bridgescribble | Certified memory-foam meme

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Certified memory-foam meme

It's the excuse you've been looking for to play soft, fluffy things.

Sharing is caring: You notice that the other person is in need of something--a beverage, or a space on the couch, or what-have-you--and you're willing to share.
Oh no oh no I'm sorry: You accidentally hurt them in a minor way, oh no!
Pets are cute: You're both cooing over something fuzzy. Kitty? Doggo? Tribble...?
Can't sleep: It's way too late but you just can't sleep. Fortunately you're not the only one up.
Stop and smell the roses: It's just a wonderful day to stroll around and appreciate life.
It's not that scary: One of you has to face down a fear--heights, wasps, planes. The other person is there to help.
Waiting for bail: The old saying, a good friend will bail you out--a great friend will be in jail with you, saying "that was fun!" Maybe a friend you didn't even know you had before today.
Cooking: Nothing brings people together like sous-cheffing for each other.
Viewer's choice! Idk man there's a lot of soft scenarios in the world, make up your own!

In theory - in theory - it should be impossible for a gifted Jedi knight, especially one said to be as sensitive and alert as Obi-Wan Kenobi, to be surprised by the presense of someone in his bedroom.

But it had been a long day, first with Anakin's training and then running off to deal with a minor disagreement on Abregado, which when he got there turned out not to need a Jedi at all in his opinion. He came back late, was ambushed by Quinlan Vos, who seemed incapable of keeping regular sleep hours, and by the time he made his way into his room his Force sensitivity was clouded by the heavy fog of needing to sleep.

It could also be that Anakin posed no threat at all to him and so he didn't even register him as something to avoid.

Having then kicked his young Padawan, he sighed, annoyed at himself, and unable to deny a flash of exasperation as he rubs a hand over his tired face.

Of course he couldn't sleep yet. That would be too kind.

"Anakin," he said, his voice clipped and clear in the dark silence of his room, and probably sounding slightly more annoyed than he intended it. "You're in my room again."

Anakin couldn't say in truthfulness that Master Obi-Wan hadn't ever put a hand on him - but that didn't mean he'd ever tried to hurt Anakin. Sparring did involve learning to block and take a hit. But he'd never once acted in even the slightest way as to suggest he was going to hit the boy outside of a sparring match - when Anakin knew the man was pulling his punches too.

That didn't mean that his tone encouraged Anakin to uncurl from a ball, with his body protecting his face and belly, scrunched up to shield his neck. "I couldn't sleep." Anakin answered, voice muffled by position, a good deal of wool, and simple quiet tone. He hadn't been able to sleep because he hadn't known where Obi-Wan was, and a quiet voice that had grown louder as he tossed and turned trying to put himself back to sleep had insisted, he wasn't coming back. He didn't want Anakin (no one did), and he wasn't going to come back so he didn't have to deal with him. Which was only slightly better than the times the voice insisted he wasn't coming back because he was dead.

Anakin finally moved just a little, to peep part of his face out, static crackling in his short hair. "I'm sorry."

One day, maybe, Anakin would learn to put a lid on those feelings that he broadcasted out into the Force like a loudspeaker. Goodness knows Obi-Wan has tried to teach it, but tonight was not that night. It was the reason, he knew, that Master Yoda was so reluctant about the boy, but it wasn't the boy's fault, and it was completely understandable.

He stepped past the ball on the floor to his bed, putting his sleepiness aside and moving in the dark like the lamps were on full. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he pulled off just his boots and reached out to feel Anakin through the Force. He wished he knew what to do with this. How do you teach a Padawan how to be a Jedi and manage the trauma of a former slave?

"Well I'm not going to sleep if you're going to threaten to stub my toes," he said, matter of fact. "Get up and come here."

There was space to sit next to him on the bed, and if Anakin needed to talk, he was there.

Not shouting into the Force was a skill Anakin would learn, eventually, after much tragedy and suffering. But not tonight, and more he didn't even realize he was shouting.

Instead, he simply stayed still while Obi-Wan moved about, Anakin staying still and quiet as vermin waiting for the residents to sleep. However, once bid, Anakin squirmed out of the sleeping pallet he'd made and sat next to Obi-Wan. Closer than he would if they were in public and closer than he would if anyone else was about.

He didn't know how to explain things to Obi-Wan, things which were simply how life worked, when Obi-Wan had never known that kind of life. When it was so radically different. Not being wanted, Anakin knew with a certainty that was unshakable, meant at best suffering hunger and sleeping rough, to the point that even the hovel he'd lived in on Tatooine was wonderful and worse...
Spice Mines.
A Hutt Palace.
Many worse places.

And more, he didn't know how he knew he was so universally not wanted. It was simply something he could feel. Even when his Master assured him people did want him. In their classes, or to be friends, or in the maintenance hangers.

Anakin just knew that wasn't the case. They were pretending, because of Obi-Wan.

Not him.

"I don't mean to bother you."

He also wasn't used - even now - to sleeping in a dorm so quiet. On Tatooine, he'd always been able to hear his mother's snoring, sleep muttering, and neighbors moving about. The Temple was so quiet. It allowed other things, budding (bludging) Force Sensitivity to scream at him.

He leaned just a bit against Obi-Wan, so their arms touched. "It's hard here at night."

Obi-Wan moved that arm when Anakin leaned into it - but only to pull it back and wrap it around the boy's shoulder, offer a comforting half-hug and his presence. If he had his robe still on he'd wrap it around them, but instead he lifted the two fingers from the hand on his Padawan's shoulder and used the Force to lift the blanket from his bed to drape it over his arm around Anakin, like a robe in its own right.

