This was such un-Leia like behavior, and all the more startling because of it.
"Shit, are you crying? Kriff." Han cursed himself, recoiling all the way off the bed now. "I am so sorry, Leia. You don't have to say it, I'm a fuckin' degenerate, I know."
"No." Leia sat up, lunging for his hand. "No, you're not," she responded emphatically. The look on his face in the moments prior had been so horrified and distressed that it broke her heart, sparking the involuntary tears, but the problem here was her and she knew it. "Han, you didn't do anything wrong. This is my fault."
That surprised him even more than her tears. "What? How?"
"Because you shouldn't have to be afraid to touch me," she responded with heavy regret, "or that any little thing you do might be crossing a line and I'll be upset with you. It's my fault for making you feel that way. It turns out I am the Ice Princess."
"You didn't make me feel that way," he stressed. When she scoffed through watery eyes, clearly not believing him, Han repeated, "Leia, you didn't." He sat back down on the bed with her, cupping her knee, his touch assuaging. "You didn't. Listen to me: you didn't tell me I couldn't touch you, just the opposite; you didn't say I got to walk on eggshells; and I've never once thought you were the Ice Princess. I especially don't now, when you're warm and soft against me, kissing me with enough heat to melt all of Echo Base."
With his free hand, Han wiped away stray tears from beneath her eyes with the pad of his thumb and waited to continue until he could see she was truly focused on what he was saying. "It's nothing you did, Leia. Nothing. It's me. I — I—" he emphasized, doubling down "—don't want to do something you're not comfortable with, something you don't completely want or like. And I guess that makes me more…I don't know…" He shook his head, struggling to articulate it the way he wanted to. "…apprehensive, maybe, about it."
He gave up on trying to be well-spoken the way she was and just described it simply, candid and spontaneous, like he would to Chewie. "Hells, Sweetheart, it's like I'm a teenager again. Nervous-like, thinkin': Is this okay to her? Does she like it, or is it too far and makes her uneasy? Only it's worse than when I was a teenager 'cause I'm not just thinking about gettin' in your pants. I care about you, Leia. I care about your feelings. That's more important to me than whether or not we ever go to bed. And yeah, sometimes that means I'm more hesitant and careful with you, but only because I don't ever want to do anything that upsets you, even by accident. But that's not something you made me think, like, I gotta keep in line or Leia'll have my head. It's me, honey, not you."
Leia regarded him, taken aback. "You're nervous?" She hadn't expected that. Given his worldliness, the gap in experience between them, and his professed carnal capabilities, she'd anticipated that he would be all confidence and sexual swagger with her. In the rare occasions thus far when he seemed uncertain in the physical aspects of their relationship, she'd assumed herself entirely at fault for being too rigid with him; she knew full-well her reputation for being cold.
"Kriff yes, I'm nervous." It blurted out naturally, so strong and obvious was the feeling in him, but hearing it, Han thought it might come off as timid and unappealing to her so he tried to walk it back. "I mean, yeah, a little."
When he saw Leia's reaction was just the opposite, that she actually liked that answer, he exhaled with heavy relief and gave up the pretense. "Okay, more than a little. A whole damn lot," he acknowledged. "Just don't want to fuck this up. I want to get everything right with you."
"You have," she promised, "and it is my fault if I've made you think otherwise. You haven't fucked anything up. I'm not upset with you. Han, it felt good. I was the one inviting you to touch me, remember."
"But not crawl on top of you and rub against you like a tooka in heat, when I knew you don't want us to have sex," he berated himself.
"Oh, was that sex? Did I miss something?" she countered, deadpan.
"Y'know what I mean, Leia," he replied, not taking up her banter.
She returned to seriousness, too, following his tone. "I do know what you mean, but I think you have an incorrect picture of what just happened here. Han, you're not the vile scoundrel pawing the blushing, hesitant maiden. You didn't molest me; I asked you to touch my breasts, I was rolling my hips onto you — that was all me. And as far as crawling on top of me, did you notice where my hands were when you did?" She'd had both eagerly grasping his rearend, egging him on, holding him to her as he ground himself against her. "You've gotten everything right with me, Han. Nothing we've ever done physically has felt anything less than amazing." She ran her hand up his thigh in playful reassurance. "You must know that based on the way I clearly wanted your attentions tonight, or my reactions once I got them."
