All the Right Moves

By Erin Darroch and Justine Graham

Summary: Six months after the Battle of Yavin, Leia wrestles with her feelings about Han.

A/N: This story was written for Flick (a.k.a. JustAFlick or WaitJustAFlick) for the HanLeiaSecretSanta fanfic exchange on Tumblr. When we discovered we'd been paired up with someone whose list of dislikes included "blissful marriage stuff", we decided that Santa's elves had maybe enjoyed just a wee bit too much eggnog before they handed out the assignments! Lolololol But we pulled up our stripey socks and did our very best. We hope you like it.

For any other readers: this story fits loosely into our "Happily Ever After" universe, taking place several weeks after the events in our fic Rumour Has It.

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Chapter One:

Leia Organa offered a nod and a word of thanks to the efficient droid on duty in the medbay and then, following the direction indicated by his articulated arm, made her way toward the isolation room tucked away in an alcove at the rear of the unit. She stopped outside the sliding glassine door to don the required particulate respirator, slipped in a new micron filtration cartridge and secured the mask over her nose and mouth. Activating the breather, she then gave three quick taps to announce her arrival before palming the door release and stepping inside the room. Once the door sealed shut behind her, she ventured over to the narrow bed, casting a sympathetic glance over its lone, miserable-looking occupant.

Wedge Antilles cracked open his bleary eyes and made an effort to lift his head from the pillow, but quickly changed his mind and subsided with a weary groan. He looked flushed and feverish, and it was obvious that even the slightest bit of movement caused him considerable discomfort.

"I just heard the news you were in here, Wedge," Leia said softly, her voice sounding hollow through the melded rubber mask. "Are you okay? How are you feeling?"

"Which one's worse, miserable or wretched?" he croaked.

"Wretched, I believe." She smiled, though she knew he couldn't see her expression through the respirator. "That bad, huh?"

"You have no idea," he mumbled.

"Actually, I do," she replied, and sank down onto the repulsor chair that was positioned beside the bed. "I had the Danari flu once, years ago. It makes everything hurt. Every muscle, every joint...and I've never had a headache so bad in my life."

Wedge started to nod his head against the pillow, but winced with the movement and then released a heavy sigh. "I swear, even my hair hurts. Medic says I should start to feel better in a few days, but until the risk of contagion is over...I'm stuck in here."

"I know, I just spoke to him." Leia thumbed the controls that moved her chair a little closer, and then lowered the seat a notch so that her feet could rest more comfortably on the floor. "At least seven days, he said. That's one of the reasons I'm here. You're not going to make it to lead the rest of the combat readiness classes, and since High Command has made it mandatory that all personnel complete the training in the next three days, I wanted to let you know I'm going to volunteer to take your place."

Leia had undertaken basic self-defense training in her youth, of course, and enjoyed it immensely, but she had especially relished the more recent instruction in hand-to-hand combat she'd received in the six months since she'd begun living on Alliance bases full-time. Much of that training had come from Wedge himself, along with a few other capable fighters who had been tasked with bringing all recruits in their tiny Rebel cell up to a minimum level of competence. As such, she'd fully endorsed the training program mandated for all personnel by High Command, and had taken to the routines with great enthusiasm. The challenging physical regimen not only honed her skills and kept her body in peak condition, it occupied her mind as well, providing a distraction from her grief and acting as an outlet to channel some of her pent-up frustrations into something more beneficial. She'd quickly excelled and risen to the top of the class, often acting as Wedge's informal assistant. Despite the unfortunate circumstances that had put him out of commission, Leia had jumped at the opportunity to act in his stead.

Wedge had fallen silent in the wake of her offer but he stirred after a moment and cleared his throat, managing a sheepish expression on top of his sickly pallor. "Uh, sorry, Princess. I thought you were going to be too busy this week with all the mission briefings coming up, so I've, uh...I've already found someone to replace me. Sorted it out before I headed to medical."

"Oh, that's fine," Leia hastened to reassure him, though she couldn't help feeling a mild pang of disappointment. "Who'd you tap, then? I thought the rest of Rogue Squadron was busy escorting supply runs to the Varada Sector. There aren't many left on base who could do it."

There was another long pause. Wedge skewed his pursed lips to one side before finally turning his rheumy, red-rimmed eyes back to Leia and answering with apparent reluctance, "Uh...Han's gonna do it."

Leia blinked. "Han?"

Wedge squinted at her. "Yep."

"As in… Han Solo?" Leia pressed, not bothering to hide her incredulity.

"The only Han I know," Wedge sighed, closing his eyes once more.

A long barrage of questions racked up in Leia's brain in such rapid succession she didn't know which one to fire off first. Han Solo—the cynical, self-serving and fiercely independent contractor with an ego the size of a small moon—volunteering to lead a training exercise for a bunch of revolutionary soldiers whose cause he didn't support or even care about? That didn't sound right. Disconcerted, Leia blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

"Is he even qualified?" Then, belatedly realising that her tone sounded harsh and Wedge might take her comment as being critical of his choice, she amended, "I just mean that he's a spacer, not a fighter, unless you count that blaster on his hip. What does he know about hand-to-hand combat?"

