Work Text:
They had a love like burning.
Like his cheeks when their eyes first meet at the academy, and his heart falters unexpectedly at the easy grin Han offers him after they nearly collide in a busy hallway.
“You one of this newest class, kid? Don’t think I’ve seen you around before.” People shuffle all around them, but the man stands out with the way he leans so easy against the concrete wall, with the way he looks at Luke like he’s really looking at him, really seeing him.
“Yeah, first day here.” Luke laughs, too nervously. The heat on his cheeks grows hotter, but he forces his eyes to keep Han’s gaze. And despite the cocked eyebrow, despite the folded arms, he finds a softness in the other man’s expression. “I’m, uh—my name is Luke Skywalker. I’m training for the moon mission.”
“Lotta people are, kid,” the man answers easily, almost dismissively, and Luke bristles to defend himself… but any argument evaporates when Han takes a step forward to clap him on the shoulder playfully. “Hell, I am too. Name’s Han. Han Solo. You got a tour of the whole place yet?”
Luke shakes his head. Any plans he might have had smolder down in the warmth of Han’s palm, gentle but firm where it stays rested against his shoulder.
They had a love like burning.
Like his love for Han, slow and smoldering and suffocating. It’s an attraction until it’s a crush, and then it’s a crush until it’s an infatuation, and then it’s an infatuation until it’s a love so deep that it hurts him. The long hours of their training kindle it and cradle it, with project after project spent working close together. Days are spent in the pool to practice weightless working, nights are spent in the cramped mock shuttle until Luke feels like he might crack under the pressure of it all… and then Han is always there next to him, somehow, a guiding light in a starless sky. A snicker in a serious meeting, a hand that steadies his when the tool shakes too much from the nerves. Before Luke can quench it, the kindling is roaring flame.
It burns inside him, hidden and held close, a secret feeling cloaked by the thick, ill smoke of guilt. And then one day their small group becomes smaller, a final evaluation cutting them down to the few and the fortunate, the ones who are fit to carry on to the final stages of training to land on the moon. And somehow, in spite of it all, Luke Skywalker is amongst them. And somehow, in spite of it all, so is Han.
There’s a rare bottle of whiskey on the base that night and a rare burning of liquid boldness running down Luke’s throat, and when his mouth opens against Han’s ear in the lonely barracks they had stolen away to, the words rise up with a thrill of final freedom.
“I want to kiss you,” he says, and the brush of his lips against Han’s earlobe sends a shiver through him. “I’ve wanted to kiss you, Han. For so long.”
Han doesn’t answer, but Luke hears the subtle hitch in Han’s breath before rough hands slip up to cradle his face, and Han’s eyes gaze down at him with all the force of a comet streaking down through the stratosphere. Luke braces for impact just as it happens, lips against lips and fingers in his hair, a whiskey-tinted kiss that intoxicates him more than any shot of alcohol ever could.
They had a love like burning.
Like the gazes when they go public after weeks of sneaking kisses and passing tenderness in private moments. It’s a decision that comes when the final crew is announced for the moon landing, following an extensive explanation of why the shuttle can only fit two astronauts and of the importance of the backup candidates. Luke is waiting beside Han amidst the other half-dozen trainees when his name suddenly leaves the lips of the project director, followed by Han’s, and before he can react there are hands against his back and cheers all around him. It’s a dizzying swirl of emotions, but beside him, amidst the same reaction, Han’s face is a rare shade of serious.
“We gotta come out with this,” he says to Luke later, as they steal a moment underneath one of the facility’s trees. “It ain’t right, keeping us quiet.”
“Don’t you think they’ll reconsider us if we do?” Luke worries, tightening the hold on Han’s hand where it hides between them. “They’d call it a liability. I don’t think they’ve ever sent two astronauts up that were dating before.”
He can feel Han’s gaze boring into him, and sure enough he turns to find those hazel eyes staring hard from under a creased brow.
