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It was one of those things. Something you do to help quiet the voices in your head, to collect your thoughts into one big bundle instead of scattered scribbles on the pages of your mind. It was calming. It was your way of coping. It was writing.
When everything became too much, you knew the one thing that would always help is to write things down. With a pen or a pencil in your hand, the world goes quiet. It was also a way to express your secrets without ever really telling anybody— secrets you kept for the very reason that if anyone found out, you would be in deep waters. Why? Because you’re in love with a Jedi. And you have no idea what to do about it.
You’ve been friends with Obi-Wan ever since you were knighted a Jedi alongside him, and although you two were on less and less missions together as the years passed, your feelings for him never faulted. Whenever he greeted you with a toothy smile or ran a hand through his hair or looked at you with those dazzling blue eyes, you felt every sort of butterfly erupt in your stomach; completely head-over-heels for a man who could never love you back, or love at all for that matter.
So, writing was the best option for you. It was that or harboring your entire existence around him, which was almost becoming the norm for you with how much you think about him. But no more. To get the thoughts out of your head, you know you need to put them to paper. Then you can scrunch it up into a little ball and burn it and hope for the best.
However, the hopeful moment was split in two when a finger tapped your shoulder and you flinched; turning around in your chair quickly to see those beautiful, sparkling cerulean eyes that you were all too familiar with— the very pair that made you melt down into a puddle, feeling all gooey inside— so you can’t help but instantly relax at noticing that it’s him and smiling like, what you are sure looks to be, a complete and utter goofball.
“Hi, darling,” he smiles, a soft chuckle flowing past his lips as he settles himself into the chair beside you— and you feel as if your smile has grown even wider with just those two words and the very way he said them— “do you mind if I sit here for a while? I’m on the run at the moment.”
“On the run?” You laugh and he leans in close to shush you.
“Yes, from Madame Kandria. I’ve become her errand boy for the day and I have had it. I need a break.”
You nod at him, placing your chin in your palm, “Hmm, very good choice then here, the library.”
“It was the most obvious choice, yes—” he nudges your arm— “besides, when I saw you sitting here all by yourself, I had to join you.” He smiles brightly, as if he should be receiving a golden sticker on his robes for such a charming compliment, “What are you writing?”
“Just thoughts,” you offer, sliding him a piece of paper you had been scribbling at for the past few minutes, fortunately nothing about him… yet.
He takes the paper with gentleness; using one finger to spin it to face himself and taking his time to read each word with the utmost attentiveness— you almost scoff at how he looks, all he needs is a pair of reading glasses and the picture would be set; something adorable to frame inside your mind, as opposed to all the other moments you’ve captured that now reside where you can always look at them. After a moment, Obi-Wan hums and flashes you another, but quick, dazzling smile.
“You have a way with words,” he says and you drag the paper back to you, rolling your eyes and shaking your head as if it were a twitch, but Obi-Wan is quick to reach for the paper; placing his hand on top of yours, “I mean it!”
“Thank you.” You nod at him, focusing much more on the feeling of his soft but calloused hand rather than his sincere words.
“When are you going to write me something?” He asks suddenly, and you’re looking at him with such genuine surprise that he chuckles, “I’m asking.”
“You’re asking?”
He makes such an adorable sound when he nods at you that you almost cave and tell him well, I have written about you before, plenty of times, so take your pick! but just as his tap on the shoulder to you interrupted your thoughts before, so does the shout of his name from the doorway does now; Obi-Wan springing up, his hand squeezing yours, and stammering out a, “M-Madame Kandria!”
She looks furious, the poor woman; standing with her back so straight that she might as well have been a statue, the lines under her eyes showing more than just age but stress too, “I’ve been calling for you.”
“My apologies, I was helping my frien—”
“Come with me.”
She doesn’t say another word, just simply spins on her heel and walks right back out of the door. Obi-Wan turns around to you with a mocking yet tired smile on his face and you’re about to burst into laughter right then and there with how much annoyance you can feel seeping from him, until he leans over to press a kiss to your forehead, his hand that was on yours now at the back of your head to move you toward him gently, and then he’s dashing out of the room to follow Kandria before she can shout at him again.
And you sit there. And you blink. And you write.
─────── ⋯ ───────
Obi-Wan rarely sees you that week, with him at Madame Kandria’s beck-and-call and you with your duties around the temple, that whenever you two do happen to see each other, it’s when you’re leaving the library and he’s entering it. He keeps trying, however, to time those quick encounters better so that he can actually talk to you but it turns out that when he tries, he ends up missing you altogether. Like now, with him finding the only evidence that you were even in the library to begin with being the papers scattered on one of the desks.
It brings a soft smile to his face, though, to see all the mess you’ve left behind— you have always been a bit of a scattered bookworm and besides, this gives him the best excuse to find you and return these as if he hasn’t been chasing you around the Jedi Temple for days. As he goes to collect them all, he can’t help but skim his eyes down the pages and read what he can, because he doesn’t want to pry, really he doesn’t, but he has always hoped that you would write about him one of these days, even if it were to make fun of him or—
Soft, cerulean eyes and auburn hair. He’s beautiful without realizing it.
Was that… his eyes that you had written about? His hair? Do you think that he’s… beautiful? Now he can’t help the jolt of curiosity that suddenly rushes through him, and he sits down on the chair to properly read what’s on the page.
