a/n: thanks for your enthusiastic response!
interlude ii
She went with him.
Chewbacca was in no condition to co-pilot, and Dodonna refused to authorize anyone else to go. He forbade Leia to go – Han could pilot on his own; he could risk his own life. Leia's argument that she was a high value target, a lure away from the base if they were caught, was feeble, and convoluted; that didn't matter, she earned Rieekan's consent, and upended the first decision.
She went in spite of them, because deep down, Rieekan was not yet adjusted to his new role as her superior; he was too ingrained with Alderaanian norms to stand against a member of his sovereign family when she declared immutable intent – she went because these were two of the most important people in her life. Of the only people left in her life at all. She went for Chewbacca, and she went for Han, and she went looking for some salvation or some feeling, whichever came first.
The struggle just to get Chewie on the ship, to transfer him from med bay to the Falcon's paltry med bunk without disrupting his meager treatment – that was a testament to the fragility of their situation.
He was barely conscious, suffering, and intermittently lucid; dead weight and infection, contained in mottled fur and a weakening system. Han had difficulty looking at him, even as he focused on settling him for transport.
The Two One-Bee politely and blithely advised against the move. Han told it to fuck off. The stealthy departure from Hoth was rough, and white-knuckled, matched only by the heaving, unreliable lurch into hyperspace, and the haunting worry that they had been spotted.
That in itself was a persistent, dull worry that plagued them in a steady current at all hours of the day, and after the initial burst into hyperspace, it simmered back down to its homeostatic level, there to linger until they reached Kashyyyk, and dropped out to see what awaited them.
Han said there were multiple hidden atmospheric gates into Kashyyyk, many that led ships in through dangerous swatches of jungle – jungle he'd navigated more than once, on other furtive runs. Their journey was dangerous, but perhaps benefited from the simple possibility that the Empire would never expect them to dare hurtle right into a populated, well-known system.
"And if we are caught?" Leia asked dully, dwarfed in Chewie's seat, working the co-pilot's triggers with sharp, familiar jerks of her hand.
She wasn't particularly frightened of the idea. She'd been caught before. She had lived. Perhaps the Empire had made a grave mistake, in not killing her immediately; they had created a woman who knew what they would do to her, and had resisted, and fought back anyway – the only way to defeat her now was death, and if they killed her, they'd lose her knowledge, and they'd make a martyr of her.
Weapons won wars, but martyrs won revolutions.
Han's knuckles were white as he leaned back, the sweat on his brow a result of the unusually fast and rough acceleration from base to space, and his personal stress. He looked pale, and confounded at that idea.
"We always get away, Leia," he muttered.
He stood up, turning to go back to tend to Chewbacca.
"We'll get away," he said, distracted. He beckoned to her. "I need help."
She abandoned the cockpit, following him.
"You said you'd help," he said, as if she would – could—somehow back out now. He burst into the med bunk, tearing bins of things out of cabinets.
"I meant it, Han," she said calmly, taking to her knees next to the bunk. Her finger flew right to the worn blood pressure monitor attached to Chewie's, and she checked the reading, at the same time suddenly noticing it was the type that was meant for his species. Han had not been bluffing about his obvious concern for the medical treatment of other species - he'd clearly gone out of his way to make sure both he and Chewie could be treated here.
Han, leaning over her to shine a light in Chewie's eyes, noticed her looking. His ribs pressed into her head as he leaned over her, and she frowned, tilting her head up.
"I got most'a the stuff I need to treat and stabilize a Wookiee 'round the first year he wouldn't leave me alone," Han said gruffly, leaning closer to Chewie's face.
The closer he leaned, the more he pressed into her. Leia ducked her head back, lowering her eyes to watch him work. He dropped the light carelessly, and pushed back Chewbacca's lips, checking his gums.
"Oxygen? Check the Oh-two," Han said. "The switch is faulty, has been for years – hey pal, can you hear me?"
Chewie made a feeble noise, and Leia got up, twisting around Han to check the oxygen machine. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Han wince, and start testing Chewbacca's response to pain, using stimulus on different key nerve points on his snout and neck. One touch resulted in a weak roar, and Chewbacca feebly ripping the tube of oxygen loose from its perch.
Han gave a hoarse laugh of approval as Leia went after the machinery, hastily hooking it back together.
