Dani Moonstar's a survivor (ms_moonstar) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2012-06-20 15:02:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, dani moonstar (mirage), obi-wan kenobi |
We've had ... really odd happenings around here
Who: Dani Moonstar, Obi-Wan Kenobi
What: Obi-Wan comes over for dinner, Dream talk, etc!
When: Before the linked plot and after the eyebeam incident.
Where: Dani and Scott's House
Ratings: PG-13 I guess, just to be safe.
Status: Complete!
The smell of fajitas slowly simmering wafted through the house. They’d only started cooking a few minutes ago, but the smell was already so delicious that it was making Dani’s mouth water as she prepared some fixings to go with it.
Somewhere on the second floor, a cat woke from his nap and perked at the smell of it. Dani snickered a bit, catching that ceaseless optimism that perhaps this time she’d spill some on the floor for him to eat, or share it with him. He awoke the other two cats on his way to the kitchen, and soon she was surrounded by a circle of cats and a squirrel.
She looked down at them and smirked a bit, “You’re only hungry because you smell the food. Shoo.”
Listening to the animals was a thing that kept threading itself in and out of her day. It wasn’t persistent and it wasn’t controllable, but it was just constant enough to throw her off.
Kind of like going outside to the porch and seeing the hole in her roof was doing. She really needed to get that fixed before monsoon season. It hadn’t been the reason she’d invited Obi-wan over for dinner, but she was hoping she could get him to look at it while he was there.
He rolled up the street slowly and came to a smooth stop in front of the house. The windows were open, and the music of some obscure Bob Dylan album drifted into the air to mingle with the fajitas’ smell. The old Camry had no CD-player, so Obi-Wan had one of those setups working with a discman on the seat and an adaptor in the tapedeck.
A turn of the key, and the engine and music came to a simultaneous halt. The click of the door opening followed. Finally, he stepped into view, sporting an eye that was more yellow than black, by this point, and a healing gash beside his temple. They were nothing compared to the injuries he’d received in a few days time, but the major events leading up to them were yet to be even conceptualized.
Wearing jeans and a surprisingly new grey T-shirt--he’d gone shopping since half his wardrobe became too tight--he strolled up the walk. The beard was still gone. In his hands was a lemon-peach pie, courtesy of Mrs. H.
Obi-Wan knocked on the door and sniffed the delicious air. He waited, patient but hungry.
The tunes that wafted into the house from outside announced Obi-wan’s presence before he knocked, and her dog Ho’nene let out a welcoming bark at the sound of the car pulling up. The husky was already waiting by the door to greet him when Dani finally made it over there, which made her chuckle.
“Hold on,” She shouted through the door, “You should know my dog is probably about to pounce you and lick your face off.”
Preparing for the onslaught the enthusiastic dog was about to make, Dani looped a finger in her collar and then carefully opened the door. It was a good thing she noticed the pie in his hands, because she had just enough time to rescue it from decimation before Ho’nene broke free and started with her own enthusiastic greeting.
Obi-Wan was not, as a rule, a great lover of animals. But he tolerated them well enough. That said, he and Ho’nene began to engage in something like a dance on the front step. And Obi-Wan found himself laughing anyway.
“Down, girl,” he said, trying to lead her back into the house. “Missed me already, did you?” He tried to work in some kind of greeting for Dani, too. “Hullo, again.”
Dani laughed, "Hello to you, too. What in the hell happened to your eye, if you don't mind my asking?"
She carefully kept ahold of the pie, which smelled delicious, as her dog trotted circles excitedly around them a few times. Dani wasn't really sure how Obi-wan felt about her dog's friendliness, but from her point of view it looked like they were best friends. Which was just fine with her. Obi-wan had this air about him which Dani read as easy to get along with, she was certain he was probably friends with just about anyone he'd ever met.
"I better go stir the fajitas before they burn, do you want a beer?" She started walking towards her kitchen, dog-around-feet willing, "Thanks for the pie, by the way. It smells really good."
