AN: I dedicate this chapter to the ladies over at HSBCAS, where waxing poetic about any part of Han Solo's anatomy is not only commonplace but highly encouraged.

Serendipity

(n.) the development of events in an unplanned but happy and beneficial way; finding something delightful when you are not looking for it

Sitting at the dejarik table with Han, still nursing their caf from breakfast, Leia gradually tuned out his and Chewie's alluvial damper debate, taken instead by the sight of Han's hand where it sat against his thigh. This wasn't a new captivation. She'd spent years watching his hands: while he was piloting; executing repairs and improvements around the Falcon; making her tea after a nightmare; drawing and using his blaster; tending to a wound — his or hers; figuring nav calculations on flimsi because he only trusted himself with their lives in Imp heavy territories.

In the beginning, she told herself the allure of his hands was simply a larger admiration of his talents and skills, of how they could be of great use to the Rebellion. When their appeal only increased with time, she reasoned what she was experiencing was an appreciation of the connection between the way he used his hands and what that revealed about his deeper personality. His fingers were adept and sure, which was to be expected of a smuggler pilot with his experience, yet each movement was implemented not only with expertise but with extreme focus, patience, and even gentleness; that said a lot about the sort of man Han Solo truly was. While all those things were indeed true, as the years passed, Leia eventually gave up and reached the point where she could secretly admit at least to herself that she just plain found Han's hands sexy.

They were dexterous and adroit, agile and nimble, precise and careful — not just careful as in 'cautious', literally full of care. Han used his hands to pilot and work with such focused attention; always with measured motions, deftly targeted for optimum results. It didn't take Leia long to begin to imagine how that could translate in far different, intimate circumstances with her. More nights than she cared to admit — there was a time when she would have been mortified for him to ever know — she thought about Han's hands.

And his face, and his mouth, and his body, yes. But his hands. Those capable, attractively masculine hands — the many feats they had performed, and all she craved for them yet to do — sparked fantasies that weren't limited to her bunk alone but that crept up at the oddest, most inconvenient moments.

The pleasant roughness of Han's hands, just abrasive enough to cause that extra little bit of friction that made her crave his touch all the more: further, longer, across more of her skin; always more. Not just an attention-seeking tap of her knee or an innocent stroke over her wrist, but up the full length of her arm, along her entire leg — and bare, his skin against hers with nothing in between.

Such long, clever fingers. So proficient, gifted, and skillfully exact.

Now that they were together, often Han would play them over her neck, collarbone, and shoulders as he kissed her. It never failed to send shivers through her and a warmth that woke her body. And that was just her neck! What they could do to her more sensitive areas had long held sensual sway over her in the quiet of her darkened room. By now, it had become an utter fascination.

Even the veins and the tendons that powered Han's practiced fingers; the increased breadth at his knuckles; and his carefully rounded, short and clean fingernails — somewhat surprising for a man who did so much physical labor with his hands. It was all a turn-on, and all transferred to some way he could touch her, pleasure he could give her, his certain ability to make her body soar just the same as he did the Falcon.

Sometimes during debriefings, especially following missions they'd spent alone together with exponentially rising sexual tension that was ready to burst by the time they made it back to base, Han would be sitting beside her, slouched and usually blithe and brazenly bored with the proceedings — she couldn't really blame him as they often were boring and filled with far too much red tape; after already submitting written reports and answering questions, it needn't go on and on — and Leia herself would start to drift….start thinking about Han's hands, looking at them where they were lazily spread over his stomach, hanging over his knees, or resting idly in his lap. And soon looking would lead to imagining: imagining them resting on her instead; spread over her, rubbing that delicious friction onto her somehow-suddenly-bare body.

Once at a debriefing a few months before Ord Mantell, Mon herself had needed to call Leia to attention, red-cheeked and stammering, from an absorbing fantasy of her and Han in an amorous clinch in the back of the tapcafe, his hand up the short, formfitting dress she'd worn as part of her waitress cover. It had been embarrassing to say the least, but thankfully, no one had seemed the wiser. While Han was apparently capable of detecting generalized desire on her, and had sussed out the effect lower registers of his voice could have, he had yet to make that particular connection.

