Chapter 10

All this anticipation about making it back to see her and of course the princess was injured and unconscious and so typically Leia in a ritzy med center on Naboo. 'Course she is! he'd exclaimed to the grunt who'd told him, wearing a tight-lipped smile. 'Course!

He was getting too needy. Dodging Imperial blasts out there on the Outer Rim thinking fuck, Leia, Leia'll kill if I come back dead; bouncing his leg with uncharacteristically upbeat expectation the whole way home flipping that goddamn data chip between his fingers til Chewie had made a chuckling jab about it. Ages away from her and still under her spell, her eyes desiring or unamused or righteous in the corner of his conscious like they'd been for how many years now? What had Dameron called it as Han had near bounced around wearing some dumb goofy grin once they were finally heading home? Honeymoon phase.

Han had looked at him with alarm and demanded, joking-not-joking, No phase.

Hilarious. That's what she did to him. And kept him running up after her, racing to catch up. This time, all the way to Theed, coming out of his grueling endless briefing but still immediately volunteering to fly off again, now to collect her and Shara Bey.

Chewie was annoyed but unsurprised. [You've got it bad, cub.]

"Bad? Me? This is business as usual," Han said, stifling a yawn. "I've been rescuing Her Highness from the messes she makes for years. And don't tell me I've had it bad for years. Plus I gotta get in those higher up's good graces, y'know – so they approve," he added cheekily.

[How are you still awake? No – how are you even forming sentences? We've been up for…]

"Once we're in hyper no one's stopping you from snoozing until we land."

[Until we land,] Chewie echoed back, rolling those huge knowing eyes. [Exactly.]

So he put off sleep to get to the girl a little faster. It wasn't that crazy. And she was injured, and unconscious for a bit too 'cause of needing bacta, and someone had to go get the duo. What was he gonna do – sleep at the fleet, not able to see for himself if she was okay or not, let someone else bring her home safe?

Home. That was definitely a new one. Maybe he was a little crazy.

Or just really, really needed some sleep.

He was mostly too tired (or too busy fighting off Chewie's making fun of him for showering and shaving before they landed) to remember to worry, but once they made it to the fancy Theed med center, he remembered alright. Worry, flooding through him, and also anger, like what the hell had happened, and why had only Shara and Leia of all people been sent to Naboo when it was being targeted by Imperial remnants, and what the hell was this about the two of them plus the teenage Queen of Naboo jumping into flight suits and fighting them off themselves? And had Leia seriously thought it was a good idea to take it upon herself to rescue civilians from the debris when she didn't have any kind of protective anything, only to get smacked by a crumbling beam, unconscious and crumpled and burned up on one side?

And the exhaustion wasn't helping him think too clearly…

By the time they got in to the center, his heart was pounding and he was ready to rush right into her room but of course, of course there was some droid in his way. Wasn't that just his luck? Wasn't that always the name of the game? He tried appealing to the thing, but it was no use. Apparently its lexicon didn't include the phrase, I-gotta-see-her-I'm-her-person. Husband was in that lexicon, sure, but person not so much.

This was why he hated droids. Everyone acted like they were just computers but they had their own little quirks without any of the reasoning to see past 'em, and far from being objective, they had the thoughts of the sentients' who made 'em programmed right in. And apparently these sentients were really serious about marriage or some shit – "I'm sorry sir, only family beyond this point," the thing was still insisting, barring him and Chewie from moving forward and surprisingly fucking sturdy.

"I changed my mind, I'm her husband, alright? I'm her husband, now let me through."

"I find that difficult to believe, sir, considering moments ago you just said the opposite!" it insisted, and Han groaned.

"I'm her person, alright – she don't have family – we're a – couple, okay, so either you're gonna let me in or I'm gonna get you short-circuited, alright?" he insisted, voice low and intense – lucky for the droid, a human nurse intercepted him before he could completely dismember the damn thing.

"Can I help you, sir?" the nurse asked, a little nervous.

