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The bruises look a lot worse in daylight.
The purple and green span across Anakin’s cheek, reaching the small cut at the corner of his lips. Lesions are all over his throat in the shape of fingers, with more hidden under the collar of his tunics. The half-healed wounds don’t just stop there—four weeks of being captive is enough to accumulate injuries to fill an entire page of the healer’s report. Under Anakin’s clothes, his chest is bound in bandages for the broken ribs, right above the electrical burns, now covered in fresh bacta patches. The separatists are getting creative with their torture devices, lately.
Obi-Wan goes through the list of Anakin’s wounds in his head, calculating which ones need to be redressed on what day. The Coruscanti sun casts long shadows, barely hiding the dark circles under Anakin’s eyes.
Obi-Wan aches to kiss, to soothe until Anakin can sleep them away, finally finding some rest after the month’s ordeal. But there’s more work to be done—the torturers did not pay much attention to feeding their captive. Anakin’ cheeks have sunken, the nightshirt hanging off his thinned shoulders. The constant lack of food has weakened his stomach to the point that he can barely keep anything down. For fear of throwing up yet another meal, what he needs right now is something simple, comforting, but also provides plenty of nourishment.
So, Obi-Wan is making his special pancakes.
They may be his best work yet. After all, those special pancakes were Anakin’s favorite food when he was a child. Obi-Wan still remembers a nine-year-old Anakin, malnourished and underweight when he first came to the temple. Master Che had to prescribe different nutritious powders to go along with his meals, but all Obi-Wan knew was to make them into a porridge. The boy could never swallow more than a third of what he needed.
And then, he had the brilliant idea of making them into pancakes.
The batter is the perfect medium to hide all the supplements. Obi-Wan still remembers the quiet smile Anakin gave him at every breakfast, right after finishing everything on his plate. Obi-Wan kept making them until the healers finally declared his padawan to be an appropriate weight and height for his age.
Now, more than a decade later, it’s time for Obi-Wan to use an old trick again.
Even though it’s early morning, Anakin is exhausted enough from insomnia and pain that he doesn’t notice the supplements being added to the sweet pancake mix. He only waits by the kitchen counter as Obi-Wan works, expression distracted and tired, attention splintered all over the place.
Anticipation rises in Obi-Wan’s chest as the kitchen is filled with the smell of warm, buttery pancakes, almost making him giddy with pride. He hides it well though, under a calm, nonchalant exterior.
“Here. Try this,” Obi-Wan says softly, flipping the last pancake into the plate and drizzling with syrup, before pushing it across the kitchen counter.
“Hmm?” Anakin blinks, just brought out of a stupor, looking down to notice the stack of warm pancakes. “Oh.”
“Your stomach is still weak, so I’m only giving you a small portion. Hopefully, some pancakes will go down better than the standard-issued rations from the Halls of the Healing.” Obi-Wan smiles. “I remember it’s your favorite.”
There has been a haunted look in Anakin’s eyes since the rescue, one that is hard to shake. But upon meeting Obi-Wan’s eyes and seeing his smile, part of that look melts away, giving way to the warmth in those blue eyes.
“My favorite, huh? Let’s see if it’s still the case.” He pokes a small corner off the stack and lifts the fork, an eyebrow raised while putting the pancakes in his mouth. The following pause has Obi-Wan’s heart beating in his throat, hope fluttering like the wings of a hummingbird.
“How is it?” he asks, unable to hide the curiosity any longer as Anakin chews slowly, carefully, as if he needs to channel all the energy he has just to eat. “Well, not to rush you. I know you’ve been having trouble keeping food down, and eating too fast won’t help. I just thought—it’s your favorite, after all. If anything, you could use something comforting, and there’s nothing more comforting than pancakes. I haven’t made them for years. Hopefully, it still tastes the same? If not, I can always make something else. Something you’re missing in the field, perhaps Franikhad—oh, but that’s too spicy for your stomach. There’s nothing like pancakes, truly. So… how is it?”
Obi-Wan knows he’s droning on again, as Anakin was so inclined to call it in his teenage years, but truth be told, he’s too nervous not to.
Watching Anakin struggle to recover has been one of the hardest things in this entire ordeal. They’ve got Anakin back now; he should be getting better, not barely healing because his body doesn’t have enough strength. Cooking is about the only thing Obi-Wan can do to help, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself if he fails even that.
He just… he can’t fail again.
Anakin swallows the bite, licks the syrup on his lower lip. By some miracle, he smiles. It’s a small and quiet thing, but it’s there. Obi-Wan thinks he could be soaring.
“It’s good, master,” he answers. “Tastes exactly like I remember.”
“Yeah?” A weight lifts off of Obi-Wan’s chest. “It’s truly the same?”
“Of course, even the powders are there.”
Obi-Wan pauses, blinking as Anakin takes another bite, making a pleased hum.
“Whatever do you mean?” It’s possible that the kitchen has become very warm from all the cooking. Obi-Wan feels his cheeks heat up. “What powders?”
The syrup coats the fork, so Anakin licks it clean. When he looks up again, a glint of mischief flashes across his eyes.
“Oh come on. Do you think I couldn’t tell? The nutrition powders they prescribed for me when I was still your padawan? The porridge you made was awful, and then the pancakes tasted exactly the same. You weren’t subtle, master. There must have been more supplements than flour in my meal. I noticed right away, of course.”
The pancakes are disappearing steadily from Anakin’s plate, picked apart and dipped in the syrup. Suddenly, they don’t seem like the best idea in the world anymore.