It wasn't her intentional plan to apprise him of it now, but Leia's desire led to nerve, and her hand was moving before her brain even caught up to it.

Initially, she only set her hand over his where it continued to rest against his leg. There was a whisper of a pause in Han's flow of conversation and he glanced over to her and smiled before looking back to Chewbacca, but all the while he carried on with what they were discussing.

Until Leia took hold of his hand from above and placed it atop her upper thigh, letting go and leaving it there. At that, Han stopped dead mid-word.

He looked down to his hand on Leia's thigh, then up into her eyes, where she boldly met his gaze with a kittenish arch of her brow. "I've always wanted to do that," she confided.

His fingers spasmed a little against her leg at that confession, and he looked back down, taking in the sight of his hand on her. They both watched, rapt, as he spread his fingers wide over her until they completely spanned her leg, his thumb hooking over her inner thigh. He began moving his hand in a gentle but steady caress, and when she didn't object he broadened his touch all the way down to her knee and back up again.

Han's eyes went back up to Leia's, but it was his copilot who he addressed. "Chewie, get out," he warned gruffly.

The Wookiee barely had time to leave the room before Han's free hand reached for Leia and pulled her into a hungry, immediately open-mouthed kiss.

Things went on as such as they reached the end of their first week toward Bespin. The frequency and fervor of their kissing had grown increasingly heated, and Leia surprised herself by basking in it. In fact, she was certain the Rebels back at the rendezvous point on Home One would have difficulty even recognizing her. But this interlude with Han, it was all so new to her — and it was invigorating. Not just their romantic pursuits, though that aspect was electrifying and revelatory all on its own, but the freedom with which she could yield to them.

She'd spent years conflicted over Han: conflicted over his suitability for her, not the orphaned smuggler part but his refusal to commit to the Alliance and his oft proclaimed ephemerality with the Rebellion; conflicted over her fear of loving anyone again after losing everything she had loved. Additionally, she felt herself unentitled to any kind of personal life.

After Alderaan, she carried the weight of her people in a whole new way — a terrible, unique burden that no one else in the galaxy could fully understand. Beyond the guilt of surviving when millions of others had not, beyond the sense of culpability that if she had just said or done one thing differently — only one thing more — maybe she could have prevented it, there was the heavy mantle of responsibility for atonement and redress. She was unable to bring her people back, but as the Last Princess of Alderaan she bore the singular, exacting charge and obligation to see the beings and government that had committed the atrocity forever brought down. It was up to her to give the death of her people at least some sense of meaning by restoring peace to the galaxy and ensuring such planetary genocide could never, ever happen again.

As long as the Emperor, Vader, and the Empire ruled, as long as the Alliance to Restore the Republic fought on another day, it was her sole duty to see to that — and nothing else. Only once she'd avenged the destruction of Alderaan would she be entitled to anything like personal feelings, diversions, or a life of her own.

At times, she'd felt guilty feeling happy at all. She'd have these brief dalliances of amusement and flirtation, of lust and longing, of lively enjoyment with Han. Then, afterwards, she would feel all the more compelled to buckle down harder, to recommit herself to the only important goal.

She had lived that way ever since the Disaster, torn and taxed, with a heart pulled in different directions.

But now, floating out in deep space, something had happened to Leia.

In those first hours, it had driven her crazy, nearly to distraction, that things were so far out of her control. There was a war to be won, the fate of the galaxy on the line. Her Alliance was on the run yet again — they would need to find a new location, build a new base, remobilize their forces. And here she was, idle for weeks, at the mercy of a temperamental starship!

Yet, after the first day or so, after her heart-to-heart with Han, after the revelation of their shared feelings and their joint commitment to actually acknowledging them now, suddenly her powerlessness began to take on a whole new light of reprieve. It was no longer a sentence, but a respite.

Because this wasn't her fault. It was utterly beyond her control, and for once, there was no alternative to pursue. For the first time since her planet was destroyed, the weight of rectification wasn't on her. There was nowhere she could go and nothing she could do for the Alliance or for her people.

And in the absence of that acute responsibility, all that was left was herself — her wants, her needs, her time and her freedom to indulge her feelings.

