fulfilling a promised lesson on the fine art of blasting things ...

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Walking back to the Millennium Falcon through the Nexus has gotten a little bit easier each time.  The first time, it took him more than an hour to get back despite the fact that his ship has always been parked about a thousand yards away from a path that leads to the forum.  The shiftable nature of this place makes no walk to and from anywhere as straightforward as it seems, but you can get used to it.

 

For a while, he cleans up the areas that he thinks both he and Verity are likely to be in for a while - the cockpit and the lounge especially, but also near the entry ramp and the living quarters.

 

He did promise lessons on how to fly and in due course, he will get her into the sky with him ... but he's still doesn't have a ton of fuel yet and the priority was always teaching her how to use the blasters.  So he's pulled four weapons out of the storage lockers, completely disassembled them and cleaned them.  He also discharges all, but one, of the plasma magazines.

 

They get placed them on top of the holochess board, which, sadly, is among one of the biggest flat surfaces available to him on the YT-1300 and then, he takes a shower and slips into a light weight pair of pants.  It seems to take a long time for him to drift off in the small bunk that he's claimed for himself.  The sound of the winter wind skips across the surface of his ship and makes a low howling sort of sound.

 

This is one of the reasons it's always preferable to put your ship in a proper hanger, but, when you're Han Solo, you work with what you got.  After a few hours he wakes up, not knowing what time it is, until he opens the entry ramp and looks outside.

 

It seems too early for her to arrive.  The sun hasn't even reached the apex of it's path yet, so he decides to lay back down.  Leaving the ramp down for her to facilitate her letting herself in. 

Comments

[twelve_not_fourteen]

He will thank her someday, when he realizes that some women really do expect that the men they cook for will like everything they prepare. That she's okay with him not is pretty cool. Even if he doesn't realize it yet.

"Hair dying isn't in style in most places among humans." He says with a shrug. "Bored, rich people and the occasional person trying to set themselves apart. Where I'm from though, we have aliens that stand out far more than a person with bright hair."

[brave_heart_verity]

She'd only be upset if he asked for something then refused to eat it after she made it. Otherwise, it's a guessing game, and she knows the odds.

"I suppose that would make it more difficult to stand out in a purely aesthetic manner," she agrees thoughtfully. "The shifting standards of beauty must be interesting to navigate." Careful or she'll go all social archeologist trying to learn about his culture. She might be able to pull off the hat, but nobody wants to give her a whip except for other reasons.

Inddddddyyy. XD

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"I'm hardly well versed on the latest trends."

He says as he reaches for an orange. He knows there's fruit in the middle, beyond the peel, because he's seen them be used for drink garnishes at the bars he been in.

Still, it's probably going to be amusing, watching him peel his first orange. Enjoy the show, Ver.

"I think what makes it difficult about keeping up where I'm from is the sheer number of planets. How's anyone supposed to keep up with all of that?"

It had to be done.

[brave_heart_verity]

She'll enjoy the show until he starts looking really frustrated. Or until she finishes her salad and picks up her own little orange to peel. She's got the nails for it.

"I have no idea. I had a hard enough time keeping track of what was acceptably trendy in the city I grew up in. But being trendy or not isn't so important really. Not unless it's what you choose to focus on. I just find what I like and wear a lot of it." Like stripes. She has a mad love for stripes.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

So far, he's not really getting the depth that he needs to get at the fruit. He's leaving behind a lot of the white rind as he peels.

"We have droids that keep up with most of that stuff. The idea is that you keep one around and they'll tell you how to fit in better and not embarrass yourself."

[brave_heart_verity]

Okay, then she's going to save him from himself. Once she's got hers started, she'll trade him. "The white part isn't for eating," she explains.

Getting told what to do by droids... there's an instinctive little recoiling from the idea, but after she's thought about it, is it really any different than reading something like Cosmo? "Could have used one of those my first day of school. And every day of school."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"This seems like a job for a knife." He says frowning at the orange. Though at least she has him started and he's got some idea of what he needs to do now.

As for droids? Han's never been especially fond of them, but they have their situational uses. Protocol droids are a special kind of annoying, though. It's like they never shut up.

