dress for dinner (Obi-Wan, Padmé; PG-13)
Disclaimer: George Lucas owns Star Wars. I am not making any profit from this work of fan fiction.
Author's note: attanagra requested a follow-up to undercover, and estora kind of obviously deserved more Obi-Wan/Padmé fic, so here it is ... another he!au outtake!fic.
dress for dinner
Ryn doesn’t look happy when she gets off the transport. Obi-Wan can tell this because she’s gone back to the all-black synthleather gear she used to wear as a hostage of the Temple instead of the soft and colorful collection of skirts she’d taken to wearing after she married Anakin and started playing nice.
Jedi don’t value revenge, but he can’t quite help giving her a tight smile as she steps off the ramp and slides the dark glasses onto her face. That’s my girl.
A proper Lorethan wife, she stays a half-step behind and to the right of Anakin as they fall into rhythm together, tracking toward Obi-Wan and Padmé.
He leans forward and whispers into Amidala’s ear: “Get ready, Senator. This is a Ryn Orun you haven’t met before.”
Padmé continues to stare, clearly appalled. “What is she wearing?”
Obi-Wan folds his arms, enjoying the scene - mostly because it’s the first sign he’s seen in what feels like forever that the girl he betrayed years ago is still in there somewhere, fighting. “That’s her Ranger gear. Dressed for kicking ass and taking names.”
Padmé shoots him a disbelieving look, no doubt thinking the last part of that statement doesn’t sound like him at all. Which is fair, since Siri Tachi said it first.
By the time they’re in speaking distance, Anakin is visibly nervous - probably because the sense of clarity coming off of Ryn is enough to remind anyone who knows her of her sharply focused battle-mind, and this is supposed to be a peaceful reunion.
Also: who wouldn’t be a little nervous to see his partly-estranged wife and ex-mistress meet again?
But Ryn behaves herself. She keeps silent behind Anakin’s shoulder during the greetings, bows at the appropriate intervals, and generally gives no one any reason to complain. It’s Anakin who reacts to Padmé’s unexpectedly proficient attempts to treat Obi-Wan as a lover: he’s the one who lifts an inquisitive eyebrow at the way Padmé casually rests a hand on his arm when she asks him to arrange transportation to the hotel, who frowns in what Obi-Wan desperately hopes isn’t jealousy when she gently squeezes his thigh in the speeder-taxi.
Her moves are overt, certainly, but not heavy-handed, and Obi-Wan is surprised by the subtleties of her performance - the way she adjusts her body language to match his, seems to gravitate toward his presence to underscore their identity as two sets of couples, instead of four people wary of each other - until he remembers how seamlessly she integrated with the handmaidens, indistinguishable from the others in her role as Padmé and not Amidala. He’d never even suspected that Sabé wasn’t the true queen until that moment in the Gungan swamp. (Qui-Gon had.)
She maintains the ruse effortlessly until they get back to the hotel, and then she trails one soft hand down Obi-Wan’s back in the casually intimate caress of a woman familiar with his body (fairly astounding, since despite their practice at her insistence, she really isn’t). “Well,” she murmurs, Mid-Rim accent exoticizing her words, “we should really get ready for dinner. I’m sure the two of you will want to ... rest ... for a while, as well.” The way she leans into Obi-Wan as she speaks doesn’t leave much doubt about what she considers rest to be.
Obi-Wan almost winces at her implicit assumption that everyone “dresses” for dinner, since nothing is more likely to raise the hackles of either Ryn or Anakin. It’s amazing, how much the backgrounds of a Lorethan aristocrat and a slave from Tatooine have in common: the rough struggle to survive that leaves no time for the niceties of upper-class Mid-Rim society. Probably neither of them have ever dressed for dinner in their lives. But Padmé’s performance is so otherwise flawless that he lets it go and takes her hand in his instead (it’s soft and well-manicured, a politician’s hand, and it feels much better in his grip than it should). “Padmé is right,” he says, trying to sound affectionate instead of uneasy. “We’ll see you two in ... say, two hours?” On impulse, he pulls her delicate hand to his mouth and kisses the join of her two middle fingers. “Or longer if you need.”
There. That should be clear enough: Anakin can’t possibly miss the implication that he ought to be making love to his wife right now, instead of staring at other women. But Anakin, perhaps predictably, just continues to stare at them in what might be either fascination or horror (or both).
It’s Ryn (also predictably) who takes things in hand. She pushes the dark glasses up to the top of her head, surveys the three of them with a look that fringes on exasperation, and says, succinctly: “We’ll be ready in one.”
The thing that makes his evening, though, is that when she turns to go, she actually snaps her fingers at Anakin. And he follows her.
Anakin.
Headstrong, impetuous, fiercely independent Anakin ... turns on his heel and follows her down the hall.
Padmé barely gets the suite door closed behind them before Obi-Wan collapses against the wall, gasping with amazed laughter.
“Did you see that?” she whispers to him, exultant. “I think we have them!”
“I think Ryn has Anakin,” Obi-Wan responds, sobering. “But she didn’t look impressed.”
Anakin did. He feels a little pang at that, at the idea that Anakin might still have a suppressed longing for Padmé, that it’s really guilt making him jump at Ryn’s suggestion.
“We can go one better at dinner,” Padmé says. Her eyes light with mischief, and for a minute she looks almost as young as she really is. For a single, traitorous moment, Obi-Wan can’t resist wondering what she might have been like if she hadn’t had her personality leached by a life in politics. If this was the side of her that Anakin saw and was drawn to. “Come on. We have to practice.”
