Archive: EL, SWAL
Archive Date: December 11, 1999
Category: missing scene, h/c
Feedback: any and all comments welcome
Notes: Thanks to Holly for beta-reading! *hugs*
Pairing: H/Lu
Rating: NC-17
Summary: set in Jabba's palace during ROJ
In the pulsing dark before him, unsteady shimmers lined up and swayed as he stumbled forward, the clear pressure of a gun barrel between his shoulderblades giving him directions. The heat of a burning torch washed over the side of his face and whipped a white flare across his retina as large, fleshy fists jostled him through an abrupt turn. Metal groaned angrily on slow hinges. At his back, a Gamorrean snorted predictable obscenities, and the next prod he received almost sent him sprawling into a pit of blackness.
Han caught his balance with an effort, lurching several steps forward into formless shadow, until his shoulder made contact with a wall of rough stone. He'd expected to be taken outside by the straight route, but the dank smells were too reminiscent of Jabba's dungeon. At least that meant the compact darkness was conclusive fact, not another symptom of hibernation sickness screwing with his senses.
>From the other side of the dark, the sound of a heavy door falling shut attacked his eardrums. While the metallic clang cut off the Gamorreans' jeers and grunts, quieter footsteps faltered at a short distance. Luke.
"Where're we?" Han rasped. Catching his balance would have been easier if his hands hadn't been tied behind his back. "Where's Chewie?"
"We're in one of the chambers off the main hallway," came the reply, in an almost absent tone. "I suppose they're taking Chewie to a different hold."
"I thought we were goin' to the Sarlacc pit," Han muttered, not too sure what to make of the delay. 'Terminated immediately' was evidently a matter of definition.
"Jabba isn't very mobile," Luke's quiet voice reminded him. "I suppose he needs some time to transfer to his sail barge. And he'll want to gather his entourage, no doubt."
"Yeah, and give us time to work up a scare," Han grumbled, his throat tightening with anger.
"Let me take your binders off," Luke offered calmly, like it was a mere matter of will. Had Jabba's guards forgotten to tie his hands? Somehow Han didn't find that very likely.
He stiffened when he felt the pressure on his wrists lessen, and the binders dropped away. But for all he could tell, Luke hadn't crossed the distance, and his head started swimming again --
Hell, to be thawed out of frigging carbonite and thrust into the vertigo of hibernation sickness only to find he was slated for execution. Pointless didn't begin to cover it.
Right on cue, another spasm seized Han's stomach and reeled upward through his lungs, into his head, firing ruddy sparks across his questionable vision. His legs were trembling when he leaned back into the wall. Sitting down before he collapsed gracelessly had never seemed like a better idea.
Fighting for breath as he sagged into a sitting position, Han pulled up his knees. The ground felt cold like pack ice, but the painful heaves lessened after a few moments. Another jab of anger sent a flush of adrenaline through his veins.
Life owed him a fighting chance, some shred of dignity he could use to face the inevitable with levelheaded acceptance. But in a state like this, he'd be reduced to useless baggage, and no doubt about it, Jabba's cronies would just love the spectacle of a blinded Han Solo, stumbling helplessly towards his miserable end. A desperate rage joined the fierce burning in his lungs.
Han swallowed with effort and tried to concentrate on breathing evenly. Working himself into a temper wasn't going to help. Not when the return to reality had burst in on all his senses like a nova, leaving him raw and defenseless. For all that he couldn't see, too much of everything assailed him -- sensation, feeling, the slightest perception invaded his nerves with razor-sharp intensity. And the clenching nausea that came and went in sporadic fits consumed the last of his energy reserves. The blackness around him began a slow revolution.
Focus, he told himself, his head throbbing. Focus on something, anything...
"I don't suppose there's a way we can get outta here," he ground out, pushing both palms against the ground to preserve a sense of up and down.
"And it doesn't make much sense to try," Luke answered. "Once they take us to the Sarlacc pit, we'll all be together, and our chances of escaping will be much greater."
The cool, detached sound of his voice cut a path through the black swirls, and Han couldn't help feeling grateful. Everybody else had seemed ready to throw themselves at him with unchecked emotional outbursts -- starting with Leia, followed by Chewie, who had a penchant for periodic gushes of sentimentality anyway. Right now, Han appreciated the fact that Luke showed no such impulse. It helped him concentrate on essentials. Like breathing, and pulling the one or other consistent thought from the viscous fogs in his brain.
