Rated for language and eventual sexual content in chapters two and three.

Leia Organa heard him enter her quarters aboard Home One and instinctively glanced at her bedroom door. Han was the only person with direct access to her quarters and she was happy to hear him using it. Good things happened when he showed up to her bedroom unannounced.

Or they usually did. Tonight, however, Leia was attending a formal event for the nominal Mid-Rim ambassadors, a long-overdue dinner to which she had furiously argued not to be assigned. Tonight was also Han's last night in the Endor system before his next assignment near Thyferra. And ambassadorial dinners did not typify brevity. She was looking at a long, boring night of politics when all she really wanted to do was grab a quick dinner and soak up as much of Han's time and attention as she could before his departure.

She exhaled and finished her hair. She'd braided it into a loose crown to keep it out of her way tonight. She wasn't interested in attracting anyone's attention other than the man she desperately hoped would wait for her here. Her hair was not particularly spellbinding, her dress was a bland navy blue silk with a high neckline (although she quite admired the open back), and she hadn't spent much time on her make-up at all.

Leia was more interested in what she wore beneath the dress. And she was fairly certain Han would be, too. Once she managed to escape the dinner, that is.

"I was thinking," Han said, his voice echoing throughout her quarters. She liked the way he just walked into her living space and didn't bother with a greeting. She loved the familiarity it implied. "I think I found a way to send you messages from the Falcon without the brass seeing it."

Leia shook her head. "You are the brass, General," she reminded him.

A pause.

"Damn," he said, loud enough for her to hear. She smiled as he continued. "That's depressing."

She laughed. "And what kind of message are you sending that you don't want the rest of the brass to see?"

"Dirty ones," he said. He sounded completely unselfconscious about it. She didn't doubt his honesty. "Lots of inappropriate things in them. Dodonna'd have a fit."

"I'm sure he would," she said, adding the final layer of lipcolor. "I'm surprised you'd even bother hiding them."

Leia marveled at herself, speaking with Han so frankly about sex. It wasn't long ago - less than a year, she thought - when she'd been nervous around him on Hoth. He'd exuded a magnetism that made her simultaneously want and fear him. At the time, she'd believed he had an unfocused field of attraction. He'd draw anyone into himself; it didn't matter which gender, or species, or type. Everyone wanted Han Solo. He was like a planet inexorably pulling moons into orbit around himself.

Leia hadn't been intimidated by him, per se. She'd been wary. She'd witnessed firsthand what happened to women who let their infatuations flare for Han. And she hadn't believed she had the emotional strength to deal with such cool indifference.

It'd taken her a very long time to realize that while it was true most beings naturally gravitated toward him, Han's magnetic field was aimed squarely at her. Just her, only her, to the exclusion of everyone else. Not like the gravitas of a planet, more like the pull of a tractor beam. So while she'd felt that agonizing draw to him, not everyone else had. He was gorgeous, of course, and that was probably what made everyone move to him. But the way he looked at her, the way he forced her reactions, the way he stepped into her personal space and refused to be intimidated by her? He hadn't expelled that much energy on anyone else and she was only now starting to see that.

Her comfort with him now was novel but not surprising. Finally caught in orbit around him, it seemed only natural to lean into his somewhat lax interpretation of discretion.

"I don't mind people knowing that I'm sending you all sorts of messages," Han replied. "I mind them reading them."

She had an image of quietly disapproving Jan Dodonna reading a message consisting largely of the words wet, hard and fuck and grimaced. "Ugh."

"Yeah," he replied. "Not a pleasant thought."

"No," she agreed. She stood to look herself up and down in the small mirror. "I'm going to try to make this quick," she said, moving. She gathered her shawl from the bed and slipped her heels on. "Very quick," she emphasized as she walked through the rest of her quarters. "Two hours, maybe three. Do you want me to comm you when I get back or - "

She stopped dead in her tracks. Han Solo was standing in the living space of her small quarters, dressed in full military dress uniform, hands shoved in his pockets. She swallowed and raked her eyes over him. Always a cut figure, the hard lines of his torso were edged in black piping, drawing her eyes to his long legs and polished boots. His pants still held the Corellian Bloodstripes, she noticed, but the obligatory DL-44 was conspicuously absent. His hair was thankfully still a mess and his eyes were playful when she met them. "If this is gonna take three hours you might have to comm me. I'll be hiding behind the bar after one."

Leia blinked. "Who the hell gave you a dress uniform?" Her voice sounded indignant but she felt a little punch-drunk. Her thoughts were a fast blur of sex and love and it made her feel lightheaded.

He smirked. "The same morons who gave me a commission."

