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It took Obi-Wan some time to find Bruck, though his friend and lover had been back from his latest mission for nearly a day. Uncharacteristically, he hadn’t contacted Kenobi immediately after he and his master had given their reports to the Council—making a rare appearance in person—though he was certain Bruck knew he was in Temple. Usually, it was the first thing they both did when their duties had been seen to and the roster checked. One would call the other and they would meet for dinner, or whatever meal arrived first, or arrange to meet or go out that evening. But Obi-Wan had heard not a word, though he had left more than one message and finally resorted to checking with Bruck’s master.

“No, Padawan,” the little Lannik had informed him, looking tired as well as troubled by his apprentice’s disappearance. “I do not know where he is, merely that he has gone out. We have been given recovery time after our last mission, but Bruck has not mentioned how he planned to spend it. I do not believe he has left the Temple though; his pack is still here. He is not answering his comm?”

“No, Master Rallin. I know he has it with him, but it’s set for ‘emergency only.’ I don’t want to disturb him, but . . . Is there something I should know when we do see each other?”

“We did have a hard mission,” the Lannik admitted, “one Bruck seemed to have some emotional difficulty with. We were required to interrogate several prisoners. I liked it as little as he, but we do what the mission requires,” he shrugged, and there was the sense of resignation in his words that Obi-Wan often caught in his master’s voice and had begun to hear in his own. It’s a hard life, was Qui-Gon’s way of putting it, when he had been required to do things that went against his grain. Interrogating prisoners was one such duty. Sometimes it was easier than others, if the interrogator was a strong telepath; neither Bruck nor his master were. Regardless, few Jedi liked the job, but it had to be done. “He will not speak of it, at least not with me, though I know his role in the interrogations troubled him. And I do not want to force the issue unless I must.”

“I understand, Master Rallin. There was no trouble with the Council?”

The expression on Rallin’s face darkened to a scowl. The reaction was so reminiscent of his own master’s reaction to such a question that Obi-Wan had to actively suppress his own smile. “No. For once they not only failed to castigate the boy, they actually seemed pleased with Bruck’s performance, little as he liked it.” Rallin shook his head. “I’m afraid that might be troubling him more than the interrogations.”

Obi-Wan nodded, knowing exactly what Bruck’s master meant. “Thank you for telling me. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Somehow, that makes me feel more hopeful, Padawan,” Bruck’s master smiled. “Thank you.”

 

But it was another four hours before Obi-Wan finally found Bruck, sitting in one of the more out of the way, seldom-used, and overgrown gardens on the Temple grounds, and it was only because he’d opened himself to the Force and let it guide him there. Bruck’s signature, something he usually had no trouble honing in on, was faint and guarded. Clearly, he did not want to be found. Obi-Wan followed his heart, regardless.

Bruck didn’t appear to be meditating, merely sitting still as a statue on a chipped stone bench around which the grass was nearly knee high. Nearby, a long-unpruned tree had dropped its small fruits on the ground where they were slowly rotting. Insects hummed and buzzed around them, feeding off the sickly sweet corruption. A few weeds bloomed around the stunted trunk and some kind of vine had wound its way up into the branches, half-smothering the tree in a ghostly grey-green growth. Obi-Wan had never been here, and half-expected to see the ruins of some structure poking up out of the unchecked undergrowth. What an odd garden, he thought, though he could see its attractions. It was almost romantically melancholy if one were in the right mood.

Bruck didn’t seem to be, however. He was tightly shielded, but his body language was a picture of defeat and depression rather than melancholy: rounded shoulders, bowed head, hands hanging useless and empty between his knees. He stared at the ground between his feet as though it were a puzzle to be solved and didn’t seem to hear Obi-Wan approaching, despite the dead leaves crackling under his feet and the occasional snap of a dead branch beneath his boot heel.

He didn’t look up at Kenobi until Obi-Wan was right beside him and impossible to ignore anymore. “Hi,” he said listlessly. “I suppose I should have called you sooner. I’m sorry.”

“And perhaps I shouldn’t have come looking for you, if what you want is solitude. I think Andreth’s worried about you, though.”

“I’ll be all right. I just need to think for a while.”

“Do you want me to leave you alone?” Obi-Wan asked gently.

“No,” Bruck whispered. “Not when you put it that way.”

Kenobi sat down beside him and ran his hand up and down Bruck’s bowed and very tense back, letting the silence fall around them again. Bruck would speak when he was ready, and Obi-Wan would listen. Until then, they would just be together, here in this quiet place. Obi-Wan opened himself to the Force once more, feeling the currents around them, the low hum of life in the grass and trees and the troubled eddies around Bruck, wondering what was wrong, but willing to be patient, as Bruck had been with him any number of times.

“I used to come here when I was a kid,” Bruck said finally. “After Col was killed and everything went wrong. Nobody came here, and nobody seemed to care about this place any more than they cared about me. I felt like this was the only place in the Temple I belonged.”

“Is that how you’re feeling now?” Obi-Wan asked him “Unwanted? Because it’s not so.” He leaned his chin on Bruck’s shoulder and slid his arms around the other young man’s waist.

“Not unwanted. That’s not the right word. Out of place, maybe. Like a misfit. Wrong.”

“Wrong how? Like—”

Bruck turned to him with a look of such anguish that it made Obi-Wan’s heart stop for a moment. “I tortured a man, Ben. I hurt him until he was screaming and begging and pissing himself. Until he told us what we needed to know. I wrecked him the same way I wrecked you. And now Windu decides I might be worth something after all because I’m so good at this.”

Thank the light Rallin had warned him. “And if you hadn’t done the interrogation?”

“That argument doesn’t work. The ends don’t justify the means. Or what Windu suddenly likes about me.”

“If you hadn’t?” Kenobi insisted. “Would other people have died? Innocent people? Was this person—”

“Shut up, Ben! Just shut up! I know these arguments. I know I did what I had to do and that I probably saved hundreds of peoples’ lives doing it. I just wish I wasn’t so damn good at it! And I wish that didn’t suddenly seem like my one valuable skill to the Council.”

It was hard to know how to respond to that, and it wasn’t something to which he could simply say “what makes you think you are so good at it?” He’d had his own experiences with Bruck’s skills at interrogation and inflicting pain, some of the latter intensely pleasurable, the former . . . the former encounter had indeed broken him. In Bruck’s imaginative hands, the most ordinary of objects could be made to cause the most excruciating sensations, whether pleasure or pain depended upon the recipient and motive. Since the night they had spent in the sex club together, Bruck had only hurt him a few times, teasingly and within bounds previously agreed on, never to the point of damage, never in the organized fashion they’d gone about it at the club, and Obi-Wan hadn’t asked him to. But he suspected that wasn’t what had been done in this instance.

What had made his first experience with Bruck’s interrogation skills so devastating was the other young man’s instinctive ability to pin-point and exploit Obi-Wan’s own fears and weaknesses, things he hadn’t suspected were even issues. Bruck’s observations and analysis of his lover’s behavior and personality had been crushingly revealing, and deeply shocking. Having been an outcast for so long had turned Bruck into a shrewd, analytical, and astute observer. It didn’t surprise Obi-Wan that he was good at wheedling information from reluctant sources. Or that he didn’t like what he thought it revealed about himself—or the way the Council seemed to be molding him in this direction.

“This guy—” Bruck swallowed hard and drew his heels up onto the bench, wrapping his arms around his legs. “He’d been running arms for years, knew everybody on both sides, all the radicals who wouldn’t sit down at the negotiating table, who were buying the explosives that one side set off in the other’s public places, and the small arms rockets the other side would lob at the schools and hospitals and homes of the first. The peacekeeping force had finally nailed him one night while we were there, handing over a shipment of explosives to a small cell of radicals. They brought him and the others back to us, said ‘we need names,’ and turned us loose on him. Turned me loose on them. Andreth was out rounding up more extremists and they wanted to send him more information. So I got to work.”

“Why didn’t the peacekeepers take care of it themselves? Surely they’ve got interrogators?”

“Not their job, they said. They have intelligence officers but they’re not authorized to ask questions.” Bruck rolled his eyes. “Only in the Republic. And you know how much more afraid of us people are. That’s part of what makes it relatively easy. You play to people’s fears, hint at what you could do, might do, will do if they don’t cough up. The unknown is a lot more scary than what’s already been done to you, or even what you can imagine.”

Kenobi nodded. So it was. He’d learned that the hard way himself. “What did you do? How badly did you hurt him? Or would you rather not talk about it?”

Bruck was silent for a while, resting his head on his knees. “The funny part is,” he said finally, “that I barely hurt him at all, Ben. You’d probably have gotten off on what little I did to him. He was a greasy, saggy, old bugger and I thought his heart might seize up if I hurt him much, and that would have been, y’know, ‘counterproductive,’ wouldn’t it? What I did mostly was scare the shit out of him.”

 

---

 

Bruck could smell the man’s fear in the close quarters of the tent now. When he was younger, he’d thought that was a cliche, writer’s hyperbole, but had been surprised to find that sweat did take on a kind of acrid, metallic pong when people were afraid. By now, he’d been around enough frightened people to know how true it was, even of himself.

It amazed him that this man was already afraid of him. It had taken less than a minute.

What he’d been spouting when the Republic’s soldiers brought him in wasn’t just bravado. He knew the worst he could be charged with was possession of illegal weapons, and the man wasn’t a coward. That much of him was easy to sense. He’d been fairly certain the Republican force wouldn’t harm him, and he’d been surprised and a little wary at finding Bruck in his Jedi robes, but he hadn’t been afraid, even when the soldiers had tied him into the chair at Bruck’s direction. He’d looked Bruck up and down insolently, then grinned.

“Now the Republic sends pretty boys to do a man’s work? You belong in a real man’s farjhaz being fucked in the ass twice daily, pretty boy. You’re not safe here.” His voice was taunting, insolent, loud. But his eyes kept flicking to the brazier in the corner, the only source of heat in the cold little tent. There wasn’t any fear in them yet, just awareness. Bruck said nothing, but stretched out with his feelings into the Force to test the currents around this man. He was not some weak-minded fool it would be easy to whammy into giving up the names of his contacts. Both greed and determination had hardened him and united him with both sides in thinking the Republic should get the hell out of their world’s business. Something would have to soften him up first.

Satisfied with his analysis, Bruck had leaned into the man’s face and said very quietly, “I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to tell me the truth about everything I ask you, because it’s not smart to lie to Jedi. Do I make myself clear?”