"Makes sense," he answered after a minor eternity of struggling with coordination. And perhaps the wait wasn't such a bad thing after all, if he could use it to get himself together.
"We do have a chance," Luke said with definite emphasis. His clothes rustled as he shifted his stance and leaned against one of the stone arches.
An automatic ironic retort faltered in Han's mind as the image caught up with him. Impossible to make out anything in the pitch blackness, even with fully functional vision, and yet he could pinpoint Luke's position exactly. Like a node of clarity in his mind that let other perceptions settle into a steadier pattern around it.
Come to think of it, the same thing had happened before, when they'd hauled him back up to the throne room. From the moment he'd heard Luke shout his name, his focus had steadied, and even though Jabba's guards kept them apart, he'd been aware of Luke beside him all along. Not that it made any sense. And what ever did, since he'd been yanked from the crushing white void of the carbon freeze?
He groped around for some mental foothold and caught at the recalled sound of Leia's voice, the pressure of her lips on his own. Warm, determined, not lingering for a moment too long. ...someone who loves you.
Like she was offering him a cue that hooked up the present to his last distinct memory. And it had worked as a trigger that closed a stabilizing circuit. He'd recalled the terror on her face, the haunted confession splitting the bloodshot steams of the carbon freeze chamber... I love you.
And he'd not been able to answer with a clear feeling of his own -- just as he wasn't now.
The clutch of pain in his chest took him by surprise. Too damn bad he didn't have more to offer; he'd played a little too hard for a concession of wanting from the haughty Princess. And the truth was, he cared for Leia, but none of it would do her any good now that Jabba had selected her as a personal slave. Regret swamped him with giddy intensity. He locked both arms around his knees, needing to keep a hold of something -- anything -- solid.
"Han..."
Drunken blackness cleared into the touch of Luke's hand curving around his shoulder, the close sound of his voice, forthright like a homing beacon.
"I'm all right," he bit out.
"No, you're not." The controlled tone softened and betrayed concern.
And there really wasn't any point arguing. Han restricted himself to drawing a deep breath and another, mooring his sense of orientation to Luke's grip on his shoulder.
"It will take a little more time before you have full control again," Luke continued, "but the symptoms are bound to lessen soon."
That was good news, and Han refused to question Luke's authority on the matter. "Great," he mumbled, "I really can't wait."
A soft laugh came out of the dark on his left, a little strained and shaky perhaps, but it carried the mark of relief and confidence.
"Try to breathe slowly," Luke encouraged him. "That will help you with the dizziness."
Han grunted irritable assent. He'd figured out that much by himself, but the problem was not to lose track of working on one thing when his stomach went
through the next series of vicious spasms, or to get his raw vocal cords to cooperate while pain raced up his spine to careen through his skull. Everything was completely off the scale again in another moment...
"Han," Luke's voice drew him back from the bout of heart-sickening nausea, "calm down, breathe... don't think of anything else..."
He shifted, and Han could feel his body warmth slide against his left side, steadying like an energy field. Cool fingers wrapped around his hand and lifted it until it rested flat on Luke's upper chest.
"Breathe with me," Luke urged. "Focus on my rhythm, here... can you feel it?"
Instead of trying to answer, Han merely pressed his hand more firmly into the cloth of Luke's tunic, the steady rise and fall of his chest. Pacing himself to the slow draw and ebb of air that soothed some of the acrid burning from his lungs. A strong heartbeat patterned time and space, clearing into a restful emptiness.
"Yes," Luke whispered, "that's it, breathe with me... easy now..."
Easy, Han thought with a fuzzy sense of amazement. With each inhalation, the savage tides of darkness receded from his body and mind. Almost as if he was breathing Luke's breath, absorbing that unshakable calm into himself. Weird notions.
The hand on Han's shoulder relaxed by a fraction, a faint tremor slithering through the fabric of his shirt to join breath and heartbeat and the sound of Luke's voice, talking him through the seizure. Thought settled into a semblance of order and circled the sensations with a building momentum of relief, tailed by several hundred questions.
He remembered now. Cloud City -- Vader's takeover scheme and the trap he'd set -- Lando's pressured voice saying, he's after someone called Skywalker. His own impotent fury when he'd realized they were using him as bait.
And there was the freaking miracle he'd failed to recognize until now, as if it took physical contact with the truth.
"You're alive," Han murmured, startled by the relatively firm sound of his own voice. "You got away from--"
"Yes."
The answer came in a near toneless hiss, and Luke withdrew the hand he'd held clasped over Han's.
