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“I’m terrified of heights,” the man in front of Anakin says calmly. Anakin pauses in bunching the tether rope to look up at him, but the man apparently is not finished. “I have not flown in a plane since I was six years old and back then I screamed and cried so long the airline put me on the no-fly list for being a menace.”
“Um,”Anakin says, and he doesn’t know what exactly he wants to say, but there’s nothing particularly menacing about the man standing before him in a checkered sweater vest and trousers cuffed at the ends to reveal a pair of very delicate looking ankles.
He’a got glasses on for fuck’s sake and a pair of sunglasses pushed up into his hair. Anakin would put good money on those being prescription sunglasses too.
“Um,” he says again when his eyes finally trail over the lines of the man’s face. He must be forty at least, if not a bit older. There’s specks of silver in the neatly groomed beard, lines around the corners of his eyes and mouth. He’s handsome.
Anakin’s been taking tourists on hot air balloon tours for five years. He’s never before met one so good-looking and in fifteen minutes, if this man is who he thinks he is, he’s going to be in a very small basket, practically pressed up against all of that.
“Um,” he says again.
“When I was twenty-five years old, my father was in the hospital and I hitchhiked across the country on trains to get there and visit him. I jumped from a moving train, sir. I did that before and I would do it again if it meant not flying.”
Anakin blinks. “Are you my afternoon appointment? Mr. Kenobi?”
Anakin would usually have to specify which afternoon appointment, but a Mr. Kenobi had paid an obscene amount of money in order to pre-book all of Anakin’s afternoon slots. From 12 o’clock all the way to close of business at 6 in the evening.
“Oh yes,” the man says. “But please, Mr. Kenobi was my father. Well, no he wasn’t. He was Mr. Jinn. But please, call me Obi-Wan.”
“Obi-Wan,” Anakin tests the name on his tongue. Strange, but somehow charming. Sort of like the man who bears it. “I’m Anakin Skywalker.”
“Really?” The man looks fascinated, twin lines of auburn rising on his forehead in surprise. “I was sure that was a bit.”
“A bit?” Anakin asks, finally standing and dropping the half-finished looped rope. He’s taller than the man, but not truly by that much. He tries to straighten his back even more, accentuate the difference. He likes that he’s taller.
“You know. Skywalker’s Balloon Emporium? You have to admit it’s a bit too on the nose. But it’s just your name. It’s like you were destined to run a hot air balloon business. Or be a pilot.”
Anakin blinks again. He feels as though he should be contributing more to this conversation—after all, half his job is ass-kissing tourists for the best tip at the end of the ride—but everything the man, Obi-Wan, feels like it flummoxes him. Gut punches that knock him out.
At least he has a very nice voice.
“I am a pilot,” he says.
Obi-Wan looks chagrined. “Yes, of course, my apologies. I didn't mean to imply hot air balloonmanship wasn't real piloting. I’m quite relieved you call yourself a pilot.”
“No, I mean. I’m an actual pilot. For an airline. I just take the summers off to work here for my mom. But I fly planes for a living.”
Obi-Wan blinks at him and then gives a very exaggerated shudder. “You’re a madman,” he tells him with a genuine tone.
There’s a grin tugging at the corner of Anakin’s mouth and he doesn’t know when that got there. Something about Obi-Wan is at the same time ridiculous and charming. Anakin is charmed.
By a man in a sweater vest, wearing two pairs of glasses.
“You do know what a hot air balloon does, right?” Anakin checks. “Like. It goes in the air.”
“Oh yes,” Obi-Wan says. “I prayed every night for the past month that it would rain today and you would have to cancel the ride.”
“This is a desert,” Anakin points out.
“Oh yes,” Obi-Wan says. “I believe it’s called divine intervention.”
“This isn’t some weird sort of self-punishment thing, is it?”
“No, of course not. There are other much more effective ways to do that. Ones closer to home well. In fact, a lovely little club called Gag Order is a frequent haunt of mi—“
“Please stop talking,” Anakin requests. He doesn’t need those mental images if he’s going to be ferrying Obi-Wan up into the sky in a small wicker box. No need to make the man even more uncomfortable than he already seems to be with a sudden and unignorable erection in the pilot’s pants.
