Written for hanleiacelebration's HanLeia Appreciation Week 2022, Day 3. Prompt: Traveling together.

Leia's rant with the hydrospanner takes a bit of inspiration from a scene in The West Wing, although there's not a cricket bat involved.

Tiny Umbrellas

Working up a sweat alongside Han was certainly a fair part of how Leia had expected to spend her first real vacation in several years, but this was not exactly what she'd had in mind. She'd been crawling through corridors and reaching through narrow passageways and helping Han reroute cables for a few hours now, after the navigation system, and then the sensors, had conked out during their final checks before liftoff. They'd managed to get the nav system back, but the sensors had, as it turned out, a rather questionably rigged configuration that was not so easily fixed.

She finished reconnecting the last of the wires to the array and called out to Han. "Okay, try it now."

She felt a wave of hopeful excitement from him in the Force, quickly followed by disappointment punctuated with the sound of Corellian curses. The board must have booted up and then immediately shut down again. Damnit.

Leia crawled out of the small passage where she'd been working to the main part of the maintenance bay, just as Han returned from the cockpit. She was grubby and sweaty and more than a little grumpy now, but she was doing her best to avoid taking it out on him.

"Well, at least now we know," he said, running a hand through his hair. He looked exhausted; he needed this vacation as much as she did. "Can't work around the power motivator. Gonna need that part. Good news is, should be pretty easy to get it here."

They were still on Castilon, which had just hosted a qualifying race for the Five Sabers tournament.

"And what's the bad news?" Leia asked. Han's sheepish look and his feeling in the Force made her a little suspicious.

He made a face. "We'll have to take the whole damn thing apart to install it," he said. "Probably gonna take a day or so."

That was probably an optimistic estimate, given that it was just the two of them. No Chewie, and no droids to help out.

Leia wanted to slam her face into her palm. "Fucking hells, Han."

"I know, I know, I'm sorry," he said. "Know this kinda fucks up our plans."

The first part of said plan had actually gone swimmingly; they'd come here to support Han's team in the Five Sabers qualifier, then after the race were preparing for a couple of weeks of relaxation at a private resort on Telerath— so private, in fact, that the place allowed only limited transmissions from off-planet. Meaning that even if the galaxy were burning down again, the New Republic would have to call someone else to fix it.

If only the Falcon had decided to cooperate.

"Whatever," she said, shaking her head a little. "Telerath will still be there in a couple days. We'll take care of your baby first."

Han grinned. He was as grubby as she was, his face smudged with dirt, his sunset shadow already making him look extra scruffy.

"C'mere, Baby," he said, extending a hand to pull her up from the bay. "Let's take care of you."

Day 2 of their sensor repair "vacation" started out fairly promising: they'd easily found the part in town, and were in good spirits at breakfast as they looked over schematics and discussed how to tackle taking apart and reassembling the system.

Ten hours later was a different story. They'd had to disconnect part of the climate control system in order to get to the sensor arrays, so the Falcon was even hotter and smellier than usual; the project revealed several "special modifications" Han had made that didn't show up on the schematic, meaning that they had to keep modifying their plan; and Leia had accidentally reconnected one section while looking at the wrong schematic, forcing them to back up and redo it.

And they did yell a little, although as Han had noted that they were both a lot nicer when they fought now, often prefacing their complaints with endearments, like I love you, but what in the nine hells did you do to this panel? Or I love you, but does any thing on this goddess-damned boat fucking work?

Leia had reached her limit, however, when one of her spanners literally got stuck on a bolt she was tightening. She tried brute strength, she tried the Force, but it was refusing to move.

"Fuck me," she said loudly, and was about to launch into a series of choice Alderaani curses when her spouse appeared behind her shoulder.

"You rang?" he said, pretending her curse was an invitation.

That might have worked six hours ago, but Leia was done. She refused to look at him and let him coax her out of her foul mood, instead focusing intensely on the panel she'd been working on as she began to rant.

"I am supposed to be—" she continued yanking at the spanner, which remained stuck— "lying on a chaise, on a sunny beach—" yank— "with my feet up–" yank, yank, bang— "Ow! Fuck!— and droids bringing me fancy drinks with fruit skewers and tiny umbrellas in them!"

She finally looked back at Han, who was nearby but clearly trying to keep his distance from her fight with the spanner.

"TINY UMBRELLAS, HAN!"

"I know," he said, giving her a sympathetic look. "Makes you feel better, we just got a few more things left to do."