Han could concede that Leia had something of a point. The way she'd hurried to undress him, her flushed cheeks and the quick rise and fall of her chest as she'd sat straddling his lap, her breathless sighs and aching moans — they had all loudly proclaimed the truth of her words now. However, that didn't justify his taking things further than she'd intended. "Yeah, but it doesn't matter how turned on you are. It's still up to you how far we go."
"Yes, of course, but—"
"And you already set that boundary. I respect that, I do. I want to let you take the lead. I try…" Han looked down, apologetic for his failure. He glimpsed her hand on his leg and moved his atop it, weaving their fingers together. "Sometimes I get carried away by how much I want you…But that's no excuse, I know," he underscored in a tone still dripping with self-reproach.
"You don't need an excuse, Han. I came on to you. Nothing that happened was unexpected."
"I could have walked away. I should have."
She didn't know if he hadn't heard the last thing she'd said or if he simply hadn't processed it yet, but he was continuing to blame himself and Leia shook her head, determined to be more forceful on this point. "No, you shouldn't have. No one behaves that way. Frankly, if you would have turned and walked away after I — let's just call it what it was — presented myself to you, I would have been hurt. I wasn't shocked or appalled by your behavior. I keep saying this is my fault because it is."
Leia swallowed, taking a deep breath before confessing it all. "The truth is, Han…I planned it, all of it. I planned it all out. I planned to be half-naked, I planned to come on to you, I planned for you to react the way you did."
Han heard the words she was saying, but he was mystified as to the explanation behind them. "Why?"
She was leery to admit the full extent of it now that things had gone so far off track, but he deserved to hear the whole truth, even if it was unbecoming to her. "Because I wanted to incite you, make you lose control, push you past constraint until you were desperate to have me. And after you were driven so wild, you might take things further…"
Han was confused to say the least. Leia had just admitted to engineering a situation in which she hoped he would escalate things in the bedroom, but she must know by now that all she had to do was say the word and she could have him. So why the pretense? "Is that what you want? To take things further?"
"I…maybe?" At the time she'd planned it, it seemed like a perfect way to let herself have him without taking on any of the emotional responsibility for that decision, but it had clearly been a horrible idea.
"You don't sound very convinced, Leia. You sound conflicted at best. Definitely doesn't seem like you're sure you want that."
"I felt sure earlier…" That statement came off lame and lacking conviction, Leia knew, but she really had felt certain in her decision earlier, so she tried to explain her line of thinking more clearly to make that come across. "I thought that if I could entice you and make you completely unrestrained then you might try on your own to take me to bed. And then, I could just…let you."
But her plan would never work; she could see that now. Swept away or with a clear head, even if Han did initiate it, she would still be the one who allowed it. The choice was ultimately still hers. She was trying to have it both ways, and that was impossible.
"Sweetheart…" Han tried to keep the tinge of hurt from his voice, tried to keep it from influencing his reaction. Because the last thing they needed was to revert back to acting out of misunderstanding and wounded feelings. But it did sting for her to say that, to know that she had planned that. "I don't want sex to be something you 'let me' do to you. I can't — that's just…no." He shook his head, repelled by the very idea.
The situation she'd described wasn't unfamiliar. It was a holofilm cliché — and for good reason; she had just depicted probably half the human female population's first time. A guy gets excited, makes a pass, the woman doesn't stop him, and so he gets his rocks off; maybe or maybe not to her benefit. The scenario was common, but as far as Han was concerned, it was dizzyingly out of place to consider between them.
With some one-time hookup in the back of a dingy cantina, sure, maybe all he needed was her willing company and lack of objection to be enough for him, but not with Leia. Never with Leia. "It can't be that way with us."
Leia could tell from his tone, from Han's pained eyes, that she'd made a serious error in judgement. And he wasn't wrong to feel the way he clearly did; saying it out loud, it sounded so awful to her own ears.
