Leia Organa was on her knees, bent at the waist with rear upraised, belly pressed to thighs, head and shoulders squeezed under industrial shelving, right arm outstretched, when he spoke.
"This a bad time?"
She couldn't see his face, but the deep voice was dryly teasing. Under the shelf, resting her sweaty forehead on her dirty forearm, Leia closed her eyes.
Stars. Why.
"Not at all." Leia tried to deliver this tartly, but her chest was compressed against the duracrete floor, and it came out squeaky, almost eager. Ugh. As though Han Solo needed more reason to believe her raring to see him! With no alternate escape presenting itself, Leia launched the undignified process of retracting her upper body from under a makeshift shelf in a makeshift storage facility stuffed with generic-labelled provisions meant to feed a makeshift Rebellion. This required more wiggling of her frankly presented bottom and hips than Leia preferred, but as her mother had often said, needs must. Leia couldn't see Han's amusement, but somehow the slight shudder of the unit under a new weight conveyed the picture to her: a long-legged Corellian smuggler, leaning stiff-armed on his palm, other hand hooked at his gunbelt, giving her Alliance-issue shorts a lazy perusal.
"Yeah, c'mon outta there," Han said. "Little to the left, you got it. What are you doin', anyway?"
"Watching a holofilm, obviously." Now Leia was irritated. Maybe at his maddening...approval, the nerve of him, acting like he was navigating her through the treacherous ass-in-the-air sector. Maybe she was mad at her own behaviour. What was she doing? Leia was assigned to clerk Food Storage B6 for the day, but that task was more about keeping moss-mice out of the Anoat oats and dried fruit out of Wes Janson's still. It hardly required she dislocate a shoulder to retrieve this random plastisleeve that had fallen through gaps in the shelving. Leia went on talking as she slithered from under the racking in a way one would hope was sinuously feline, but no cat she'd known would afford whatever animal Han Solo was akin to (a canine creature, surely. But was he a dog, loyal and affectionate as she'd seen him be with Chewbacca, or a wolf, solitary, hoarding his kill to himself?) this level of satisfaction. I probably look like a nerf-calf being birthed, Leia thought grimly, pushing to her hands and knees. "I'm attending a gala! Praying to the god of instant potam—"
"Alright, alright," Han said. "Take it easy, I—"
Leia unfolded her body to sit upright on her haunches, tops of her bare back thighs set on the heels of her too-big boots. From this angle, Han was very...leg. Breathing harder than she'd like and wet with sweat, on her knees at Han's feet which she liked even less, Leia was pierced with self-consciousness. That outside perspective recurred, this time of herself: shiny, tetchy, itchy. Certainly improperly dressed; it was against protocol to doff uniform while on-shift, but it was so, so. So. Hot in Food Storage Unit B6. Its corrugated steel walls and roof were meant to reflect the heat, but had had their shiny sides turned inward on construction, which was an error Leia chose not to consider too closely, lest it lead to dire conclusions about their overall chances of, say, taking down a genocidal superpower. But her body contemplated the structural flaw with every drop blotting her hair to her neck, not to mention the temperature sensor unit was malfunctioning. And since Leia was today's only stocking clerk, no one to see her but the beetle moths, she'd tossed aside her linen uniform blouse, set out on her ridiculous recovery mission in this tight white camisole. Now how was it that that letch in Human Outfitting couldn't source any boots small enough to fit her, yet the support garments he issued struggled to contain her breasts? A mystery for the ages.
Leia needn't have fretted. Han was looking at her, eyes raking her over, in fact. Long fingers splaying stiff, he pushed away from the shelf, drew himself tall and straight. It occurred to Leia that Han was always doing that, toggling between hard and soft. His posture was rigid, angular jaw set, yet his lips were full, and heavy with what looked like hurt. But Han was not looking at her like that. Of course he wouldn't, Leia near-scolded herself. She was a frazzled mess, white cotton of her top smeared in oil and dust, a scrape on her left wrist deciding if it would bleed or not, hair a Caroika's nest. She puffed at a tendril, plastered to her cheek with her own heat.