Carefully, Wedge angled his head and opened his dark eyes to peer at Leia. "You might be surprised. I've seen him in action a couple of times. He took me along on that run he did to Garel a while back, remember? We got into a scrap trying to get past the Imp guards at the rendezvous point and barely got out of there with our lives. And there was that time on Daimla, a couple of months ago, when we had to fight our way out of the tunnels to get back to the ships. Couldn't use blasters, or risk bringing the whole thing down on top of us. He fought 'em off, as good as—or better—than the rest of us." Wedge gave a little one-shouldered shrug against the thin mattress, his features crinkling up in a grimace of pain. "He knows how to handle himself, Princess. I don't know how, but he does. He knows all the basic maneuvers, for sure, and he even had a few tricks up his sleeve that I'd never seen before."

Leia absorbed that information in silence, trying to imagine the Han Solo she knew engaging in such activities. It wasn't difficult to envision him being physical. Although she would never admit it to another living soul, Leia had to acknowledge that she had envisioned Han being physical with increasing frequency over the last couple of months, especially after sharing a run of a back-to-back missions with him before they abandoned the base at Rasdun. The time she'd spent with him on those brief runs had put her into close proximity with him on a more extended basis than ever before. He was undoubtedly fit; tall and lean, but strong, too, and possessed of an easy grace that spoke of a man completely at home in his own body and keenly attuned to his own physicality. While on base, she often watched him out of the corner of her eye, trying not to seem as if she were watching, as he loaded and unloaded freight from the Falcon's holds. The way he moved in the performance of such routine tasks was fascinating enough, but when he had to resort to more physical labour, such as when one of the repulsor sleds on his dilapidated ship broke down—which was more often than not—that was something else altogether.

On one memorable occasion, she'd watched him jump up to grab the bottom edge of the loading ramp when its hydraulic mechanisms failed, bringing its jerking progress to a screeching halt that turned the heads of everyone gathered in the cavernous hangar, and leaving the ramp frozen in place just above his head. She hadn't been able to take her eyes off him, riveted by the way he'd smoothly pulled his body up with the strength in his arms, and then hefted himself up with apparent ease, planting a knee in the gap and then a forearm, until he had enough traction to haul himself up the rest of the way. The sight of his hind quarters slowly disappearing from view as he'd crawled his way up into the ship to palm the emergency release would be forever burned in Leia's memory. Even underneath his ubiquitous white shirt and black vest, she could see evidence of well-defined musculature in his arms and chest, and those form-fitting bloodstripe trousers he wore accentuated his firm thighs, and did nothing to hide the rounded curve of what she had to admit was the finest ass she'd ever seen.

"Anyway, from what I've seen he's a pretty decent hand-to-hand fighter," Wedge was saying. "I thought he could do a fair job of taking the new recruits through the basics, anyway."

Leia snapped out of the momentary daze engendered by Wedge's revelation. Feeling mildly embarrassed by her own extended reverie—and mortified by the level of detail in her mental cataloguing of Han's physical attributes—she gave herself a little shake and tried to regain her composure enough to continue the conversation. There was another question hovering at the top of her mind, one that begged an answer, given the tone of almost every conversation she'd ever had with Han on the subject.

"I'm sure you're right, Wedge," she said. "I have no doubt he's capable; I'm just surprised you would even think to ask him, considering his usual attitude."

Wedge grunted in acknowledgement of her words, but Leia thought she saw a flicker of a smile cross his face. She sighed and sought to clarify.

"I just mean...he's been hanging around here for over six months, but he hasn't shown much interest in getting involved with anything we do, beyond handling the freight work and personnel transfers he's been hired for. How much did you have to pay him to lead the combat training?"

"Nothing," Wedge croaked. "He's doing it for free."

Now that really didn't sound like Han. Leia furrowed her brow and gave Wedge a dubious look. "I don't believe you."

"It's the truth, Princess."

"If you aren't paying him outright, then he must have talked you into owing him something else," she said firmly, crossing her arms over her chest and fixing him with a pointed stare. "There is no way he'd volunteer for something like that, if there's nothing in it for him."

Despite the absolute conviction with which she'd loaded her tone, Leia felt a strange inner twinge as the words left her mouth. She didn't particularly want to examine the emotion that fluttered briefly in her gut, but her rational mind would never let her get away with fooling herself. Deep inside, she wanted to be wrong about Han Solo; in fact, if she were being completely honest with herself, she didn't even believe that what she'd just said about him was true. And she was silently hoping against hope that Wedge was about to tell her that the Corellian had had a change of heart and wanted to join the Rebel cause after all.

Wedge hesitated, flicking his eyes in every direction but hers, and looking like he'd rather endure the pain of diving under the bed covers than respond to Leia's challenge.

"Wedge?" she pressed, drawing out his name with an inquisitive drawl.

"I wouldn't say there's nothing in it for him, Princess," he hedged.

"What do you mean?"

The dark-haired pilot finally heaved a weary sigh. "Look, I commed him to ask the favour before they hauled me down here. At first he said sorry, he wasn't available. So...I sent him the roster." He gave another small shrug. "Next thing I know, he commed right back and said he'd do it after all."