"I know."

That he didn't mean to bother him, that nights are hard, all of that.

"Is the floor of my room really more comfortable than your own?"

He knew the answer to that as well, he was just talking to fill the silence, and because a mild amount of teasing is just in his nature.

The weight of Obi-Wan's arm around his shoulders and across his back was comforting but also grounding, not that Anakin really had that concept down yet. Neither did it stop him from fidgeting, although it was limited to his feet moving inside his socks and playing with his fingers. He didn't really know how to be still, only that being still felt fundamentally wrong.

"Sorta? You're here." Even when he wasn't, his presence was and that was something.

"No one sees me."

Fidgeting was understandable, and easily ignored, though Obi-Wan himself was still, having unlearned those habits when he was younger than Anakin himself. He breathed steadily, holding Anakin in his arm like that quietly and without acknowledging what he was doing, he worked on easing some of that fear and sadness at the root of tonight's fit of insomnia.

In the long term he'll continue to attempt to teach Anakin this contorl, but not every moment had to be a teaching moment.

"What do you mean by that, no one sees you?"

Some of Anakin's fidgeting was rooted in Anakin's previous life - idleness resulting in getting a hard fist upside his head - but some is simply Anakin. Being still feels suffocating and yet at the same time, like he'll explode when he tries. And he can better relax and focus when he does fidget - something not all of his teachers allow.

When he can, like now, he's better able to relax. And in relaxing he's not trying to push away Obi-Wan's efforts at comfort and calmness.

"When I come in here. No one sees me. I make sure." Because he did understand it wasn't something he should be doing. And so he stayed on full alert, stuck to shadows, and felt around to make sure he wasn't seen. "I learned when I was savaging parts. I didn't want to get robbed. Or have Watto catch me."

Oh, oh. Anakin was worried about being caught - punished for sneaking around when he shouldn't have been. A holdover, of course, from when the consequences of being caught were so much worse than what Padawans could expect to face.

It meant that just telling him not to would just add to the pain.

Obi-Wan put that thought aside and chuckled lightly.

"Oh I'm sure you do," he said. "You hid from me, didn't you? I had no idea you were there."

It wasn't just Anakin trying to protect himself from punishment - he was making sure Obi-Wan didn't have consequences for tolerating Anakin's rule breaking.

"I wasn't trying to hid from you. I was just cold." Coruscant felt cold to him. It always had and Anakin couldn't understand why. Tatooine got cold at night, deadly so. Coruscant didn't have the huge temperature swings, and yet. He always noticed the cold here.

The concept of someone trying to protect Obi-Wan - someone who wasn't Qui-Gonn anyway - hadn't really occured to him.

"I don't find it cold."

He didn't mean for this to sound like a judgment on Anakin for being cold - it was just an observation, but his dry tone had a habit of implying that.

"It depends on what you're used to I suppose. Are you still cold?"

Say what you would about Anakin's predilection for pack bounding with anything which gave him a feeling of 'friend' but he cared deeply about those he bonfed with and that extended to protecting them.

Anakin pulled his lip between his teeth for a moment, feeling like he was being scolded for complaining.

He shook his head 'no' slightly, thinking about the answer. "No. Not with you here." Anakin chalked that up having another person there which warmed up the space and someone to distract him from it.

Obi-Wan almost immediately regretted giving that impression, but he let it go and conceded that perhaps he could have been less blunt about it.

"Well, then," he said. "I don't know about you, but I still haven't had any sleep. If you stay in the bed am I going to be kicked all night?"

When everyone in a position of authority who wasn't your mother had dealt with you harshly, it was difficult to learn to adjust your expectations to a softer hand.

And yet, that was almost more stressful: Anakin wanted Obi-Wan to want him and love him and for Anakin, that meant proving he was worth it. He has to prefect and then better, in his mind.

And he was often not.

"No. I don't think I kick." He'd not shared a bed regularly with his mother in a few years before Qui-Gon rescued him, but even when Watto had first won them, even having space that wasn't a sleeping mat, they had slept curled tight into each other's arms. He still tended too fidget, and he talked in his sleep sometimes. But he didn't kick. "But I can sleep on the floor if you want."

He didn't want to. Inside he jumped at the chance for the private attention.

It must be hard, to feel that you had to earn and deserve the love of someone so used to giving it unconditionally. There was nothing Anakin could do to prove his worth, because the line didn't exist.

And Obi-Wan, unable to relate to that fear, had no idea how to keep him reassured on that. What he did have, though, was the ability to give the boy what he wanted this one time.

"No," he said. "I'll just forget you're there and kick you again. Come on."

He pulled away from Anakin just enough to pull off his outer-tunic, leaving him in under-tunic to sleep in, and curled his feet up in order to lie down.

"Get some sleep, because we're going to have some meditation training in the morning."

It wasn't just the physical affection Anakin wanted, of course, but the feeling of safety. And safety for Anakin had always been found in his mother's arms. Of course, he wasn't a small child easily hoisted upon a hip anymore but that didn't mean the feeling of a warm body next to his didn't read as safety anyway.

"You didn't kick me hard Master." Really, he'd already forgotten it.

Still, when beckoned, Anakin pulled himself into the bed and tucked himself between his Master and the wall, but solidly against Obi-Wan. The amount of time it took Anakin to actually relax was measured in seconds, making a soft little contented sigh as he settled in to sleep. He didn't like meditation practice, but he didn't even protest this once.

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Certified memory-foam meme

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