corellian-smuggler:

23–In relief.
(10 days pre-Ord Mantell)

Xxx

The second he’d thrown the Falcon into hyperspace, Han leapt from the captain’s chair and staggered from the cockpit.

“Leia!” he shouted, sprinting through the ship.

He found her emerging from the gun turret, white-faced and sweaty, and without thought for his own injuries he seized her by the biceps and all but lifted her the rest of the way up the ladder.

“You alright?” he demanded, voice frantic and harsh. Barking at her, but Leia’s face was shockingly pale, her clothes drenched in blood. Of their own accord his hands ran over her, seeking to push the sodden jacket off her shoulders and find the source of it.

They’d never had a mission go so wrong so quickly. They’d landed on Xyfar as planned, posing, as they almost always did, as a married couple. Their stolen landing codes were transmitted and accepted without trouble. Their forged identification cards weren’t spared a second glance while processing through the interplanetary immigration checkpoint at the spaceport. They’d taken a public shuttle across the arid city and checked into their hotel without so much as a glimpse of an Imp or a sign of trouble. The worst part was, Han grimaced, that they hadn’t even thought twice about it. Under other circumstances Han would have been wary—would have been hyperaware of the ease of the mission and would have been waiting for something to go wrong. Would’ve had a bad feeling. And so, he suspected, would Leia.

But no. For the first time, Han realized, he’d allowed his feelings for Leia to jeopardize her safety. In his gut he knew that he’d gotten caught up in their undercover identities—had been more affected than ever before by posing as her husband, by holding hands in the spaceport. Her head leaning on his shoulder as they sat pressed close on the shuttle. Her arm loose and casual about his waist as they’d checked into the hotel where they were supposed to meet their contact. The spacious suite with the single bed that they both knew they would be sharing—his desperate wish that maybe finally they’d inch forward—share a kiss on the balcony or exchange a tender glance that night in that bed. And in the night, when they’d thrown the windows open and she’d sat cross-legged across from him on the plush mattress, sipping the champagne they’d stolen from the suite’s kitchenette and playing sabacc into the early hours of the morning… how they’d both murmured about needing to go to sleep, get enough rest for the mission the following day, and yet they’d kept dealing more hands and sipping more champagne, and leaning closer and closer to one another as the open window delivered warm breezes that ruffled Leia’s soft braids and carried the floral scent of her to him.

Finally the sabacc cards had lain forgotten near the foot of the bed, and somehow he and Leia had found themselves lying face to face in its center. In his hands Han had held one of hers, and in silence he’d caressed her fingers and palm and wrist.

“Are you trying to read my future?” Leia had finally whispered, lips turning up at the corners and eyes sparkling with the champagne and the coy mischief he adored, and Han was utterly entranced. Oh, how he’d wanted to lean closer, kiss those smirking lips, let his enraptured investigation of her tender wrists and lovely fingertips follow the path of her beautiful arm to shoulder and collarbone and neck. How he’d longed to touch her cheek, let his fingers brush along the fine wisps of hair at her temple.

But the evening had taken on a shimmering, insubstantial air—fragile and surreal and dangerous, how it seemed they were both holding their breath and waiting for something to break the spell. Han had been terrified that it would be him, that he’d read her all wrong and spook her, plunge them back into the tense avoidance and biting remarks of months past.

He’d run his thumb carefully over one of the lines of her palm, from one side of her hand to the other.

“‘Course I am,” he’d grinned at her. “Little Corellian gypsy kid like me running around on the streets? Think I never learned how to read a palm, sweetheart?”

He’d been kidding her, of course, seeking her bright smile, her exasperated laugh, maybe even that little smirk and the tolerant shake of her head, the one that said his kidding was awful but endeared to her—he loved that one.

Instead though her eyes had been as huge as moons, staring back at him in the darkness—behind her over the balcony the glittering of stars over the desert city.

“What do you see?” she’d asked, playfulness seemingly forgotten.

He’d seen her big brown eyes and her piercing expression and her want and her courage and her strength, he’d seen her laughing in the hangar with Chewie and racing down the landing strip—braids streaming behind her—with Luke. Saw her pinched face and exhaustion at 0200 in the command center, scanning Imperial transmissions for code. He saw her sliding, graceful as an athlete and recklessly wrathful as a god, beneath the closing blast door of an Imperial cruiser, blaster fire colliding with the metal on the other side. He saw her, limned in moonlight, before him in the big hotel bed, compact body covered only by the tiniest athletic shorts and thin white standard issue tank top in the dry heat, white skin luminous and dark hair coiled atop her head. He saw her angled towards him, expectant, breathing softly, waiting.

“In your future?”

She’d nodded.

Han had never wanted her so badly. Never. His desire robbed him of words.

“What do you want me to see?” he’d finally asked, transfixed. His fingers now had been trailing her arm from the crease of her elbow to the bend of her wrist. “What do you want, princess?”

