Author's Note: Hey, you all know the supremely talented Erin Darroch. She's not only a brilliant writer but an invaluable friend and support, and I hear she likes Han Solo playing pool. ;) So this is for her. Sorry it turned into whatever this is and turned out so long, my friend, but...yeah. I adore you. You're a treasure!
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July 4, 1957. Rolling his eyes at himself, Han Solo waded into Alder Lake again. It was a good day for it at least, real hot. He enjoyed the sunlight on his bare back. What Han liked a whole lot less was the feeling of wet denim, heavy and clinging to his lower half. Part of Han remained sure the Rogues were putting him on, that they were all gonna jump out from behind the trees and laugh.
He was leaving tomorrow on a sales trip with Doc. Han knew a guy didn't wear his coverall to meet prospective clients, but it wasn't a suit and tie gig, either. And yesterday Cunliffe, Doc's oily top salesman, had pointed out that the military honor represented by Han's bloodstripes could help them swing deals with other vets. Shit. Somehow Han kept the scowl from his face. Cunliffe, the son of some Mantell alderman, was Chewie's age but not drafted like Han and Chewie, that was for sure. Nix to that.
So yesterday afternoon, adjusting a shelf in Chewie's kitchen, Han asked Wedge Antilles where to buy blue jeans. Chewie closed the diner early to leave for a visit with his family in Washington State, and the freed Rogues took Han to the workwear shop down the street where they got theirs. The salesclerk sized Han at a glance, found Levi's long enough for his legs but otherwise Han thought they fit weird: close but stiff, the denim almost like fine-grade sandpaper. The button fly so rigid and unyielding it pinched even his calloused fingertips. When Han came out of the changing booth he'd been expecting the Rogues to crack up at his expense.
"I dunno," Han began. "They're kinda—"
Nah, Kes Dameron said. They were fine: 501s fit like that before they were broken in. All Han had to do was get in a tub and soak them through, then wear them all day.
"I...gotta wear wet pants." Han repeated. "All day."
Shifting his lime sucker from the inside of one cheek to the other—he was trying to quit smoking, Shara said it made Poe cough—Kes nodded.
"You're a father now, Dameron." Han hitched a thumb at Wes Janson. "Leave the clownin' to this guy, huh?"
Janson, newly single, noticed the cute salesgirl was eyeing the tall, tanned man frowning into the full-length mirror. "Hey, Kes. Let Solo look like a goof." Janson grinned around a rubbery bubble of chewing gum. Pop. "Leave a chance for everyone else."
"Solo." Wedge looked grave and stringent, like he was inducting Han into some religion. "You ever soak slats?"
Han shrugged his assent. Sure, he'd done bentwood work.
"So, it's like that." Wedge said. "Wet jeans fit your line. Get 'em wet, let 'em dry out a little, still on. Do it again." You had to do this repeatedly, eight hours at least—Wedge nodded at Han's incredulous face—then take them off and dry them with heat. After that, the cloth fit you for good. You could tell the guys who didn't bother with this, Wedge warned as though of an ancient curse: their jeans hung all wrong, boxy in some places, baggy in...others. In cheerful illustration of this critical fit location, Janson booted the red tab affixed to Kes' back pocket.
"I gotta bury the damn things at a crossroads, too?" But as Han groused he noticed that the Rogues' jeans did look fitted, faded and flexible enough, not at all the coarse texture of these brand-new ones. What the hell: he'd give it a shot. But there was no way, ever, Han vowed to himself, he'd grease his hair into that ducktail bit.
Now, today, the holiday, seemed a good time to try this insane greaser prescription. So when Leia took Millie into New Hope to run errands, Han stayed home, following the Rogues' directions. Well, mostly. The Rogues had said to get in the tub, but Han figured, why would he do that on a blazing summer day? So here he was: walking, for the fifth time, into the lake.
When he left the water Han didn't bother with the tree stumps pulled up to the firepit to act as seats. He sat shirtless in the pebbled sand, knees drawn up under his elbows, wearing the vintage aviator sunglasses Leia gave him when he began flying lessons. Feeling his wet skin tighten in the heat, Han ran his fingers up the shorn back of his neck. Willa Calrissian had cut his hair in return for his helping to gut old suites in that apartment block she and Lando bought after they unloaded Cloud City (Lando said he couldn't stand the sight of the bar anymore, so he sold it. Han was amused that his old friend had made a small fortune—this mixture of decency and profit acumen was pure Lando). Han wasn't yet used to his hair short. Not short-short, not bristles—Han's hair still ruffled, a little, in today's rare breeze, but it definitely revealed the shape of his head. Leia said he looked handsome, and that was good: Han wasn't vain in the way of, say...Lando, but he did want his girl to dig him. Anyway, Han couldn't let his hair stay scruffy if he was going on client trips with Doc.
