Hi All! This was supposed to be a slightly longer piece expanding my Drabble No 1 and some nice naughty fluff of Han having a beard and Leia really liking it and ...Well then it took on this whole other life and is turning into a rambling multi chapter angst filled smutty exploration of my head canon! Let's level set some parameters: time frames - between ANH and ESB, roughly 2.5 years after the Battle of Yavin, before Hoth and Ord Mantell. Location-previously undisclosed Rebel outpost. My head canon it has been greatly influenced by 25 years of reading EU profic, AU fic and my own crazy theories! One big assumption that I am making here is that Han and Leia's relationship was well established before the events in the film. Leia was too f'ing pissed at him for leaving, Han was way too anxious to get away from her and the Alliance after the bounty hunter shows up, sexual tension was off the charts, and that was by no stretch of the imagination a first kiss.

Rating - M for sexual situations, language, references to self harm.

Welcome to the GretchenAmy-verse. Please leave comments. I love feedback!

It wasn't spying she told herself, hiding behind a giant fern, watching his practiced strokes thru the warm clean water. Where had Han learned to swim? The Academy?

"Damn, he is getting out", she muttered emerging from the foliage as he broke from the gentle surf.

Picking up shirt, Bloodstripes, and holster, stopping cold when he saw her.

"Princess?"

Feeling her internal temperature soar as her eyes flicked from shaggy wet mane to crinkled hazel eyes, wide smile, the unusual days of stubble on his cheeks, chest gleaming with moisture, dusted with hair, paps like copper Sulussant coins, abdominal muscles flat and lean, sculpted by years on the run, navel exposed, black undershorts clinging to his thighs and waist, dragged down by the water dripping from them, the ridges running along his hips, downwards, shaped like a 'V' ... what had that older girl at University called that, the one Winter called 'brazen and fast', so vulgar that she blushed to recall it ...

"Sweetheart, you miss me?"

"When did you get back? Have you checked in? You, you have a beard?" Her eyes flying back up to his face knowing she had been caught looking like she 'wanted to jump his bones', another naughty witticism learned in the Ladies' common room.

"Whoa!" Han Solo held his hands up in mock surrender while moving closer.

"You're all wet ... ", she murmurs in flustered obviousness, back walking away from him and all his bare skin.

"You're gonna be all wet too ..." his one hand gesturing to her clad in an Alliance issue bathing suit. Nothing as revealing as the swimwear he had seen on other female beings on his travels across the Galaxy, but somethin' about the tan and green camo tank against her pale skin and how it made her slim waist, short shapely legs, long bare neck, and full perfect bre...

Giving his head a little shake "Been back an hour. Checkin' in tomorrow, official debriefing with Dodonna at 0800. I was feelin' kinda scruffy and wanted to take a dip before ..."

Running his hand down his left cheek and along his jaw, "You like the beard?"

They were inches apart now, compulsively she reached up to mimic his own hand. The short trim beard was bristled, yet soft under her fingers. Darker then his sandy brown locks, closer to the wiry fuzz on his chest. It framed his lips, making them seem even fuller, sexier, her thumb sweeping over them, feeling him suck it in gently ...

Was it a lifetime ago that he rescued her? Not only from the Death Star, but from despair. This? Them? Whatever it is, and they are, began with mutual derision mixed with attraction, but after Han completed his third or fourth supply run for her Alliance cell, a respectful detente turned into genuine friendship. But after the night on his ship when she wasn't sure she wanted to see the next morning. Han found her sobbing in a heap beneath the holochess table. Without a word he got down with her and spread his legs around her, listening to her damn the day she was born until he gently gripped her hands in his so she would stop punching his shoulder. She realized that her fear, pain, anger, and sadness no longer threatened to choke the life from her body as easily as Vader could have strangled her with the Force. Han exasperated her and excited her. And he made her feel safe? Alive? Just Leia? And they all could be dead or worse in the blink of an eye. This realization made her acknowledge she wanted him and welcomed his want in return.

She felt her hand being pulled away from his face as he bent forward barely grazing his lips to hers, moving slowly down her neck, nuzzling, brushing his furry cheek across her shoulder until sighing she closed her eyes and felt those full lips on hers. Yes, she liked his beard.

When the kiss ended, he stepped away rubbing the back of his neck and with a wink, "Hey go for your swim. I'll wait for you. Walk back to the Falcon together, grab some dinner and ..."

"Sounds good, Flyboy", turning her back to him, toeing off her sturdy boots on the pebbled shore and walking waist deep into the warm effervescent water before diving under, gliding to the opposite shore and back.

Settling on a boulder to pull on his pants and boots, holster and shirt slung over his shoulder, Han Solo watched Princess Leia lap across and back a handful of times.

Damn, how did they get here? How did They get here? Over two years since he, Chewie and Luke busted her out of the Death Star and he started doing runs for the Alliance. Quickly he knew he had misjudged her. Leia wasn't a zealot, but a pragmatist, she was no pampered socialite shilling for the Rebellion, she wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty and could handle a blaster better then some of Rogues. Being honest, his baser instincts had wanted her in his bunk, within a parsec of having her body crushed against his in the celebratory chaos after the Kid destroyed the space station, where he would have shown her there was definitely more to him than money. Somehow despite telling Luke he left his chivalry for a ten-carat chrysopaz and good brandy on Commenor, his more noble attributes won out and he was satisfied for a time with the sweet chaste kiss the night before her birthday. But when she started to take refuge from her nightmares in his spare bunk after the night in traumatic shock she cursed Tarkin and Vader for torturing her and blowing up her home, High Command for making her a living icon of the Rebellion, her Parents for encouraging her political ambitions, then even himself, Luke, Kenobi, and Chewie for saving her. Han held her and let her beat her fist against his chest with every epithet she hurled out to the Universe. That is when he knew his admiration and hunger for her fused with something else; the need to protect her, to banish the demons from her mind, to help her destroy the Empire, and to give her such pleasure that she forgot everything else if even for a few seconds.