Author's Note: This will be a four-part story updated on Fridays. Language warnings apply. And one last thing: please remember that fanfic is freely written and freely given. Reviews are most certainly welcome. Thank you, my friends!

Part One:

It was a celebration of sorts.

An improvised bar, a few Rogues, the crew of the Millennium Falcon, a couple hands of Sabacc. If anyone bothered to ask why the impromptu celebration had occurred, Han Solo would be hard-pressed to give a credible reason for it. Someone's mission had been a success. They had alcohol. They were still alive. Take your pick. They didn't need much of a reason.

Their little enclave of the Alliance was stationed on a planet only designated by the alphanumeric P-X77. It was awful: a muggy atmosphere, humid, dank and home to the galaxy's largest species of flying insect. Han felt like he was sweating from the inside-out, like he was constantly wearing a sodden coat. They ran drills in the morning before dawn or after sunset when the troops weren't drowning in their own sweat. All technology had to be adjusted for moisture-retention. Everyone was miserable. Everyone.

The worst part was that they'd spent more time at this base than any other since Han had started smuggling for the Alliance. In the past two years, they'd lived in much more comfortable bases that had been discovered and abandoned in a matter of months. But this hellhole? Damn Imperials couldn't find it with a map and two good hands. Han half-expected a jaded Alliance recruit to put out a distress signal to the local moff just to force an evacuation. He was tempted to do it himself.

So it wasn't a surprise that the elite of Alliance Starfighter Command overran his galley the day before the Falcon was scheduled to depart for Eretraa. The group had over twenty years of combat experience and four sober brain cells between them. Han felt a little like a chaperone at an Academy party: watching with mild amusement as their youth and vigor spilled all over his limited entertainment area. The kids were sprawled out over the holochess table and the booth around it, loudly talking over each other and tossing back any and all alcohol they could find. Han was miffed to see his secret stash of Corellian whiskey had been found and pilfered in the raid on his galley.

Upon entering the galley, Chewie had taken one look at the assembly, huffed something about finding a drink suitable for a Wookiee and left for his cabin. And so Han was alone with the kids, drinking him out of ship and home and not giving a damn about it.

He sat at the navigation console, his back to the equipment and his feet propped up on a spare shipping container he'd brought into the hold for that exact purpose. He regarded the scene in front of him with nostalgic amusement and remembered nights like this one from a different life, from what felt like a completely different person.

How in the ever-loving fuck had he survived to be the semi-responsible adult in a situation like this? It beggared belief.

"Are you degenerates going to restock my liquor before I take off tomorrow?" he asked, good-natured and with a knowing lift to his eyebrow.

The nearest said degenerate—a kid named Wes Janson that Han had only met last month—grinned like an idiot from his place at the holochess table. "Nope."

"Serves you right," Wedge Antilles said. "Charging us for your services."

Hobbie Klivian nodded. "Rebels share."

Han rolled his eyes but threw a container of Argin nuts at the group nonetheless. If the kids didn't get some food in them, they'd still be drunk when they reported for duty in the early afternoon. "Good thing I'm not a rebel, then. I'd go broke."

More broke than he already was, that is.

The last of the freeloaders shuffled around the bend in the ring corridor, overhearing Han's last remark. Daybreak had found Luke Skywalker a little drunk, a lot exhausted and very amused at his squadron mates as they congregated in the Falcon's galley. With bleary eyes, he turned his head and grinned at Han.

"Oh, shut it," Luke said. "We've been hearing it for two years now."

The kid was filling out, Han thought as he watched Luke take a seat on an overturned crate. Sandy hair spilled over his head in the usual mop and his eyes were tinged with just enough world-weariness to mark him as a seasoned soldier. His face looked thinner to Han, too. The farmboy had seen and done things that the wet-behind-the-ears nobody Han had picked up at Mos Eisley could never have imagined. Confronting the reality of warfare and experiencing the loss of people you knew took their toll on the most genuine of people.

Han took a swig from his ale, grimaced when he realized it was empty. "You'll keep hearing it if you continue stealing from respectable businessmen."