He hadn’t bothered waiting for an answer, but the man had laughed at him, as he’d expected. Bruck had ignored him, and instead, he’d turned to one of the guards, the one he’d been flirting with before they’d brought this man in, and asked her for a stim stick. She dug into her pocket with a now-serious face and a “yes, ser,” handed him one and offered a light. Instead, he’d thanked her politely, walked over to the brazier and, standing where he could be seen by the prisoner, picked up one of the live coals in his fingers. The Force kept it from even heating his skin, but he could feel the glow of it on his face as he lit the stim stick with it then let the coal roll into his palm. He took a deep drag on the fragrant cigarette, let it out in a slow, calm breath, not letting the mild intoxicant muzzy him. The man sat unmoving in the chair, watching him, though it was clear he didn’t want to. Bruck walked back over to the prisoner and crushed the coal in his hand, letting the embers sift through his fingers into the man’s lap, where some of the larger ones burned through his clothing and lay glowing against the skin below.

That smell filled the tent then: sour, fear-tinged sweat, along with the smell of the stim stick, and burned cloth and burning flesh. The man’s skin was shiny with terror and pain as he twisted and bucked frantically, trying to dislodge the embers that continued to burn him. “Do I make myself clear?” Bruck said again, putting one foot on the front of the chair’s seat, holding it down, foot wedged between the man’s legs. He reached down with the stim stick and set a corner of the man’s loose clothing alight, blowing on it gently until the outer shirt he wore caught in a little licking flame.

“You have probably ninety seconds before that flame begins to burn through to skin. Maybe we should move you outside. I wouldn’t want the tent to catch when you go up.” Bruck gestured behind him, and tent flaps sprang wide as though someone were holding them back, but there was no one outside. Just darkness. The man screamed when his chair rose off the ground and began moving toward them, clothing still alight, the flames fanned a little higher in the night breeze coming in through them. “Little Gods!” Bruck heard one of the guards mutter as he sauntered after his prisoner, as casually as if they were going for a stroll, stim stick pinched between his fingers.

He was still screaming when Bruck dropped his chair onto the rocky soil outside, jarring him but leaving him still upright. A dark stain appeared on the front of the main’s trousers. Most of the lower front hem of his outer shirt was burning now and some of it had to be scorching the cloth and skin beneath. Bruck watched with apparent impassivity as the flames ate slowly into the cloth. “What do you want? What do you want?” the man screamed, twisting his head back and away from the rising heat in his lap. “I’ll tell you everything! Everything!” he sobbed.

Bruck said nothing for a few more very long seconds, taking another drag of the stim stick and watching the man struggle and shake in his bonds. He didn’t seem to be paying very close attention, but was in fact monitoring the progress of the flames carefully. The embers he’d originally dropped in the man’s lap had left a couple of tiny but painful burns on his thighs, but nothing else had touched him yet. “Tell me who you’re dealing to,” Bruck said carelessly, as though it didn’t really matter. “Names, locations, and affiliations.”

When the man started to babble names, he nodded at the lieutenant who had been standing by to take notes and carefully held the flames in check with the Force. He let them burn, let the man feel their heat crawling slowly over his lap and up his chest, into his face, let them raise a small blister or two on the skin beneath, but no more. When the man faltered, Bruck encouraged him with a little Force suggestion, made the flames seem hotter and nearer his face.

When the intelligence officer was satisfied that they had rung everything out of him, he nodded to the Jedi. There was a loud ripping sound and the man’s shirt shredded to rags around him, wrenched itself off his body into the air and burst into flame. His prisoner screamed, shaking in the chair so hard that it fell over. Briefly glowing bits of ash drifted down into the dark like falling stars. The man lay on the ground and whimpered.

Bruck tossed his stim stick in a glowing arc into the night, walked back into the tent and left him there.

 

---

 

“So what’s bothering you about this?” Obi-Wan asked. Bruck’s face was ashen.

“It makes me sick,” Bruck spat. “It makes me sick that I had to do it. It makes me sick that—”

“That what?”

“That it was so easy. It was easy like it was with you, to just slip into that role. To be intimidating and cold and mysterious. To just put on the piss-head bastard persona I’ve got and make this man’s life a horror.”

“Did you get off on it?”

“Like you get off on the pain? No. I didn’t sleep that night. I kept—keep seeing his face.”

“But you get off topping me. You get off hurting me to make me come. Don’t you?”

“It’s not the same. It’s not a mind game.”

“Exactly.” Kenobi agreed. “You were doing a job, doing something you had to do, not something you enjoyed. Whether you’re good at it or not is almost irrelevant, Bruck. You were following the necessities of the mission, and the guy was lucky it was you and not me. You scared him for what? Maybe a half hour, an hour? But you didn’t really hurt him. I’ve been burned that badly around campfires. He’ll get up and walk away from that, and someone will put some bacta on his injuries and maybe he’ll start to have second thoughts about arms dealing, if it means tangling with Jedi. But he’ll eventually go home, unscarred, and help perpetuate the myth of who we are and what we do—and how one of us got him to spill everything he knew without touching him. I couldn’t have done that. I would have had to hurt him much more than you did. I’ve had to do it before.”

“And if you had to become someone else to do that, it’s not so bad. You’re only protecting yourself.” Kenobi slipped his arms around the other young man again and rested his chin on Bruck’s shoulder once more. “Everybody thinks you’re such a hardass, B-boy. Even you. But you’re not. Not really.”

Bruck snorted derisively but his breath caught in his throat and he put his head down on his knees. They sat quietly for a while in the sad, neglected little garden, until the light began to grow dim. Finally, Kenobi said quietly, “It’ll be all right, Bruck. You did what you had to do. And you did it well. Even Windu couldn’t find any reason to take a chunk out of you. ”

“That’s what really scares me, Ben,” the other young man said equally quietly, lifting his face from his knees. “The thoughtful look on his face when I gave him the blow-by-blow. He not only didn’t take a chunk out of me, I got a ‘well done, Padawan,’ out of him. That probably means he wants me to do something that I really won’t like, later.”

“The infamous sweets-and-stick approach.”

Bruck nodded. “I’m waiting for the stick. ”

“Maybe there won’t be one.”

Bruck shot him a disdainful look. “And they actually let you out on missions like that. Amazing. There’s always a stick, Ben. I’ve been getting the stick since I was kid. Either on my ass or up it.”

Kenobi gave him a squeeze. “I could put something else up it, if you’d like,” he said in a sultry whisper, one hand straying between Bruck’s legs.

The other young man shrugged him off and squirmed out of his grasp, then looked guilty about it. “Not—I’m sorry, Ben. I just—”

“It’s okay. I just thought it might take your mind off it. At least come and get something to eat. You’ve been here all day, haven’t you?”

At the mere suggestion of food, Bruck’s stomach gave a loud growl. Both of them laughed, Bruck a little sheepishly. “Do you suppose that was a hint?”

“Crude matter has its limits, you know.”

“I know,” Bruck said.

 

---

 

Qui-Gon was surprised to find his apprentice still at home when he returned from a leisurely dinner with friends of his own in one of Coruscant’s quiet restaurant districts. Obi-Wan was sitting alone on the lounge in the common room, scrolling through something on his datapad with a pot of tea and a cup in front of him on the table beside his feet. He looked up with a smile as his master entered.

“Not so long ago, you used to lie on the floor to do that,” Qui-Gon observed, putting up his long leather coat and boots. He was in civilian clothing tonight, which for the tall Master meant black pants and boots, and a high-collared wide-sleeved blue shirt with intricate gold embroidery around the cuffs and collar. His hair was braided down his back for a change, woven with one of the decorative thongs Obi-Wan liked to collect for him, this one blue beaded in gold.

“Not as comfortable as it used to be. You look . . . edible, Qui. How was your dinner?”

“Very pleasant,” Qui-Gon replied, ignoring Obi-Wan’s come-on and walking into the kitchen. “Bail Organa was there, by the way,” he went on, the sounds of tea-making emanating from the little room, “and sends his greetings. I’d expected you’d still be out with Bruck. Do you want more tea?”

“No, thank you, Qui. We didn’t go. Bruck wasn’t in the mood.”

The sounds stopped, and Qui-Gon stood in the doorway, frowning, testing along their bond for any distress on Obi-Wan’s part. There was worry, but nothing that seemed to need his attention. “Is everything all right?” he asked carefully. He had never pried into the relationship between the two young men, and he wasn’t about to start now.

“Not really. I mean, we’re all right, but Bruck’s . . .”

“Not ill, I hope, or injured,” he said, walking back into the common room to stand next to Obi-Wan.

“No, neither of those,” Obi-Wan sighed, and put his datapad down. “Upset, more than anything. And frightened. He’s just back from a particularly hard mission and it’s rocked him a bit. The closer he gets to his trials, the more he worries about doing the wrong thing and the less self-confidence he’s got. He’s so used to being wrong that he doesn’t know when he’s done well, no matter how often his master tells him.” Obi-Wan briefly related Bruck’s version of the interrogation he’d performed and its results.

Qui-Gon shook his head. “He certainly was clever in getting what he wanted yet causing the least amount of pain and injury possible. It’s difficult to be well-pleased with oneself in a situation like this, because no matter what one does, it feels wrong. It’s far worse than injuring or even killing someone in self-defense because it’s less obvious that they’ve brought it on themselves. The cause and effect are less directly related.”

“Too true,” Obi-Wan agreed ruefully.“And the Council’s not helping. I think they’re pushing him in this direction, Qui. According to Bruck, Master Windu was practically patting him on the head and saying ‘Good boy!’ when he gave his report on the interrogations. It was the most positive feedback he’d gotten from the Council in years. And look how readily they agreed to him finishing up my pain trials.”

Qui-Gon’s lips compressed into a thin line that Obi-Wan recognized as frustration and disapproval. It was an expression he’d seen often in the Council’s chambers. “I’ve been hoping this wouldn’t happen,” he said, sinking into the seat beside his padawan.

“Hoping what wouldn’t happen?” Obi-Wan asked with alarm.

Qui-Gon touched his knee reassuringly. “Nothing to be unduly worried about, Padawan. I just—” He hesitated again and Obi-Wan had to actively keep himself from strangling his master, schooling himself to patience.

Qui-Gon went on again after letting out a gusty sigh. “The Council has a vested interest in cultivating the talents of certain individuals within the Order, Obi-Wan. You must know this from your own training. When Ayana was my padawan, she showed particular talents that are useful in covert missions and that’s the way she was groomed, or the way I was instructed to groom her. I didn’t always—”

“—Being independently minded, yourself.”

Qui-Gon smiled. “You know me too well, My Padawan. Nonetheless, her career was steered in this direction from very early in her years as a padawan, perhaps even when she was an initiate.”

“You’re saying this is what they’re doing with Bruck? Grooming him? For what?”

“Think about it for a moment.”

He did so, reviewing the missions Bruck had told him about, especially since Rallin had taken him on. “I can’t see a pattern, Qui, except that so much of it is dirty work, like these interrogations.”

“Look at the places he’s been sent to,” Qui-Gon urged him. “All hotspots with armed conflicts in progress, not the places we get sent to, where it’s about to break out and can still be staved off. The places Bruck and Andreth go are places where his skills as a fighter are most useful, but not as a strategist, like you. One of the things Bruck is very good at, whether he likes it or not, is manipulation, both mental and physical.”