If Dani really believed that, he must have given her a very good first impression, because people who knew him better would have argued otherwise. He did have an ease about him, certainly that was true. But keeping close relationships was quite a different thing.
That said, he was very polite about turning down the beer and asked for water instead. “I’ll tell Mrs. H,” he replied. And he explained that the black eye had been earned during a self-defence class... of sorts. Admitting he had a sparring partner invited too many questions.
He followed her into the kitchen, doing his best to distract the dog so she could pass. He lead Ho’nene to the kitchen table, where he took as seat and playfully scratched her head. (Alright, so maybe he did have a soft spot in his heart for big, friendly dogs.)
“Who else is around tonight?” he asked. “Your house usually full of people, isn’t it?”
It could also be argued that Dani was horrible at making snap judgements about people. But she knew she at least liked him almost automatically, so there was that. And her dog was usually pretty good at picking up on the people that were absolute jerks. Ho'nene really liked him, and she trusted her dog's sentiments on the matter.
In the kitchen, she stirred the fajitas a bit, then got out a bottle of water for Obi-wan and handed it to him with a smile. The pie was placed securely on the counter, where the cats hopefully would leave it alone. Just in case, she squinted at the closest one, an orange tabby named Proudstar and made the 'I'm watching you' gesture at him. He of course feigned disinterest and went back to hoping she dropped some fajita meat on the floor.
"Scott's not home, which means Emma hasn't decided to grace us with her presence, either. That's pretty much it for the crowd that lives here, though I have a few more spare bedrooms. I've been thinking about adding on another roomate or two. Maybe after things settle down around here."
And holes weren't in her porch roof, and Scott wasn't making lasers appear out of his eyes at things, and she wasn't waking up trying not to scream...
Obi-Wan chuckled as Dani mentioned Emma, and the look on her face that accompanied it. They’d never met, exactly, but he felt as if he knew her, though he tended to think of her as the woman from the tabloid with Jean Grey.
He twisted off the water bottle cap and Ho’nene made her exit, distracted by some invisible thing in the next room, as dogs were from time to time. “Settle down?” he asked.
"We've had ... really odd happenings around here." Dani wasn't sure if they were safe to talk about. She had no idea about Obi-Wan and his adventures with robes and lightsabers, and though she knew that everyone on the network was having strange dreams, she was almost certain her own were the strangest.
It occurred to her, though, as she turned her attention back to her fajitas, that she was going to have to explain that hole in her porch, "If I told you something that in normal circumstances would sound really crazy, would you promise not to tell me I'm insane?"
Obi-Wan smiled. “Well, I can’t promise.” But his eyes coaxed her to continue. If only she did know what he’d been through in the past few months, especially the most recent weeks.
If he ever told her the whole story, she'd probably feel like an idiot for making such a big deal out of this.
She got out some tortillas and started heating them up in another skillet, while thinking through the words she was about to say. Then, "I have nightmares about a demon bear killing my parents and coming after me. It nearly kills me, and every time I have them, I wake up paralyzed from the waist down for a few minutes. And I have dreams where I hear the animals. Recently in the waking world I've been able to communicate with my pets, some."
Working through the pile and not waiting for him to react to that, she continued, "My roomate has dreams where he wakes up blind or seeing red. The other day I was driving home when a red laser looked like it was coming out of my roof. It came out of his eyes, he'd been napping on the porch. A Laser. Came out of his eyes. But he probably doesn't need you spreading that around. I shouldn't have said anything, except you seem trustworthy. And you're bound to see the hole sooner or later."
Obi-Wan glanced briefly in the direction Ho’nene had trotted. He also did this to disguise the look of puzzlement that had crossed his face. The stream of questions that rushed through him foamed up in his brain. As he turned back to face her, he wasn’t sure which one to start with. It was pretty much a tie between lasers out of his eyes? and waking up paralyzed?
He opened his mouth and closed it again. The longer he thought about it, the less crazy it actually sounded. But, then again, maybe he was losing his mind, as well.