"Vader was gonna drop you into the carbon pit right after me," Han went on, assembling pieces of memory into a more cohesive picture. "There were stormtroopers... practically all over the city. How--"
"I was lucky," Luke cut in. "I had a very narrow escape."
Yet the flat, drained sound of his voice gave testimony to something more blighting than a mere brush with final curtains. Han could feel Luke's withdrawal with strange acuteness, the chill draft of rancid air settling against his throat and chest. Reflexively, he pressed his palm flat against the ground, but his stomach twisted again, and blackness crowded in on him with icy sears.
"I'll wanna hear...the full story...sometime," he managed and shut up before the slur in his voice could get any worse.
The cold lanced with mind-numbing force into his head and reversed into flying heat that rolled shivers down his back. Like a fever that jostled him back and forth over a cutting edge of awareness.
How long had they been here anyway? Time had become wholly subjective, a roil of tortured contractions more than linear sequence. He felt as if he'd been wrenched through a black hole that stretched out each second until it snapped -- and next everything lurched into fast forward again.
He sagged, his chest heaving under the touch of strong hands tracing the path of his labored breaths with slow, soothing motions. Setting a rhythm for him with smooth strokes down his ribcage until the giddiness eased gradually.
By slow degrees, the flares of unnatural heat and bone-tightening cold subsided, evened out into enveloping, gentle warmth. Han relaxed into the fleeting tingles that slid through his overtaxed nerves and fanned out under his skin. Deft fingers moved down his arm and back up to his shoulder, massaging the strung muscles in his upper chest. The sensations intensified when Luke's palm rubbed against his nipple, stirring up a lush crawl of heat on his skin. A moment later, Han's rational mind kicked back in with some disconcerting observations.
Luke had never touched him like that before, though Han felt certain he couldn't mean it that way. If his body chose the worst of times to respond with more than relief, it sure wasn't Luke's fault.
"Thanks," Han muttered, but couldn't bring himself to draw away.
The caressing hand stilled at the center of his chest, and Han could almost feel his senses level out around that focal point. Some malfunctioning part of his brain turned it into a flicker of light, like a distant primary in a desolate region of deep space.
"Better like this?"
"A helluva lot." Han grinned weakly before he remembered that it was a completely wasted effort.
"Come on, let me make you a bit more comfortable now." Luke reached for his arms, easing him away from the wall. "There's some kind of pallet in one of the corners. You'll feel better if you lie down."
Only problem was, he had to get up before he could lie down again. Though his legs threatened to refuse cooperation, Han noticed that his sense of equilibrium no longer confused Jabba's palace with a zero-gee simulator. Some progress. He hauled himself to his feet and swayed as if he'd spent the past six months on the bottom of a brandale barrel, not stuck in carbonite.
Like a vise, Luke's right hand closed around his arm, the bruising strength shooting a spike of pain up into Han's shoulder. Before he could help it, he flinched, a raspy breath escaping through clenched teeth. Luke loosened his grip at once.
"I'm sorry."
His voice a hiss of pain in the confounding dark -- though that notion made no sense at all.
"'S okay," Han managed. "Just... oversensitive, I guess."
Yet something about the abrupt strength in Luke's grip caught at him with a distant chill; something about the way Luke had frozen in mid-motion --
"Not your fault," Luke countered too fast, touching him only with his other hand as he steered Han across the cavernous chamber. His left. "I'll be more careful."
But the flat, lifeless note was back in his voice, an almost unnatural dispassion that didn't fit in anywhere with Han's recollection. Sure, Luke had been forced to grow up at the hectic pace of the Rebels' trek from one hideout to the next, but essentially remained the boisterous kid who faced every new challenge with that unnerving blend of confidence and vulnerability. Who'd let himself be bruised with that same, reckless openness.
Han set his jaw and concentrated on walking. He wasn't up to figuring through any of this right now.
"Here," Luke said, a moment before the tip of Han's boot made contact with some yielding surface.
He lowered himself on the pallet, hands sinking into coarse fiberweave stuffed with what felt like clumpy old dunnage. A definite improvement over squatting on the bare ground. If there was any pattern to those vertigo spells, Han reckoned he had a couple more minutes of relative comfort and clarity. He waited until Luke had settled down next to him.
"So, what's your escape plan? What's my part?"
"Han..." Luke shifted, bootheels scraping against the ground as he crossed his ankles. "By the time we get to the Sarlacc pit, you should be able to see enough to stay out of the line of fire. Chewie's going to take care of you, and Lando will be on the skiff as well."