Obi-Wan saw it then: all Bruck’s training in close combat; his skill with weapons beyond his lightsaber; his ability to blend, to become someone else; that wild side of him no one had ever really quelled, the way the Council had always kept him a little off-balance to win his complicity, the way it all added up. The implications chilled him.

“He’s not like that, Qui. Bruck’s a good soldier. He’ll go balls-to-the-wall for the Order, but he’s not like that. It would eat him alive to be one of the Shikakin.” The Assassins Corps, the Jedi who did the dirtiest work of the Republic, jobs the Agency couldn’t or wouldn’t do.

“You and I both know that, but Bruck is also—”

“Expendable. Cannon fodder. A throwaway,” Obi-Wan snapped. “Gods, Qui! How can they do that? There aren’t enough of us for anyone to be expendable.”

“I was going to say that Bruck is better suited to it than you think he is. But he’s also blindly loyal. These days, I fear that’s dangerous for any Jedi. If he’s going to do this, and I fear he may be asked to, he needs to go into it with his eyes open, not because he’s being coerced or manipulated into it. Once he passes his trials, there is little the Council can use against him, having so given him their approval. But they could easily use his sense of obligation against him. He needs a firmer sense of self than he’s got to stand up to them. He has the right of refusal and he must learn he has the right to use it.”

The kettle whistled and Qui-Gon went to attend to it. A few moments later, he brought a small pot and cup back into the common room and set them down on the tray with Obi-Wan’s, sitting down beside him on the lounge, companionably close, but not touching. “Sometimes it’s difficult to see yourself from the inside,” he said in a subdued voice that spoke of lessons he’d learned himself, the hard way. “And when no one mirrors you, or the mirror they hold up to you is distorted, there’s no way to know who you are, except from inside. Bruck’s been looking at himself in the Council’s distorted mirror for a long time. I suspect his first master wasn’t experienced enough or strong-willed enough to truly stand up for him and protect him. She didn’t seem to notice or care that he hadn’t reintegrated with his peers. He needed someone like Andreth, or Tahl, right from the beginning.”

“Or you,” Obi-Wan agreed. “I don’t think anyone’s ever really protected Bruck until Master Rallin.”

“It’s no wonder he’s the way he is, then.” Qui-Gon’s voice held a tinge of exasperation. “They take a young boy no wilder than you were, neglect him, make him feel completely unsafe and somehow responsible for the torture and death of a peer, then they wonder why he gives his loyalties to the first person who seems to actually care about him. Then they castigate him for trying to protect himself, and hand him over to a young, inexperienced, unsuitable master who not only also fails to protect him but betrays him further. There’s never been anyone watching out for him, so he’s learned to watch out for himself by being tougher and harder than his real nature.”

“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Obi-Wan said gently, pouring his tea and handing him the cup.

Qui-Gon gave him a sharp look as he took it. “Everyone has a mask they show to the public or don with duty, Padawan, for our own protection. The ones I worry about never take it off, and can’t see around it, only through it.”

“And what we all really want from each other is to be seen for what we truly are. Recognized and known and loved for who we are, by the people who love us. Or the people who should love us.”

“And how very rare that is,” Qui-Gon murmured, touching his fingers to Obi-Wan’s cheek, then lifting his chin for a kiss tasting of sweet tea. “Bruck and I are both lucky to have you,” he murmured when it ended. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s something you or any other master can teach him, Qui, no offense. It’s something he needs to learn from his friends. I’m sure Master Rallin’s done everything he can, but this isn’t the kind of lesson that can come from an authority figure. If it were, Bruck would have learned it already.”

Qui-Gon smiled. “You’re growing very wise in the way of masters, Obi-Wan. You’ll be a fine one yourself.”

“I have had an excellent example myself, My Master,” Obi-Wan replied with genuine warmth.

“Have you found a way to help Bruck regain some of his lost confidence?”

“I don’t think it’s his self-confidence that I can mend,” Obi-Wan said regretfully. “All I can do is show him what he’s doing. And I think I know someone who can help. I was just making an appointment with her and reading through the information she’d sent me.”

“May I ask?”

Obi-Wan grinned suddenly and rather wickedly, and handed over a personal datachip with swirling blue spirals pulsing on it. The heat from Qui-Gon’s fingers set it in motion once again, type and a flat holopic appearing among the spirals. The master read it carefully, twice, and returned it with no comment but a raised eyebrow.

“She’s a friend of Bruck’s and we’ve spoken before. He took me here after the pain trials and showed me—held up the mirror for me. I’m hoping she’ll be able to help me find some way to do the same thing for him, help him see what’s happening to him, and what he’s really like before he lets others twist him entirely into something he’s not, something he hates. I never thought I’d say this, but he needs a bit of your bloody-mindedness.”

Once again, Qui-Gon smiled, recognizing the backhanded compliment, and nodded. “In some ways, he’s more aware of his responsibilities than you are, for all he calls you Perfect Padawan.”

Obi-Wan snorted. “Takes one to know one. I just have more leeway for failure than he does.”

Qui-Gon leaned in and stole another quick kiss. “Odd that I should have two of you in my life, Imperfect Padawan that I was.”

“Rebellious and Snotty Padawan, you mean.”

“Yoda would never use the word ‘snotty,’ though my first master might have.”

“No, possibly not. I believe what Yoda actually said something like ‘Know-it-all’ or—”

Qui-Gon smiled. “‘Impudent,’ perhaps?”

“Ah, that’s where it came from,” his apprentice replied mockingly.

“You’ve chosen a rather unusual method, Obi-Wan,” the master went on, done bantering. “You’re aware of the risk you’re taking?”

“Yes, I know,” Obi-Wan replied, equally soberly. “Bruck took the same risk for me. I don’t see how I can refuse to return the favor. If this doesn’t break us, nothing will.”

“I hope you’re right, Padawan.”

 

---

 

The meeting with Bruck’s friend Suri Asul was both fruitful and interesting, as well as somewhat discomfiting. They met at a small cafe, one with deep booths and privacy shields, over pastries and tea, or in Suri’s case, something foul she called “coffee,” that smelled wonderful and tasted like something you’d lubricate moving parts with. Though not as dramatically dressed while off the job, it would have been hard to miss her as she walked in the door, though she looked much like everyone else in the area they were in. Her hair was still blue and asymmetrically cut, falling over one eye, though her off-duty clothing tended toward raffish: tight, threadbare pants that rode low on her ample hips, revealing selected swatches of skin through their worn holes and a jeweled navel surrounded by a flaming sun tatoo, topped by a tight, sleeveless, low-cut shirt that rode up her muscular, shapely torso when she removed her short red leather speederbike jacket. Little Gods, Obi-Wan thought, watching her approach the table, if I didn’t already have two lovers, I’d be chasing her.

“Nice to see you again, Ben,” she said, slipping into the booth across from him and pushing her helmet along the seat beside her. They chit-chatted for a while, waiting for their orders, and then flipped on the privacy shields after they arrived. She was every bit as pleasant and amusing as he remembered, setting him at ease without making him feel like a fool. “I half-expected to see you and B-Boy at the club again, some time. You haven’t been back.”

“It’s a little beyond both our means,” Obi-Wan replied, trying desperately to keep cool under her friendly yet appraising gaze. “That was something of a special occasion.”

“And it’s not really your thing, is it? Or B-Boy’s.”

“Not really. It was . . . instructive, though. And not exactly unpleasant.”

“Good. I’m glad it was a more-or-less positive experience. Was the info I sent you helpful?”

“Theoretically. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it though.”

“I think the easiest way for you to learn how this works is for me to show you,” she said. “And there are two ways to do that. I can bring you in as a ‘top-in-training’—”

“Won’t that piss off your client?”

The young woman grinned. “I’m the trixie, honey. My word is law. And the guy I have in mind would like it. Somebody like you would scare the shit out of him and he gets off on that. Or if you’re uncomfortable with that, I can bottom for you. We don’t have to have sex,” she said quickly, watching his face change, “unless you want to, but I can coach you more privately that way.”

“I’m not sure I can afford your rates,” he began, thinking how this particular expense could be debited to his trust without alerting the trustees to its nature. Maybe a cash withdrawal—

“You insult me, ser,” she said, drawing herself up in mock hauteur. “Listen, Ben: Bruck’s a friend. I owe him, in a big way. I got myself in over my head one night at a dance club when I was still in school and had just started doing this, and he . . . did whatever you guys do, the hypnosis thing? And got me out of it without making a scene. They just went away, the people who’d decided I was their meat, forgot I existed, and that they were looking for somebody to hurt. Then he escorted me home to make sure I was all right, and stayed to talk me down from the freakout. That’s how we met. If there’s something I can do to help him, I’ll gladly do it for free. Besides,” and she grinned again, “it wouldn’t exactly be a hardship to play with you.”

Kenobi smiled. “Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you. You really like your work, don’t you?”

“Beats an office job, no pun intended. Certainly pays better. And my degree in psychology isn’t wasted, either. Besides, I’ve always been a people person.”

Kenobi laughed outright this time. “That’s one way of putting it. All right, I think I’m more comfortable with the private tutoring. When can we set that up?”

“At your convenience, master,” she said demurely, eyes downcast, entire demeanor altered in a blink. Gone was the self-assured adult. Sitting across from him now was a humble, pliant young girl waiting to be commanded. Obi-Wan found it shocking, but not at all titillating. “I am at your service.”

“Bruck will never do that,” he said skeptically. “Not even if I really hurt him. We’re trained not to, and he’s been through those trials already.”

And then Suri was back. Obi-Wan was amazed at her ability to move in and out of persona, apparently without much thought. “This is different, Ben. You’re not turning him into a sub, and you’re not breaking his spirit. What you’re doing is a little paradoxical. You want to strip away what he’s not and get down to his core, get beyond the ways he protects himself. And to teach him that he’s worth protecting and loving no matter what he does. At the same time, it would be best if you could get him to fight back and stand up for himself. He’s going to hate you for it, but you have to be strong for him, the way he was for you. You owe him, too. I don’t know if he told you how hard it was for him to do what he did for you—”

“He didn’t have to tell me,” Obi-Wan assured her, remembering. “Let’s schedule it as soon as possible, then.”

“Whatever my master wishes,” his new teacher agreed meekly, but with a flash of mischief. “It’ll be fun being a pushy butch bottom for you.”

 

---

 

Qui-Gon had already gone to bed by the time Obi-Wan came in. Suri had given him the better part of an afternoon and evening and he felt emotionally wrung-out and physically exhausted, and more appreciative of Bruck’s efforts on his behalf than ever before. He also felt he truly understood, for the first time, what was tearing Bruck apart. During the course of his lesson, he’d discovered aspects of his own personality that he’d only suspected existed behind the same kind of mask he was trying to strip from Bruck.

