JAOA Webpage: http://digitalmidnight.simplenet.com/garden/jaoa.html
Category: AU, Angst, PWP
Disclaimer: George Lucas is god. I just slip in and play with
the toys when he's not looking.
Notes: [This is telepathy] and these are thoughts.
Pairing: Han/other
Rating: NC-17
Series: JAOA
Summary: A quiet encounter reveals some private truths.
The bar was filthy, a fact which was only meagerly hidden by the shadowed darkness which the lights no longer even attempted to push back. The sharp sweet scent of spice hung on the smokey air, tickling the back of his throat with a familiar flavor. He wasn't willing to bet that it wasn't that alone which had drawn him into the establishment.
Han liked to think he was a man who knew when to bet and when to hold.
Bars, taverns, cantinas... low life bolt holes that sprang up, regardless of the planet or people, around every spaceport ever built. He had seen more than his fair share of them in passing, experienced the insides of them often enough to know what to expect. Sitting at a bar counter that he would hesitate to even rest his elbows on under other circumstances, he almost laughed. Oh, he knew enough about bars, alright. And if the haunts of his youth had scandalized his teachers, he could only too well imagine what they would think of where he was now. The indescretions of childhood were nothing compared to this.
Which was why no one knew and no one needed to know. His secret, his whim, indulged in the time that belonged to no one but him. If he'd indulged more frequently of late, maybe it was only a reflection of the extra time.
Too much time, the quiet portions of his mind told him, but he sealed them silent with the tip of a glass, letting the bitter cold bite of the alcohol burn through him and chase the thoughts away. There. A problem that took care of itself. Pity more of them didn't.
He slid credits across the countertop and signaled for a refill. He hadn't come to the bar to drink, but it wouldn't hurt. He hadn't, in fact, come to the bar for anything. He never did. Crossing the thresh hold was enough, he never came looking for anything in particular. He didn't have to. Whatever he wanted, whether he admitted it or not, would find him. That was the luck of the draw, and if there was one thing Han Solo posessed in abundance, it was luck.
Luck that was holding still, when a body slid into the place beside him, voice calling for a drink. Eyes rested on him and Han let them, played for them, an actor on display in a game as old as time. Let one hip thrust out as he leaned forward to retrieve his drink with boneless grace, tossed back head and hair as he downed the contents in a gesture that emphasized throat and a profile he was just vain enough to think had developed some rugged charm even while honesty was forced to admit that it would never be handsome. Ah well. A man worked with what he had.
And what he had was enough, he knew it. Had it confirmed when he dropped the empty glass back onto the counter, drawing in a deep breath to chase back the drink, and another voice called for a refill before he could. It was a good voice, deep, a little throaty, but it didn't matter and he couldn't have said that he heard a word spoken. The lines were a set pattern, seldom varied, and he parroted them with a lazy open smile that invited the viewer to skip past the words and on to the real goal.
Older than Han, but that was the way he liked it. Human, roughly good looking, dressed in the flamboyant motley of a unregistered spacer, probably a smuggler. Some part of Han's mind catalogued it all, stored it away, but none of it mattered in the slightest. Come morning he wouldn't remember and it was better that way. There was nothing to remember. Faceless, nameless - it was an indulgence, nothing more. There is no passion... but this wasn't passion. It was almost meditation, an occupation of the body that did not require the participation of the mind.
The man wanted to talk and Han let him, let the words create a buffer of sound around them, cushioning, blunting the moment of truth when a broad fingered hand brushed his hip and he didn't draw away. No questions asked, none wanted. Gather the moment, live it, one single instant after another. He fancied he could feel the pulse of the living Force around them, through them. "I have a room." He didn't, but it didn't matter. It was just easier. His ground, his terms.
There were times he thought he was never more in touch with the Force around him then during these thoughtless encounters. It was all too easy to reach out, to push ever so subtly and watch the ripples streak out to wash up his wishes elsewhere. Touch a point, dip the fingers of his will into it, and the being beind the bar handed over a key to one of the upstairs rooms that were rented by the hour. So very, very simple, and he wondered why he had ever struggled with it.
Within the room, in the silence after the hiss of the door and the soft chirp of the privacy lock, words were abandoned. Han felt himself automatically tense as hands caught his waist, pulled him back against a tall body. Felt it, gathered it, until it was a tightly wound ball within himself, taut and hard. Held it for a heartbeat, feeling it, and let it go. Dispersed it out, flung it, and in the wake of its absence let himself turn into the embrace whole heartedly.
Don't think. Live the instant.
Be mindful of the living Force.
He felt his breath catch momentarily and then it was ripped away, stolen in the demanding crush of lips against his. He reached up, buried his fingers in a short cap of silken hair, reveling in the taste, the feel. The single shining moment, at once seperate and flowing, melting into the next.
