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As a university professor, Obi-Wan was very particular about his beauty sleep. He had to make time for such nice things, and he did. He had his whole life figured out, a nice routine. It was a comfortable life, and he liked it like that. Being single in his mid-thirties, though, meant the rest of the faculty constantly trying to set him up. He had to fend off such attacks weekly, but it was fine.
He loved teaching, he loved his specialization, had a new textbook in works, he loved his students too.
There was nothing he could complain about—still, he did that sometimes, just for the fun of it. Nothing better than a little complaining session with good tea and Padmé, his sister-in-law.
A new semester had started a couple of weeks ago. A colleague of his had left for maternity leave and so Obi-Wan had offered to cover some of her classes. On top of his own, it left him with a lot of work, but he didn’t mind all that much. His own lectures had been scheduled for early morning. That, he wasn’t the most excited about.
He did sort of hate it, something that had never left him from the years of his own studies. As long as he maintained a good enough sleeping schedule, though, he should be fine.
The thing was, Obi-Wan really needed all that beauty sleep. He never liked the taste of coffee and he preferred to rest fully. Sometimes he did a light meditation before going to sleep. And usually, that was enough, not only to keep him energized but also to make his skin glow, his hair shine.
A well-rested Obi-Wan felt great. Felt amazing.
Until a new neighbor moved into their apartment building, right next door, and ruined his perfectly nice mornings for him.
.
The first morning it had happened, Obi-Wan hadn’t thought too much of it. He had been busy at the university, but he had seen the notice and had expected some noise.
It continued throughout most of the week. Which made sense. All that moving, your whole life in a new place… he could sympathize.
He didn’t have anything after his morning lectures that lasted till noon. After a quick lunch, he could go and offer his help to his new neighbor, whoever they were. Introduce himself as well and all that. The flat next to his had been empty for a couple of weeks, it would be nice to have a new person around.
Nothing too demanding, he had enough of socializing at work, but having a new person around, to greet, have a short chat by the elevator, recommend the best restaurants around, that was a nice addition to his days and he sort of looked forward to it.
But when Obi-Wan got there, he couldn’t see any empty boxes, no moving trucks either. Confused, he went back home, the door a further down the hall. He had left work early, but oh well, at least he could get ahead on his planning. He wanted to come up with some activities he could sprinkle in between his monologuing during the morning lectures. To lighten it up a bit. He could still recall just how tired he used to be during his morning lectures when he was still the student and how boring they were, how they dragged on forever—no matter the topic.
His neighbor was done moving in, so it seemed, and yet the loud noises in the mornings persisted.
Maybe they were renovating, he reasoned but already knew that wasn’t true. He hadn’t heard a drill or a hammer, no such things. The sounds resembled people running around and things getting smashed. And they were renting the flats so such complete renovations weren’t allowed.
He had thought only one person was moving in, but now he wasn’t quite sure and he was starting to get worried.
.
On the fifth day of the neighbor moving in, Obi-Wan woke up with a start, panicked and looking around. Then, he realized nobody was breaking into his flat, his alarm wasn’t ringing yet. The loud and sudden noise he had heard had come from the other side of his bedroom wall.
He sighed and checked the time. Just a few minutes after half past five. He tried to go back to sleep, but his waking up was too sudden and laced with a bit too much adrenaline for him to do that. Obi-Wan could barely calm his heart, much less fall asleep again.
He figured he might as well start his day early.
Once he was done getting ready and had his bag in hand, Obi-Wan grabbed his keys and left his apartment. He went down and met the oldest tenant. She was coming back with her morning newspaper and smiled and him after he greeted her.
“Obi-Wan. Isn’t it a little early for your lectures?” she asked politely.
He nodded, his smile turning into a bit of a frown. “I suppose. I haven’t been sleeping well lately.”
She reached out and patted his forearm. “I’m so sorry. Anything bothering you? You know my door is always open. And I never leave my place,” she added with a bit of a conspiring smirk.
Obi-Wan laughed. “Don’t worry about me too much. It’s just my neighbor. They’re loud and I must have gotten used to the flat being empty.”
