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“You’re late.”
Qui-Gon flicks on the lamp the moment the front door slips open. Obi-Wan’s silhouetted figure in the doorway freezes. Then is illuminated by the dim glow that now covers the darkened quarters.
The twenty-year-old padawan is a proper dugar-dugar in headlights. Standing completely still with his hand still hovering over the door switch and the other paused mid-ruffle through his auburn locks.
It takes every trick in the book of Qui-Gon’s many years of raising adolescents to not burst out laughing. He crosses his arms over his chest instead.
“You’re... still awake,” the boy says quietly, taking a few tries to hit the close door button. Qui-Gon’s eyebrow raises when he gives up entirely and a quick pulse of the Force does the job instead. “I thought y' had... dinner or something.”
“Dinners do not often last until two in the morning, padawan.”
“Th’ good one’s do,” Obi-Wan takes a few more careful steps into their shared quarters, conveniently avoiding the direct illumination of the lamplight. The scent of jogan fruit wine coolers suddenly wafts past Qui-Gon’s nose, and the pieces fall together.
“I presume you were at one of these good ones, padawan?”
His eyes lazily drift from where they were focused on his bedroom door. “W’ got waffles.”
“Waffles?”
“With syrup.”
By now Qui-Gon has relaxed from his rigid posture and is just watching Obi-Wan with amused fascination.
“Did you now?”
Obi-Wan nods, still inching toward his room.
“Are you... tired, Obi-wan?”
“Aye.”
If the smell of wine and sweat wasn’t already a dead giveaway, the drastic thickening of his native accent certainly clues him into Obi-Wan’s inebriation. When Obi-Wan drinks, his usual Core inflection loosens and his vowels shorten as his mind unwinds enough for remnants of his early years on Stewjon to resurface in his alcohol-soaked muscle memory.
Qui-Gon discovered this quirk of his padawan’s drunken state during their protection detail of Mandalore’s duchess. At eighteen, it took him about three glasses of wine to reach the point of his r’s growing honeyed. The most amusing part of it all was Obi-Wan was completely oblivious to it. Every time Satine attempted to point out his shift in accent, he assured her that he did not live on Stewjon long enough to retain his accent after so many years. Qui-Gon and Satine shared many glances over the phenomenon on the nights when they had the luxury of nursing a bottle or two.
“Off to bed with you, then,” Qui-Gon shoos him, earning a wide grin that is wildly disproportional to the sort of reaction his response should have received.
“G’night master.”
Qui-Gon watches him pad not-so-gracefully into his room. Obi-Wan does not even bother to close the door behind him before collapsing face-first onto the bed. The Jedi Master chuckles, rolling his eyes at the soft snores already coming from the bedroom.
As he heads to bed himself, Qui-Gon wonders if Obi-Wan remembers that he has saber training early the next morning.
“I can’t believe you’re living right now,” Quinlan says from his curled-up ball while Bant blocks one of Obi-Wan’s Ataru strikes. “You’re fucking lying.”
“I wasn’t that drunk!” Obi-Wan replies with a pointed glance at his pale-faced friend. “Perhaps I can just hold my alcohol better than you can.”
“No you can’t,” Bant and Quinlan say in unison.
“Then why is Quin on the ground moaning in pain and I’m winning a spar?”
“Winning?!” Bant laughs mockingly. Obi-Wan grins.
“It’s all about the water balance,” he says in a deliberately condescending tone. Quinlan is shooting daggers at him from his spot on the edge of the mat. “You have one drink, then one cup of water. Rinse and repeat.”
“I’ll rinse and repeat your face,” Quin groans, throwing a boot at Obi-Wan’s shins.
Obi-Wan wouldn’t be so smug if Quin hadn’t purposefully gotten him obliterated when he turned the Coruscant drinking age a few years ago. There are holos out there that Obi-Wan will never live down. Quin might be moaning and groaning, but Obi-Wan knows if he was fine enough to drag his hungover ass to sparring practice, then he’s just being overdramatic.
Bant locks him in a complex series of offensive strikes, which he manages to parry with ease. If Obi-Wan is being honest, he is surprised he woke up without a horrific headache and the need to sprint to the refresher. All signs of the night before pointed to a horrible next morning. Their game night at Quinlan’s turned into drinking game night at Quinlan’s. Then a late-night hankering for breakfast food, which they accompanied with some to-go canteens of more wine. By the time they snuck up to the Temple roof, the speeders were mere blurs in Obi-Wan’s unstable vision.
He remembers dancing to some Alderaanian pop song Siri has been playing on repeat all week.
He remembers lying on the roof and staring at the speeders, pretending they are the stars Coruscant's light pollution prevents the sight of.
He vaguely remembers Garen calling Bant, who just arrived back from a mission that night, to escort him back to his quarters.
Everything after that is murkier. He was pretty drunk. The fact he’s standing right now is... impressive.
“Still think you’re winning?” Bant teases as she suddenly drops to kick Obi-Wan’s feet out from under him. He manages to pick up one leg before her swing follows through, but the other gets slammed by the force of her quick footwork. He falls into the instability, rolling on the mat while quickly deactivating his training saber. He’s upright again a second later, blue blade at the ready and at an even better position than he was before she tried that move.
“Perhaps.”