“I’ve... been having dreams myself,” he began slowly. Then he shook his head. “If you’re nutters, so am I.”
"I wish someone else had witnessed the lasers besides the both of us, because then at least I'd feel a little less insane about the whole thing. But it really did happen, and I really do have a hole in my roof over there now."
Dani glanced in the direction that Obi-wan had glanced in, and tilted her head a bit, like she was trying to figure out what it was he was looking at, or maybe trying to figure out where her dog had gone. She could almost pick up something about hearing a noise out in the yard, but she wasn't really sure. She wasn't even sure if trying to get any of her animals to respond to her thoughts would prove anything, other than that they were both of them crazy for seeing it happen.
"This dreams mess, I could really do without it. What do YOU dream about, if you don't mind my asking?"
She brought over a tray of fixings, then took the fajitas off the heat while she waited.
Once again, Obi-Wan’s stomach rumbled. For a few moments, he’d forgotten just how hungry he was. Dani had given him plenty of other things to chew on, mentally.
But he wasn’t sure how much it would be wise to divulge about himself. By now, he knew of several people who were dreaming of being characters in pop culture. Or claimed to be. He was not exactly a pop culture aficionado. But it still seemed to be another thing entirely to admit that, in an alternate world, you were a Jedi from Star Wars.
So Obi-Wan gave her what had become his safe answer, while he idly--at least in appearance--poked at the fixings with a fork. “Oh, I have strange dreams about training for battles. Lots of exercises and military-type routines. And I’ll admit that I wake up with skills I didn’t have the night before.” And then he transferred the subject back to her, because he was concerned about this paralysis she had mentioned, worried that it might become permanent somehow. “You wake up and you can’t walk for a few minutes?”
She set the pan of fajitas down on the table with a spoon, followed by the tortillas, while listening to his brief answer about dreams. It seemed to Dani like he was either holding back, or her own dreams were far more crazy, but she didn't say either thing.
She wished she hadn't mentioned the paralysis bit, though. That part was the second most terrifying part about any of it. So she took a few seconds to put together a fajita before finally answering him, "The first time it happened, I woke up screaming. It... alarmed my current bed mate of the time... who, being a scientist, immediately started trying to test my nerve function. I couldn't feel anything, not my legs or toes anyway. The rest of me was in screaming pain. It all faded away, but it seems like the more I dream about it the longer it takes."
Her lips thinned into a line and she pondered getting herself a beer instead of water, but she wasn't sure if it was rude to be the only person at the table getting drunk, "The demon bear attacks me from behind, you see. In the dream. I think it's dead, but it isn't. It probably severs something, since its claws were bigger than I am tall. That's very possible."
Obi-Wan put together a fajita for himself, going a bit heavy on the onions. He liked strong flavors. But the real reason for it may have been that his mind was simply distracted. He was trying very hard to picture this demon bear. For some reason, he was imagining it as a two-story polar bear, which probably wasn’t accurate.
He caught Dani giving her water bottle a stare and easily intuited what she was thinking. He’d always been good at that. He couldn’t really claim the force had anything to do with it. “If you’d like something a bit stronger, don’t hesitate on my account. I don’t have a problem being about other people drinking.”
It was almost an accurate description, though she would correct him on a few points if he brought it up. The bear scared her more than anything had, in her life. She could see it whenever she closed her eyes, and was sure it was literally stalking her in the physical world somehow.
"I didn't want to be the only person drinking, especially if there was a reason you were abstaining, but I might change my mind about it," Dani nodded her head. It was pretty amazing how he did that. It actually reminded her of her grandfather, somewhat. He'd been very intuitive, too. She decided not to mention that, though, because oftentimes handsome men didn't seem overly fond of the idea that they were being compared to some very old dead guy.
Of course, Obi-Wan was a special case, and would have taken it for a great compliment.
“I just don’t drink very much,” he replied. If felt it was better to leave a little wiggle room, rather than admit he didn’t drink at all. He really didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable. “There’s no reason for it. In fact, I would feel badly if I kept you.”