Leia had just looked at him for a long time, not speaking, not answering. Han had been sure he’d crossed the invisible line that they’d both seemed to fear they’d find, and he’d waited for her to pull away from his touch.

Instead she’d turned her hand and caught his as he’d skimmed her palm again. She’d laced their fingers together, and squeezed tight, eyes so intent on him. Han’s heart had skipped a beat.

Not until the door had been kicked in an hour later and they’d been scrambling for their blasters had he realized that they hadn’t checked their suite for bugs, that they’d left themselves so vulnerable, that he’d called her “princess” out loud during a mission. But how could he have used her codename then when she’d been lying there letting him gaze into her soul?

They’d had to jump off the balcony to evade the stormtroopers. Flee barefoot through the busy dawn market below. In desperation they’d scrambled into one of the many tents, hiding behind one of the colorful hanging carpets that served to divide the it into separate rooms—frantically donning clothing Han had snatched off the back tables. The awful singed gash on her thigh where she’d been grazed by a blaster bolt—“there’s no time to bind it—we have to go Han we have to go!”

Sprinting through dirty back alleys, past orphans and beggars. Leia’s face screwed up with pain, loose pants she’d pulled on four sizes too big and soaking through with blood despite the frantic binding he’d insisted upon tying. Somewhere in the distance an explosion. Huddled, unmoving, behind a stack of barrels as stormtroopers ran past not three feet from where they’d crouched.

There was no talk of their contact. It was painfully obvious to both of them that there had been no contact, or that he’d betrayed them, or that he was dead already if he hadn’t.

Hours later they’d reached the Falcon and found that the Imps had found it, too. Han had no idea how they’d survived that firefight. No idea, either, how a dozen stormtroopers had been suddenly flung off their feet—there hadn’t been the time to think on it as they’d made the mad dash up the ramp. Without speaking Han had run for the cockpit and Leia had scrambled for the guns—the TIEs found them the second they hit open air, and Han had jumped them to lightspeed before they’d even left the atmosphere.

“It’s not mine—it’s not mine.”

Leia kept saying this but Han couldn’t understand her. He’d peeled off the soaked, enormous jacket in search of a gruesome wound beneath, and only when he’d found Leia’s thin white standard issue undershirt near transparent with sweat but mostly untouched by blood did he realize she was trying to say that the blood on the coat had belonged not to her but to one of the troopers he’d shot off of her.

“You’re alright?? Are you alright??” still saying it, over and over.

“Yes,” gasping, “yes.”

At some point the words penetrated the adrenaline and the panic—for her, he knew, driven to panic over her—and he blinked and saw her, alert, catching her breath, telling him that she wasn’t in mortal danger.

Han realized he was still holding her and abruptly let go.

“Fuck,” he breathed, slumping against the bulkhead. “Fuck.”

Leia nodded and slumped next to him in exhaustion. Both of them were panting.

“Are you alright?” Leia asked, and it was the first time since they’d jumped off the balcony that she sounded shaken.

Han nodded, hands hovering nervously over her thigh, seeing that blood and knowing it was hers, saying “fuck” again and preparing to lift her in his arms and carry her to the medbunk.

“I can walk,” she winced as she rose to her feet, like she could read his mind, and Han scrambled to stand too when she swayed and caught herself with a bloodied hand on the bulkhead.

Han wrapped an arm around her and helped support her weight. She weighed nothing. Did she know she weighed nothing? They staggered to the medbunk, Han nauseous and struck by the jarring contrast between Leia injured and leaning on him just to walk, and her arm around him when they’d checked into their hotel, sparking and incendiary as they’d posed as husband and wife.

Leia lifted her hips for him and allowed him to pull the enormous marketplace pants off of her, left her sitting once more before him in the little shorts and thin white shirt, covered now in sweat and blood and dust, skin white and clammy as opposed to the night’s starlit glow, crown of braids frazzled and loose and matted. The memory of their closeness from the night before was torture, and Han could see her closing off, resurrecting her walls as he sanitized his hands and began digging for bacta and gauze.

As he worked Leia stared down at her leg and at their filthy feet, her face intense and introspective. He could almost hear her thoughts: you got close to him and look what happened, you were distracted, you weren’t careful, you blew the mission. As his imaginings of her thought process continued he felt his own anger and self-loathing escalate, that scathing voice in his brain seething and cruel. ‘You let your guard down, you’re a fool for thinking the likes of you could have her, you put her in danger, you were off your game, her blood on your hands, on your skin, on your clothes—your fault, your fault, all your fault.’

As he gently tied off the ends of the bandages his stomach was roiling with anger and dismay and dread, knowing now that Leia would never let anything happen again, that the inevitable disillusionment had arrived in the form of this catastrophe. He knew that when he looked at her she’d be impassive, distant, regretful—that she’d identify him as the problem and immediately seek to solve it. Logical. Calculated. Her stern analysis for the sake of the rebellion. No more dinners at the holochess table, no more sharing their kaffe. No more teasing—the warm teasing that they’d started, not bickering but affectionate, knowing, special. No more missions—she’d get some clown to escort her now, he knew it, but how could he object to some fool being charged with her life when he had so badly failed, when he hadn’t checked the suite for bugs, when he had let her title slip, when she’d been shot in her strong little thigh because of his negligence, his stupid hope, his dangerous want??

