via
http://ift.tt/2EXyn7hnotbecauseofvictories:
han, leia, and the five first times there weren’t (plus the one there was)
[read on AO3]
..yavin.
This would be an easier story to tell if he’d been drunk. If they’d stumbled together in the frantic aftermath of the Death Star, giddy in their temporary immortality (the fear it wouldn’t still be there, come morning.) It would have been easy, a story told a hundred times before, too much cheapshit ale and a beautiful girl he doesn’t deserve, flushed and smiling, at him, at him; one night of pretending he was worthy of her. It’s an old story. Older than the stars.
But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t—
He’s sober and so is she, though the way the sunlight filters through the viewports—retracted, to let in the rain-washed air—is headier than it has right to be. Luke had left, something about sabacc with Antilles; but it’s easy to stay here, with her, lazing in the warmth of her rooms and teasing her for how serious she looks, bent over her datapad. Occasionally, she reaches for something on the desk; instinctively, because she always looks up when she can’t find it, shakes her head as though chasing away a thought.
He wonders what used to sit on her desk on Alderaan. He wonders if he can ask, or if that’s impolite, reminding a girl her planet is dead.
Really he just likes watching her, the graceful economy of her hands, the way she touches her mouth sometimes, checking on her lip. (Her ‘war wound’—she’d worried at her lower lip all through the battle of the Death Star, torn it open. It still bled when she smiled.) He’d tell her she’s beautiful, but he gets the sense that she’s heard it before, though maybe not quite the way he means it. He imagines princesses get called ‘beautiful’ like paintings or vases do, not ‘beautiful’ like women, like her, like the nape of her neck and her lip, bleeding.
Likely there’s some royal bantha-fucker out there who’s promised her hand in marriage, but there’s no harm in Han looking in the meantime.
“Stop looking at me like that, Solo,” she says then, like she can hear him thinking it.
He grins, letting his head fall against the back of the chair. The Massassi left every inch of the stone carved, back when this was their temple; the ceiling of her quarters is the coils of a monstrous snake, swallowing a planet. Han hopes it’s not this one. “And how exactly am I looking at you, princess?”
He doesn’t think he’s heard her laugh before. She should do that more often.
“You’re funny, Solo.”
“I am kriffing hilarious, Your Worship, but you haven’t answered my question.”
She scoffs. “I wasn’t raised in a tower. I know what that look means.”
“Enlighten me.”
“…you’re not going to make me say it.”
“I would also accept a practical demonstration,” Han offers generously. His grin is wasted on the carved ceiling.
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