Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to me, they belong to George Lucas. He's the one who makes the money off of these guys--my use of them is solely recreational. And, of course, I'm running behind on my typing. The idea of Han taking a Tatooine rent boy away was kinda abducted from the AU story "Every Harlot" by Lady Angel, which kinda sorta inspired this one. I really recommend it, although it can be rather racy and is not for the faint of heart.
Three: Like a Hothouse Flower
Han Solo could not believe his incredible luck.
This time last night he was trying to sleep in a sterilely cold, brightly lit cell. Tonight he was in the doorway of Luke's chambers, watching nervously and silently as his host cooked supper.
No synthetics--he was standing over a heating element, mixing spices into a pot of thick stew. That was odd, and somehow a bit more alarming. He hadn't noticed Han yet, which left his guest with a sudden, nervous feeling that he wasn't supposed to be there after all.
But the dark figure at the stove turned suddenly. "Sit," he demanded.
Han moved cautiously away from the door and sat on the edge of a seat.
"I apologize about the soup," Luke said, turning back to the pot. "I'm the only one aboard interested in learning to prepare real meals, and this far into space I can only get a hold of a synthesized protein and freeze-dried vegetables. But the spices are good."
"You're probably the last person in a civilized system to cook over a heating element."
"It's something to do, at least. Certain others frown on it, though. Another of your tasks while living here will be sampling everything I know how to cook, and whatever I make up." He seemed satisfied with adding a new responsibility to Han's position.
But something didn't click. "Wait--I'll be living in here?"
"Well, obviously so. Were you expecting me to be kept in the detention block? Taste this." He dipped his finger into the pot and extended it towards Han.
Uncomfortably, trying to be as casual as possible, Han crossed the room and gingerly licked a bit of the thick brown substance from the outstretched finger. "Not too bad," he commented, "kinda reminds me of home."
Luke smiled. "I figured I could ease your concerns with Corillian spices. Get two bowls from that top cabinet," he ordered, turning his attention to a smaller pot of something grayish white and unpleasant looking.
"So what's the deal here?" Han asked as he brought the bowls down from the stack in the cabinet. "How'd you get Vadar to let you keep me?"
Luke shrugged, his back still to Han. "I asked, and he accepted. But you should know that you are grounded wherever I am. If you try to live in that miserable little freighter of yours we will have to kill you."
"Nothin'll happen to the Falcon though, right? I just got her a few years back, I don't wanna lose her."
"No, we will leave the, uh, Falcon alone. You could even tinker with it a bit if you desire. But if a single suspicious move is made, you, the Wookie, and the ship will be blinked out of existence. As though you had never existed."
"Great." A grounded life is better than no life at all, he told himself, but for a moment he had the feeling that the walls were closing in on him.
Luke joined him at the table and filled the bowl in front of him. Han noticed that Luke's bowl, however, was about half full of the miserable looking stuff in the other pot.
"I can't really digest any animal bases proteins," Luke said quietly, glancing sadly at Han's bowl and moved a stack of ancient looking books and papers from the chair to the table. "And the spice plays wretched tricks on my stomach."
"Sounds like a dull existence--sterile walls, boring foods..."
"You don't begin to comprehend."
Han glanced curiously at the stack--the books and pages were covered in a language he had never encountered, but on top was a battered looking old holo. From where he sat it appeared to be the image of a tired, sad looking woman and an infant. "Mind if I look?" he asked, indicating the holo.
"Yes. I mind very much," Luke replied in a clipped tone, shooting him a look that could have thawed Hoth.
"Who is it?"
"My mother and twin sister. Died when I was very young." He seemed to want to be done with the conversation.
"I see." Han smiled and tried to find a new topic of conversation. "You cook like this for every prisoner you get to keep?"
"Actually, you're the first person I've ever been interested enough to keep someone around." Luke sipped a glass of something strange and opaque blue.
"Something else for your weakened stomach?" Han raised an eyebrow.
"If you'd like to be taken back to the detention center to await your execution that can be arranged," Luke snapped in a voice cold and deadly.
"Fine." Han turned back to his soup, and for a moment they were silent.
"Before we caught you in the tractor beam, what were your plans?" he seemed to have calmed down, and now his eyes glowed with a manic excitement.
Han sat back in his chair and crossed his fingers behind his head. "We'd just dropped off a load of spice to Tatooine--and it's a good thing, too, because we almost got boarded on the way there."
"Boarded? By space pirates? Something like that?"
Nah, by the crew of some Star Destroyer. I almost had to dump my shipment--which would have been a damn shame, because Hutts are notoriously attached to their spices. If I'd dropped it--"
"Hutts?" Luke sat up straighter in excitement and resting his chin on his knuckles. "The crime lords? You do business with the Hutts?"