Obi-Wan at least has the shame necessary to flush red in embarrassment. “Apologies,” he says. “I tend to talk when I’m nervous.”
“It’s um. Fine,” Anakin says. He rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed himself because he’s still thinking about the fucking. Gag Order club apparently wherever Obi-Wan lives. This man is very dangerous. He needs a distraction. “So, what brings you to Skywalker Balloon Emporium, Mr. I Hate To Fly?”
This feels like a very important question to ask. Anakin is terrified of the ocean and you don’t see him getting in a cage to swim with sharks.
“Well,” Obi-Wan says before pursing his lips and thinking for a moment. “I suppose I have a very long list of things I would like to do before I die. And hot air ballooning is on it. So is visiting the desert, so. Two birds, one stone. You understand.”
Anakin frowns and then squints at him. “Wait, are you dying?”
This grants him a warm smile. “No,” he replies. “I’m not. I’m just extremely punctual. But thank you for sounding a bit put out at the possibility, that’s very kind.”
Are they flirting? Is this flirting? Anakin actually doesn’t know. “Well, I gotta say, props to you for committing. You’d never see me in a cage.”
Obi-Wan blinks at him.
“I mean a chained-in cage,” Anakin adds even though that’s not what he’d meant to say at all. “I mean with sharks. Like. Underwater. Because I hate the ocean.”
Obi-Wan blinks at him again. “Don’t all pilots get training about what to do if the plane goes down in the ocean?”
“I think I’d just let the gods take me,” Anakin admits. “Rather than try to swim.”
“Can you swim?”
“Yeah. But like. In a pool. Ocean? I don’t know, never tried, never wanted to. I’m a desert boy through and through.”
Obi-Wan’s eyes trail over the lines of his shoulders and then down his slightly exposed chest. “I can see that.”
They’re definitely flirting. Anakin tries to keep the grin off his face.
“So the ride is about thirty minutes. Ahsoka, who you met inside, will be following along on the ground and then pick us up after we land. The balloon holds about 4 to 5 people max, but uh. You booked all the slots. Which you know.”
“Well, if I’m going to start crying in the middle of take off, I don’t want people around to see.”
Anakin purses his lips so he doesn’t smile. “I’ll close my eyes if you do,” he promises.
“That’s very sweet of you to offer, but as the pilot I would rather you did not do that.”
“There’ll be times in between the rides,” he warns him as if he hadn’t spoken at all. “Pick up, drop off, refueling. The balloon’s a bit small, so that’s mainly the reason for the short travel time. You won’t be spending the whole of your reservation up in the air.”
This is something he always has to stress to people, who apparently think that Anakin can magically fuel the balloon mid-flight, or that it really is just hot air that gets it to work. No.
“Thank goodness,” Obi-Wan says firmly, which. Alright. Isn’t surprising.
“I gotta ask,” Anakin says, “I understand if you hate flying but you’re doing it for some, like. Kick the Bucket List or something. But why are you making yourself go more than once in a single afternoon?”
“Oh, I doubt I will,” Obi-Wan replies. “I imagine as soon as you put me down on the ground, I won’t leave it again until my soul literally ascends.” He frowns. “Or I suppose descends, but that would be implying going into the ground. If one believes that Hell is somehow below, of course, but—”
“Obi-Wan.”
“Apologies,” the man flushes again.
“Nervous?”
“Doubly so.”
“Wait, doubly so?”
“An attractive pilot and imminent death by flying? This is much too much.”
Now it’s Anakin’s turn to blush. Customers have hit on him before in the past, and he’s always detested it, but. Well. It was never Obi-Wan doing so. Anakin likes it when Obi-Wan does it.
“Um. Thanks. But. What were you saying?”
Anakin hasn’t been so tongue-tied since he tried to ask Padmé Amidala to junior prom. She was a senior at the time, cheer captain and student council president, and she’d looked at him as if he’d proposed something ridiculous like marriage.
“Oh right! Apologies. Yes, I really do only intend to go the once.”
Anakin’s eyebrows furrow. “Wait, then why did you book out my afternoon?”
“Well,” Obi-Wan shrugs and tilts his head to look up at Anakin. “I factored in how long it would take you to convince me to actually climb aboard.”
