Han Solo groaned softly. No, his eyelids weren't welded shut. Just extremely reluctant to open. Grimacing, he squinted across his cabin - Who left the lights turned up so high? - and hastily shut his eyes again. His over-loaded optic nerves were not the only parts of his anatomy having trouble facing the day; his queasy stomach and throbbing head also suggested that full awareness was not a state to rush into, this morning.
Or whatever time this was.
His brain, still coming round, more than waking up, wasn't ready to work that out yet.
Okay, concentrate on the good news first. He was in his cabin on the Falcon, lying on his side in his own bunk, even if he couldn't recall getting into it. He did at least remember why his ship's engines were silent; the Falcon was berthed in a hangar aboard the Rebel cruiser Sa'Tiochrahan.
But if the engines were quiet, the whirring of the air-recycler and the occasional clicks from the cabin thermostat were decibels louder than usual. These normally muted sounds seemed to be echoing back and forth between the bulkheads and the interior of Han’s skull, as if in an amplifier, making his head ache more with each pass. Still, apart from that and the quiet complaints from his guts, he didn't feel too bad. So this monumental headache, bone-dry mouth and quavering stomach weren’t the aftermath of a blaster attack or of being dosed with truth drugs or riot-control gas.
No, this was just a really bad hangover.
Having established that, the next important item to consider was who was lying beside him. Someone's hand was resting on Han's chest, and a pleasantly warm body was curled up against his back. A warm, naked and very obviously male body; a solid erection prodded Han in the small of his back as whoever it was snuggled closer.
Han's own body was ahead of his befuddled brain on that one; it automatically pushed back. Besides, it wasn't just the hard cock pushing against him that said that its owner was happy to be beside Han. He could feel something else, something less tangible, a faint sense of mingled content and desire… And something else. Concern, perhaps.
He opened his eyes again, blinked and persuaded them to focus on the hand on his chest. It was clean, but there was oil ingrained under the short fingernails, and a red weal across the back of it. From when the Imperials had inconsiderately attacked without warning while Luke had been helping Chewie weld up the new heavy duty landing gear.
Good. So Han hadn't been that drunk last night. This was a much more comfortable awakening than that time he'd come to prone on the hard stone floor of Jabba's palace with those three Twilek dancers piled on top of him.
And much less embarrassing than waking up under the engineering work-bench with General Madine's cock still up his ass. Though that one had been due to drinks spiked with drugs, not alcohol, and at the time Han had been so reluctant to believe he'd let it happen that he'd settled for passing out again.
He turned his head. Slowly, because it felt like an asteroid mining crew, complete with pulveriser droids, industrial lasers and proton charges, was remodelling his skull from the inside. Without anaesthetics. He squinted, as Luke shifted to lean over him.
The kid's mop of tousled fair hair looked even untidier than usual. He smiled - a big, bright, aggravatingly cheerful smile - and said, "Morning, Han. You awake? Are you all right?"
That was too many questions to cope with, so Han settled for, "Hi, kid." The words came out as more of a moan than a greeting, which didn't seem to faze Luke at all.
It occurred to Han that although Luke had obviously been enjoying lying so close beside him, he'd also, as usual, been practical. With the kid wedged up against him, no matter how out of it Han had been, he couldn't have rolled over on his back in his sleep and choked on his own vomit if he'd thrown up.
Thrown up again, amended a brain cell less pickled than the rest which had retained some memory of last night.
Luke scrambled off the bunk, which made Han’s unhappy guts feel even more precarious. He took several deep breaths, trying to convince his stomach to settle.
"Here." Luke was holding out a glass of water.
Han eased himself into a sitting position. He couldn’t really be dying. If he had been, Chewie and Luke would have taken him to the medical unit, no matter how much he protested. He took the water. It tasted flat and recycled and absolutely wonderful. "Thanks," he croaked.
"You all right?" Luke asked again, perching on the side of the bunk and putting a cool hand on Han’s forehead. That felt nice.
"Mmmph." The mining crew inside Han's skull had moved far enough over to leave space for the nagging question, what did I do last night?
And why am I worried about it? 'Just so long as it doesn't get to be a habit', he'd said to Luke, back on Pemul, after the first time. But sleeping with Luke wasn't a worry, even if it was getting to be something of a habit. "What was I drinking?" he managed to ask.