The group laughed and even Han had to grin. Though he didn't want to admit it, he knew they were right. They would drink his liquor and he'd find a moment to restock it when he was off-base. Then he'd groan with good grace the next time they all managed a collective night off and drank him dry. This was a pattern: not one he'd ever given permission for, but certainly the way things went down with the Alliance.

"Sharing with you animals feels a lot like robbery, if you ask me," Han continued.

Luke threw Han an indignant look. "We do not rob."

"Rebels share," Hobbie helpfully repeated.

Han launched himself from the nav station and ambled into the galley. They really were kids: ten years younger than him in most cases. Full of hopeful idealism and eagerness to save the galaxy. Luke was the most seasoned one of the bunch.

Goddamn. How things had changed in just a few years.

Despite that, they were fun to have around, though it'd be nice to hang onto a bottle of whiskey for more than a couple weeks. And it was kind of nice to have a place for them to relax. There sure as hell wasn't a decent mess hall anywhere on this dump of a planet. And even if they had one, it wouldn't serve alcohol.

Come to think of it, maybe the problem with most of the Alliance bases was a lack of booze. At least on Carida there'd been cantinas nearby to dull the inevitable ethical crises one dealt with at the Academy.

"So Eretraa, huh?" Wedge said, interrupting Han's train of thought. "That's a sweet run."

Han grunted, reaching into the recently renovated cooling unit for more ice. "It ain't sweet. It'll be boring as hell."

"If it isn't crash landing and being stranded for three weeks, it's boring as hell," Luke quoted. "You need a different rubric for excitement, Han."

"I got a great rubric for excitement," Han insisted, crossing his arms over his chest. "And I crash landed once. That isn't even a record in this room."

"Twice," Wes corrected, holding up two fingers.

Han thought back, then shook his head. "No, the other one doesn't count. That was Leia's fault."

A loud chorus followed his proclamation. Several voices chimed in at once, a wave of contradictions that bounced off the hull like the bass of a jizz band. The immediate blowback caught Han by surprise though he didn't move a muscle. He'd be damned if he showed any such shock in front of the kids.

"Leia's fault," Hobbie crowed louder than the others. "It's always Leia's fault."

Han opened his hands, work-roughed palms up and fingers splayed. He wasn't sure what the Rogues were up to, but it sure as hell sounded like they were hitting on a familiar point. He knew about their betting pool; he knew about their asinine speculations. The only reason they were vaguely hinting at it now was because they were drunk. And if not truly drunk, they were too uninhibited for their usual slightly-awed fear of him.

It also sounded strange to hear someone beside Han and Luke say Leia. Everyone else stuck to Her Highness or Princess. If they were addressing her directly, she was often Ma'am. Han understood why, of course: the woman inspired her own brand of awe. And he couldn't blame the guys for that awe; he'd experienced the feeling more than once while on missions with her. Hell, he'd experienced it the first day he'd met her, when she'd grabbed Luke's blaster and shot them an escape route into a garbage compactor.

He'd told Luke that Leia had a lot of spirit. There was much more than just her spirit to admire. Woman had courage enough for ten Alliances and was ballsy enough to inspire it in others.

Han made a point to never use her proper honorifics as a matter of pride, not because he didn't think she deserved them. It wasn't his style to call anyone ma'am, except in a few very specific circumstances relating to …. things he hadn't done with Leia.

Yet, his less-than-chivalrous nature whispered.

That thought spiralled into a dozen others that he quickly tried to suppress. He knew that path well and now was not the time to obsess over a woman he had absolutely no hope in seducing. No matter how tantalizing she was. Or courageous. Or brilliant.

Han scowled. "Of course it's always her fault. Her missions somehow go wrong nine times out of ten. Those odds speak for themselves."

"So she's…. What? Crash landing you on purpose?" Wes asked,

"Maybe."

Luke pointed a finger at Han. "You were the one that got caught on Manna Ki."

Han exhaled his breath in a huff. "I didn't get caught. I got jumped waiting for Her Worship to get the rest of the manifests from her contact."

The minute Han had met Leia's contact on Manna Ki he hadn't trusted him. The slimeball had stared at her breasts with such naked intent that Han had considered bashing his head in as a shot across the bow. He knew that was a gross overreaction and he hadn't breathed a word of it to Leia. But as he'd waited for her to return from her second meeting with the lecherous slug, Han had recalibrated the sight on the DL-44. Just in case the creep had gotten handsy with his princess.