Sales! Back-slaps, flattery, jokes: the whole routine made Han itch. Cunliffe had once said he'd shill his own wife for a shipping contract, and Han still wasn't sure he was kidding. It was Cunliffe who usually went on sales trips, but Doc had unexpectedly asked Han along on this one with them, and Han loved flying so much, so much that he didn't want to give his boss reason to doubt his commitment. Leia knew that if Han took on sales work they'd spend time apart and she supported him nonetheless, but Han had simply refused to consider the long-term prospects. He'd avoided even thinking of this trip. Now, though, it was upon him: tomorrow began a full week in Eisley, a small, bleak city three hours away. Sales meetings scheduled every day, opportunities to watch Cunliffe stretch his glibness over six-beer lunches. Han grimaced. If he did badly with sales, he faced potential flightlessness. If he did well...well, he'd get sent out more, which meant increased Leialessness.
No, not her, never that. There had to be another—
His jeans hadn't dried much but Han stood and walked back into the lake. This time he waded farther, up to the shoulders, ducking under to cool his head. The water was silky but he guessed swimming in jeans was a drag in every sense. So out Han went, saturated denim tugging at each long step. It was too hot to go after the hard exercise he craved; he paced awhile along the lakefront, skipping flat stones. Finally he dropped onto a chaise, bent an elbow behind his head, drummed his fingers on his abdomen. This was one of the rare times (bank line-ups were another) he wished he was a serious reader, like Leia, envying how she could be transported. He didn't want to sit here chewing over his own thoughts, or letting them chew at him.
Instead Han chewed his lower lip. He could go into his workshop for awhile, use the garden hose when the jeans dried. With Leia's blessing, even horror that he'd asked her—my God, of course, you don't have to—Han! don't you know it's all ours?—he'd spent from late winter to early summer fixing the workshop up. There was some rot, but Han polished most of the great old hardwood that lent the place the beat-up character he liked. Expanded the place some, insulated it so he could work comfortably in the cold, installed a sliding barn door salvaged from a farmer. Hired Kes Dameron, just qualified as an electrician, to juice the place up to code. Han could manage wiring himself, but Dameron was trying to make a go of contracting on the side from Chewie's, Shara was going back to nursing school and they had a kid and mortgage, while Han was earning more money than he'd ever imagined. Han hired Kes on a weekend so he could pay double-time with no effacement of Dameron's pride. You're sneaky, Leia said later, loving accusation in her eyes.
But what to work on? Millie was running better than ever, the cabin tightened up. Growing drowsy on the hot lounger, Han stumbled into a thought: problem with the shop is...The problem was, he'd made the shop too big. Expanded it enough to accommodate work on his projects and on Millie with ample room left over, but now it felt—kinda cold. Eventually Han would think of something to do with the extra space, but for now it just seemed...empty.
The word Han couldn't, or wouldn't, reach—not on this eve of his work trip, on the borders of another birthday—was lonely. But Han had a last coherent want: no matter how stupid he looked in his wet jeans, he wished Leia was home.
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Oh, come on.
Sometimes Han's allure was so ostentatious it struck Leia's eye like a gambler's trick. A glamor, a prestige in the illusory sense, if she didn't intimately know Han's depth. And though she was closer to her husband than anyone else, this was not something Leia could say to him. She could not even explain it to herself, the mingled tenderness, bemusement and lust she felt for Han at his most natural, no preposterous boasting or elastic expressions to disturb the lines of his beauty.
He was sprawled on a canvas lounger, fast asleep. His shirt was off, trim waist flaring to deep chest dusted with wiry copper, broadening further at the shoulders. Tanned to warm toffee. Right arm flung above his head, face mild in rest, turned toward a taut convex bicep. One long leg outstretched, one bent. Big bare feet, those absurd toes. He wore new jeans, soaked indigo, stiff but softening enough to sling at his narrow hips. Resting a knee on the side of the chaise, Leia combed gentle fingers through his shorter, sun-lightened hair; she wanted to scoff at the universe for this clichéd display of blatant maleness. But she did not want to scoff at Han: not at him, no, not like this, coming to slow wakefulness in her shadow, under her slow touch. Leia would never doubt Han's earnestness when he was so drowsy and soft and mussed.