With that came the gradual return of the person she used to be before the Disaster. Still dedicated to the cause, still determined to see freedom and goodwill reign across the galaxy, still honoring the obligation to her people that came with being their elected representative and their princess, yet also allowed to be her own person — one who valued her individual life and the pursuit of her own personal happiness; one who was witty and fun; one who was allowed to be lighthearted and joyful, and even occasionally cater to her own pleasures and wellbeing.

For the first time in what felt like forever, Leia was permitted to be and do all of that. And so she was, in abundance.

Han recognized the change in her too, and was perceptive enough to understand exactly how and why it came about. Though he didn't say as much to Leia, he thanked the Force, or whoever was responsible, for the fortuitous malfunction in his ship. It had spelled no real danger for them — they'd managed to escape the Empire, and he was certainly in no hurry to say goodbye to Leia and go face Jabba — and it had made possible the circumstance and time that was so desperately needed for them, to work on being a 'them', and for Leia especially, to let go, to relax, to be able to just be.

So, yes, she was basking in it. They both were. Though, so far, their passionate indulgences had been almost entirely limited to their mouths, it was still more on every level — more excitement, more pleasure, more euphoric exhilaration — than anything either had known before. Every chance they got, they engaged in enthusiastic bouts of deep kissing, all open mouths and teasing tongues and enough heat that Dodonna would be scandalized to know that's how they were passing the time. Yet, beyond the stray playful kisses to cheeks, noses, eyelids and the like, everything was kept within the relatively safe boundary of lips-on-lips.

Han didn't intend, on the afternoon of their seventh day together, to broaden the intensity and scope of their amorous repertoire. It just….happened all on its own; a transformative experience in itself for Han, who before Leia had never made an unintentional move on a woman in his life.

Chewbacca was on watch in the cockpit, and Threepio had voluntarily closed himself down until his shift — something Han definitely wasn't complaining about — which left Han and Leia to their own devices in the rest of the ship. He was ostensibly doing some overhauling in the main hold, working at the access panels next to the acceleration couch but really just using it as an excuse to be near Leia, who was sitting at the dejarik table, scrolling through something on a datapad that he couldn't see at his angle.

He soon abandoned all pretense of work and moved onto the couch beside her for a better view, only to discover she was actually writing something. "You adding me to your diary, Princess?" Han asked with a rascally grin before making a grab for the datapad.

She held him off, and a playful tussle ensued. One thing quickly led to another after that, but it was Leia's eager reception that impelled Han to take things a little further beyond where they'd been. Pressing her against the back of the couch, he moved his mouth from hers to begin an exploratory course along her jaw that led him over to the shell of her ear, where he laid a string of kisses, before moving on to brush tender but teasing lips — barely there, but enough to feel the tempting warmth of his breath and the softness of his mouth — just beneath her lobe, where jaw and ear met. Finding this triggered an equally, if not more, receptive response from Leia, Han traced his tongue along the outer edge of her ear, and when she was good and primed — with soft sighs and her fingertips pressing into his shoulders — he took her entire earlobe into his mouth, sucking until the combination of heat and suction, delicate sweeps of his teasing tongue paired with provocative nibbles, made her whimper and squirm against him.

Successfully having mined that area, he moved down to her long, proud neck. Oh, the many meetings he'd become lost in fantasies of mapping the pale, slender softness with his mouth! Actually bringing his lips there now, Han found it to be better than he'd ever imagined — skin like warm shimmersilk against his mouth, and her lush curves pressing into him as she ever so softly moaned and wriggled closer.

"Han?" Leia whispered to him while his lips began to outline her collarbone.

He responded distractedly, absorbed with kissing along her skin. "Hmm?"

"Take my hair down."

Han froze for a moment, sure he hadn't heard that right. Easing away to intently meet her eyes, he found her regarding him in tender amusement.

"My hair," she repeated, holding his gaze meaningfully. "Would you like to take it down?"