Leia hated to burst his bubble, but she was still picturing that beach and feeling a little bitter about it. "There's supposed to be blue sky, and clear water, and trashy novels, and me ogling you in those little swim trunks of yours–"

"I could take my shirt off," he offered. He waggled his eyebrows in that goofy way that Leia had trouble resisting and gave her a grin that was more of a leer.

She wasn't having it. "Don't make me throw hydrospanners at you."

That made Han do one of his full-body laughs, the kind that made Leia a little proud whenever she inspired one, where he threw his head back and let the laughter run through him from head to toe.

He recovered, but his grin stayed in place. "I love you," he said.

She smiled, in spite of herself. "I know."

He reached in front of her and somehow managed to free the hydrospanner in one go, but rather than handing it to her, he put it down and took her injured hand in his, stroking it in a familiar way and drawing closer.

"My hands are dirty, y'know," he said.

She tried to hide her smile. "You just want an excuse to make out."

He raised an eyebrow. "Did I need one?"

Leia rolled her eyes, but she pulled him down to kiss her anyway. "Okay, Hotshot."

By lunchtime on Day 3, the repairs were finished and tested, they'd managed to take off, and Leia had gone off to take a long shower before doing a last check of her messages. She did fully plan to be away, but they both knew that she'd feel better if she checked everything one last time before entering the limited comms zone at the resort.

Leia was still in the shower when her comm went off. Han picked it up, intending to just turn it off or to sleep mode, but the call activated.

"Oh, hello, Han," Mon Mothma greeted warmly.

Han still found himself trying to wrap his head around the fact that Mon—actually seemed to like him? Not that he wasn't a likable guy, not that he didn't want Leia's friends to like him, it was just that he'd gotten the feeling that for a long time she didn't quite know what to make of Han. Which he'd assumed was a bad thing, but apparently not.

He still liked to throw her off-balance sometimes, though.

He gave her a lazy grin, figuring he could head off any designs she might have on Leia's vacation. "Hey Mothy, good to see you, but Her Worship is full up on galactic crisis right now, so you'll have to try 'er later."

To her credit, Mon chuckled, though it didn't last for long. "I'm afraid we might have one more to deal with," she continued. "Is Leia available?"

Han cocked an eyebrow. "Now, you know she's been off the market for a while," he teased, but after a pause he let the joke drop. "Hold on, I'll get 'er."

Leia was wrapped in a soft robe, her hair newly rebraided, as Han approached her with the comm.

"It's Mon. You need me to tell her about the tiny umbrellas?" he asked.

She shook her head, taking the comm from him. "I've got it. Thanks."

So close, they'd been so close to getting away. If only he'd done that maintenance months ago—

Well, he needed a shower, too, and it sounded like Leia's call was going to last a while. He could learn of the fate of their vacation later.

"You're gonna kill me," Leia began, and that didn't bode well, but Han inclined his head, indicating that he was listening.

"We need to take a little detour, before the resort," she continued.

Kriffing hells. "I'm not takin' you back to Coruscant," he said. The minute they landed in that system, any hope for Leia being able to actually get away was gone. "Don't care if they've resurrected the Emperor, they can find somebody else to handle it."

"We're not going back to Coruscant."

"No side missions, either," he continued. "You know how those go."

Leia nodded, and smiled a bit wryly. "Yeah, I do. We just need to drop out of hyper and find a place where we can do a secure transmission. I need to be in a meeting in two hours."

That didn't sound so bad. "Just a meeting, that's it?"

"That's it."

"Gonna hold you to that," he promised.

Leia grinned. "You are being awfully bossy right now, Captain."

He stepped toward her. "Just tryin' to get you your tiny umbrellas, Princess. And your beach."

"And my fruity drinks?"

"Mmm-hmm," he said, closing in to kiss her again.

Leia did do one last thing on her work comm after the meeting, but it didn't really count as breaking her promise.

"A whole 'nother week?" Han said, pausing in his work to spread solar shield lotion on Leia's back.

"We need it," Leia said, enjoying the feeling of his hands on her. "We've earned it." She knew her words to be true, but she still felt a little like she was getting away with something.

"Pardon me, gentle beings," the serving droid said, rolling up beside them and picking up their empty glasses. "Would you like another beverage?"

"Please," Leia said. These frozen cocktails were pretty silly, true, but delicious. And she was on vacation.

"Sure thing," Han said, and slipped the droid a small tip as they placed their orders. To her delight, he seemed to really be getting into the swing of this vacation thing, too. And her fantasies about him in those swim trunks were even better in person.

She stopped the server droid before they left. "Could I also get another fruit skewer in mine?"

"Certainly, Madam."

"And don't forget the tiny umbrella, yeah?" Han reminded them.