It's not their hotel. It's not even a motor inn. It's a motel charges by the damn hour. But it's across from the bar, and there's a limit to how far they can make it, aching like this. So they jaywalk the busy street, fingers linked, dodging cars. Toward the sign buzzing an endless cursive loop of brand new! renovated rooms!

Inside the lobby, the clerk has lazy, bloodshot eyes. Visibly doesn't mind if Han's scrawl is an alias—it's not, but Han knows how his name looks. Leia swivels on her boot-heels to the thrum of a song playing somewhere in the thin-walled rooms above. With Han distracted fumbling for payment, and distracted from that by swirl of purple minidress, Leia snatches the key, etched 406, and goes for the elevator. Han's hand freezes on the wallet in his back pocket. He points at her, a silent order—Princess, don't even think it—and Leia waves, gives a taunting little shimmy as the doors close. He can read her hips just as if she'd said it to him: Don't call me Princess.

Han hurls money at the clerk, way too much money, what the fuck is money. He takes the stairs three at a time. Tricky girl. Music rising in volume as he reaches the fourth floor, stalking down the hall, heartrate out of control. Drawn by room numbers, by the letters G—L—O— bellowedfrom powerful speakers; the occupant of 408 is playing a record so loud it shakes the walls.

At 406, the door is locked.

Does he knock? Tricky, tricky. Palm dragging his prickled cheek, Han wonders. Is it wrong to shoulder it in? Is it wrong, in 1967? A busted door is what Han considers, with the part of his mind that looks at Leia and says, Mine. The part expressed in this carnal drive of a song. It's what Han Solo thinks of, leaning against a door, breathing hard. In a corridor in Chicago, in the summer of love.

"Sweetheart," he growls through cheap pressboard. It's warning or it's plea, damned if Han can tell which, he can barely manage speech. No answer, and he half-tries it again—Swee—before remembers thatthis, tonight, won't serve as password. Han makes a fist, knocks on the door. He hears the click of the retracting lock, the steps across the floor, away. Leia doesn't twist the knob, she leaves that job to him. And when he swings the door open, Han near-implodes on the sight.

His wife of yes, eleven years is leaning back, palms flat against the open windowsill behind her. Her brassiere—no it's not called that anymore, it's a bra, and women don't always wear them anymore, either—is new. Her skimpy bottoms, too. No wires, no seams, just filmy, see-through triangles of blue sewn to satin strings. Not garments so much as adornment, doing nothing to inhibit Leia's lavishness.

With a grunt of disbelief, Han falls back against the door, slamming it shut under his weight. His fingers find and flip the lock, but part of him wants to do what he did the day he met her, when they were truly strangers: jam the door with some cheap knife. The room is plain but clean, faintly scented with lemon and fresh paint. They're alone here. Intruding phone, no. Bed: yes, a narrow double. Walls papered with a pattern of waving green grass, in its middle Leia, like some carnal flower.

And Han isn't sure what to do.

It's been years, years—over a decade since he did this, with someone else. Fucked someone, that is, or let them fuck him; raw, anonymous. A single man, then, a man who knew women found him handsome. And he hadn't missed it, the chance encounters, not since Leia, not since falling in love, never. That is the truth. But what's also true is that Han is dizzy to discover just how much he does like it, the thought of this when it is Leia.

He knows she doesn't want to be asked. But Han wants this—her—hell, whoever and whatever Leia is right now so much that he feels like he's getting away with something, and he has to check. He doesn't want to be dishonest, doesn't want Leia to think he wants anyone else.

His voice is hoarse, barely audible over the raucous music—she come to my room, Van Morrison howls. "We doing this?"

Leia nods, holding his eyes. And Han sees in the warmth there, that red-brown, the spark of play, humor, trust, that she knows how he feels about her. Knows Leia doesn't want him to be anyone else, either. The pink shade blows slightly into the room, stirring her ponytail around her shoulders. Leia turns on her bare toes, beautiful sway of back, beautiful ass through blue transparent mesh. Leans on the sill, looks out past the fire escape over the crowded street, curious, alive. Traffic, horns, voices, song. Neon and sunset reflected on her fair skin. The slightest movement of her hips, flex of her feet; she's not dancing so much as she swells with the sound through the wall, her movements so subtle, a well and fall. Just enough to pull Han's greedy gaze to her curves, controlled enough to prove it is hers, Leia's body. Hers to spend as she likes.