"Looks like you're trying to cook yourself," Han said, and he sounded for all the worlds...no, not concerned, he was a mercenary, he couldn't possibly worry about her. But unaccountably terse. He practically fired words down at her. "Hot as Tatooine's armpit in here, Princess. When was the last time someone changed the coolant, huh? You all alone? Where's your water? You know how fast a human passes out from heat exposure?" There it was, the dreaded pointer finger. "Average size human, mind you, never mind you, Lady Littlington. Never mind all that...that, uh." He swallowed; the angry finger relaxed, entire hand opening like some big bronze bloom.
"Fair skin." Han mumbled it, then looked almost stricken at the ceiling, and Leia saw him seize upon the glaring magnification of the overhead fluoros against the wrong-sided steel panels, saw him put it all together, what had happened and what he would have done differently. The rapidity and rightness of his calculations piqued Leia, even as she admired his ability to make them—and the error seemed to push him over some edge, too. Han outright scowled at her. "What if you'd got stuck?"
It just popped out. "They'd have found me in an unseemly position."
Han's barrage broke in a bark of laughter. Leia found herself smiling up at him, and he gradually smiled back, and they made eye contact, and that lasted long enough that Leia remembered it was unacceptable to share anything with this man, even a sense of humour. She rose to her feet as briskly as she could, what with the sweat and grime and too-big boots and too-small shirt, and the plastiwrapped whatever lost under the shelving forever, unless the mice or Wes got it first. "What are you after, Captain?"
The smile faded. Han jerked his chin across the aisle. "Cup of sunhoney."
Leia blinked. The groceries stored here were hardly of consumer proportions—more befitting the Imperial megaprisons. No one took personal servings of anything, nothing here was in single-use packaging; it was strictly bulk pickups for the mess. Han of all beings must know this, since he'd brought practically all of it back to the base. She looked pointedly at the sunhoney container. Hardly a jar of honey like you'd find on Alderaan or Naboo, quaint glass hand-labelled and lidded with ribboned muslin. This sunhoney was in a sealed tin barrel, stencilled with harsh black Aurebesh. Wait...was it from an Imperial megaprison? Leia had never asked him.
"A cup?" She rapped the metal with her knuckles. "Not...say, a vat?"
"Cup's what I need," Han said stubbornly. His refusal to take her bait riled Leia all over again.
"What do you think this is, Flyboy? Exomar's Emporium?"
Han's eyes flared at Leia's mention of the smuggler hangout. She'd never been there, but something in her—was it the much more functional steel structure she'd imagined Han building, in some fictional realm where he enlisted?—made her plant her heel on his turf. In response Han rolled back on his own bootsoles, thumb hitched in some loop probably sewn on his belt for that very purpose. He surveyed their surroundings with cool comprehensiveness, slow enough to reveal what Food Storage B6 actually was: a makeshift warehouse in a makeshift clearing, jungle vines encroaching on the walls both inside and out, so inexorably that Leia nearly couldn't bear it. Sometimes she dreamed she was hacking them back, back, back.
His eyes returned to hers. "No." Han said neatly, as though reporting the results of some intensive study. "I do not think this is Exovar's Emporium."
Honestly, honestly. Leia thought about braining Han then. Suffocating him with her discarded shirt and stuffing him into a tub of powdered basa root. No jury in the galaxy would convict her. Exhibit A: the man towering above her in his off-white shirt and tight blue trousers, all stubble and chest and sixteen belts at his gunslinger's hips. His smirk now utterly stripped of the sensitivity implied by those plump lips. If only she could give the court this picture. He came in, Your Honour, while I was working. And he looked like that, and he wanted sunhoney. It was either the plot of a dirty holo or an acceptable motive for murder.
Unless Han survived—he had a gift for that—and approached the stand himself, on the climactic swell of music that always signaled the truth on those formulaic law-and-order dramas she used to tease her father for watching. Unless Han asked her...
"What were you going to do, if I wasn't here?" Leia demanded, as though she herself was the prosecuting attorney. Ahhh. Much better.
