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“Babe. Babe. Babe.”
That’s the first thing you hear when you awake.
With tired eyes and a heaving chest, you try to stir and fully jolt yourself awake in Hardcase’s arms. There aren’t any lights on, only the soft lumination of passing speeders at this unholy hour.
“Babe.”
You huff, turn over, and almost immediately collide with Hardcase’s watchful eye above you. Leaning on an elbow, he has an idea-struck face, as if anticipating anyone with willing ears to listen.
“What is it?” you rasp, yelping at how dry your throat feels as you speak. While swallowing down some gathered saliva and clearing your throat, Hardcase hums and leans further, riveting feelings of brilliance in his eyes. “It’s not even 0400 yet.”
He had better woken you up for something good.
Hardcase pouts at your foiling glare and continues without a moment to linger further.
“Do you think if the Jedi ever find out about General Skywalker and his wife, they’ll tell him ‘may divorce be with you’?”
Your jaw slacks, your elbow slowly sliding down, and you plop your head back down on your pillow, incredulously scoffing.
“Maker, `Case,” You groan, biting back a laugh. “You woke me up for this?”
“Yes!” He exclaims, shuffling to lean over you with a speculative eyebrow raise. “It’s genius. Do you think it isn’t?”
“I think it’s silly,” You retort. Hardcase whines and leans down as well, cradling his face with a forearm to keep his stare on you. How he manages to stay so wide-eyed at this hour, you’re unsure.
“Haters gonna hate,” is his only response. You sigh.
“I’m not a hater,” you bite your lip when you feel his breath on your creep closer, body heat radiating toward yours. He’s still got that pensive, mischievous look on his face. But you can feel yourself beginning to drift off. You yawn out, “Just a person who likes their sleep.”
“Hm,” Hardcase hums as though he doesn’t believe you yet.
Silence rushes over the two of you, and your eyelids weigh heavy, just as though you’re about to fall asleep. But then Hardcase talks again.
“How do you unlock doors on Kashyyyk?”
Oh lord.
You try to stay silent so he thinks you’re asleep.
“With a wook-key.”
You’re unsuccessful.
The snicker that lurches in your mouth gets Hardcase smiling all smug and satisfied into your shoulder.
You slap the back of his head lightly with a whine.
“That wasn’t funny!” You say in a whisper-yell.
“Is that so?” Hardcase mutters against the bare skin of your shoulder, vibrations of his voice sending relaxing yet rousing shivers through your chest. “Then why’d you laugh?”
Your mouth falls ajar, gasping softly as he continues giggling.
“I’m not laughing because it’s funny!” You snap back in your greatest attempt to convince him of your innocence. “I’m only laughing because you’re just so unbelievable.”
“But you love me,” Hardcase says in a cheerful, sing-song voice. With a roll of your eyes, everything softens as you feel a featherlight kiss against your neck, his lips lazily pursed and pressed to your skin.
“Yeah, I do.”
Silence finally rushes between you, but as you suddenly become restless, you decide to give him a taste of his own medicine.
“How do Jedi eat?”
Hardcase perks up, reverence coating his stare for indulging him so. Your lips curl upwards in a tight, lovely grin.
“They force-feed themself.”
His incessant giggles make you bite your lip and bring him down into the crook of your neck and shoulder again.
“That’s a good one,” he compliments, hand crawling up from his side. As he talks, a cold hand slithers up your stomach, slipping under the fabric of your tank top to trace aimless patterns into your skin. “Where’d you learn it.”
“‘Heard it ‘round the base.”
“Clever.”
You nod. “I know.”
“Makes sense that you didn’t make it yourself then.”
You gasp, flicking his forehead lightly when he erupts into childish giggles again. Despite it, you don’t shush him or urge him to stop. His laughter could fill you with more joy for twenty lifetimes.
He eventually comes up with a new reveling thought, tilting his head and leaning up again so you can look at each other.
“`You ever think about the fact that having sex on a lift is immoral on so many levels?”