Anakin throws his head back when he laughs.
He’s not laughing two hours later.
“I understand the concept,” Obi-Wan tells him. “And I am trying.”
The concept in question is putting his foot inside the basket.
Obi-Wan’s hands are white-knuckled on the side of the basket (this had taken a whole hour), and Anakin can practically see his pulse beating wildly in his neck. There’s sweat on his brow.
He is trying. It’s adorable and Anakin wants to coo and pet him and tell him he’ll be alright, that he won’t let anything bad happen to him. This is, of course, an incredibly inappropriate thing to feel for someone you met two hours ago, but Obi-Wan is ridiculous and ridiculously endearing.
“Okay, why don’t we try the other foot instead then?” Anakin asks.
“Obi-Wan, come on, these are perfect flying conditions.”
“I believe that is an oxymoron.”
“Would you rather me knock you out and then wake you up when we’re mid-flight? I could probably do it.”
Anakin doesn’t know if he could do it. Obi-Wan deserves to be cherished or some shit, not knocked around the back of the head.
Obi-Wan looks like he’s considering it for a second.
“Best not,” he decides. “Fight or flight would kick in, and neither option feels like a good choice when airborne.”
“Obi-Wan, get in the basket,” Anakin says in his firmest, most no-nonsense voice.
Obi-Wan blinks at him. “Anakin, you cannot dom me into conquering my fears.”
Anakin blanches. That hadn’t been what he wanted to do. Fuck. Shit. Now he’s thinking thoughts again and that is something he cannot be doing right now.
“I need to use the bathroom,” he blurts out. “Stay exactly where you are, we can’t afford any backsliding.”
“If I’m being honest, darling, I think my fingers have become glued to this siding. I can’t even feel them anymore.”
“Ineedtousethebathroom, berigghtback.”
Everything is ready to go. They could take off within minutes. If the passenger were inside the basket with Anakin, that is.
“Is it too late to ride with Ahsoka?” Obi-Wan asks. Ahsoka has been watching out the back window for the past three hours.
“Yes,” Anakin replies, making a mental note to force her to delete all the pictures he knows she’s taken. “Come on. Look, I got in, I showed you how. Nothing’s happened. It’ll be fine. I’m a great pilot.”
Once, his cat Artoo had hid under the refrigerator for a whole day. It had taken Anakin kneeling by his food bowl and pretending to eat the cat food (loudly saying, “Mm, yum, this is wonderful!”) for him to come out at all.
He feels like he’s doing much the same with Obi-Wan here and now.
“I understand,” Obi-Wan nods. “Very much so. You look like you’d be quite a wonderful ride.”
Anakin chokes and then starts coughing.
“As a pilot,” Obi-Wan hastens to add, his cheeks as red as the Skywalker hot air balloon.
For whatever reason, the blush or the phrasing or how many looks Anakin has caught him giving him since they met four hours ago now, Anakin blurts out, “Would it help if you could hold my hand?”
Obi-Wan blinks at him.
Anakin blinks back.
“Is…that an option?” Obi-Wan asks.
Anakin nods, trying not to seem too eager. He can do the pre-flight checklist stuff with one hand, especially if it means getting to hold Obi-Wan with the other. “Yeah,” he says. “Um. It can be.” He holds out his hand, stepping forward in the basket until his hand is a scant inch or so away from Obi-Wan’s.
Obi-Wan looks at the offering for a very long moment before he lets out an annoyed sigh and grabs at it. “Could you have been just a little less patient or kind?” he mutters as he allows Anakin to guide him through the opening of the basket. “Or just twenty percent less devastatingly attractive?”
Anakin trips over the damn coiled rope. “I would highly recommend you not saying those things when we’re in the air,” he tells him seriously even as he’s intertwining their fingers.
“I would highly recommend you mentally prepare yourself for the possibility that I will faint as soon as this deathtrap is a foot off the ground.”
Anakin fights the absurd urge to raise their hands to his mouth so he can kiss the back of Obi-Wan’s. “You’ll be fine,” he insists. “Come on, you can watch everything I’m doing.”