Han blinked up at her, then offered a beatific half-smile. "Heya, Princess." His already low voice weighted with sleep.
Leia smiled back at him from under her mother's wide-brimmed straw hat, sipping her Coke. She held out the bottle. Han sat up to take it, a long icy swallow rousing him. Leia watched his eyes scale rapid levels of consciousness and color as they roved over her figure, irises rising from hazy khaki to the clear bright shade of the green glass at his lips.
Her cream bikini was piped in navy. The structured top emphasized her generous bust and the waist of her small shorts was well south of her navel. The cut was more daring than Leia would once have chosen, though far from the golden Isolder disaster. And the only reason Leia wouldn't have worn this style last year was because an insolent stranger was living here, but that man was no longer foreign to her, nor to the form now before him—though you wouldn't guess how thoroughly Han knew Leia from the way he looked at her now.
"I got my own damn bikini." Leia stepped back from the lounger, inviting, even daring the stare that had once incited her to wrath.
"You...sure...did."
Between his deliberate syllables, Han worked the bottle into the sand, never taking his eyes from Leia. But when he lunged to surprise her, to seize her at the waist, Leia dodged so that he only just grazed her hip, momentum sending him to a knee on the beach. Laughing, Leia tossed the teasing Frisbee of her hat at him, escaping to the water's edge. On his knees, Han watched Leia run into the scalloped waves, a small ache in his heart for her spirit and grace. Then, rising, Han took after her at speed. He'd thought he wouldn't swim in jeans, but there was nowhere he wouldn't follow that beloved shape.
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Leia was a beautiful swimmer, fast and practised. When Han, hindered by wet trousers, reached the dock she was already perched there, her hair slicked sleek and dark as black leather. Chest rising and falling with her exertion, with the swaying platform. Han planted an elbow on the wood to anchor himself as he recovered. Leia smiled down at him in the water as he playfully bit at her kneecap, then she peered closer.
"Han? Are you still wearing your—"
Han smirked, ignoring the short ladder bolted to the dock, hoisting himself to join Leia on the wet cedar. Looking steadily at her and not missing the way she looked at him in return as he pushed his body from the water. Her eyes followed the long veins in his extended arms, the very paths she liked to map with her fingertips when they were in bed together, close and bare just after.
"Forgot to take 'em off in all the excitement."
"That's not like you," Leia said dryly.
Han ran his own finger under a bikini strap, watching Leia's neck flush in response and marvelling at the private arrangement of nerves strung under her skin. "I like this thing," he confided, softly snapping the strap against her shoulder.
"Oh?" Leia pulled back to look at him, arching a fine eyebrow. "Would you say it, hmmm, how did someone put it—blows your doors off?"
Han nodded. "Doors," His broad hand opened on her belly, spanning from hipbone to just under the cups of her bikini top, pulling her steadily closer. "Hinges, jambs..."
He tilted his head to kiss her in earnest but suddenly Leia stood, sending his wet palm skidding down her middle. Smiling at Han's small trumpeting of thwarted outrage, Leia walked away from him to the opposite side of the dock. Feeling him track the sway of her hips, slow until the final faster steps that carried her off the edge into an elegant arc.
When Leia broke the surface of the lake, Han was standing on the ledge she'd just abandoned, thumbs hooked into his pockets. "Your Highness." He whistled, steady, impressed, enamored. "That was some dive."
"Your turn, Hotshot," Leia goaded, treading water.
Han paused, seeming abruptly removed from his usual physical confidence. Leia read this in the minute dip of his shoulders, a shuffling of feet made unsure of purchase on the slick planks. And she was surprised at this hesitance, since there wasn't much in the kinetic realm that Han couldn't at least pass muster at. Han did insist he couldn't dance, but Leia suspected this was discomfort with the exposure of a public floor. Because often at home Han spontaneously pulled Leia close, moved her easily through the kitchen to the rhythm of whatever was playing on the radio, or the jukebox they'd never given back to the Rogues. His body was its own boast of competence.