To her own great shame, she hadn't even considered how it would make Han feel in retrospect — the role that painted him in — if they had ended up having sex that way. Now she was deeply regretful for trying to orchestrate such a situation. "Han, I…I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry, Leia, kest." Now, it was her sincere remorse that was breaking his heart. "That's not what I mean, I don't want you to feel bad. I'm only trying to — You were right, that's what it is." He nodded definitively. "Yeah, you were right that we can't do this right now. If we did, I think you'd regret it. No, I know you'd regret it. You told me as much; you've been saying it for weeks."
"I know. I know that's what I said, I just—" Leia broke off with a sound of frustration. She felt utterly dysfunctional: so drawn to intimacy with him, yet at the same time terrified of it, too. Because connection meant potential for loss — and as a woman who had already once lost everything, she couldn't bear to go through that pain again. But having a reason for it didn't make her feel any less broken; she was broken. This was yet another way the Empire had scarred her, as surely as the marks they'd left on her body.
Her fingers fisted into the shimmersilk near the hem of her lingerie, furious with the entire situation and needing something to take it out on. "Gods, this must seem crazy. I must seem crazy. I haven't lost my mind, I really haven't." She paused, wrestling to get ahold of her tenuously reined emotions.
When she continued, her voice was shaky with the effort of fighting back a renewal of tears. "This is one of our last nights together. Depending on where Home One is hiding, it could be our very last. I just didn't want to be sorry when you're gone. I didn't want to miss my last chance, but I didn't feel like I could let myself, either…But I also didn't want to be stuck wishing we'd been together that way only to have it be too late. So I thought that if I pushed you toward something more aggressive, that could be my roundabout way to let myself experience it. It seemed like a good solution at the time: we both want each other, I have hangups, so I'd make you want me, you would try to get me into bed, and I would let you ravage me."
"But it can't be that way with us," Han reiterated. "I don't want to have you that way. I don't want to just have you. It doesn't matter if you didn't fight me on it — hells, even if you said the word 'yes'. Consent alone isn't enough for me, not with you. I need you as an eager participant, not just letting it happen to you. If you're not fully in it, enjoying it, lost in it as much as I am, than I'm not enjoying it either. But most importantly, Sweetheart, I want more than just the use of your body. I need you — all of you, Leia. I need you with me here." Han touched her temple. "And here." He placed his other palm just above the swell of her breast, over her heart. "With no second thoughts, no second guessing. And when you're not yet in a place for that, in a mindset where you're convinced it's what all of you wants, then it's just as much a no-go for me."
It had seemed like a win-win to her at the time. Now, with a clearer head prevailing, Leia could see that her plan had been tactless. It cast their relationship in a tawdry light, would have made Han feel predatory, and was insulting to the emotional depth of their connection. All in all, she was thoroughly ashamed of herself. "I shouldn't have tried to manipulate you. I am sorry for that; I should be sorry. It wasn't worthy of either of us. All of that is bad enough, and now I feel like I've led you on."
"How can it be leading me on, Leia, when you've told me how it is? That's the opposite of leading on."
"I suppose…" she tentatively allowed, "but then, my actions tonight—"
"It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how blatant you were. You could seduce me all day, every day. You could walk into this room stark naked, and I still wouldn't expect to do anything you're not one hundred percent ready to do. Sweetheart, I promise you that," he vowed. "I don't care how long I've wanted you; I wouldn't do that to you. And for the record, I liked your actions tonight. Liked 'em a whole damn lot. I just need all of you to be onboard with it before we go any further, that's all."
"But…all this does make me wonder…" Worried how what he was about to say might come off, Han moved their joined hands from atop his thigh to resting on the blanket, seeking a more neutral space than on either of their bodies. "And I'm asking this with no pressure, no intentions in mind: are you sure the reason you feel this conflicted about sex is because I'm leaving to pay off my debt? Or could it be about somethin' more?"
He knew he had to be careful with how he worded this or she would shut down on him. Anything emotionally heavy, that touched on her trauma and the fear left behind by all she'd been through, was always walking a dangerous line with Leia. "Could it really be about keeping one last wall up between us?"
