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“I think you’re just making up an excuse to get me out of my shirt.”
“Shut up.”
“No, no, I really do. You’re simply insatiable.”
From where she was perched, crouching on the couch and trying to get the best possible angle, Satine looked away from her camera long enough to toss an aptly named throw-pillow at Obi-Wan’s head. He caught it easily, and the sound of his laughter made a small smile tug at Satine’s lips as she returned her eye to the camera’s viewfinder, immortalizing his mirth on film.
“This has nothing to do with whether or not your bare chest makes me insatiably lusty. It’s about me wanting to get top marks on my photo-thesis.”
Leaning against the wall, his thumbs tucked into the beltloops of his loose jeans, Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow and smirked. The camera flashed.
“I’m not sure I understand why I need to be half-naked for you to get top marks.”
“Because, my dear Obi-Wan…” Satine mused with a small smirk of her own, reaching over to pluck her lit cigarette from the ashtray on the nearby end-table, “The assignment is to capture the very essence of life.”
Placing the cigarette between her lips, Satine hopped down from the couch, camera still in her hands and hanging from a strap around her neck as she crossed the room to stand directly in front of Obi-Wan. Moving the camera to one hand, she drew the cigarette from her mouth with the other and blew a ring of smoke into his face. Traces of red lipstick clung to the white paper casing.
“The very essence of life…” Obi-Wan repeated thoughtfully, tipping his head back against the wall and touching his chin. Her camera lifted and Satine snapped another photo. When he flitted his gaze back to meet hers once more, Obi-Wan admitted, “I’m still not quite sure that I follow.”
“I wouldn’t expect a science student to understand…” she sighed with faux disdain, grinning afterward and leaning forward to bump her nose against his. Her grin was infectious, and Obi-Wan couldn’t resist reaching out to slip his hands beneath her unbuttoned shirt – his unbuttoned shirt, to be precise, which she had stolen when he took it off – to rest them at her waist. He could hardly protest his current state of undress, not when his girlfriend was in a similar state of disarray, clad only in his shirt and her bra and panties.
Not a day went by that he didn’t thank the high heavens he’d fallen in love with an artist.
“Try me,” he whispered, nuzzling his nose against hers in return, and he let his eyes fall shut when Satine let the camera drop to hang around her neck and lifted her now free hand to tangle her fingers delicately in his long, messy hair.
“The very essence of life, my darling… is beauty,” she whispered, brushing her lips against his before she elaborated, “and I happen to think that you are the most beautiful creature to ever wander into my life, and my life is all the more beautiful for it.”
Obi-Wan, who normally viewed his composure as a point of pride, blushed. She had quite the way with undoing him, and he often worried that she would leave him completely undone.
His lips mere inches away from hers, he whispered, “That's incredibly poetic, my dear, but it still doesn’t explain why I have to be shirtless.”
Biting back a laugh, Satine smiled and leaned in to press a soft, lingering kiss to his lips and whispered afterward, “Perhaps I am just a bit lusty, and rather insatiable.”
“I knew it,” Obi-Wan remarked, opening his eyes and grinning wickedly before he squeezed her waist and leaned forward to nip at her ear. Laughing properly, loudly, Satine swatted his arm and stepped back out of his grasp.
“Naughty,” she chastised him, taking hold of her camera again before she moved close once more, close enough to place her cigarette between his lips instead of her own. He didn’t object; the tobacco was laced with her lipstick, the latter of which he found far more addictive.
Moving back again, Satine studied him thoughtfully before she muttered, “You’re missing something…”
Drawing the cigarette from his mouth, Obi-Wan exhaled a cloud of smoke and playfully mused, “You could try kissing me again; perhaps inspiration will strike…”
“Shut up – and put that cigarette back in your mouth. I put it there for a reason, Kenobi,” she instructed, walking thoughtfully around the room. Smirking, Obi-Wan did as he was told, blinking when Satine gave a shout of, “A-ha!”
Picking up an empty bottle of Stolichnaya, she gave it a victorious little wave, prompting Obi-Wan to furrow his brow and ask, the word garbled slightly by the cigarette, “Vodka?”
