The club pounded with a relentless electronic thumping that matched Leia's restless, antsy heartbeat. The plan called for their contact, Lanara, to approach and ask to cut in and dance with Leia, with the assumption she and the data swap would be harder to recognize on the crowded dance floor.
She and Han were entwined around each other on the dance floor, with his arm slung low on her back and the other grasping her hip. Their rhythmic movements to the pulsating beat of the music made her think of love-making - a thought she had a hard time abandoning once it surfaced. As they moved, Leia was at war with herself to keep her mind on the mission and not on Han in those pants that showed off his ass and a tunic that hugged his throat just under his apple. The flashing lights highlighted the two day beard he'd grown for this operation and made him look both dangerous and gorgeous.
Hand threaded through Han's hair, Leia leaned in to quietly ask if he'd seen their contact just as Han shifted his stance to the new rhythm of the changing song. Her face grazed against the stubble on his jawline. Kriff, when was she going to learn to stop whispering things to Han Solo?
The grazing - that sandpaper scrape - inflamed her. She paused her dancing momentarily as she got caught up imagining the thrill of scraping her teeth over his jaw, or his stubbled chin tickling her inner thigh.
Leia dug her nails into her palms with her other hand as she took up beat and resumed dancing. With great difficulty, she got a grip on her thoughts and pulled them back to the mission. She briefly closed her eyes to calm down while they continued to dance and his hands burned a hole through her ridiculously skimpy bodysuit.
This Han Solo problem of hers was getting far too out of hand. The flirting in the hotel suite, the way his eyes lingered just slightly too long on her breasts when she'd caught him looking. And how could a man usually covered in engine grease smell so divine all the time? It was unsustainable and was rendering coherence and a clear mind anywhere near Han nearly impossible tonight! She'd already be caught sniffing him and barely escaped that hotel room without tackling him.
For the past few months, their friendship had sparked something decidedly outside of the friend zone she desperately wanted to keep Han in. Leia was driven to distraction by an unrelenting desire to climb him like a wroshyr tree, even when he pissed her off. Especially when he pissed her off. She had briefly considered initiating a "friends with benefits" arrangement with him but had talked herself out of it.
There were two truths, previously ignored, with this Han mess that she finally coaxed out of the secret place in her heart and acknowledged. The first were the deepening feelings she had been ignoring and was fairly confident cut both ways. Second, despite the intensity of her attraction to Han, she wasn't ready to be intimate with anyone yet. She was still vulnerable to panic attacks, and had too much trauma left to unpack. At least that is what she kept reminding herself as they were pressed against each other on the dance floor.
In the year after Alderaan's destruction, Leia had had a tenuous relationship with wanting to live. It usually was just this side of not wanting to die. After her world had narrowed to the pinpoint of a laser, and then in a horrified breath, expanded ever outward into cosmic dust, she put herself on autopilot as a rebel leader and coasted. Of course she worked her ass off all the time and raged privately in quiet moments, but she wasn't living.
Until one day, nearly a year ago, her lip had accidentally come into contact with Han's scruffy face during an intended whisper in a boring meeting. The non-event acted as a wholly unexpected catalyst of sorts for her to recognize that she was alive. She could choose to live, to feel, to make this fight, that would likely cost her her life at some point, stand for more than martyrdom. So she did, in fits and starts.
She had put in the work to move forward and function like a normal adult in war would be expected to function. No one but Han, Luke, Carlist, Chewie, and the base therapist knew, but she'd developed a training and mindfulness routine, had attended counseling sessions (at first kicking and screaming) for the past year that had actually be very helpful in working through all the dark shit she had to grapple with.
She still had bad days, sometimes weeks. She cried in private, especially when she wanted to tell her parents about her crazy adventures with Han, Chewie, and Luke but couldn't. Although less frequently, Leia was still plagued by nightmares that would set her progress back by weeks. But, she was living. She had swallowed a lot of her independent, stubborn pride, and leaned on her friends, her little found family, when she needed their support. Leia was proud of herself but also irritated that all that work and healing resulted in the inconvenient opening of her heart and the awakening of her long-dormant body to, of all people, a scruffy smuggler. A hot, kind, scruffy smuggler.
When she opened her eyes again, no more calm than before, she noticed a woman she recognized from her Senate days that she knew to be ISB, paying attention to them from across the dance floor.
Leia caught Han's eye through her upturned lashes, and gave him a dazzling smile. She urgently whispered "Kiss me, now ," as she let her lip graze his jaw. Fuck, here we go again. Think about something gross. The Emperor naked and dancing in a bouncing way! Nice, I'm going to remember that one. She took one more breath and focused on ascertaining whether she had been recognized by a very dangerous adversary.
Han shivered at the contact and invitation. He glanced longingly at her lips but made no immediate move. Placing soft kisses up his throat while she pulled him to block her from the ISB agent, she whispered with what she hoped was a seductive look, "We've been noticed. ISB agent that knew me when I was a senator."