It took everything in Leia to resist the compulsion to immediately lock her guard in place at that. Only with great effort did she manage to tamp down that survival instinct and instead try to seriously, objectively weigh any potential merit in what he was asking.
If Han were staying with the fleet, with her, they would be having sex tonight, right now; she truly believed that. So, yes, his departure was the cause of that resolution. His point about keeping a wall up between them was harder to dismiss. The ban on their sexual union was to keep at least some part of herself emotionally at bay. She couldn't deny the truth of that.
"I'm not trying to shut myself off from you completely," Leia maintained, "but that is a way to keep some distance between us, yes. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't." She hadn't been looking to detach herself from him, just not to give any more of herself to him when she knew he would be walking away. "But only because I can't start something sexual with you — there's a valid argument to be made that I shouldn't have started anything with you at all — when you're about to—"
"I know, when I'm about to leave." This time Han was the one to speak a truth with shame. "Sweetheart, I don't know what else to do to keep you safe."
She nodded, accepting. "I know you think that. And maybe if I didn't have such strong feelings for you…"
"I have strong feelings for you right back. Ain't that a good thing, Leia?"
"If we were going to be together, yes. But in the long run we won't be, so those strong feelings are the very thing that are holding me back from doing something so personal, so intimate and…meaningful." That distinction struck a chord with her, hitting the exact root of her issue. "See, that's the problem: what it means. It would mean something to me, Han, and how can I allow that to happen when I know in as little as a day or so you'll be gone?"
"Don't know what to say to that," Han responded somberly. "I won't deny it. I'm not going to change my mind about going; I can't."
"I know you're not, and I'm finished asking you to." Leia suddenly became very aware of the fact that they were having this difficult conversation in their underwear; this was the first moment she felt self-conscious about that. "It wasn't meant as persuasion, only explanation. I was trying to explain that if I were stronger, then maybe I could—"
"Stronger?" he repeated incredulously. "Leia, you're the strongest being I've ever known. Strength has nothing to do with this."
"In a way it does," she asserted. Because it wasn't the fact that he was leaving; it was what that leaving would do to her. "Maybe if I were stronger, I could handle it. Or maybe if sex was blasé for me, it might feel different, not so significant."
"Would it?" Han posed. "'Cause I've been around the block, Leia, but the way I feel about you…" He shook his head, unable to even put it into words. "Trust me, it would be significant for me, too. You don't think it would mean something to me? Of course it would. Experience has nothing to do with that."
"You may be right," she granted. "Maybe it's not about a 'first time', then. Maybe it's because it would also be our last…I do want you. Obviously," she added with chagrin at her recent behavior. "But I feel like if we went there, it would be that much harder when I have to—" She stopped short of saying when I have to let you go, and revised it to, "—when you go."
What she really meant to say is that it would hurt so much more if they were further bonded through lovemaking — it would leave her devastated once he was gone — but she couldn't bring herself to tell him that. It had already taken quite a piece of her to be vulnerable enough to admit all that she had.
"I can understand that." Han didn't necessarily agree, but he could understand why she would feel that way. Part of him thought, perhaps somewhat cynically, Do you really think it's gonna hurt any less simply because we haven't had sex? How is that really going to make it any easier?
However, when he considered the utter bliss it would be to finally, fully, freely lose themselves in each other, Han knew the cynical thought was wrong. Sharing that, knowing that pleasure, finally connecting in that way, on that level, only to then have to give it up? Well, even a jaded smuggler felt certain that finally having sex with feelings involved — literally making love — was something altogether different from the fleeting pleasure of simple penis in vagina. It would feel worse to have to leave her immediately after sharing that. And if he'd never, ever shared any kind of sexual experience with someone before that? He could only imagine that would heighten the emotional power of it.
So maybe Leia was right and they honestly were better off not partaking in what couldn't yet be permanent. Either way, it was certainly her call to make, and he was going to do his best to respect and honor her feelings on the matter.