"Princess Leia. Her room. Now. I'm – her – boyfriend," he ground out, scowling at the idiocy of the phrase and shooting Chewie a foul look at his friend's snort – whatever he and Leia were to each other, lovers, in love, close in that way hardship and almost dying made you close, so people who cared deeply about each other, would do anything for each other, plus a lot of sex too – boyfriend and girlfriend didn't cover it. What would she call it? Trite.

"Oh!" the nurse exclaimed. "You must be Han––"

"Han Solo, that's me, and this is my partner. I heard she got burned up real bad, knocked out, and I'm her – boyfriend, and you're gonna take me to her," he repeated, low and pissed.

"Yes, sir," the nurse said. "Of course."

The Theed med center was so posh compared to what he'd been used to – instead of soldiers treating battle wounds all cramped up tight together, anyone able giving blood to those who needed, it was all marble and long corridors, signs for different sections for different things – chronic illness, maternity, children's – pointing way off from emergency. Civilized, elegant – it just pissed him off, he'd treated a blaster wound of Leia's in the middle of the Endor forest, he knew he should be happy that because she'd been injured here she'd be getting top-notch care but it was hard, sometimes, to think about the conditions some people had gotten while they'd been fighting, even if it was under Imperial rule… his boots were noisy, clattering and stomping on the elegant flooring as he jogged ahead of the nurse – this was probably what she had been used to, before.

He didn't begrudge her that, but.

"General Solo," a doctor said, greeting him briskly. "I'm the Princess's attending."

"Where is she?" Han asked by way of greeting, clasping his hand and shaking it firmly. "She awake?"

"She's awake, yes – she came to shortly after the transport brought her in––"

"Well where's she at now?" he demanded.

"She's in a room down the hall, resting and getting fluids. She sustained very serious burns on her left leg, especially her outer thigh, but she's finished a few hours of bacta treatment. We've bandaged the more superficial burns and cuts otherwise and are monitoring for infection."

"Good," Han said, nodding firmly at the doctor and then at Chewie. "Good."

"Otherwise, she was a bit shaken up – ringing in her ears, dizziness, maybe a mild concussion. She's bruised up and sore. But overall, she and the baby are doing just fine."

There was a brief moment of total stillness when not even Chewie made a sound, and then Han said, blinking and uncomprehending and hoarse, "What baby?"

"I'm – ah, I'm sorry, I thought––"

"Does she know yet?" he demanded suddenly.

"Excuse me?"

"She know yet, you tell her yet!" Han snapped. "'Bout the – the – er––"

"She told us," the doctor corrected, shaking his head and reviewing his files on his datapad. "We ask all females upon admittance if there's any chance they might be pregnant and she immediately volunteered that she was. She provided the number of weeks…"

Immediately volunteered that she was pregnant? The number of weeks? Leia? Leia?! Imagining those words coming out of her mouth – getting wheeled in here all burned up and gasping out I'm I'm I'm, hand flung over her stomach all protective, he couldn't, it seemed like something out of a holodrama, a bad soap reenactment of her life, their life – that plus it being ten days since he'd seen her, like he couldn't even picture her right, remember precisely exactly perfectly what she looked like beyond that sexy smoldering holo.

And yeah! He'd just seen her and – she hadn't – well she hadn't said anything! And she didn't seem – she hadn't said – he'd just seen her, ten days ago maybe, hadn't they used protection and anyway could she really already know––?

"I'm sorry for the confusion," the doctor said. "The Princess's room is right this way."

Han rubbed his face, ordering himself in his head to stop twitching, dammit. "Better let me go in alone, pal," he said to Chewie slowly, still stunned. "I'll, uh, give the princess your best."

(That was something new, too – or had been, since he and Leia started – seeing each other, sleeping together, being together, whatever you called it. Normally information flowed between him and Chewie seamlessly, like a perfect current or a pristine pipe – now there was that bit of filter there, when it came to Leia – stuff she had an expectation of total privacy about, when she told him. One time she'd overheard him saying Nah, don't worry about getting her worked up pal, s'just that time of the month and threatened to maim him –

That time of the – shit––!)

"What? Me? 'Course I'm fine," Han exclaimed in response to his friend's question. "Never better!"