Suri had been patient, informative in her coaching and, like Bruck, astute in knowing which of his own buttons to push, and how to get what she wanted from him to make the lesson clear. She’d also been inexorable and unforgiving, pushing him mercilessly to get it right, as relentless as any of his masters at Temple were. A good part of the time had been spent discussing technique and psychology and then illustrating it, but there had been something a little surreal to it, considering how both of them had been dressed at the time, and the fact that Suri had been, well, trussed like some food animal in a market. The ease with which she had slipped in and out of her persona still amazed him.

During the time they spent together, Obi-Wan started to realize just how deep her feelings for Bruck ran, that she would give so much to him, as a way of giving to Bruck. Her parting words to him had been even more indicative of her affection for Bruck. “Remember that you’re doing something a little different from what we did here, Ben. What you’re going to do is harder and more frightening and riskier for both of you. Don’t forget, for a moment, why you’re doing it. Don’t damage him. He’s had enough of that.”

“I won’t forget,” he promised. “I won’t hurt him.”

Suri smiled, a little sadly. “Yes, you will, if you do it right, but it won’t be permanent and he’ll be stronger afterwards. It’s not the same as damage. Remember that,” she said again, grimly, “or I will personally come and fuck you up, Jedi or not.”

“I understand,” he replied, believing she would, and kissed her forehead. “Thank you. We both owe you.”

“No,” she shook her head. “I think we’re even, all of us, after this. Tell him to call me. We’ll go dancing, the three of us.”

He wasn’t at all surprised that Suri would care for Bruck. The story of how they’d met had been too typical. Though not at all unusual for a Jedi to see to a stranger’s safety, Bruck would take the extra steps of also making sure she got home safely, and stay to talk if she needed it, and of course strike up a friendship. He wondered again why his own friends had such a hard time seeing who Bruck was, and then felt stupid, because that was the whole point of his appointment with Suri, to get Bruck to come out from behind the mask that kept everyone from seeing him—including himself.

It was a mask he only seemed to wear with other Jedi, and it was no wonder. “You get what you expect from people,” Suri had told him. “If you expect someone to be an miserable bastard, they’ll rarely disappoint you. Likewise if you expect someone to fail. There aren’t a lot of people who have the personality to say ‘Screw you! You’re wrong about me, and I’ll prove it!’” Sadly, Obi-Wan agreed. Bruck did have that in him, but he seemed to have nearly given up in the constant uphill battle. And he couldn’t afford to, not now, so close to his trials. Obi-Wan wouldn’t let him.

He had showered before leaving Suri’s, but despite the late hour, didn’t feel inclined to go to bed yet. There was too much to think about, too much to process. Instead, he slipped into a loose pair of work-out leggings and one of Qui-Gon’s old undertunics, settled on his meditation mat in the dim common room, and opened himself to the Force. He thought about what he had planned, testing the Force to see if it felt wrong, and finding it reassuringly filled with light and peace. This might be his last chance to help Bruck before his trials, their lives being what they were, and he didn’t want to fail. But, Little Gods, it was going to be so hard . . .

Then he stopped thinking, letting his mind go blank and the Force fill him with that same peace and a calmness and centered purpose he knew he would need.

 

Qui-Gon found him curled up on his mat in the morning, peacefully asleep, and woke him with a soft kiss to his temple.

“Good morning, love.” Obi-Wan’s master said, sitting back on his heels on his own mat and pouring tea.

Obi-Wan stretched and yawned and blinked sleepily in the early morning sunlight as he sat up, the smell of food pushing the muzziness slowly out of his brain. Qui-Gon smiled at him, rather soppily, Obi-Wan thought, amused. “You only smile at me like that when I’m not quite awake,” he accused, taking a steaming cup from his master’s hand.

“Because I know you’ll forget to tease me about it later, when you’re truly conscious. You should have come to bed, love. Why sleep on the floor when you don’t have to?”

“I think it was finally just too much effort. I came in quite late, and I was so tired, and then I meditated for a long while. I don’t really remember lying down, to tell the truth.”

“Did it go well yesterday?”

“I think so. But I won’t know until I see Bruck.”

“It will have to be soon, Padawan. We have a mission coming up. Whatever you need to get done should be done tonight. I’m not certain when we’ll be asked to leave.”

Obi-Wan frowned. “I was hoping to have some time with him afterwards.”

“That may not be possible. This is not a mission we can refuse. I’m sorry, Obi-Wan.”

“It’s all right, Master. Duty comes first. Not that this is actually pleasure. It’s something Bruck needs, though, and I think we should look after our own, as well as attend to duty.”

“All too often, we don’t, Padawan,” Qui-Gon agreed. “I’ll do what I can to give you as much time as possible.”

“You’ve been very understanding about this, Qui.”

“Why wouldn’t I, Obi-Wan? I like Bruck, and he’s obviously in some distress. And as you said, we have obligations to each other, to our fellow members of the Order, that sometimes are not very well fulfilled. Do what you need to to help Bruck. I’ll do what I can to give you both the time.

“Thank you, love.” Obi-Wan leaned forward and kissed his master. “I’ll make the arrangements.”

 

---

 

“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing out with you,” Bruck muttered, curled up in a corner of the cab. Kenobi was snuggled up warmly beside him, leaning against him with one hand on his thigh and nuzzling his ear as he looked out the window into the rain. A rare Coruscant downpour, and they were out in it, when he’d much rather be home in his dry, cozy room with that new piece of pottery the museum had sent him, or pieces of pottery, rather, figuring out how they all fit together.

“Because you love me,” Ben chided gently. “Remember? I’m going away in a couple of days and we haven’t seen each other in so long, and I thought,” he paused as they pulled up in front of a small, discreet building that looked more like a townhouse than a club. Bruck jerked upright in the seat when he realized where they were. “—this would be good for you. Now promise me you’ll play along, like a good boy.” Kenobi paid the cab and, climbing over him, dragged Bruck into the downpour, where his only choice was to run like hell to the covered entrance, or get soaked and ruin his clothing.

“Ben, I really don’t think this is a good idea,” he protested, shaking off the rain under the overhang. “Not right now. I don’t think I can—”

Obi-Wan turned to the other young man with him, standing on the doorstep of the club they had been to only once before. As they had been that night, they were dressed in civilian clothing, Obi-Wan all in black leather and silk, Bruck in black cloth pants and a loose, filmy white shirt beneath his black jacket, only their padawan braids giving any indication of who and what they really were. “You’ve always trusted me,” Kenobi replied, cupping his cheek. “Do you now? Utterly and completely?”

“You know I do, Ben, but—”

“No buts. Just trust me. Trust your feelings. I’ll take care of you. I promise.” Ben leaned in and kissed him so tenderly it made his eyes sting. “All right?”

Still looking dubious, Bruck nodded. Obi-Wan kissed him again and took his hand, and touched the com plate.

The same Twi’lek from the last time opened the door, headtails quivering with apparent delight at seeing them again, though it had been several years. “Ah, young sers! So good to see you again,” he said unctuously, ushering them inside and collecting their coats. “Ser Kenobi, Lady Blue sends her greetings, and wishes you well.”

Bruck looked startled. “Lady Blue? You set this up with Suri?”

Obi-Wan rounded on him with a sudden, inexplicable cold fury. “You,” he snapped, “will shut your mouth, and not speak unless spoken to. Is that clear?” Without waiting for an answer—not that Bruck could have given him one anyway, reeling as he was with shock—Kenobi turned back to the Twilek. “Thank you. I trust the arrangements are in order?”

“Oh, yes, ser.” The Twilek pressed something Bruck didn’t see into Kenobi’s hands. Before he could move, Ben had wrapped it around his neck. It fastened with a sharp click and sat against his collarbones with a cold, hard weight. He automatically lifted his hands to touch it, and with two simultaneous clicks found those bound together with cuffs equally hard and cold. A third click fastened them to the collar at his neck, all in less time than it had taken to blink. The Twilek, pointed teeth glittering in a wide smile, handed Kenobi another item, which was also fastened to the ring on his collar.

“Ben—what the—”

Kenobi jerked the leash attached to his collar hard enough to make him stumble, hard enough that the cold metal bit into the back of his neck. It would leave a bruise.

“Don’t. Make. Me. Gag. You.” Kenobi threatened softly, pulling his face in close enough that Bruck could smell the sweetness of his breath. He always smelled so good, tasted so good, Bruck thought dazedly. Kenobi looked furious, eyebrows arched in a fierce frown, mouth in a tight line, eyes a livid green.

“What do you—”

He saw the slap coming but didn’t believe it. The open-handed smack, real weight behind it, rocked him on his feet and slewed his head around. A punch like that would have decked him, perhaps broken his jaw. Heat flushed his cheek where Ben’s hand had landed, followed by a sharp burning sting. Tears filled his eyes from the force of it, from the shock. The bottom dropped out of his stomach and his heart sped in his chest.

Ben had hit him.

Hit him and meant it. Slapped him. This wasn’t sparring, where they’d not-infrequently bruised, burned, or cut each other before. It wasn’t over-exuberant foreplay or sex that had left marks on both of them that they only felt or discovered later. Ben had struck him in anger, the way he’d once Force-shoved him into a wall in Temple, meaning to hurt.

He felt lost suddenly, disoriented as though he’d awakened from a dark and ugly vision and couldn’t get his bearings in the night. Strong, callused fingers closed on his jaw, hauled his head around again, making him focus on Ben’s face, or on the man who used to be Ben and was suddenly a stranger.

“Once more, and the gag goes in, pretty boy. Do you understand?”

Numbly, Bruck nodded, not knowing what else to do. Anything to not be hit by Ben again.

He watched the Twilek press a key card into Ben’s hand, vaguely heard a room number, directions, then felt the tug on his neck, looked up and saw Ben frowning at him impatiently and moved before that tug on his neck came again, cutting into his skin the way it was starting to. Kenobi preceded him up the stairs, dragging the leash behind him, not giving Bruck any slack, not giving him time to think about anything but keeping his balance. He stumbled almost immediately, went to his knees on the second step and when he struggled to get up again, was yanked harshly forward and up, keeping him off balance. “Stay down!” Kenobi snarled, making him crawl on his knees and elbows up the stairs. “Until I say otherwise. You’re right where you should be, clumsy, stupid shit like you.”

At least it’s carpeted, he thought. Not that he had any choice, the way Kenobi was dragging him along like a reluctant pet. By the time they reached the first landing, his knees were throbbing. He started to get to his feet again, leaning against the wall, but Kenobi pushed him down again by the neck. “I didn’t tell you you could get up, pretty boy.”

“He is pretty,” a new voice said, admiringly. He felt slim fingers slipping through his hair, down his neck, beneath the collar and his shirt, making him shiver. Suddenly Ben was beside him, between him and whoever it was touching him, blocking his view, his own hand in Bruck’s hair, stroking, possessive, pushing his head down until all he could see was the floor and a pair of very expensive red shoes with heels so high he wondered how anyone could walk in them.

“Look,” Ben said in a dark, low, threatening voice, one Bruck had never heard before, “but don’t touch.”