“Vodka,” Satine confirmed, walking back over and placing the bottle in his hands, wrapping all ten of his fingers around it securely. It was technically a stolen empty bottle of vodka; they pilfered it from Professor Jinn’s upperclassmen mixer a few weeks back. Adore the astronomy professor though she did, Satine had been horrifically bored when surrounded by all of Obi-Wan’s science classmates. While she treasured listening to her boyfriend talk for hours on end about the stars, it wasn’t nearly as endearing when strangers did it.
So, desperate to make her escape, Satine had snatched the mostly full bottle of vodka from the liquor cart in the dining room and, upon finding Obi-Wan chatting with a bloke he knew from one of his physics classes, she’d whispered in his ear a proposition: if they left now, they could get blindingly drunk and fuck until dawn.
He nearly tripped over himself trying to find his coat.
The blush that spread further on Obi-Wan’s cheeks when she wrapped his fingers around the now empty bottle clearly indicated that he remembered that night exceptionally well. Satine flashed him a knowing grin and stepped back, taking a test photo as she explained, “Vodka and cigarettes are deeply intwined with when I find you most beautiful; wrapped up in my bedsheets, sleepy, and with sweat cooling on your skin.”
Even from several feet away she could see his pupils dilate, and Satine laughed when the poor boy seemingly looked to the heavens and begged an unseen deity for mercy. Snapping the perfect photo, her pièce de resistance, she cooed, “Oh, yes, darling; just like that.”
Quick as her camera’s flash, his eyes snapped back down to meet hers, and Satine smirked.
Pulling the cigarette from his lips, Obi-Wan extinguished it in the empty bottle before he set it carefully back down on the floor and then ran forward, catching a squealing Satine around the waist and tackling her down onto the couch, the springs of the thrifted sofa creaking as he glued his lips to hers. Realizing quickly that her camera, wedged between their chests, was going to be a nuisance, Obi-Wan drew back and breathlessly asked, “Have you captured enough of life’s essence…?”
Still smirking, Satine lifted her fingers to trail them over Obi-Wan’s cheek before she softly conceded, “…for now.”
Grinning fondly, he bent to press a kiss to her nose before carefully taking the camera and lifting the strap over her head so he could set it down on the coffee table. When he turned back, Satine pushed her fingers deep into his thick hair and pulled his mouth back down to hers, hitching a leg around his hips as she kissed him. Returning her kiss, Obi-Wan slipped his fingers once again beneath her – his – shirt, enough that he could deftly divest her of her bra. Unhooking the clasp and the straps, he chuckled when she gasped as he tugged it off and tossed it aside.
“It seems only fair,” he mused, his eyes the picture of innocence, “that if you get to photograph my bare chest, I should at the very least be allowed to appreciate yours in private.”
Shaking her head, her cheeks turning pink, Satine leaned up and nipped his lower lip, whispering afterward, “Cheeky…”
Obi-Wan laughed quietly and brought his hands up to cup her cheeks, pressing his body down close to hers as he whispered, “You adore it.”
Her expression softened and Satine brushed the tip of her nose against his before she whispered in return, “I do, darling. I do adore it…”
I do adore you, she was tempted to say, but he stole her breath and her words with another kiss.
Hours later and deep into the night, they lay in a tangled mess of limbs and a fleece blanket, Satine resting on top of Obi-Wan with her head pillowed above his heart. She could hear and feel it beating beneath her ear, so steady and true. Gently brushing her fingers through his chest hair in the dim glow from the streetlamps outside, she whispered, “I wish we could stay like this forever.”
His own head resting on a throw-pillow, Obi-Wan ran his fingers through her fine blonde hair, being careful not to snag any tangles. Tilting his head, he pressed a tender kiss to her forehead and whispered, “If life was just lying here with you, it would be very beautiful indeed.”
Lifting her head, Satine gazed down at Obi-Wan intently for a long moment before she reached over and picked up her camera once more. This wouldn’t be a picture for her photo-thesis; it would just be one for her.
Without a word, she leaned down and kissed him full on the mouth, her arm held out to freeze this moment in time, captured forever by the camera in her hand.