He finally dug into the fajita. And it was gooood.
“And what’s this about Scott?” he asked, using a napkin to shield his full mouth.
At Obi-Wan's insistence, Dani had gotten up to get herself a beer out of the fridge. She brought over a fresh bottle of water as she headed back to the table, and set it down for him, then popped open her beer with a thoughtful frown.
"I feel like an idiot, because that's really his business. But I trust you. He admitted he was having dreams where he wakes up blind. I guess sometimes he has serious headaches, too. Or he sees everything with a red tint to it. Then, you know. One day he's napping on the couch and wakes up, and bam. Hole in my roof."
Dani punctuated the sentence with a swig from her beer bottle, then decided to dig into her fajita.
Obi-Wan began to look this way and that about the house, peering into the adjoining rooms. “Where is this hole?”
"... well it was actually a lawnchair type couch." Dani motioned in the direction of her large back porch. The roof from the second floor jutted out over it to provide shade, and while it wasn't likely noticeable from the angle they were sitting, there was a pretty good sized hole in it, "I think we're all lucky that he wasn't actually sleeping inside here. My bedroom would be in my living room."
She paused and took another swig off her bottle, "And he'd be seriously injured, which would be horrible. That isn't an afterthought, I swear. He was pretty scratched up by the debris, lucky I've got some first aid training."
Obi-Wan rested his fajita back on his plate. “You want me to take a look at it?” he asked. He was already on his feet and walking in the direction of the porch. As the hole came into view, he craned his neck upward. “Oh my...” he breathed. He looked back over his shoulder, his fingers working the door without looking. “There’s more hole than roof!”
He stepped onto the porch and lifted his fists to his hips, turning slowly as he examined the hole. It wasn’t a patch job. It was a replacement job. “Scott did this?”
"Uhm... yes?" Dani's voice echoed from the inside of the house. She had a beer in one hand, and a half of a fajita in the other, and frankly, she was staring at Obi-Wan in much the way that he was staring at her roof.
Mainly, because she was pretty sure that he'd opened that door with his mind, and had no way to politely ask him that. She might have been seeing things, too. Maybe he'd been closer to the door than she thought, or maybe one of her animals had nudged it open.
She took a quick mental check, or tried to, of all the animals in the house. It seemed like most of them were still nearby and still hoping she dropped some fajita on the floor for them to eat. Realising her mouth was hanging wide open, she shut it. Then made her way out to the porch so she could stare up at the hole, too.
"Pretty impressive, isn't it? In an 'I'm actually kind of disturbed that a man's eyes could do this to my roof' kind of way."
Right. Obi-Wan had heard of the ‘male gaze’ in a sociology context, but this was ridiculous. “Very impressive,” he resounded. “Mind if I have a look from up top?”
There was a ladder off to the side, probably used by whomever had last given the hole a look. Privately, Obi-Wan knew he had the means to get up there without it, but he decided against leaping for it. He wasn’t a showoff. If he had, in fact, unlocked the door with his mind, it had been completely unintentional.
Unintentional or not, that was pretty fucking amazing, in Dani's book. It beat the pants off of fighting a Demon Bear with arrows and apparitions, or hearing the thoughts of her cats, which were pretty much always hungry.
She nodded and took another bite of her fajita, casually, while keeping an eye on him from the ground. Not that she'd be able to do anything if he fell off her roof, but she could at least spot check the ladder while he climbed it.
"I got an estimate from a contractor, but I think he's padding the bill."
Obi-Wan began to climb, taking the rungs quickly. “Stop looking up my kilt,” he said, his tone dry, but when he was up top, he looked back at her with a smile.
Then he got to work, switching between walking to crawling as necessary, as he examined the extent of the damage. “Well, I don’t know if he’s padding it,” he said at length, standing at the edge and dusting off the debris he’d collected on his hands. “Because what he ought to be telling you is you need a new roof.” It was one of the few words he said with a distinct accent, and it sounded more like rough.