Hers to toss into a night with some pool-shark stranger.

Well, alright.

Han crosses the plank floor to her, kicking off his boots as he goes. Hand going to the neck of his t-shirt, peeling it over his head, tossing it away. Takes her by the handle of her hip, pulls her back to his bare chest. Leia shudders as he sweeps her ponytail aside, ducks to close his mouth on her throat. She tilts her head to give him access. Sighs into the pinch of blood, the draw from her heart to his tilted lips.

His voice is muffled against her. "Everyone'll know what you get up to when you're away."

"I'll wear a turtleneck," Leia fires back. Breathless, yes, but quick. Her fingers dig into the windowsill, unable to resist pushing her hips back into him. Han widens his stance, slides his palm up, up her sleek torso to cup a breast through silk net.

"In August?" His lips pop from her neck.

"Whatever I—" Leia tries. He rolls thumb and finger at her nipple. She shudders. "...I like."

"What you like." Han exhales against her temple. "Let's talk about that."

And his right hand travels below Leia's navel, over the lowest sheer triangle. His fingers almost arrogantly bends, her head thudding back into the hollow of his shoulder, eyes hazy. Teasing press, slow circles and that wins Han the fierce grip of Leia's fingers behind her, into his thigh. If Han's pacing, his location, are perfect and familiar this is new, this blue sheath between them, the heated drag and slip of silk against her.

Han withdraws his touch from her breast, moves it to himself. Lets her feel his right hand, there, tight between her spine and his belt buckle. Leia swallows at the clink of metal. Han pairs this sound with the slip of two fingers beneath wispy cloth. Shares her shudder at the hot plunge into her, deep and sure. His rough thumb outside and wickedly curved.

He has never promised not to know her like this.

"Oh." Leia breathes in fast and out slow, into the uncontrollable roll of her hips at his urging hand. "Scoundrel."

"I am. I really...am." Han sighs in agreeable conquest, stroking his nose along her cheekbone, hand looping into his belt. Other hand bidding her move, and move, and move. "Mmmm. You—"

Leia turns in his arms fast enough to shock, unseating him from his cockiness, unsheathing his fingers. Kissing Han between his collarbones Leia bats his hand from his belt. Pulls the clasp free, abrupt so the leather gives a muted slap back on itself. Unbuttoning his fly, she drags denim and jersey below his hips as she lowers to perch on the edge of the sill.

And Leia smiles up at Han as she frees him, biting red into her beautiful lips. Raises her brows as though impressed—nice touch, puffs Han up some though he knows it's ridiculous, both because the years of intimate closeness and because—well, it's stupid, isn't it, to connect any pride to size? It's not like he designed his cock himself. Yet here he is, half-grinning back. Hitch of bare shoulder down at her, a modesty so false it makes her chuckle.

But then she closes her fingers on his girth, soft-tight and merciless, and that slaps Han's face free of smugness, all right. He takes an involuntary stagger-step. She strokes him slow, thorough, and throughout she holds his eyes, avid, enthralled. Leia's got her own thumb and her own knowledge and she wields it on him shamelessly as he had on her. He finds her shoulder, rubbing the satiny strap there, trying to anchor himself to something other, something that won't—

Fuck.

Han hears his own low, choked moan when Leia takes him in her mouth. He reels, almost collapses really, one hand slapping for purchase on the windowframe, the other curving reverently against Leia's glossy head. Usually, when she does this, Han weaves her loose hair between his fingers—not to pull, just so it doesn't obscure her. It was Leia, after all, who made this something he loved, even craved sometimes. Her who reclaimed this, who made taking him like this closeness instead of unendurable vulnerability before strangers. But with her hair tied back he can see Leia, know her, even if he's not supposed to know her according to the parameters of this encounter. The dissonance is dizzying but it's delicious enough to tremble Han's thighs, her face allowing the shuddering thrill. Han strokes her hair with a shaking hand. He's helpless not to look at Leia now, even if the sight might kill him, the sight and ah Jesus her lips, her tongue, her hands.

He's rising too fast. He knows this, like any pilot, and he needs to last. Desperately Han drags his eyes away from her, the gorgeous pain of her, up to the windowshade facing him. It swells in on the breeze, sucks back with a click; between, flutters of shell-pink evening, of city just beginning to glitter in the dusk. Under the velvet twist of Leia's tongue, her wrist, Han feels faint, music, traffic below becoming bloodrush in his ears. The pink of his eyelids, the pink of the shade. In the air, fall nips at his bare belly, chills the gold circlet suspended on its chain between his nipples. Han shivers, and Leia gives a tiny responsive hum that he feels all through himself. Suddenly Han's hauling Leia up, into his arms.

