A/N: I hope the wait was worth it!

An additional note about the rating: this chapter pushes the boundaries of a T rating. If you have any issues with non-graphic adult sexuality, you probably shouldn't continue reading ... you have been warned.

Bad Romance

The light in the 'fresher had timed out. Leia looked down at the hand wrapped around her own. Han's tanned skin, usually such a contrast to hers, looked ghostly pale in the partial darkness. Some things that couldn't be admitted in the light of day could be admitted in the dark.

"I – "

"Shhh, don't. Lemme talk," he adjusted his fingers to entwine with hers, "I missed you, Sweetheart. I missed you a lot. But, I dunno … I don't know if I can do this again."

"Do what? Us?"

"Yeah."

Leia let out the breath she'd been holding, "I don't either."

"Still feels easy, though."

She nodded slowly, "But we can't pretend our past isn't what it is."

"Yeah."

He seemed to want to say more, but Leia let it go. Using the Force to read taciturn men was a skill she'd honed to near perfection, but she couldn't use it on Han. On the one hand, she respected him too much, despite everything; on the other, she wasn't sure she really wanted to know what he was thinking.

"So we agree?"

He didn't answer, which Leia took at face value to mean he did agree. She rolled onto her side to face him. It was a profoundly more intimate position to be in, her body curled toward his, her thighs nearly touching his backside. In response to her movement, he in turn unlaced his fingers from hers and shifted his hand to rest on her hip. Warmth radiated from his open palm, even through the coverlet and sheet.

"Han?"

"You said you meant what you promised on Endor."

The statement was a question. Her thoughts went back to the must of the forest and sparks of the bonfires and the tang of the berry wine. She didn't know what the oath of a twenty-three-year-old – made in the euphoria of the Alliance victory over the Empire, when all the infinite possibilities of life were suddenly spread out before her for the first time – meant now.

I love you, and I promise that no matter what happens, I will go through life by your side, and we'll both go down together.

It had felt so right to say at the time. Now it rang melodramatic and silly in her head.

"When I made that promise, I didn't plan on any of this. Honestly, Han, I didn't think there would be a New Republic, and I assumed we'd figure it all out together," she took a deep breath, snuffing the idealistic spark that crackled in her chest in order to force out the pragmatic thoughts she knew she had to communicate, "But we have separate lives now, and I don't know if it would be possible to knit our lives back together. Or, even if we could, if it would be a good idea."

"You're right."

His hand was now making small motions past the curve of her hip and down to her upper thigh.

Struggling to ignore his touch, she raised her eyebrows, "You're admitting I'm right?"

He smiled widely and used his free hand to shake a finger at her.

"Sometimes you are. Not too often, but sometimes."

Wriggling underneath the hand that rested on her body, she couldn't resist returning a smile, "Why didn't we talk like this when it mattered?"

"'Cause we were young and stupid."

"You," she poked a finger into this ribs for emphasis, touching his bare skin for the first time since he'd reappeared in her life, "Might have been stupid."

"Hey!" He grabbed her wrist and held her hand away from his torso. She struggled a bit for show, and he shifted his hips so he faced her more directly.

Leia lowered her voice, "You shouldn't be in my bed, Han."

"I'm not in your bed, Sweetheart," he leaned down until his face was less than half a meter from hers, "I'm on your bed."

"Han …" she stated warningly.

Now rubbing his thumb along the bones of her inner wrist rather than gripping it, he raised his eyebrows teasingly and drawled out his next word, "What?"

"Gods, stop that."

"Stop what?"

"You shouldn't be on my bed," she repeated.

"What're you afraid of?"

Leia had to admit it sparked a small thrill inside of her that he remembered their old script.

"Afraid?"

He lifted his chin a fraction of a centim as if he was confirming his assessment of her emotional and physical state. The nerves in her fingers and toes lit up, and she shivered.

"You're trembling," he stated, leaning closer.

She shook her head once.

