunted him ever since their parting.

More so, since he’d encountered a vagrant wearing what appeared to be a Jedi Temple-issue throw blanket over their shoulders. It couldn’t have come from anywhere else, not one of those blankets in the same condition.

The door squeaked as it opened, and Obi-wan let it, in case Maul was inside and likely to be startled.

“It’s just me,” he called, “and I have food.”

The bag rustled in his hands as he turned and shut the door behind him, proving the truth to his statement.

“I am here.” Maul’s hoarse voice echoed off of the tiles of the small refresher, and Obi-wan could hear the water running.

He smiled to himself. Maul always made a point of taking a very long, very hot shower whenever he had the chance- his reaction the first time Obi-wan had pulled him into the hot spray, of confusion and awe, had proven it wasn’t a luxury he was afforded often. His first question, when does the timer shut the water off, still made Obi-wan feel slightly sick.

Setting the bag down on the still-made motel bed, he made it to the ‘fresher door in a scant few steps. Opening the door, a thick cloud of steam rushed out at his face.

As it dissipated, Maul’s vibrant patterning came into view; he was looking at himself in the dingy and fogged-up mirror. As Obi-wan watched, he swiped a hand across the glass to clear a new layer of steam off.

His hand left a thin strip of red across the mirror, and Obi-wan’s stomach sank.

Maul’s eyes darted towards him in the mirror, and yes, Obi-wan could see the flecks of blood around the bases of one horn; the last to be cleaned, given the stained cloth he was holding in his other hand.

He opened his mouth, feeling the words bubble up inside him to demand answers, but- he couldn’t. He pursed his lips, held his breath, kept the words inside.

Asking questions of Maul would set a dangerous precedent. If his lover couldn’t answer, it would break the trust they had built. And if he did answer, he might expect the same from Obi-wan.

His fingers twitched, wanting to touch the back of his ponytail to make sure his Padawan braid was still safely hidden.

This room had been a safe haven, for both of them, for years. But they both knew they couldn’t afford honesty.

The little Obi-wan knew of Maul’s life made him sick and sad and sorry, the deeply-held wish to save others, which had made becoming a Jedi Knight his life’s goal, flaring up brightly whenever he felt half-healed wounds on his lover’s skin. He knew Maul called a man Master in a way dissimilar to the way Obi-wan did, calling out in his dreams in fear of him. He knew that Maul had faster reflexes than any non-Jedi Obi-wan had ever met, that his first instinct was to lash out when frightened. And he knew that Maul would rather freeze and bear pain or discomfort, than risk saying stop or I don’t want that.

That last one he’d managed to fix with a physical safeword, making sure that Maul knew he would move off of him whenever Maul tapped his shoulder twice. But making him understand even that much had been a struggle.

In the mirror, Maul looked away, scrubbing at his last horn with vigor. The rest of his skin was still wet; the blood had dried so thoroughly on the bone that it required great force to scrub off, even after the shower. Obi-wan didn’t want to think about what he’d looked like before he’d gotten in.

So he didn’t think. He stepped around, grasping the edges of the cloth in Maul’s hand, whispering “may I?” to a look of confusion on Maul’s face.

He nodded, and Obi-wan wetted the cloth again, working with his own hands to take the blood from the bleach-white bone.

It came off well enough that he was satisfied, and as he worked he felt Maul relax, watched his stance sink to something less ready, less wary. Obi-wan set the cloth in the sink, and guided Maul out into the room proper, always keeping his hands a few inches away from damp, warm, patterned skin until Maul was willing to give him permission.

“Here,” he said, picking up the sack and pulling out a few takeaway containers. “Food.”

Maul took what he was handed mechanically, sitting cross-legged on the floor with no regard to the way the towel around his hips fell half-off. Obi-wan pressed a utensil to his hand as he struggled with the lid, knowing there was a real risk of Maul just eating with his fingers if he wasn’t specifically given something to eat with. 

