Disclaimer: I do not own these characters but I am grateful to George Lucas for their creation. I make no profit from this piece, but writing it has brought me great pleasure.

"Probing Questions" – for the January prompt at Nerfherder's Playground

Setting: Flight to Bespin

Han heard footfalls behind him and turned to see Leia gliding towards the cockpit.

"Can't sleep?" he asked.

"No".

"Me neither. That's only going to get worse the longer we are out here, you know?"

She nodded. She brushed his hand with her thigh as she scooted past him. A sliver of electricity shot through his hand. Oh, this woman. She slid into Chewie's chair and lowered the armrest on it as a barrier against Han.

"I've got some pills I can share with you. They'll help you regulate your sleeping and waking until we get to Bespin."

"Are you mixing those pills with alcohol?" She pointed to the drink sitting on the instrument panel in front of him. The glass contained what looked in the dark cockpit like a deep purple, almost black, liquid.

He smiled slightly, "No, I haven't taken a pill on this trip yet. I prefer the whiskey-method of sleep regulation."

"Is that what you're drinking?"

"Yeah, Corellian whiskey. Wanna try it?"

She bobbed her head, and he passed her the glass. "If you like it, I'll pour you a glass."

She brought the glass to her mouth and just barely let the liquid brush her lips before pulling it away. Closing her eyes, she slowly licked her lips. "Mmmmmm." Han was entranced by this display. He was trying to control himself since their kiss last week had led to a little thaw in their relationship. He felt on guard against his own attraction to her nearly every waking moment. Finally, she brought the glass to her mouth again, taking an honest swig of it this time.

"Want a glass?" He tried to sound casual lest she see how the sight of her running her tongue over her lips affected him.

"Sure," she agreed.

Han dashed from the darkness of the cockpit to the bright galley to grab her a glass. He blinked as his eyes tried to adjust. Slow down, Solo. She came to you. She's not going to disappear while you get her a glass. Slow. Down. He took a measured pace on his return, poured two fingers of whiskey, and handed her the glass. Is my hand shaking? She took it from him. Turning sideways in the co-pilot seat, she threw one leg over the armrest and brought the glass to her chest, closing her eyes. Han retook his own chair and regarded her. Does she have any idea how gorgeous she is? She was wearing one of his shirts. Because he was nearly two heads taller than she was, his clothes swallowed her, making her look younger than her years. On her legs she wore the pants from her Hoth thermal underwear. The cream, silky fabric clung to the curve of her calf. One bare foot was centimeters from him as she bounced it unconsciously. He wanted to hold on to this moment, so he tried not to disturb the air in the cockpit and instead held his breath, staring at her.

The lights from the instrument panels created a soft glow against her face. Her famous hair was in a long braid down her back, but thin wisps of chocolate strays danced around her forehead, spurred on by the soft circulation of air through the Falcon. He had watched her struggle with one rogue tendril by her left cheek all day. He doubted she was even aware of the constant pushing back of this hair, she did it so unconsciously. It was loose again, but she no longer tended to it, her fingers busy open and closing on the glass of whiskey. Was she nervous about something? The soft hum of the engines and a small squeak from the co-pilot's armrest as she bounced her foot were the only sounds he could hear. He took another sip of the whiskey. The movement of his arm disturbed her own reverie; she opened her eyes and stared back at him.

"Do you remember the first time you got drunk?" she inquired bluntly, breaking the spell.

"Excuse me?" he choked. The question took him by surprise and he wondered if he had heard her correctly.

"The first time you got drunk. Do you remember it? Where you were, what you were doing?" She smiled and raised her glass to him. "I thought it was an appropriate question given this strong whiskey you've poured me."

He settled back into his seat and turned his gaze to the instrument panel above his head. "Okay. Let's see," he said, searching above him for the answer. "My friend's brother was having a party." Opening his eyes as the memory came to him, he looked out at the blanket of stars and continued, "His brother had just got his own place, and he hired a couple of us guys to tend the bar for him at this party." Han laughed remembering it. "For every drink we served, we drank one ourselves. It didn't take the brother long to realize we were pretty drunk. He kicked us out from behind the bar, but he let us stay at the party." Han smiled, remembering other aspects of the evening he did not intend to share with Leia.

"Did you get sick?"

Han shook his head. "No, not that I can remember. Not that time."

"But other times?"

"Well, yeah," he answered not sure where she was going with this line of questioning. "A couple of times I guess. It's not exactly something I keep a count of, sweet-." His voice bordered on sarcasm, so he clamped his mouth shut before he said anything else. He almost always took the verbal sparring too far with her. I need to work on that.

They were silent for a moment before Han turned the question on Leia, "What about you? Have you ever been drunk?" His voice was awkward and clunky, and he immediately regretted asking her.

