Notes: I really think "challenge fic" should be a category -- if not on MA, then here and on LiveJournal. There's a community on LJ that issues a challenge every week, either a situation or a first line or a hook of some kind, and a time limit. This ficlet comes from a challenge that starts with the first line "Even watching him feels like being a voyeur", and I think the time limit was 60 minutes.
Notes part 2: This didn't happen. Lost fic! As you can see, we went in a completely different direction for Obi and Xan's encounter in the club, and Bail's reaction to it.
(Bail)
Even watching him feels like being a voyeur. But that's what I'm here for, isn't it? That's why I come to these clubs in the first place. I should know better than to go to the back rooms myself -- I'm a voyeur here, yes, but I should know better than to go back and watch what he's going to do.
But I have to watch. I have to know. I have to let this hurt me, so I can remember not to trust him, so I can remember never to let my guard down with him again.
He's absolutely beautiful. He moves with liquid grace. He dances as if he knows all the things he can do with his body, all the ways to make it move, as if every muscle is under his control at all times.
Have I ever seen him out of control?
I remember the first time I saw him... I was sitting at the bar, as I always did, watching the flashing lights and the colors and fending off the not-so-occasional people who wanted to buy me a drink. He was walking into the back room, tugging a very happy-looking man with a shaved head and a goatee along with him. I didn't see him for another ten minutes, and when he came back, the look on his face was hungrier than when he'd left.
I stared. Gods help me, I stared.
I wanted to walk onto the dance floor and curl my arms around him, feel him against me. I wanted to pull him back into that back room, rest my back against the wall and watch him get to his knees and suck me off.
And I wondered: How long can I keep watching him this way? How long can I keep myself apart from him, apart from this roiling, undulating crowd? How long can I stay detached and anonymous? How long can I watch without moving in to touch?
It wasn't long enough. I knew this wasn't going to lead anywhere I should be going, and I was going to find myself in trouble. But I wanted him. I still want him. I can't seem to help wanting him.
I came back every time I had a free evening on Coruscant. I sat at the bar, in the darkest corner, and I looked for him. He wasn't always there, either, and on nights when he didn't show up, I left immediately.
I knew what he was almost right away, though I didn't know who. I didn't want to know who. I knew he was a Jedi. I remember the flash of anger I felt when I first saw that braid hanging down his chest. I felt angry and betrayed and horrified, and defeated. It didn't matter that he was Jedi. I was going to keep coming back, and I knew it.
I've seen people walk up to him and kneel, not out of the desire to suck him into their mouths and get him off, but out of the desire to thank him. They bow and scrape because they worship the Jedi. It was hard to watch, knowing what that kind of hero-worship once did to me. What I let it do to me.
The first night we met, I went home and sat on the balcony for an hour, watching the cars go by, searching for my future in the sky. Sometimes I hate Coruscant for its lights and flashing movement. You can never see the stars here. It's too bright; the atmosphere reflects all the light from below and the stars can never shine through.
I didn't want to see the stars that night, though. I just wanted to look up and lose myself in the movements.
I didn't know that was going to be the night I couldn't turn away from him. He was beautiful, though. His eyes were rimmed with black, and I wanted to see them looking at me. I stared. I was not subtle. I watched him and could not make myself look away.
I knew he was going to approach me. He'd been looking at me, too, and I didn't think he was going to just walk away, not the way he'd been glancing back when he thought I wasn't looking. I was always looking.
He finally approached me, and before I knew what I was saying I had him out of the club and into the night air. I had him to myself in a different club, where we talked, and shot pool, and acted as if we weren't just taking each other's measure to see what was going to happen next.
I want you. Oh, gods, I want you. I wanted to say it then, but I knew better. He has too many people who want him already, too many people who go back to the back rooms with him in those clubs because they can't resist him. I wanted to be someone else; someone who resisted, someone who could walk away. It was my only chance, really; I know what it's like to be spellbound. I know what it's like to lose all sense of control. I can't do that again. Not even for a night. Not even for someone I've watched and wanted for as long as I've watched and wanted him.