"Yeah," Han said, almost delirious, half to himself. "If it hurts, it ain't dead, eh?" he muttered, turning to glance at Leia. He thrust out his hand and waved it at her. "He needs water saturation in it, more'n us," he said, "hit the humidify setting – no, not dehydrate – "
Han got up and hustled her out of the way, focusing on the machine. He changed the settings so that the oxygen Chewbacca received was thick with water, humid, like a jungle – like the air would be in his prime environment, his homeland.
Leia watched, her throat tight with anticipation, with wonder.
"You've done this before," she said lamely.
"You know how many people try to kill me and hit him?" was Han's terse response. "Idiot jumps in front of me a lot – I only did him one favor," he griped under his breath.
Leia stood near Chewbacca's head, bending closer to him. She felt relief at the sight of him breathing, though it was still shallow. Han was still talking to himself behind her, tension ever present in his voice. He started rummaging through things, upended an entire bin in his cursory rush, and swore, so violently and with such colour, that Leia turned to him, visibly startled at the imagination of it.
"Kriff," wash the final pejorative, uttered as he took a knee. "I need a potassium antidote," he said, gesturing at the floor. "Help me look - ?"
Leia started to go to a knee, nodding quickly – potassium antidotes were vital in stopping the poison in Chewbacca's crushed limb from spreading; tourniquets and bacta therapy blocks had already been applied on Hoth. They were reaching a threshold at which nothing would stop the spread.
Even as she lowered her gaze to look, Han had suddenly grabbed her elbow, and unceremoniously wrenched her back up, a harassed, distracted expression on his face.
"What?" she asked, exasperated.
She started to look down again, and he shook her elbow.
"No," he ordered. "I forgot about," he grit his teeth. "There's fuckin' syringes all over the floor," he snapped. "There's needles. Don't look."
She felt paralyzed, for once not at the prospect of a needle, but because he took a moment in all this drama, concern for his oldest and closest friend, to remember her phobia, and to protect her from it.
"It's alright," she said faintly. "If I'm not getting the shot – "
"Don't do that to yourself," Han muttered, loosening his grip. "Go – hey, grab 'im some – there's tea leaves from his planet in the galley. Brew them, soak a cloth in the hot water, bring it to put on his chest – it's one of their remedies."
She stood staring at Han silently, her lips parted.
"C'mon, Leia, I don't want you to look down and lose it," he said.
It was a little callous, and left her feeling self-conscious, but she doubted he meant it in any way that implied she was ridiculous. She slid her arm out of his grasp, and she left with her eyes fixed on the walls, guiding her way to the galley with a stumbling hand. She easily found the tea he spoke of – it was the only tea on the ship.
Her hands shook as she prepared hot water and immersed the tealeaves in a sieve. Her head ached and her chest still hurt; her mouth felt dry, and she felt as if her gravity had abruptly been shut off, and she was floating and twisting in a dizzy fog of mixed directions.
Han was ecstatic to be given the chance of this desperate rescue effort, yet still mired in his anxious despair over Chewie's condition. He had every right, and Leia felt his anguish over their friend, but felt powerless to express her own grief because she'd come so close to extinguishing Han's last hope.
The idea of being the person who doused the last spark of hope was so abhorrent to her.
She closed her eyes and breathed in the heady, thick scent of the tea – it was hot, medicinal; it burned her throat, but inexplicably, it tasted like healing. If Kashyyyk's forests hid other powerful remedies like this, then maybe –
She took a clean cloth from a cabinet and soaked it in the tea as Han had instructed, ignoring the burn of the water against her hands. Folding it up, and folding soggy, potent tealeaves into the material, she returned to the med bunk, eyes up for self-preservation.
"I picked them all up, found the potassium antidote," Han said distractedly. She knelt beside him and leaned to place the cloth on Chewie's chest, hesitating. "Here," Han indicated, pointing to a place over Chewie's heart. "Put it there – Leia," he muttered, taking her hand when she placed the cloth down. "You're fuckin' burning yourself."
He shook his head roughly.
"You can't get hurt, too," he complained.
Irrationally amused, Leia wiggled her fingers.
"It's only a little steam," she protested.
He looked up at her, his hair falling in his face, and sticking up at odd angles. His face was pale, his jaw drawn, and circles under his eyes were darkening – she saw, in the sickly yellow light of the med bunk, how must sleep he'd lost recently, worrying over Chewbacca, how much of a toll it had taken on him.