It was hard NOT to look up his kilt, though if she'd been doing it, it was mostly not on purpose.
Mostly. She wasn't dead, after all. Obi-Wan was a very attractive man, and he had a very impressive arse.
She watched him at work, finishing her beer and fajita like it was popcorn and she was at some kind of show, though that was mainly to side-track her mind from having to think about the fact that this really was her roof and she really was going to have to pay for its repairs somehow, instead of out of some idea that Obi-wan was an object there for her entertainment.
"He seemed to think that I was made of money just because I own this place, and made some kind of elaborate sketch about how he could plug the hole up with creative uses of plywood and 2by4's. Then tried to get me sold on the idea of just putting in a gigantic skylight there. And he told me it would take a month to fix, on top of that, so I told him politely where he could put his clipboard."
Her tone implied, of course, that she'd wanted to actually put the clipboard there herself, and sadly was unable to do so.
He chucked, and started back down the ladder. If she wanted to look at his arse, he really didn’t mind. He wasn’t a self-conscious man. And she had already won him over as a friend, and quickly, too.
“I can do it,” he offered. “It’s not a small job. He wasn’t kidding about that. And I can’t do it for a sandwich. But I can do it.” He paused. “But don’t feel you have to. You can keep shopping around. No worries.”
"I'd never ask you to take on something this big and then only pay you in sandwiches," Dani laughed, then joked, "I'd pay you in fajitas, too."
She could think of some other forms of payment, but that was completely his fault for taking her brain there with the whole 'look up my kilt’ comment. She whacked her brain and reminded it that she wasn't sleeping with anyone ever again until the bear dream stopped, and anyway that was highly inappropriate, not to mention Obi-Wan was a friend and had never made a pass at her.
Brain finally listening to reason, Dani shook her head to clear it, and added, "But in all seriousness, if you want to take this on, be my guest. Scott said he'd cover the costs, and I think between him and I we can purchase any materials you need and compensate you for the labor, too. You can even stay here while you work on it if you want, if that'll be more convenient for you. It's not like I don't have an abundance of empty bedrooms. I don't know how Mrs. H would feel about that, though."
After another quick pause, she added, "I didn't invite you over for this, you know. It randomly happened after I'd already sent you the invitation."
Obi-Wan laughed easily at her jokes. They had a similar sense of humor, which probably had at least a little to do with why they got on so well and so quickly. If there were other factors involved--you know, other factors--it would probably take a while longer before he would be in any place to acknowledge them. Jean Grey still crept into his thoughts from time to time, though less and less frequently. It was less like a crush and more like a healing wound. But if anyone happened to ask for some reason, if Obi-Wan found Dani pretty, he might have realized he felt the word wasn't strong enough.
"Oh, Scott certainly should pay," he replied. "I'll get on it as soon as I can. Is next week too late? I have a painting job to finish up. And then I'm all yours." And yes, he meant that innocently, even if he rarely looked completely innocent.
As far as the offer for the place to stay, Obi-Wan declined. Honestly, he had it made with Mrs. H, and she genuinely needed him. Her children lived so far away. He liked having someone to look after.
“All mine, eh?” Dani chuckled, and then waved a hand to let him know she was joking, again. They really did seem to hit it off quite well, which was a rare treasure in a friendship, and she was keen on not messing that up.
“Next week should be fine. It’s not like it’s in a place where we need to worry about rain leaking on anything, and I respect the fact that you keep your other commitments. We’ll need a bit to get all the materials together anyway, so we can work on that while we wait. And I’ll have an extra set of keys made for you so that you can come and go while me and Scott are off at work.”
That was a pretty big step of trust for a woman who was still missing a set of valuable earrings since her party. She was almost certain someone among that party had made off with them, or at least taken a liking to them and then misplaced them somewhere while admiring them. Obi-wan was not that person, though, and she just knew it.
“Why don’t you come back inside and we can finish up dinner while you write up a list?”