Chapter Text
The sun had cracked like a yolk on the endless horizon, and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s eyes were sore. He hadn’t slept last night, besides occasionally nodding. As a child he had tried to teach himself to sleep with his eyes open, but nobody had ever confirmed if he could do it. His back ached. With a cringe, he cracked his neck and stretched his legs straight. His feet poked out of the bottom of a woven blanket and he pointed his toes. Jostled by the sudden movement, Obi-Wan’s hardly read excuse – book – tumbled to the carpet with a thud. He sighed and smeared his hands across his face.
“Jesus Christ,” Obi-Wan muttered to himself, voice rough in a way that pleased him, but similarly reminded him of how tired he was. “Bed.”
Sometimes he spoke to himself just so he could hear his own voice. It always grounded him. Obi-Wan stood from his seat – a usually comfortable seat built into the bay window of his second-floor bedroom, but made uncomfortable by the longevity of his position there. Moving was like dislodging a statue and asking it to do a different pose. His knees creaked in a way that made him feel desperately old, despite being in his early twenties, and around him fell the ephemera of a night wasted to passion. Pen, notebook, tissues, a nondescript bottle.
For this was a passion that he had maintained for nearly ten years, though it had developed and progressed as such things often did. The passion was getting to an advanced stage, now, one heightened by the onslaught of a long summer which was due to be one of boredom and college-reading he still felt too smart to actually do.
Obi-Wan wrinkled his nose and toed a scrunched-up tissue out of the way with his foot; tugged his blanket over his shoulders and stumbled towards his bed. It was perfectly made, with a quilted throw that apparently someone who loved him greatly had made for him, and several throw pillows that were uncomfortable to lie upon. Still, he flopped upon the bed and lay on them. Burrowed into them and pulled the blanket over his shoulders and ignored the early morning chirps of waking birds.
Behind his eyelids he saw flashes of last night, like how one remembers a movie when most of it is spent falling asleep. It was like watching a TV screen in warm tones, blurred and pixelated by distance. There was no sound besides his own heartbeat, which mostly stayed steady except when it did not. Except when it raced and sat at the back of his tongue and in his wrists and neck and pulsing in the space between his legs.
Obi-Wan fell asleep.
The sun began its ascent.
There was no one to wake him the next day. No one to tell him good morning, and to made breakfast together. No one to demand he do some chores around the house if he was going to stay there for the summer. He was self-sufficient, as his father taught him to be at a young age.
Still, Obi-Wan slept until he heard the distant noise of music playing from outside. It woke him a little, but he rolled over and burrowed back under the sheets, easily drifting off. Until the clang of a metal tool hitting concrete echoed into his bedroom, and even then, he only grumbled and dozed back off.
It was when he heard the familiar, distinct rev of an engine that his eyes flew open. Sunlight was bright through his window, his heart skipped in his chest with excitement, and he sat up quickly. This ritual, one that he’d developed over the years – over a decade of development, to be more precise – was one that never failed to get him excited.
Obi-Wan rolled out of bed, toward his window again, and peered out it. His second story window overlooked the side of their neighbour’s house. He looked toward the front yard, where he knew the sounds to be coming from. Movement from the front had Obi-Wan turning back to his bedroom and hurrying to get dressed. He found a pair of shorts and a simple shirt, both unwrinkled and clean.
Should he bring something over? No, that was too forward. He’d only gotten back to town recently, and a first trip over with a gift was just unheard of.
Obi-Wan ran a hand through his long hair, detangling it with lazy fingers as he jogged downstairs. He’d make himself something quick to eat, maybe some caffeine, then go see…
There was a window above the sink in the kitchen, on the same side of the house as his bedroom window. Only this one was closer to the front of the house. Obi-Wan’s head emptied of all thoughts as he finally caught glimpse of who was making all the noise.
His neighbour was outside in his driveway, garage door wide open, tanned skin on full display. His hair was bronze curls, all browns and golds and threaded silver – Obi-Wan couldn’t see the silver from where he stood, but he innately knew they were there. Anakin was already glistening, for he’d been outside working all morning and it was mid-afternoon already.
Obi-Wan watched as Anakin flexed his arm, twisting something inside the engine of a car he was elbow deep in.
“Oh god,” Obi-Wan muttered to himself, standing at the sink, obviously staring.