"I gather you and Wedge started off with Dokril and Alyn's home-brewed Eoran ale."
"Yeah…that bit's coming back to me. We were trying to decide on an suitably lingering way to dispose of idiot Dodonna when Wedge's girlfriend turned up. And Wedge insisted that I wasn't to kill the senile old moron without him." Han snorted. The Empire must love Dodonna, who was utterly loyal to Republican ideals, but also utterly unable to recognise that this war wasn't a case study from the strategy text books he was forever reminding everyone he'd written. Leia had clearly been fond of the old man, so presumably he'd had some ability once, but now he'd brand any common sense objections to his impossible schemes as cowardice. Why he hadn't been forcibly retired, Han had no idea.
But a few beers wouldn't have given Han this headache, not even the more potent home-made ones.
"By the time I got back to the hangar, you'd moved on to that." Luke indicated an unlabelled and nearly empty bottle which was sitting on the deck, propped up by a tangled heap of clothing.
A small quantity of dark amber liquid should not be able to lurk malevolently, but Han could swear that this stuff was. Though the cloying stale alcohol smell pervading the cabin seemed to be emanating mostly from the piles of clothes scattered over the floor, not from the almost-empty bottle.
"Oh. I remember. The batch of home-made Corellian brandy that accidentally got concentrated twice."
"The batch that Dokril said even you and Wedge shouldn’t drink undiluted."
"Dokril," Han muttered, "is a great engineer, a talented amateur brewer and distiller - and a lousy psychologist."
Luke grinned. Han glowered at him. "Do you have to look so sickeningly happy and healthy?"
Luke’s grin broadened. "No. I practice specially to annoy you."
Whatever scathing reply Han might have made to that was derailed by an urgent message from his stomach. As he hauled himself off the bunk, he managed to groan, "Stay right there." If his memory was going play games, and lock away the sordid details about last night, he'd just have to ask Luke. Launching himself towards the head, he ignored a quiet,
"I hadn’t meant to be so literally sickening."
Han’s stomach felt a great deal happier empty. Cleaning what felt like crystallised brandy off his teeth was also good for his morale, as was having a shower. He might not have felt completely human when he walked, rather than staggered, back into the main cabin, but he’d progressed a few steps above the ooze-dwelling slime-mould level.
Luke had taken Han's instruction literally and was still sitting on the bunk, leaning back against the cabin wall, eyes closed.
Han smiled to himself. It hadn't taken the farm-boy long to learn that rule of soldiering - catch up on sleep whenever you get the chance. "Where," he muttered, dripping, "did the all the towels go?"
Luke opened his eyes. "On the floor." He leaned forward, frowning in concentration at one of the tangled piles on the deck. A towel helpfully moved itself away from the pile towards Han.
"I see you've been practising."
Luke smiled, obviously pleased with himself. "Whenever I can." The smile faded. "There just never seems to be enough time. Compared with what the Jedi are supposed to have been able to do…"
"Are rumoured to have been able to do," Han pointed out. The final fall of the Jedi had only been twenty-odd years ago, but someone had done a very efficient galaxy-wide job of deleting information about them, leaving only hearsay and stories. The fact that people like Dodonna had retold the history of the Clone Wars, giving credit to themselves, so often that they'd forgotten what really happened didn’t help either.
Han picked the towel up. It was damp, which recalled something about last night. Something pleasant, involving Luke and the shower. Sure enough, the kid's messed up hair looked as if he'd gone to sleep while it was still wet.
Luke was gazing at Han with what seemed to be a mixture of appreciation and curiosity. Han suspected that his current appearance was being filed under 'so this is how a horribly hungover Corellian looks'. "Feeling better?"
"Yeah, thanks." Han prodded with one bare foot at another damp towel. "We had a shower together, right?"
"A very long shower." Luke grinned. "Don't you remember the water running cold? You were very vocal about it at the time."
"I was?"
Luke nodded, still grinning. "I've no problems with you wanting to prove to me that Corellians don't get brewer's droop, and it is true that, after growing up somewhere as dry as Tatooine, I like the idea of having sex in a shower….but maybe combining the two wasn't such a good idea."