An amused laugh, one that sounded familiar. “Does your pretty boy know how lucky he is to have an owner like you?”

Owner? Bruck thought dazedly.

“He will, after tonight. Unless he’s even dumber than he looks.”

“I hope you’re as good as your word.” He knew the voice now. Would she—

“I am,” Kenobi’s hand fisted in his hair, holding his head still. He tried to look past Ben, had his leash jerked for the effort. “Eyes down,” Kenobi snapped. And the moment was gone, she was gone, hope was gone.

Kenobi yanked the leash again, half dragging him down the hall, over the hard mosaic floor. He tried to go lightly on his knees but couldn’t at the speed he was being pulled. A door slid open in front of him and there was more carpeting, lush and thick and soft and ominously dark. He sighed with momentary relief and was pushed suddenly down on his face, landing hard with his hands and arms crushed beneath him, wind knocked from him. He struggled to get up, now that they were alone, but Kenobi planted a booted foot at the small of his back, the leash abandoned for a fist in his hair, yanking his head back at a painful angle until his elbows were off the floor, his pelvis pressed to it. He’d never been as limber as Ben and the position hurt, a lot. “Here are the rules, dumbass,” Kenobi growled at him. “You speak when spoken to. You keep your eyes down. You don’t call me by my name. It’s just ‘ser’ or nothing, as I don’t expect you to say much. You do everything I say without hesitation, without question. Disobey me, and you’ll regret it. Are you smart enough to do that?”

And when he didn’t answer right away, when he hesitated, as promised, Kenobi pulled his head back a little farther, arching his back painfully. “Are you?” he demanded again. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” he choked out, amazed that the word had come out of his mouth.

“I doubt it,” Kenobi said disgustedly, taking his foot off Bruck’s back and letting his head drop, then flipping him over none-too-gently with a boot beneath his ribs. Bruck winced and let out an involuntary “whoof.”

“Shut up. I haven’t hurt you. Yet,” he said, walking around him as though to get a view from every angle. Bruck’s eyes followed him until Kenobi noticed and jerked the leash, the collar biting into his neck again. “Eyes down!” he snarled and Bruck caught himself flinching. “Oh, you’re cute, all tied up like that,” Kenobi murmured wolfishly. “I’m going to have fun with you.” He straddled Bruck, pushed his shirt up and bit his nipple hard, pulling a startled gasp out of him. “Did that hurt?” Kenobi growled.

When Bruck didn’t answer, he was slapped again, as hard as the last time, and appalled to hear himself whimper. “How about that? Did that hurt?”

“Yes,” Bruck whispered.

“Yes, what, pretty boy?” Kenobi snapped.

“Yes, ser,” he corrected in a small voice he hadn’t used since he was a child.

“Better, Fuck-Up. But not perfect.” Kenobi muttered, getting up, black-booted feet still straddling Bruck’s hips. “That’s what I should have called you all those years you were calling me Oafy-Wan. Fuck-Up Bruck. That’s the one thing you were good at. You made some really spectacular mistakes. That takes talent. Too bad it’s the only talent you’ve got.”

The light in the room was harsh and he looked up at Kenobi looming over him almost in silhouette against it, feeling very small and helpless. He had felt the same way he had kneeling in front of the Council that first time, after Xanatos had turned him, when his hopes of becoming a Jedi had been crushed by the enormity of his error. In his black leather pants and boots and black silk shirt, Kenobi seemed two meters tall suddenly, as big as Master Windu had seemed that day, to a twelve-year-old boy, as big as Pesh Crellin had seemed at twelve to a helpless, nine-year-old Bruck.

He closed his eyes and looked away.

“Gods, you’re pathetic. I don’t know what I see in you, except that pretty face and tight ass. Get up, dumbshit.” Kenobi snapped his leash like a whip, jerking his head up, metal cutting into his neck again. Bruck rolled over and struggled gracelessly to his feet, reeling less from the physical pain than from Ben’s words. The one thing Ben had never done was throw his mistakes in his face, until now. The last person that really believed in him had finally turned against him. He understood what this was now. He should have known it was only a matter of time. This was payback. And Bruck knew he deserved it. He only wondered why it had been so long in coming.

When he was barely up, Kenobi pushed him roughly across the room, slamming him into the wall, then turning him enough to unfasten his hands from the collar, though not from their own binders. Those he stretched above Bruck’s head, leaning hard against him and rubbing himself over Bruck’s ass. Kenobi was hard in those black leather pants and that shocked him enough that his hands were fastened to another set of rings above his head before he knew it.

Kenobi stepped away then, leaving the back of Bruck’s neck tingling, knowing he was being watched and wondering what was coming next. He was starting to not care, sinking instead into the same dull, emotionless apathy that enveloped him whenever the Council dressed him down. “Turn around.” Bruck shifted until he was facing forward, and flicked his gaze downward almost automatically now, remembering the slaps and jerks on his leash. “Too many clothes,” Kenobi muttered. “Off with the boots, pretty boy.”

Stymied with his hands tied, Bruck just looked at him stupidly for a moment. Kenobi’s face changed, eyes narrowing, mouth thinning. This time, he saw the slap coming and went with it, but it was much harder than the others and still slewed his head around, first one way, then the other with the matching backhand. He could feel each individual finger mark burning against his skin. “Eyes down, Fuck-Up! Don’t act stupid. You know how to do this. Off with the boots.”

Shaking, Bruck toed them off and with a little help from the Force, kicked them away, eyes on the floor, humiliated, but unable to muster the will to rebel. It would be over soon, and he would just do what he had to to endure, as he had so often before.

“Took you long enough to figure that out,” Kenobi said, and stepped in close to him again, one hand molding itself to his groin, kneading him. Bruck hissed, wanting to thrust into that warm hand, despite himself. The moment he made any noise, Kenobi stepped back, reaching for something else behind him, and Bruck only then saw the assortment of objects laid out on the bed.

“Eyes down!” Kenobi snapped again, catching him at it. The slap wasn’t as hard this time, but it renewed the burning on his face. “Don’t make me blindfold you yet.”

“No, ser,” Bruck gasped, the idea of not being able to see setting his heart racing, whether in fear or anticipation, he wasn’t sure himself.

Kenobi slapped him again, lightly, almost playfully. “That wasn’t a question for you to answer, pretty boy. Shut up.” Bruck bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from replying again.

“Very good, dimwit. I see you’re getting it,” Kenobi smiled, leaning in to kiss him, tongue thrusting between his lips. When he leaned back again, he was holding a fine vibroblade, like the ones that had made the scars on his own back. Ben had showed him the blades afterwards, gnawing, hungry, nasty little things that they were. He’d wondered then how they’d done something so beautiful as the marks on Ben’s back. He shivered, eyes wide, focused on the blade. “You’re going to hold very still now,” Kenobi warned him. “I don’t want any messy accidents. Eyes down.”

Better than that, he closed them altogether, not wanting to see, wondering if Kenobi really would hurt him. He heard the high-pitched whine and buzz, like some carnivorous insect, felt something slip inside the front of his shirt, and a moment later, cool air on his chest. The same upward pull on the arms, first one, then the other, a tug, cloth whispering over his skin, falling away, his flesh rimpling, nipples rucking up though the room was warm. He whimpered softly as the blade slid down the side of his pants, beneath his linens, over his hip, down his leg, the motion repeated on the other side and the neatly bisected halves pooled at his feet. When the sound stopped, he let out his breath in a gasp and opened his eyes again, but flicked his gaze right to the floor, feeling horribly exposed, as though Ben had never seen him naked before.

“Yes, you are catching on,” Kenobi murmured, running his hands over Bruck’s body with an impersonal and intimate familiarity. “Better late than never,” Kenobi closed his teeth over the barbell in his nipple and tugged hard. Bruck whimpered. There was nothing erotic about, only painful.

Again, Kenobi leaned against him, reaching up and loosing his arms, which were just beginning to go numb, letting them fall in front of him, giving Bruck the absurd urge to cover himself. The leash snapped back on at his neck and Kenobi pulled him forward again. “This way. You need to be cleaned up before I really touch you.”

Cleaned up? Bruck thought numbly. I showered before we came out— and suddenly knew that was not what Kenobi meant. He pulled back on the leash, dug his heels in, panicked. “No, Ben! No way! Uh-uh! Game over.” It was only then he realized that they hadn’t discussed this, hadn’t decided on a safeword, hadn’t set the boundaries as they always had before.

Kenobi yanked hard on the leash, pulling him off balance and onto his knees and elbows, sending sharp jolts through them. “What makes you think this is a game? Or that you have some say in what happens here? You’ll do what I say, you little fucker. And you’ll like it.” He shoved Bruck over onto his side with a booted foot on his hip, and kept it there, keeping the leash taut. Bruck curled up on his side, or tried to, cupping his genitals protectively. He’d never seen Kenobi like this, didn’t know who this was. He leaned down into Bruck’s face, hissing. “I owe you, shithead. Remember that. Now get up.”

He half expected a kick to his ass or his ribs, but there was only the steady pull on the leash, dragging him to his feet. He got up without fighting, knowing that whoever this person was, he would drag Bruck across the floor by the collar if necessary. He was right, this was payback, and he would have to just shut up and endure it. Force knew he deserved it; he’d hurt Ben so badly . . .

Kenobi dragged him into the fresher and, inside the oversized stall, clipped his bound hands to a bar low enough to the ground that it bent him almost double. Then he kicked Bruck’s feet apart and fixed a rigid bar between his knees, clamping the metal cuffs just above them. He knew what was going to happen, and steeled himself for it, still not quite believing it. Then, for several minutes, there was nothing but a little rustling behind him.

Finally, there were bare feet in his field of vision, and hands on his hips, a hard cock rubbing against his ass, between his cheeks. “Gods, I could fuck you right here, you look so tempting,” a voice that wasn’t quite Ben’s growled. “But I’m going to make you wait instead. And first, you’re going to be exceptionally clean.”

Kenobi reached over his head and turned on the water. Instead of falling directly on him, it ran out a long hose with a narrow sprinkler nozzle held over his ass. Warm water ran down his lower back, soothing some of the ache he was beginning to feel. Then he felt the nozzle slide between his cheeks, almost teasingly. “Is that good?” Kenobi crooned. “Do you want this?”

“Yes, ser,” Bruck whimpered, closing his eyes, dreading what any other answer might get him, and what this one certainly would.

“I knew you would,” Kenobi told him. “You like this sort of treatment, piece of shit like you.” The nozzle stroked over his ass, up between his legs, over his hole, lingering there.

The sound of water hid his anticipatory whimper, but Kenobi was surprisingly gentle, making sure the water temperature was all right, pushing the nozzle into him slowly. Bruck choked as it slid into him, breath hitching at this invasion of his body. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping Kenobi wouldn’t notice the tears streaking down his face. And yet his body liked it, like the weight and heat of the water in his rectum, the sensation of the spray inside him. It brought him up hard, made him quiver, weak-kneed, and he hated himself for it.