He's strung out, Rieekan had said.
Han couldn't have more perfectly defined the phrase if he'd been on a narcotics bender.
He looked at her almost like he didn't know her, and then looked back down at Chewbacca, frozen, and staring. Leia took her hand back slowly, and turned to check that the cloth stayed where she had placed it, and Chewbacca's breathing was still consistent, if not good. Then, she lightly touched Chewie's snout for comfort, and turned to Han, taking his arm at the elbow.
She coaxed him to stand up, tugging and pushing gently, until he did so with a stumbling motion and rubbed his face.
"You need to breathe," she said. "Step out for a moment."
"Can't," he started to protest angrily.
She pointed silently to the green lights, all indicating that for lack of anything else, Chewbacca was stable. What Han desperately needed was a moment to breathe, to recoup from all the stress that had reached a breaking point. It was as he said – what he had on the Falcon was more or less the same equipment that the faltering Hoth med bay had been able to provide. He lacked the same highly advanced support.
Han finally let her draw him out into the hall by his elbow. Once there, he wrenched his arm away and turned on his heel, pacing away with his hands pressed to the back of his head. He turned to the wall, leaned his forehead against it, and then whipped around, sliding down to the floor hard.
He hunched forward, shoving his forehead against his knees, his hands clasped to the back of his neck. He groaned – in frustration, relief – maybe both, and did not look up.
Leia approached him haltingly. Hesitating even as she sat down. She leaned against the wall; her eyes drawn to Han's back. His shirt had ridden up high, exposing a constellation of thin pink scars on his back, streaking from his shoulders – she presumed – to his belt.
She looked at them for a long time, sitting in silence with him.
From deep in her heart, she drew on her revolutionary strength, on the well of positivity that a leadership role demanded she have, and demanded she utilize to instill hope in others.
"Han," she said firmly. "Now is the time when you refuse to believe you'll fail."
She didn't even expect those words to come out of her mouth. They were her mother's words, strong, and cherished. Her signature pronouncement to her headstrong, willful, and sometimes foolhardy daughter – there will come in, every moment, a point where it is unbearable, and unthinkable to go on, and that is the time when you refuse to believe you will fail.
Han rubbed the back of his neck until the skin was red and raw. He did not look up. Leia rested her hand on the tangled material of his shirt, and then let her hand drift down to the rose ribbon blemishes on his skin, her fingertips tracing them with quiet and sudden resolve.
She wanted to ask what had happened to him, but it did not seem like the time.
"You're going to save him," she whispered fiercely – that was what Han had believed so strongly, if they would just let him go to his people, to Kashyyyk – where had that aggressive, arrogant surety gone?
Han lifted his head and let it bang back against the wall. Leia jerked her hand away before it could be trapped against his back. He seemed not to have noticed her touch. He rolled is head from side to side and grit his teeth. He shouted, or swore, or groaned – something; he made some noise, which chilled her, the most distressed sound she'd ever heard him make.
She tilted her head up to look at him. The distorted expression on his face was unfamiliar. It was so far out of the realm of her experience with him, that it took her far too long to realize he was crying. She opened her mouth, not to say something, but as if she would scream; she felt her heart slam to a stop for a terrifying moment.
She did not think too much. She clutched at his shoulder for a moment, her lips pursing, trying to get him to turn towards her. He did not shake her off, but he didn't move, either too stunned with himself, or too withdrawn, to acknowledge her. Leia, presented with a visual presentation of her own heartache, something lodged in her that she couldn't shake loose enough to feel, was envious that he could feel like that, and desperate to ease his pain.
On the journey he'd fought for, hurtling towards the only possible cure, he gave in, for now, to the pure agony of what it would mean to lose Chewbacca, and Leia understood because she had lost those closest to her, too.
She rose to her knees, and touched his face. He wouldn't turn to her, so she turned to him, without a second thought to the sexuality of it. She slid a knee over his lap, facing him, her chest aligned with his, and she touched his neck, forcing him to look at her. He pulled his head away, so she let him, and offered her shoulder.
He took it. His hands remained at his sides for a moment, and then he wrapped them tight around her shoulders and kept them there. He gave no second thought to her position, and neither did she; there was nothing but chaste comfort in it.
She put her lips to his ear, and her hand to his hair, and whispered –
"Shhh."