The princess. The. Not his.

"If she'd stuck to the timeline we would have been long gone before the Imps showed up," Han hurried to add. "Manna Ki was all on her."

"What about the time the Falcon got stranded in interstellar space without supplies?" Wedge asked. "Pretty sure the princess isn't in charge of stocking your ship."

"That could happen to anybody."

"But it doesn't happen to anybody. It happens to you and Leia," Luke said. He was still pointing the damn finger. "I've gone on plenty of missions with her and I haven't once had to blast my way out of a spice den."

"Hey, now—" Han started.

"Or nearly died from some crazy new disease that Two-One-Bee ended up naming after you," Hobbie added.

"—That was not my fault!"

"Or taken hostage by some weird prince who wanted to marry her," Wes said.

Well, fuck. They had him there. From across the galley, Luke had the good grace to look sheepish. He'd been part of that mission, too, and there had been an escalation when the prince ordered their deaths as a show of strength for the woman he thought was his betrothed. Luke had been amused; Han had been homicidal. The situation had only devolved from there.

Han cocked an eyebrow at Luke, silently blaming the younger man for what Han knew had been his own fault.

Oblivious to the silent look between Han and Luke, Wedge raised his glass as if he were going to make a toast. "Hobbie and I took her to a drop-off on Sullust last week with no problem. It was really nice. She bought us a drink while we waited for her."

"Good for you," Han said.

He poured himself a shot of whiskey, not nearly drunk enough for this discussion. The Rogues clearly thought they knew something. Han was sure they were just fishing around for information. They couldn't know; nobody knew. Except Chewie, who had been forcibly quieted by virtue of his life debt. And that was how it was going to stay. Until this whatever it was between his fantasies and the last princess of Alderaan cooled off, no one would know.

He'd made sure of that.

Luke's slightly-glassy eyes found Han's again, and that infernal finger was back, wagging in Han's direction like the kid was saying something new. "You have to admit that things don't go the way they're supposed to when the two of you work together," he said.

"What do you know?" Han said, and tossed back his whiskey. It burned down his throat and settled in his chest: a nice, dry heat.

He had no control over viruses that infected them on strange worlds, or on crazy princes in marriage-heat. Rather than dumping all the blame on him, perhaps they should congratulate him for surviving the missions at all. Not a single one of these kids could've made it out of some of those scrapes.

Leia only commissioned Han for the worst of the worst missions on the Alliance docket. The ones no one else would take. The ones for which normal, sane people didn't sign up. When she needed to do something truly dangerous, when her objective required a wide skill set and the fastest ship in the galaxy, she called him up. Simple. By the very nature of those missions, they were doomed to some sort of failure. That Han and Leia survived at all was a miracle. Half the time the mission departure sheet didn't even bother to list a return date next to their names. It just said: Leia Organa, Han Solo, Chewbacca, ETA unknown.

Which in military slang meant something like: yeah, good luck with that. Pal.

"Don't get testy, Solo. We're just pointing out the facts," Hobbie said.

Han scowled and stared daggers at his shot glass. "You take her to nice, calm worlds like Sullust and I wind up in fucking Lagalos with no food and lots of cannibals." Han was pissed, past the point of caring. "Cannibals. I get called in for the shady shit. Not my fault the woman has me starring in her death wish."

Janson eyed Han with a drunken sageness that would have been funny if the conversation had been about anything else. Wes crawled up the back of the booth and lugged his feet onto the game table. His boots made an audible clunk and Han grimaced at the flecks of mud that flew everywhere.

"No, my friend," Janson said. "Not a death wish. A shag wish."

Han was thrown for a moment, the word shag such an immature term for fuck that it took him a moment to process what Janson was saying. How long had it been since someone had used the word shag in front of him? Seemed like decades.

Once he connected the dots, Han spread his hands wide in self-proclamation. "Can you blame her?"

Bravado and brashness had carried him through much of his adult life. If there was one thing Han Solo knew, it was how to be insufferably cocky until people believed in the persona he gave them. It was a front, an intentional deception, and it had served him well from the streets of Corellia to the cantinas on Nar Shaddaa.