Nozzle still inside him, Bruck fought back a gasp as Kenobi threaded a cold metal ring around his cock and snapped something similarly cold and hard around his scrotum.“Just to remind you that this isn’t about your fun,” Kenobi told him. Like he could forget that. He was just paying what was owed and he knew that. He should be thankful it wasn’t Ben’s saber up his ass. That would have been more fitting, considering what he’d done, what he’d let happen so many years ago.

The nozzle came out and he was soaped down and rinsed off, but left in his bonds. Kenobi knelt behind him, hand stroking his ass, between his legs, squeezing his balls, fisting his cock. The rings cut into him hard, making his genitals throb, and he tried hard not to squirm uncomfortably.

“You’re so beautiful like this, trussed for me to use. Don’t make a sound. Don’t spoil it.”

Hands parted his cheeks, held him open and that hot, wet tongue drew a line from his balls to his hole. It made him shudder, made him harder, the ring around his cock compressing it painfully, cutting into his testicles as they pulled up against his body. Again that tongue, teasing. He’d never wanted to do this—what had Ben called it? Rimming? It was gross, licking someone’s—oh. “Ohhhh,” he moaned helplessly when that tongue circled the tight ring of muscles in his ass, arms and legs going rigid with pleasure he didn’t expect.

Then it stopped and the heat that told him there was a warm body behind him went away. The moment of pleasure had put him off his guard and he was suddenly cold with fear again. He sensed someone in front of him just before a hard hand gripped his jaw and forced it opened, then shoved something soft and tasting of leather into his mouth, filling it. He panicked and struggled for a moment then realized he could still breathe through his nose, around the gag, though he couldn’t force it out of his mouth. “That’ll shut you up. One more thing, pretty boy. You’re not to come until I tell you. Understood?” Bruck nodded as much as he could with his head in that vice-grip. “Good. Now you’re going to show me how much control you have.”

Hands clasped him again, opened him and the tongue was back, circling, licking over his perineum, mouthing his balls. Thumbs spread him wider. “I’ve wanted to do this to you for a long time,” Kenobi growled. Then his tongue was, was—pushing into him. Inside him, opening him, wriggling, hot, wet. It made him buck and jerk. “Does it feel good?” He rocked back into it, or tried to, heard a laugh. “I knew you’d like it.” It pushed into him again, flicking inside him, and he couldn’t help himself. Even around the gag he was making desperate noises, it felt so good.

And he didn’t understand why Ben was doing this now. Why make him feel so good when all he’d done since they’d arrived was hurt and humiliate him? What was he doing? He shuddered suddenly, hardly able to think with the sensations centered in his groin, the mixture of pain from his bound genitals and pleasure from Ben’s tongue stroking in and around his hole. Sweets and stick, he’d called it. Bruck wondered when he would get the stick again.

As though he’d known what Bruck was thinking, Kenobi stopped and suddenly shoved something large and slick into him in one hard thrust, hard enough to hurt. Bigger than Kenobi’s cock, it filled and stretched him painfully, unprepared for it as he’d been, and he jerked away, grunting around the gag.

“You’re always such a tightass,” Kenobi told him. “This should loosen you up for me.” He worked what Bruck realized must be a dildo in and out roughly several times before releasing one of Bruck’s hands and closing his fingers around it. “Now you do it. Go on. Fuck yourself for me. Do it!” He grabbed a fistful of Bruck’s hair and pulled his head back, until Bruck did as he was told, feeling his face burn with humiliation underneath the stinging that still lingered from the slaps, as he moved the dildo inside himself. “Good, pretty boy,” Kenobi hissed, and Bruck suddenly realized that Kenobi was close to coming, his cock nearly in Bruck’s face, leaking pre-cum. Abruptly, Ben’s other hand pulled the gag out of his mouth but kept it pried open, and before he knew it, the gag had been replaced by Kenobi’s cock. “Now suck me,” he ordered, fucking Bruck’s mouth savagely, still holding his head up with a painful fistful of hair. “Suck me, I said! And keep fucking yourself.”

Bruck did as he was told, his awareness moving into some distant place that didn’t involve this room, or Kenobi, or anything at all except, possibly, sleep or a willful forgetfulness. Distantly, he heard Ben’s voice, moaning, felt his cock moving in his mouth, himself licking and sucking it, felt the dildo moving in his ass, but none of it seemed real or important anymore.

“Oh Little Gods, Bruck! Suck me harder! You look so hot, that big dildo up your ass, just like the Council gives it to you, just like Col got it. You’re such a stupid shit that you’ll let anybody give it to you, just like I’m doing. You’ll even fuck yourself. Bend over for anybody. Harder!” And then Kenobi was coming in his mouth, pumping his cum into him, fucking him, choking him. He gagged on the taste, the smell, the words, and went to his knees, then emptied his stomach at Kenobi’s feet and started to sob.

 

Obi-Wan stood over him, sickened himself, not by Bruck’s reaction, but by the actions that had brought him to it, by his own behavior, purposeful as it had been, perhaps because it was. More than he wanted to, he imagined he knew exactly how Bruck had felt with his prisoner. Each time he’d touched Bruck with the intent to hurt him, each time he’d snarled some insult at him, some little part of himself had flinched and gone numb, until now he felt distanced not from Bruck, but from himself. He’d interrogated prisoners before as well, and it had never felt like this, never this bad. At the end, it had been as though he’d been watching himself from elsewhere, through a window filmed with grime. Perhaps that was the problem. He’d lost touch with himself and his motives and simply gone too far.

Bruck was retching in between sobs, head and braid hanging, still bound to the bars. Kenobi quickly removed them, rinsed away the vomit from the tile floor and out of the end of Bruck’s braid, and knelt beside him, laying a hand on his damp skin and sending the warmth and reassurance of the Force into him.

Bruck shuddered upright and pulled away frantically. “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me!” he rasped, eyes streaming, spit flying as he coughed and tried to speak, arms folded across his middle. “Leave me alone. . . .” as he bent over again, retching dryly.

“Bruck—” Obi-Wan began, pouring all his love into the bond between them where it crashed against Bruck’s now-impenetrable shields.

“You made your point,” he choked, swiping at his eyes, barely comprehensible, voice shaking as much as he was himself. “Fine! You’re just like all the rest of them. Now leave me alone.”

“Please, Bruck. Just listen to me. That’s not what this was a—”

“Leave me alone!” he screamed hoarsely, eyes wild and voice sounding as though that was all he’d been doing for hours.

Kenobi backed away, feeling just as sick as Bruck still looked. He’d never seen Bruck so devastated, not even after his master had died, and this was not what he’d intended. He watched as Bruck staggered to his feet and into the next room to paw through the pile of shredded clothing left on the floor, looking for something to cover himself with, still weeping and shaking. Obi-Wan quickly pulled on his own pants and, taking a soft robe from the fresher, holding it out in front of him, followed Bruck into the next room. It might have been either an offering or a shield.

Realizing he was holding nothing but the rags of what had been his clothing, that the only way to get out of this room would be to walk out naked and utterly exposed, undid Bruck completely. He folded up on his knees as though gutshot, rocking a little and keening, head to the floor like a penitent.

Hesitating in the door of the fresher, Kenobi watched Bruck for a moment, stunned, wondering how this had gotten away from him, what he’d done wrong, and how he could remedy it. This wasn’t the reaction he’d expected. Fury, yes, but not this. He’d never expected the evening to go as far as it had either. With each fresh insult, he’d expected Bruck to pop open his bonds with the Force and tell him to go fuck himself, shove him away, hit him, something. Instead, Bruck had just—taken it. Taken it meekly, not even as if they were playing, but as though this had all been real. As though Obi-Wan had really turned on him. That was an eventuality he hadn’t planned for, though Bruck certainly had. That alone shocked him.

Gods he’d been stupid to do this. Obviously, Bruck had been in a far more fragile emotional state than either he or Suri had realized. He caught himself staring at the naked bottoms of Bruck’s feet and thinking how vulnerable they looked, calloused and hardened as they were by his combat training. Even barefoot, Bruck could kick a hole in a permacrete wall, if he had a mind to. And Obi-Wan had reduced him to a quivering puddle.

Finally, he walked forward cautiously and went down on his knees beside Bruck’s shaking form and put the robe over him. When Bruck didn’t react, Obi-Wan tucked it around him and stroked his hair. “Hush, love,” he murmured. “Hush. It’s not what you think. Hush.”

Bruck didn’t react at all, though he’d fallen silent now, his back rising and falling in shallow, broken gasps. Kenobi just continued to stroke his hair, feeling like a complete shitheel, then after a time, gently lifted him upright, wrapping him in the robe more securely. Bruck shuddered and gasped, stiffening beneath his hands, and tried to pull away, but Obi-Wan held onto him with a tender strength. “Hush, love. I’m not going to hurt you again. I’m—”

“Please,” Bruck gasped. “Please don’t,” shuddering in Kenobi’s grasp as though he’d taken a chill. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry . . . just don’t . . . don’t do anything . . . anything else.”

Obi-Wan buried his face in Bruck’s hair, holding him tightly and rocking him a little. “Shhh, hush, love. I won’t. I won’t hurt you. It was nothing you did to me. I just wanted you to see—”

“Don’t don’t don’t,” he keened, over and over, not hearing anything Kenobi said.

Obi-Wan held him tighter and murmured soothingly into his hair and carefully wormed his way through Bruck’s none-too-steady shields, and sent a quiet suggestion that sleep was a highly desirable escape from the pain right now, a suggestion Bruck eventually followed, reluctantly.

 

---

 

Bruck didn’t remember much about the rest of the night when he woke, and he must have fallen asleep at some point because when he did finally open his eyes again, it was morning and he was in an unfamiliar bed with someone curled up close and warm behind him. He had on the old practice shorts he sometimes slept in and was wrapped protectively beneath the covers in someone’s arms. He thought, oddly, that he should hurt more than he did.

For a while he lay blinking in the sunlight, trying to suss out where he was. The room was bright white and largely unadorned, simply but richly furnished with two deep plush red chairs in one corner, the large bed he was in in the other, and heavy red drapes that had been pulled back over white sheers that pooled on the white carpet. The covers were crimson, heavy and soft, the white sheets crisp and fresh. The view beyond the curtains was of upper Coruscant, so they were somewhere expensive, a hotel, perhaps, though it didn’t feel as impersonal as one. Clothing lay across one of the chairs, two pairs of boots and a travel pack beside it.

He wondered where he was, why he couldn’t remember . . . and then he did, and scrambled out from under the covers and turned to look at the figure still beneath them, and wondered if he looked as bad.

Kenobi sat up, blinking, dark bruises beneath his eyes and something awful in their muddy grey depths.

“Bruck? Are you all right?” Kenobi asked in a sleep-roughened voice, obviously trying to clear his head. Not morning people, either of them, Bruck would normally have had some sympathy. Not now. His own head was far too clear.