His legs carried him down the hall fast and jerky, like some possessed thing or a droid gone all rusted. Then something compelled him, made him stop short outside of her room. The little window peering in, he couldn't help but pause there.

The princess was sitting up and holding court, instructing the droid on how to prop her leg up just so, itching at the IV port in her arm. Somehow she'd managed to still get a datapad, and her eyes flicked between her leg and whatever super important document she was reading, impatient but polite. And she was filthy, too, all bandages and messy hair, but then, there, her tiny white foot popped out of the binding on her leg, her cute little toes, surreal. Familiar. Making him feel less panicked, right? Yeah this was unknowable, but he knew her, knew she could do anything. He knew everything about that foot.

Still: he couldn't deny that she looked different to him somehow. Even from behind this window he could see that she was radiating energy and light and potential and precariousness – something almost scary about it, like she was volatile, like she could do anything, like anything could happen, good or bad, maybe not glowing per se but definitely radiant in the real literal sense, like how hyperspace blurred stars 'cause they were too damn fast, streaks of bright brilliant terrifying unknowable light… Then she saw him.

Through the tiny window, he watched Leia startle, her mouth going wide in a delighted-in-spite-of-herself smile even as the droid tried to ease her back down, then her hand going up to smother that smile 'cause she didn't like to seem too sentimental – before she did so, he could just catch her lips parting excitedly. It was easy enough to read her lips so he could practically hear her: Han!

He took a deep breath and stepped inside.

"Hey, sweetheart," Han said, raising a hand and giving her a crooked half-smile. He could hear his damn heart thumping in his chest, looking at her, lying like that in a hospital bed, his head going crazy, making him blink and catch a vision of some future her there sweaty and smiling and holding her – their –

Which was pretty fucking insane but also at least she was smiling in it ––

"When did you return? How did you know I was here? Are you alright? Was the mission alright?" She leaned over the railing as if to bridge the distance to the door, blowing stray hair out of her face and beaming and so surprised and so ignoring the droid reaching across the bed to keep her leg in place and that's what ultimately got him across the room, so she wouldn't fall out of the damn bed trying to get to him, instead he strode over to her and snatched a stray chair as he did so, sitting down close beside her, close as he could––

Then she was kissing him or maybe he had kissed her first but it seemed like she started it because she near grabbed his face, her hands going to cup it then finding purchase in his hair, her tongue insistent – then he was touching her face as they kissed, his thumbs brushing over the ash still smeared across her cheeks – it wasn't one single long deep reunion kiss, more like a slew of urgent apocalypse-averted-type kisses, breathless and fast, at first she was leaning back over the railing to get closer to him but he was still worried about her leg, leaned instead, upper body sort of half-diving into her bed, her fingers clutching at the collar of his shirt, brushing against his skin – he just wanted to press her up against him, to hold her tight and just clutch her to his skin, never let her go. This is crazy, he thought. How she made him feel, how he couldn't get close enough... This is definitely crazy.

"Hello, you," she breathed, pulling back so just their foreheads touched. Her smile was so bright that he felt guilty, like maybe he shouldn't bring it up at all.

She had to bring it up first right? He didn't know what he was thinking when he came in here, what was he gonna do, Hey Your Worship, you miss me? Uh-huh, uh-huh, got anything else you'd like to add? What was she going to do, not bring it up?

How long had to go by before it was a lie for him to not bring up that he knew?

"Hey, princess," he muttered, brushing some of her hair out of her face. "What'd you get into this time, huh?"

XX.

Old habits may die hard, but habits forged in wartime died even harder. Leia was especially aware of this in in moments like these, when the noise from the entry to Han's – her and Han's? Her and Han's and the problem below her belly button at least for the time being? – cabin sliding open caused her to jerk in alarm. I wasn't always like this, she thought fleetingly, releasing her tight grip on the blaster.