Han didn't much like the note of arrogance in Luke's voice. Protest leaped to the tip of his tongue out of sheer habit, but he swallowed it back down. That he felt a little stronger didn't mean he was up to anything beyond making himself as small as possible a target when the shooting began. Not without his full eyesight.
"Fair enough," he muttered.
"I've spent a long time getting ready for this," Luke said tightly.
And damned if there wasn't a measure of desperation beneath all that resolve. Han didn't doubt for a second that his friend had worked out a detailed rescue plan, but just to what extent it took realities into account was another matter. Maybe Luke was so uptight about it because he didn't want to get their hopes up for nothing.
Look, I know you've done your best, was what Han meant to say when his insides started twisting themselves into knots again. He ground his teeth together. Evidently, his inner clock was still off. Or those goddamn spasms simply came and went at random.
He sagged back against the pallet, determined to ride it out, when the first wave of nausea rolled through him. But this time, relief came within moments. Eyes squeezed shut, Han focused all his senses on the movement of Luke's hands across his torso, nerve endings yielding to the seductive comfort. Reviving energy sparked at each point of contact, and the tangled mass of sensations eased into smooth ripples. All of it fusing into a wash of bright warmth that permeated every inch of him when Luke's hands met again over his breastbone.
Han drew a shallow breath. Something about the carbon freeze had left his nervous system raw and ready for sensory overload at the slightest stimulation. The churning pangs had long ceased, obliterated by a heady pleasure that pulsed in every nerve and thickened in his groin.
Han swallowed when his cock stirred with unmistakable interest. Maybe he should be grateful to find out that forced hibernation hadn't messed with that part of his anatomy, but he caught himself wishing that Luke would go on touching him. Hell of a time to turn all raunchy on the kid.
When he tried to get his elbows under him, Luke stopped the motion. "Save your strength. You'll need it."
"Hey, I ain't doing too bad for someone who's been dead for--" Han faltered, and something in him cringed away from the assertion of a maddening truth. "How long's it been?"
"Over six months," Luke answered tonelessly.
Six months. Han's jaw clenched as he tried to wrap his mind around the insane notion. Six months carved out of his life while living went on without him, and he recalled nothing except a stagnant sense of dread, a hungry void clawing through him --
"What took you so damn long?" he asked, but instead of the light mockery he'd intended, it came out in the harsh tone of accusation.
"We expected Jabba to...put you on display here," Luke said, "but Boba Fett didn't take the direct route back to Tatooine. And then we had to make arrangements..."
He trailed off, most likely wrestling with guilt and regrets, though his voice didn't reveal any of it.
"Makes no difference to me anyway," Han returned after a pause and tried to force his thoughts in a different direction. It was over, period, and nothing mattered except that he'd survived. Though right now he wished Luke would show some more emotion. What was it with him anyway? All that impervious control and coolness were starting to give Han the creeps.
Like a guidelight, memory came sailing out of the dark, and the last moment he'd shared with Luke unraveled in minute detail. The hangar of their Hoth base, the way they'd both groped for words, and the odd silence that built between them and grew into a shielded pocket, sealed off against the hectic noises of evacuation.
He recalled the unguarded look on Luke's face, blue eyes shining jumbled feelings at him, an uncertain smile forming almost unawares. And somehow he'd carried that memory around like a charm, just below the layer of conscious thought.
A cold sense of loss tightened beneath his sternum. All of a sudden he missed Luke, the way things had been, with completely irrational intensity.
"It does to me," Luke said abruptly. "It makes a difference."
A barely perceptible tremor went through his frame, and Han reached for the hand that still rested atop his chest, gripping it firmly. "Don't worry about it, kid..."
Luke stilled, the tension in every muscle unmistakable. No wonder, Han thought. Chances being they had less than an hour left to live, and of course Luke felt responsible, the way he always assumed it was up to him to set any random injustice right. From experience, Han knew there was no point in trying to talk him out of it. Pitched arguments and mocking jabs simply bounced off that thick hide of idealism. Surely that much was still the same...
"Then you spent most of that time here?" Han asked. Simple conversation might help easing the subliminal strain, and besides, he needed to make sense of all the clandestine changes in Luke's attitude.
"Most of it," Luke answered. "I returned to Ben's house... to meditate, think some things through... And to build a new lightsaber."
So he'd lost the old one, and it was easy enough to guess where, but Han veered from that line of thought at once.