Sickening. He felt sick.

“Han?”

Han was startled to realize that he’d tied off the bandage but hadn’t moved, crouched still on one knee before her, both hands gripping her thigh just above her knee and under the bandage. His thumbs were rubbing over her skin.

He clenched his jaw. He needed to let go of her. He needed to not touch her. He’d lost that privilege, he knew. Abruptly in his ears he heard his own voice, “You think a princess and a guy like me?” Fool. Arrogant, selfish fool.

“Han.”

Finally he looked up at her. Again her pale, pale skin. Her sweat-soaked hair. Lips set in a line, eyes alight with resolve. Han thought of her, crouched behind the barrels, holdout blaster gripped tight in the very hand he’d spent the night holding, her bleeding leg, her eyes glued to his. Thought of when they’d been running and she’d fallen behind, the look on her face, the words on her lips. “Go without me, Han, I’m slowing you down—go!”

How he’d reached for her hand—that same hand, held it tight and told her there was no chance in hell. How tightly she’d squeezed back.

Now they gazed at one another in silence, exhausted, hurting, reeling, and absurdly Han thought she looked beautiful, thought that even if she was about to push him away forever she was beautiful, and in his head that scathing voice now lamented ‘love her, you love her, you—“

Leia lifted his hand from her thigh and Han flinched, tearing his other away from her too. But rather than taking his hand off of her as he thought she’d been doing, Leia turned his hand over and laid it face-up in her lap. With both her hands she cradled his, and as he’d rubbed his thumbs over her leg so did she use both of hers to rub along his rough palm. He stared, speechless, at this slow movement, watched her trace the creases of every finger, find every callous. It shocked him to see that his hand was white and clean after washing to bandage her burn, while hers were still filthy from the day’s events. Blood and dirt under her nails, grime streaked all over her, and his scrubbed and unmarked.

Han was afraid to speak.

“You—Leia, what’re you doing?”

“I don’t know how to read your palm,” she shrugged, voice so soft. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She looked away from his hand at last and gazed squarely into his face.

“I don’t know what’s in the future,” she whispered, thumbs still tracing. “But I do know,” she breathed, “what I want.”

The sounds of the hyperdrive were the only sounds in the room as he stared at her, unable to breathe, not wanting to move. Leia’s thumbs went still.

“Do you?” she asked.

Han opened his mouth—closed it again. He couldn’t answer. If she weren’t still sitting there, looking down at him and searching his face, he might have thought he hadn’t heard right. But he had—he could see in her eyes that he had: trepidation, decision, desire, question, daring, fear. Want. So much in her eyes, had she seen as much in his? She must’ve. She must have known—reading him so well, always. Sensing his dejection and his guilt and his dread. Perceived his anger and frustration. How many long months now of this yearning? How many months, this unspoken and skittish thing, and now Leia here and now, “I know what I want.”

Han closed his eyes for a moment. Here was the culmination of his deepest desire: the princess all but telling him he could have her. But was it right? After what had happened in the hotel? After she’d taken a blaster bolt because he hadn’t done his job?

Han opened his eyes again and saw her face had changed, now equal parts anxiety and expectation—not pressure, never that. But he understood then that her words had not come without a cost, understood that it was fear that had kept them from acknowledging this before now and understood how much bravery it had taken for her to be the one, now, to give it voice. And there between the lines: not only her, Leia, but the rebels, the cause. Commitment—she wanted his commitment, his promise.

Do you know what you want?

Han held her gaze as he turned his hand and took hold of hers once more, as he had in the alley, as she had in the hotel bed.

“Yeah, princess,” he whispered. “I know.”

It was Leia’s turn to close her eyes, then. Not because of any conflict, he sensed, but from emotion. The nights she snuck onto the Falcon, unable to sleep, seeking not the spare bunk but him. Waking in a ditch in the freezing cold together, limbs entwined, her face nestled against his neck. All those fights, the goading, the denial and the dares. All those missions with their lives in each other’s hands. It had been so much, he realized. Like years spent barreling towards each other, like gravity and need, and years of putting it off, years of push and pull.

She squeezed his hand and nodded, eyes closed like she’d been granted some sudden, unforeseen mercy. Like reprieve. Her head bowed, forehead just barely touching his, and Han couldn’t help it, either, with his eyes stinging and his chest so suddenly tight. Reaching up with his other hand to finally touch her cheek, fit his fingers against her jaw and along her damp hair. And when Leia opened her eyes once more Han leaned even closer.

And when they kissed, Han felt it in his entire body. Like breathing finally after far too long without air. Like cold water in the desert. The feel of her lips, the taste of her breath. Her words clamoring in his head “I know what I want.” In his chest and veins, singing.

Relief.

I love this so much!!!