"But I need you to know it's not just you who'll suffer when I go," Han told her. "There's not a single part of me that isn't wrecked at the thought of leaving you. I may have talked a big game, but for years — years, Sweetheart — I couldn't go. I tried, and I couldn't leave you." He gave a self-deprecating laugh. "And that was when you gave me the cold shoulder half the time. Why would I want to go now?" How could that not leave him broken? He cupped her face in both his hands as he tenderly professed, "It's torture, Leia."
She nodded, relating to that sentiment keenly. Her eyes filled once again, stinging in the battle against crying. "I know. I'm sorry I haven't considered it more from your point of view. I'm sorry I've focused so much on how it's affecting me. I wish I could give you a proper sendoff."
Han shook his head vehemently. "Leia, no, that's not what I—"
"I've just done what I had to do to survive," she continued, progressively falling apart. "I'm doing the best I can to balance this. To be with you in the here and now, enjoying us while I can, but still have something left of myself once you're gone." She was becoming increasingly afraid that the loss of him would already be something gut-wrenchingly impossible to bear. "After everything that's happened in my life, I don't think I'm capable of opening myself to someone that completely only to instantly lose them. I always lose them, Han. Everyone." Silent tears spilled down her cheeks now unchecked. "I—I can't, I…I don't know if I can do it again."
Her voice broke on the word 'again' and it was all Han could take. "Sweetheart. Leia, it's alright." He wrapped his arms around her, drawing her against him in a loving embrace. "I understand, Amant. I'm not asking anything of you, mielo. I promise you."
"I know I'm being dramatic," Leia said into his chest, "and I hate that. It's not who I am."
She lifted her head and he cupped her face again with one hand, keeping his other arm steadily around her. "I don't think you're 'being dramatic'," he replied, his thumb wiping away her tears again, rubbing soothing trails along her cheek and jaw. "You're being human. And that's okay, Sweetheart. Kriff, after everything you've been through, it's more than understandable."
"I don't know what it is," she murmured around a sniff. "Maybe it's this place. I can't put my finger on it. It's beautiful, luxurious, perfect — but there's something that feels…off. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I can't describe it any better. I feel safe here in this room with you, but I still just can't shake this sense of foreboding." She had an ineradicable, persistent feeling that something was deeply, deeply wrong. "It feels like there's something lurking around the corner, about to destroy us."
Han tucked her head back to his chest, holding her safe and secure. "I know your nightmares came back, got worse, the closer we came to here." That knowledge left him with a lingering sense of guilt, watching her suffer all week, knowing he was the one who brought her here — and only because it was his ship that failed them in the first place.
"I'm not blaming you, Han. None of this is your fault. Cloud City's resources are more than adequate to get the Falcon back up and running. This was the best choice for us," she assured him. "I'm not really blaming Bespin, either. I can't find anything wrong specific to this place; like I said, it's perfect. I'm sure I'd feel this way no matter where it was. It's what reaching here represents. We've been living in a bubble, and now that bubble is bursting. We're back to reality. And I don't care for our current reality."
"Leia…" he began cautiously.
She pulled back to look at him. "That wasn't meant to criticize you. I know part of our current reality is my fault. If I had been braver, we could have gotten together sooner. Or if I wasn't the way that I am about sex, we both could be a lot more satisfied. Believe me, I wish I didn't have to make such a big deal of it. I wish it wasn't a big deal to me. We could be enjoying each other right now, instead of feeling frustrated and miserable."
"Hey," Han stopped her, gentle but insistent, "I'm not miserable. What in all the worlds gave you that idea? Not anywhere close. Not frustrated either. 'M happy, Leia. I'm enjoying being with you. Lovin' every minute of it. Ferrying you off Hoth, the broken hyperdrive — best things that ever happened to me. Because I get to be with you. Misery ain't anywhere in it."
"You're certain?" she asked, appearing anything but.
"'Course I am. Now…" He hoisted himself further onto the bed until his back was supported by the headboard and then patted the space in front of him. "…turn around and come here, let me take your hair down," he directed solicitously. "That'll help you to relax, make you more comfortable."