“Oh, I’m fine,” he said acidly. “Never better. Where the hell are we?”

“We’re at Suri’s. I didn’t want to bring you back to Temple last night, not—”

“Not in the shape I was in? You mean, puking my guts out and sobbing and cursing at you? Yeah, that might have been hard to explain and a little embarrassing for Master Jinn’s padawan.”

“You weren’t cursing at me, love. I wish you had been,” Kenobi said sadly.

“No, I guess I was cursing all of you, wasn’t I? Hardly surprising, the way you’ve all been so kind to me over the years. I suppose I should thank you for that. You did a great job of making me see that, finally.”

He turned away, looked for something to wear and was relieved to find a set of his own civilian clothes laid out on the chair beside Kenobi’s. He couldn’t face putting on that uniform again. If he’d had something sharp, the braid and cauda would already be gone, before he’d gotten dressed. That would be his first stop after leaving here, literally cutting his ties. He stripped out of the shorts and started to dress. Behind him, he heard Kenobi get out of bed and pad over to him.

“Bruck—”

He whirled around, catching the outstretched hand and using it, in a swift, graceful movement, to twist Kenobi into an upright headlock. The other Jedi didn’t struggle, just followed the movement and froze, breathing calmly.

“Maybe I’m not good enough to be one of you,” Bruck hissed, “but I’m not taking anymore shit from any of you, ever again. You, or Windu, or your fucking sanctimonious master, or mine, or the rest of the Sith-begotten Council. Leave me alone, you fucking little Jedi bootlicker. If you touch me again, I will break your fucking neck. Is that clear, Perfect Fucking Padawan?”

“Yes,” Kenobi replied with infuriating composure.

“Good. Then get the fuck away from me.”

“I’d like to get my clothes.”

Bruck let go of him with a push that sent Kenobi staggering a little, and hurled the other bundle of clothing into his face, then went on climbing into his own, hands shaking. It made him clumsy and slowed him down, so Kenobi was already dressed and standing beside the bed by the time he was done. Though he wore the same clothing he’d had on the night before, there was nothing intimidating about him now. He stood with his hands clasped in front of him, looking a good deal more serene than Bruck felt. Smug bastard, Bruck thought. Just like the rest of them.

“May I speak?” Kenobi said with his eyes downcast. It was the formal request a subordinate made of a superior. Bruck thought that was almost funny.

“Sure! Say whatever you damn well please, Kenobi. I don’t give a shit anymore.”

“Will you listen? Please, Bruck. It’s important.”

“If I don’t?”

“Let’s not bloody up Suri’s beautiful white carpet. We’re bound to if I have to make you listen.”

“Then say it and be done with it, you shitstain.”

“You let me do everything I did to you last night, Bruck,” Kenobi said bluntly but without anger, defensiveness, or malice, and more than a little sadness. “Even though we didn’t discuss it, didn’t set up any safewords or parameters, you could have put an end to it at any time. I kept hoping you would.”

 

Bruck said nothing for quite some time and Obi-Wan watched him carefully, without seeming to. He opened himself to the Force, and let the waves of rage and pain coming off Bruck wash around him as though he were a boulder in a river. So much, he thought. Years of it. And no wonder. He watched Bruck’s chest rise and fall in several long, deep breaths as he tried to get hold of himself, years of training making the act instinctual. Finally, his face changed, and something a little more sane came into his eyes, but that sanity was very brittle yet.

“Are you saying this is my fault, what happened last night, what you did to me?” Bruck said incredulously.

“My actions, your choice.”

“Oh, that’s a fine hairsplitting distinction, you fucker. I know where you learned that. Did he put you up to this? Or was it Windu? He’s never liked me.”

“No, Bruck. It was my idea.”

“And just what were you trying to do? What was the point of this little exercise?”

“I was trying,” he said gently, “to get you to stop bending over for everybody.”

Bruck burst out laughing at that and couldn’t seem to stop. “That’s good!” he gasped. “Fine turn of phrase you’ve got.” A tinge of hysteria crept into the laughter and Obi-Wan wanted to go to him but knew he couldn’t, yet. “Get me to stop—stop bending over,” Bruck gasped again, and did bend over then, bracing himself on his knees, still laughing, so hard he was nearly choking, “so I had to bend over for—you . . .” and then he slid onto them, crumpling the way he had last night onto the tile floor, retching and shaking and sobbing. He wasn’t retching now, but that was the only thing that made it different from last night. After a moment, he reared back on his heels, face wet and twisted. “How was I supposed to stop you?” he cried helplessly.

“Oh, love,” Obi-Wan murmured, going down on his own knees to bring them eye to eye again, but keeping his distance yet. “We were at a secure, private club. You were never my prisoner. I never put a Force collar on you, or drugged you, or whammied you, or coerced you in any way. The door was only locked from the inside. You could have gotten out of those manacles, out of everything I put on you, everything I did to you, with just a little Force manipulation, some of it with your bare hands. Some part of you liked it. Even without the cock ring you were always hard.”

“Was that the point then?” Bruck demanded, swiping at his eyes without accomplishing much. “Was this some test of yours I failed?”

“Not my test. Your own. You failed with me last night, and that’s all right. It’s safe to be helpless and scared and weak with me, and I’ll give you that any time you need it. But you have to succeed out there in real life, despite the Council and whatever they throw at you. And if it means you have to put on a little armor to do it, well, you’re not the only one. None of us are what we seem to the outside world. People are afraid of the Jedi, Bruck. Not everyone, but the ones who should be. It’s not necessarily a good thing, but as long as we don’t compromise the Code, it helps us do what we do. If that armor, that persona you put on to do your job were really you, how long would that scene have lasted?”

“Not a second after you first hit me, you fucker,” Bruck snarled, still weeping.

“Exactly. So why did you let me keep doing it?” Obi-Wan said gently.

There was a long silence that Obi-Wan let go on as long as it needed to, until Bruck found the courage to tell himself the truth.

“Because I . . . I believed you,” he whispered, choking.

“What did you believe?” Obi-Wan coaxed.

“When you called me stupid. And Fuck-Up. When you hit me.” He’d started to shake now, his voice uneven and hoarse. “Thought I deserved it. Thought you were just paying me back.”

“For what? Why would I need to?”

Bruck covered his face with his hands, and Kenobi crept over to him, still on his knees, carefully touching his shoulder. “For what, love?” he said again.

“Hurting you.” It was barely audible through his hands. Bruck folded again, this time over Obi-Wan’s lap, shoulders shaking, hands still covering his face. Kenobi pulled him close and held him.

“You never hurt me, love. Not really. You only made me stronger,” he murmured, gently rubbing Bruck’s back, “by showing me who I am. I want to do that for you.”

Obi-Wan stroked his hair gently, petting and soothing him, his voice quiet and even. “For years, you’ve been listening to the Council tell you that you’re barely worth keeping and letting people like Garen tell you how useless and stupid you are for making one mistake. Don’t let them win, Bruck. You’re so much smarter and more capable than they think you are, than you’ve let yourself believe you are. There are other people who know it too. Qui does, your master does. I do. The Combat Master. Eeth Koth. Suri. Don’t let the rest of them fuck you up, love. Don’t bend over and take it. It won’t be long before you’re knighted, Bruck, and they won’t have that threat to hold over you anymore.”

Against his leg, Bruck shook his head and struggled upright, wiping his eyes. “I can’t do it anymore, Ben. I never know if what I’m doing is right or wrong. And I’m so tired . . .”

“A couple of minutes ago, you were going to walk out of here. Where were you going to go?”

Bruck smiled a little, looking sheepish. “To get a haircut.”

Obi-Wan pulled on Bruck’s braid, which was looking a little the worse for wear. He took the ties out of it now and unraveled it, combed his fingers through it, and set about replaiting it. Bruck looked away as he did but didn’t try to stop him. It took several minutes, though his fingers were quick and used to the work. Bruck’s braid was as long as his own, falling below his nipples. “Eleven years,” he murmured, tying it off with the Senior Padawan’s red tie, and smoothing the end against his chest. “That’s a lot to throw away.”

“I’m just so tired,” he said again, distantly, and looked it.

“When was the last time you were called up before the Council, just you, for something personal?”

“After your pain trials.”

“That was more than two years ago, love. Maybe we need to have Isa crack into your progress reports again. She’s old enough now that I’ll probably have to sleep with her in exchange, not just tutor her in biochem,” Obi-Wan grinned.

“Don’t bother,” Bruck said in a listless tone.

The silence that fell then was thick enough to have weight. Obi-Wan felt crushed beneath it. He’d run out of words. This wasn’t something he could solve in a day. It wasn’t something he could solve at all. It was something Bruck would have to resolve himself.

“I have to leave tonight on a mission,” he said quietly. “Will you be all right?”

Bruck didn’t answer, didn’t look at him, didn’t seem to be listening. His presence in the Force was subdued and full of uncertainty and pain. Obi-Wan sat beside him silently, and finally reached for his hand, threading their fingers together. He was surprised Bruck allowed it.

“Ben,” he said after a while, still not looking up, “would you just—just hold—”

Obi-Wan didn’t bother answering or even waiting for him to finish, just moved closer and pulled Bruck against him and held him tightly, rubbing his cheek against Bruck’s soft hair, hands clasped around his waist. They sat that way for a long time, in the middle of Suri’s bedroom floor, before she opened the door and peeked in, obviously prompted by the ensuing silence. Bruck’s face was hidden in Obi-Wan’s shoulder, and Kenobi looked at her over the top of his head. She raised her eyebrows questioningly, silently asking if he needed anything. He shook his head slightly and she retreated again, closing the door softly behind her.

“Bruck,” he murmured a little while later into the young man’s hair. “Oh, Bruck. You know I love you, don’t you? I wish I could make it easier.”

“You could, if I’d let you,” he sighed, finally extricating himself from Obi-Wan’s arms and scooting back against Suri’s bed, leaning against it and wrapping his arms around his knees. “If I just had the balls to believe you.”

“What, that I love you?”

Bruck nodded. “Why would you? You’re not like Qui-Gon. You don’t take on pity projects.”

“Exactly,” Obi-Wan snorted. “So there must be some reason I’m expending all this emotional energy on you.” He crawled over to Bruck and sat next to him, wriggling close so they were pressed against each other. Once again, he picked up one of Bruck’s hands and threaded their fingers together, pulling their hands into his lap, and forcing Bruck to uncurl a little. “Did you ever think it might be because you’re a genuinely good person?”

This time it was Bruck who snorted. “Why would that ever occur to me?”

“Perhaps because you are?”

Bruck looked up at him. “You and Suri are the only people who’ve ever told me that.”

“Other people have told you too, love. You just haven’t heard them. I named them before for you. They may not have said it in so many words, but their actions show it. There are people who believe in you. But you have to meet them halfway before they can help you. If you want respect, you have to earn it, and you can’t do that by avoiding people. Open up. Maybe not to everyone, but to the people you trust, the ones who’ve treated you well. I know there aren’t many of them, but they’re worth the risk, the few you do trust. Suri and I were. Qui was. Weren’t we?”