"Must've been a tricky piece of work," he returned. That he preferred a blaster at his side didn't mean he couldn't appreciate the workmanship involved in a lightsaber's internal mechanisms.
"It took me a while to figure it all out... how to channel the Force through the crystal and establish a connection..."
The drifting note of abstraction was back in Luke's voice. Even though he'd settled down close by Han's side, his mind seemed to wander somewhere several parsecs away.
"So what happened when you got here?" Han asked, determined to keep him talking. "Jabba used to have guards posted at every entrance."
"He still does." Luke seemed to be pulling himself together with a terse motion. "But there are things I've learned to do..." He paused again, as if considering how much he could safely give away.
Han tried to smother a stir of impatience. "What things?"
"Levitating objects. Planting suggestions in somebody else's mind," Luke answered, his dry rationality like a flare shield against anticipated disbelief. "I can even... cause a physical effect without touching."
Han didn't much like the sound of it, and ingrained convictions urged him to shrug it off with a snide remark. The way he would have before he'd made the mistake of setting a course for Bespin. Before Vader had stopped sizzling plasma bolts with nothing but a gloved hand and yanked Han's blaster from his grip across a distance of at least eight meters.
"It's incredible," Luke said softly. "All the possibilities... and I never knew."
And don't tell me you ain't frightened, Han thought. Hell, it jarred him to think that Luke had the same kind of power at his disposal. And he recalled now how Luke had snapped the binders off his wrists, just like that, not touching.
"Sometimes I don't really understand what's happening to me," Luke added, a haunted pressure thickening his voice.
One moment he was remote, and the next he was almost electric with all that leashed tension. Unease plied at Han's mind with greater insistence. Something or someone had messed with the kid's head, driving him to this edge of... whatever it was. A spark of anger revived in the pit of Han's stomach.
And damnit, his senses started reeling again, as if his unbalanced sentiments had triggered another flare of rebellion from abused nerves. Bracing himself for the next onslaught, Han counted out the seconds, determined not to lose his hold on reality again. Sharp pangs seized his insides, and without another thought, he pushed Luke's hand down flat over his abdomen.
Almost at once, brilliant warmth leavened through the dizzy shadows that engulfed him. Uncoiling fitful aches into a vibrancy that settled at his center and from there spread its fine heat into every part of his body.
When he resurfaced, he was clutching at Luke, breathing hard and fast with an agitation that hovered somewhere between vertigo and galavanic need gathering in all his nervepaths, urging to the front under Luke's touch.
Gods, and all he wanted was to pull him closer, get a grip on reality again and start right here. Like he could pull them both back from some invisible edge.
Luke pried his fist away from the front of his tunic and linked their fingers. "Han, I'm sorry. I wanted to be there when you were brought out of it, but--"
"You're using the Force on me, right?"
Though he hated the raspy edge in his voice, things made a lot more sense now -- and then again didn't, not from a rational point of view, but he couldn't argue with the clear evidence of his own senses, the loose energy that sprawled through his body like aimless light. The way his awareness of Luke had sharpened in the dark.
"It's all I can do to help you," Luke said in a rush. "We collected all the information there is about hibernation sickness, and that isn't much -- nobody's ever had a chance to study the symptoms closely. That's why there's no reliable medication either..." He drew in a quick breath. "Your entire metabolism's been affected, and stimulants could have all kinds of side-effects--"
"Luke," Han stopped him, blindly reaching for a shoulder. "It's okay. I feel better, and I'm in no state to worry about the way you're doing it."
Soft hair brushed against the back of his hand when he wrapped it around Luke's neck without a thought. Tracing the distant pulse under his fingertips, a swift, jumbled current of confusion. He drew Luke closer against him until a slowly exhaled breath brushed his mouth.
I gotta be out of my mind.
"I mean, thanks -- all right?" Han muttered.
And he wished he could see Luke's face and compare his expression to what he thought it would be. Because right now, all the strangeness had melted off, and touch made a charged connection where nothing else could reach.
He felt the quick start when his mouth closed over Luke's, seeking that powerful, intoxicating warmth. The hesitant response during a moment of amazement that rocked back through him. Then the shockpulse fined down into wanting, and it felt just... right. Like something he should have done a long time ago.
"I've missed you," Luke said, pulling away for a sharp intake of breath.
A small, sudden ache twitched in Han's chest, clenching around another jab of reminiscence, hot and fierce like the glow in the carbon freeze chamber. A single thought pounding through his head when he'd looked at Vader across the rim of the pit. Loyalty and idealism were going to get Luke killed this time, and there was nothing he could do --
"Luke," he murmured, "hell, I didn't think I'd see you again..."