"That a complaint?" Not that it had sounded like one. To judge by Luke's dreamily reminiscent expression, the combination had seemed like an extremely good idea to him.
"No."
Han sat down beside him on the bunk. Someday, he was going to figure out what it was about Luke. Sure, he had a nice body - okay, a very nice body - and a beautiful smile. But there were squads of fit young men on the ship, whose smiles Han never noticed.
"How's your head?" Luke was asking, putting his hand back on Han's forehead. That still felt nice. "Want me to get you some pain-killers?"
"Nah." Han grinned at him. "There's a better cure for a hangover than drugs."
"Other than getting drunk again?"
Han must getting old. Or worse, responsible. There had been a time in his life when he would have just got drunk again, but now both his stomach and his head were loudly vetoing the idea of writing the day off. Besides, his cock had better ideas. "Oh, yes. Old Corellian folk remedy."
"Oh, really? That wouldn't be that sex cures everything, would it?"
"Nah, old Corellian folk knew better than that. Of course sex doesn't cure everything. But it does take your mind off things." He thought about that. "Which makes it your fault that I have this hangover."
"My fault?" Luke obviously wasn't convinced.
"Yeah. If you'd got back from that debriefing earlier, I could have gone for taking my mind off things with sex sooner, and I wouldn't have had to drink so much."
Of course, if Han were a more mature person, he would have found some other alternative to alcohol for taking his mind off the war and what his role in it ought to be. But he wasn't a mature and responsible person, a point he'd wanted to rub into the Alliance High Command. I'm a freighter pilot, dammit, a smuggler, and yes, I like to think I'm pretty good at that. That does not make me the leader type you're kidding yourselves I could be.
Although the Han who would have been looking for another drink now wouldn't have stayed to make any points; he'd have been out of here at Reeikan's first hints about leading missions.
He glanced back at Luke, found himself being regarded steadily by those clear, penetrating blue eyes, and wondered how much of what he'd been thinking Luke had followed. Sure, Luke wasn't a Jedi yet, and the Jedi had not, as far as anyone now knew, been true telepaths. But the kid was getting all too good at making all too accurate guesses about what Han thought.
But if Luke had this time, he must have decided not to say anything about it. Instead he smiled, ruffled Han's hair and said, "My fault. Right. So I'd better make up for that, then?" He kissed Han, very gently, on the forehead.
Maybe there was truth to the rumours that some Jedi had been healers. That did actually make Han's head feel better. Or maybe it was because, as Luke's mouth moved down the side of Han's face and along his jaw, Han's circulation was re-routing most of his blood from his head to lower down.
Luke lay back, pulling Han down with him. That was something else Han hadn't figured out yet; Luke had this way of fitting himself into Han's arms like he belonged there. There was a hint of mischief in those big blue eyes. "And obviously Corellians don't get brewer's droop the morning after, either."
Han didn't get a chance to comment on that. Luke was kissing him on the mouth. Very thoroughly.
It was one thing to have intellectually figured out how sex was for Luke, because the kid could directly sense some of what his partner felt. It was another to be on the receiving end of it. What Han hadn't expected was that the more they did it, the more it worked both ways. He could feel something of what Luke felt, too, beyond his obvious physical appreciation of what Han did to him. Nothing as tangible or intrusive as Luke's thoughts, just a heightened awareness of his pleasure.
Had his mouth not been occupied, he would have grinned. The way that awareness of each other's enjoyment resonated between them was also like an amplifier, but a much nicer one than sounds oscillating in his hungover head. Like the intensity building up inside the cavity of a laser cannon, maybe - an appropriate analogy, Han reckoned, was since technically the output of laser cannon was stimulated emission.
A few months ago, if someone had told Han that he could come just from the feel of an appreciative body under him, a warm, hard cock rubbing against his, and from being kissed, he'd have laughed, and told them not to believe the sex scenes in the wildly inaccurate holo-dramas about lusty Corellian space pirates. But now…. Now might be a good time to slow thing down a bit.
He pulled back, somewhat breathlessly. Luke smiled up at him, also breathing hard, and looking distinctly pleased with himself.
Without really thinking, Han said, "Don't get too cocky, kid."