At the mention of the neighbor, her brows went comically up. “The new neighbor?” And by her look alone, Obi-Wan knew she had some kind of information that he didn’t.
“Yes?”
“What a charming young man. Have you gone to talk to him about it?”
“No, I thought he was moving in, but I haven’t seen any boxes or anything.”
She patted his arm again. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation.”
He nodded. If it was just one guy living alone, there wasn’t any sort of domestic violence going on. Obi-Wan was relieved to hear that, but now he was back to his confusion as he went to his classes.
.
Obi-Wan slept fitfully for a few more weeks. He still hadn’t met the new neighbor. When he had tried to knock on his door, nobody had been home. They kept missing each other.
Once or twice when he had tried that, he could have sworn there were sounds coming from the inside but nobody had opened the door for him. He liked to imagine that his neighbor wasn’t ignoring him and that rather, Obi-Wan was hearing things.
He didn’t get woken up every morning. But almost. Every other, perhaps, sometimes three days of total silence and bliss went by. But those came rarely. He was forced awake by loud sounds and now he always felt tired.
The exhaustion was constant as he couldn’t get proper rest.
A new routine had developed. He went to bed alright, then suddenly woke up to some kind of a sound or a screech he couldn’t explain but attributed to his dreams. He would still be tired and try to get back to sleep, only to be woken up again a few minutes later in a similar fashion. It was impossible to sleep through the mornings. He tossed around, tried to muffle everything with his pillows, but then he couldn’t breathe.
It was a lost fight.
An understatement—Obi-Wan was not getting any of his beauty sleep. It was so apparent even his students had taken notice. He wouldn’t mind all that much if it had been his colleagues, but his students? They were worried about him and he couldn’t have that.
He was currently far from beauty anything. Red eyes and permanent dark circles during the week. Then, during the weekend, when he had thought he would finally be able to sleep since he didn’t have to start work early, he was woken up again.
And on the occasional days that it was blessedly silent all around, Obi-Wan still slept fitfully because of all the stress. His mind was convinced that he wouldn’t get enough sleep, that he would have to go through yet another day filled with caffeine and coffee he didn’t even like. Of course he wasn’t sleeping properly with all that.
Few more days and Obi-Wan was getting desperate. Forget the beauty sleep. He could deal with the dark circles even—some of his younger students thought he was being trendy, if only. So yes, fuck that beauty sleep, he thought bitterly, he needed good old regular sleep first. Just a couple of hours uninterrupted. He wanted to feel well-rested after waking up again.
It wasn’t like his neighbor was doing anything illegal being loud in the mornings. Technically, the day already started. But Obi-Wan needed the sleep for his sanity and the neighbor was terrible.
Obi-Wan had all kinds of ideas about who the man could be. Charming, his ass.
His imagination had never lacked and when he lay in his bed, listening to the noise, he thought about all these things the man could be. He had seen him once, in a hoodie, getting into a Uber. Just the back of him. A clearly tall and bulky guy.
Definitely irresponsible and quite rude, too. Clearly very attractive from what he had heard the other people in the building say. Obi-Wan couldn’t quite believe it. He felt like they were all pulling some kind of a joke on him.
The man was a phantom. Obi-Wan had never seen him in the hall or by the door. Like he was never there when Obi-Wan was. It frustrated him to no end. It brought out feelings he didn’t know he had.
Anakin liked to tease him about it, say he was acting obsessed, at which point Obi-Wan always hung up on him. He was not obsessed. He had a good reason for always having his mysterious and odd neighbor on mind.
He supposed Anakin was right to some extent. Obi-Wan really needed to stop creating all these fictional scenarios of who the man was. His time could be spent elsewhere, on more productive things.
.
The last straw came over the weekend. It wasn’t even six a.m. yet. There was a crash, a loud one, right next to the wall. Forgetting all his exhaustion, Obi-Wan got out of his bed, put himself together a bit, and then, all righteous anger, he left his flat.
Obi-Wan snapped. It had to come sooner or later.