"Yeah. They'll smuggle anything, and they pay really well. They just tend to have a temper when they don't get what they want. So you can imagine my reluctance to go back and tell Jabba that I didn't have his shipment. "Han was starting to enjoy the storytelling, slipping back into a time when he would sit and listen for hours to the old family stories. Now it was his turn to pass on his tales, although they were considerably less noble. "So I tell Chewie to punch in the hyperspace coordinates for somewhere just outside of the asteroid field near Tatooine while I stash the spice in the floorboard compartment." He paused for dramatic effect.
"And?" Luke had leaned forward eagerly.
"And then the Falcon takes that moment to overheat the second hand power coupling and spray sparks all over rather than take us into hyperspace."
"They would have followed you, you know," Luke piped up, sounding slightly smug. He looked so much like a child then, a child listening to the stories of older and wiser family. Han decided he liked him better innocent than as a Starkiller. "It's standard procedure to follow a fleeing ship into hyperspace because that means they are hiding something."
"I know, but have you ever been inside a Star Destroyer in an asteroid field?"
"No."
"'Cause it's never been done. But the Falcon is thin enough to fit between asteroids--we could fly out the other end, drop off our cargo at Hutt's palace and have a few drinks in Mos Eisley before they could even get around it."
"Clever thinking." Luke smiled.
"Standard procedure," Han said with a self-satisfied smile. "So anyways, I've got a defective hyperdrive, a Wookie screaming his head off for tools to at least make the stops start flying, and a crew full of officers practically knocking on the hatch. I tell Chewie to shut up and open a channel so I can talk to the Imperials."
"What did you say?" Luke had his eyes fixed on Han--bright, blue, and fascinated. He was regressing, it seemed, in what was probably the sweetest way Han had ever seen.
"Told them to come up, nearly begged them to." He paused for a moment. "Asked them to bring their medic, if they had one."
"Medic?"
"Yeah. Told them I'd caught something unpronounceable and violently contagious from a rent boy I picked up in some Mos Eisley cantina."
"Rent boy?" Luke chuckled derisively.
"Hey, the worse I could sound to those slugs the better--you know how discriminating your officers are. So I ask to have their medic up to have a look at me, my copilot, and the rent boy."
"Did they?"
"No, they put him on the line. I described the vilest things I could come up with--green puss, bumps, swelling, itching like the devil all over the naughtier bits of me and the imaginary rent boy. He said there was nothing he could do and they beat a hasty retreat."
Luke laughed. "They believed that? Didn't they know that storm trooper helmets would filter anything out of the atmosphere that could possibly get them sick?"
"You don't get out much, do you, kid?"
"I've already told you, no." Luke glared, the innocence and charm ebbing away. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"It just shows. You know those little details that no one else thinks of...but sometimes I think the bigger things are lost on you."
Luke coughed slightly, then shrugged, but his pride was obviously injured. In the same gesture his fingers twitched and a small fruit flew into his hand. A wickedly sharp looking knife followed from the other direction, dangerously close to Han's head.
"Kwava fruit?" Luke offered, cutting it in half and offering a piece toward Han.
"Aren't those awfully acidic? Maybe you shouldn't--"
"I'm not supposed to--they're difficult for a healthy person to digest. But to be honest, I actually sort of enjoy it."
"You enjoy the stomach pain that accompanies these little things? They nearly killed me the first time I had them..."
"Yes!" Something bottled up, something small and angry that had been gnawing away at him. "I'm quite tired of being pampered and tended to as though I was--was--"
"--a sickly child?" Han interrupted with some concern.
"Yes! I'm not a child anymore, and I don't want to live in so sterile an environment! I am perfectly capable of caring for myself!"
"Hate to break it to you, kid, but if sterility isn't your game you've been playing for the wrong team."
"Would you please stop calling me that?" Luke asked, gesturing threateningly with the knife in his hand.
"Bother you that much, huh?"
"Yes." With a brooding look Luke pushed the piece of fruit forward quickly, stopping it just short of Han's face. Han pulled it of the air gingerly and nipped at the end.
They sat in awkward silence for a moment or so.
"Luke?"
He grunted.
"I don't think they of you as a child."
Luke didn't respond.
"Probably more like some kind of finicky plant--you gotta water it, and feed it and maybe keep it real warm and cozy or something...you're--" The half-formed thought was floundering miserably halfway out of his mouth.
"Like a hothouse flower?"
"Yeah, I guess. Something you gotta love a lot to keep alive."
Luke laughed mirthlessly. "Perhaps they ought to just let it die."
