Because I'm terribly indulgent: Nashav uhhhh STAR WARS AU
“You came in this piece of junk?” Nash blurts out, pointing at the smuggler’s ship that’s more scrapheap than any sort of well-designed ship. “You’re braver than I thought.”
“Nice,” Hav smirks, blaster raised beside his head as he leans over the viewport ledge to scan the floor below them. “Let’s go.”
They start down the hall only to hear methodical footsteps behind them again. Hav rolls his eyes. “We just left this party,” he mutters, picking up the pace. “Come on, your highness; I think we need to run.”
“Good rescue plan,” Nash says, lengthening his stride to keep up with Hav.
“Well, I mean, I could always leave you behind,” the smuggler says, flashing a grin over his shoulder, “but something tells me keeping you around will be infinitely more fun.”
“I didn’t want any trouble,” Nash sighs. “I don’t want trouble. And I feel like if I look up the word ‘trouble’ in the holonet dictionary, there’s just a little picture of your face with a stupidly wicked grin on it.”
“What, like this one?” Hav says, turning to face the prince with exactly the sort of grin Nash was imagining.
“Stop it,” he snaps, but there’s no bite in it, and Hav’s grin only spreads wider. “I’m trying to run. Stop distracting me.”
“Oh, I haven’t even started distracting you yet, your worshipfulness.”
“I’m sure I’ll be plenty distracted once we get to your bucket of bolts--distracted by trying to find whatever breaks and fixing it before the tractor beam comes back on.”
“Hey,” Hav says, “my ship is not broken.”
Their argument--flirtation?--is cut off by the sound of blaster fire from behind them, and Nash picks up the pace again, dashing around the corner as Hav turns, falling to one knee and aiming his own blaster back the way they came. He squeezes off a few rounds, and there’s a few grunts of pain and the footsteps behind them sputter out. Hav whips around the corner, sweeping past Nash toward a sloping ramp leading down to the hanger where the ship is parked.
“Keep up, your princeliness,” he calls out, and Nash can hear the laughter bubbling up in his voice. Nash isn’t sure if he wants to punch the man or kiss him. He ducks his head as more blasters fire behind them, and he feels Hav’s arms yank him forward, off the edge of the ramp to the hangar floor where he flattens the prince against the wall of the ramp, protecting him as he peeks back up over the edge and fires another set of rounds. Nash catches his breath, breathing in the scent of leather, sweat, and that particular brand of space-dust all smugglers seem to share. His fingers are tight on Hav’s arm, feeling the muscles straining there as he holds the prince steady even as he fires back.
“You all right?” Hav asks, voice worried even as his angry eyes scan the hangar for enemies and flick back toward the ramp, watching their rear. “Hey, are you all right?” he says again, and Nash’s brain catches up to the moment.
“Yes,” he says, “thanks. Uh...have they got us pinned down, or can we make the ship?”
Hav just laughs, a low excited laugh that makes the skin along Nash’s spine tingle.
“Nothing keeps me from my ship for long, your worship.”
And Nash finds himself completely unsurprised to discover that Hav is actually enjoying this. He sighs, readying himself to sprint for the ship.
“You know you only get the reward if we get out of this in one piece, right?” he says.
“Sure, your highness, but you know--” he pops up over the ramp again, letting off a hail of blaster bolts to give them cover as they begin to move toward the ship, Nash sprinting out front, Hav following behind, covering them, “--sometimes the chase is its own reward. Especially if the chase looks as good as you.”
Nash almost hits his head on the low clearance of the ship’s ramp, but ducks. He decides his flush is from all the running, not because he’s blushing.
“Captain,” he says warningly. “Get us out of here first. Pretend to flirt later.”
“Who says I was pretending?” Hav says, winking again as he brushes past Nash on his way to the cockpit, all swagger and confidence despite the fact that his ship still looks like it can barely fly let alone make hyperspace. “What do you say we blow this thing and get you home?”
Nash sighs, following the voice drifting back from the pilot’s seat and falls into the co-pilot’s chair with a sigh.
“You’re absolutely sure this thing can fly?”
“You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
(Hi, listen, Nash and Hav would make an ABSOLUTELY PERFECT Leia and Han and suddenly I need to write a heck of a lot more of this???? Dangit Alyx. Thank you.)