Luke raised one eyebrow and arched his body up against Han. "Oops. It's a bit late for that particular piece of advice."
Han snorted. "So it seems." He shook his head, and muttered, more to himself than to Luke, "I don’t generally go much on kissing guys. Not like that."
Luke grinned. "'S okay - I’m not a general."
Han almost didn't catch the slight emphasis on the 'I'm', and even when he did, his body was preparing to ignore it, settling itself more comfortably on top of Luke and starting to kiss him back.
But then his mind processed it and he froze, mouth still over Luke's. Sure enough, there was more than a hint of mischief in Luke's eyes now. "Luke!? How the hell do you know about that? Madine wouldn’t have said anything.... I'm sure he wouldn't have said anything…..If he said anything, I’ll kill him!"
The corners of Luke's mouth twitched. Part of Han was aware that he was staring at Luke in total horror, probably seemed like a complete over-reaction. Kid, if you laugh, I'll have to kill you, too.
But Luke didn't laugh, just breathed out slowly, and said, "Han, calm down. I didn’t know. At least not until now. Nobody said anything. I just …" He shrugged. "I just guessed."
"Just guessed, huh?" Han leaned back on one elbow and glowered at him. "Anyone ever told you that you can be too perceptive by half?"
"Yes. Fairly frequently, lately." The kid almost looked contrite about it.
Han decided to let him live a while longer. "So how come you guessed?"
"Does it matter?" Luke seemed genuinely puzzled that it should.
Of course it bloody matters. "You'd better explain, kid, or I'll…."
"Or what?" Despite being subjected to Han's best glare, Luke was showing no signs of cowering.
"Or..." Han looked around for inspiration and decided against threatening Luke with the dregs of the brandy. Instead he grinned and trailed his fingers lightly across Luke's ribs. "I’ll tickle you."
As he ran his fingers over the kid's flat stomach he could feel him shiver, and the corners of his mouth twitched again. But Luke lay back, shut his eyes and took a deep breath. The muscles under Han's fingers relaxed. Luke opened his eyes again. "It might be good training for me to ignore that."
All right, then, Han would try something else. "I’ll turn you over my knee and spank you."
"You can try." Luke rolled quickly over to plant his backside firmly against the cabin wall.
Very quickly, and his arm and stomach muscles had tensed. Han considered the still soggy state of his own reflexes and decided that pushing that joke any further would result in too many bruises.
Luke was eyeing him warily. "You haven't been reading that last romance of Sylla's, have you? The really improbable one about the Jedi master and his apprentice?"
"No. Well, yes," Han admitted. He'd read several of Sylla's stories. Especially the ones with the Corellian space pirate as the hero. Sylla was young Commando whose preferred avenue of escape from the harsh realities of war was an apparently never-ending series of what she termed 'romantic' stories. New ones, each more lurid than the last, continued appearing even when other supplies were scare or nonexistent, which had lead to much discussion about whether someone on board was writing them. The current betting was that the ship's main computer was churning them out; it was generally agreed that, given the injuries and tortures the characters shrugged off, it couldn’t be any of the medical staff. "Hasn't everybody?"
Luke shrugged. "Probably. Wedge reckons everyone on the ship reads them - only nobody but Sylla herself admits to liking them."
"So, kid, why do you read them, if you don't like them?"
"They puzzle me. They're full of male-male sex…. "
"That puzzles you?" Han grinned. "You seem to have got the hang of it all right."
Luke's hand moved against Han's chest. He glanced away for a moment, his shoulder tensing slightly under Han's hand, which meant he was about to get serious. Then he looked back up, straight into Han's eyes. "Because how they describe it isn't anything like the way you make me feel."
"Oh?" Luke was still gazing up at him, a faint flush on his face. Han smiled. "And how do I make you feel?"
"I - " Luke was clearly searching for, but not finding, words. It didn't matter; the sparkle in his eyes and that look of almost wonder on his face were enough. Han had never had much false modesty about his performance in bed, but he couldn't help but feel smug.
Luke gave a slight shrug, glanced down at himself, grinned and offered, "Cocky?"
