Thursday, August 3, 2017

A Missing Moment from Recovery by jediofgrace

Anyone still here? It's been awfully quiet lately. Jediofgrace was awesome enough to send us a missing moments piece to fill in some of Recovery. So this is also your reminder that any missing moments from these books are strongly encouraged. 


Author's note: This is set during the short story Recovery by Troy Denning. If you haven't read the book, briefly I will say Leia has been recovering from severe leg wounds inflicted by the Yuuzahn Vong in the previous book. In Recovery it talks about her doing her recovery exercises around an empty pool, which seemed like a wasted opportunity to me. The first few spoken lines are from the book, but then I take over. 

---
Leia took his shirt collar, and, unable to rise on her toes, started to pull him down to kiss her. 

"Not so fast." Han disengaged himself and walked to the edge of the pool. "If you want to do that, you're going to have to come over here," Han said, holding his arms out for her. 

"You're going to make me work for it?" 

"Yep. Now c'mere." 

She walked towards him, her braces clanked as she walked, echoing in the large room. She made it to him though, her heart melting just a little as he allowed her to kiss him. It had been so long since they'd been alone together and she had missed him. A lot. Too quickly he ended the kiss as he pulled back to look at her. 

"How would you like to get out of those braces?"

"I'd love to, but I thought you said I had to finish my exercises." She wasn't sure why she was putting up a fuss! Her legs were shaking from her effort of only a few laps around the edge of the pool. And while she was thrilled to be able to put her arms around him, she also needed to hold on to him to be able to keep herself standing upright. 

"You do have to finish. But let's finish in the pool." 

She looked at the water. "Han, I can't swim yet. I can hardly walk!"

He picked her up and took her to her chair, setting her down in it. Then he started unstrapping the braces from her legs. 

"Han, it's okay, I'll finish my laps." 

"Do you trust me?" He stopped working and looked at her. 

"Of course. I just-"

"All right then." He dropped the last piece and sat down in front of her. After removing his boots and socks, he rolled up his pant legs then stood up and picked her up again. 

"In our clothes?" she said as he headed straight for the pool. 

"Well, someone could come in, so I figured you wouldn't want your clothes off. But if you do..."

"No, I don't." Although she wouldn't mind such a scenario... if the doors were locked, that is. 

"Good." He chuckled as he stepped down into the water. She felt him take each step carefully as he couldn't see his feet with her in front of him. She held him tightly as he was finally deep enough for her to feel the water. 

"Too cold?" he asked. 

"No. It feels good. I haven't been in a pool in a long time." She tried to kick her feet, but she couldn't make much of a splash. Finally he was deep enough that she felt like she was floating in his arms. Her legs rejoiced with the temporary reprieve from the pain of gravity. 

"There. See? Not too bad. Your husband knows a thing or two." He gently let her legs sink down, while holding her up with his arms around her waist. She put her arms around his neck again as he walked slowly backwards, letting her feel the water flow past them. "Try to move your legs." She did. She put a small effort into making her legs do a swimming motion. 

"This feels a lot better than the braces," she said. He raised her up enough to reach her lips and softly kissed her. 

"That's your reward for trying." 

She smiled up at him. Loving the feeling of his arms holding her up. She pulled against him to give herself enough leverage to wrap her legs around him. It took her a few seconds, and she gave him a satisfied smile when she finished. "I did it! Now I get another reward." He laughed and pulled her close again. Kissing her longer this time, she savored his lips and warm body pressed against her in the cool water. Months of separation and stress seemed to evaporate as they reacquainted themselves with each other. At last he pulled back, smiling down at her. 

"Let's try this," he said as he turned her around so her back was against his chest. He held her tightly again. "Kick those legs." She tried, but the muscles needed to bring her legs to the surface were still too weak and her tired legs were starting to burn. After a few more steps he seemed to sense her struggle and stopped. He pulled her close, letting her legs dangle, his arms still around her waist. He gently kissed her neck. She leaned her head to the side, giving him all the access he wanted. His fingers pulled the edge of her shirt up until he could slip his hands underneath. "Hey, that's not fair," she said, pretending to pout. 

"What's not?" His hands moved up her sides.

"I can't touch bottom so I'm stuck here while you have your fun." She kept her arms very loose as she held his arms in front of her so he could reach anything he felt like reaching. 

"I don't know what you're talking about." One of his hands slipped down to her backside and back up. "I can touch your bottom just fine. Come on now, kick those legs." His hand found the edge of her bra and quickly ducked underneath. He continued to walk slowly backwards, keeping them moving and also keeping them out too deep for her to touch. 