“Joy,” Obi-Wan mutters, but when Anakin turns to begin take off, Obi-Wan plasters himself to his back, fitting perfectly against him even though Anakin knows he must be standing on his toes in order to hook his chin over his shoulder.
“I promise the tip will be stellar,” he mutters against the edge of Anakin’s jaw.
Maybe it’s the sensation of Obi-Wan’s beard scraping his skin. Maybe Anakin is just a bit stupid when it comes to handsome men who check all of his boxes. Maybe Anakin is just a bit stupid. “Just the tip?” he asks.
Obi-Wan huffs and turns his face into his neck. When he next speaks, Anakin can feel his lips brush against his skin, which is somehow worse than the beard. “If I can’t say those types of things while you’re flying, you can’t either.”
“Apologies,” Anakin says, even though he’s never said "apologies" in his life. All of Obi-Wan, even his weird language quirks, is addicting. “You may wanna close your eyes.”
There’s enough air in the balloon. To be very honest, there’s been enough air in the balloon for ages now. He just needs to add the heat to encourage a lift.
“No,” Obi-Wan mumbles. “If I close my eyes, it doesn’t count.”
“You’re impossible,” Anakin marvels, even as he turns the knob to light the fire. “If you throw up, please get it over the side.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” Obi-Wan says. At the first jolt of the basket leaving the ground, he grips Anakin’s hand harder. He’s shaking, Anakin can feel it. “Do you get a lot of people who vomit mid-flight?”
“Mostly get a lot of marriage proposals,” Anakin replies, regretfully untangling himself so that he can walk the short distance to the other side of the basket and examine the controls there as well. Obi-Wan follows. His palm is sweaty. “Sometimes people who look like they really wish I wasn’t there so they could have sex.”
He hadn’t meant to say that.
“Have you ever gotten propositioned for a threesome?” Obi-Wan asks. His voice is high and thin and Anakin thinks that he’s going to come out of this with broken fingers and then how will he sleep with Obi-Wan?
“Uh,” he says. The answer is, of course, a couple of times. “Not seriously.” Probably not seriously at any rate.
“Hm,” Obi-Wan says like he doesn’t believe him. “I guess thirty minutes wouldn’t be enough time for me either. Not with you.”
“Obi-Wan!”
The bastard smiles. Anakin can feel it against his neck now. Out of all three sensations, it’s the most devastating one.
“Apologies,” the man says, but Anakin knows he’s lying. “I say things when I’m nervous.”
“Are you still nervous?”
“Oh, downright terrified.”
Anakin turns around, allows himself to look at the man. He’s still shaking slightly, pulse still hammering, sweat still beading at his temple. He’s so brave. He’s so brave.
“You’re so beautiful,” Anakin tells him. Obi-Wan blinks. “I meant brave,” Anakin tries to correct himself quickly. He rushes on before Obi-Wan can respond. “To do this, even though you’re afraid. I think that’s really brave of you.”
Obi-Wan’s cheeks are flushed. It’s a very nice look on him.
What’s not so nice is when he drops Anakin’s hand and takes off his sweater vest.
“That wasn’t an invitation to derobe!” Anakin cries, even though he wouldn’t actually complain about more than the logistics if Obi-Wan did decide to get naked right here and now.
“I know, I know,” Obi-Wan tells him. “I think I was overheating.”
“Oh,” Anakin says. He wonders if he sounds disappointed. “Well, you did wear a sweater vest to the desert.”
“It was armor,” Obi-Wan replies as if that makes any sense at all. He reaches back out and entangles their fingers together again. “Thank you,” he tells him softly. “You have been so patient with me and so very wonderful.”
Anakin fights the urge to shiver, a curl of arousal blooming to life inside his tummy. “Um. You’re welcome,” he says in lieu of Please keep saying nice stuff about me, I’m close.
“I can’t believe I’m flying,” Obi-Wan tells him, tugging him over to the edge of the basket so he can look out. Instinctively, Anakin boxes him in, presses up against him in a reverse of their previous position.
“And not crying,” he murmurs, nestling his chin on Obi-Wan’s shoulder.
“Now darling, if you want my tears, you’re going to have to work for them,” Obi-Wan replies.
Anakin groans and drops his head onto the fabric in front of him. “Baby,” he mutters, “you’re really fucking pushing me here.”