The moment was shattered when fingers caught in the loop of the braid he had wound back around the tail of his hair, tumbling the thin rope down across his shoulder. Han held his breath as the man studied the length of it, running thumb and forefinger down its length in a gesture which was almost a caress. He had to close his eyes against it, against the memory of all the times other hands had done that exact same gesture. ...padawan...
But there were no words spoken now and particularly not that one. The man smiled slightly, tugged on the braid just a little, enough to let Han know that he knew, at least somwhat, what it meant. Knew what group Han might be connected with. But then the braid was wrapped around a finger, tugged on harder, and Han let himself be pulled forward into another hard kiss. Hands tugged his shirt free, slipping under to press hot palms to skin.
They stumbled back to the small sleeping couch, the only real furnishing in the room. Clothes were discarded haphazardly across the floor, flung blindly every which way as greedy hands reached for flesh. Taste of sweat and salt beneath his lips, soft and hard ripple of muscle over bone beneath his tongue. Han closed his eyes, letting taste and touch paint the limits of his world.
Palms skimmed along his calf and thigh, up to hip, lingered at his groin. Han groaned, thrusting against them. Dug his nails into the broad surface of back and shoulders, sliding up into that tantalizing nape of dampened hair. Whispered words, half gasped, but he ignored them. It didn't matter. Nothing but touch mattered, the welcome weight of another body, the burning pleasure of a hand with skilled fingers. Opening himself, body to body, in a pulse that spoke to the primal instincts of the base flesh.
The first thrust was always pain, gasping with it, discarding the sensation with the air from his lungs. Wait a heartbeat and it would change, the pleasure flooding back, hot and urgent. Stretching, filled, beaten with the rhythm of another body. Han flung his head back, eyes closed, letting the sensation wash through the limits of his being, letting it become him, letting the one single moment become the entirety of the galaxy. Gasping, soft wordless cries, dimly heard and not even knowing if they were his own.
It came in a rush, the second telescoped down to exist in one perfect, glittering, crystalline moment that went on and on, sustained in timeless flow within the stillness of mind. He cried out with it, felt the warm rush all about him, through him. It was the moment and he was part of it, touching it, woven into the same cloth. This was life, this was the moment.
This was the living Force. He stretched out, reaching, hopeless and helpless. Reaching for the warm touch of the familiar deep within, to break the silence, break the stunning emptiness. The cry never touched his lips, never breathed across his tongue. It echoed only in the stillness of his own mind, wrung forth with the crest of orgasm, dropped into the silent depths where the sound was swallowed whole. One word, one gasp, one desperate wish flung upon the ripples of the Force to sink into them and in doing so maybe, possibly, make the impossible real.
It was almost painful to come back to the reality of flesh and bone, couch and room, afterwards. To feel the Force slip away, become again the dim barely felt hum. Cut off, bereft, in so many ways. Cold. He shivered, felt the other man's weight slowly pull away from him with a muttered apology.
Damned awkward, always, but he had learned to ignore it. To give the right answers, the pleasing ones, to smile a little. To reach out with the lingering wisps of pale ripples and urge them on their way. Soon enough the door hissed shut again, leaving him alone in the tiny room, in the silence and dim light.
Bringing his hands up to rub them across his face, he could smell the musk of sweat and sex. And there, caught between his fingers, too short to wrap around them, the only physical evidence. He stretched it taught between thumb and fingers, held it up where the light could gleam along the pale gold length of it.
Short golden hair, and if he thought he could call forth the image of dark blue eyes, tilted just so. The rest of it, the face, the body - it didn't matter. But there, the hair he had run his fingers through, the eyes with their bright gleam... Wish fullfillment, gleaned in scraps, in the cast off remnants of tattered fantasy. It was impossible to keep from whispering it one last time, to keep from hoping that to give it voice would lend the wish strength. "Master."
But no. There was only stillness and quiet. Han closed his eyes, dropping his arm to let the single strand of hair fall from the edge of the couch to the floor.
"Pathetic," he told himself bitterly, voice echoing softly through the tiny empty room. But the feeling was fleeting and too familiar, something that had grown easier to pass over with each identical encounter, each memory. And there was a certain satisfaction in the cool touch of sweat on his skin, the ache in muscle. Easy to push the thoughts away, back into the silent reaches of his mind where they wouldn't trouble him. At least, not now. There wasn't time for it, and he would make very certain there never was. Meditation in the body, not in the mind. The mind held too many shadows. The body was simple, clean cut and easily understood. Better.
Get up, gather up his clothes, pull them on. If he returned now no one would be the wiser, and that was how he preferred it. No one need know.
Particularly not his Master.