Obi-Wan is gearing up for a more complex leap when his stomach suddenly protests to the harsh jolting of his body. Cold sweat starts to bead on his lip and forehead, and even Bant stops her forward progression to continue the fight, her eyes widening.
“Obi? You just went pale, are you—”
Bant doesn’t have time to finish before Obi-Wan drops his saber and runs off the mat. Hurdling Quin gives him the quickest access to the locker room just off the training sala.
He doesn’t quite make it to the refresher stalls. The garbage chute is closer and where he ends up sticking his head as he’s reminded of his wine and waffle splurge.
Syrup and jogan fruit wine do not pair as well together coming back up as it did going down.
Obi-Wan does eventually manage to stagger to a stall. Nausea is still swirling in his gut and making his vision swim as he settles down on the floor. The cool tile of the wall feels good on his sweaty-soaked back. He tries not to think about the cleanliness of the refresher room floor.
Obi-Wan is hyper-focusing on remaining as still as possible to prevent his stomach and head from tearing themselves apart when a water bottle appears in front of his face. He follows the hand holding it until he finds Quinlan looming over him. Smug, as is to be expected.
“Gotta keep your water balanced, Obes.”
“I’ll puke on your fucking boots, Quin.”
Obi-Wan’s pleads to any god, diety, or decider of destiny that might hear are unfortunately not heard as he stumbles into his quarters.
“How was spar—” Qui-Gon starts to say, but the moment he looks at Obi-Wan he trails off. “Are you alright?”
The padawan is about to answer, but the moment he opens his mouth, something other than words threatens to come out. He drops his bag and runs to the ‘fresher.
Qui-Gon has seen him in a number of undignified situations, but there is something especially dehumanizing about being twenty years old and curled over a toilet while his Jedi Master brushes back the hair slackened against his forehead and rubs circles on his back.
“Rough night?” Qui-Gon asks when he seems to be done. Obi-Wan slumps against the wall beside the toilet.
“The night was great, it’s the morning that seems to be rough.”
“But you still went to sparring clinic?”
“I didn’t feel like I was dying when I woke up.”
Qui-Gon chuckles. “Still drunk then?”
Well, that would explain his happy-go-lucky mood so early in the morning.
“Perhaps,” he grumbles. Qui-Gon opens one of the cabinets and starts rifling through the contents. He’s being surprisingly lax about all this— but Obi-Wan has this sinking feeling that the other shoe will drop at any minute. “So... how in trouble am I?”
“Trouble?” Qui-Gon looks genuinely confused as he glances his way while pouring a few pills into his hands. “Whatever for?”
“Giving a list might implicate me further I’m afraid.”
Qui-Gon smiles and hands him a few pills and a cup of water.
“For nausea and the headache,” he explains. Obi-Wan doesn’t question it further and downs the pills. “As for your wild night— you were past curfew, but I did receive a wildly incoherent collection of letters around the time of your usual check-in,” Obi-Wan’s cheeks and the tips of his ears start to grow hot, “so I suppose you made some attempt to let me know you would be late.”
“I, uh... apologies for... that.”
“Obi-Wan you’re of legal drinking age and you attended to your next day’s duties,” Qui-Gon glances at the time on his chrono. Obi-Wan is definitely supposed to still be practicing but he figures nobody is going to ask him to get on that mat, “well, you attempted to attend to your duties.”
“I won a spar against Quinlan.”
“Isn’t Quinlan also quite ill this morning?”
“That’s neither here nor there.”
After Obi-Wan is able to peel himself off the ‘fresher floor he spends some time assuming the curled-up position Quin demonstrated earlier. He’s perfectly content wallowing for the remainder of the day, but his Master seems to have other ideas.
“Drink this,” Qui-Gon says while handing him a sickly brown beverage. Obi-Wan uncurls from his blanket nest just enough to raise an eyebrow.
“Just looking at that makes me nauseous, master.”
“It will help.”
“What... is it?”
“A cure.”
“A cure for me or for your padawan infestation problem?” Obi-Wan asks as he takes the drink and makes the horrible mistake of sniffing it.
“Very funny,” Qui-Gon says dryly.
“This smells like you juiced a potato and mixed it with a decomposed salad left in the sun.”
“You mean it smells like hemchar root.”
“Sure.”
“It’s an old hangover cure used by the star pilots and smugglers.”
“A reliable crowdsource you have.”
“I’m hearing a whole lot sass and not a lot of drinking.”
The drink is not nearly as bad as it smells. It goes down easy enough and he is free to dramatically flop back into his blanket nest while Qui-Gon rolls his eyes and takes the cup back to the kitchen.
Perhaps the star pilots and smugglers had a point. An hour later, Obi-Wan’s headache has finally cleared and his stomach has begun to rumble with the first evidence of hunger he’s had all morning. He emerges from his quarters freshly showered and feeling truly up to beating Bant in a spar.
“Better?” Qui-Gon asks while looking up from his holonovel.
“Much,” he says sheepishly. “Thank you, Master... for taking care of me.”
“I was young and unaware of the limits of my alcohol tolerance once, too, padawan.”
“Unaware of my—”
“I’m glad you had fun with your friends and you’re feeling better now.”
He considers fighting the subtle jab at his self-control but decides better of it based on Qui-Gon’s sly smile. His master of seven years very likely has his own arsenal of holos and stories... Obi-Wan will not dare to trifle with that possibility.
Not today at least.