“If they do, I’ll step down. They’ll put Wedge or someone else on in my place.”
Luke’s emotions flare up immediately at that. “I’m not going up without you, Han—”
“And I ain’t goin’ up on a lie.” The emotion behind Han’s voice takes Luke by surprise. “If we’re going to the moon together, we’re doing it as we are. The rest of the world can go to hell if they got a problem with it. Together, Luke. Let’s do this all together. No more hiding.”
Luke swallows back the tears that threaten to well up at the sentiment, and he finally nods. No more hiding.
It is surprising, and perhaps a little mortifying, how few people in the academy are shocked at the revelation. Their subtlety had, it seems, not been quite as subtle as they’d thought. But the lingering glances when they walk together are undeniable, and the attention from outside the academy is the worst. The news stations, the papers, the websites—they’re all eager to know the first men to land on the moon in decades, and the disclosure that those two men are romantically involved catches and spreads like wildfire.
The stares burn like the flashes of the cameras, and Luke feels like they can’t leave the planet soon enough.
They had a love like burning.
Like the sun in his eyes from where he stands on the launch pad, squinting out in awe at the crowds gathered miles away. They circle around the rocket, kept at bay by safety barriers far out in the field, flying American flags and rainbow-banded streamers and signs too small to read. They move like a field of many-colored flowers, blown about in the warm breeze that sweeps across the prairie and tangles Luke’s hair.
Han leans against the safety rails next to him, an incredulous grin on his own face. He’s got the same bright jumpsuit on as Luke, the helmet held haphazardly between his crossed arms.
“Kinda celebrities, aren’t we?” he muses, in a tone that’s halfway between amusement and exasperation. “Wonder if that’s why they kept us on together. Must’ve made a real good story to sell.”
“Let’s hope it has a happy ending,” Luke responds, laughing despite the sick and fluttering anticipation in his gut. He turns to trace the form of the rocket behind them upwards, until it pierces the sky so high above that he can’t bear to stare any longer. For an astronaut who’s spent the past year preparing to leave orbit, the sight makes him disconcertingly dizzy.
“So long as I got you, kid,” Han says, pushing off the rails to slip his arm through Luke’s, “Any ending’s a happy one. C’mon, we got one more stupid photo before we can board.”
Luke smiles and hopes that it hides the apprehension. He doesn’t want to think about endings before there’s even been a beginning.
They had a love like burning.
Like the roaring engines as the shuttle frees from the rocket, sinking the pit in Luke’s stomach even lower. He hears his voice respond to the calls from control, as calm and level as Han’s when it crackles to life on the radio as they sit side-by-side, but his mind is far away from the checks and updates. Everything is shaking, roaring, screaming around him, dulled only by the glass dome around his head, and he hears in every sudden pop or rattle a new malfunction, a new dent, a new weakness in the armor keeping them from bursting like balloons in the mounting pressure. He wonders if Han is feeling the same.
They climb so high that the light outside is unbearably bright, and then higher still until it ebbs away into darkness. Luke recites the time back to control, down to the millisecond, but he would never remember it; the only thing that finally punctuates the endless climb, that finally breaks through the tension of his first spaceflight, is the gentle nudge against his arm as Han pulls his gaze away from the instruments in front of his and to his own triumphant grin. Luke follows his gloved finger to the window again. Earth is below them, a soft and gentle glow that arcs across the viewport. They are alive. They are in space. And they are together.
They had a love like burning.
Like the rising disc of the sun across the Earth’s horizon, which Han and Luke watch together form the tiny viewport. Free of their bulky suits, they hover close to each other, still wavering unsteadily in the alien sensation of zero gravity. Luke smiles when Han wraps his arms around him, a warm embrace in the cool, sterile air of the shuttle.
“We’re on course for the moon as planned, kid. Got a while before the next check-in.” Before Luke can answer, he feels the tingle of Han’s lips ghosting across his cheek, and with a breathless laugh Luke turns to meet the kiss.
