Dedicated to the brilliant LASOS, as with all my Han/Leia stuffs. Hope you enjoy, hun!

Five Times Han Solo Fell In Love
(And one time he didn't.)
by Mathematica

One.

The first time Han Solo falls in love, he's seventeen, old for his age and in way over his head and she's twenty four, bored of the world and is his boss's youngest daughter.

There's something about her that captivates him, about the lipstick stains she leaves on glass rims, about the way she swings her hips leftrightleft when she walks past him until he can feel his pulse racing just looking at her, about the way her hands squeeze his as she passes him a spanner, her touch burning, like his cheeks. And it starts almost too suddenly -- one minute, it's sharing a scorching glance across the crowded hold and the next it's being cramped up together in the hyperdrive cupboard, his back against the wall, breathing in the scent of her skin as she guides his inexperienced fingers lower, and he dares to think it'll last

(faster, she hisses, her sugarcream nails raking lashes on his back)

forever, but it ends just as suddenly as well.

"You are dismissed." She tells him formally, impersonally, and he tries not to think about the last time he saw her, when that white shirt was stained with his sweat and she was groaning into his mouth and

"I see."

she was shaking under his grasp, smooth. Her pen falls to the floor,

(metal, harsh, just like it was when his back scraped against it and she was on top of him, squeezing her thighs tighter while his short nails uselessly scratched the grooves)

and he hands it back to her without meeting her eyes as she walks away, angular hips taunting him.

"I --"

(don't know your name)
(don't care)
(think I love you)

"--'m sorry, I --"

She walks away, heels clicking. Those hips keep on swaying, swaying, swaying.

Two.

The second time Han Solo falls in love, he's twenty one, using a false name and under arrest and she's dark-eyed, a spitfire and completely off her head.

"You're somebody." She slurs smoothly, scarred hands shaking as she inhales.

"Damn right." He says as the drug widens her irises until they're as wide as they'll be when he's on top of her, her mouth open in a silent scream as she clutches at him with her hands like he's a god, like he single-handedly created the whole damn universe, but

(he'll think that he had when she moves those hands downwards and)

he doesn't know this yet.

"Vykk Draygo. Charmed."

And she doesn't simper, doesn't pout, doesn't

(kiss him then and there)

blush and go stupid like those whores that come for ten-a-credit down Coronet. And he realises that she's high and he's not and that come morning, only one of them will remember. So he moves in closer to her, so close that he can smell the drugs on her breath, see her hands shake slightly in her delirium, see her eyes roll like black marbles in her head, static.

"You're charmed, too." He whispers, mouth so close to her own that he can feel each shudder as she inhales.

"Yes."

And then it's six months later and he realises that he's still with her, that he mightpossiblymaybe

(love her, and)

regret leaving her, even for this too-short time.

"It's six months, Han." She consoles him. "And think -- on Carida, you'll get famous! A hero of the Empire!"

"Lieutenant Han Solo."

"Captain Han Solo."

"Not yet, Bria."

"I've always liked a man in uniform."

Their goodbye kisses take longer than they should and he almost misses the shuttle. He thinks

(knows)

that this will just about foreshadow everything that occurs with this stupid empire and his damnedtohell life, but he ignores it. Laughs, instead.

And when he returns from Carida, the apartment is empty.

"I'm sorry, Han." The letter says. "I love you too much to stay."

He never sees her again. The ring falls out of his pocket, denting the floor.

Interlude.

The officer paces the floor, boots thump-thumping in time with his pulse.

"Your duty was to the Empire."

He bites his already-bleeding lip. Thinks about duty. About work and rules and

(slamming that Rebel against the wall until he screamed, blood pouring from his broken nose as he died and)

damnedtoallhell morality.

"Yes, sir."

The officer towers over him, cracked fingernails rimmed with blood, eyes as dark as the bruises that cover his back

(just like that Rebel's back when they were through, black from the beating and the probe droids and damn you, scum, I'm not gonna tell you anything while).

"You failed in that."

And he sees only his

(hands as he grabbed the Rebel to interrogate him, remembers how fucking steady they had been as he had ripped though his)

past, something that he'd rather forget about, buried deepdeepdeep below, like ice in a glacier.

"Yes, sir."

The officer eyes him with contempt, like

(the Rebel had, with those bloodshot eyes as he said, "This is your first time, isn't it?")

all good superiors should. "You failed."

"Yes, sir."

And then the officer pauses, halts, actually looks at him like he's a bloody person, except he's looking through the wrong end of the telescope and all he can see are the whites of his eyes and the stubble on his chin and the ripped off medals leaving scars on his

(chest, like the Rebel's chest when he was through with his)

shirt, the threads frayed and broken.

"Do you love your Empire, Solo?"

("Fuck your Empire, Lieutenant. Fuck it to hell.")

"No." A pause. "Sir."

Three.

The third time Han Solo falls in love, he's twenty five, bitter and drunk on a win and she's ancient, battered and illegally won. But he couldn't care less because he's just pulled one over that Lando Calrissian, and that knowledge is too sweet to ignore.

"The Millennium Falcon." Lando spits, ever the sore loser. "She's yours."

And he doesn't gloat, doesn't whoop, doesn't even bat an eyelid. Instead he smirks, shoots the hull with his DL-44 and says,

"Damn, what a hunk of junk!"

(He supposes the black eye was worth it, after that.)

Four.

The fourth time Han Solo falls in love, he's twenty nine and cynical with eyes too old for his age and she's nineteen, sharp tongued and leader of a suicidal cause that he doesn't dare to admire.

"Wonderful girl! Either I'm going to kill her, or

(we'll end up locked in the hyperdrive cupboard together, backs pressed against the walls, breath warming each other's faces as we swear that)

I'm beginning to like her!"

Of course, what he doesn't know is that true love is something gradual, something sought after and worked towards and fairy-tale perfect. It's three years before they even admit that there might be something there, something infinitely more beautifulpermanent than any of the other times he dared to think of

(the morning after or)

love, and afterwards, they lie together, damp with sweat, and wonder why it took them years to act on what took a split second to occur. But of course, it takes a carbon-freezing and torture and blindness and total war to goad him into proposing, because he is nothing short of

(terrified)

impossibly stubborn, and she is likewise. And the irony, the bitter thing, is that he has spent his whole life loving women and leaving them, but the one thing that he truly fears is

("I'm sorry, Han." The letter says. "I love you too much to stay.")

that.

"I love you." He whispers into her hair.

(For the first time in his life, he actually means it.)

"I know." She says.

And she does know.

He loves her so much that he thinks that he can never fall in love again.

He is wrong.

Five.

The fifth time that Han Solo falls in love, he is thirty eight, proud and totally overwhelmed and they are two hours old, fragile, and nothing short of perfect.

And he still has his worries, just like anybody else. He wonders whether he can keep them safe. He wonders whether he will

(laugh about this in twenty years time: and then your Uncle Luke got so drunk that he fell off the chair and)

be able to set a good example, when he had none of his own.

"Jaina." Leia smiles. "Jacen."

They seem too fragile to comprehend normal speech, its volume, the syllables harsh, held like chunks of metal on the tongue. And he has too much to say, and too little time to say it in. So, instead, he

(tries not to cry and)

bends down and whispers

"I love you."

(And for the second time in his life, he actually means it.)

And hopes that they know. They do.