“From what I remember, which I admit is not much, Alderaan is ruled by a Queen. Doesn’t that mean the fancy Princes should be coming out to woo you?”

All things considered, there weren’t that many planets that he could think of that still had royals. Or maybe he just only knew of the really rich and famous ones. They were all gonna have trouble if they didn’t yield to Palpatine, Han supposed. That was the only thing that mattered when it came to hierarchy of power in the galaxy.

Han sat beside her and that will probably remind her of the guy that she knew — because he immediately settled into a posture that was comfortable and not one that seemed overly concerned about impressing anybody. His arm stretched out along the length bench, behind Leia’s back. He hadn’t expected her to lay that kiss on him, even if it was fairly chaste. His eyes had widened slightly and his cheeks seemed to have picked up a bit of flush in the aftermath.

“Uh, you’re welcome.”

“I didn’t ask not to have a lesson in politics, either.” Han said with an amiable shrug and an easy smile. “It was nice to hear you talk about something you’re passionate about. I can imagine if you’re anything like your mom and dad, they’re good at giving speeches.”

“It’s just not a topic I can add much about.”

Han’s arm lowers off the back of that bench now, sliding around Leia’s shoulders. It’s sudden weight was probably not all that surprising to her, given that they both knew he was probably going to try to draw her in like this at some point. With her already leaning closer to trace the scar over his chin? It seemed like a good a time as any to spring that on her.

She had turn toward him, after all. He just wanted to keep her there.

“I’m a very good pilot.” Han murmured. “I always was drawn to anything that I could get behind the controls of. Driving when I was younger, because it was just easier to get access to a speeder, but I always knew someday I’d be flying.”

There was an aspect of this story he wasn’t comfortable telling. The fact that he left Corellia to enlist with the Empire is something he’s not very proud of, in hindsight. He thinks he can tell the gist of the story without offering up that part of himself.

“I started learning how to fly when I left my homeworld. I was never satisfied with taking anything slowly and listening to the people that were trying to teach me, was only acceptable to me if they were telling me something I already agreed with. One day I decided I was done with the training wheels and took a one man starfighter that didn’t belong to me for a little spin.”

Han seems almost bemused by how dumb this story gets, but he goes on. She wanted to know, after all. “I got misidentified as a hostile and one thing led to another. A whole squadron of people were trying to run me down, but I was too stubborn to eject. I didn’t get out of atmosphere fast enough and they were my friends, sort of, so I wasn’t going to shoot back at them. Lost my right wing completely. Spun out of the air. Hit the ground and got lucky that my ship didn’t explode.”

“So the scar came from cutting my chin on the control panel during the crash and not being able to afford bacta to prevent the scar.”

No, he didn’t consider it stealing if you intended to give the vehicle back. In this case, he actually had simply been trying to steal the TIE/LN and get off world, but he had purposely not wanted to cast himself in too much of a negative light. He still wanted to impress her. Still wanted her to like him. It was, also, why he didn’t mention that he had enlisted either. He can’t imagine the Princess from a world that eschewed violence would be all that impressed that he was a Imperial Academy washout and Ex-Stormtrooper.

“Mmm, so you like it, huh?”

The cut on his chin hadn’t worried him so much. Or the bruises that he’d sustained. It was the scratched cornea that had come from the crash that had been really concerning. He had to cover his eye with a bandage for almost a week.

She must have wanted to ask about it. He could kick himself for not noticing sooner. How she had so easily gone from ‘tell me something about yourself’ to an instantaneous suggestion about the scar — it had came off not spontaneous in the least. Leia was not very well versed in the art of lying.

Her doe-like brown eyes were tracing the mostly horizontal mark while she tried to deny that she found it handsome. He couldn’t picture a lot of men in her life who’d been battered as much as he had. Even if those civilized Alderaanian’s had managed to sustain the same kind of injuries he’d gotten over the years, they would have treated the wounds with the best medicine available, regardless of the cost. Not a lot of opportunities for the Princess of Alderaan to meet the kind of guy who spent his teenage years getting into fights and stealing speeders, he realized, even he’d thought of himself as ordinary.

“It’s gray on Corellia.” He murmurs, obviously distracted from giving a good answer between her and his thoughts of her. “We didn’t have a Princess ...”

In contrast to the very chase kiss that she had given him earlier, Han had placed his kiss on her neck. It was what she had turned toward him, when she flinched, but hadn’t tried to flee his grasp around her shoulders.

The words ‘I should’ told him far more, believe it or not, than any of the stories she had told him about what it was like to be a Princess. The constant see-saw of having to weigh every decision of what she was expected to do versus what she might have wanted to do was crystallized in that moment. He got just a whiff of the responsibility that went hand in hand with the fame and the fortune and he felt a little bit bad for Leia. It didn’t seem fair that she had to think about if she should kiss him and not just about whether she wanted to.

In that moment, he’s almost ready to apologize. He’d taken what was a nice evening and made an inadvertent conflict, for her, out of it. The words were on the tip of his tongue when he felt her turn back toward him and plant a very un-princess like kiss on his lips.