“You think that’s the first kiss in space?” Luke wonders when he pulls away, a blooming warmth in his chest as he watches Han’s eyes open slowly in a soft hazel fondness.
“Probably,” Han reasons, bumping against Luke’s forehead with his. It makes them both tilt backwards unexpectedly, and they flail to steady themselves. It’s Han that laughs this time, his eyes narrowing slyly. “I bet we got time for the first makeout in space too.”
“Han,” Luke scolds, but Han’s stubble is already scratching the skin on his neck as he buries his face against Luke’s throat. The hot breath makes his pulse race and Luke’s breathing fumbles.
“Or,” Han growls against jaw, low and mischievous, “The first ever zero grav—”
Luke yelps in surprise at the sudden bang that echoes through the shuttle, a dizzying rush of adrenaline raising gooseflesh across his skin. Han curses loudly as both of their gazes snap to the direction of the lunar module, where a dull hissing is unmistakable beneath the ambient hum of machinery. The knot in Luke’s stomach is as tight as Han’s grip on his arm.
They had a love like burning.
Like the sickness in his core while Han argues with ground control beside him, a dim outline in his periphery vision. It’s difficult to see much in the low light that glows from the few modules that haven’t been shut down. He watches, helpless and numb, as the dial in front of him falls slowly, the last of the oxygen in the second tank after the explosion of the first ruptured it an hour ago.
He jumps when Han touches his shoulder, wheeling around for an answer so fast that it makes him dizzy. Han’s voice is calm but his expression is dark.
“They said we ain’t gonna suffocate, with all the extra tanks we got for the moon landing, but I could’ve told them that. Probably don’t gotta tell you we ain’t making it to the moon either.”
Luke nods silently, swallowing down the burning bile of apprehension. It takes him a moment to remember that the moon was their destination to begin with. But those tanks were more power than they were air to breath, and without that fuel there’s no way they would be able to safely land. Luke had accepted that the moment they realized what had happened. Han must see the real question in his expression because he takes a deep breath and answers it slowly.
“They think we can make it back home,” he says, though his tone is uncomfortably cautious, “And they’re working out some calculations now. We got some to do ourselves. We can use the landing module for some thrust, and if we hit the moon’s orbit just right on approach—”
“I understand,” Luke says quietly, pushing forward to unstrap the clipboard that hangs above the panel. It’s a maybe, it’s all a big maybe, but it’s better than nothing.
They had a love like burning.
Like the tears in his eyes that he can’t hold back any longer, stinging and bitter. They’d done everything right and it isn’t fair, it just isn’t fair. They have half an hour now to jettison the lunar module before the chance is lost for a return trajectory, and ground control is still coming in with the same answer, over and over, like nails being pounded through a coffin: it still won’t be enough. Not with the fuel they have, not with the time they have.
Beside him, Han is curled up around the clipboard, scribbling furiously. The noise stops and Luke looks over to watch him grab the calculator drifting slowly off, pulling it in for another round of formulas. He holds the pencil between his teeth, already littered with marks where he’s bitten down in concentration a dozen times before.
Like the moon, Luke thinks. Covered in craters.
Suddenly Han turns to him, mumbling something unintelligible before he remembers to take the pencil out of his mouth. And for the first time in what feels like eons, he’s smirking from one ear to the other.
“They’re wrong,” he says. “I knew it. They forgot a variable. They did the math wrong. We can still do it, Luke. It’ll take every tank but the main one, but we can change our course back.”
They had a love like burning.
Like the boosters that finally shunt them out of the moon’s orbit like a slingshot, sending them on a swift course back to Earth. Luke’s heart feels like it must be racing in time with the shuttle’s speed as the blue planet slowly fills their viewport.