"So I see." Han moved over on the bunk, making space to roll Luke over, so the kid was lying in front of him, back to Han. Brushing straggly blond hair out of the way, he leaned forward to nuzzle the nape of Luke's neck, then moved on to nibble his ear-lobe.
"Ohhh..." Luke leaned back again him, eyes closed, lips parted. If Han ever got really hard up for cash, he could make money out of selling holos of Luke like this. If he could get over not wanting anyone else to find out how good the kid looked when he was turned on, that was.
How he looked was almost good enough for Han to tell him he was beautiful, except that would sound like a line straight out of one of Sylla's stories.
And almost good enough to make Han forget about finding out about Madine.
Almost, but not quite. Han's hand had been happily sliding down Luke's chest, over his stomach, and had just got to pulling at the darker blond curls below his navel. He told it sternly to stop for now. "Luke?"
"Yeah?" His voice was husky, his eyes unfocused.
"Kid, you're extremely distracting, but -"
"But?" Luke twisted round to look at Han. "That sounds ominous."
"Tell me - how did you guess about Madine?"
"Mad- ?" Obviously, Luke had stopped thinking about that, even if Han hadn't. "Oh. Madine." He grinned. "Or?"
"Or I’ll throw you out of bed."
"That's not fair."
"Life isn't, kid - get used to it." Han pitched his voice to be softer than the words.
Luke was nodding, the way he often did when he was thinking something through. He let out a long, slow breath, rolled onto his stomach and said, "There's not that much to tell."
"So tell it quickly." Han leered at him affectionately. "Then we can get back to business."
"Okay. Partly it's way he sometimes looks anywhere but at you. Especially any time you're bending over. Like the other day when you were leaning over the chart table explaining something - practically everyone in the room was looking at your rear end, except him."
"They were?"
Luke nodded solemnly and went on, "But mainly it was last night. I couldn’t figure why you were so adamant about not talking to him when you were drunk. I thought you'd be happy to have an excuse to say things even you couldn't get away with sober. And I couldn't understand why someone who's normally as calm, cool and collected as Madine should have been be so rattled by the prospect, either, and so relieved that you didn't want to want to see him. He's usually so good at keeping a straight face. I'd never seen him pull such a range of contradictory expressions before."
"Who told him I was drunk?" Han promptly demanded.
"No one. But you tipping brandy all over me after I got you back on the Falcon was a bit of a give-away that someone on board was. And since Madine knew Chewie was still down in Engineering, he knew it wasn't him."
Did I do that? Surely I didn’t? But memory was gradually returning. Okay, maybe I did. "Why did I waste good brandy like that?"
"I don't think you were trying to. I just wasn’t sure whether it was your throat or mine you were trying to pour it down. Either way, you missed."
Han glanced back at the still-lurking bottle. Perhaps spilling the brandy had been his sense of self-preservation kicking in. "So I didn’t talk to Madine?"
"No, you made it very clear that I was to talk to him, tell him that you were unavailable and ask him nicely if the report you'd promised him could wait until today."
"That should have been simple enough. How'd you go from that to discussing his sex life?" And mine.
"We didn't. But after you'd hauled my shirt off and tried to wring the dregs of brandy out of it, you should have given me time to grab something more than one of your flight jackets to put on instead, before shoving me out of the hatch to talk to him. A chance to dry my hair would have been good, too. I don't know what I looked like, dripping over-proof brandy, wearing no shirt and what was obviously your jacket, but...."
Han grinned. "Probably you looked cute."
"If I did, Madine nobly refrained from saying so."
"What did he say?"
"I said something like, ‘it is worth me saying that this it isn’t what it looks like?’ And he said that although thousands wouldn’t, he’d believe me. So I had to ask him why."
Han groaned. "You would. And he gave you an answer?" Do I want to hear this?
"He said that if we had been doing what it looked like, he doubted that I’d have stopped to see who was at the hatch. And then he walked away. It was like…" Luke frowned, obviously not sure how to explain. "It didn’t show on his face, but inside he was smiling. And thinking something like, ‘I certainly wouldn’t have’. Well, not thinking, exactly. It wasn't like I could sense the actual words. More just feeling." Luke grinned. "But it was a very strong feeling."