Leia struggled to find the connection. "I don't understand," she said. "Why did you think that showing him the roster would change his mind?"

Wedge gave Leia a long, speculative look. Pressing his lips together, he appeared to give his reply careful consideration before responding. "Maybe because I made sure yourname was at the top of the list."

Leia felt her eyes go wide and then she looked away as she felt a hot flush paint her cheeks. Suddenly grateful for the stuffy mask that obscured half of her face, she cleared her throat and tried to compose some sort of response. It wasn't the first time someone had suggested that there might be something brewing between herself and the handsome Corellian; just the other night Luke had come looking for her and had found her aboard the docked Falcon, chatting and laughing with Han and Chewie over an impromptu meal. Luke had been invited to join them and had accepted readily, but his comment on arrival had lingered in Leia's mind ever since: Figured I'd find you here….

The offhand remark still made Leia squirm inwardly. Up until that point, she hadn't realised that she'd been spending so much time in Han's company, visiting the Falcon frequently enough that it had become the most obvious place for Luke to look for her when she wasn't on duty. It was true that Han's help in rescuing her from certain death had forged a bond between them. Together with Luke and Chewie, he'd been there for her in the darkest hours of her life—in the aftermath of the Death Star and the destruction of Alderaan—when she'd struggled to gather together the shattered pieces of herself into some semblance of order and calm. Although they'd never openly discussed it, Leia was keenly aware of her connection to those three treasured friends; each in his own way had helped her to get through the first overwhelming waves of grief, then to set aside her sorrows and get back to the serious business of bringing justice to the galaxy.

In Han's case, it was never any words that he said or even anything specific that he'd done. Laconic by nature, he seemed to shun empty platitudes and refrained from overt gestures of comfort, for which Leia was eternally grateful. Starting with the first time he'd sought her out after the awards ceremony on Yavin Four, when he'd handed her a bottle of ale and then sat beside her, sipping his own drink and letting her lean against his side in companionable silence, his steadying presence had become a welcome constant for Leia. And although he made a show of indifference—or even scorn—when it came to the political and military machinations of the Alliance, the missions that they'd shared so far had forced Leia to revise her first impression of him as a mercenary who cared for nothing more than money. No matter what sour or disparaging words might occasionally fly out of his mouth, Han's actions always told a different story. It had come as a bit of a surprise when she finally recognised it, but the Corellian smuggler had undoubtedly joined the short list of people Leia fully trusted, and their developing friendship was growing stronger over time.

For reasons she didn't completely understand, though, the knowledge that her closest friends—and now all of Rogue Squadron, apparently—had noticed her deepening camaraderie with Han, enough to make reference to it as Wedge had just done, was mildly disconcerting. Perhaps, she thought, it wouldn't hurt to exercise a bit more discretion where he was concerned; the last thing she wanted was to allow her friendship with him to become the subject of base gossip. He had weathered just such a firestorm not long ago, and Leia had no desire to fan the flames of idle rumours around him again, let alone around herself, when things were finally beginning to die down.

Still, the prospect of withdrawing from those occasional social interactions filled her with a sudden, heavy melancholy. Over the past month or so, she had become accustomed to—and rather enamoured of—Han's particular brand of flirtation. He aroused her in every sense of the word, making her feel simultaneously energized and deeply calm; desired, but also valued for higher reasons that remained unarticulated but which she nevertheless understood. She still persisted in teasing him about his clumsy methods of engagement, and he still joked about requiring a How to Flirt with Feisty Princesses guide, but they had developed a warm friendship that promised something more, and she was loath to curtail its development.

Impatient with her own musings, Leia gave herself a mental shake and turned her attention back to Wedge only to find that the pilot's eyes were closed. While she'd been absorbed in ruminating over her feelings for Han Solo, her friend had taken refuge in the silence and subsided into sleep. Leia felt a pang of remorse for having prodded him with questions, and for outstaying the limits of his tolerance. Under the circumstances, she decided, it was best she make her exit while he was dozing, and avoid any future discussion on the matter.

She rose to her feet quietly, but the movement caused Wedge to stir and open his eyes once more. His face bore a look of profound fatigue, superimposed with that same slightly sheepish expression that dragged down his already pallid features even more. "Sorry, Princess. "

"No, I'm sorry," she said, giving his arm a little pat through the starched, white bedcover. Lifting her chin a fraction, she strived to keep her tone light. "You're not well, Wedge, and I've kept you too long. Get some rest; I'll pop in and see you again tomorrow."

As expected, Wedge gave no argument. He nodded weakly and closed his eyes as Leia moved toward the door.

"Hey, Leia?" he called as she reached for the controls, his voice already sounding heavy with sleep. "You're not mad, are you?"

Leia bit her lip and threw a quick smile of reassurance at him over her shoulder. "No, I'm not mad."

"Phew," the pilot teased, offering a wan smile in return. "Mind dimming the lights a little for me?"

"Sure," she replied, and palmed the control, reducing the glare of the overhead lights to a fraction of its previous intensity. "Sleep well, Wedge, and get better soon."

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