It wasn't any different from, say, inflating his Imperial capture reward by a few million credits when meeting with a dangerous contact. Similarly ridiculous but useful. Sometimes the only thing he'd had to his name had been his confidence, no matter how false it might be.

So who would blame Leia for wanting to fuck him? Honestly, he would. She was smarter than that.

Janson wasn't finished, though, sensing blood in the water and diving in for the kill. "But the princess isn't the interesting one here. You, Solo, have been acting all sorts of strange lately."

Han dropped his hands to his sides and leaned back against the hull. He glanced at Luke without thinking, checking the kid's reaction. Luke hid his mouth behind his hand but didn't hide the amusement in his eyes.

"Like the time you let her land the Falcon," Hobbie said.

Wedge crossed his arms over his chest. "You threatened to push me out an open airlock the one time I offered to take her into lightspeed."

"I might still do it," Han grumbled. "Any of you fools stop to think she's just plain better at the controls than you?"

Another round of loud denials, the Rogues' own brand of confidence echoing around the hold. Han found it amusing that even in responding to an affront to their piloting skills—an offense that could get you killed on Corellia if you weren't careful—not a single one of them disputed Leia's capability at the helm. They were just as proficient at their own bluster as he was in his, in their own way. Their protest was edged with good humor, underlined with the full respect Leia deserved.

Luke's voice rose to the top of the pack. "That's low, Han."

"And speaking of you," he pointed to Luke. "If anyone is guilty of anything regarding Her Worship, it's you."

Han caught the delighted, shocked faces of the four barely-men sitting at his table. Janson muttered a quiet oh shit. Hobbie's mouth gaped wide, looking ridiculous, and his eyes shined bright with gleefully surprised humor. Wedge looked like a spectator at a smashball game, head rotating back and forth between Han and Luke as he tried to catch all of the signals between them.

But Han was looking squarely at Luke. And Han was not amused.

The kid was growing up, sure: that was obvious. Han and Chewie had invested a lot of good time and money in getting him up to speed. Drinking and gambling and the rest of the fun an older brother would have helped with: that was their role in this party. Luke was uninitiated in the more scandalous things in life, but his damn homeworld and relative isolationism had made it difficult for him to truly partake in the fun. And there had always been a part of Han that wanted Luke to experience adult entertainment in the safe way Han himself hadn't had growing up.

But Han wasn't so sold on Luke that he couldn't call the kid out on his hypocrisy.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Luke said, opening his hands and looking like a saint. "Leia is my friend."

Han put his hands on his hips. "Bullshit. You fought me on it the first day I met you, Kid."

Luke's eyes flashed. Han couldn't tell if it was from embarrassment or anger, but the chill that swept down his spine warned him that if he pressed the issue Luke might not react well. This was not the first time they'd referenced the silent gentlemen's agreement they had about Leia. Han decided to back off, leave the pissing contest alone for the moment. He could take the heat and let it roll off his back. It looked like Luke might be feeling a bit sensitive about it at the moment.

Unfortunately Luke's mates didn't have the same understanding as Han and Luke had.

"Whoa!" Janson said, eyes glued to Luke. "You pulled rank on Solo on day one, Boss?"

"Balls of durasteel, man," Hobbie added.

Luke didn't move a muscle but said, "I didn't know any better. He was pretty much stuck in jerk mode that day."

"Yeah, well," Han grumbled.

Leia had tested his nerves and not a damn thing had gone to plan on Luke's charter. Between the two of them—and Chewie's instant love for them both, the traitor—he'd had no patience for any of it. Ferrying a crazy old man and his young sidekick hadn't seemed like much work when they'd started but by the time Leia had started yelling, he had been done with the lot of them.

"Besides," Luke continued, "I bowed out of that fight a long time ago."

All Han could manage was a sneer. "Sure, Kid."

It wasn't that easy to stop aiming for Leia. Han knew that intimately. She had a habit of sticking around his head, coloring the inside of his eyelids. She hung around every fantasy, insinuated herself into each and every last one until he couldn't stop thinking about her. Every word she spoke, every look she gave, every time she pulled a blaster or commanded a group or risked her life, he was ... lost.