His hands fell down to her hips and he kissed her back. Spurred on by her enthusiasm and the realization that Leia is also a woman his age that seemed to enjoy the idea of kissing a scoundrel, he doesn’t try to clean it up any. He kissed her the way that he would anybody he was this infatuated with, complete with an assertive press his jaw and cheeks against her delicate face.

Han’s biggest concern at fourteen, conversely, was probably kissing girls. He wouldn’t say he was good at it (or that Leia was bad), but he was clearly more comfortable in this kind of display than she was. The confidence that he had built up probably helped make it all the more thrilling for her, who at best, had stole mainly small kisses in the rare moments where she could be alone with someone.

He already felt familiar with her body — which was a strange feeling — but one he had attributed to the fact that she was so similar in stature to Qi’ra. Short, with curves that you didn’t normally see in a small frame. It was the kind of figure that would draw Han’s eye away from everyone else in a crowded room. His hands felt comfortable on her hips and he had no desire to withdraw them.

After a prolonged kiss, he finally releases her lips so that the princess can catch her breath. He doesn’t really move away from her though, instead he’s brushing his cheek and the bridge of his nose lightly against her.

“That’s probably a good thing, right?”

Han’s not sure what living in a palace is like, but there seemed to be a lot of work for her to have to do there, the way that she made it sound. Doesn’t seem like she’d get nearly as much done if there was this kind of kissing going on. He’s also proud of himself for being able to stun her like that with the affection, because for a while there, he felt like the worldly princess had the conversational upper hand on him.

“Guess I would have been a little less jealous if I had known you hadn’t had good kisses with those other guys.” She had only mentioned the one that got to go for a swim with her, but there had to have been others ...

He picked up the slight correction in the words. He had never kissed her like that. By that she was implying that there hadn’t been several boys in her life daring enough to try to kiss her, just the one.

Han had a tendency to be jealous, so the fact that there wasn’t going to be a lengthy comparison of his skills to other princess suitors, did make him feel better. He liked his odds of coming off impressive when he was dealing with a pool of only one other boyfriend. And he knew that, while he was far from perfect, there weren’t many people that would work as hard as he would to make someone happy. Was that getting a head of himself? Probably. But that had been the theme for the entire evening.

Moving fast and yet, it still not feeling fast enough.

“Let me tell you, it’s not always that good for everybody.” He says, raising his eyebrows and adopting a saccharine tone. “We got a spark, you and me.”

It was a strange way to flirt with someone, he supposed. He recognized that he was commenting about their own attraction like he was a spectator in it, likening it to something dangerous and trying to sell himself as someone worth fooling around with all at the same time; but then, he didn’t often flirt with a Princess who kinda already knew him, so how could anyone know exactly how to navigate that?

He doesn’t interrupt the hand that’s touching his face, but he does reach out to her hand that’s not touching him. If only because he finds himself wanting to touch her too, somehow.

“Sure it’s dangerous.” He says with a bright smile. A smile she never would have got from a more sullen version of himself. “Danger is fun.” He lets that observation speak for itself for a moment before he follows it up with another observation. “A spark can make a fire that will fight off the cold and the dark. Or it can make a torch to help you find your way.”

“Yeah?” Han says, flashing a somewhat contented smile at the Princess while her fingers explore his wavy hair. It’s definitely shaggier than what she would have been used to in high society, but it’s still a fashionable look among scoundrels. It’s a good look on him, besides. “I was kind of afraid of that.”

He was younger than the Han Solo she knew. It was probably a bit a stretch to assume the other guy was exactly like him, but older, but it might tell him something about the coming years. Rio, Val and Beckett had treated him like he was a short-sighted idealist and maybe that was because when you spent long enough as a smuggler it starts to change you. He could see how it might, having already run into the backstabbing and the lying that permeated the culture. It seems like a lot even to a kid that had been brought up committing petty crimes.

“I’d be glad to.” He murmurs, pressing a quick kiss against her hand before pulling her into his lap. Han didn’t position her so that she was straddling him, but rather had her position across his lap. She would have to half twist to face him, otherwise it was actually her right check (and shoulder and neck) that was facing him.

“Welcome to your first public display of affection, your highness.”

He smooshes a playful kiss into her check to punctuate the thought.

Han quirked his brow at the slight woman while she ordered to be put down and then groped for a reason for this to be a bad idea. While it was true, someone could come by and complain that two young people were acting like young people, right now there weren’t a lot of people around. He supposed this must be what happens to you when your behavior is constantly scrutinized — you found as few reason

“I don’t know how delicate you think I am, Leia, but it’s gonna take a little more than you sitting on my legs to break me.”

He answered her question, largely, with an impish grin. He was eager to brush his lips along the length of his neck, not even to parlay it into a kiss necessarily, but just to make new points of touch with her. He wanted her to feel that even though he was rough and scarred that his lips were soft by comparison. That he could make her heart start racing with strategic touch.

“I promise I’ll tell you if I want you to stop anything.” He says, more seriously, but in a soft murmur against her ear. “Same goes for you telling me, alright?”