So many times in the past month, Han had been certain they'd never make it back to where they'd been at Ord Mantell, before Fett came along and ruined everything. To have another chance seemed miraculous, and his heart soared knowing this was no mere request for her comfort, or for him to admire the beauty of all her dark hair in its full glory. This was an invitation. No, more than that; it was a statement. A declaration of her intent — maybe not today or tomorrow, but inevitably — to take him as her lover.

Blood rushed to his groin and he swallowed heavily, made an attempt to answer affirmatively, express appropriate enthusiasm without hinting at his nearly overwhelming urge to clumsily lunge himself on her at her first word of welcome. "Yeah. Yeah, I'd like that a lot." He lifted an eager hand to her hair, but any endeavors at smoothness abruptly failed him there, as he had no idea how to actually go about it. "How…how does this work exactly?"

Laughing softly, Leia showed him where to start, what pins to pull out in which order to get her twin braids tumbling to her shoulders without twisting or painfully catching. Once down, he removed the ties on each braid's end and began carefully working the plaits free, distinctly aware of how privileged he was to do so; alone together, with his fingers buried in the hair of the Last Princess of Alderaan while he touched her and kissed her and loved her in any way she'd let him.

Finally, her hair was fully loose, abundant and flowing in soft waves about her face, shoulders and chest, down to her waist. All Han could do was stare as he took in the stunning curtains of silken tresses that would look and feel like heaven falling over them in bed from her place astride his hips. He tried to rein himself in from that thought, from the accompanying twitch of his cock, taking a deep though shaky breath as he looked at her with eyes that had gone dark emerald. "Valoramosa," he sighed, the word spilling from his mouth unintended.

Han's enthralled regard had a heady effect on Leia. Her expression had grown soft and hazy, but now it sharpened in distinct interest. "That was Olys Corellisi, wasn't it?" Han silently nodded. "You hardly ever speak it."

"Most people don't. It's become kinda private and.…" He grasped for the right word. "…personal, guarded — like your hair. Mostly only fringers use it now. It's somethin' of a smugglers' code, secretive and privileged."

"But you have used it, with me," she pointed out, "more than once."

He gave an acknowledging tilt of his head. "Worship, you got a way of reducing me to my most basic; sort of just comes out. Instinctive-like. The only way to come close to expressin' —" He stopped, shaking his head, seemingly embarrassed to say the rest or of how she'd react to it.

"Expressing what?" she gently pressed.

He still looked as if he might not tell her, but then he finished in a quiet rush, "What you make me feel."

Leia's face flushed attractively, pleased and beguiled by that. "What did you say just now? What did I make you feel?"

"I said, 'valoramosa'," he revealed somewhat self-consciously; he hadn't anticipated saying it aloud, let alone translating it for her. "Means: 'first step'."

"First step," she highlighted, a smile playing at her lips. "And what do you imagine us taking our first step towards, Captain?" she asked, arch and leading.

Han figured she was fishing to get him to say he wanted to take her to bed, but that much was a given; it didn't need to be said. He'd insinuated it enough, fairly blatantly at times, over years' worth of flirting. Plus, he'd promised to go at a pace she was comfortable with — and that included no attempts toward his bunk until she made it perfectly clear that's where she wanted to be.

"What's our valoramosa? To start, this." Reaching out, he gently grasped a handful of her hair, following it down from her ear, past her chest, to it very ends, where his fingers released it to mold instead to the curve of her waist. "And this." He buried his other hand in the strands at her neck, sliding his fingers around to the back of her head. "And then? More of this, lots more of this," he murmured, leaning in to kiss her.

His tongue only coaxed at the seam of her lips for a nanosecond before she opened to him, plunging her tongue inside his mouth and taking the lead, which was just fine with Han — more than fine; anything was fine when she kissed him that way.

Several minutes later when they pulled back for breath, a frenzied hitch in Han's that bordered almost on a pant, he couldn't help the way his eyes hungrily tracked over her, admiring her some more. "God, you're beautiful," he marveled. "You're wearing your hair down from now on." He phrased it like a statement, but with a boyishly imploring tone and a hopeful nod of his head that took any actual hint of command out of it.

"I don't know about that…" Leia demurred.

Han gaped at her. "Why?" he asked in a near-gasp that made her laugh.

"Because, Flyboy, I've just discovered how much I like it when you kiss my neck."