Well. She wasn't always like herself in many ways. She was in uncharted territory, personality and life experience and trauma -wise. Relationship-wise…

"S'just me," Han said cautiously. He was looking right at her in that way of his, considering her in some private way she'd never be privy to. Sometimes it made her blush and sometimes it infuriated her, but now, she didn't know what to feel under his gaze. He also looked – a tiny bit stricken still, but less so than in the medical center, the only really indicator being that his hair was in all different directions like he'd been yanking his hand through it nervously. Other than that…

(It had been so awkward in the med center, not to mention on the way to the ship. He'd hardly blurted out what he'd discovered before they were interrupted by, in succession: an obstinate droid, a nurse, a technician fixing the heretofore unused projector in the corner, the screech of said malfunctioning projector, another technician, her doctor, and then finally Lieutenant Shara Bey, who wanted to know, had Leia been cleared to go, and how had General Solo's mission with her husband gone, and was everything alright?)

(She'd expected that he might freeze or she would, after the declaration was actually spoken between them, but she'd never imagined that freeze would last hours… Well, maybe this was how she'd felt since she'd learned. Stuck in place, paralyzed, unable or unwilling to decide what happened next. Her hope that his mere presence would spur her into sudden clarity was fading rapidly.)

Han shifted his weight. "I wake you up?"

"No. I was reading." She indicated the datapad, then steadied herself and asked, "Is everything alright?"

"Oh, sure. Yeah," he said absently, looking at her still. Like he was in no rush. Like he could know everything about her, just by looking.

She felt warm now, being watched by him, not quite a blush. The way she felt when she could tell he was seeing her, seeing through her, in a way no one else had ever been able to. Maybe a little vulnerable. What did he see, now, looking at her? Could he tell her what she really wanted, how she really felt about all this? See something she couldn't?

"Were you looking for company?" Leia offered. Two's company, three's a crowd, and two-and-an-unruly-clump-of-cells-in-one's-abdomen is…

"If you're up for it," he replied, frowning slightly and tilting his head to the side as if to get a better angle.

Now she was blushing, she was sure of it. "You must be exhausted," she tried, indicating with her chin the mug in his hands. "Please, go easy on the caffeine – you should lie down instead. How many hours have you been up?"

He looked down at it, brow furrowed for a second like he had forgotten he was holding anything, before shaking his head. "Bey said she made you tea when you got sick on the transport over, that it helped."

Leia pressed her lips together and nodded. He'd brought the tea back for her on a supply run, once. Of course he'd acted casually about it, didn't even tell her other than offering it nonchalantly the next time she'd been over, but the fact that it was Alderaanian had betrayed the care that had gone into the gesture.

Han shifted his weight again and set the mug down beside the bed, his hands moving into his pockets as he cleared his throat. "Listen – this – wasn't intended as an ambush, or… just wanted to make sure you were alright."

"I'm fine," she promised, taking the mug and holding it in both hands as though that proved something. Like, see, I'm consenting to taking care of myself, you don't need to worry, I've got this under control. "Really," she insisted, managing to smile a little – his face, there was something sweet about that boyish worry, that slight crease of his forehead, "It's been like this for weeks. It's okay."

Something sweet, too, about his blinking taken aback look. "Right. 'Course it has. That's…" He shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck, wearing this dumbstruck look. "Wow. Yeah. Were sick when I left – shit."

"It seems obvious in retrospect," she admitted into her mug. "Between that and thinking we were safe on Endor – I feel like such a fool."

Still wearing that slightly stunned look, he echoed, laughing a little in surprise, "Endor. Right." Pressed a fist to his mouth, shaking his head again.

"What?" she asked – too needfully, she realized. "What're you thinking?"

"Nothing special," he said, sitting – carefully, gently, that made her roll her eyes – beside her. "Just – everything. Thoughts're – everywhere. Y'know. Same as yours."

"I doubt they're the same as mine…" she murmured, taking one of his hands and playing with it idly. "How much have you thought about your breasts in the last twenty-four hours?"

"How much've I thought about your breasts in the past twenty-four hours? Counting down 'til I saw you again?"

"Charming."

He shrugged again, clearly struggling and lost in thought, looking down at their intertwined hands. "S'not – never thought I'd be in this situation."