“We’re coming in at a steep trajectory,” he says. He can see his breath when he speaks. They’ve drawn the power from everything but the boosters and communication, and it leaves the shuttle cold and quiet and increasingly difficult to breathe in. “You sure we won’t burn up?”
“Can’t make any promises, kid,” Han replies from the command module, none too soothingly. After a pause he amends, “Nah, I take that back. I got one promise for ya.”
There’s just enough time for Luke to turn and face Han before he’s pulled into a tight embrace, rough and desperate. Luke wraps his arms around Han in turn, just as firm, just as emotional. He can feel Han’s breath shudder in his lungs before he steadies himself enough to speak.
“We’re in this together, remember? No matter what. I promise you that, kid. Now n’ forever.”
Luke nods and swallows dryly, balling his fists around the fabric of Han’s jacket. Now and forever don’t feel so far apart in the approaching glow of the planet below them.
They had a love like burning.
Like everything. The stuffy spacesuit, the air in his lungs, the whole cabin around him. Plasma ripples and swirls outside the viewport but it’s too bright to look at, flickering in his peripherals like a flame that might break through the thinning glass any second.
It’s too hot. It’s too fast. Something is wrong.
The radio is silent, smothered by the ionization around them. His hand should be braced against his chest, forced tight and compact like the rest of him by the rising force of gravity that threatens to pretty the air out of it, but instead it’s cupped tightly into Han’s, clumsy for the thick gloves they wear. There is nothing they can do now but to watch the dials and hope. Hope that the temperature drops, hope that the air doesn’t, hope that the explosion didn’t manage to tear apart the insulation that keeps them from the plasma and the pressure outside.
The heat is ebbing and the light fading, a good sign until there’s a sudden pop—and then they’re jerked violently back, just once. Not enough. Not nearly enough. Luke’s heart stops—it’s the parachute. Deployed and snapped, lost to the searing winds. He curses under his breath, and then louder. He can’t hear Han over the roar, but the way his fingers dig in against Luke’s, he can imagine that the other man is cursing just as loudly.
The manual deployment is so close, but the gravity holds him like quicksand, a constant pressure that he can barely push back against. It’s a risk, but it’s their only hope. He feels Han try to push on him too, urging him back to the safety of his seat—not you, I’ll do it, not you—but it lights a new fire inside him, a stubborn determination that forces him forward.
If it has to be one of them that lands safely, it has to be Han.
The resolution spreads a numbing calm across his mind as he pushing forward stubbornly, reaching with strained muscles to grab the red handle of the manual back-up parachute. He tugs once, twice, as hard as he can a third time but it jams.
He grits his teeth and throws all of his weight forward. It feels like a fraction of the force it should be, but it’s enough. Enough to snap off the release, and enough to lurch him violently forward as the parachute deploys.
The capsule bounces wildly again, more than once this time as the parachute’s cords hold true.
But Luke doesn’t know it for the stars he sees when the violent movements sends him crashing against the panel beside him.
The last thing he hears is the crack of his helmet against the metal it dents. The last thing he feels is the sickening crunch as gravity pulls it down across his outstretched arm.
Everything is burning so hot and white and painful that in the end he’s sure that he feels nothing at all.
They had a love like burning.
Like the curiosity inside him as he stares up, wide-eyed, through the rocket’s viewport. The sky is soft and white, no stars or clouds, not even a moon. He turns to where Han sits beside him, arms folded, gazing upward as well. He’s not wearing his spacesuit.
“You’re not wearing your spacesuit,” Luke says, and Han smiles like he’d expected the statement.
“We don’t need them where we’re going,” he says simply. It’s only then that Luke looks down to realize he’s not in his either. The curiosity burns hotter.
“Where are we going?” he asks, feeling certain he ought to know the answer, but he doesn’t. To his surprise, Han only shrugs, turning to look at Luke with a similar curiosity.
“No idea.” His smile widens into a grin, the same gentle affection that had made Luke’s heart stop all those months ago. “Figure it don’t matter, s’long as we’re headed there together.”