His voice caught, and he urged Luke's mouth back down against his own, before free-wheeling sentimentality got the better of him. The first jolt of surprise had made way to a different kind of tension, and his hands moved into Luke's hair to bring him closer. He breathed with the melting pressure of Luke's lips against his own, filling his lungs deeply, felt them expand with the energizing force of pure oxygen. The kiss grew hungrier, more demanding, and it warmed him through the bone to feel Luke cling to him and respond with the same, heedless craving for contact. A quick, teasing engagement of tongues shot white-hot threads all the way down to Han's groin. A stifled gasp passed between them, and throbs of pulse rose with dizzy suddenness into his throat.
He sagged back, mouth working at Luke's lower lip while his fingers delved into the thick cloth of Luke's tunic. All the disparate needs in him tangled and coalesced into the simple desire for skin under his hands, never mind the protests from the rational part of his brain.
There was no telling when Jabba's guards would come for them. But the hell with it, he'd been dead too long to care.
Hauling Luke closer, he caught him around the waist and felt the clear outline of a swelling erection nudge his thigh. Too hard and bright, desire flared in him, every trapped nerve starved for sensation. And maybe it was a visceral response, the need to hold on to someone he could trust absolutely.
Someone he could trust. A noxious shadow of doubt trailed after the thought, and he twisted away from it with angry defiance. Goddamnit, they'd known each other for years, and somewhere along the way he'd started trusting Luke the way he trusted Chewie and his own ability to talk or shoot himself out of every scrape. He wasn't going to question that now.
"What is it?" Luke's hand framed his jaw, easing the brief start of tension with gentle insistence.
"Nothin'." Han fought to slow his breaths. "Been a long time..."
Something quickened in him at the searching tenderness in Luke's touch, residual stiffness of muscles fading under the brush of fingertips that passed lightly across his face. And for the space of a breath he wondered if Luke acted on something stronger than momentary impulse -- if he'd wanted this before -- though it hardly mattered now.
When their mouths met again, the frantic surge deepened into a lush, lightheaded fever. Lips parting to the pressure of Luke's tongue, Han felt his pulse stumble to the pace of another adrenaline high. Phantom heat coasted along his nerves, opened them to a wild rush of life, while his hands roamed and claimed restlessly. Sculpting Luke's jaw and throat and shoulders out of the dark.
Without breaking the kiss, Luke tugged the shirt free of Han's pants and slipped a hand under it. Gliding an inquisitive touch up his stomach until his fingers raked softly through the sweat-dampened hair on Han's chest. His nipples had stiffened before Luke brushed them with teasing, circling strokes -- and it felt like sunlight falling unfiltered against his bare skin. Han gasped for air before he could stop himself.
The darkness filled with the sound of their shortened breaths and the staccato beats of pulse under his breastbone. With deft motions, Luke pushed the shirt up until it bunched under his armpits. A moment later, his mouth settled over a tightened nipple. The sensation arrowed sharply downward, and need cramped with abrupt urgency in Han's groin.
He bit back a ragged moan, muscles trembling with effort as his arms locked around the kid's back and pulled him up close. As if he could cover himself with Luke's body and absorb all that boundless warmth and blind passion into himself. Sprawled half across him, Luke nipped tender skin at the side of his neck while his hand cruised with clear intent down across Han's belly. Cajoling the muscles that tensed, relaxed, and wound up again in the familiar pattern of arousal.
Through the magnetic pull, Han became aware that his hips were straining upward in the same rhythm, his cock throbbing against the confinement of his pants -- and there was no way in hell he could control his reactions.
But when Luke's palm pressed against his erection, gripped him through the confining cloth, he felt equal hardness grinding down against his thigh. And from the way Luke's other hand clenched around his shoulder, Han could tell he was struggling for a hold just as desperately, adrift in the sightless, boundless dark that enveloped them.
He raised his hands to Luke's face, felt the sharp gusts of breath against his skin and returned a kiss that became an expression of something more than desire midway.
"Don't stop now."
"You think I could?"
There was something in Luke's voice -- husky and excited and incredibly young -- that made his heart kick his ribs with sudden violence. As if the nagging sense of loss were a phantasm, another misconception produced by his carbonite-clouded brain.