Obi-Wan isn’t nearly as unwilling as he’d like when she takes his hand and leads him to the bedroom.
Author's note: attanagra requested a follow-up to undercover, and estora kind of obviously deserved more Obi-Wan/Padmé fic, so here it is ... another he!au outtake!fic.
dress for dinner
Ryn doesn’t look happy when she gets off the transport. Obi-Wan can tell this because she’s gone back to the all-black synthleather gear she used to wear as a hostage of the Temple instead of the soft and colorful collection of skirts she’d taken to wearing after she married Anakin and started playing nice.
Jedi don’t value revenge, but he can’t quite help giving her a tight smile as she steps off the ramp and slides the dark glasses onto her face. That’s my girl.
A proper Lorethan wife, she stays a half-step behind and to the right of Anakin as they fall into rhythm together, tracking toward Obi-Wan and Padmé.
He leans forward and whispers into Amidala’s ear: “Get ready, Senator. This is a Ryn Orun you haven’t met before.”
Padmé continues to stare, clearly appalled. “What is she wearing?”
Obi-Wan folds his arms, enjoying the scene - mostly because it’s the first sign he’s seen in what feels like forever that the girl he betrayed years ago is still in there somewhere, fighting. “That’s her Ranger gear. Dressed for kicking ass and taking names.”
Padmé shoots him a disbelieving look, no doubt thinking the last part of that statement doesn’t sound like him at all. Which is fair, since Siri Tachi said it first.
By the time they’re in speaking distance, Anakin is visibly nervous - probably because the sense of clarity coming off of Ryn is enough to remind anyone who knows her of her sharply focused battle-mind, and this is supposed to be a peaceful reunion.
Also: who wouldn’t be a little nervous to see his partly-estranged wife and ex-mistress meet again?
But Ryn behaves herself. She keeps silent behind Anakin’s shoulder during the greetings, bows at the appropriate intervals, and generally gives no one any reason to complain. It’s Anakin who reacts to Padmé’s unexpectedly proficient attempts to treat Obi-Wan as a lover: he’s the one who lifts an inquisitive eyebrow at the way Padmé casually rests a hand on his arm when she asks him to arrange transportation to the hotel, who frowns in what Obi-Wan desperately hopes isn’t jealousy when she gently squeezes his thigh in the speeder-taxi.
Her moves are overt, certainly, but not heavy-handed, and Obi-Wan is surprised by the subtleties of her performance - the way she adjusts her body language to match his, seems to gravitate toward his presence to underscore their identity as two sets of couples, instead of four people wary of each other - until he remembers how seamlessly she integrated with the handmaidens, indistinguishable from the others in her role as Padmé and not Amidala. He’d never even suspected that Sabé wasn’t the true queen until that moment in the Gungan swamp. (Qui-Gon had.)
She maintains the ruse effortlessly until they get back to the hotel, and then she trails one soft hand down Obi-Wan’s back in the casually intimate caress of a woman familiar with his body (fairly astounding, since despite their practice at her insistence, she really isn’t). “Well,” she murmurs, Mid-Rim accent exoticizing her words, “we should really get ready for dinner. I’m sure the two of you will want to ... rest ... for a while, as well.” The way she leans into Obi-Wan as she speaks doesn’t leave much doubt about what she considers rest to be.
Obi-Wan almost winces at her implicit assumption that everyone “dresses” for dinner, since nothing is more likely to raise the hackles of either Ryn or Anakin. It’s amazing, how much the backgrounds of a Lorethan aristocrat and a slave from Tatooine have in common: the rough struggle to survive that leaves no time for the niceties of upper-class Mid-Rim society. Probably neither of them have ever dressed for dinner in their lives. But Padmé’s performance is so otherwise flawless that he lets it go and takes her hand in his instead (it’s soft and well-manicured, a politician’s hand, and it feels much better in his grip than it should). “Padmé is right,” he says, trying to sound affectionate instead of uneasy. “We’ll see you two in ... say, two hours?” On impulse, he pulls her delicate hand to his mouth and kisses the join of her two middle fingers. “Or longer if you need.”
There. That should be clear enough: Anakin can’t possibly miss the implication that he ought to be making love to his wife right now, instead of staring at other women. But Anakin, perhaps predictably, just continues to stare at them in what might be either fascination or horror (or both).
It’s Ryn (also predictably) who takes things in hand. She pushes the dark glasses up to the top of her head, surveys the three of them with a look that fringes on exasperation, and says, succinctly: “We’ll be ready in one.”
The thing that makes his evening, though, is that when she turns to go, she actually snaps her fingers at Anakin. And he follows her.
Anakin.
Headstrong, impetuous, fiercely independent Anakin ... turns on his heel and follows her down the hall.
Padmé barely gets the suite door closed behind them before Obi-Wan collapses against the wall, gasping with amazed laughter.
“Did you see that?” she whispers to him, exultant. “I think we have them!”
“I think Ryn has Anakin,” Obi-Wan responds, sobering. “But she didn’t look impressed.”
Anakin did. He feels a little pang at that, at the idea that Anakin might still have a suppressed longing for Padmé, that it’s really guilt making him jump at Ryn’s suggestion.
“We can go one better at dinner,” Padmé says. Her eyes light with mischief, and for a minute she looks almost as young as she really is. For a single, traitorous moment, Obi-Wan can’t resist wondering what she might have been like if she hadn’t had her personality leached by a life in politics. If this was the side of her that Anakin saw and was drawn to. “Come on. We have to practice.”
Obi-Wan isn’t nearly as unwilling as he’d like when she takes his hand and leads him to the bedroom.