There’s a strange calmness in that idea, and Luke finds himself laughing, leaning back to gaze at the empty sky beyond their little shuttle. It’s true, he supposes.
“To the end?” he hears himself say, but it’s something distant. Like another Luke has thought up the idea.
Han’s hand brushes at the fringe of his hair, soft and loving. “Is that where you wanna go?”
That makes Luke pause, and for the first time in… in forever, it feels, there’s something uncomfortable skirting the edges of his thoughts.
“I… I don’t think so,” he says quietly, frowning. It’s hard to think. It’s hard to know. He wants to be with Han, of course— wants to go where Han is. Anywhere that Han is. Is that at the end? He doesn’t know. “I just want to be with you, Han.”
He can hear Han laugh, but it sounds so far away. A new heaviness weighs him down and he can’t turn to look, can’t turn to make sure Han is still beside him. Something like fear begins to trickle through his thoughts, until the fingers in his hair cup his neck gently and he relaxes into their warmth.
“Then let’s not hit the end just yet, kid. We got a few more stops.”
Luke nods, mute and numb, like he’s sinking into the seat below. He wants to lift a hand to hold Han’s but it just tingles when he tries to raise it, like there’s…
Like there’s nothing there.
Like there’s nothing here.
The viewport is gone, the touch against his skin fades, and there is nothing but white nothingness all around him.
|
o
|
O
|
O
|
o
|
They had a love like burning.
Like the pain in his right arm, ever-present despite the heavy medication flowing through his veins. He can’t look at it. Not yet. So Han covers it under the hospital blanket when the doctors aren’t in to scold him for it.
“Look, I know I’ve said this before,” Han says once, after having said it many times before, “But losin’ a hand ain’t anywhere near the worst that could’ve happened.”
“I know,” Luke says, and he truly does. It was a miracle Han had managed to pull his unconscious form back into his chair before the wild turbulence of descent had snapped his neck along with his arm. But it didn’t exactly make the hopeless mangling of his dominant hand any less difficult.
Luke looks over at Han where he sits beside his hospital bed, one leg crossed over the other and bouncing lightly. The other man hadn’t exactly escaped unscathed either; he is littered with sickly-colored bruises that make Luke’s stomach squirm in instinctive queasiness to behold. Han had assured him the landing was better experienced unconscious.
“I really wish you would lay down and rest too,” Luke scolds weakly, though Han’s ridiculous stubbornness lights a small smile across his face as he speaks.
Han waves off the concern nonchalantly. “They wouldn’t let me wheel any bed in here, so there’s no point in it. Can’t believe you, kid—lose your damn hand and you’re worried about a few bruises on me.”
Luke laughs at that, his smile turning playfully wry. “I think we’re both in a pretty rough shape, Han. Must’ve been a pretty lackluster ending for the media, huh? We didn’t even make it to the moon.”
“Are you serious?” Han’s incredulous tone takes Luke by surprise. “You got any idea how many goddamn letters they got waiting for us up front? Enough to fuel another trip to the moon, at least.”
Luke doesn’t know how to respond to that. He knew that they had been a spectacle, sure, but… it seems Han’s celebrity remark hadn’t been so far off. Before he can answer, Han sits up straight, pushing out of his chair with a small wince of pain to hover over Luke.
“Besides, what’d I tell you at the launch pad, huh? Any ending’s a good one if I got you by my side, kid.” Han smirks, but there’s nothing light about the way he catches Luke’s lips in a kiss. There’s a lot that Han doesn’t say with words—that Han maybe can’t say with words, Luke thinks—that Luke tastes in their kiss and feels in Han’s breath against him.
Like maybe, of all the good endings, this is one of the better ones.
They had a love like burning, Luke thinks. The kind of love that could fuel a rocket to space again, to the moon this time, to wherever they could dream to go together. And someday—someday far away—it could take them all the way back to the end.