Chapter Text
“Anakin, don’t you dare fall asleep,” Obi-Wan warned. “Don’t forget there’s an enormous mess in the kitchen with your name on it.
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’m serious. You’ll completely ruin your sleep schedule, and then you’ll be bouncing around the Temple in the middle of the night—”
“Tha’s good, m’ster,” Anakin mumbled. The boy moved from his position on the couch to—infuriatingly—rest his entire body weight against Obi-Wan’s side.
“That is not good,” he snapped, but he knew it was a lost cause—his padawan’s eyes were already drooping shut. “We both have work to do, and I am not about to answer to Master Rhet when you sleep through your Diplomacy final tomorrow. Your Diplomacy final, need I remind you, that you have not studied for.”
Anakin mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “whatever.” Obi-Wan narrowed his eyes. “So help me, padawan, if you fall asleep after what you and your droid experiment just did…”
“Mm,” Anakin said, and burrowed his head deeper into Obi-Wan’s arm. Then, muffled, and just a little too watery for a boy supposedly half-asleep: “Don’t be mad at me, m’ster.”
He stared down at the scrawny tangle of limbs currently pinning him in place on the couch. The nerve. “I am not mad at you,” he began. “I am disappointed and perhaps a little upset that you have once again decided to flaunt the rules that we have gone over countless—”
“Don’ be upset,” Anakin interrupted, sleepily. “Shhh.”
In the precious few moments that it took for Obi-Wan to process the fact that he had just been shushed by his own padawan, Anakin wisely took advantage of the silence and—utterly shamelessly—fell asleep. Obi-Wan sighed, carefully extracting himself from the boy. It was going to be a long rest of the evening, cleaning up after Anakin’s mess in the kitchen and drafting the rest of his reports for the Council. And maybe writing some practice questions for Anakin before that final—if his padawan could be convinced to review those. He stood up, already exhausted.
Then he glanced back down at Anakin, hesitated, and draped the couch’s woven throw blanket over his infuriating padawan. He wouldn’t have him complaining about a cold next.
“Well, good night,” Obi-Wan said, rather crossly.
He was turned halfway around when he heard, in a sleepy, barely perceptible mumble: “Goo’night, love you.”
Heart suddenly in his throat, he spun back, but Anakin was already asleep again—eyes closed and arms splayed and hair an absolute mess. The boy must’ve said it accidentally, instinctively from his days with his mother, Obi-Wan reminded himself. He probably wouldn’t even remember saying it when he woke up.
But that didn’t stop Obi-Wan from bending down and running a gentle hand over the nest of blond hair, a futile attempt to tidy it. Anakin was practically drowning in the blanket.
And before Obi-Wan could stop himself, the thought emerged, unbidden: I love you, padawan. He swallowed it away. The words were too heavy to say out loud, too foreign and familiar all at once. So he mouthed them instead, felt their phantom weight roll across his tongue—felt, with good-natured reluctance, the words ring true in the Force.