Archive of Our Own ^beta

Han is in deep shit.

“What’s new?” Moans Chewie when she declares this, but he’s trying to drown himself in a pint of whatever clear spirit they sell by the gallon on this stupid sandpit of a planet, so she takes it as solidarity rather than actual bitching.

Greedo is glaring at her across the bar, piercing her with a gaze that sucks in her attention like flying too close to a black hole, and she frowns into her soup, a sucking horrible feeling in her stomach, self loathing for getting messed up with the Hutts. But her baby had needed new shoes, so to speak. When she talks like this about her ship Chewie laughs at her, but it’s not like she’ll ever have kids of her own, and she has to do everything for it, so she feels more responsible for the Falcon more than she ever would be for a child.

When Chewie returns from a run to the bar with a couple of religious fanatics who want to give her enough money to disappear in exchange for the easiest milk run in the galaxy she wants to yell and scream and give an offering to all the gods she’s ever heard of, but instead she takes that adrenaline and straight up murders Greedo because fuck him, fuck Jabba, fuck all of them, she’s got money, she’s got freedom, and she’ll never make that mistake again.

And then it goes to shit, because Han Solo is cursed by the universe.

The main religious fanatic, the old man with the voice like an old time radio star, is annoying the way patriarchal figures always are, but it’s the little one, the twinky farm boy who has obviously just had his dick sucked by the Force to be such a strong true believer, who she worries about. It’s the way he looks at her, like he’s never seen a woman like her before. The woman of Tattooine dress in soft draping fabrics to keep the heat and sand off and keep their feminine mystique and sensual modesty, which is about as far as Han’s style as you could ever get, but that doesn’t make her anything other than a woman, and Han is all woman and proud of it.

Then Alderaan isn’t there, but a fucking giant moon weapon is, and then it’s on her to get them out of trouble, and really, she isn’t being paid nearly enough for this.

Then the farmboy talks her into rescuing a princess with the absolute worst plan she’s ever heard.

Han likes to think that she and Princess would be friends under other circumstances, but Han’s pride is bruised as badly her left arm is from the Stormtrooper blaster recoil, and so this delicate, pretty slip of a girl taking charge and dropping them into disgusting, fetid certain death, pushes her badly. They scream at each other, and Han hates her, hates her so much she can barely breathe.

She’s tired and hungry and angry, so deeply angry, she can feel the film of Imperial waste covering her body and making her clothes heavy and useless, her hair coming loose from where she slicked it back, she needs to get Chewie to cut it again, just a number two clipper so she doesn’t have to deal with this bullshit anymore, and it’s in her eyes but not enough to hide the fact that the Princess looks perfect, her white gown barely even stained, her hair only slightly out of place.

Han Solo never claimed to be mature, and so she stomps off, heavy boots sloshing with every step, snarking all the way, enjoying the way it makes her highness’ jaw muscles twitch as she scurries to keep up.

And then it all starts again: stormtroopers, more stormtroopers, useless droids that have far too much personality to be reliable, weirder shit than Han has ever seen dressed up and throwing shit around with their minds, and then the old man sacrifices himself and then Han and Chewie fly the falcon out of there like goddamn heroes, and when Han throws the Falcon into hyperspeed, she’s suddenly so tired she can’t stand it anymore.

She showers and it is pure bliss against her scrapes and bruises, and when she emerges wrapped in her towel, the Princess is standing in her quarters, stripped down to her underwear, scrap that, that is Han’s underwear, poking through her wardrobe with a critical eye, her hair restyled in a long, unfussy braid. She has a beautiful body, the kind of woman Han never sees outside of dirty holos, curves that look like soft cream, slender but with no lines at all, just so rounded and bounteous she makes Han’s mouth water for a taste. Han has a body that is hard from labour and thin from poverty, she’s darker anyway, takes after her Pa, but she has the kind of tan lines you usually only see on 50 year old mechanics, plus there’s the scars, the kind that tell stories. Han has always preferred to fight with her tongue and words, but that doesn’t mean she can’t throw a punch or wield a knife if she needs to.

Anyway, there’s this beautiful woman wearing Han’s threadbare pants, her breasts barely contained in the bralet Han keeps for when she boxes with Chewie, and Han definitely has a bad feeling about this.

“Excuse me, your worshipfulness, but I don’t have many ballgowns in stock for your perusal, perhaps I can check out the back?” She gripes in self defence, feeling exposed.

“Shut up”, the Princess says. “My dress is disgusting. Please lend me something, I will have it cleaned and returned to you the moment we get to Yavin. We wouldn’t want you to catch manners or something.” Her voice is deeper than Han would have thought a Princess would be allowed to talk, gravelly, perhaps from the tiredness and whatever she’s been through on the Death Star. She’s also mean, and god, Han has always loved it when hot girls are mean to her.