"I was gonna take it," Han said. "Yeah, so what? A measly cuppa."
"You'd open the barrel—"
"Why, sure. Always got a minicutter on me," Han slapped a vest pocket.
"I'm not asking about tools," Leia cried. "I'm asking about waste." She brought her hand down on the metal top. "It's a barrel. A bushel! It's—"
"Yeah," Han preened. "Lucky Chewie and I were around when it fell off that speeder-truck, huh?"
"Sunhoney," Leia said with her own facetious sweetness, "dries out if it's left open."
"Dry out," Han snorted. "Ninety asstillion bodies on this moon? All of 'em hungry. Won't happen. Anyway. I was gonna sign the whole can out—yeah, put my name right on the datapad you got there, time and date—take my cut and,"
"Your cut? It's honey, not your gambling winnings."
"Hey, Your Absemiousness. Don't knock my game." Han opened his arms as though he could bundle up all the barrels and take them peevishly home. "Whole lotta these vittles brought to you by my game."
"Abstemious." Leia said. "And, even the corrected term is inaccurate, for your information. I play a little cards."
His eyes crinkled. "You do huh."
"I do."
"We'll see, Sweetheart." Han said. "Listen. I was gonna take my cut—one cup! one!—and drop the rest of the goop off in the mess. Got intel they're makin' vineapple crisp."
"Will the Alliance have the honour of hosting a particular Captain for dessert?"
"Nah." He examined a gouge on his knuckle, then dismissed it. "Particular Captain ain't enlisted."
Leia gasped. "Does the Princess know?"
Han laughed again, eyeing Leia with wary enjoyment. "Sometimes it's hard to tell."
She studied him right back. "Isn't it just."
Han let the it hang there a moment between them. Then he nodded as though it were resolved, when it was merely...well, shelved, with everything else. A great big drum of it, Leia thought, sealed up tight, contents under pressure.
"So. I was gonna take the honey, yeah. Not steal it," Han said, rather affronted for a man with actual smuggling compartments built into his vest. "Just take one cup, give back the rest."
"What if I wasn't here?"
"You are here," Han said.
"You're missing the point," Leia said, through gritted teeth. "If it wasn't me, on shift. If it was someone else. They would never just let you take—"
"I knew you would be."
Leia cocked her head. "How would you know that?"
Everything about Han became straight lines, then: his posture, his arms at his sides, his long legs, his Bloodstripes. Except his nose, that was. Noting this crooked feature made Leia recall what, a few days past, she'd overheard Lhysk Dtannic say to her deskmate when Han walked by, though why was he in the tech department at all? Cutting through to the hangar! He'd loudly announced to Chewbacca, then flustered when he realized the stone chamber ended dead just beyond Leia's desk. Chewie had chuckled, and when the unlikely pair doubled back, Han staring forward like an equun fitted with blinders, Chewie palmed Han's head, and with the other huge paw he cupped Leia's braided crown. It was only a second, but both gestures had felt of a piece, to Leia, and shaded with a fond sort of...exasperation? Perhaps it was a Wookiee greeting.
Han Solo is almost gorgeous, Lhysk said, watching Han stride off. If he'd only fix his nose.
Yes! The scar, too, said Lhysk's co-worker, who never said his damn name so Leia couldn't congratulate herself on remembering it, her memory being a small vanity she permitted herself, and Nameless consequently mildly annoyed her because he inadvertently denied her this tiny pleasure, which was silly she knew but nonetheless true, and anyhow, not everyone could be good as Luke Skywalker. Six seconds with a medic, Nameless said. I don't know why he doesn't bother.
Leia had been shocked at the force of resistance she'd felt to the idea. It hurt her, viscerally, in the chest, the thought of Han...polished. Another thought followed, linked like a boxcar to the first, too fast and weighted to stop at once. He wouldn't be so sexy if he was perfect. Similarly connected, and similarly insistent, came a rapid chain of feelings Leia could only helplessly observe as they flashed past: protectiveness. Possession. Affection. Lust. It was only the caboose-emotion Leia couldn't quite make out, or maybe she closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to. But in Food Storage B6 Leia identified the feeling just fine, as it trundled into view again, in the vista of Han Solo's wide green eyes.