Startled into action, Han surrounded her with his considerably larger frame and pulled her close until they were pressed flush against each other again. She forgot to breathe as his other hand entwined in her hair. She swallowed back a moan when he gently pulled on her hair to tilt her face towards his.
"Are we blown?" He whispered.
She nodded her head no slightly. Although she had drawn the interest of the ISB agent, Leia wasn't overly concerned. This particular club drew a young crowd of well-to-do professionals and she knew going into this mission that Imperials might come to the club to unwind after a stressful day of suppressing freedom and making the galaxy a worse place. She was confident if they monitored the agent, they could give it five more minutes before sneaking away in the crowd.
After just a moment of hesitation, when their eyes briefly met as Han seemed to seek permission, she raised on her toes and touched her lips to his. Han tightened his grip in her hair and eagerly kissed her back while they kept rhythm to the slower song. Momentarily forgetting space and time, and even the mortal danger they might be in, Leia deepened the kiss, moaning into Han's mouth when his tongue traced her lower lip, before resuming the kiss. Gasping, Han yanked back to shake his head clear and covertly glanced around.
"They still watching?" He asked softly. He cupped her face with his enormous hands to hide it from view as he placed kisses along her jawline toward her ear.
"Mmm" she answered, tilting her head to place open-mouthed kisses over the curve of his throat. Her hands ran up his sides and rested on his chest as she chanced a glance over his shoulder.
"She's still looking this way. I don't think she knows where she recognizes me from yet. Still don't see our contact." It wasn't strictly necessary for her to run her tongue along his scar, but she could justify it as mission-essential if he protested, which she very much doubted he would, given his current physical state.
"You see our contact yet?" Han asked as he covertly tried to adjust himself.
Before she could answer, the ISB agent turned to look at them and Leia yanked Han's neck down for another kiss. Han hoisted her up on her toes and crushed his mouth to hers again. She buried her fingers in Han's long hair as she once again lost time feeling their lips move together hungrily. Her Han Solo problem had just gotten a lot bigger. What was supposed to be a kiss to save their covert mission had quickly turned into a breathless, desperate dance-floor makeout session that was so unnecessary and far from mission protocol, she had no idea how she'd explain it away later. Leia felt a tap on her shoulder a few moments later and Han, without breaking the kiss, pulled out his blaster and pointed it at the offending person's head.
"Go away," he growled before resuming the kiss with his blaster still pointed at their face.
"Name's Lanara. Can I cut in, my guy?"
Leia tore her face away from Han's to see their contact - a beautiful tanned human woman with flowing, curly hair in a skimpy black dress that clung to her curves. Leia held out her hand, elbowing Han gently out of the way so they could make the exchange.
As they danced, Leia felt Lanara slide the data chip into the concealed hip pocket of her jumpsuit, while Leia slid the Alliance's data chip into Lanara's concealed shoulder pocket as she moved Leia into the pre-planned spin, to make spotting the exchange more difficult for onlookers. Leia smiled at Han halfway through the spin, raising her eyebrow at him so he'd cut back in and Lenara could disappear. Before the spin was complete, Lenara had a blaster hole through the forehead and Leia was desperately yanking her hand away to escape while her contact crashed onto the floor in a heap.
The blaster fire had brought the music and dancing to a sudden halt as club-goers panicked and ran screaming. Seizing the opportunity to escape in the chaos, Leia grabbed Han's hand and pulled him towards the service entrance at a run. As they palmed open the service door, Leia threw a glance over her shoulder and saw the ISB agent.
"Organa?" the agent shouted as she aimed her blaster at Leia. The shot sailed high as Han shoved her through the door. They sprinted for the fire escape in the back of the building. Leia swung her feet on either side of the escape railing and slid down like a fighter of fire.
"Holy shit!" Han gasped as he followed suit after her. While Leia hopped off neatly at ground level, Han landed hard on his ass.
"How the hell does a princess learn how to do that?" He asked as he hoisted himself back on his feet. They took off running towards a darker alley.
"Princesses school." She smirked at him before her face became serious. "Do you think we can get back to our hotel?"
Han stopped and scratched his head uncomfortably.
"ISB is gonna have the data chip when they search the contact and that agent might not have placed your face at first, but she knew you by the time we left. We're blown, Princess."
"Kriff," Leia muttered. Just once, she wished a mission would go to plan.
"It's done. We'll find some cheap place that ain't gonna ask questions and hole up there until we figure out exfil."
They continued to jog through alleyways until they found a tunnel down to the underground, where they had a better chance of escaping unnoticed.
After what felt like hours of meandering the dark underground, they found a seedy hotel where clients usually paid by the hour. The hotel receptionist didn't even bother glancing up at them as Han passed a handful of credits through a security window and pulled out the key card.
It was going to be a long night figuring out how they were going to depart Coruscant undetected when the Empire knew they were there.
Author Note: Please consider reading my fics on A03 at DiplomaticPrincess. FFN has become unstable, making updates, responding to comments, and using challenging.