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Kanan Jarrus had never felt better. He had no jobs to do and the most gorgeous woman in the galaxy on his lap with her lips on his face. His breath hitched and then—
“If you aren’t into this, you could just tell me like a normal, mature adult,” Hera said, frowning at him and suddenly entirely too far away on the bench seat.
“What?” He looked stricken. “I’m into this, Hera. Very, very into this. What makes you think I’m not?”
“Your quills,” she said as if it’s the most obvious thing in the galaxy.
“Quills?”
“Don’t play dumb,” she rebuked. “Every time I try to take things further, try to stray a millimeter from your lips, you’re stabbing me in the face!”
Kanan started to open his mouth, but thought better of it. Instead, he rested a hand over his jaw and mouth in thought. Stabbing her in the…?
And then, as he moved his fingers, it dawned on him. It was a lazy weekend. He hadn’t showered yet, and more importantly, hadn’t shaved yet. He started to laugh.
“It’s not funny!” she insisted.
“It’s a little funny,” he wheezed. “Stars, Hera, quills? Really? It’s just hair. I usually keep it shaved, but I haven’t gotten around to it today.” Kanan ran his hand along his jaw. “I suppose it is getting prickly.”
“Well, how was I supposed to know!” she said defensively, her cheeks flushing a darker green.
“You weren’t, I guess. But why did you think it meant I wasn’t interested?”
“I guess I thought…” Hera took a deep breath and fiddled nervously with one lek. “I thought…well, some species have mechanisms to ward off…unwanted mating. Like spikes or…”
He took her hand between both of his. “I appreciate your integrity, but I can assure you there’s nothing to it except being too lazy to shave. And—” He paused for emphasis “—I’m very much enjoying what we’re doing. But you raise a good point. Let’s make a pact: If either of us is ever uncomfortable with something, we’ll tell the other, in words, right then. And the other person will stop, no more explanation needed.”
“Okay,” she said. Hera felt tension she didn’t even realize she had leave her body.
“Good.”
Kanan swept her up in a kiss once more. She sighed happily against his lips and even raised one slim green hand to caress his cheek and feel his quills. They kept at it for a few minutes before Kanan began trailing kisses down her jaw, her neck, her lekku, drawing delightful little gasps from Hera. Properly contextualized, the rasp of his stubble was a pleasurable contrast to the softness of his lips. Hera tipped her head up to brush her own lips to his skin and let herself get carried away in the sensations.
It seemed poor Hera’s skin had not enjoyed their makeout session as much as she had. Patches of her neck and a long stripe up the underside of her lekku were covered in tiny, angry-green bumps that stung to the touch.
“That’s it,” Kanan said as he helped Hera gently rub bacta lotion into the abrasions. “I’m shaving. No more putting it off.”
“You don’t have to—” Hera protested automatically. Long-conditioned guilt at the idea of someone going out of their way for her or suggesting she needed help in any way bubbled to the surface.
“No,” he said firmly. “I’m not going to enjoy this if you don’t, and it’s not like I have any reason not to shave except my own laziness.”
“Can I watch?” she asked, her head tilted quizzically to the side.
“What?”
“Can I watch you shave? I’ve never seen— I want to know how it all works.” She made a vague waving motion across her face with her hand.
“Uh, sure? It’s not very exciting, but I don’t mind you watching.”
Kanan knew instantly he’d made the right choice when Hera’s eyes lit up in anticipation. He led her into the Ghost’s cramped bathroom, and she sat on the lid of the toilet looking up at him as he got ready at the sink. She watched as he washed and wet his face — that part wasn’t too alien, she supposed — and rubbed some kind of vaguely-foamy paste on every centimeter of skin save his nose and lips from his cheekbones to the hollow of his throat. It smelled familiar, like Kanan, and the texture reminded Hera a little of sweet cream. The same traitorous part of her — a part somewhere between her navel and her knees — wondered how real sweet cream would taste mixed with that wonderful Kanan smell. It was lucky she was just here to observe, not talk, because her tongue felt too dry to form words.
Then Kanan took out a little blade mounted on a metal stick in a T shape and fiddled with the handle and the connection point a bit. The blade tilted slightly against a metal cover with little teeth on each side. It looked deceptively simple. Hera wanted to know everything about it. The engineering that must have gone into something that held a blade against the neck and let the user come away unscathed fascinated her.
He started gently scraping the blade against his face, wiping away foam and hair to reveal clean skin. In some spots, he dragged the blade down, and in others, up or even across. There must have been a pattern, but Hera couldn’t work it out. After every couple of swipes, he rinsed the blade in the sink.
“Do all humans do this?” she asked during one rinse.
“No,” he said. “Lots do at least a little bit here and there, but some never do. And there’s dozens of ways to do it — different soaps and razors and stuff. It’s just all a matter of preference, for the most part. Women don’t usually have enough facial hair to shave it, but some do. And lots of them shave other parts, too.”
“Like what?”
“Legs, underarms, uh, personal areas.” Kanan blushed under the shaving foam.
“Why?”
“They like how it looks or feels, I guess.”
Kanan didn’t feel the need to include this detail, but he had a deep appreciation for smooth, silky legs pressed up against his. He knew Twi’leks were completely hairless, and he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.
Hera pondered the idea of someone shaving their body. The concept of body hair in general was quite foreign to her. Head hair, she saw every day on passersby, on people in markets and hangars, but she’d yet to have an opportunity to see a human naked outside of a few biology textbooks. She’d seen — and on a couple of occasions, felt — the fine, curly hair on Kanan’s arms, but she wasn’t sure how it compared to the rest of his the human body.
By this point, Kanan had scraped most of the foam off his face. He ran his hand over the areas he’d shaved, checking for spots he’d missed. He wet his face again and cleaned up a couple spots with small, quick strokes and then washed everything off, taking care to use the towel on the counter and not drip all over. Finally, he applied some kind of moisturizer, wiped the stray hairs from the counter and sink, and tossed the towel into the hamper in the corner.
He turned to face Hera. “So, what do you think? Just as thrilling as you imagined?”
“It was certainly…interesting,” she said, still trying to make sense of everything herself. “From an anthropological perspective.”
“Naturally.” Kanan grinned. “Do you want to feel the difference? For anthropological study, of course.”
She cracked a small smile. “I suppose I must. For science.”
Hera stood up and took a step toward him before taking his face in her hands. He shivered as her callused fingers brushed the soft, smooth skin of his jaw, and she reveled in both the glide of skin against hers and the effect her simplest actions had on him. She planted a few exploratory kisses across his cheeks and jaw.
“Much better,” she murmured against his skin.
Not able to resist any longer, Kanan lifted her by the waist onto the bathroom counter and cradled the back of her head to bring her in for a proper kiss. Hera responded immediately, wrapping her arms and legs around him and settling in. After all, they didn’t have any jobs today.