Except, Anakin didn’t look up. He was so deep into his work that he didn’t feel eyes on him. He was always like this during the day.
Anakin ran some sort of mechanic business out of his garage. Obi-Wan never could get the details out of anyone, but in the end the only thing that mattered was that Anakin worked up a sweat in his garage for Obi-Wan to watch all day.
Obi-Wan worked on autopilot to fix himself some sort of caffeinated drink. Anakin wiped his brow with the back of his hand, his eyebrows furrowed together in concentration.
It was hard to look away from him, and Obi-Wan didn’t until the coffee machine gurgled and hissed and steamed his fingers pink. He yanked his hand away, the mug skittering aside and leaving an oil slick across the pale marble countertops.
“Shit,” Obi-Wan hissed, shaking his hand out and snatching a tee towel from the side to sop up the coffee before it stained.
It burnt his fingers a little as he pushed the milk-stained coffee towards the sink and mopped and scrubbed at it until it was clean. He glanced around and felt the cool sweat of guilt at the back of his neck – though since beginning HRT Obi-Wan found he sweat at literally everything and anything – at the thought of being caught ruining the countertops.
But no-one else was home; he likely wouldn’t see his dad until later.
Obi-Wan looked back towards the window. His neighbour had vanished. Obi-Wan bit his lip and leant over the sink, grabbing the edge of the windowsill for balance, he peered up and down through the glass, his nose pressing against it and leaving a faint smudge. Anakin must have disappeared back into the garage as Obi-Wan was cleaning his coffee.
He sighed and stood up straight once more. There was a little coffee stain on his clean shirt.
“Fuck sake,” he muttered to himself, plucking it away from his skin because suddenly the sensation was unpleasant with nothing to sake it.
Without his neighbour to watch, Obi-Wan successfully made himself another coffee. The milk frothed in large, foamy bubbles. Obi-Wan tucked his spoon into the side and filtered a stream of brown sugar down the side so not to disturb the foam, then he licked the spoon and tossed it with a clang into the sink.
He was a little hungry, but he didn’t want to smell of eggs when he went to speak to Anakin for the first time since he’d returned home, so he picked up two cereal bars and opened the packets with his teeth. Dunked the chocolate-oats in his coffee and wandered the long hallway to the front door, his bare feet tacky against the dark wooden floor.
Obi-Wan didn’t have any particular plans that day – maybe he would do some laundry, he would read love poems and highlight lines that reminded him of the feelings he got in his gut around Anakin – but mostly he planned to spend them leaning against the fence and bothering his neighbour.
Obi-Wan wasn’t unrealistic; he knew that even if eventually Anakin looked at him with even a shade of the affection and admiration that Obi-Wan had for him, things didn’t immediately work out like that. When they’d first met Obi-Wan had been thirteen years old and gender dysphoric to his very bones; whilst Anakin had been perfectly formed and alluringly adult. Obi-Wan hoped that Anakin didn’t even remember him; it would make his plan of wooing him easier, for Obi-Wan was entirely himself now – or almost, getting there, a work in progress – but he knew exactly what he wanted.
Taking a bite out of his cereal bar, Obi-Wan put his coffee down on the teak credenza and peered down at himself in assessment.
He huffed, tugged his shirt over his head and stormed up the staircase. His door creaked as he threw it open and sloughed through his drawers for something equally effortless. Everything seemed to be in the wash. Obi-Wan huffed. Went to his cupboard and pulled out a short-sleeved button up in a dark green. He pulled it on and wandered to his bay window, sinking a knee onto the cushion and peering out once more at the drive.
Anakin had returned.
Obi-Wan sunk the rest of the way onto the window seat and watched.
Anakin was bobbing his head to the music playing over his radio, which made Obi-Wan sigh in adoration. The music was mostly indistinguishable from his spot inside, and he realised that, instead of concocting some plan to go straight up to Anakin, he had an actual excuse to be outside.
His mess with the coffee suddenly felt inspired. Obi-Wan, with more relish than it warranted, went to go do a load of laundry. He grabbed the least embarrassing clothes – mostly just shirts – and threw them in the wash downstairs. To speed up the process, he put it on rapid cycle and went back to his post to watch Anakin, who was working on the car he’d been fixing earlier. God, he wished Anakin would take off his shirt, but he didn’t mind watching him sweat through it, either.