"Oh." Han was doubtless pulling a range of contradictory faces himself now. Part of him couldn’t help but feel pleased that he'd such an effect on Madine, even when drugged out of his brain. And it was a relief to know that Madine hadn't done anything that anyone other than Luke would be likely to pick up on. But… Han put on what he hoped was a lethally serious expression. "Luke, if you tell anyone about this, I’m not going to care about depriving the universe of the last of the Jedi. I’ll kill you."
"Why would I want to tell anybody?" Luke asked, obviously quite seriously. He regarded Han as if filing this under 'Han: miscellaneous peculiar behaviour'.
Han tried to glower even more lethally.
"Okay, okay," Luke said. "I’m too young to die. I promise I won’t tell anyone. I don’t understand why it bothers you so much, when there's so many rumours flying around the ship that people would just think it's another novel but inaccurate story. But since it does, I’ll keep quiet." He put his hand over his heart, and added, in reasonably well-pronounced High Kasshyyk, *On my honour.*
Normally, Han was not over-trusting of anyone's promises but Chewie's. Which Luke was well aware of; presumably that was why he'd added the phrase in Wookiee.
"Good". Han flopped down on his back. Madine must have been what his befuddled brain had been quietly worrying about since he'd woken up.
Or at least some of what he's been worrying about...
He turned to face Luke. "After Madine left, was I sensible and dragged you off to the shower, or is there more I should know about last night?"
Luke grinned. "Just a little. It was a struggle, but I
did get the com-link off you when you tried to call Leia in the middle
of the night to tell her you’d decided to forgive her for calling Chewie
a walking carpet, since you could understand why she hadn't felt very diplomatic
at the time."
"Oh, gods." No wonder his memory had been reluctant to
come back on-line. "Thanks, kid." Luke was still and quiet, obviously thinking,
which suggested there was more. "Is there anything else completely stupid
that you had to stop me from doing?"
"Not really. I couldn’t think of any way short of knocking you out to stop you giving me that lecture about not being so ready to trust what Kenobi told me. So I just listened to that. Twice."
Han wasn't going to apologise for that one. Luke was sensible about most things, but taking every word Kenobi had said as gospel was one of the kid's blind spots.
"You were also going tell Leia that you hadn't forgiven her for insulting your ship. I couldn't get anything coherent out of you as to whether I'd apologised enough for calling the Falcon a heap of junk."
"Hmm…" Luke was definitely looking contrite about that. And he did help Han and Chewie work on the Falcon. But…"Nah. You'd better keep right on apologising."
"How'd you like me to do that? I am not going to lick your boots like in Sylla's story."
"No?"
"No." Luke grinned again. "I can think of better things to lick."
"Sounds promising." Han put his arms back round him. "And Luke…"
"Yeah?"
"What happened with Madine…"
"Isn't any of my business."
"No," Han agreed. "But the mission it happened on was a success. Leia still talks about it and I don't want you inadvertently dropping her any hints. So there's a couple of things you ought to know. On Kskannit, Madine and I were both drugged by someone hadn't done their homework on Corellian physiology and culture. We were meant to kill each other, not have sex. We saw no reason to include that -um - side-effect in our reports, but the part in the official record about the spiked drinks is true." Luke nodded. "Okay. I promise to keep a straight face if anyone mentions that."
Han couldn't think of anything else that Luke needed to know to avoid remarks that might incite suspicion. But his headache was gone, and he could remember last night now. Including a few things Luke hadn’t mentioned, like Han not making it to the shower before he threw up all over the place. And he certainly hadn't been in a state to clean up after himself. Those Old Corellian Folk had a saying about that; a real friend will not only will not only stand you drinks, he'll also cover you back while you throw them up and clean up the mess afterwards.
And, unlike some people Han had been to bed with, having found something out about Han's past sex life, Luke was not demanding to know how Han felt about it, and whether it had meant anything to him. So he added, "Kskannit was quite a while ago, now. Back before the Sa'Tiochrahan was recommissioned. Before Pemul. You're still the only guy I've let screw me more than once."
Luke smiled again - a big, beautiful smile, radiant rather than aggravating - but all he said was, "That mean I can do so again now? Just to make sure your headache doesn't come back."
Han lay back, pulling him closer. "I'm all for preventative medicine."