She flattens her palms against his chest, boosts herself as he lifts. Her legs wrap around his waist, her lips find his, his find hers, a clash to the clattering rhythm of the song. They don't stop their big starved-blind kiss even when they thump into a wall, grassy paper vibrating with the volume. Some part of Han is grateful they didn't end up on the fire-escape. They end up tumbled to the narrow bed tucked into the corner, the bed indeed so new—renovated rooms was the truth—it doesn't give under their combined weight. Even bounces them back, a bit, breaking off their kiss, making Leia squeak and Han huff, and then they both come back, laughing into one another's mouths. The bedspread is new, too, crisp and cheap, crackling under their backs. Through the wall the name comes bawled in hunger, spelled out like otherwise they won't remember: Gloria, Gloria. Han pushes up Leia's bra to fit his mouth to her breast and Leia unfurls, seeming longer than she is, everywhere her pearly skin except for those dreamy scraps of blue. Her eyes hidden beneath the sling of her arm and that won't do.

So Han draws back, to the side, props himself on an elbow. Watches his other hand slip over her hipbone again, under her silk again, sets her to writhing, to high little breaths. Finally Leia knots her hands in the cover, pushes herself upwards, muscles in her thighs twitching almost to the erratic beat of the windowshade. Meets his eyes, her desire blazing there but its specificity opaque. Han knows Leia doesn't often want him to drive her all the way, like this, not when it's prelude to something else. It's not what Leia wants, every time, to climb over again when Han's inside—sometimes it's too much, others not enough. She likes his fingers, his mouth most as an equalizer, catching her up.

But he's not supposed to know that, so. Han cocks a brow, little smirk: curls his fingers inside her, wicked question mark.

And falling back, shaking her head hard against the pillow Leia makes a greedy, needing sound. Even without knowing her he'd know this as now, and on another kiss they tangle in her delicate set of underwear, in his boxer-briefs, his trousers. All come off in a comical wriggle. Van Morrison stretches an I to four exultant syllables as Leia pulls Han back to her. Breathless Han kisses Leia's palm, his ring on her finger and her other hand is on him, guiding and he's driving inside all at once. She arches hard, both moaning at the completion as their hips meet.

Then, a crucial stillness.

"How d'you want me?" Is what Han grits at last against Leia's wrist, eyes squeezed shut, holding onto whatever composure he has left.

"Don't ask," Leia gasps back.

The music is so loud it should dictate pace. But it's not to its raw jangle that Han moves, when he is able. Han moves slow. In long, lazy, got-all-day strokes. If before he flourished his knowledge of what Leia wanted, brash as a royal flush, now he pretends he doesn't know. Slow, slow. Agonizingly controlled, distracting himself from his own building pressure by concentrating on the links of his dog-tag chain, pooling on the pillow only to be retracted. Slow. Until Leia's growling, bringing her hips up in an impatient little buck. Her fingertips pressing at his back, tugging his hair, her white teeth at his collarbone.

"You're gonna have to tell me," Han sing-songs, voice low, eyes tight crescents of amusement. His smile warm and real on her pretty scowl. "Otherwise..."

"I want, I," Leia manages, and then Han tosses a little force into his hips. When she nods in frantic encouragement, fast but wordless, he slows again. Almost withdraws, pauses, looking at her with teasing expectancy. Leia begins to laugh, breathless, frustrated. "You are such a, a—"

Han huffs his own laugh. "C'mon, speak up,"

She looks up at him, opens her mouth. And the song cuts off in half and the mood changes, just like that. Suddenly Leia's eyes are searching his and there's such emotion there that Han taken aback.

"I want. You to...to,"

Leia swallows, eyes moving from his to the waving fronds that line the walls. Green, but not his green at all. How to say it? At first it was exciting, this distance between them. At first she liked it, his languid passes, his refusal to understand her. At first, when he filled her with such presumption, thrill covered her with a sheet of sparks. But eventually—as eventually as it can be, the space probably seconds, but those seconds are set to the slow rock of his hips between her legs—this control, this game, has proven to...to prevent her. To obstruct Leia from reaching some next level. And if Han knows everything else he doesn't know this, he's playing the role she herself set up, charming, snake-hipped, cool-hearted rogue. Not hers, at least not beyond the intense but fleeting connection at their crux.