"... I find that a little difficult to believe."

He made a face. "Not with – look, you know how I feel about you. So if I ever thought about – look, getting someone knocked up, or––"

"Knocked up––"

"They – weren't you. So it's different."

Leia chewed a bit at her lip, pausing. "The funny thing about this situation is while you may not intend to ambush, it's inevitable. I don't know how we'll be able to even speak to each other about anything else until it's all – settled."

He frowned contemplatively. "Sorta sucks up all the oxygen, huh."

"Yes, and it also makes me feel awkward around you," she confessed, her frustration bleeding through. "It's such a complicated, delicate thing, and it feels absurd to try to talk about your mission or mine or anything else because how can we possibly just carry on as though this isn't happening – what am I to do, say I'm pregnant, tell me about your week? It's ridiculous, it feels ridiculous, trying to act as though everything is normal when it isn't. It was one thing when it was me pretending on my own, but pretending to each other… You feel very far away. Further, even, than when you were actually absent."

"Hey," he said firmly, putting his hand on her arm. "No pretending here. Alright?"

"You say that, but––" (To her absolute horror, her voice sounded faintly choked.)

"Said it because I mean it. Look at me. Hey. You alright?"

"You're just acting like this, looking at me like this, because of the – situation––"

"Like what, huh?"

"So exceptionally – considerate, thinking I'm not well or I'm going to be set off – like you're worried about me––"

To that he shook his head so vigorously it surprised her. "Always look at you like this."

"You – what?"

"M'always worried about you. S'not a new thing. It's not. Maybe you're just looking for it. I swear, Leia. M'not trying to treat you different, or like you can't handle yourself because you're that way." He shook his head again with conviction. "I wouldn't do that."

She looked at him, her lips parting slightly. How did he always know exactly the right thing to say? Was it so obvious, that she was terrified this would put something between them, make it so that she was always the one being held, never holding? She should've known better. He always treated her like she was a person, not a princess, how could she really fear he'd place her atop the pedestal of being pregnant? "Thank you," she said, slow and serious.

Han shrugged it off. "'Course, Leia." Her name, again. Like he knew she needed it right now, that signifier that they were friends and peers and partners, that he saw her as herself. She tilted her head to the side so she was leaning against him. She could always lean on him without worrying he'd think less of her. He was so…

(He'd be a good father, a voice in her head was observing neutrally. He never makes his kindness feel like a gift – he makes it feel like it's what's right, like doing good is not a virtue but the natural order of things. He never makes anyone feel ashamed for taking his help, or indebted to his generosity.)

"All this to say," she said softly after a moment. "Maybe we just – well. We should either make a conscious to decision that we are going to talk about it right now." She bit her lip again. "Or we should ensure we don't have to talk about anything, and just – go to bed together."

He was looking down at her, startled and pleased and about to speak, but she quickly sat up and insisted, "But Lieutenant Bey is on board, it wouldn't be appropriate––"

"Seriously? How many times've we gone at it with Chewie or the kid in the other room?"

"That's different."

"Hey princess, exactly how well's someone got to know you 'fore you can get laid a few halls over?" Han teased, but he was grinning at her fondly, and something in her chest clenched. She loved him. She'd missed him. She meant what she said, about them either having to talk about it or have sex, that it would be impossible for them to spend more than a few moments together without feeling so far apart if one of those two options weren't pursued. She'd missed – would miss? – this.

(And if they did have sex? The same choice would present itself afterwards. Sex or talk, was a choice. The other one, also. Looming, massive.

Well. If they timed it right – how many rounds could they manage…?)

It didn't matter though because it didn't work.