Fear.
"I saw your name on the assignment roster. Can't miss it. It's right there in the hangar," Han babbled.
"I'm never rostered," Leia said. "Security risk."
"Or, or Luke told me."
"Luke didn't know, I took the shift last-minute, after he was out on patrol."
Han glanced at that ceiling. "I asked the droid," he muttered.
"Which droid?"
"I don't know his name," Han said with incredulous disdain. "Y'know, the prissy brass—"
"You asked Threepio where to find me?"
Han looked at her a long time, and there it was again, the it, crackling now between them.
"You gonna give me the damn honey, Princess, or not?"
"Fine," Leia said. "So long as you sign it out." Ugh, she sounded like Jan Dodonna. Leia wouldn't say she softened her tone, exactly, but she did modulate it, not for Han so much as for her sense of self. "Did you not feel you could ask anyone else?"
Leia meant approaching anyone other than Threepio to find out her schedule. Though Leia often thought Han wore a vest mostly to keep his cards close to it, a few traits had been screamingly apparent even on the Death Star. He was proud, skeptical, chippy. Clever. Perhaps foremost, the man loathed C-3PO. That Han had been so keen to find her that he would engage the protocol droid intrigued her.
"For the honey?" Maybe Han misunderstood her question. Or maybe he understood it all too clearly. "Well, I tried all the beehives in the vicinity—"
Leia began to walk down the aisle toward the hover-jack. "Knocked on their tiny bee doors, did you?" she tossed over her shoulder. Han let her go, then matched pace with her so effortlessly it startled her, how tall he was.
"Rang aaaall them tiny bells." Han drawled, and not for the first time, Leia reflected that that voice made even absurd statements seem suggestive. Suddenly the sweltering aisle seemed to be narrowing around them as they strolled together—she had to check her boots to ensure she wasn't slowing, slowing to...to look up at him and...? But then Han added, "Left 'em wee comm messages, even," holding finger and thumb almost imperceptibly apart, and this was so goofy time was industriously clicking again, Leia right along with it.
She laughed, half relief, half mirth. "No luck?"
"No. Rude." He grasped the jack and powered it to humming life, no question that he would handle the machinery—men did this to Leia all the time, out of deference or contempt. Both bothered her. But with Han this was different, reassuringly impersonal. He depressed the lever that lifted the jack on its cushion of vapor. "Dunno what I ever did to them, furry little jerks."
"You? Probably took their card money."
Leia said it with playful appreciation, and her tone appeared to surprise him, then please him so much Han forgot to hide his true smile. It was wide and stunning. "Somethin' like that."
They reached the sunhoney barrel, and as Han easily hoisted it from the rack to the hover-jack, Leia pulled the inventory datapad from its hook. She powered it up, offered it to him with the stylus. Han scrawled his initials and the time onto the line next to sunhoney and handed the implements back.
"Wait." He wrinkled his brow at her. "Did I just enlist?"
Leia shot him a look, and hung the pad back up. They resumed walking toward the retractable door, Han guiding the jack with a lack of attention that was somehow appealing, coupled as it was with his competence. The silence was relaxed. For a moment, the strangest small moment, they became to Leia players in another life; they were a couple shopping together at some Coruscant majormarket. Intellectually she knew it was merely a passing fancy, but it felt more like a vision; so real, the sense of trust and companionship, Han Solo of all people as her...as...her partner, that Leia drew in a gasp. Han looked sharply down at her. To cover her shaken sense that she'd tumbled through dimensions, Leia frantically gestured at the industrial-sized staples surrounding them.
"Anything else?" She didn't recognise her own voice. "Tea? Dpann'oor flour? Salt?" She managed a weak alliterative humour. "How are your ship's saline supplies?"
"Sufficient," Han batted right back, looking at her strangely. "On the smuggler scale."