And the quiet things did him in, too. The hand that flew to her hair when he startled her, like it was her most prized possession. Her big, brown eyes: equal parts fierce and kind. The low pitch of her voice in those sporadic moments of quiet friendship, the one that wrapped around him like a cool breeze and made him feel important in the galaxy.

So the kid was lying through his teeth if he was saying she wasn't doing the exact same thing to him.

"No, really. That ship launched months ago," Luke pressed. "She's just my friend."

Han stared at Luke, trying to comprehend how the kid had managed the impossible. Bowed out of the fight? Meaning he'd stopped mooning over the princess? What the hell kind of Jedi magic was this?

Part of him was jealous; it'd be nice to get a decent night's sleep without first jerking off to images of the most infuriating woman in the galaxy. He honestly couldn't imagine.

And that was the most terrible thing about Luke finding reprieve from the chase. They'd both known it was a battle neither of them would win. They knew that she had her own agenda, her own life, and that she wasn't interested in playing any games with them. It hadn't been a contest. It hadn't been a fight. It'd been mutual frustration that this woman—this incredible woman—was so far from either of their orbits that being unintentionally plagued by her was a communal weight. Everyone was in love with Leia and no one had any right to be.

But if Luke had figured out how to be just her friend, then Han was alone in that hell.

Deep in his own thoughts, Han only came to his senses when Chewie's lumbering footfalls reached him. The Wookiee growled and leaned against the hull closest to Han.

"We were just listening to Luke lie about chasing Leia," Han answered him. "Says he gave up the fight."

Luke shook his head. "Look, she's alone a lot. I figured she didn't need both of us pawing all over her all the time."

The Rogues cackled, and Han suddenly remembered that there were more people on the Falcon than just him, Luke and Chewie. Jarred, he watched the three pilots throw their hands in the air and make out like their commander had pulled a bottle of Whyren's Reserve out of his pocket. They hollered loud enough to reach outside the Falcon's hulls where the morning shift was just about to begin.

Beneath the din, Chewie growled quietly: a warning. Han ignored him and pointed an innocent finger at himself. "I don't paw all over her."

"Right," Wes said.

Hobbie could barely breathe, he was laughing so hard. "Sure."

"Whatever you say, Han," Wedge finished.

The trio of hypocrites. This was ridiculous. He pawed all over her? He was only one on this fucking rock that treated her like a person. Who put her on a pedestal, who thought she was made of glass, ready to break at the first sign of trouble? Not him. Never him.

He fought with her and pushed her buttons and made her feel like everyone else. He was probably the only one on base who felt guilt for his attraction to her. Beneath all of their chemistry, their spectacular pyrotechnics, she truly was his friend, somehow and without permission.

Maybe that was why he was so pissed at Luke. Jealousy. How was Luke able to stop feeling that attraction to Leia? Had the kid escaped the ensuing guilt that came with being half in love with her? The kind that confused Han, because he'd never before felt the need to suppress his baser instincts. It took him hours to suppress the effect she had on him and fucking Luke could just shrug it off?

How? How?

"I'm no worse than the rest of you," he said, anger lacing his tone. "You all want to fuck her just as much as I do. You're just too intimidated to show it."

Luke shrugged and Wedge eyed them both. "I think you're both crazy. The princess has better things to do than sleep with any of us."

"That's right," a rich female voice said from Han's right. "I do."

Silence. Full, complete, pregnant silence. Gaping mouths, wide eyes, the weighted feeling of being caught. A running undercurrent of oh, shit, oh, fuck, what did she hear?

Shame. So much shame.

Han shut his eyes. He'd heard the footsteps too late. What word had he used? Shag, right? Not fuck, please not fuck—

He felt Chewie bristle next to him, shifting weight from one foot to the other in an uncharacteristic display of discomfort. The air became heavy around them, freezing in the climate-controlled environment of the Falcon. A deep unease rooted them to their spots: no one moved.

What did she hear?

Han opened his eyes. The Rogues stared at him with varying degrees of shock on their faces. Janson looked downright sick. Chewie turned around and grunted softly to their early morning visitor.