Han did not loosen his grip; he held onto her as if letting go meant he untethered Chewbacca from life.
For a very long time after he extricated himself from her grip and left her sitting on the floor, Han didn't speak to her. He tended to Chewbacca with rapt attention, silent, apparently recovered. She monitored them both, and she monitored the flight path.
Two days to Kashyyyk, and two hours – or four? Since Han had last said a word. She often lost track of time in hyperspace. Hours could feel like weeks, seconds could feel like days.
She took a ration bar to him in what she calculated was standard evening, and applied another poultice of medicinal tea to Chewbacca's heart, silently marveling over it – it had eased his breathing somehow. She wondered what other secrets the ancient healers on his homeworld knew.
She retreated to his cabin when she felt intrusive and useless. She lay on her back, staring up at the metal top of his bunk. For a moment, she idly wondered how many other women had stared up at it. The thought was fleeting, and harmless; she didn't care. His sheets smelled like him, and no one else. That was always of interest to her. The way he talked up his reputation, she'd half expect them to smell like feminine perfume, and be covered in lipstick stains. Instead they were always clean, yet heavily wrinkled. The bed was never made.
She counted dents in the bunk, and scuffs and smudge marks on the wall, reflecting on why she was here. Had she broken rank for the right reasons – because Chewbacca had a right to the best treatment they could give him, because leaving him to perish in the desert of their human-centric med bay, no matter how meager, was a cruel betrayal of their values? She loved Chewbacca – it would affect her deeply to lose him, but was it Han she had done this for in the end – and was that selfish, misguided.
She had feared the rage in Han's eyes when he looked at her on Hoth. Hated it, hurt over it. She didn't want him to hate her. She never wanted him to look at her like that again.
He came into the room and she whirled onto her side furtively, as if caught in a compromising position. He waved his hand at her gently, his eyes down low.
"Stay," he mumbled. "S'okay."
She sat up slowly, her eyes following him. She lowered her feet to the floor, and moved closer to the edge of his bunk. He stripped off a shirt that had blood and matted fur, on it, careless of her presence, and presented his marred back to her.
He changed shirts, ran a hand roughly through his hair, and then turned around to face her, subdued. He nodded his head at the bunk next to her, raising his brows, and she looked at it.
"Your bunk," she said quietly.
He shrugged.
"Luke's usually around," he muttered. "S'not usually us."
Leia made room for him, without answering that. She drew one leg up under her, and Han sat, leaning forward with his forearms on his knees. Leia watched him, and then looked down at her nails, licking her lips.
"How is he?" she asked.
"Stable," Han grunted. He shrugged hard. "Same. Stable sepsis."
He reached up and rubbed at his temples softly. He sighed.
"Kashyyyk," he muttered to himself faintly. "Their healer's have got to…"
He just trailed off. Leia nodded to show she understood, he needn't say more. His face was still drawn, the skin so pale it was nearly translucent. His eyes were worse, but he ignored it. He hadn't tried to get rid of the evidence of his tears, or hide it.
She was about to offer to make tea, or to let him have a 'fresher while she checked in on Chewbacca, but he spoke before she could. He lifted his hand, and gestured tightly over his shoulder.
"Shock whip," he said abruptly, evidently explaining the scars. He lowered his hand back to his knee. "Nine strand. There's nine codes of obedience for an Imperial cadet, and if you fall out of line, they whip you with all of 'em." He gave her a shrewd look. "I saw you looking."
She looked sideways at him, listening.
"I got 'em when I met Chewie. You know how I met 'im?" he asked.
"No," Leia said softly, drawing one knee up and resting her chin on it. "You've never told me."
Han smiled tightly.
"Second year at the Academy. I was comin' back from liberty with some guys. Bunch of weasels I didn't like much, but it was better to run in packs, so I did. We came across a couple of officers haulin' a Wookiee on a leash – he had a slave tag on his ear," as if to punctuate the statement, Han reached up and rubbed his own ear. "I knew the Empire had slaves. Just hadn't seen it," he muttered. "Corellia's all humans."
Leia nodded. She remembered the first time she'd seen the brutality of the Empire, rather than just ideologically learned it from her tutors. She also remembered the first time she'd seen a real slave - Alderaan hadn't had them, either. And her father hadn't taken her to the Imperial courts until she was older.