And her voice shakes in the fragile quiet so that Han draws back in dawning concern.

"Talk," Han murmurs, finding and not relinquishing her eyes. "Sweetheart. No kidding now. Talk to me."

"I," she says,

"Hey-hey. We can stop." He says, very quiet, serious as flying. Begins to pull back. "We can sleep—"

"No. I'm not tired," Leia says, wrapping her legs around his waist. "Don't go, don't. I just—"

Their neighbor flips the record and drops the needle on another song, it's still the same voice but it's gentler, now, remember and overcome and behind the stadium, and gravely Han kisses Leia's lids, her cheeks, her mouth.

"Han," she breathes. "Just you. Please."

And he smiles, so small and soft that it shouldn't light up his whole face like it does. Leia pulls him down by his dangling wedding ring to kiss him. He kisses her back, open, ardent. She feels Han's hand cup the back of her head, fingers spread around her ponytail, and he gives a noise, tiny, happy, that she feels in her own throat. A sound that spikes when she tightens her thighs around him, pushing up.

Leia slides her hands down his back to the shallow dimples, there, above his firm ass. Pulls, a beseeching feeling in her grasp. Draws him back into her so tight and full Han makes that other sound she loves, that deep hurt secret sound he wouldn't make outside private space with Leia even if he severed a limb. And now he's moving with urgency, with power. Not at all to the meter of this sweeter song but harder.

Han sucks in a shuddering breath above her. His eyes roving Leia's face, stunned, as he moves, as she moves to meet him. Leia is his wife, the mother of his beloved child. The burning, eternal love of Han's life. Yet he's never solved her, never will, not caught up to her either but by god he can make her, make her, make her—

"Oh. Yes. Just like this," Leia whispers, fierce. Fingers tightening to whiteness. "Oh just,"

He nods, nods his promise. All he can say is her name, deep and fervent. From his chest, his gut, desperate and repeated. He fits his fingers to the silvery glints on her hips, from carrying their daughter. She frowns sometimes over these near-invisible stripes, but Han loves them. They only appear in certain light, at certain times, and when they glimmer he feels he's discovered a new star, revealing itself to only him. For him to know, to name.

Gripping her tightly, there, Han lifts. Angles so he meets her at the place she needs, and her cry comes broken and animal and transported. Her lush lashes quiver as she seizes his own hips and he groans soft and pleased, always overjoyed when she, so articulate tumbles into gibberish: "God, Han, oh God I'm please I'm please don't st—"

Making love in the green grass, Van Morrison answers back,as Leia clamps her lower lip in her teeth, silenced by the force of her peak. Shaking with it, head to feet, breaking at last into those sweet little curses Han traps in his mouth, nodding his desperate crooning approval into his kiss. And Han is not the kind of man to wonder if it's what people say anymore this casual summer: making love. Or what they do. As Han does he just knows it in his body, feels it—his love for Leia, as she leaves marks of her own, in his back. His name in her voice edged in beauty and wildness, the heat and slipping, gripping pulse of her, it's too much, much more than enough to—

"Han," Leia sighs, delirious, her hands stroking his skin, up into his hair, along his jaw. Mapping him, claiming. "I love you I love you,"

His orgasm hits him so it rips away his breath before he can say it back, so hard Han can only shape it, the name for all he's ever wanted, needed. The name of his own brown-eyed girl. But it's there, against her, again and again on his trembling lips as he submits to his last anguished, overwhelming thrusts.

Leia.

XXXXXXXXX

"How much time do we have?" Leia whispers into his chest, after the obliterated aftermath has passed.

Trailing his fingers up her spine Han yawns, his body deliciously heavy. Leia's languid and boneless too, draped atop him in the narrow bed, under the crisp starched sheets. "'Bout six days."

Her shocked snuffle of laughter tickles his throat. "Yeah," he admits, proud, sheepish. "Gave the guy prob'ly forty bucks."

Now Leia giggles helplessly, her delectable form shaking wonderfully against Han's. With a sudden lump in his throat he holds her close with his broad hand splayed at her back, kisses the top of her head. Doesn't ever take it for granted, this warmth, this closeness. This trust with her, Leia, his girl. The bright chords of that happy song still going on from next door and damned if Han knows what their neighbor gets out of blasting the same tune sixteen times in a row but there are worse things than hearts a'thumpin. So.