Later, when Leia is in Han’s only formal suit, reserved solely for funerals and court martials, bonding far too well with Chewie in the back, Han sits up front with Luke. He’s a sulky brat, but he has potential, he’s already grown a lot since she met him two days before.

“What do you think, a Princess, and a girl like me?” Han asks Luke, to break the silence, as they drop into the Yavin 4 atmosphere and begin the arduous process of convincing the Rebel base they mean them no harm.

“No” he snaps. “I don’t think.”

Han shrugs. “We’ll see”.

---

Han Solo gets her reward, plus a medal to boot, and stashes both in the most secret place in the Falcon. She offers Chewie half of it, but he instead hugs her and calls her a stupid pup, and lets her cry her relief into his coat. She loves him so much, like the big brother she never had, growing up with just sisters who teased and mocked her, but he’s also her best friend. She knows he desperately wants to go home, back to his wife and his real pups, but she needs him, can’t imagine doing all this without him. Paying this debt means that they can have that conversation, maybe she could pawn the medal for a one-man ship, put the Falcon in storage somewhere, maybe even leave it on Shyriiwook, try going out on her own for a bit, until Chewie gets itchy feet again.

Instead, she helps the rebels move to Hoth, makes herself useful. Part of this is because Jabba has gone quiet, the grapevine saying he is sick, perhaps even on the edge of death, and if he dies her debt goes with him, and the only thing better than being debt free is being debt free and rich, so she puts it off, puts it off, even though Hoth is literal hell frozen over and she thinks she’ll never be warm again.

She and Leia do become friends, of a sort. Leia insists on lending Han her hairdresser, her tailor, laughs at her bad jokes, eats dinner with her. She holds Han’s tools as she helps out in the hangar. Leia teaches her formal strategy, and Han is good at it, despite the fact she never really got much formal schooling once Ma started drinking and Pa fucked off. They get drunk together on one of the last cases of Alderaanian wine left in the universe, and Han nearly kisses her, comes so close to getting up the nerve, but loses it.

She’s not sure why. She’s never held back before.

Then news comes through that Jabba is back, and then when Han tells the general that she needs to go and be an honourable thief, she expects Leia to say something, expects her to maybe help Han out a bit and maybe say ‘yeah, I fancy you, please stay’, but instead it’s like these months haven’t happened, Leia is stiff and formal and just weird, and keeps talking like all her dead royal ancestors are watching her think about fucking a woman, and it pisses Han off so much she turns off her communicator, fighting back hot tears of fury that she would ever think that maybe she would have a chance, stupid fucking Corellian trash that she is.

She tries to get her breathing under control, angrily fixing the Falcon through her self loathing, and then has to go and rescue that stupid farmboy from himself again, and then nearly freezes to death, and then, on top of everything, the fucking empire finds them and they almost fucking die again, and Han Solo ends up hiding in an asteroid field, her ship half in pieces, barely working but full to bursting with credits, with a makeshift crew of her pissed off first mate, an infuriating gold dildo of a droid and of course, the Princess, who if its possible is even more pissed off than she is.

Han finds her fixing a modulator, looking impossibly tiny in the smallest room in the ship, and god, she is so tired again, feels her emotions bubble up to the surface.

The modulator is designed for a bigger mechanic, and even Han gets Chewie to stow it for her because spaceship designers are sexist dickheads, but when she reaches out to help Leia she is roughly pushed away.

“Shh, Princess, it’s okay. That thing sticks all the time”

“Stop calling me that!” Leia snaps. “You’ve been calling me Leia for months, so you know, you know it pisses me off.” She takes a deep breath. “And I don’t want to argue with you right now.”

She sounds as tired as Han feels, but when she looks straight up into her eyes she looks alert, and that is when Han realises just how close they are. The door is open, and Han realises that she and Leia are still holding hands, and that Leia is shaking and looking at her with such naked want in her eyes that Han can’t help herself, and leans down to kiss her.

The kiss is luscious, wet, dizzying, and Leia is so alive in her arms, and Han waits not even a second before unzipping her jacket, and pushing Leia back into the wall of switches, getting some leverage to lift her up. Leia wraps her legs around Han’s waist immediately, and so Han’s hands are free to stroke and grope and get her hands on Leia’s gorgeous breasts, and this kiss is like no first kiss Han has ever had, and it feels like the first time she took the ship to lightspeed...

And then threepio sticks his head in and starts babbling, and Han puts Leia down and turns around to bite his head off, because she will wipe his programming herself for interrupting this, and then when she turns around, Leia is gone.

So Han does what she always does, goes and tries to do something productive with her anger the way Namie taught her back when she was constantly letting her rages get her in trouble.

When Leia bursts in a few minutes later shouting about something being outside, Han is careful to ignore the way her jacket is still undone and how dishevelled her hair looks, and definitely not the way her lips look swollen and kiss-bitten, looking how Han’s feel.