"I never joined the Academy 'cause I liked the Empire," Han said. "I just wanted to keep from starvin'. And fly."
Han paused for a moment.
"They were mockin' him. Cuttin' his pelt with a vibroblade, blasting pitch whistles at his sensitive decibels, tryin' to break him, I guess."
Han shrugged.
"I interfered. Didn't think twice. I figured, sure, that's a slave, lots of planets have 'em, can't do much about that. But they ain't got to be treated like that," he paused again. "I knew a different Wookiee," he said finally, quieter, "kind of took care of me after my ma," Han broke off for a moment, shifting uncomfortably. He cleared his throat, and redirected himself.
"I threw a couple a punches and got 'im loose from the damn leash thing and started brawlin' with the officers – and the guys with me backed them up. Next thing I knew, I was in the brig, bein' court martialed."
Han folded his arms bitterly.
"They didn't try me. They dragged Chewie out in a leash and a muzzle and told me they'd toughen me up, pulled out the shock whip to hit 'im with. I said I was plenty tough, and if they were such tough guys, they'd let the Wookiee loose and see who won a fair fight. They said if I was so tough, I could take the lashes."
Han shrugged.
"So I did," he muttered.
Leia turned her head, her cheek pressing against her knee.
"How many?" she asked quietly, thinking of the myriad of intersecting scars blossoming over his back.
"Lost count," Han said dully. "The game was, they'd stop hittin' me when I executed the Wookiee," he said. "They'd been haulin' him off to execute him that other day. 'Cause he escaped bondage twice, and on the second time, killed a general."
Rapt, Leia stared at him, perfectly still.
"I wasn't gonna shoot Chewie, so I figured they'd just whip me 'til I was dead."
Leia swallowed hard. She waited to be told what would happen. Han reached over and encircled his wrist with one hand, his nose wrinkling. He shook his head.
"I don't remember a lot of it, 'cause I was so messed up – shock whips cut to the bone," he said dryly. "Some moron Imp didn't bind Chewie tight enough. He was worrying his cuffs loose durin' the whole show. He got loose, snatched a couple blasters in the panic," Han shrugged, "we stole a ship and got out."
He looked down, turning his palm up and staring at it heavily.
"First place he went is back to Kashyyyk," Han said. "Concocted up somethin' that cleaned and healed the wounds – stuff that shoulda probably killed me," Han explained. "Left me to sweat out the poison up at the top of his clan's bungalow, then when I try to thank him and leave, he gets up and follows me."
Han looked over at her.
"Couldn't shake him. Said he owed me a life debt," Han snorted. "He busted us outta there. I told 'im that. But he said, if I hadn't got him loose that first night, he'd have been dead. And I took a beatin' instead of executing him, so that's twice. I told him that made us even, since he got me out, fixed me up."
Han fell silent and looked at Leia for a long time. Her eyes were soft, engrossed with his story, and she waited patiently for him to be read. He swallowed hard, and looked back at his palm, rubbing the center of it with his thumb.
"That's not how it works," Han said. He cleared his throat. 'S'what he said to me. 'That's not how it works,'" he quoted again.
He fell into once of his silences again – melancholy this time, and then looked up and stared straight at the wall.
"Now the furry bastard follows me around," he said bluntly. "Can't lose 'im."
The doublespeak there was evident – he couldn't shake Chewbacca as a companion, he couldn't bear to lose him in any other sense.
"It's a fucked up tradition," Han growled suddenly. His tone was abrasive, and it startled her.
Leia, jolted from a reverie in which she'd been pondering the context of Han's life, the inherent honor in him, despite so many temptingly dark circumstances, gave him a wide-eyed, chastening look. She shook her head.
"That isn't fair," she said. "It's just different. Alien to you."
He looked at her stubbornly.
"It's this thing that makes 'im miss his family, miss his cub? Risk his life every time I do somethin' stupid, hang around your little civil rights club 'til it's almost the death of him, just 'cause that's what I feel like doing? 'Cause I can't stay away?"
Leia compressed her lips intently, allowing herself a moment to process just how much guilt Han appeared to shoulder regarding the terms of Chewbacca's commitment to him. She could tell he'd wrestled with this before.
"Ancient ritual commitments aside," Leia said softly. "You two are like brothers. It's not a life debt anymore. It's," she stopped, sighing, trying to find an appropriate word, "a contract. Equalized."