He took a couple of steps toward the closest door and knocked on it. Loud enough. But not so loud that he would wake up any other neighbors. He wouldn’t wish such a thing on anyone after experiencing it for so long.
It took a while till the door opened. Obi-Wan had considered knocking again. And when it did, he froze, no words on his tongue as he took in his neighbor for the first time—and Obi-Wan was usually pretty good with words; that was his whole thing.
Not as tall as he had thought. They were nearly eye to eye. And what nice eyes they were, honey brown, complimenting his brown skin. His brows were arched, his hair cut short, with just a hint of curls, a wide strong nose and the most kissable mouth.
And his shirt, stretched tight across his chest, and Obi-Wan would have loved to focus on that if not for all the blood smeared on it. His hands too, were covered in cuts, some still fresh, probably the source of all that blood.
He had come ready to lash out, to give him a piece of his mind, and now, he couldn’t force a word out. This situation was nothing like had imagined. And the man nothing like he had thought.
Obi-Wan hadn’t thought the neighbor could actually be dangerous, or any danger to him personally. Now, seeing all the blood… he didn’t know what to think anymore. A part of him was scared, making him want to flee back to his flat and call someone, the other part of him was keeping him there at the door—the more rational part. The part that told him he must be misunderstanding something. That there was more to this.
Surely the man had to know about the cuts and the blood. And what image it painted. Had to have a good explanation if he had opened the door for a stranger so casually.
Before any serious regrets could overpower his curiosity in the situation, there was another crash from inside.
The man visibly froze and Obi-Wan realized that barely a minute had passed. What more, a look of absolute panic swept past his features. He muttered something quickly—something Obi-Wan hadn’t caught—and then ran back inside his flat.
The door stayed open.
Obi-Wan wasn’t sure what to do next. This wasn’t going according to his plan. Still, he took a tentative step inside the flat. A bit of fear ran through him, he was entering a stranger’s flat. A stranger currently covered in blood. Obi-Wan needed to check it out and finally figured out why he hadn’t been able to sleep properly for weeks.
It was all too weird, but the other neighbors had nothing bad to say about the man and that had to count for something. There must have been a perfectly good explanation.
Or he was getting murdered.
The layout was the same as his, only in reverse. Obi-Wan hadn’t put on any shoes to toe off so he went further inside, past the hallway, then through the small kitchen and once he was there, he saw the man again.
He was turned to him with his back, squatting on the floor by the opened door to the tiny pantry. He was talking in a quiet voice, coaxing.
“What’s happening?” Obi-Wan asked when this whole thing became a little too much.
But he had been too loud compared to the volume his neighbor had used and by the time Obi-Wan realized there was a reason for that, it was too late.
Something orange sped next to him, a blur running past his legs. Obi-Wan took a startled step back, hit something with his elbow. The object came flying, shattered on the floor next to him.
When he looked down, a ceramic mug lay on the floor in pieces. The sound had been exactly like what he had been hearing all these weeks.
He looked to his neighbor, ready to apologize for the mess. He didn’t move, not eager to step on the shards and cut himself. But the man was on his feet now, looking horrified.
Not because of the mug.
“Did you close the door?” he asked Obi-Wan hurriedly.
“I didn’t.” Obi-Wan had wanted an escape route. Just in case. He wasn’t that dumb. But now he felt foolish. An idea of what might have been happening in this flat started forming in his mind. “You didn’t say anything… and then you rushed out…”
The man cursed low under his breath. “She’ll make a run for it.”
“Who?”
“My cat.”
And with that, most of the things clicked in his mind. As did the cuts and the blood. And clearly, something was up with the cat, something he didn’t know yet.
The man whose name he still didn’t know, stepped over the shards, then he turned to Obi-Wan as if remembering he was still there. “Are you alright?”
“I’m perfectly fine.”
He watched as the man quickly checked through the rest of the flat, but as soon as he started pulling on his jacket, Obi-Wan knew the cat had fled. And it was more or less his fault.