Not one to concede to inexperience, Han set his jaw. He retreated on the dock, then launched himself into a charging leap that dashed its impact over her. Soaked, Leia stared in shock as Han cleared the waves he'd made. When she couldn't help but snicker—she did try not to—Han gave her a look, lips rounded in mock-hurt. Leia began to speak then shook her head, yielding into laughter, leaning back into water made supportive by the regular sweeping of her arms.
He sluiced a hand over his face, other arm working, legs cycling to keep himself vertical. "Yeah, yeah." Han muttered. "Laugh it up, Missus." He angled a glance at her from under tawny lashes. "Maybe you could, uh. Show me again."
Her relish of correctness piqued, Leia spent the next twenty minutes performing perfect dives before Han's wide, studious eyes. Strictly she adjusted his position, put her hands freely on him to gauge weight distribution, placed his own hands on her legs and waist and hips to best demonstrate placement. Leia taught him so clearly and thoroughly that she couldn't believe it when Han's dives got worse—Han, who'd casually leap up during their forest walks to catch a tree limb, pulling himself into chin-ups, overhand or under, then swing himself into easy dismount, resuming his stroll alongside her. How was it, Leia thought, tossing up her hands in exasperation as Han somehow hit the lake backwards, that this man, so agile on land, could not get his shoulders into the water before his frankly beautiful ass?
And that was it: it was the jeans, Leia thought later. They were so funny and out-of-place in the lake, yet aggressively attractive plastered on him—Han's goofiness and sex appeal a combination that would forever weaken her. Han like this, combined with her love of instruction, clouded Leia's logic, prevented her from seeing the actual gambler's trick. His sleight-of-body. Leia really should have guessed something was up from the escalating slapstick: Han went in on his feet, his front, on his side, hitting so hard and clumsily and, and wide that Leia was surprised any liquid remained in the crater basin of Alder Lake. All the while Leia cupped her hands to her mouth, hollering pointers that Han missed, so furiously did he hurl himself at the water.
His last attempt was a truly baffling flop so powerfully wrong that it left Leia sinking to her knees on the dock with despairing mirth. Han came up shaking his short hair, a hapless pup complete with mournful eyes. His shame was so showy that Leia paused like a deer scenting something on the breeze, narrowing her own doe eyes—and then she saw the flash of white teeth, quickly hidden. Oooh, that...shark. And that was Han's mistake, not the brief smirk which he may have intended Leia to glimpse anyway—no, Han's tell was unconscious reversion to grace as he stroked easily and quickly back to the dock. Han forgot, or could not feign, the gawkiness necessary to maintain his playful con.
Still kneeling on the wood, Leia shook her head. She tried to hold her chiding expression as Han pressed himself up from the water, tried to ignore how low his soaked jeans dragged on his hips. "Why am I getting the feeling..." Leia began, lifting her chin as he rose to full blithe height.
Han, face and voice neutral, said "why can't I get this though" and fell immediately sideways off the dock, body rigid as a plank, into the waves. Leia laughed and laughed, letting her head fall back, grazing her waist with the points of her two wet braids. She was still laughing when Han reappeared on the platform above her. The gold band on his finger flashed hot semaphore.
"What's my score?"
Leia held up her fingers in a loose zero, then reconsidered. "Okay, two. You're cute."
"Two? Ah hell." Han laced his fingers at the back of his neck. "Gimme one more chance, Sweetheart, willya?"
Leia made a gesture of elaborate tolerance. Han twisted his torso, stretched luxuriantly all along his long spine, shuddering with pleasure. And he took a brief set of steps back, then covered the distance again at speed and flew, knifing clean into the waves with all the lean utility one would expect from Han Solo's frame.
He came up as sleek and grinning and toothy-sweet as a dolphin. "Princess! I think I got it!" Leia's husband exulted, borrowing her brother's earnestness.
Leia crawled to the edge of the platform, lowering herself prone to her elbows to meet his return. Han slung tan arms on the wood on either side of her. "You," Leia sighed, gripping his chin and administering a scolding string of kisses, "are shameless."
Han hummed his admission, his satisfaction with Leia's attention, flashed a grin against her mouth that more than lived up to her accusation. "You? Are gorgeous."
"No, I'm clueless." Leia laughed again. "You're from a port city! I should have known."