"You'd better be careful, hotshot. The doctor hasn't given me clearance for any of your...special exercises yet." But oh how she wished she had...

He turned her around to face him again. His voice low, he said, "so you're saying you'll work hard on your regular exercises and see if you can't get clearance soon?"

"Are you saying you'll take me swimming again?" She would be talking to Cilghal today, for sure. 

He kissed her before answering. "You bet I will. Come on now. Back to work. Kick kick kick." 

18 comments:

  1. I don't know Recovery all that well, but I loved this. So sweet - Han at his very best.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aww, Jediofgrace, this is so wonderful! I hate that Threepio had to ruin this scene ONCE AGAIN, so it was wonderful to see you fix it and stretch out this adorable scene. I love this so much! Great job!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. That's our Han and Leia! Very nice piece

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very sweet. I love Han taking care of Leia like that, and not letting her give up.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Lovely piece. Really love Han as her coach/physical therapist. Special exercises would be an helluva reward for working hard!

    ReplyDelete
  7. YES!!! heh "Special exercises" made me smile. This is lovely.

    Sorry for my absence of late; summer holidays + visitors staying with us for a week = not much computer time. I'm back now, though!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thank you, my dear Han and Leia peeps! :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. It sure is quiet around here! I do recall a similar slump in activity around this time last year, though. Last of the holidays and the start of the new school year no doubt keep people busy doing other things. I look forward to more fic and chat soon, though!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I feel like August is notoriously quiet. Part of it is my fault, at least here, because the summer months are typically when I am spending by far the least amount of time poking around the internet. Although I have peeked at tumblr and know things are busy elsewhere! But hopefully once it gets cooler and we're all inside more (or I am, at least) we will see some more action.

      Delete
    2. Just put up another post on Han, Leia, and sex and everyone will comment in spades! LOL

      Delete
  10. I have dozens of BP/Recovery One-Shots! Maybe I should find those ...

    ReplyDelete
  11. I love it! This was sweet. It's nice to think of Han being attentive to Leia again after his previous "mid-life crisis."

    ReplyDelete
  12. I love them working together toward a common goal like this, each of them eager. Thanks for this sweet missing moment!

    ReplyDelete
  13. This was such a sweet missing moment!! I loved Han trying to gently encourage her to work on her exercises and Leia taking advantage of this new motivation. I think it really adds to the book scene--they were having a rough time and their frustrations were finally being let out, but eventually they found their way back to each other.

    "I can touch your bottom just fine." - lol!

    --

    I read Recovery because I was promised it was a good Han/Leia story... and I guess /in a way/, it is. But it also has a lot of heartache and mentions of a bigger story I couldn't care less about, so it was also sad and pointless. I did a quick read over the last few book reviews and it just reaffirmed my anger and sadness at what they did to Han and Leia in the EU and how little interest I have in it, so the lack of participation on my part is that I just had nothing to say (and nothing to say re: HF's birthday either, lol). But I still check! And yeah, I'm very active on Tumblr and there were two big Han/Leia events not long ago (Han/Leia Appreciation Week and an exchange), so that was fun and kept a lot of us busy :D

    ReplyDelete
  14. I'm missing our regular chats on this blog, too! Tumblr is fun for pics, but the "discourse" there is...uh...fraught. At least, it often is for me. I have learned to steer a wide berth around bloggers' opinion posts about what are, essentially, very personal writing choices, the public disparagement of which I think must be very hurtful for anyone who happens to employ those elements, especially when the post is popular and lots of people chortle and mock in unison.

    Not that such things shouldn't be discussed, of course, but imho it needs to be done with a certain delicacy, to avoid creating fractures in the community, or silencing and discouraging people who are "guilty" of whatever "offense" is named. I am not innocent of this behaviour myself, although I only realised that in hindsight (I distinctly recall expressing rather strong personal opinions in a breezily mocking way about certain elements of fic on this blog not so long ago, in fact). I think, though, now that I'm more aware of it, I just don't want to touch such things with a barge pole, and there seems to be a lot of it on Tumblr. Makes me nervous!

    Anyway, is your summer busy season winding down a bit Zyra? How's everybody else doing? What's our next topic for discussion? =D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Haha, you? Expressing strong personal opinions? Nah ;) I don't look at discussions much on there, mostly just pictures. But my annoyance isn't so much the content of the discussions but the fact that it is incredibly hard to follow "threads" of discussion over there. A nightmare, in fact.

      Yes, we are getting close to things being quiet for me, finally. Got through one major obstacle this past weekend, and then the grand finale is this coming weekend and THEN I should finally have lots of down time and mental energy for frivolous Han and Leia stuff.

      Delete