They make it out of the not-actually-a-cave by the skin of something else’s teeth, and then it’s more creative thinking, more of Han’s terrifying spur of the moment genius, a maneuver that definitely shouldn’t have worked, but does. Maybe the general is right and Han does have a knack for this kind of thing, but the stress on her heart will likely kill her long before the war is over.

The computer says that Landeau is nearby, which, okay. Any port in a storm, but god, Han’s stomach cannot deal with having Landeau and Leia in the same room. She might self-immolate from the sexual tension.

To her credit, Landeau only teases her about the Falcon and hits on Leia for less than a second, before showing why she was always the most mature of all of Han’s ex girlfriends. She has an actual job with responsibility and okay, she’s still corrupt as fuck, but she wouldn’t be Landeau if she wasn’t a little bit skeevy. If Han didn’t have Leia half wrapped round her, she would have that cape and kicky little outfit off in half a second.

And that’s when Han realises that its Leia who is being territorial, and Landeau is backing off because of it, and god, is that not the hottest thing she’s ever seen?

Landeau gives them a suite of rooms, and Chewie mutters something about finding threepio, and Han just goes ‘uh-huh’ and follows Leia into the master bedroom and closes the door.

They’re on each other the moment the door is closed, as if the last four hours hadn’t happened. Leia jumps back into Han’s arms, her legs knotted tightly round her waist, their mouths needing no warm up, just back to this primal, beautiful kiss that feels like it never ended. Leia gets her hands into Han’s hair, still mostly grown out, just enough for a handful if you’re a small as Leia, and pulls, and god, Han wants this woman so badly she think she might actually die.

There’s a bed, and there’s time. No one knows that they are there. There are two locked doors between them and the outside world, and Chewie will rip the arms of anyone who will try and disturb them, the old romantic, and the Falcon is still full of the means to buy Han her freedom the moment she gets the opportunity to actually get back to Tatooine, and there’s a princess, the most beautiful woman Han has ever seen in real life, pouting and panting her name underneath her, raising an eyebrow when Han pulls back to pull off her jacket and shirt.

Han gets Leia undressed and she is even more of a vision than she had expected. She spends half an hour on her breasts, beautiful and soft and blindingly white with large, strong nipples that can take just about anything, and by the time Han lets them go are so sensitive Leia seems ready to come just from the drag of Han’s own small brown breasts across them.

Han loves that Leia wears the same kind of trousers as she does now, especially because she knows how to strip out of them with barely a whisper. She is just so glorious naked, her hair half undone against the snow white sheets, so turned on she can barely cope with it, even a light breath makes her squirm, something Han definitely exploits. By the time she gets her mouth on her cunt, Leia is honest to god yelling, wraps her strong thighs around Han’s ears and fucks her mouth with absolutely no shame nor abandon. When she comes, moments later, it’s with a scream and a flood and Han would happily die here, in the service of her queen.

She nurses Leia’s clit through it, little kitten licks, her face soaked and pruning and it is so wonderful she grins wide. She spends long, long seconds sucking her through all the aftershocks, nuzzles her through the long minutes of hypersensitivity when Leia pleads with sounds that aren’t words, and then when she seems ready, does it all again, but this time, she uses her hands.

She comes herself with most of Leia’s small hand inside her, Leia’s sex-dark voice rumbling absolute filth into her ear, and Han sees stars behind her eyes as the orgasm takes all her tension, all her stress and adrenaline until none of it matters anymore.

They doze until there is noise outside, the quiet murmur and moan of Landeau and Chewie chatting like the old friends they are, and then quickly shower. There are clothes laid out for them, and they dress each other between kisses and roaming hands, before stepping out, hand in hand.

Later, a long time later, when this was all over, Han would still think about them dressing each other, giggling so hard her face hurt, a moment of pure happiness before the tide rushed back in to take them, feeling relaxed for the first time since since her home stopped being a safe harbour.

Betrayal makes things move fast. Landeau is an opportunist bitch, but Han can’t even feel her usual anger, because the terror is so much more all encompassing. This monster is using her like she is a pawn in some stupid religious war that no one in the galaxy even fucking cares about anymore and that is the most terrifying thing she’s ever felt, this feeling she isn’t actually the protagonist of the story. She is the second act twist, and she will die just because someone thinks it will achieve an end she can’t even see.

They march her into the bowels of the space station, her voice raw from screaming that she has the money, that she has more money than fucking Jabba could ever want. He can take her ship, he can take anything, but she doesn’t want to die. Something has broken inside her, the cool carapace she wears to keep the world out, because why should she? She isn’t the main character, she isn’t playing their game, none of this even matters anymore, so she lunges forward, kissing Leia for a last time, whispering “I love you, I always loved you” over and over again in a litany, before being shoved down into cold, dark, painful oblivion.