"I'm not trembling," she made another minor show of trying to pull her wrist free of his grip, "But you are a scoundrel."

"You like me because I'm a scoundrel. I'd bet on good odds there aren't enough scoundrels in your life."

"There are plenty."

His voice dropped even lower and grew huskier, "Should I take that as a challenge, Princess?"

Leia looked right into his eyes, past the film of his corneas, and into the light in their depths. In his crackling hazel irises she saw something she couldn't quite put a finger on. It wasn't love – she knew what that looked like in his eyes. It was something else, something she couldn't remember seeing before. Maybe it was fear, vulnerability, or nostalgia. She pulled her left hand up – heavily, as if she was on a high gravity planet – and rested her palm on the side of his face, her thin fingers grazing a sideburn and the outer edge of an ear. The time for teasing was over.

"Han," her voice was rough, and she swallowed, "Han, we can't erase that, what happened. And seven years don't just disappear. It's been—"

He cut her off, "They already have disappeared."

"What?"

"Doesn't matter, 'cause we're not doomed to our mistakes," he quirked his lips, "Believe me."

"You said you weren't sure you wanted this."

With a quick widening of his grin, he turned his head to bring his lips into contact with the thin skin where her palm met her wrist and murmured, "I didn't say that."

The intimate move startled and excited her, increasing the amperage of the current pulsing through her body. Somewhere, Leia realized, a line had already been crossed. When had it been? When she agreed to accompany him to the Wookiee gathering? When he first touched her in her office? When they kissed for the holorecorders? When he had opened up about Chewie? When she'd invited him into her apartment? When she didn't send him home a few hours ago?

Like it or not, Han Solo is back in your life.

She filled her lungs in a long breath, and tried to put a stop to the panicked spiral of her thoughts. Her senses focused in on the three points of contact Han's body had with hers.

"You meant you didn't want anything more than this."

He closed his eyes against her statement, and slid his lips down the inside of her forearm, following the blue line of veins as they disappeared under her skin.

She pressed on, "We need to be clear with one another."

"We ain't in a treaty negotiation, Minister."

Leia fisted her hand in his hair, fleetingly glad he still wore it long enough to grab easily, and gently tugged backward, "That's exactly what this is. And I'm not going to make a mistake."

"Why would this be a mistake?"

His attention was obviously not fully on her attempts at communication; the words against her skin were slow and distant.

"Look at me," she adopted the voice she used before the Senate and particularly difficult diplomats as her anger flared at his willful ignorance; she was surprised that he snapped his head up to look at her, and relaxed her grip on his hair, "You know us. I know us. This won't end well if we don't set some boundaries. You can fuck me - I certainly wouldn't complain if you did - and walk right back out of my life, but I'd like to at least know before you do."

"I like it when you talk dirty, Sweetheart."

Frustrated but electrified despite her efforts to focus on productive conversation, she let her hand slip down to his collarbone and locked her elbow to keep his torso at a good half-meter distance, "I'm serious."

"I'm serious, too," the left side of his mouth curled up in a grin, "But I'm sure as the Nine Hells not givin' up my negotiating advantage."

Leia furrowed her brow and opened her mouth to form a retort, but he moved quickly. Even perched awkwardly on the edge of her mattress, he was able to throw his weight against the arm that held him back. She was strong, but her elbow buckled under the unexpected mass of man bearing down on the outstretched limb.

It was like knowing she was falling and not being able to do anything about it before she hit the ground. His mouth was on hers and her head was pushed back into the soft feather pillow on which is rested before she could react. This was not the chaste, close-mouthed kiss they'd shared earlier in public.

Learning to kiss him, to be physically intimate with him, had been like learning to pilot a speeder. She'd spent the long limp to Cloud City getting her license under his instruction. She'd gone from timidly pulling back on the throttle with great caution to pushing her vehicle to the limits of its acceleration within seconds of firing the engine up. When she climbed in a speeder on those rare instances she drove herself now, she piloted it like a racer on a backwater planet. She didn't need to think about it; it was habit. When she opened her mouth immediately under the pressure of Han's lips, it was with the same kind of reckless familiarity.