Write about me, he says. As if I haven’t done so a hundred times before. A letter to you, then. I’m consumed by you. You touch my hand and I light up. You kiss my forehead and I melt. I doubt you even know how I feel about you. Sometimes I think that you may feel the same. I wish you had kissed me on the lips instead.
Obi-Wan’s whole world has been turned upside down. The words he’s read are swirling around in his head, spinning faster and faster like a tide-pool, until he feels as if he’s going to topple over. All these years… all this time when he thought he was chasing daydreams, and you’ve felt the same way. Why couldn’t you be here? Why can’t you be next to him so that he can pull you to him and kiss you like you had wished that he would? How could he even tell you that he’s loved you ever since you were young? If only he had an outlet like you, where he could express himself and confess to his feelings— wait.
He looks down at the paper, and he looks at all the others, and he finds one that’s barely been written on. And he grabs the pencil you had left on the table. And he writes.
─────── ⋯ ───────
You turn around the corner with a smile on your face, looking as positively cheerful as you can muster, before noticing that the desk is empty and you’ve missed Obi-Wan in the library again, and the smile wipes itself off of your face almost about as fast as Obi-Wan had ran out of the library at the start of the week. It was becoming increasingly tiresome to constantly miss Obi-Wan by a couple of minutes or only see him down the hallway when you’re heading in the opposite direction. You just wanted to talk to him. Aside from writing, he was the only other thing— the only other person— that helped you relax. And the very fact that the last exchange between the two of you was him kissing your forehead is about driving you mad. That spot has been burning ever since and you’ve found yourself swiping your fingers along it without prompt on more than one occasion.
You need to write. You need to get these thoughts out of you before you bubble over, or boil over for that matter (it does seem the most appropriate with everything that’s been going on.) With you is your stack of papers, all crumpled up between each other; the ones that were left by your door by who you’re sure was Obi-Wan. You hadn’t meant to leave a mess behind you in the library that day but you were in a hurry, and you’re thankful that no one else found them… like Master Mace Windu. You shiver just at the thought of him reading anything of yours. What if he read something private? Like the one time you wrote in agonizing detail the embarrassing encounter you had with the Gungans who had been invited to one Senate meeting and you had… no, that’s better left unsaid.
Flicking through your papers, you look for a spare one that you can write on, but you don’t seem to find any empty space, which is odd seeing as you always make sure you have at least one blank piece of paper with you. There’s your diary entry of sorts about yesterday, the messy notes you took in the meeting which was only supposed to be quick but it went on for much longer than that, the dream you had, the note you had written about Obi-Wan— maker, what if he had seen that?— and the paper about someone’s eyes. Wait. You don’t remember writing that. Wait. That isn’t your handwriting.
The most beautiful eyes I’ve ever gazed into. You’re beautiful in everything you do and you don’t seem to realize it.
You re-read those words as if your life depends on them. One more time. Two more times. It sounds just like what you wrote about Obi-Wan the other day, and you quickly flick through to compare the two letters. It’s as if someone has replied to what you wrote. And when this thought registers in your mind, you read the rest of it.
I’ve never been too good at words like you are, as much as you may think that I am. Instead I will list all the ways that I love you. In the way I touch your hand, in the way I kiss your forehead, in the way I smile when we talk. I love you in every way that I can. I wish I had kissed your lips as well.
It’s as if someone just drove their hand deep into your chest and gave your heart a handshake. There’s no feeling in your fingertips for a moment as you sit there and hold the letter, glance at the words, and fight the urge to scream— because if what you read wasn’t any indication on who wrote this, then it was the scribbled ‘sincerely, the errand boy’ on the bottom of the page that gave it away. It was Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan wrote you this letter. Obi-Wan read the letter you had written him. And Obi-Wan told you that he loves you.
Now you really do bubble over (and, yes, this is the most appropriate with the excitement you feel) at the thought of Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Jedi knight, the boy, you had fallen in love with all those years ago who loves you back. It seems too good to be true, as if you’re going to smile so wide that you’ll wake yourself up from this dream and go back to only ever being able to love him in words. But the weight of everything sinks in when you flip the page over and read ‘I’m in the training room’, and you leap out of the chair like you’ve never moved so fast before— taking care to not leave anything behind this time— and practically run to the training room. He needn’t have to tell you which one; you can feel him as you get closer— he’s nervous.
When you step through the doorway, Obi-Wan is sitting at the other end of the room and he stands almost as fast as you had done only minutes before in the library. There’s a moment where neither of you two move, where the air goes quiet and you can only hear the hammering of your heart, and then in a soft, whispered press of the Force to your mind you hear him speak, ‘you’re here’ and you nod at him, a smile forming at the corner of your mouth, and speak aloud, “I’m here.”
He takes the first step toward you, then you take one, then he takes two more, and so you two play this game of who will reach the other first. As you near him, you can see the way he fiddles with his hands. Chuckling, you reach out to him, your hand gently brushing along the top of his until you can feel him relax under your touch, and you both have stepped so close that you’re breathing the same air together, and he takes one more tentative step to gently rest his forehead on yours. You close your eyes and you breathe this moment in; you let yourself remember what this smells like, you let yourself cherish the quiet that you spend with him like this.
And then ever so quietly, with the sweetest tone of his voice, he speaks, “Can I kiss you this time?”