She shook her head at him. "I'm the one asking the questions here, not you."

So typical. Always in charge. But he didn't dare say that out loud. He was enjoying having her sit here with him. This was new, this conversation about their lives outside of this trip, outside of the rebellion. He didn't want to do or say anything to jeopardize that.

"Ok," he said quietly, making a great effort not to sound like a smart ass.

"Do you remember your first kiss?"

He nodded. "Malie. Her father owned the junk yard where I fenced the stuff I stole. She used to pull me out back and tell me she needed to practice kissing me so she could impress her boyfriend. She was a couple years older than I was, and I was afraid to tell her no."

Leia laughed out loud and the sultry bass of her voice bounced off the walls of the cockpit. Gods, the sound of her laugh makes you want to close your eyes and slip down into it. "I found out a couple of weeks later that there was no boyfriend. But she'd gotten in plenty of practice on me." Leia did not laugh again as he had hoped but only smiled in response to his continued story.

"How old were you?"

"About 10, I guess."

"Ten? You are kidding me?" She sat up slightly in her seat to punctuate her disbelief.

"Nope. I guess you could call me an early bloomer." He winked at her and grinned his lopsided smile.

She blinked in response.

Han saw an opportunity. "So what about you? Tell me about your first kiss." He tried to sound nonchalant. He knew it wasn't the kiss they had shared on the asteroid, for he had seen Leia kiss Luke in the medical bay on Hoth. Maybe, however, the kiss on the asteroid had been the first time a man, a grown man, had kissed her. Really kissed her. She was so supple in his arms that day, she melted right into him. She wanted him. He shifted is his seat at the stirring in his thighs. No way. Not right now. Don't screw this up.

She shook him off. "Tell me about your first girlfriend."

"Uh." He groped for another topic, something to dissuade her from her line of questioning. He realized now where this was going, and it wasn't good. This was a conversation women always wanted to have but inevitably regretted. He stalled.

"Want some more whiskey?"

"Just a splash. I can already feel it in my toes," she giggled. He looked at her alabaster foot as he leaned past it to pour the whiskey into her glass. I could just run my hand across her foot. Massage her arch for a moment. No, don't touch her. Don't spook her. He retreated to his seat and placed the bottle of whiskey on the floor between them.

"You are avoiding the question about your first girlfriend."

Han sighed. Resignation punctuated his next word. "Peg."

"Peg?" She paused waiting for him to continue. When he did not, she prodded him. "How did you meet her?"

"I don't know," he shrugged. "We grew up together. She had a bunch of brothers and was always hanging out with us guys. We just considered her to be one of the gang." He fingered his glass. "So, I guess you could say we were friends first. And then one day, when we were about 15, we just looked at each other differently. The attraction was just suddenly there, you know? Something we couldn't deny. Something we had to act on." He watched her reaction to this, waiting for her to answer.

She lifted the whiskey to her lips and held his stare over the edge of the glass. "Tell me about her," she said as she lowered the glass. Her voice was deep and soft.

He instantly regretted telling her that he and Peg had been friends before they were attracted to each other. The knowledge changed the tone of her voice, and he did not want to encourage this new direction. She was teasing him. Her voice. That low, husky voice. She would use his weaknesses against him later, he knew it. But he couldn't stop.

"She was adventurous. Always game for whatever the guys were getting up to. She never wanted to miss out on a good time." He ran his hands through his hair and shifted in his seat. Talking to Leia about Peg agitated him. "And birds! Her family raised birds!" He laughed, trying to bring levity to what felt like an increasingly heavy conversation. He began to punctuate his descriptions with his hands. "Big birds, small birds, exotic birds, and average birds! Birds were everywhere in her house. The noise was unbearable. You couldn't even talk in the house it was so loud. It was a-" he paused searching for the word. "What's that word when things are really loud and it's all different sounds?"

"Cacophony?"

"Yes! A cacophony! Birds from all over the universe squawking and screeching their protests at being in captivity. It was crazy! So we just spent most of our time making out." She frowned, and he should have stopped there, but he continued. "And not all of them were in cages. You know how that mynock swooped down on you on the asteroid?"

She nodded, pinching up her face. "Well, imagine having birds swoop at you every time you try to make out with your girl!" She started to laugh. Good, make her laugh.

"And the smell!" He tossed his head back, moving from laughter to a roar. "I can't smell bird shit and not think of Peg! Gods, Peg!" He was going for the truly ridiculous in Peg, and he wanted to take Leia with him, diffuse the situation. He took a deep, gasping breath ready to let himself slip into that space where everything is exponentially funnier, but he caught her eye. She was no longer laughing.