Or it did work, but not all the way, not enough. It was working as he kissed her deeply and passionately until he was handling her breasts, which she'd had to confess were quite sensitive. It worked until he was peeling off her top and kissing them with a kind of tenderness that made her chest clench again, because she'd said she was sensitive now his touch was feather light, gentle and deliberate and she loved him, his cautious, contented expression, the careful movements of his tongue, she was lucky to be exhaling in a sigh because otherwise she might whimper at the sight of him, that softness, how much underneath his swagger he could just care, about her or anyone he loved – any clump of cells that might come to need him, this was not supposed to be what she was thinking about when her – boyfriend, partner, she really needed a word – her Han was slowly circling her nipple with the tip of his tongue, it wasn't working. It wasn't working when he gently rested his head between her breasts and just inhaled deeply and seemed so comfortable, like he belonged with his skin against hers, like he couldn't get enough of her, whenever she remembered in an especially visceral way that she loved him, it wasn't working.

It wasn't working when his usual path of kisses from her breasts to her folds below now had the faintest pause in the middle, where he seemed to realize kissing her squarely at her bellybutton had a meaning now it never had before, and evidently decided to do it anyway. It wasn't working when she wondered if he was lingering there a moment longer, his cheek brushing against that pale fragile and heretofore unremarkable expanse of skin for two beats, three, before moving onward. It worked for a little while, thankfully, when his mouth was on her, no longer with faint touches but eager and hungry, his grip on her thighs real and familiar and urgent, like he needed her, needed this, didn't want to be doing anything else – the vigor and passion felt too good to think of anything but don't stop don't stop don't stop please, which spilled out of her lips like it always did, even though she knew he'd tease her about it later with a wry, Don't worry babe I ain't ever gonna stop. Gripping her tight and hoisting up her legs a bit and absolutely relentless with her, he seemed like himself, and she felt like herself, this was how he made her feel, he would drive her to orgasm once and then twice and sometimes made it seem like he'd near go on forever if she, gasping and breathless and soaked in sweat and fluid, didn't tug on his hair. She wouldn't be able to think of anything else if she tried when she watched him, her chest heaving, as he lifted his head up and wiped off his mouth, so lazily, with the back of his hand.

But it was right back to not working as he rested his head on her pelvis and smiled fondly at her while he waited for her to catch her breath, one hand tracing patterns around her upper thigh. Tender, again, when he'd press a few kisses around that area like he had all the time in the world. Every time she saw that he loved her too, she had to think about it.

The binary proved in danger of breaking down when she was straddling his lap, him sitting up and holding her so tight there was almost no break in the contact between them, she'd been on top plenty but lap sex was new for them, resting her forehead on the crook where his neck met his shoulder, clinging to him tightly as they moved fast and frantic. He was holding her too and that's why she was both forgetting and not forgetting, the tightness of his embrace was so familiar it was like home, but it also made her think about him loving her, which made her think of the situation, which wasn't home not really…

She was so close to him that she could hear every flickering change in his breath, every gasp and grunt and whimper, for her it was mostly whimpering, her face buried in him. He sounded desperate and needing, like she was, and he was clinging to her, too. Like they were holding onto each other to stay afloat. It was working and it wasn't working. She felt so close to him he made even the unfamiliar seem familiar. Coming down from her orgasm in the seconds before his, that delirious, fond, loopy place, she had the strangest thought, that if she wasn't pregnant now she would be after this, that this kind of closeness had to make – something, it was too much to not, it couldn't be contained in their bodies, could it? Sentimental sappy thought where she for a single moment that maybe the whole "making love" phrase wasn't as hideous as she thought? Though of course that was gone in an instant. Flushed and sated and full and holding him for a long while until he slowly pulled out.

"How long…" Han wanted to know, gasping a little and struggling to catch his breath, "'til we gotta either go again or talk about it?"

She patted his left cheek tiredly and pressed a sloppy kiss to his right. "I think we've bought ourselves some time."

XX.

Many hours later, finally in bed, in the middle of the night – of course he'd been desperately needing sleep for so long and now he couldn't calm himself down enough to get any shut eye at all… Leia, curled up under his arm, had done her damnedest to tire him out, and under any other circumstances she would've knocked him out for no less than twelve hours, but tonight…

He stared at the ceiling above the bunk. Every panel of the Falcon was so familiar, it was hard to imagine its appearance to new eyes. Would a kid see a labor of love or would it just look like junk?