Your nose scrunches with a soft chuckle, wincing at the cheesiness of his joke.
“Babe, that means we’re immoral on so many levels.”
Not even a second is spent processing your retort; Hardcase simply shrugs in response with a drifted-away gaze.
“I’m not saying otherwise.”
You purse your lips.
“Hm…”
“Just stating the facts,” he continues, lying down again. “You can come to the conclusions for us.”
“Ah, yes,” you agree, coyly grinning at your next words before they even come out of your mouth. “As always, I’m the brains of this operation.”
Hardcase doesn’t properly respond to you; he only nods softly into your neck as he waits for you to continue.
“Yeah, I think we’re immoral on so many levels.”
Hardcase laughs harder and plants a kiss on your bare shoulder. Then another. He brushes all things obscuring his path to trail more over your collarbone to reach your other shoulder, hands pressed on either side of your arms as he moves. You sigh and smile, the softest laugh leaving your lips. They purse when your mind wanders, trying to devise another joke to continue the conversation.
“...Two clones walk into 79’s,” you begin, voice strained and dwindling with the uncertainty of your joke and where it should lead. “...And one tells the other.” You pause again, eyes drifting away when you feel Hardcase’s perky, awaiting look. “‘You look familiar.’”
Hardcase’s disbelieving cackle is hushed when he presses his face into the pillow, shaking his head.
“Babe, that was so bad,” he says, lifting his chin to speak more clearly. You shrug, eyebrows knitted while you whine out a measly defense.
“I don’t know!” Your response only elicits more laughter. You turn on your side, awaiting for Hardcase to meet your eyes again while you fend for yourself. “It’s too late for this. Just… let me get back to you in the morning.”
Turning on his side and resting his cheek on his forearm, he nods with a perceptive fix of his lips.
“Fair enough,” he leans in further, resting his forehead on yours and shifting closer to your body. “I mean…”
You raise an eyebrow.
“What?”
Hardcase shrugs, impishly grinning in entire admiration.
“There’s potential there for a good joke,” he says.
You nod with full agreement and a smug crook of your eyebrows.
“‘T’s why I said it instead of just shutting up.” Hardcase chuckles deep in his chest. You shove him lightly, just enough to get the message across but not hard enough so your foreheads disconnect. “We can workshop it in the morning.”
With a nod, he tilts his chin up and presses his pursed lips to the space between your eyebrows.
“Definitely,” he mutters against you. “Y’know what else we can workshop?”
You hum, slowly melting further into his touch. His hands have returned, rubbing circles over your collarbone and shoulders, and you keenly sigh as the caresses get deeper.
“I’ve got a great joke about construction I want to tell you, but I’m still working on it.”
In your state, you become susceptible to his silly jokes, and you snort unwisely. It goes to his head very quickly.
“See? I’m funny!” He argues with a victorious glint.
You sigh loudly and roll your eyes.
“I’m just more susceptible in this state.”
“That’s why I tell you at this time.”
You deadpan, frowning and rubbing your eyes with a yawn.
“Is that why you woke me up? To tell me your dumb jokes when I’m more likely to laugh?”
“Yep,” he answers, making a little pop sound at the end of the word. You scrunch your features.
“You’re a dork,” you tell him, adjusting on the bed and ruffling the sheets to go over your shoulders.
“And you’re still here.”
With the objective statement, you melt and nod, blinking with entirely smitten reverence.
“I am,” you assure.
With a soft smile, he leans in and pulls you by your shoulders, encouraging you to cuddle into him. You do enthusiastically, nuzzling your face into his chest. The sound of his heartbeat and steady breathing fills your eyes and becomes the only important thing you could possibly focus on for the rest of his night, your soothing bedtime lullaby.
But then he speaks again.
“What do Gungans put their food in? Jar jars.”
You tilt up, stare blank and deadly.
“That’s it, time for bed.”
And the sound of his laughter instead becomes the loudest noise to soothe you back to sleep.