She reached out and touched his knee tentatively. The barriers between them were so broken, shattered without much fanfare, since the moment in the hallway, when Han's vulnerability crashed into her own bewildering need to connect emotionally.
"Look what you did for him, Han," she murmured. "What you're doing."
She withdrew her hand, tilting her head at him curiously.
"You aren't doing this because you think it will even you two out," she said.
She imagined that after so long as co-pilots, Han and Chewie had long since stopped keeping score. Whatever cultural ties had driven Chewbacca's commitment had no doubt long since faded to genuine concern and friendship, just as Leia's own gratitude towards Han for rescuing her – chaotic as it was – was barely a fraction of the foundation of her complex relationship with him now.
She lowered her knee, bending her leg in front of her. Her other foot hung off the bunk and brushed the floor. She contemplated, again, the story detailing Han and Chewie's meeting - Han didn't see to see the fact of the matter like she did, like Chewbacca had. He had interrupted an execution, sure - but he'd just said himself that he'd expected the Imperials to beat him to death. He'd been ready for that - all because he refused to kill a being whose name, at that point, he didn't even know.
They sat in silence, Han's thoughts a mystery, her own thoughts a vast library into which she catalogued stories and experiences. She tucked Han's away with care, imagining what the fresh wounds on his back would have looked like, and then shuddering away from the gruesome apparition.
"Chewie believes in the Rebellion," Leia said softly. "You don't have to blame yourself for hanging around. For," she sighed, "not being able to stay away," she repeated.
She traced a circle on her ankle, and then looked over at him.
"Why can't you?" she asked, her voice trailing off at the end with trepidation, as if she'd lost her nerve. "Stay away?"
He started to answer. It seemed like he really was going to answer, give her something more than a tease, a half-joke, a sarcastic puzzle. He said she knew, and she did - she did. But assumptions were dangerous. She wanted to hear something. It was only fair - right? She waited for it, anxious to hear, and then angry with herself for posing the question when she wasn't sure she was ready to tackle to answer.
He changed his mind.
"It's not fair," he said. "It can't be all me, all the time, Leia," he said cryptically.
She looked away, silent, implying she was lost in thought. He wasn't that cryptic; she understood. She never gave him anything, except maybe the comfort she gave him earlier, or the stand she had taken for him, when he pressed her – but those gestures could be attributed to other things.
She turned her head back to him, and then angled her body towards him a little more.
"I'm sorry I slapped you," she said faintly.
Her eyes stung as her dark lashes swept over them lightly.
"You were already hurting. I made it worse."
Her palm throbbed, as if to reproach her.
"I didn't mean it. The slap."
He glanced at her, and arched a brow. Then, she saw the first glimpse of his trademark lopsided smirk – it was dull, and tired, but it was there.
"Not the first time I've been slapped," he said, "or the hardest."
He didn't let her respond; he just shrugged.
"It bothered me," he admitted under his breath. "I shouldn't've provoked you."
"It was my choice, my bad reaction –"
"Yeah, sure, Sweetheart, but I shouldn't've said what I said," Han broke in hoarsely. "Any of it. Especially about the torture."
Leia nodded. She lifted her shoulders in a tiny shrug.
"We'll find a better way to, um," she sighed, "deal with all of this."
She did not define this, and Han didn't particularly need her to. He just gave her a nod, and leaned forward on his forearms again, staring down at the floor. There was little to do now but monitor Chewbacca, call on fate, call on hope – get to Kashyyyk.
She shifted again and leaned forward to slide her arm over his shoulder, just as he sat up again, turning towards her. Face to face, she let her arm drape against his back, and braced her other softly against his chest, as if to stop him from coming too close.
Leia smiled and moved forward to continue with her hug. Her nose brushed his jaw, he rested a hand on her shoulder, and there was a fraction of a shift to touch her lips to his, in some kind of kiss that was hungry, slow, hurting, and relieved – all at once.
She was so taken aback by her own nerve, and he by her not pulling away, that it was a lingering kiss. She opened her eyes, staring at the slope of his shoulder, at her arm resting over it, and lifted her hand to her mouth, covering it, and leaning forward to press her forehead against him – in an almost comical pose, as if she'd just been surprised. He held her gingerly, afraid she'd bolt – she didn't, nor did she kiss him again.
-alexandra