“You know you were. Little Gods, I hate it when you’re right,” Bruck grumbled. “It makes you so fucking smug.”

Obi-Wan leaned in and nuzzled his ear. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be smug. I love you.”

Bruck squeezed his hand. “I know.”

“And last night—”

“Last night . . .” Bruck took a deep breath and shuddered, exhaling. “I think we’re even, after last night. I know you’ve never held what went on in the practice room against me, but—”

“—but you feel better now that I returned the favor,” Obi-Wan finished for him, rolling his eyes. “I’ve been a bad influence on you, I see. You’ve got my martyr complex. You know, both our masters would crack our heads together for that.”

“Yeah, if we told them,” Bruck smirked.

“Can I make it up to you, before I go?” Obi-Wan nuzzled against him again, worked his way down Bruck’s jaw, along the scar, caught Bruck’s mouth with his own.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Bruck murmured, when they pulled away from each other. “Your place or mine?”

“Can I watch?” Suri asked from the doorway, grinning. “I’ll loan you my bed.”

“No!” they chorused together, Bruck laughing, Kenobi—predictably—embarrassed and indignant.

“You’re no fun, either of you,” she mock-sulked. “I guess I’ll just have to turn on the cam instead and watch the fun later.”

 

---

 

“Do you think she’s really recording us?” Obi-Wan murmured, kissing up along Bruck’s neck and nuzzling under his ear as he pulled the other young man’s shirt out of his pants. They were standing in the middle of Suri’s bedroom still, but she had gone out, ostensibly to run errands, telling them to stay as long as they liked. “There’s lube in the table beside the bed,” was her parting shot, accompanied by a large grin.

“Of course she is,” Bruck whispered, tongue following the whorls of his partner’s ear as he returned the favor. “Why else would she go out and loan us her bed while she’s gone?” Bruck gasped as Obi-Wan bit down and sucked at the tender skin on his neck.

“Doesn’t that bother you?” Kenobi asked.

“Not particularly. I think we should give her her money’s worth, though. C’mon.”

Kenobi hesitated for a moment, then leaned back and opened the shirt, and slid it off Bruck’s shoulders, bending to take one nipple in his mouth and suck.

Bruck shuddered, moaning softly, fingers clutching in Kenobi’s hair, holding him there, as Ben flicked the tiny barbell piercing the other nipple. The sensations went straight to his cock, brought him up hard in the tight pants he was wearing.

“If you insist,” he murmured, between nibbles.

Kenobi’s fingers found the fastenings on his pants and opened them, sliding them over Bruck’s hips. They’d both taken off their boots again and left them standing beside Suri’s chair where they’d been this morning. “You owe me a new shirt and pair of pants,” Bruck grumbled as he stepped out of them, leaving him in nothing but his linens.

“Mmmmm, of course,” Ben agreed, licking at the flesh he’d abused and transferring his attention to the little piercing, making Bruck squirm and clutch harder. “It was fun cutting them off you, though.”

“Was it, smart ass?” Bruck growled. “Well, you’re the one with the family trust.”

“Do I get to pick them?” Kenobi asked, and took the barbell between his teeth, tugging more gently than he had the night before.

“Maybe, if you’re good—oh! My taste is better than yours, though.”

Kenobi gave his belly a long lick beneath the band of his linens. “You taste better, too.”

“Even my ass?”

“Oh, yes,” Ben said fervently, hands sliding beneath his linens and pushing them down, too, then clutching Bruck’s ass, hands kneading the warm round globes. One finger slipped between them, stroking.

“Then do it again,” Bruck ordered, panting. “Leave your pants on but take your shirt off. Don’t touch yourself. And kiss me first.”

Ben did as he was told, pushing Bruck back against the side of the bed and straddling his legs, hands still clenched on his ass, grinding them together against the leather of his own pants, his mouth fixed firmly on Bruck’s, tongue exploring greedily. He slid his arms around Kenobi’s waist, holding him there firmly and rocking leisurely into him, then pulled him down on the bed with him and rolled them both over until they were side by side.

Finally, Bruck broke their kiss with a gasp, pushing Ben back and rolling onto his stomach. “Now,” he said, getting up on his knees.

Ben got up on his own knees and moved behind him, took a pillow from the head of the bed and positioned it under Bruck before gently pushing him down again. Bruck closed his eyes in anticipation as Kenobi spread his legs and knelt between them, then leaned over him and licked a long, wet line down his spine to the end of his tailbone. He stopped there, tongue circling briefly, then fastened his mouth there and sucked as his hands kneaded Bruck’s cheeks. Then Ben was spreading him, and that hot, wet tongue licked down over his opening, circling there instead. A charge roared up Bruck’s spine and into his head and he shuddered, moaning. He couldn’t believe how good this felt, having Ben’s tongue flicking against the ring of muscles there and then—oh gods!—pushing inside, opening him. Bruck squirmed back against him, up on his knees again, and Ben laughed.

“I knew you’d like this if I could only get you to let me do it.”

“Shut up and don’t stop,” Bruck moaned as Kenobi licked downward toward his balls, over his perineum and back up to circle again on those live, raw nerve endings that made him clench and writhe. Ben’s tongue pushed into him again, hot and slithery, probing and licking and circling until Bruck was making painful little groans.

“So good, Ben. So good. Don’t stop,” he panted, achingingly hard and trying not to hump the pillow.

“Tell me what you want, Bruck. I’ll do anything,” Kenobi said and went back to doing what was currently making Bruck’s higher brain functions screech to a halt.

“That—that’s good!” he managed to moan, sinking his head into his hands and hearing himself begin to whine as he rocked back into Kenobi’s touch. Then fingers ghosted along his cock, the tip of one teasing the slit in the crown, spreading the moisture gathered there down along the shaft. The light touch was electric and made his cock jump. He grabbed Kenobi’s hand away. “Make it last, he growled.

“Anything you want,” Ben said obediently. “Anything.”

Bruck shuddered and went back down on his stomach, rolling over and moving the pillow back to the head of the bed. Kenobi sat back on his heels and waited until his partner was comfortable. “Tell me what you want,” he said again.

“Come here,” Bruck replied, leaning forward for one of Kenobi’s hands and pulled him down on the bed beside himself. “I just want you to make love to me, Ben. In those pants. Without taking them off. Without letting yourself come until I tell you.” He reached down between them and kneaded the hard bulge inside the leather, making Kenobi gasp and push into his hand.

“Guess I deserve that,” he replied, a little glassy-eyed.

“Oh, you’ll get to come, but not until I have,” Bruck grinned wickedly. “You owe me.”

“Yes, I do,” Obi-Wan agreed, swallowing heavily, but not looking very displeased about it.

Bruck pulled him down for a kiss. “Love me,” he whispered when they broke apart again.

“Always,” Kenobi murmured, kissing over his neck

“Ben,” Bruck murmured against his ear, grinning. “One more thing.”

“Anything, love.”

“Tie me up.”

 

---

 

Obi-Wan dropped his pack alongside Qui-Gon’s, toed off his boots, hung up his cloak and his master’s, and dropped horizontally onto the lounge with something that was less exhaustion than profound relief. They’d been gone 97 days this time, on a mission that had necessitated a full use of their skills as Jedi in hunting down the leader of a terrorist organization and rooting out and breaking up the various cells. The job was still not done, but it had progressed far enough that it could now be left to the very competent local militia, who had been grateful for their help at the end, but resentful of it, as was often the case, while they were in the thick of it. The work had been hard, interesting, and instructive, full of strategy planning, adrenalin-fueled ground searches, negotiations, rough living, and even the occasional fire fight, all if it ending better than expected. All in all, a satisfying but draining mission.

“Hot food. Baths,” Obi-Wan murmured. “Sleep. Tea. Not necessarily in that order.”

“I’m rather inclined to tea, bath, and bed, myself,” Qui-Gon agreed from his post at the com table. “Bruck’s in temple,” he added, scrolling through their messages. “So you’ll be adding clubbing and sex to the list, no doubt.”

“Not tonight,” Obi-Wan yawned. “I’ll go unpack and start the tea.”

“There’s a message from your friend Suri, as well.” Qui-Gon remarked as Obi-Wan headed toward their bedroom. He was amused to see Obi-Wan break stride then color up and continue on his way abruptly.

“I’ll get it later. I’m pretty certain I know what it is, and it can wait.”

And so it did, until Qui-Gon was in the fresher, bathing. In the meanwhile, Obi-Wan had read Suri’s message and collected the rest of their deliveries—laundry, groceries, and packages, including, this time, a holochip, also from Suri and addressed to Obi-Wan. The message accompanying it had been touching, reassuring, funny, bawdy, and a little embarrassing, rather like Suri herself.

Dear Ben:

Just wanted to congratulate you on a job well done. I continue to be amazed at the many talents you Jedi have. Wink wink. (Or should I say, wank wank?)

B-Boy seems, well, almost like a different person. I think he’s been doing a lot of meditating, or whatever it is you people do to get your heads on straight, and seems to have scrubbed some old thought patterns out of his brain. We met for drinks a few days after you left—just coffee, if you can believe it—and he was, well, I don’t know how to describe it. He was in a surprisingly good mood, for one thing, not the quiet and stunned wreck he’d been when you took him home from my apartment, and he’d lost that kind of insecurity of his that’s always covered with annoying bravado. Underneath it there’s a man I like very much, the same one who sauntered calmly up to a pack of thugs, told them to lay off and go elsewhere, then picked me up off the ground in an alley one night and held and petted me until I stopped screaming and shaking: kind and gentle and very sure of his own power.

It felt like you’d crystallized something in him, some resolve he hadn’t had before. I’ve never seen him this way, this content with himself. Whatever you did in that room at the club, and the talk you two had afterwards, it seems to have changed him for the better. When you see him again, you’ll have to let me know if this is the result you wanted. Even if it’s not, I’m certain you’ve done a good deed.

I’ve sent you and B-Boy a little prezzie. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. And listen—if you two ever want to make a little extra money, just let me know. I know just the vidders to set you up with. And you, particularly, we could find a place for in the Club. There aren’t enough good doms to go around. Sateet, the bouncer, speaks very highly of you.

If you have time, com me and we’ll go dancing.

Kisses,

S

Obi-Wan rubbed his thumb across the surface of the unmarked vidchip, wondering if he had the nerve to view it. Bruck would undoubtedly tell him all about it, with a sly, teasing glee at his discomfiture. He’d always found it rather excruciating to watch recordings of himself, from tournaments or practice sessions and this would be even more excruciating. But he knew someone else who would like it a great deal, even with Bruck sharing the starring role. Perhaps not right now, but in time, when his presence was less constant.

He tucked the chip away in a drawer and turned down their bed, waiting for Qui-Gon to make his exit from the fresher, smelling of soap and heat, and climb in beside him.