"Yeahhhp." Han said. "Piers right near the home." Long fingers slipped just under the legbands of her shorts, skimming the backs of her thighs. "But I do appreciate your, uh, unbelievable form,"
She rolled her eyes at his gleeful flirtation. "In jeans? You looked like bouncers were ejecting you from a bar."
"No shirt, no shoes, no service." Han hitched a shoulder. Leia drew back to smile at him, her eyes with their rich deep sparkle. Resting his chin on the wood, Han regarded her. And Leia looked back at Han as he folded his forearms in front of the lower half of his face, his eyes very green against his tan. He angled an eyebrow toward his wet-tufted hair.
"...bouncers, huh." Leia could tell from the crinkling around Han's eyes that he'd smiled behind his obscuring arms. "You gonna get rowdy while I'm gone, Princess?" Now those eyes were amber, complicated: hungry, warm and soft, slightly pained.
They hadn't talked much about their looming separation. It wasn't like Han hadn't been away from her—he had, twice, on quick overnight flights with Doc and the guys to adjoining states. But now Han would be in Eisley for a week. And over the ninth of July. When Leia mentioned that date, Han shrugged and said he'd never made a thing of his birthday anyway. Still, Leia could tell he felt something about it, even if Han himself did not know it: perhaps it was the ghost of old loneliness. The birthday bothered her, Leia thought, possibly more than him.
It wasn't like Leia didn't have, and love, her own work, particularly with the unprecedented success of her first column on New Hope. Han loved his work too, ecstatic about his flying lessons, the prospect of being assigned short shipping hauls. Both seasoned by their experiences, neither of them demanded perpetual heaven, though this first married summer felt to Leia very close to that. They were young and, in ways, still getting to know each other, layer after layer, through enjoyable debates and verbal exchange of prior lives. Their days off wound like rivers around sex and errands in town and rambling walks and companionable chores. Long mornings spent in bed, with what to have for dinner the evening's most taxing concern. That was often the diner. And after, the hammock or records or television or Luke on the phone or they'd go to the drive-in (sometimes they watched the movie, sometimes they just spent sixty cents to neck for two hours in Millie's cab). And back to bed again. Leia was still happily surprised, sometimes, to find herself married to Han, the man she had been compelled to wed. Han who couldn't wear his wedding band with his hands in engines so he found the chain welded to his dog-tags—debossed with SOLO, H. TYPE A POS. RELIGION: NONE—and looped the band on, wore that chain rather than leave his ring behind.
"Han," Leia felt seized by urgency. "When you come home, for your birthday—"
Gray crept into Han's eyes; he cast them to the shoreline. "Hey, we better head back. Antilles said I gotta let the pants dry out."
Leia cocked a brow, allowing him his evasion. It was his birthday, after all, not hers, and she knew now that Han would always in time open to her. And this would give her time, she decided, time to make his birthday celebration flawless, even if delayed. She felt her lifelong iron determination in her spine: Leia would make her husband's twenty-fifth birthday perfect, so perfect that it would cancel all the others.
"Or what?"
His lip crawled up the side of his face. "Or I'm a frog again, Princess. Wanna race me back?"
"Why don't you dry them on the dock?" She said it lightly, but she tucked her fingers into the water, into his back pocket.
"Oh, I would." With open eyes Han kissed her, firm and final, in a way that made Leia think of punctuation: baseline dot. "But you're goin' pink. And not in the way I want."
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Later, night, much later, long after Han had completed several cycles of the Rogues' assignment with increasing vocal impatience that made Leia laugh to hear as she read Peyton Place on a chaise in the shade; after their picnic supper of cold fried chicken and potato chips and fruit salad she had picked up from the diner, Han and Leia curled together on an old quilt on the beach. They were so relaxed that all was sense: the occasional prickle of long grass through sand and patched fabric, the acrid crackle from the fire Han built, the lingering heat rising from the beach that had completely dried his jeans at last. Below the smoke the deep green breath of trees, the sweetness of their own skin after a day in fresh water and sun. They didn't talk so much as just keep close, Leia's head on Han's chest, her ear rumbling with his hum along with the transistor radio. Tucked under his shoulder, his fingers in her hair, his other arm folded behind his head. At nine o'clock the fireworks began downtown and they sat up to watch stalks of light from downtown bud and burst, making them laugh, point, mouths hot with burnt sugar and tart with icy lager.