They had nearly reached the door, thank the stars. But instead of leaving Leia to collect herself Han stopped, in a strip of sun leaked through the flawed steel roof. He crouched, pronounced thigh muscles pressing against the rough fabric of his trousers, and a long arm snaked under the lowest shelf. When he pulled it back, Han held the stray packet Leia had been after when he entered. He rose smooth and sure, of course he did, the mechanism of his body in perfect working order, and handed her the pouch. Leia took it in unsteady fingers. It wasn't labelled. She didn't know what it was. It didn't matter. There was a heat in Han's eyes, and it was this that drew her, some motive he'd only now chosen to reveal. That gold gaze streamed into Leia until she felt she'd never regain her breath. What was happening?
"I do need somethin' else," he murmured.
"What's that?" Leia groped for the joke again. "Sixteen sachets of..."
He didn't shake his head so much as turn it, very slowly, side to side. "You," Han said.
"Me. Me?" Her laugh was brittle. "What could you possibly want with...?"
He smiled at her, and there was no leer to it, only a kind of boyish excitement. "Sweetheart. You ever baked a cake?"
"No, I've never baked a...never baked." Leia felt a stab of...not shame, quite. It wasn't as though being inexperienced in the kitchen was some moral error. But Leia did feel that old ache of apartness nonetheless.
Han obliterated this with a wave. "Neither have I. But I figure, how hard can it be? Hells, we can both fly. And if we hit bumps, there's the 'net."
All Leia could do was stare at him.
"Now, I ain't askin' you to ditch your shift, Your Most Committedness. But when you're off at 18:00, wouldja come by the Falcon?"
"You want me to help you bake a cake."
"Yeah. Well. Not help," Han said. "Females bake cake."
"Females?"
"Whoa, no!" Han winced. "That came out kinda—"
"I'm afraid I am unavailable, Captain," Leia said, coldly. She wasn't sure what had triggered it more, the closing of her icy walls, that she had felt so warm and open with Han moments before, or that he was...she'd known Han to be aggressively sure of himself, yes. But as with his attitude about the hover-jack, Han's manner had seemed to Leia more about confidence than misogyny. His ego she could forgive. Han's swagger, backed as it was with proof, acts of skill and daring like blasting Vader off Luke? Was even attractive. It was safe for Leia to acknowledge that, now that she was cancelling any budding interest in Han Solo forever. "My dinner rota is at 18:00."
"Supper, hell, is that all? I'll feed you!" Han said. "I never baked, but I can cook alright, and—"
"Try Lhysk Dtannic." Leia said nastily.
"Who, the slicer? No thanks." Han pulled a face. "She's a real nutter. Asked me outta nowhere if I'm scared of the bone-knitter? Hells is that about?"
"Then try some other female." Leia turned her back. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I—"
When Han caught her wrist, it didn't make Leia angry, when anyone else who'd tried would've had their ulna cracked by a well-placed tactic. It was exactly where the bastards had snapped the manacles on her. Yet it wasn't like that. His touch was firm, insistent, but not restrictive, and something in it spoke to her, a language instant and blunt and helplessly honest.
"Leia. Please."
Slowly she turned back to face him.
"It has to be you. Partly because..." Han's cheekbones flushed, and it was oddly endearing, the way he looked away from her body when he said it. "Female. Yes. But that ain't me, see, it's—" He exhaled. "Hey. It's Wookiee Feast Day today. Comes around every twenty-odd years. Chewie spent the last one with Malla and Lumpy."
"Who are Malla and—?"
"Chewie's mate. Lumpy's their boy."
"But why isn't—where are they? His family?" A terrible thought occurred to her. "Oh no. Oh Han,"
"No. Not that. They're on Kashyyyk. He was—when I—when we met—" Han held her stare desperately, defiantly. "Look. I can't get into it. Chewie took the job with me, and he don't get home much as he'd like. Right?"
"I see," Leia said, though she wasn't sure she did. "Kashyyyk. Isn't it...?"