The washer beeped sometime later, just as Obi-Wan was admiring Anakin’s backside. He jumped, then scrambled to go to the laundry room to grab a basket, his wet clothes, and the clothespins. It was a good excuse, no, a great excuse to be outside. To hang his clothes to dry. And while the lines were in the back, they were close enough to the low wall that he could see Anakin, and that Anakin would (hopefully) see him too.
Obi-Wan very calmly and very collectedly strolled out back. He started with the side that blocked his view from Anakin, in case he got too distracted and didn’t end up hanging anything to dry and then his clothes would get all musty in the pile and he’d have to rewash them.
He’d just gotten in view of Anakin, hanging up a blue striped shirt, when Anakin’s head lifted up towards him. Obi-Wan knew Anakin hadn’t been staring (Obi-Wan had been the one hyperaware of Anakin’s every move), but he must have noticed the brightly coloured clothes he was hanging out.
There was a gentle, warm wind, that felt a little like being trapped in an oven, but perhaps that was due to how hot Obi-Wan’s body suddenly felt under Anakin’s gaze.
Under normal circumstances, maybe he would have been offended that no recognition flashed across Anakin’s face, but Obi-Wan only felt relief. In a neighbourly fashion, Anakin lifted a hand in a wave. Obi-Wan’s heart gave a traitorous, hard lurch in his chest before a calmness settled over him.
Obi-Wan smiled, forgot all about his laundry, and walked up to the short fence separating their yards.
“Hi neighbour,” Obi-Wan greeted.
“Hey,” Anakin said right back, automatically. He began to turn back to his work, so Obi-Wan moved closer along the fence.
“I like your music,” Obi-Wan pressed. Anakin looked back to him – really focused on him this time – and Obi-Wan felt like he might melt into a puddle. His eyes were so blue. So blue. Bluer than he remembered.
“Oh shit, is it too loud?” Anakin sounded genuinely worried, brows furrowing.
“No, no, I really do like it,” Obi-Wan laughed softly as he tried to reassure him. “It’s not too loud.”
Anakin looked at him for a moment more before he turned back to his car, but that singular moment felt like forever. Obi-Wan could almost feel the marks Anakin’s gaze had made in him. He wondered if Anakin liked what he saw as much as Obi-Wan did, though of course this was only hopeful. These things took time, Obi-Wan understood that.
He licked his lips and leant further into the fence, chin resting on forearms.
“What’cha doing?” Obi-Wan asked as Anakin sat on one of those wooden trolleys with wheels.
A glance. Like he was surprised Obi-Wan was still there. “This car belongs to a very wealthy man,” Anakin told him and began to root around in a toolbox on the floor beside him. “He’s had it his whole life and now something in it is rattling.”
“My dad’s car used to make a thunking sound when he turned right,” Obi-Wan said, but didn’t know why he said it. “Is that what you do? Fix rattles?”
Anakin looked up at him once more and a smile tugged the corner of his mouth. “I’ll do anything for a cost,” he said. “And this is the sort of man that thinks a pint of milk costs ten dollars.”
Then Anakin gave him one more neighbourly wave and disappeared under the body of the car. It was a huge, austere thing with sparkling jade paint and tan leather seats. Obi-Wan waited for him to re-emerge. He was patient, practiced; he waited as one might wait for someone to surface at a pool after a dive. He looked at Anakin’s feet in dusty leather work boots - the toe of the boot worn to steel, the laces a little chewed looking - and listened to the sound of him removing expensive car guts. Chink, shhhk, clink.
He looked at Anakin’s legs, what he could see of them. One was bent at the knee and swayed to and fro as he moved beneath the car whilst the other one was splayed open, his toe on the ground moving the trolley ever so slightly when he needed it. He was wearing shorts that were ripped at the knees and Obi-Wan looked at the muscles of his calves appreciatively. He thought of running his tongue up the length of them. He wanted to see Anakin’s leg hair damp with his spit.
He blinked.
Obi-Wan had no idea what time it was. It suddenly felt late.
From the corner of his eye, he saw his laundry floating in the wind, the low sun filtering through a bedsheet, his shirts.