Ignoring the shards for now, he carefully walked toward his neighbor, who was doing something on his phone. He felt bad about the whole thing and couldn’t simply leave now. “How can I help?”
The man looked up quickly, then back to his phone. “The vet was able to put a tracker collar on her. They had to sedate her for that,” he said, obviously distraught with the fact. “I need to go find her before she hurts herself.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“That’s really not necessary,” the man said, his voice carefully blank.
Obi-Wan had a feeling the man didn’t like him. He couldn’t exactly blame him, the past few minutes… well, he hadn’t made his life in any way easier.
And then, he remembered the reason why he had come here and some of the anger came right back. Only Obi-Wan knew how to keep it inside. “I’m going with you,” he said, just as blank.
They watched each other for a tense minute, before the man nodded, a bit of hesitation in his movements. Obi-Wan hurried to his flat to put on some clothes and shoes before joining his neighbor.
His car wasn’t that big, it was clearly made for a city. They got in in silence. The man looked around quickly, his phone with the map in his hand. There wasn’t any space for where to put it without the phone falling. Wordlessly, Obi-Wan took it from him and held it where he could see the tracker on it.
“Thank you,” he said, genuinely this time and turned on the car and got out into the street. He was able to follow the tracker with relative ease, sometimes Obi-Wan had to tell him where to turn and so.
They made a pretty good team, all things considered.
“You were about to complain about the noise, weren’t you?” he asked all of a sudden, chuckling wryly. “I was wondering how long it would take you.”
“Well, you would be correct.”
The man sighed. “I moved here for a new job. As soon as that was finalized, when I began searching for a new place to rent, I came upon her. She was out on the street, and it wasn’t cold yet or anything, she looked like she had been able to get enough food too, but… well, she had kittens, two of them. They didn’t make it. She probably refused to leave them and… I took her to the vet.”
Obi-Wan could tell that the most important part was coming up now. “The scratches on your arms?” he prompted the man when nothing else came immediately.
“Something happened to her. We don’t really know what. The vet said she must think her kittens are still alive, and that we took them from her. She’s been living on the streets for a while, must have tried to defend herself and them. She thinks everybody is a threat to her.”
“You included.”
The man nodded. “She wakes up really early. I can hear her, so I try to get her to eat when she is still a bit sleepy. Bring some routine into her life so she knows what to expect from me. It, well, it doesn’t always work. You can hear the worse days.”
They both cringed at that.
“The vet said she would have to be put down and I don’t know, I work from home most days. It’s not her fault.”
“I get that.” Obi-Wan told him to turn left. They were almost to her. She had stopped a short while ago.
“She’s getting better, I think. But it’s a slow process.” He stole a glance at Obi-Wan before focusing on the road. “I’m really sorry about all the noise, though.”
“I’m not going to say it’s alright, because it really wasn’t, but I understand, I really do. All’s forgiven.” The corners of his mouth twitched. Obi-Wan supposed a few tiring weeks were worth an innocent life saved.
“Glad to have you for a neighbor, then.”
He smiled then. “I’m Obi-Wan.”
“Cody. I’d shake your hand but…” But Obi-Wan was holding his phone and Cody had his hands full with the wheel.
Obi-Wan laughed lightly.
They found the cat. Cody revealed they—he and his brothers—called her Tooka. She was a cute tabby, now that Obi-Wan could properly see her. She cowered from Cody as he tried to coax her into coming with them. He had a blanket from the car to make it easier.
It wasn’t really working. Obi-Wan stepped in front of Cody, bent low and tried to get her attention. He wasn’t sure what exactly did it, but Tooka came to him with little complaints. Still cautious, still wary, but she came and let herself be taken into his arms.
Much later, Cody liked to tell the story of how they met, how Obi-Wan had charmed his cat too, how she only came because of the color of his hair.
Truth was, Obi-Wan had always been good with animals. He couldn’t really explain it, only that they liked his energy, his calm. Sort of like his students.
That day, Obi-Wan had wanted to help his neighbor. He always wanted to help people, could never escape that urge. And then it started something he would have never expected.