Leia rose, on her knees, and moved closer to the fire with the marshmallow stick Han had whittled. She wore his discarded work-shirt open over her bikini, her hair loose and waved from air-drying in braids. And something in Leia's attire, her posture reminded Han of the Gil Elvgren calendar in the hangar. He'd always liked 'em, those pinup girls, since he first saw them painted on the sides of Allied planes at the dawn of his sexual awareness. Belle Wringer. Gorgeous George-Ann. In their garters, in their bathing suits and sheer nighties, the exotic markers of all that was unknown to his lonely adolescence. And Han's understanding of his liking for Elvgren girls stopped there, at the broad base of itself; he did not consider, not consciously, that these pretty women were often pictured not only unclothed but also in the midst of doing something recognizably human, something warm and—and loving, like wrapping presents or writing letters to their soldiers or...well, say, roasting marshmallows.
As a teenager Han never questioned the absurdity of the situations that illustrated the titillating mystery of women in their filmy underthings; he'd been merely grateful to project his longing and lust. But as a man, as a grown man married to this exact woman, it was impossible and unwanted for Han to imagine Leia catching her damn skirt in the oven door while she was baking a cake, not realizing what she was revealing. No. Leia certainly had the hourglass figure and the bikini, she was as playful and industrious, inquisitive and beguiling as any of those cheesecake girls—but her allure was tempered by her intelligence, her incisive awareness, and it was this combination that ruined him.
Even apart from his true love for her, his admiration for her as a discrete person, Leia Organa was also some alloy of everything that Han Solo found sexually irresistible, bright and magnetic and molten. And so Han made an involuntary sound to see Leia now, sitting back on her heels, smiling up at the neon bursts, nibbling melted confection from her thumb. At this noise she looked to him, tucking wavy hair behind her ear. Han wasn't going to answer, but Leia went on quizzing with her eyes, her red lips quirking upwards. A little embarrassed by his moony expression, Han was thankful for firelight to obscure the extra heat he felt crawling into his neck.
Her eyes sharpening—she did like to find new roads into him—Leia moved deliberately to Han, still on her knees. She seemed steady enough, but her face was flushed so that Han wondered if she had got that sunburn or—
"Are you drunk?" Han wasn't, not really—just pleasantly buzzed, an easy glaze in his hazel eyes.
"No," Leia said, carelessly. "Are you blushing?"
She slung herself astride Han's thighs, her face close to his and somehow both indulgent and intense. And Leia waited. Her slight weight on him a wonderful abrasion. Han sighed, cupped her bottom with one hand; with the other he stroked the back of her neck, under her fragrant, sheltering hair.
"You look like one'a them pinups," Han finally said. "At a guy's work, like. You seen 'em?"
Leia raised her eyebrows in triumph and tenderness. Then she smiled, pushing Han gently down as she kissed him deeply, for a long time, as though in reward for releasing this old, mild but guarded part of himself to her.
"So." Leia opened her mouth on Han's throat, finding his jumping pulse. She moved to kiss his still-bare chest, his taut, bunching belly, lower. Bit at Han's angled hipbone, toying with the topmost glinting new button slung below his navel. "How long until these can come off?"
"Now. Ri—" Han was cut off by his own rough swallow, fingers flown to his button-fly. "Right now."
But with the unforgiving stiff fabric and Han's emphatic eagerness underneath, the buttons resisted. Han wrangled and wriggled and muttered and swore until Leia's kisses dissolved into laughter against his abdomen.
"Fuckin' guys," Han growled through his teeth, weltering beneath her, "sold me a damn chastity belt—"
Leia batted his wringing hands away and slipped her much smaller fingers into the close spaces dividing denim and metal discs. The buttons left their slots with muted pops, like the fireworks appearing in the distant sky, above the treeline. Han heaved a sigh, just threaded with groan. And Leia breathed a soft, fond laugh as she freed him, asked him: "No underwear in this blue jeans rite?"
"Uh." Han leaned up on his elbows, breathing uneven. "The guys said—"
Words broke in his throat as Leia brought her beautiful mouth to him. His chest felt like an imploding star, inflamed and collapsing, and all he could do was exhale heat: Jesus. Han fell back to threadbare patchwork, one hand closing in sand, the other in her hair. Leia—
Goodnight, sweetheart, the radio entreated, goodnight. And Leia pulled Han into the blooming climb of something hotter, sweeter, than fire tossed into the sky to rain down as color.