Right now, she was lying naked on her side, vying for the sheet that covered Han somewhat, resting her head on a bent elbow, taking him in.

Right now was all that mattered to Han. Right now could last an eternity. But she wasn't like that.

The weight of one of her breasts sagged towards the mattress, and she was not self-conscious. He was on his back, and she became aware of the different expanse of their own rib cages. She tapped his deep chest with the palm of her free hand, enjoying the hollow sound. He was looking at her, a shadow of a grin as clear as the stubble on his unshaven jaw.

She could read his life story in his face. Little lines radiated from the corners of his eyes. One pointed up, towards his temple, while another tracked downward like a tear's path, and the middle one, the longest of them, stayed the course. He looked so... real. Good, and lived-in. She was a bit jealous of those lines.

"How did you get these?" she asked him.

"Which?" He had no clue what she was asking. Everyone always asked about the crooked nose, or the jagged scar on his chin. He had no idea what she had found, but she was different, and that made him different, and he never knew it until now, but that's what he wanted all his life.

Gently, she put her finger by his eye and he blinked wildly to ward her off. They laughed.

"Everyone's got those," he said. "From squinting at suns. Peering through smoke. Laughing."

"I won't get them."

"Give it time, Princess. It's a sign of getting older."

"No." She sat up, bringing the sheet high to her chest and curled a leg around to balance herself. "It's a life line."

"Sounds nicer than wrinkle." He leered at her because she was getting that serious look of loneliness and loneliness was something you felt when you were by yourself. "You sayin' I'm wrinkled?"

"On Alderaan, the life lines form when one becomes settled."

"That's nice. For poetry. Read through it, though. Just another way to say aging."

"The lines are a house. Haven't you ever noticed?"

"A house?" Han frowned. He'd noticed the lines on people's faces before. His own not so much. He let others tell him what they saw.

But life lines was a good name, he considered; better than what it was where he was from. Laugh lines. If Leia said he had them then he did, but sure as hells it wasn't laughter that carved them into his face.

"Close your eyes," Leia directed, and he obeyed. She used her finger again. "The roof line," she said, and her finger tickled his skin, moving diagonally up from his eye's corner and then down. "And the beam runs down the center from the peak." A final trace. "When an Alderaani makes his home, he gets the lines."

"Sweetheart," Han said. She had it all wrong. He shifted a little, and made another line on his face, one she was sure to have noticed before, the one between his brows. He raised a hand to caress her bare shoulder. She was so wrong he didn't know what to say.

His hand moved to the furrow in his brow. "See what you do to me?"

Her smile was there, still a little too sad. "I give you lines?"

"Not this one," he guarded his brow furrow protectively. "That's my thinking line."

"It looks a little shallow," Leia pretended to peer at it, and used her thumb to smooth it away.

"Did you notice these lines on me before, or just since you like to stare at me in bed?"

Leia gave that some thought. He wasn't exactly what she would call a settled man, but he had his ship and Chewie. Still, she didn't recall making the singular observation. "Maybe in bed."

"Mm-hmm," Han said smugly. Behind her ear was a pale red line. It was left from the needle interrogation, but he wasn't sure she knew it was there.

Damn Alderaan, he thought. That the planet didn't die in her like it had for everyone else. At least with the Empire- which were the real murderers, not her- at least the war was helping her channel that grief energy. She carried Alderaan's memory like it was a punishment.

Not as often though, he thought slyly, and a twitch of desire moved his hand back to her shoulder. It wouldn't embarrass him to be naked in a room with the memory of a planet, but he'd seen how she shut down.

"It's a geometric symbol," Leia said. "A glyph."

"Sure, but it's not a house," he argued late. "Who'd put a sideways house on your face?"

His language often made her look deeper. Who would put a sideways house on a face? "What is it, then?" she asked.

"It's an arrow."

"An arrow?" His hand on her shoulder felt good. She pictured how the whorls of his fingertips would stay on her skin forever, revealed only by a special light or spray. She tilted her head up and closed her eyes. "Who will you shoot, then?" she murmured.

"Look again, Princess." He waited for her eyes to open, the caressing hand declaring more surface area of her body. The lines weren't there; he wasn't smiling. "I'm shot."

"My, my," she clucked. She let go the sheet. He positioned himself as she was originally, on his side, head propped on an elbow, and the other hand pulled the sheet back so he could see the heel of one of her legs pressed into her other thigh. "Was it dreadful?"

"Or it's one of those tow leads," he said, still finding explanations for triangular-shaped glyphs on a human face. "Ever see one?" His face pressed into her lower belly, stopped by a knee, and then he spoke again. "They got an anchor- the eye- and these two cables that shoot out on either side."

"It's not that." Leia knew where this was heading. The sheet was in the way. She roamed her hands over his warm torso as he was doing to her, and she sneaked it lower each time she made a pass below his navel. "That's tech; not-mhm- life."

She raised herself on her knees and pushed him onto his back. Keeping her eyes fixed on his, she slowly brought one leg over until she was straddling him. His face was... something. She was becoming less coherent.

Full of everything. That's what his face was. Serious, but also light. And hungry but contented, too. Smart and innocent. His face was lovely, flushed and with a thin, wavering line across his forehead. She leaned back into that delicious feeling once he was inside her, and she tried to find her heels to rest her hands upon them.

Her knees were pressed against his hips, her feet angling out at a wider angle, his own legs straight and long beyond hers.

"Han," she breathed. "I found it."

"Found-" he grabbed her hips and his eyes actually rolled- "what-"

"It's us. Look." She leaned forward to pull at his shoulders. He blinked, looking like she woke him, and stared as she swept her hands along his thighs, then hers, then to her feet. "We make the arrow."

He brought himself to sitting, his arms wrapped tightly around her lower back, imprisoning himself so that he could only make tiny movements. "It's sideways, too," he breathed in her ear.

She threw her head back, elated and alive and he kissed her neck with his teeth.

"Come home to me, Princess," he urged.

"Yes, and you to me. Oh, come home, Han. Come home."

Another entry for the prompt Home/Going home