“Apologies,” Obi-Wan says, but it’s very breathy and Anakin doesn’t think it’s from fear. “And um. Do you think we could perhaps go stand in the middle of the basket again? I’ve noticed this basket could be quite easy to fall out of.”
It’s not. One would have to actively try in order to fall, but Anakin is feeling a little mean and a lot sexually frustrated, so he says, “What do you think the rope’s for?”
When Obi-Wan drops his hand to hit him in the chest, Anakin knows he deserves it.
“It really is quite beautiful,” Obi-Wan murmurs, sometime later. They’re hugging—vertically cuddling, really—in the very center of the basket. Or. Just to the left of the center. Open flame and all.
“The desert?” Anakin asks. His chin is resting Obi-Wan’s hair. He hasn’t really ever felt like this before. There’s something very fragile but very light blooming in his chest. Everything about Obi-Wan feels right, even his most annoying aspects. “Yeah. I guess.”
“You guess?” Obi-Wan sounds as if he’s offended on behalf of the desert, and it’s so endearing that Anakin is opening his mouth before he even knows what he’s going to say.
“Lived here most of my life,” Anakin replies. “Look, there, I used to call it Beggar’s Canyon. I don’t know the actual name though. I just thought one day I’d jump my bicycle over it. Mom almost broke my arm herself when she heard I was planning to.”
Obi-Wan’s laugh is beautiful. Anakin hasn’t ever heard anything more beautiful. “I can’t decide if you’re a terrible tour guide or a wonderful one. Tell me more. What’s that?”
He points to a rock formation they won’t fly over but they’ll pass by.
“That’s where all the best high school parties were held. Captain’s Caverns is what we called them, except they aren’t actual caves. But Captain like Morgan, the rum.”
“Yes, dear, I got that part.”
Anakin coughs. He likes being Obi-Wan’s dear. “I had my first kiss there,” he tells the top of Obi-Wan’s head. “Padmé Naberrie Amidala. Only because of Captain Morgan. I got sick all over her dress right after.”
“Ladykiller,” Obi-Wan says. His voice sounds affectionate. Or maybe Anakin is just hearing what he wants to hear. It’s happened before. “And that?”
He points to another rock formation. Anakin grins. “Oh, come on. That’s world famous. All the tourists come to see it.”
“Well, yes, I know,” Obi-Wan says. He gets grouchy so easily. This is a thing to be marvelled at, Anakin knows already, instinctively. “But I want to know what it is to you.”
Anakin’s mouth suddenly feels incredibly dry, but the honesty is pried out of him when Obi-Wan turns to look up at him curiously, blue-gray eyes open and wondering. “Hated it,” he tells him, even though he’s never really told anyone else this before. “Hated that people would come all this way just to look at it, when I—god, when I was a kid, I would have done anything to get out of here. And people just came here willingly? To see some rocks? And then they got to leave.”
Obi-Wan is quiet, thoughtful. “Is that why you became a pilot?” he asks, and Anakin grunts in agreement.
“Something like it, yeah. I’m never here anymore, not unless it’s the summer. I go everywhere else though. I visit other towns’ stupid monuments and I’m sure some kid thinks the same thing about me I used to think about them.”
There’s a burst of laughter. “Isn’t that the nature of humanity?” Obi-Wan says, and Anakin really wants to kiss him.
“Um. Where do you live?” he asks instead, and he’s trying not to sound desperate, but it’s hard. “I—what do you do? I mean. No offense or anything, but this thing is expensive for a person to do for an hour and you’ve been with me for almost five.”
Obi-Wan smiles slightly. There’s something haunted about it though. “It’s my father’s money,” he tells him. “He died a few months back. Too young, too soon, the usual complaints. But he left me all his money and told me to use it to do some of those things I always talked about.”
“Oh,” Anakin says. He squeezes Obi-Wan’s waist tighter. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” Obi-Wan replies, and he can tell he means it.
“So what do you do normally then?” Anakin asks and hopes he doesn’t sound like he’s as desperate for every scrap of information about Obi-Wan Kenobi as he actually is.
This time when Obi-Wan smiles, it’s bright and full of something like mischief. “You’ll actually never believe me,” he tells him.