He blinks at the wallpaper. Suddenly the green grass looks like jungle.

"Listen," Han mutters, twining his fingers in Leia's hair, mostly loosened now from its ponytail. "Weren't full honest today, with you."

She pushes slowly up from his chest. Her dishevelled hair, huge eyes, her sprinkle of freckles make Leia look much younger than her age—yet her expression is wise, serious. But her gaze ticks just the tiniest bit toward the window where she'd damned near wrecked him and Han reads there her concern, some line crossed.

"No, no, not—" Han shakes his head. "Not that. That was...was..." He gives the darkened window a spiffy thumbs-up, then winces. Leia smiles, and Han blows out a still-shaky breath. "It was that pilot. Aaron, remember? Back home, Sweetheart, I started to tell you—"

"The one who left the plane in...Detroit..." and Leia narrows her eyes into her own thoughts, that way she gets, that Han never tires of watching. He just waits; it never takes Leia Organa long. She looks at her husband, steady, affected but unshocked. "You helped him. Canada."

"Help's a strong word."

"I know my words, Han," Leia says tartly, but she's winding her fingers in his dog-tags, his chest-hair, with tenderness.

Han smiles almost shyly up at her. "Was it me, left a map of Ontario in the cockpit, inked up? Who can say, right?"

"I can," Leia whispers, nodding very seriously.

"And maybe, ah, someone got a coupla grand in them funny colored dollars. Stuck it, like, in Aaron's locker. Just in case his number came up in that fuckin'..." Han's face twists in horror; Leia knows he'd insist on calling it disgust. "Death bingo." He tugs her close, almost hides his face in her neck. "Leia. He's just a kid."

"Oh, Han. Oh no."

"Oh yeah." Mirthlessly Han laughs. "Da Nang's calling. So go, boy, g—"

Brusquely Han clears his throat, draws back, barreling past his own sentiment. Waving a finger in Leia's peripheral vision, as though lecturing someone long gone. "Thought we had an understanding, though! Me and him. Don't fuck off to the Great North in the middle of a shipment. Shit! Didn't think I had to say it—"

"Poor boy," Leia says. "He must have panicked."

"Left me with a buncha work, is what he did." Han grouses. Then, a glint in his eye, he tugs at the sheet, kissing the tops of Leia's bare breasts. Right, then left. "Hell. Turned out alright, though." He offers her his full smile, blinding, warm-white and hers, only. "Picked up this unbelievable girl—"

She squawks her indignation. "Who got picked up?"

Han laughs, impossibly pleased with himself, then yelps when she pinches his ass under the sheet.

"D'you care?" He asks, then. Leia looks at him."That I'm the only one you been with?" Han strokes her hair from her face. "Not 'cos of tonight, mind. This was great, so great and—" He touches her cheek. "I'm askin' for you, not me."

She thinks, hard. "It's not other people I wonder about," Leia starts. "Sexually, I mean, so much as I—I wonder about me. Myself. About what I like, I want." She smiles at him in the secret chamber of her falling hair, her nose wrinkling impishly. "Finding out. I could use a handyman—"

Han heaves an awed breath. "Count me the fuck in for that."

There is a long kiss.

"Hey," Han says, and his mouth curves smug on the coming jest. "Listen, I know we just met but...pretty good date, right? So whaddaya say, stranger? Blow this joint, set up house?"

She hits him with a pillow.

"C'mon. Gimme a shot." Gently Han toys with her dangling opal earring, Mother's Day gift, his eyes soft, adoring. "We'd make a helluva baby."

Another kiss, another, another. "Knew you wouldn't be mad," Han mumbles, against her. Almost brags it to himself, but so boyish and proud and grateful she can't scold him.

"Han! My god! How could I be mad if—" Leia sighs. "Aaron's 1-A?"

"A guy like me? He'd be real careful not to see, or hear, anything official." Han studies Leia, eyes hooded, thumbs caressing the backs of her thighs. "But—I figure maybe someone'll call me, month or two, for a reference. From, say, Kitchener, like. And I'll say, Aaron Milhaniuk, right. Solid kid. Great pilot. Too young to die." He shrugs, his smile poignant. "And someday I'll die, and no one'll ever need know that I—"

"I'll know." Leia nods, as she closes in, and kisses him, her husband. His face, his scruff, his scar, green, green eyes. She kisses him into permanence. "Han Solo. I'll know you anywhere."