That brought on the crooked smile she adored. "You do, huh?"

"Yes," she declared wholeheartedly. No bantering retort, no flirtatious humor to lighten the admission. Just bald, bold acknowledgement of what felt good to her, of what she wanted from him — and, kriff, if that wasn't a turn-on.

"Well, I can still do that just fine," Han murmured, husky and low, in that tone that tripped along her spine. With a slyly pointed look in his eyes, he moved the length of hair that was resting along her right shoulder to drape over her left, exposing one side of her neck: one ear, one clavicle, the length of her throat. "Got a lot of territory to play with here," he asserted as he bent to her.

His mouth found her neck again, and she immediately angled her head back to give him better access, encouraging the line of hot kisses he left along the underside of her chin. He moved his lips down the column of her throat, his tongue teasing over the dip of its base before trailing his mouth back up the side of her neck. "You liked that," he crowed, his lips curving against her skin in a self-satisfied smirk.

"How do you know?" was her whispered, wispy response, proof all on its own, but still he lifted his head to answer.

"To start, your pulse is racing under my lips. Men may have the more obvious physical tell," he dryly acknowledged, "but women have theirs, too. Pupils dilate, breathing picks up — which is easy to tell since a guy's eyes are usually on her chest already."

"Cad," Leia asserted with a smile.

Han's eyebrow went up at that and his cocky grin appeared. "Cad, huh? I like that one. Gotta make you call me that again."

"I like scoundrel better."

"Oh, I know you do." His fingers played over her lips, dancing down her neck where his mouth had just been. "You got your own particular tells, Princess. I made it a point to catalogue 'em all."

Now it was Leia's eyebrow that lifted in pleasure. "For example?"

Han suspected she thought she'd be calling his bluff, but he had a list locked and loaded. He'd certainly spent enough sleepless nights turning it over in his mind. "Whenever I do or say something that gets you goin', your body freezes all up; your muscles go tense like you're tryin' with all you got to hold it in."

Leia's eyes burned a little brighter, and Han knew he had her in his thrall right now.

"And if it really catches you, you suck your lips into your mouth and kinda purse 'em. First time I ever noticed was when I was wearin' one of those shirts with the open collar that go down to mid-sternum," he pointed in demonstration. "You really like those. And when I talk to you, soft and deep. Don't even matter what I'm sayin', long as I say it all low and suggestive — that's how I first knew you wanted a scoundrel in your life. And you can deny it all you want, but I had it pegged from early on that you love it when I call you 'Sweetheart'."

Han gazed down at her, all heated eyes and smugly pleased expression. Force help her, on him, it was the sexiest look.

"Need any more examples, Highness?" he asked, dropping his voice into that aforementioned tone that drove her wild. "'Cos this topic I could go on about all day."

"Why don't you demonstrate a few of them?" Leia requested, her hands settling on the warm firmness of his chest. "What does it take to make sigh, Han? Show me that now."

"Gladly." He dipped to take her mouth, lingering there in a kiss she enthusiastically returned. "But," he continued even as he moved his attentions back down to her neck, "a sigh ain't enough in my book. Sweetheart," he emphasized. "Let's make it a little louder."

He slowly, thoroughly kissed his way down her neck, swept his mouth along her collarbone and back, to the junction of her neck and shoulder where he gently sucked at her skin. She drew in a pronounced, tremulous breath at that and clutched him closer. Han's body strained against hers in response, and he began using his teeth too, in soft but hungry bites that enflamed Leia. The fingers of her one hand twisted into his shirt while the finger of her other pushed up into his hair, holding him by the nape of his neck and further urging his mouth to stay pressed to her skin.

Her encouragement prompted a voracious hum in the back of his throat, and he drew on her skin harder, driving an unmistakable moan from her — a hedonistic sound she hardly recognized. Han nearly lost himself hearing the needy, keening cry from Leia, something his imagination had played out in countless lewd dreams of her but bore no comparison to the sheer glory of it in reality. His hand swept over her thigh of its own volition, and his sucking bites further increased in avidity. Han had just enough presence of mind left to know what the outcome would be if he continued, so he pulled back enough to whisper her name questioningly against her fair skin.