Leia Organa stood in the corridor, feet planted wide and hands loose at her sides. Her hair was tied into a sharp braid that disappeared from view down her back. She pursed her lips, the picture of cool impenetrability, but her eyes were angry, livid. Brighter than the fluorescent lights above their heads. She took in their faces one by one, shrewd and discerning. Han had the impression she was making a list. Leia liked lists. She was always making lists, even in disastrous situations, even in the midst of blaster bolts and stormtroopers.

This was not a good list to be on.

The only one who seemed totally at ease with the newcomer was Luke. He waved a hand and said brightly, "Hi, Leia."

"I'm sorry to interrupt your—" she seemed to struggle for a word, "—your rec time. But I need Captain Solo's signature on this transfer manifest."

She held out a datapad to him. Her hand was steady, but he couldn't tell if that was because she really wasn't affected by what she'd heard or if she was compensating the gross violation with pure Organa grit.

Her wide eyes locked onto his. Big, brown and hurt. Another wave of shame washed over him as he took the datapad from her, deep and biting. She'd heard him. He could tell by the look she was giving him, the depth of control she was maintaining over her reactions. She'd heard him say he wanted to fuck her, that they all wanted to fuck her, and this was like watching a door slam shut.

Because, yes, she starred in every single one of his fantasies: every night, all the time. But so had other people before her. Fantasies weren't new.

The difference was that sometimes he fantasized about waking up next to her and tracing the cascade of hair running down the pillow beneath her head. Or the one where she locked eyes with him while she was giving her daily briefs and just smiled at him. Like she was genuinely happy to see him there.

Last week he caught himself thinking of what it felt like when she talked with him. Sometimes it happened like that on missions before things turned ugly. They just talked. And she looked so beautiful and she was just so fucking smart and didn't need a damned soul to do anything for her. So capable. God, he loved that.

But she hadn't heard him say any of those things. She'd heard him casually identify her as something to be fucked. It played into every terrible persona he'd tried to be with her. The ones he'd stopped using. And suddenly he was afraid he'd been too good at it for her to believe any differently of him.

He signed the manifest and handed the datapad to her but still couldn't think of anything to say. Chewie made a soft noise next to Han, urging him to fix the situation. But Han's brain wasn't working at any calculable speed. He didn't have a thought in his head that wasn't no, please.

"Thank you," she said.

Han watched her leave: one small silhouette walking through the ring corridor. It wasn't until he heard Wedge exhale that Han's brain snapped into action. He rocketed forward, following her through the corridor, fists clenched and without a single cogent thought in his head.

In the docking bay the wide cavern bustled with tired mechanics. A deckhand slapped Han's back as he jogged toward Leia, but Han didn't respond. He was intent on the woman in front of him. Her small stride was hurried, syncopated footsteps on the deck plating. Uneven. Her hand gripped the datapad to her chest. She looked so small among the Alliance war machine, so stark an irony that she took his breath away.

"Hey, Leia. Wait!" he shouted.

She stopped and turned to him, datapad still clutched in her hand. "I have much to do before we take off tomorrow, Captain Solo."

He felt sick, shame and disgust heavy in his chest. Battered, he tried to make sense of her expression, the odd look in her eyes as she stared at him.

When he didn't immediately answer, she blinked and then turned, ready to walk away. A rush of adrenaline flooded his system and before he knew what he was going to say, his mouth was open and he was talking.

"I know, but, uh," he faltered, "That wasn't … you weren't supposed to hear–"

She sighed and turned around again to face him as he trailed off. She looked at him, really looked at him: her eyes a mess of anger, hurt and stubbornness. Smothered fire, almost. He was struck by the naked emotion of it, like she could flip a switch and suddenly she was human. How often did she keep the switch unflipped? His ribcage felt too small for his lungs, breathing too fast at the thought of such control.

"It's nothing I haven't heard before," she said. Her tone was dismissive but her eyes were still captivating in the worst way possible: disappointment, shame and acceptance hot in her small body.

Without another word she turned and strode out of the docking bay, steps now even and sure, arms swinging with the datapad locked in her right hand. Energy crackled beneath the line of her back. Han watched her until she disappeared, swallowed by the Command Center's walls, and felt the bald face of self-disgust envelope him.