Instead, she had him under scrutiny, using the microscope of her senses to measure his facial expressions as well as the timbre of his voice rising and falling as he talked about this other girl. Leia might be inexperienced at love, he thought, she was not, however, inexperienced at reading people. She had built her entire political career on her ability to judge the tiniest shift in someone. He knew his plan to make light of Peg had not worked. He needed to tone it down; he was in dangerous territory. His laugh dropped to a smile, and eventually he shook even that off. "Anyway, that's Peg." The cockpit returned to silence. She was no longer bouncing her foot, so the squeak was gone. The low engine hum and the sound of Han trying to slow his breathing were the only noise in space.

He looked down at the empty glass in his lap and contemplated pouring another. He was still in control of his tongue at this point, and he weighed how much more alcohol it would take to tip him over the edge. He had just decided not to pour another couple of fingers' worth when he heard her next question.

"Tell me about the first girl you ever, um, you know."

Leia, do not ask this question. Women always ask this question and they hate the answer. You do not want to hear about my first time. You think you do, but you don't.

He shook his head ever so slightly. "No," he feigned ignorance. "I don't know." If she was going to press this line of questioning, she was going to have to say it.

"The first girl you ever…, "she hesitated for a split second and then blurted, "slept with."

He wanted to lighten the mood, avoid this question. He needed to avoid this question. "Slept with? Slept with." He bobbed his head and rubbed his chin. "My mother, I guess," he finally said with a wink.

"Come on, hot shot, you know what I mean. The first girl you had sex with. Was it Peg?" Despite the darkness in the cockpit, he could see the pink blush rising on her neck against his white shirt. Good. I'm glad this topic embarrasses her. I don't want to be the only one suffering through this game of probing questions.

She sounded like a little girl when she said the word "sex". Between his oversized shirt, the simple braid, and the suddenly shy voice, she no longer projected the confident princess in rebellion he was used to. Instead an insecure young woman, trying to find her footing as a potential lover, sat across from him.

He was relieved she had asked about "sex" and not making love, because as he'd gotten older he no longer viewed them as the same thing. The sex question, while uncomfortable, was easier to answer than the making love question would have been. However, it was clear to Han she was not experienced enough to recognize the difference. He leaned over to pick up the whiskey to pour another finger. The bottle clanked the side of his chair with a hollow, metallic sound. How much of this have we already had? He offered her the last of it, but she covered her glass with her hand in decline.

"No, not Peg." He swallowed. "I was 19."

"19?" she interrupted. "What happened to the early bloomer?"

He shrugged. "It's not like I didn't have a lot of opportunities," he protested. "I just. I don't know. It was just never right." He waited for her to say something judgmental or mocking, but she sat in silence, waiting for him to continue.

"Anyway, I was with this crew on some nameless moon to pick up a cargo shipment. We headed into a bar while we waited on the captain. And as we sat there, this girl was staring at me from across the room." He closed his eyes trying to conjure her. "She had electric green hair, real short and spiky, and this blue lipstick." He grinned thinking about her. And big tits. "She was quite a sight. But her eyes entranced me." He opened his eyes and held Leia's gaze as he said the next part. "They were like endless pools of liquid. I can't really describe them beyond that. Just these endless, sad pools." He trailed off, broke his gaze, and took a sip of the whiskey. Finally with a deep breath he continued, "Before I knew it she was leading me to the back of the bar. I didn't protest because I didn't want the crew to think I wasn't game for an intriguing girl's obvious pass at me. So I pressed her up against the wall and-" he abruptly stopped. Leia's face had turned to stone.

Nice, Solo. She didn't need to hear about you pressing other girls up against walls after you tried to win her over by pressing her up against the Falcon's wall.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have told you that." He sat quietly, letting the apology linger in the air for another beat. "What about you?" he asked hoping to cleanse the moment.

She slowly turned her head from side to side.

"No, you aren't going to answer my question or no, you haven't been with a man?"

"Both," she whispered, the corners of her mouth turning up ever so slightly.

He smiled. Good. He thought about goading her for more, but left it there.

She stared at him with the intriguing little smile still on her lips. Han hoped the smile was a forgiving one. Forgiving him for the green-haired girl up against the wall. Or forgiving him for asking about her experience. Or forgiving him for not lying about the whole thing and claiming never to have been with anyone at all. He was aware that the tension slowly filling the cockpit since she walked in was a productive one. She did not ask about his previous experience out of boredom but to understand her place in his history. Now they were engulfed by their own silence, their own unwillingness to answer anymore questions. She began to bounce slowly her bare foot. The squeak returned. He sank back into his captain's chair and drained his glass. The sub-light engines of the Falcon hummed, and the chocolate wisps that curled around her face continued their slow dance. The tendril still dangled next to her cheek. Both were pleased that in the end they hadn't spoiled the moment as they the two of them so often did.