During their four and a half weeks trapped on the Falcon, Han hadn't always taken her hair down at night, though it had become a habit for them as the time and situation permitted. Sometimes Leia had done it herself if he was up late fixing a problem or keeping watch and she went to bed before him. Occasionally, she'd even left it down the entire day. But when he was the one to do it, it never failed to be a treasured time between them, alternately sexy and lulling but always a moment of sensual serenity for them both.
Leia smiled now at the thought and did as he bid, relaxing back against his body as he set to work on her hair.
"You know, I think maybe it's good that sex is a big deal to you," Han expressed while he, one-by-one, removed the pins that were holding up her hair. He had gotten quite good at it, was familiar with all her most common styles now and knew exactly where to find them all. "Probably should've been a bigger deal than I made of it my first time. And my last. Hells, and every time between."
With the final pin removed, the weight of her hair caused it to uncoil on its own, her twin braids falling down onto her shoulders. He straightened each one against her back, then reached for the tie that secured the left braid, unwinding it first.
"Before you, I never thought of sex as anything more than physical gratification," Han conveyed as he started the process of unraveling the now-wavy strands of her hair with his fingers. "Just another release. A damn good one, to be sure, but not that different from how people use whiskey or a ciggaro. I didn't consider it that personal of a thing. Till you said it, I never thought of it that way, but you're right; even without any feelings involved, sex literally is sharing your body with someone. And if that someone isn't a being you'd trust on your ship — or even with your real name — then maybe that's not someone you should be sharing your body with either. Maybe it should be at least that."
"I think so," Leia fervidly agreed. "And I believe I still would, regardless of my upbringing. I don't think Alderaan or being a princess has anything to do with that; it's just who I am. I assign meaning to things, I always think about the full implications, I see all the emotional connections — my father used to say that was why I was so good at reading people."
Nestled between Han's legs, she watched over her shoulder for a moment as he unwound her right hair tie, and Leia considered the intimacy of this very scene. At least one of her aunts would have found this behavior more scandalous than actual sex.
"But then, we far exceed that intimacy criteria," she said dryly. "We're long past knowing each other's names, all the way to knowing the scars on each other's bodies. We trust each other, we mean something to each other. We've both saved one another's lives on numerous occasions, and tended to one another's wounds, and held each other while we slept. I'm not deluded; I'm aware most everyone would think this shouldn't be such a hang-up for me at this stage of knowing each other."
Han shook his head. "Doesn't matter what 'everyone' thinks. Doesn't matter what anyone thinks. Only you, Leia. It just matters what you think, how you feel."
She sighed but eased into his touch as he started to undo her last braid. "I don't know. I've tried to consider this judiciously and from a worldly viewpoint, but I genuinely don't think I'm being naïve about it. Knowing you're going, having the dread of that hanging over our heads, how could that not color and dim the experience? And yes, I'll admit I've imagined us together, but I truly don't believe I'm trying to recreate some ideal fantasy. Still, that doesn't mean I don't want it to be nice. I know it would be nice physically regardless, but I want it to be nice psychologically and emotionally, too."
"Well yeah, it should be," Han firmly seconded that. "Sex with anyone should always be at least that. But between us? It should be everything you want it to be. Nothing less, Leia. I want you to have all of what you imagined, all of what you need, every condition met. Not a thing less, or it's not good enough for you."
Now that her hair was completely loose and free, he started massaging her scalp, hoping to further relax her. "You think I'd want to go to bed with you, as great as that would be, if it's gonna mess with your head and leave you hurt afterwards? Sex should always make you feel good, Sweetheart, all of you, all of the time. End of story. And until it does, we wait."
"But what if that's impractical?" Leia debated in counterpoint, as was her practice with every issue she tackled. Taking a question apart and examining it from all sides was something her father had taught her, and it was second nature to her now. "Maybe real life is too messy for that kind of guarantee. Is it naïve to need things to be 'just right' between us before we take it to that level? Is that especially naïve during a galaxy-wide war? Sometimes I think I'm being unreasonable and over-romanticizing it, trying too hard to reach for the perfect combination of time, place, and circumstance when those things may not ever line up in the chaos that we live in."