"Mmm, don't stop," she murmured, a breathy yearning request that elicited a groan from him.

Still, he looked up, seeking her eyes, seeking tacit consent for the love bite he was sure he was about to cause. "Leia, I'm going to—" She opened her eyes, no longer caf in color but molten dark Trammistan chocolate, and Han momentarily lost his train of thought, finally managing to stammer, "It's — it's gonna leave a—"

"Let it," she brazenly urged.

That was all the more affirmation he needed to let go and lose himself in her.

For the next long minutes, Leia was lost too, with Han pressed to her, seeming to surround her, certainly to engulf her senses: the heat of him; the feel of his hard, strong muscles; his scent, masculine, uniquely Han, and utterly arousing; the scrape of his teeth, the pressure of his lips, and the sleek warmth of his tongue all working together to set her body on fire until she was aggressively arching against him, nearly knocking him off the couch in her ardor.

Han caught himself just in time, though his mouth broke free from her neck with a pop of suction. He looked down at her, meaning to make some comment on how she could manhandle him anytime, but it died on his lips when he saw the bruising on her skin.

His eyes widened and he brought his hand up from her hip to carefully skirt over the marks with his fingertips. She had a two blotches down the side of her neck, one over her throat, and another a couple of inches below her collarbone — all of them appearing especially dark and noticeable on her porcelain skin. "This…might've been a mistake," Han muttered. "Didn't mean to be so —" So what? Aggressive? Overzealous? Horny and gung-ho as a fourteen year-old boy with his first girl? He went with, "I didn't mean to do all that."

At the guilt in his voice and his near-scandalized expression, Leia couldn't help but laugh. "What? Is it really so bad?" she grinned, trying to see it for herself, but the angle proved impossible.

Glancing around, Han's eyes caught on the datapad they'd left discarded on the dejarik table. It at least proved something of a reflective surface when the screen was off. Snatching it up, he handed it to her. "Here."

Outthinking him, as she often could, Leia went one better and with two flicks of her finger turned on the datapad's holocam. Peering down at the screen, she saw her admittedly wanton-looking image staring back: mussed hair and skin conspicuously marred by Han's mouth. She had never had a passion mark before, let alone four of them at once; she never would have allowed such a thing. However, she'd been witness to plenty. During their time at University, Winter had once come home with a veritable star map of such bites along her neck.

Han was right about hers, though; they did appear rather extreme. Her aunts would have had apoplexies. Her father probably wouldn't have fared much better. Her mother would have told her to be more prudent next time. Leia, though, didn't feel any of those things. Seeing his literal mark on her, she felt erotic, desired — and somehow, interestingly enough, like it flaunted some kind of possession of Han, though the marks were on her body.

Anticipating a different reaction from her, Han muttered a rueful, "Sorry", preparing for what he reckoned was a deserved scolding.

"Don't be," Leia told him. "I love it."

"You lo—" His brows shot up in surprise. "You do? The woman who used to get all jittery if I so much as slung an arm around her in public?"

"This was more enjoyable." She smirked, giving a little giggle. "And it's not as if there's anyone here to notice."

Han nodded; that made more sense. "But in the future, do it a little lower," he replied knowingly. "Under your shirt, where no one can see."

The suggestion sent a shock of something hot and electric zipping through to Leia's still-throbbing core. "Beneath my shirt," she reiterated slowly. The prospect tantalized, yes, but it also left her feeling undeniably unsettled, an uneasiness that was quickly winning out.

Noting the gallaze-in-the-speeder-lights look in her eyes, Han walked it back. "Don't have to be far under, just enough to be out of sight. I wasn't sayin' — I mean, you know, it can still be above your bra; you can still leave it on. Next time."

"You want to do that the next time," she repeated, processing that. 'Next time' wasn't some nebulous future but imminent, soon.

"Yeah." Han was quick to add, "If — if you want."

"Maybe," she allowed, putting on her best diplomatic face. "I suppose we'll…see what happens."

He nodded and kissed her lips lightly. "'S about time to relieve Chewie," he told her, getting up from the couch. He didn't notice Leia biting her lip apprehensively as he left.