Obi-Wan didn’t question it. He’d long since given up questioning Satine’s antics. A few months into dating her in their sophomore year of university, he realized why she did the things she chose to do didn’t matter. What mattered was that, when she painted a little yellow star on his cheek and called him her galaxy, it made his heartbeat faster and his cheeks burned, but most importantly of all it made him smile. He spent so much of his time looking for logical patterns in the stars, trying to make everything about the universe make rational sense, but he didn’t think the way Satine made him feel would ever make sense. There was nothing rational about falling in love with the whimsical, witty, passionate girl from his astronomy class, it just… happened.
And as quickly as it happened, it all fell apart.
Twenty-four years later, Satine Kryze was busy unpacking the many stacks of boxes in her new apartment. After eight years of graduate school and more than a decade of teaching across the country, she had come back to her alma mater to take over as the professor of Art History. Her new apartment was significantly nicer than the tiny one she rented on the opposite side of town when she was an undergraduate, but it felt… colder, somehow, than that old studio flat with creaky floors and windows that never fully shut ever did.
As she began sifting through her box of old photos, many of which were taken during those draughty, squeaky-couch years, she figured out why her new apartment felt so cold.
It was because she was alone. She was completely and utterly alone.
She’d been alone since she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in May of 1995 because she idiotically told Obi-Wan, upon realizing that they would be attending graduate schools on opposite ends of the country, that long distance would never work. In truth, she’d been too afraid of things falling apart to even try to keep them together. What they shared was so beautiful that she couldn’t bear to watch it break, so instead she let it shatter.
Then, for two precious decades, she had Korkie. After he sister’s accidental pregnancy, her nephew fell into her lap; Bo, frazzled and far too young, hadn’t been prepared to take care of him, so she dropped him on Satine’s doorstep and ran.
But now Korkie was off at college himself, studying astronomy, and there was something painfully poetic about where his interests fell; she knew that Obi-Wan would have adored him, and her nephew would have idolized Obi-Wan.
Smiling fondly as she lifted a photo from the box of her beaming as a very young Korkie blew out his birthday candles, Satine’s smile slipped when she saw what photo lay beneath.
It was that old snapshot from 1995, taken mere weeks before she broke Obi-Wan’s heart and, in the process, broke her own. Looking at it now made her heart ache as though the break was fresh and not several decades old.
Picking the photo up delicately, she leaned back against the wall behind her as she sat on the floor, and she sighed shakily and pushed a hand into her hair to get her bangs out of her face.
They were so young, and so hopelessly gone for each other. He was smiling against her lips, his fingers in her hair, and she was kissing him as though doing so might make things slow down – might even make time stop.
She realized, as she stared down at the photo and recalled the sense of desperation that had made her heart pound, that the essence of life wasn’t beauty, as she had told Obi-Wan. It never was. From the moment Obi-Wan Kenobi chased her down in the rain to return her astronomy textbook, his blue eyes so earnest and utterly smitten, the essence of life was love.
She’d loved that impossible, stubborn, kind, warm boy with all her heart, and she never once told him so. Not aloud, at the very least. For three years she kissed him, laughed with him, had sex with him, watched the stars with him, painted him, danced with him in her kitchen’s refrigerator light, and every day of those three years her heart whispered, spoke, and then screamed the words, “I love you. I love you. I love you.” – but she never had the courage to say them out loud.
She loved him so much, and she lost him. After all these years, she still loved him. No one else that she’d met ever even came close.
So she kept that old snapshot stowed away in her bedside table, and she framed a photo that she’d taken of him smiling at her, his eyes filled with all the love that she so carelessly threw away. She kept it on her sketching table, and each time she looked at it, she allowed herself to hope that she would see him smile at her again someday.
When she ran into him in the quad on campus less than a week after moving into her apartment and learned that he was also a professor at their alma mater, one of Astrophysics, it felt too good to be true. Then he smiled at her - that same smitten smile from twenty-four years in their past - and Satine realized that no photograph could ever fully capture the essence of her life because it could never fully capture Obi-Wan Kenobi and the love, the warmth that radiated from being in his presence.
He was art, beauty and love personified, and she wouldn't let him slip through her fingers a second time.