“I will,” Anakin replies immediately. Is Obi-Wan a famous singer? An actor? A crime lord? A chef? A professor? A—
“I’m an oceanographer,” Obi-Wan tells him. “I live on the coast and I spend about half my time in labs and half my time underwater, in submarines.”
“Fuck off,” Anakin replies even more immediately than before. “No, you’re not.”
“I am,” Obi-Wan says. “I’ve a PhD and everything. I love the ocean.”
“You’re a madman,” Anakin tells him, recalling the same words Obi-Wan had said when they’d met. “Absolutely.”
Obi-Wan throws his head back and laughs, and Anakin watches hungrily.
After forty-five minutes, Ahsoka radios in. “Skyguy,” she says over the shitty connection, “put her down. Over.”
Anakin’s first instinct is to toss the radio overboard. Putting the balloon down means that Obi-Wan will leave, and Anakin is having quite a nice time talking to him and flirting with him and touching him with a level of casual intimacy that surprises him by how natural it feels.
Obi-Wan looks at him. He’s stopped shaking now, but their hands are still tangled together. There’s something unreadable in his eyes.
Without breaking eye contact, Anakin leans over to pick up the handheld. “Is no an option? Over.” he asks her.
Ahsoka sounds snippy. “Just ask him to dinner, for the love of god. We can’t handle a hostage situation right now. Imagine the bad press. Over.”
Now Anakin really wishes he had thrown the radio overboard. Obi-Wan has a hand pressed to his mouth, but Anakin can still see his smile.
“Fine, over.” Anakin snaps, hanging up the device and turning to face the man completely. “She was just joking. I’ll put us down right now. No trees to snag on or anything, that’s the best part of ballooning in the desert. Anywhere is a good place. Actually, I think ballooning in the desert is probably—hmmph.”
Obi-Wan has shut him up with a kiss. It takes a second for Anakin’s brain to fully comprehend what’s happening, but when it does, he gets with the program immediately, dropping his hand to curl both of his into Obi-Wan’s shirt and yanking him closer.
Their lips slot together easily, perfectly, and when Anakin moves to push him back against the side of the basket, Obi-Wan goes willingly. Maybe he’s one of those people where fear gets them off.
Anakin doesn’t mind if it’s true. He’s too busy licking at the seam of his mouth, begging entrance, and then when it’s granted, licking in , tasting Obi-Wan and sucking on his tongue when the man presses forward himself.
The radio connects again. “I see no drop in elevation, Skyguy!” Then, a few seconds of dead air later, "Over."
Anakin groans and it has everything and nothing to do with the way Obi-Wan has started pressing desperate, heated kisses against his throat, licking and then sucking at the flesh.
He separates himself, and it’s the hardest thing in the world. Obi-Wan looks both wind-swept and recently fucked, hair a mess from his hands and clothing rucked up. His cheeks are red, his lips swollen. From his eyes, Anakin knows he doesn’t look any different.
“So. Um.” He says. He doesn’t really know where to go from here except down, so that’s what he focuses on, lowering the heat and letting the hot air balloon sink lower and lower to the desert sand. “Um. Now that you’ve flown. What’s next on your list?”
Obi-Wan smiles. This one is different from all his other smiles. It’s really more of a smirk. There’s something very dangerous in it. “Dinner with a pilot, I hope,” he murmurs, coming forward and catching his hand to intertwine their fingers. “On me.”
“Dinner or the pilot?” Anakin asks.
It brings another laugh out of Obi-Wan, who raises their hands and kisses Anakin’s knuckles. Anakin is pretty sure that if he doesn’t stop doing that, they’re going to crash. “We’ll see.”
“And then after?” he has to ask. How long will Obi-Wan stick around? It’s a question that’s burning inside of him. It’s suddenly the only thing he wants to know.
“We’ll see,” Obi-Wan repeats. Anakin pouts. “Perhaps shark cage diving.”
This time when Anakin drops his hand so that he can hit Obi-Wan’s chest, he knows the man deserves it just as much as he had deserved Obi-Wan’s ire. He also knows that if the man were to ask, he’d drop everything to sink beneath those waves with him.
So long as they held hands the entire time, of course.
Fair’s fair, after all.