"Occupied. Yep." Han spat it out. "We don't talk about it much. Chewie's got pride, and I ain't the kinda guy to poke. But sixth hell, it's a big day for the Wookiees, and—"
Han looked down at his hand, seemed startled to find it still closed on Leia's wrist. He didn't remove it. Again, there was something in his grip that whispered to her, and what it said was, mercenary or not, Han had an aversion to Leia being hurt. That gave him an unsurety, and he hung in limbo a minute, wrestling with it, but at last he lifted his eyes again to hers. Han's thumb gently stroked, once, at Leia's pulse-point, and it felt as though he held her heart. He said, all in a rush, "He misses his folks."
It was true, Leia did understand longing more than most, and Chewie's kin and home were alive, and hers gone. Yet in that instant it was Leia who felt for Han; he couldn't have known it, but when he said what Chewie felt, and linked that pain to Leia but not to himself, she saw that Han had no emotional reference for missing anyone. He surely saw that as a blessing of a type. Leia knew it was anything but.
"So I looked it up. Feast Day. On the 'net. Not much out there, the Wooks aren't real...public. And like I said, I ain't one to pry. But I did find this one thing, a female bakes the honeycake. And it ain't like that, before you ask, that women do all that work. Hah! Right, Malla'd get a laugh." Han's expression sobered. "It's one female makes it, the one they most honour. The one they think is strongest. Sharing it gives them all her courage. And Chewie...hell, Leia, he thinks every world of you. Thinks you hung this damn moon. The Small Warrior."
Leia gulped the lump in her throat. "He calls me that?"
"Yeah, that's what he calls you. Says it right to you, Sweetheart, you just don't have the ear for it yet—but you'll get there, you'll get it." Han nodded. "I saved him from—uh, well, we been through a lot together, me and him, and you think he's ever called me brave? To my face? No. Nope. Not on your life."
"Han," Leia said, and now it was she squeezed his hand. "I am truly moved you'd think of me to do this, for Chewbacca—"
"Chewie. He actually prefers it,"
"Chewie. And I hold him in the highest of esteem, I—"
Han's eyes danced. "Is the Small Warrior afraid to bake a cake?"
"Han, I,"
"Wielder of sawed-off blasters?"
"Goodness. No! It's more that—"
"Scared to break a few gizka eggs?" Mournfully, he clucked his tongue. "The Sasser of Vader."
"The Sasser...what?"
"The Wook don't call you that," Han said smugly. "That's all me."
"You call me the—"
"Tarkin-Snarker?"
Leia laughed, blush warming her all over.
"Fine, that one was Luke. But he wouldn't mind I used it, the kid worships you too." Han added hurriedly, "Like Chewie does."
Leia blurted, "I am afraid of desecrating Chewbacca's cake."
"Pah." Han waved his free hand, squeezed with the other. "I'll be there, too."
"But I thought you—you're a man,"
"I am a man," Han solemnly agreed.
"Han!"
"I see it like this, Princess. A man can't bake the cake, fine. No stirring, no nothing. But it's this man's ship, and I can stay there while you do. It's my ship. I say we can talk the recipe through." His smile was small and hopeful. "Luke's gonna take Chewie out awhile, keep him busy. Whaddaya say, huh? Help me out? Surprise the big guy with some hero cake?"
Leia looked down just before her eyes filled. "I'd love to."
Han's own eyes ignited. He looked at Leia, in that moment, with such intensity and focus that she thought...well, she didn't know what. But she felt a funny disappointment when Han cleared his throat, let her go, stepped away from her with a decidedly unmilitary "See you at six." He took up the jack's handle and went for the door with his prize. But there, Han turned, pointed at her, and said, "One more Wookiee custom."
"Oh?"
"You did me a favour." His smile was devastating. "According to them, that puts me in your debt. Guess you're stuck with me now, Princess."
"How long does that last?" Leia smiled, but with an edge. Han was always saying he was leaving this place, the base, the Rebellion. These suckers. This system.
"Until you learn Shyriiwook," Han threw it back fast—not like a rock, but a ball he knew she could catch. And if Han's pitch was a bit hard, Leia thought, his eyes were soft. "Then you can ask Chewie yourself."