She tried valiantly to close her mouth. She really did. But he was doing something to her brain: he was, or the uniform. At this rate she wasn't sure which to blame. All she knew is that she'd never seen anything sexier in her life than the dashing figure of General Solo in a dress uniform.

His smirk grew as the seconds ticked by without an answer. Finally he threw his head back and outright laughed at her. "I swear, I had no idea dressing up a bit would render you speechless."

She pursed her lips. "Neither did I." she said, and moved to him. "If you were smart you would have tried this long before now."

"No kidding," he said, reaching out to grip her hips. "You alright there, Organa?"

"Working on it," she muttered as she stood flush with him, at eye level with his chin. She ran an index finger down the edge of his lapel, the rough cloth a stunning counterpart to the calluses on his hand as it smoothed over her jaw. "Please tell me this isn't a ploy to tease me while I go do important things."

He shook his head, amusement still clear in his eyes. "I'm not that cruel."

The words were cocky but he said it with pure benevolence. "You realize what you're about to do?" she asked.

She was pretty sure he understood. Offering to escort her to a public dinner in service to the New Republic (in full dress uniform, no less) took a broad legitimizing step toward official recognition of their relationship. No matter what they said from here on out, if he was on her arm tonight, they would call him her consort. That would be the word they'd use. Consort. Never mind that she wasn't a princess any longer, or that the system that would have made him a consort was long gone, or that his military rank would have granted him his own invitation to this dinner had he requested it.

In the eyes of the galaxy she was a princess. And if she took his arm tonight he would be her consort.

"We're going to this dinner together," he said. "And then afterwards we're going to come back here and build up some vocabulary for those messages."

She rested her palms flat on his chest. "That is a given," she said. "But I meant the part about going to dinner together."

"Hmm," he rumbled. They were standing so close to each other that she could feel the sound deep in her chest. Her stomach flipped. "You look a little spooked there, Highness."

Her eyebrows shot up. "Not spooked. Confused."

"About what?"

She pursed her lips and focused on the way his thumbs were caressing the silk at her hips. "Escorting me to a state dinner is fairly big-league behavior, General."

"Big-league," he repeated, grinning. Then he turned nonchalant. "You have to go to this shindig tonight and I have to leave tomorrow. You can't come with me tomorrow, so I'll go with you tonight. Simple."

Simple. She watched his eyes. They were clear, without guile or reservation. Which blew her mind because what he was saying was not simple. "You'd be escorting me. In public."

"Yeah," he said.

"You'd have to talk to people."

"Yeah."

She leaned away from him and raised an eyebrow. "Why are you doing this?"

She didn't mean to sound suspicious. And she didn't mean to imply that he had an ulterior motive. But their relationship wasn't official knowledge yet. It'd been fodder for gossip since Hoth, of course, and they'd never gone out of their way to hide it. She spent nights on the Falcon with him and he slept here in her cabin with her. They weren't particularly shy about affection, though neither of them had an exhibitionist streak. They'd even submitted a conflict of interest statement shortly after the Battle of Endor. Anyone with eyes or ears would know what was going on between them.

But that was a far cry from dragging him into her world.

"Leia," he said, and she knew she was done. His voice dropped in timbre, falling into a deep register that played over her body like music. "We're going to the damn dinner. And you're going to stop worrying about what will turn me off of you."

Her mouth dropped and she shook her head. "That's not what I meant - "

"Sure it is," he answered, squeezing her hips. "And it's ridiculous because you know I'd tell you if I didn't want to do something."

She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead on his shoulder. Of course she knew that. Logically, she knew it. But logic and fear were near polar opposites of each other. And she hadn't actually realized she'd been worried about it at all.

She considered his words. Over the past few months she'd been tiptoeing around her fear that Han would come to his senses and leave her. Not from any inferiority complex. She knew better than to think so little of Han or herself. But ignoring her fear that he'd hate this vast new world that he would eventually have to join? Dinners? Receptions? Ceremonies?

Yes. She'd been avoiding that fear.

She lifted her head and looked at him. His eyes still seemed clear. She felt reassured despite herself. "You're telling me you want to attend a formal dinner?"

He made a face and slid his hands to the small of her back. His fingers now touched bare skin and Leia felt heat tear up her spine. "Want is not the word I'd use. I want you. I will tolerate this dinner."

I want you. Such beautiful words, spoken so plainly. "Well, General," she said, rising up on her toes to reach his lips. Her hands slid under the heavy lining of his jacket. "I want to get you good and ready for those messages you promised." She kissed him softly, lightly, teasing. "Let's go to dinner so that we can leave."