“And you never said anything? Anakin…” Obi-Wan’s heart constricts. “I only wanted you to eat something healthy because you were so malnourished as a child, and I didn’t want to force you. Force knows you had gone through enough already.” He meets Anakin’s eyes, half pleading and half heartbroken for the small boy that he used to be. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have tried something else.”
Guilt creeps into his chest, in place of the relief he was feeling mere moments ago. Anakin only stares, eyes big and impossibly soft.
“Well, it made you happy,” he answers, as if that is the simplest logic in the world. “So I didn’t mind.”
“Anakin…”
“Has it occurred to you that you were also going through a lot?” Anakin now drops his eyes, having stopped eating. “You had only lost your master, and immediately took on a padawan yourself. Every day you fussed over nutrition and proteins. My meals, my lessons, my health. But you…” he trails off in a whisper. “You were just…sad. All the time.”
“I didn’t know you could tell.”
“I can always tell.”
Obi-Wan opens his mouth and closes it. His fame as the Negotiator is nothing when it’s just him and Anakin. Clever quips and quick thinking are his weapons when the saber is out of reach, but here, he doesn’t need to fight.
“So you just lied? For years?” Obi-Wan asks, after a moment. “Putting up with your old master’s horrible cooking just to spare his feelings?”
“Not the part about pancakes being my favorite though. That is true.” When Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow in question, Anakin continues, “I saw you smile, when I ate all the pancakes. That was the first time you smiled since I became your padawan. It was so beautiful I just decided that I wanted to keep seeing it. And the pancakes were the way to go, obviously. Oh, and—” He laughs to himself quietly, looking entirely too young despite the bruises blossoming across his cheeks. Entirely too young for this wretched war. “—Do you remember the day I was finally, finally, taller than you?”
“You mean when you mercilessly rubbed it in my face.” Obi-Wan cannot hide a laugh himself. “The worst day of my life. It’s not one to forget.”
“You are joking, but do you remember I also stopped mercilessly rubbing it in your face very quickly?”
“Oh? Doesn’t sound like you.”
Anakin tilts his head, a strand of curls falling into his eyes, too endearing for Obi-Wan’s heart to handle.
“You were so proud when you realized,” he says softly. “You looked at me, barely half an inch taller than you, and the Force was singing with pride. I couldn’t keep making fun of you, you see. My old master looked like he was about to cry.”
The lump in Obi-Wan’s throat is simply a reaction to the fond memories. He is not about to cry now.
“I thought I did a half-decent job, when you grew up okay. I only wanted you to—” he swallows, the words difficult to get out. “I—forgive me—”
Obi-Wan looks away to give the turmoil of emotions in his chest to the Force. Fear, guilt, anxiety… they leave with another exhale. He lets go of everything except for love. Only love remains, wrapping around him like the bright Force signature that melds into his own.
Anakin looks at him all-knowingly, with mirth by his lips.
“Obi-Wan.”
“Yes, darling?”
The Force sings with pride again when Anakin straightens his back, puts down his fork, one arm stretched out as an invitation. “Come over here.”
“And why should I come over there?”
“Because you,” Anakin declares with all the conviction in the galaxy, “look like you need a hug.”
“Do I now?” Obi-Wan only thinks of denying it for a split second before rounding the kitchen counter and meeting Anakin’s embrace carefully, gathering him up with a feather-light touch. He maps out all the injuries mentally, hyper-aware of where his hands travel and soothe. Something within him shifts, settles into place, when Anakin is held between his arms. “Hmm, perhaps I do. My young padawan has become wise.”
“Only sometimes,” Anakin huffs.
The way he hugs Obi-Wan back is far less careful, pressing their bodies together. With Anakinsat on the kitchen stool, they are at the perfect height for him to fit right under Obi-Wan’s chin. He squeezes Obi-Wan’s middle, as if to burrow farther into the hug, as if they have not melded into one a long time ago.
He presses a kiss on Anakin’s head, hiding a content smile in his hair.
“Ow.” Anakin hisses in pain.
Obi-Wan pulls away immediately. “Am I hurting you?”
A pause, and a sheepish look. “…No?”
“Anakin!”
A boyish grin blooms across Anakin’s face. He leans forward to wrap both arms around Obi-Wan’s waist, half to pull him close, half for support. “Can you blame me? You were smiling. You haven’t since I got back.”
“And you are eating something, finally.”
“Must be the pancakes,” Anakin adds cheekily, “with your secret ingredient.”
The corner of Anakin’s mouth is still swollen and dark with a bruise, but he leans into Obi-Wan’s touch. Eyes closed, he lets his weight slump against Obi-Wan’s support and nuzzles into his chest.
He’s holding the most precious thing in his life, Obi-Wan realizes. Right under his palms, trusting and pliant. Even injured, Anakin is still trying to make him smile, and he is. The smile stays on Obi-Wan’s face, making him feel lighter and younger than he has any right to be.
“And now you feel like you need a kiss,” Anakin whispers against his tunics. “You get all quiet and shimmering in the Force when you do.”
“What will you do about that?”
Their breaths mingle when Obi-Wan lowers his head to meet Anakin. The kiss is barely there when both of them are smiling into it, tender and slow, mindful of the healing wound by Anakin’s mouth. Obi-Wan pecks him on the nose one last time before pulling back.
“You should try to eat a little bit more,” he reminds Anakin, pushing the plate closer. “Just a little, and we’ll rest. We’ve both earned it, I believe.”
“Of course,” Anakin answers, the quiet shimmers mirrored back in his Force signature. “They are your special pancakes, after all.”