When he was a kid he would've just wanted to know how to make it his ship, any ship would do, he'd take anything at all, he'd take any scrap. (Not that the Falcon was scraps, 'cause the offers he'd gotten on it just since Endor proved it sure as hell wasn't, even if their interest was more of the historical sort.) But if he had a kid, that kid wouldn't ever settle for scraps. Bit of a paradox: if he had a kid he'd want 'em to know the good things in life. But what if he, Han Solo, didn't fall into that category? He'd only want a kid if he could give 'em every good thing, the very best, but by being his kid, he'd be missing out on having the best kind of father. Which maybe meant he shouldn't be thinking about having any kind of kid at all.

Not that he was, or anything. Or – not that he wasn't. As much as he meant what he said about wanting to do whatever Leia wanted, he could see what she meant, that it was a keen method for never having to think about his feelings on the subject. It was kind of a defense, too, in case she chose something different; like, he didn't want to be caught in a position where her mind was made up and all he could do by sharing whatever the hell it was he wanted, should he figure that out, was make the afterwards a resentful mess. Why bother going there if it wasn't going to change anything, if it would just add heartache? Well, maybe he'd never counted on being with a woman who would actually incorporate what he wanted into the decision itself. Who cared about him like that.

Which was maybe another reason why she felt so uneasy about that response, when it'd come up again tonight. It's what people say to girls they've "knocked up," not women with whom they plan to spend – well, if not the rest of their lives, then a significant chunk of time, at least.

It was all – incomprehensible. Though of course he knew it was possible it might happen to Leia, his old moral code had never anticipated something like this. If the premise was, I'd only have a kid if I could give 'em everything, forget the ethics of giving them a subpar dad – he never could've imagined being able to give anyone everything, or anywhere close.

That was the thing about not living meal to meal, Han remembered learning this when he left Corellia. You start to realize you have no damn idea what type of food you like to eat. And that's – a little scary. Like, how could you be almost grown and have no idea what you like?

(Or when you stop being in debt to Jabba or wanted by Imps, and Chewie asks you casually on the flight to Theed what you want to do once the war ends, since you can choose now. Had he not been fucked up by Leia's situation – their situation – soon after, that would've fucked him up good.)

Han stared at the unfamiliar familiar ceiling. What do I want? What do I want? What do I want? What do I want? What do I want?

"Did you realize…"

Leia's soft yawning voice in the dark almost made him jump, but he caught himself.

"Did you realize that this will be the first real decision you and I have made together?"

Han frowned as she snuggled closer to him. "Not true, I don't think. We make loads of decisions. Fast ones, too. On missions, whenever – and we're always in sync."

"No, I mean…" She yawned again, the heat of her cheek a glowing warm spot against his bicep. "You know. As a couple."

That word again, that kept popping up – sounding, like "boyfriend" or "girlfriend," ridiculously lowkey relative to their relationship, only how long, really, had they been together?

There was a long pause, and then Han said, "Quarters."

"Huh?"

"We decided if I'd have access to your quarters. That one time, remember?"

"Mmm… didn't we yell at each other a little…"

"Yeah, but we came to an agreement."

She snorted a little. "Yes, and we never ended up sleeping in there together once."

"Still an agreement."

"I guess so..." She sounded tired, and worried. "Han?"

"Mm?" he grunted, and then her hand was grabbing his wrist tight, and moving his palm – was she really – yes, right over her abdomen, making his eyes widen just the tiniest bit in surprise as she held it there.

"Do you feel something?" she asked very quietly.

He wasn't sure what answer she wanted. It took him a moment to realize the answer she wanted was just the truth. "Nah. You're not – uh, with the Force––?"

"It doesn't feel like anything to me either," she explained. "Like I look in the mirror or I brush my hand and I – it doesn't feel real, I don't feel anything."

"Okay but, isn't it pretty early to––?"

"I don't feel anything," Leia repeated, then clarified slowly, "But I don't feel nothing, either."

It took him several minutes before he realized he thought he understood what she meant by that, but by then she was asleep.

#

Thank you for your support! I promise less angst soon – and more Luke and other characters, as well!