When he kissed me, I thought I was going to come in my pants. I'd waited so long to have him pressed up against me... but then he started reaching under my jacket, and I realized that he wanted to fuck me. He just wanted to fuck me. That was all.
I didn't want that. Still don't want that. I don't know what I want, but that isn't it. So I left. Left without telling him if or when I'd see him again. Left thinking that maybe I could never see him again, that maybe I could be all right with that.
And then my steps brought me back to Rising, brought me back to see him again. I should have known I'd be back. I want too much from him, I want too much now, and I can't walk away.
He wasn't in the back room this time, though he probably should have been. He was pressed up against a pillar, eyes closed, mouth hanging open in ecstasy, as a man with striped skin drilled into him. Slowly. The rest of the room disappeared for me. I could only see him. I could only hear him. I could hear his pants, his pleas, the way he bit back curses, the way he held tight when his orgasm should have been imminent.
Look at me, Ben. Damn you, look at me.
His eyes blinked open, and I know he saw me. I tipped my glass to him.
This is what he does, Organa. This is all he is. You can't change it, and it doesn't matter what happens in the future: you will never change it. He needs this. He needs this more than he will ever need anyone like you.
His eyes closed again as the striped man slammed into him, head thrown back and screaming out his orgasm. I disappeared.
I did not intend to go back. But there I was again, waiting.
He'd almost gone off with a blue-haired man, and then... then he saw me, and his eyes snapped to mine as if I were the only person in the room. I saw him stop in his tracks and whisper something to the blue-haired man. The blue-haired man got very angry, but Ben didn't notice, didn't seem to care.
Were either of us pretending at all, that night? Did we have any games we wanted to play with each other? What was happening to us?
It was dinner, conversation. It was a date. It was... good. Damn it, it was too good, too good to stop, too good for words. And every time I found myself shutting down, or watched him shutting down, I realized that we were both caught up in something neither of us could stop. Not yet. Not until we found out where it was going.
And I broke oaths that night. I broke promises. I was...
I was afraid he was going to leave. I was afraid I wasn't going to see him again.
I reached out for him, and he let me, holding tight to me as if he didn't want to be let go, as if he'd fall without my arms around him. Kissing him was so good I nearly begged him to come home with me, nearly lost my grip on everything and begged.
But it was still a fuck to him. Still a fuck. And I did not want to be in that oh-so-unselect group. I wanted to be different. To be special. I wanted to leave him as spellbound as he leaves me.
I couldn't let him leave without knowing when I'd see him again. I couldn't let him go.
I didn't know if he was going to show up in five weeks, but I knew I was going to be here, waiting to find out.
I don't know what happened to us. Seven hells! I don't know what's going on now, I don't know what I just did, I don't know...
I streak my hair a shocking shade of violet, knowing I can fix it in the morning. Outline my eyes with black, making them darker than usual.
I dress in a tight black shirt and violet leather pants, the kind of outfit my father would be horrified to think I own.
And I go out.
He doesn't recognize me. I don't want anyone to recognize me. I want to watch him, want to know what he'll do now, what last night meant to him if he's here again now, ready to hunt and be hunted.
A beautiful man with dark hair approaches him. He might have some kind of mark on his cheek -- I couldn't tell, and the light in here is so hard to follow. I look at Ben's eyes, the almost furious need in them, and I know before he does.
I make my way toward the back room so I can watch them together. I know I shouldn't, know I should leave before I see what happens. I also know I can't, that I won't. If he's going to do this, I want to watch him. I want to watch him throw away everything last night meant to him, to either of us.
Ben is coming now, coming on the floor in front of him with that dark-haired man's hand wrapped around his cock. I shouldn't care. I should never have let him get this close to me, close enough that I care who he's fucking.
Gods, it hurts. And it is all my fault. I should never have started watching him.
What in the seven hells am I going to do now?
FIN