She looked over her shoulder at him again as she struggled to explain the murky, clashing thoughts and feelings she was mired in. "Sometimes I think that 'now' is better than 'never', but then the next moment I'm right back to thinking that 'never' is less painful in the long run if we can't last past the 'now'. And as much as I want to go with 'living in the moment', I just can't seem to make that feel okay."
"Then don't," Han said simply. His hands now free, he began calming strokes over the soft skin of her bare leg where she had one crossed over the other. "Leia, there's no one philosophy about sex. And there's no 'normal' either. Living in the moment doesn't work for everyone, even when it's not about sex. You're always thinking of the future — in every mission, every strategy session, every mundane supply run. It's been that way since the Death Star: your only concern was getting those plans to Yavin, when anyone else would've let the grief swallow them whole, too lost in pain to even function. Thinking of the future is why you're leading a rebellion to free the galaxy. Hells, it's why the Rebellion's gotten as far as it has. If it was left to people like Janson, in the first week on Hoth, we'd've blown through all our supplies and every last bit of Rebel capital just keepin' warm and stocked with booze. He's the poster child for living in the moment, and all that gets him is in Command's crosshairs half the time. Looking ahead is who you are, Sweetheart, and that's not a bad thing. It only makes sense you'd think that way about sex, too, and there's nothin' wrong with that either. Everyone feels different; whatever you feel is valid. This is the way you feel, and that's all that matters."
"Han." Leia shifted on the bed to face him squarely. "You may be a bit of a scoundrel, in just the way I like," she told him, breaking out into a sultry smile, "but you really are a nice man. A very good man."
"Because I'm not tryin' to talk you into bed?" he deflected. "Because I didn't let you just lie there while I ravage you?" he borrowed her earlier words. "Because I respect your choices and your feelings? Leia, that's the bare minimum. Because I want you to equally enjoy our sex life? I'll give you, that's more than some men, but it doesn't make me good. Most of what I've done in life proves that wrong. Or else I wouldn't be needing to pay off a Hutt in the first place."
"I disagree. I think you're every bit a good man," Leia upheld. "Possibly now more than you once were, yes, but I believe you've always been good — and not even that far beneath the surface — from the very moment you attempted a rescue on the Death Star. A very poorly thought-out rescue," she added playfully, as was their ongoing 'argument' about their meeting, "but a noble one, nonetheless."
"Nah, that was all Luke's idea," he stressed.
"But charging a hall full of stormtroopers, willing to risk death to save two people you'd only just met, that was all you. So was coming back above Yavin, at your own peril and with nothing at all compelling you to do so other than that it was the right thing. Face it, Han: you're a good man, through and through. And you can't dismiss that because it's how I feel, and you just said however I feel is valid." Her eyebrow raised triumphantly, quite pleased with herself, knowing she had him.
Han grinned in delight, forever charmed and impressed by her. "I got no hope of ever winning an argument with you, do I?"
Leia laughed, looping her arms around his neck. "Never."
Leaning in, she kissed him once. Then again, more languidly the second time, teasing her tongue over the seams of his lips until he opened his mouth to her, deepening the kiss.
Han's hands settled on her hips for just a moment before he gently pulled back, ending the kiss. "Sweetheart, I have to deal with Jabba. That hasn't changed; it's not going to change. But I need you to know, you got one thing wrong earlier. You don't always lose everyone. Because if I have anything to say about it, you're damn sure not losing me," he avowed.
That sounded pretty; it was a romantic thing to say. But its appeal was tempered for Leia when they both knew it was a promise he couldn't keep. Now that they'd reached Bespin, they would be parting ways in a few days at most, and they both knew it.
"No? What would you call it then?" she asked, her arms gradually sliding from around him.
Han felt the immediate change in her mood and half regretted bringing it up, though it was important to him it be said.
Leia recognized the contrition on his face at the heartache he was putting her through by leaving, and she read that guilt as a sign that she was right. While his remorse was clear, it still couldn't and didn't change the facts.
And since their evening had already gone so spectacularly off-course, she figured they might as well get it all out there. "I'm sorry, Han, but I need to hear it from you. What exactly are your plans once we reach the Rebel fleet?"