Donât ever tell me to stop
This is a bit of a follow-up to the ficlet/drabble âWhat are you so happy about?â in which Han discovers that Luke has overheard a little something in the South Passage and canât stop smiling about it. From todayâs prompt about kissing; title comes from a line in Madonnaâs song âDonât Tell Me.â
âSecurity codes confirmed. Ezkuta, you are cleared for landing.â
Leia breathed out in relief as the ship completed the landing cycle, and gave her second on the mission a bit of a smile. It had been a bit dicey at times, but theyâd made it.
Yance smiled back. âGood to be home, eh?â
After two years, Leia had become an expert in displaying no visible response to that kind of question. The internal bit of pain was still thereâNo, not home, not ever againâbut she barely noticed it anymore. âMmm,â she said.
She was glad to be back, glad to see her friends. Glad this mission had ended safely, successfully, if a few days late.
I wonder if heâll be waiting in the hangar for me.
That thought was a surprise even to her. Nine hells, Organa, whatâs gotten into you?
Nine hells? When had she started saying nine hells? She shuddered to think of how insufferable Han would be, were he in her head for this conversation.
But back to the first thought. Han probably would find a way to be in the hangar if he knew she had landed, but not in an obvious way. Something that would give him enough cover to be able to give Chewie a justifiable denial, but would keep him close enough to be among the first to welcome her back.
Damn it all, she liked having someone there to welcome her after a tough mission. Even if their little, ah, arrangement was known only to them. And she wasnât too proud to admit it to herself: sheâd missed him. Thought of him a lot, honestly, and not just because she was used to running this kind of mission with him rather than someone like Yance Pantour. (Who was fine, perfectly nice and capable. Just not Han.) She wasnât sure what to do with that information, but there it was.
She and Yance completed their landing checks, gathered their things, made their way into the hangar. Sure enough, there was Han, talking with a couple of pilots from Blue Squadron until he excused himself to come over and say hello.
âHey, Your Worship. Youâre late,â he teased, opening his arms for a friendly hug.
âEarlier than youâd be,â she shot back before wrapping her arms around him.
Gods, sheâd missed him. Resisting the urge to kiss him in full view of everyone in the hangar was a little harder than sheâd expected, but she managed to keep things brief and friendly. It almost felt like heâd tried to linger a bit, but she assured herself that he wasnât. He couldnât be.
âDebriefing?â he asked her.
âShould be pretty quick,â she said, giving him a slight nod. Theyâd meet up in the usual spot, slip through the South Passage, head to the Falcon.
âAll right. Welcome back,â he said, heading back to whatever heâd claimed to be doing before this.
Leia had been rightâthe debriefing was pretty straightforward, and mercifully short. She thanked Yance, grabbed a datapad, and began striding purposely toward the South Passage, as if she were still in her old job on base, tracking down requisition reports.
There was Han, right on time. Before she could say anything, he pulled her into one of the equipment storage areas, and she wrapped her arms around him again, this time in a much more than friendly way.
Suddenly, it was as if time had slowed to a crawl. She breathed in the smell of him, felt the strength of his arms as he held her. He moved so slowly, so carefully. His lips were pressed against her cheekâthen her chin and her nose and her forehead and then, finally, her lips. Their mouths moved together slowly at first, then their lips parted and they both sank into the kiss.
Oh, yes.
They remained like that for a long time, with the briefest of pauses to take a breath or two, then falling together again. Kissing was far from a new experience for them, but somehow things felt more personal, more tender. More real. (A tiny alarm sounded in the back of Leiaâs mind at the thought. She ignored it.)
Finally, they drew apart, or at least their lips did. Han was still holding her close, and as he pulled away he bent down to rest his forehead on hers. âHi,â he said.
âHi.â She smiled at him.
They just stayed like that for a minute, looking at each other. It wasnât like they normally found the nearest closet and started rutting like a couple of lothcats in heat, but they usually were slightly more removed about things than this. They were friends, and there were benefits, but not more. Despite their care in maintaining that line in the past, it seemed they had both strolled right past it tonight.
That was probably a terrible idea. But this arrangement had seemed like a terrible idea when it had first come to her, and it seemed to have worked out all right so far. So maybe it wasnât so bad for her to come home to her secret affair with a Corellian smuggler at the end of a long week. Even if they did end up making out in an equipment storage closetâ
Wait a minute.
She looked up at Han, her forehead still on his. He grinned at her, and she grinned back.
âWhy are we in a storage closet?â
His grin faded a bit, and he pulled away slightly, avoiding her eyes a bit. âJust beinâ careful,â he said.
She could feel her smile depart and a sharper look replace it. âWhat happened?â she asked.
âNothinââyet, no, nothingââ
âWhat happened?â she repeated.
Han took a deep breath.âKid heard us in the South Passage last week.â
Oh, no. Not only her best friend, but the man with one of the worst sabacc faces in the Alliance. âDoes the entire base know now, or just the Rogues?â
Han shook his head. âNobody, yet. I donât think. And they wonât,â he assured her.
They couldnât go public; it would just create too much chaos. If people knew about thisâwhat even was this?
Why was her first reaction to his assurance that no one would knowâdisappointment?
âI mean, unless you want them to,â he said. His eyes fell on hers again briefly, then flitted away.
She recognized that tell. He wanted to.
She drew him closer again, willed him to look at her. âYou know me,â she said, the grin returning to her face as she pulled him down to kiss her again. âI like to live dangerously.â
And what could be more dangerous than this?