Luke slid down his body, his mouth marking a warm trail down Han's stomach while his hands tugged impatiently at obstructing belt and zippers. The tightness in Han's groin climbed another notch. Heat curled deep in his body, lavish and dark and restless, kindling into random flares when Luke exposed his rigid cock to the cooler air, teasing it with a breath.
Han froze at the slow, featherlight strokes of fingertips along the shaft, his throat suddenly too tight to release a sound. Hell, this sure wasn't what he'd expected from the kid who'd looked the other way when someone made a pass at him. Neither flustered nor unapproachable -- simply not interested in anyone's attention, except Leia's. Or so he'd thought at the time. But he'd been out of it for six months, so much had changed, and something was wrong with Luke --
Cut the crap, Han crushed the thought. You just can't handle being so damn helpless, better admit it. Luke's only trying--
Luke wanted him.
The notion jolted him more than it should. He'd never paused to wonder about the reasons why anybody would want him, or the way they demonstrated it. But this...
Han arched up sharply at the first touch of warm lips to his cock, tasting his straining length, then settling over the head with brief, tormenting licks. The swirling tongue, the gentle scrape of teeth lashed into his nervous system, straight through to his bone marrow, and scrambled every thought as Luke sucked him inward. Nothing Han recalled came anywhere near the intensity of sensation, the scalding heat that rolled through his senses and pulled him towards a different kind of vertigo --
Not the carbon freeze. Just Luke.
His fingers slid through soft hair, across the fine pulse points in Luke's temple, following patterns of confused sentiment, of questions that took shape and fell apart, scattering into shivers on his skin. And no words came. The rational part of his mind had unraveled into sensation, his breath too shallow and rasping with the effort not to groan as each pang of pleasure radiated out from his groin in quickening waves.
Luke's head moved in a faster rhythm, tilting back, and Han groaned out anyway as he was taken in more deeply, enclosed almost to the root in claiming, seductive pressure. He could tell Luke didn't have much practice at this, if any, but raw, frantic passion made up for it like a bushfire overtaking carefully kindled flames. Han pushed up into the hard grip Luke kept on his hips, needing to move as his cock pulsed and stretched, his whole body stiffening on the edge of mindless flight.
Through a haze, he felt Luke's fingers slide around the curve of his buttock to probe slowly inward, circling, then pushing gently to rouse tantalizing suggestions in his mind. Han's breath caught hard in his throat. Inner sight flashed on fractured sensations -- and he could almost see what Luke was doing to him -- hands and mouth and irresistible demands opening him to swift incursions of excruciating pleasure, taking control of him. His fist clutched in Luke's hair as a sharp thrill coursed upward and raised ambivalent needs like a frost on his skin. His hips worked fretfully, held down only by Luke's weight across his legs, and he wanted to shout a warning, but only a breathless groan wrenched from his throat.
He bucked with the staccato bursts; his heart hammered out a crazy rhythm as release swept him far and high into a pulsating void. Under his fingers, he felt the movement of muscles in Luke's throat as he swallowed, riding out one surge after the next. And during those moments of weightless suspension, Han could feel the vibrant, healing warmth suffuse him completely, like a shot of light passing through every molecule in his body.
Across a vague, dazzled distance he became aware of careful movements. Luke had levered away to rearrange his clothes, pull up his zippers. Han sagged into darkness that guarded them like an open hand. Every nerve in his body still sang with recuperated life and something else, something that merged question and answer into one.
"Luke..." he whispered roughly, completely out of breath. "Kid, c'mere..."
When Luke moved back up, Han cradled him against his side, felt the cadence of their breathing blend in a sauntering rhythm, the taut-wired tension in Luke's muscles. His hand snaked down to Luke's groin and cupped the trapped erection, squeezing gently. A gasp warmed the side of his neck.
"Somethin' I can do for you?" Han murmured, already fumbling for the fasteners when Luke's hand closed around his wrist.
"I don't think we've got time for that." Uneven breaths separated the words, but the pressure of Luke's grip didn't relent. "And I... I don't -- I can't afford losing my head now..."
Strange as it was, those words and the short, winded laugh that trailed them were the first sensible things he'd heard from Luke.
"Shame..." Han leaned in for another slow, thorough kiss, while his hand slid reluctantly to a neutral position on Luke's waist. Too goddamn bad that Luke was right about not taking any more insane risks.
"Maybe next time," he suggested, mouth brushing Luke's hair.
A strange, choked sound rose out of the blackness on his right. Objection or disbelief or something as disconcerting as a stifled sob. Luke pressed his face against the curve of Han's neck and shoulder for another moment, then pulled away abruptly. When he sat up, coolness moved back in like a shadow curling against Han's side.