The container was from the same place they usually went, just a block from the motel where the owner had promised him unlimited access to the least-used room. (He’d gotten Ukibo’s brother cleared of murder charges. Being a Jedi had its perks sometimes and trading in favors was one of them.) It was a good mix of vegetarian, carnivore, and omnivore fare, and Obi-wan was genuinely fond of their flavorings.

Maul had never quite seemed to have much preference. The first time Obi-wan had brought him food- an all-raw-meat dish, not overly spicy but seasoned well- Maul had stared at it in pure confusion, and almost choked at the taste. He’d needed several cups full of water to deal with the spices, but he seemed to like it. He was a hard one to get a preference out of, but this item was the one he finished the most quickly.

Obi-wan had a bottle of water ready for him, too.

They ate in silence, Maul inhaling his as usual, with only a few momentary breaks for water- when he couldn’t stand the spices any more, probably. He was already downing the rest of his water, trying to get the burning sensation from his mouth, when Obi-wan decided he was done with his own food.

He put his half-empty container back in the bag to take back, already constructing the story he’d tell Master Qui-gon- that he’d gotten food with Galen, come back to the Temple with his escort like a good little Padawan, and spent the rest of the time holed up in the library. The trick was to make something up that was presumably a mix of lies and truth, just so Qui-gon would have no inclination to ask for details.

Maul set his empty box and bottle in the trash bin, and wrapped his towel back around his waist. He sat back, his shoulders even with the folded blankets of the bed, and finally seemed a little more aware of his surroundings. He looked around the room; he hadn’t cased it the way one would a hostile environment, not for a year or so, but now he looked at the walls and furnishings with suspicion, as though they might be clever tricks that would melt away to reveal whatever confines Maul considered normal.

Obi-wan watched his friend’s gaze scan the room as he made his way to the bed, taking his outer shirt and his belt off. It felt good to sit down after a few very long days of saber practice, earning a free afternoon. Maul’s horns dipped a little as he lowered his head, and Obi-wan just continued watching him with his back to the headboard.

He tried not to expect anything. They didn’t always have sex, both of them seeming to have very active and physical lives that left them sore and tired, but they did always sleep together, holding each other. An indulgence, for Obi-wan at least. Not something he was allowed, but something he needed. If he put the effort in, he could purge the need for it out of his heart, maybe- but for now, it was all that kept him going some days.

This had started as a way to get over Satine, to leave the memory of her warmth behind. But now he’d just replaced her with Maul as someone to ache for during his long and lonely days in the Temple, as his friends graduated to Knighthood and Qui-gon became ever more distant...

“Do you still have that blanket I gave you?” He interrupted his own thoughts with a question that had been boiling in the back of his mind, spilling from his lips unintentionally.

Maul’s horns jerked as he sat up. He whipped around, staring at Obi-wan, his golden eyes reflecting the light of the bedside lamp.

“What?” He asked. His voice still sounded hoarse, almost from a lack of use. Obi-wan had a suspicion that he didn’t get much conversation in his daily life.

“The blanket,” he repeated. “The throw blanket that I gave you. Do you still have it?”

Maul just looked at him, something torn-open and wounded in his gaze. Obi-wan held his eyes with what felt like a great deal of bravery.

Giving him that blanket had been one of the strangest, most humiliating, bravest, and most revealing things he’d ever done. He’d snuck it out of the Temple with him in a backpack, and at the end of their visit, pressed it into Maul’s arms over his protests. Both of them had been near tears- Maul shaking his head the whole time, Obi-wan babbling on about how he saw Maul wrap himself so tightly in the blankets, how he took so long in the shower, how he deserved warmth and comfort and please take it, please...

Eventually Maul had gone silent, folding it up in his arms and nodding. He’d left through the window, as usual.