“You must be hot working out here all day,” Obi-Wan blurted, because Anakin hadn’t emerged and suddenly that felt desperate and awful. He leaned further into the fence and waited expectantly.
The wheels squeaked as the trolley rolled out from under the jacked-up car.
“It’s summer,” said the older man, squinting at him through the sun and the sweat in his eyes. “It’s hotter than the devil’s asshole out here, man.”
Obi-Wan felt a shudder run over his frame. The deeper thrill of rightness in being called man, and then, more potently, Anakin’s language. His crassness in the presence of a relative stranger.
“Could I get you a water?” Obi-Wan asked. “We have ice.”
Anakin looked him with that same gaze that had been on his face since Obi-Wan had hung around past the basic neighbourly greetings.
“I’m alright, kid,” he said before disappearing under the car once more.
That was rejection if Obi-Wan had ever heard it. Kid. He bristled and grumbled, turned on his toe and huffily went back to hanging his laundry, which felt nowhere near as dreamy and romantic as it had when he had thought of the idea. No, it just felt like chores now that Anakin had turned his back on him. Obi-Wan pinned a sheet in place, a pair of shorts. Then he placed his hands on the line and swung forwards on it, hearing the tension pull as he peered into his neighbour’s front yard. The sunlight shone across the paintwork of the hulking green car.
Obi-Wan rolled his eyes and went inside.
In the grand scheme of things, it was only a minor setback. One that was more annoying than anything else, and one that Obi-Wan forgave Anakin for after an hour of contemplating his life. Because, really, what did he expect? Anakin didn’t remember him – thank god, or else he’d remember braces and long, long hair and awkward gangly limbs – and everyone was a kid to the eyes of someone as old as Anakin.
He had so many more grey hairs than the last time Obi-Wan saw him in person. Obi-Wan smiled to himself a little and pushed himself out of his depression chair to go about what was left of his day. He was more of a night owl when he was at home, so the daylight hours were already on their final count down, but he grabbed his book to actually read this time, plopped down next to a window downstairs that would give him a good view of the front yard if he wanted to look and read.
He read until it was dark, and then he read until he heard the music next door shut off. Obi-Wan got up, began turning on light switches throughout the house, all the way to the kitchen where he began making himself an easy meal.
Obi-Wan was alone still, as he would be until his dad had any free time to come back home from work. This summer Obi-Wan was basically a glorified house sitter, which was fine by him. Quietly, he hummed to himself as he made spaghetti from a box and used jarred sauce. When he went to drain his pot of water at the sink, he glanced out the window. Anakin still had the notorious habit of not closing his curtains, which was probably what started all of this so many years ago.
Anakin stood in his own kitchen, at his microwave, looking into his own house, at the television that faced the kitchen. He was probably heating up leftovers for dinner, which made Obi-Wan a little sad, because he knew he could make Anakin something much better to eat. It definitely wouldn’t be lazy spaghetti like he was making now. Obi-Wan would put in effort because he’d have someone to impress.
He dumped his drained pasta noodles into the sauce, already warmed up in a pot on the stovetop. Obi-Wan ate straight out of the pot to save time, right next to the sink, as he watched the television in Anakin’s house while they both ate dinner together. It was either this, or have dinner alone, and Obi-Wan preferred to have a pseudo-dinner together, with Anakin.
Once they were finished, Obi-Wan washed up his dishes wearing yellow marigolds, whilst Anakin dumped his Tupperware in the sink and retired to the couch. They went their separate ways, Obi-Wan clicking off all the downstairs lights and locking the door before he ascended the stairs to his bedroom.
He didn’t let himself look out of his window until he was entirely ready for bed – teeth brushed, hair combed, pyjama pants on – and even then, he only gave a precursory glance. Checking in. Anakin was still on the sofa, the light of the television the only light in the house, casting him in a flashing, ever-changing light. He was wearing black boxers and a t-shirt that Obi-Wan could see had some holes along the hem, his feet were bare, and he appeared to be dozing.
Obi-Wan tutted, hand pressed for a moment to the glass.
Then he pulled the curtains shut – almost shut, though he could still see the occasional light from Anakin’s television through the darkness of the suburban street – and settled into bed to finish off the reading he’d begun earlier in the day.
He marked a quote with pencil: ‘Oh that I might press my lips to yours, and drink in the cool swell of your passion’.
He slept.