"What?" Han straightened his shirt and pushed to a sitting position while he strained, absurdly, to see something in the solid gloom.
"There's so much I need to do..." Luke's voice had acquired that languid, drifting note again, but this time Han caught something in it that started a small chill at the back of his neck. A tranced kind of terror.
"Sure you're not playing around with something dangerous?"
He could almost hear intangible shutters snap back into place. "If I am, then that's how it has to be," Luke said shortly. "There is no other way."
"Yeah? And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Don't ask. I can't talk about it right now."
And if this was what being a Jedi meant, Han was pretty sure he didn't like it one damn bit. A short jab of annoyance disrupted the sprawling contentment and confidence that had filled him only moments before. But something else lingered in every nerve fiber, the knowledge of a deeper connection, a possibility...
"Somebody's coming!" A tight whisper broke into his thoughts.
"Great timing," Han growled, but his mind almost went into another spin as the notion unraveled into alternate scenarios and impossible coincidence. Shunting it all aside, he focused exclusively on coordinating movement and intent.
Luke's hands reached for his own, pulled him to his feet and supported him a moment longer. The small, almost imperceptible difference caught at his mind again and struck home like a heated plasma blast. Luke's left hand was still slightly damp with perspiration, warm and not entirely steady. But his right hand had cooled to appropriate temperatures, perfectly adjusted. Better than real, like a top-notch replica. Or a bionic prosthesis.
The thought slid the bottom out of Han's stomach. Stared him in the face with dry, sickening fact. Somewhere between their departure from Hoth and here, Luke had lost a hand, and it was all Han could do not to let anything show. For reasons of his own, Luke didn't want him to realize. Numbed, he stood motionless while Luke refastened the binders around his wrists.
"Ready?" Luke asked softly, stepping away from him.
"Ready as can be," Han returned with nothing but the fully automated part of his mind. Cold anger clutched in his stomach like a fist.
And what else was there that Luke hadn't told him?
"Han..." A hand brushed his arm with halting gentleness. "Trust me."
The sound of footfalls rang through the door with hollow metallic echoes and stirred dormant battle reflexes back into action. No time for imponderables now, and no time for all the incredulous rage that churned just below his fraying control. It would all have to wait until later.
If we come out of this alive.
If? Han pushed his shoulders back and realigned his thoughts to the demands of the moment. They would have to, period.
Relief and exhaustion claimed Han with equal force as he stared out through the Falcon's viewport, getting drunk on the sight of bottomless space before him, the distant burn of stars slightly blurred around the edges. The raspy song of acceleration wrapped around him, thrummed in his bones with unlimited promises. They were hurtling away from Tatooine, headlong into the future.
"How do you feel?" Leia's hands settled on his shoulders, articulating the concern she'd kept out of her tone.
"Like I've come home," Han muttered before he could think about it.
"Is that why you're so far away?"
She'd aimed at lighthearted irony and couldn't quite pull it off, but Han pretended not to notice. "Hey, gimme a moment to adjust, will ya?"
I've been dead for six months.
Hell. Too much clawed at him, too many disparate thoughts and sentiments pulled him into different directions, and he'd need much more than a few moments to start making sense of how he felt.
Leia's hands slid off his shoulders, soft like unspoken regrets. He had no idea what to tell her. He didn't even know if he could explain anything to himself. Instead, he sagged back in the navigator's chair and kept filling his sight, his mind, his senses with scattered silver and lucid blackness. Next to him, Chewie was busy double-checking vectors and coordinates. Only minutes now, until they could make the jump to hyperspace.
A frizzle of static brought him back to attention. Leia had opened a channel, and after another moment, Luke's voice filtered back over comlink, a tinny version of calm reassurance. Before Leia could sign off, Han leaned towards the pickup.
"Thanks for comin' after me." He breathed in quickly. "I owe you one."
Whenever, he added for himself, hoping Luke got the message. And the next time, he'd make sure he dragged some answers out of him. The channel dissolved into static. Damn Jedi.
Han tugged at the faded edges of annoyance and frustration, but something had fallen into place at last. Nothing he could put a name to, but it was edged in light, that strange, subtle radiance weaving its threads through his body and mind.
Savage energy shuddered through the Falcon's hull as the hyperdrive kicked in, and Han leaned back in his seat.
Home.
Whenever.
I owe you my life, now.
Before him, steady pinpoints of stars burst into pure white light.