"Leia," he breathed onto her teeth as she rolled fully onto her back.

"Shut up," she rasped before initiating another kiss and pressing her chest up to meet his. His hand that had stayed on her hip slid off her body to the mattress. With Han's weight safely supported, he levered his lower body up onto the bed. Leia didn't let him pull his mouth away from hers. She wanted him, all their baggage be damned. She wanted him badly.

She wriggled underneath him and felt his arousal against her thigh. The coverlet still provided a barrier between them, and she was too warm, much too warm, to be buried beneath it. She worked the fabric down to her waist, and using her feet was able to free it all from where it was tucked under the end of the mattress, but Han had it otherwise pinned around her. He, however, was too preoccupied with the skin underneath her earlobe to register her thrashing as anything other than delighted squirming.

"Han," she whispered sharply into his ear.

He made an unintelligible noise.

"Can you move?" she pushed against him, holding in her abdominal muscles to raise up slightly.

His face, still only ten centims from hers, tightened in confusion.

Leia shook her head, "No, no. You didn't do anything wrong. But I want the coverlet off, and you're on it."

"Shit," he scrambled off the side of the bed, "Sorry."

"It's," she grunted as her foot lost its purchase on the linens and they ended up wrapped around her leg, "Not a problem."

It took a few seconds too many, but when she finally kicked herself free of the coverlet and sheet and let them fall to the floor, she dropped onto her back again and caught onto his laughing,

"For Sith's sake, what in the hells are you wearin'?"

She blew a laugh of her nose, "The least sexy thing I could find."

He leaned his thighs against the edge of the mattress, and reached out to pull on the elastic waist of her baggy, worn-out leggings as he spoke, eyes focused on what he was busy uncovering, "Sweetheart, you made oversized battle fatigues sexy."

"I didn't want to tempt you."

"How were you going to tempt me," he worked the pants down over her knees and she kicked them off on top of the discarded bed covers, "If you had planned to stay in here?"

"It was just the idea of it, really."

He ran a long finger under the scalloped edge of her exposed underwear, "Then you should have changed these, too."

Leia glanced down at his exploring hand, and then back up at his face, "Oops?"

"'Oops'?" he dragged his fingertips across the fabric between her legs and pressed harder at her hissing intake of air, "You're gonna have to do better than 'oops,' Princess."

There was no turning back now; they were in far too deep. She had a sudden urge to make him jealous.

"Most men skip this part, you know," she cooed.

"Yeah, well, I'm not most men."

"Maybe," she rolled her hips, and spread her legs in response to his steadily increasing pressure, "Maybe you should put your money where you mouth is, then, flyboy."

Still manually teasing her through her damp briefs, Han gently lifted the leg stretched out toward him, knelt down next the bed, and coaxed her hips closer to the edge of the mattress.

He placed her left knee over his right shoulder and placed a tender kiss on the inside of her thigh, "If that's what you want, my money's gonna be a lot of places before we're done here."

Leia climbed out of the bed, not bothering to cover her nakedness. She considered the man sprawled facedown across the wrinkled bottom sheet, eyeing her from one of her pillows. She pursed her lips at his serious look.

"I don't love you," she tickled under the toes of his foot that hung off the end of the bed on her way to the 'fresher.

"I know."

"Good. I'll be out soon."

He grunted in response, and she pulled in a deep breath and expelled it in a dramatic sigh. The bedroom smelled lightly of sweat and sex and the detergent Threepio used to launder her bedding. It smelled lived in, lived in by the life she should have had. The mingled scents followed Leia into the 'fresher.

She keyed the door closed to keep it out of her nostrils while she washed the hint of that life off of her body. The Minister of State had a meeting in a hour.