And then a month later, on a Coruscant-based mishap-turned-mission, Obi-wan had seen a vagrant in this same neighborhood with a green Jedi Temple issue throw blanket over his shoulders. And- those were kept circulating between active Knights until they were rags. It had been a battle to find one that had any sort of insulation left to it- he’d gotten to it when Quinlan Vos moved out of his shared quarters with Master Tholme, smuggling it out with a pile of things that had once belonged to him. (Obi-wan felt justified in this. His split from Quinlan had not been amicable; it was adequate payment. Plus, Quin never got cold.) To see one outside of the Temple at all was mind-boggling, let alone one still intact.

He hadn’t been able to ask the bum where they’d found the thing, too busy helping Qui-gon with the cleanup. But he knew what he’d seen and it had half-broken his heart.

Maul stood, let the towel fall, and clambered onto the bed. Obi-wan moved the blankets aside to make room, shimmying his pants off of his hips- it seemed unfair to keep them on with Maul fully naked beside him. Maul tucked himself into the crisp white sheets like a love letter folded into an envelope, and turned over while Obi-wan shucked his undershirt.

They curled around each other, skin to skin, Obi-wan’s chest to Maul’s back, Obi-wan’s arms over his chest and Maul’s patterned hands twined around his fingers. Their legs tangled like creeping vines.

Obi-wan felt Maul’s breathing, the ways it stuttered and then steadied into a deep rhythm, and then inexplicably quavered anew.

“I- still have it.” Maul said.

Obi-wan hummed, a questioning sound. Something like anger stirred in his belly, but he let it ride- there was a shiver to Maul’s voice that disturbed him. He tried to forget the blood on the cloth in the sink.

“The blanket. I still have it.” Maul insisted. Obi-wan stroked his fingers against Maul’s belly, rubbing small circles into scarred skin and thick muscle. “It- it smells like you. I think of you when I put it about me.”

That Obi-wan doubted. The thing was Quinlan’s for years, and he’d never used it for anything but a chair-cover. It had to have absorbed Quin’s cedar-forest smell, there was no way it had picked anything up from Obi-wan in two days sitting folded in his room.

“I-” Maul started, and his breathing was shuddering again, “I sleep with it, and I wish for your company. I think of you when you are not there.”

With their bodies interlaced, Obi-wan felt intimately how Maul trembled all over, like a fever chill.

“I want,” Maul started, miserably, a sentence fragment that he almost never allowed himself to complete. “I...”

“Shhh.” Obi-wan hushed him, laying his palms down flat over Maul’s two hearts, feeling the double-time beat slow under his hands. “It’s alright.”

Maul curled his body tighter, guarding his chest, his belly, his vulnerability. Obi-wan followed, chasing the contact, not letting him retreat inside himself. Feeling his breathing, his heartbeat. Telling him without words that he deserved to be warm.

--

Maul swallowed back more words that felt desperate and sick, hoping that Ben knew what he meant. What he wanted. What he was pretending he could have, if he were the sort of person that could be free.

In a few hours, he would have to push Ben’s existence from his mind, go back to base, do his training. Master Sidious had already heard his mission report, and likely wouldn’t be back for days, but had made it a point to return quickly in the past. Just to keep Maul on his toes. Maul did not fault him for this; Master Sidious was wise and trained him well. But he could also trust that after a mission report, Sidious would have other business to attend to for a while.

So he could have this. But he would have to go back, burn and purge himself into a Sith Apprentice. And sleep on his bare mat, drink from his rusted sink, and have his single closet with two changes of clothes sorted through by a cleaning droid, who would of course report to Master Sidious if there was anything out of the ordinary. Like a blanket, which Maul had never been allowed in his life.

A soft kiss was laid on the back of his neck, and it softened Maul’s tumultuous feelings.

“Let me help you,” came Ben’s voice, breathed into the back of his neck. Just over his bared spinal cord.

Maul breathed out. He did not say what he thought, which was you can’t; because the fastest way to frustrate his Ben was to imply him to be as helpless as any other sentient.

Instead, with the bare and clumsy kindness he had gleaned very slowly over the last few years, he said, “You are.”

And tried to let it be true.