"I don't think there's anything that makes school age kids easier to adapt to." Not that Han can empathize with what it's like to have gone to a public school, but he knows what they are.

[brave_heart_verity]

"Knives are an option." Or he can skip it and go for the grapes. It's all good.

"Now that's a pity. Then again, I doubt they'd listen to it. Maybe that's why nobody's made them yet."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Oh no. Nope. Does this guy seem like the type to give up this easily? Or the type who wouldn't want to finish something that much more when it begins annoying him? This orange is finished. It just doesn't know it yet.

"I always thought it would have been nice to go to a real school." He says introspectively, as he continues to liberate the fruit. "Everybody I know who went to one seems to think the experience was overrated."

Then again, Ver now has sort of an idea why Han might have craved the normal, if awkward experience of a school, since she's got an idea of what he was actually doing.

[brave_heart_verity]

The orange will never understand these things. Ver's not surprised by them. Her own stubborn streak has led to some pretty amusing situations. Not quite sitcom levels of improbable slapstick, but let's just say, she wasn't always a great cook.

She has a sense of why he feels that, yes. "There's a saying where I'm from, 'the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence'." She sets down a piece of orange peel that's pulled loose, turning the fruit slowly in her hands to find her next point of attack. "You would have been bored in class and popular at recess, I think."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

A little more energy diverted to the peeling of the orange will yield some success. He's got it about half finished at the moment. He's becoming more confident in his ability to peel an orange, but when he realizes how much easier it is just to slice it with a knife into quarters, that will be the end.

"That sounds about right." Bored in class, but generally liked by his classmates is what he would have guessed for himself too, but he really doesn't have much of a frame of reference. "Going to the same building day after day would probably still inspire me to want to leave."

Han doesn't put it past himself to feel a certain amount of wanderlust no matter how his life might have been different.

[brave_heart_verity]

"Sometimes the best thing about school was the leaving," she admits. "Where I grew up, school followed us home. We'd have work we had to do and turn in the next day. But sometimes there were fun things. Sports teams or clubs to join."

She works a wedge of fruit free from her orange and carefully removes a seed with her thumbnail before she takes a bite. Her childhood is not a period of her life she thinks much about anymore. It sucked, and it doesn't get any better when she worries about it.

"No racing circuits for kids, though."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"I was a teenager." He says with a side long glance. Not entirely sure if she's making fun or not. Just seemed like a kind of offhanded joke more than anything and he takes it as such.

"16 years old in body and about a 160 years old in terms of heart."

Certainly, the pair of them have something to comserate over in terms of sucky childhoods. Successfully peeling his orange, he starts following suit in eating the way she does. He picks apart the segment, looks for the seed and then takes a bite himself.

[brave_heart_verity]

"Oh, that's okay then, you would have been old enough for a license." She doesn't know, those pod racers might be really young. She does know that without legal protections and oversight, some people make kids do horrible things, and his childhood sounds like it fits in that definition.

"You don't seem that old to me." But she's not really one to talk, is she?

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"I might have regressed since then, it's hard to say."

He was a decidedly serious child. Who thinks about running off to be in the military when they're still a pre-teen? It's not even like there were GI-Joe's to glamorize it where he comes from.

"In the maturity and heart part of it anyway." He muses as he chews on his orange. "All man otherwise."

[brave_heart_verity]

Kids dreamt of running away to places of safety and structure for centuries before little plastic army men came along. It's either the army or the circus.

And she's not rising to that bait or lowering her glance. Sorry, Han. "So all adult except when you're not? Sounds like a good system."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

A point well made. Still, he was serious and mouthy as a boy. Take our word for it.

Pity that he can't get a reaction from her. At least annoying women who won't take you up on advances can be amusing to him. It's like him to want to poke the badger once in a while. To make people react for the sake of it.

"You say system." He says with a smirk. That implies planning and forethought, which, is not exactly a trait associated with Han. It's more like sudden bursts of insight and non-linear thinking.

"I rarely make a far reaching plan or restrain myself to a set of rules."

[brave_heart_verity]

So was she, except for the 'boy' part. They would have been great friends or fabulous enemies.

He'll get a reaction out of her sometimes, she's not made of stone. But here she's been working so hard to not get annoyed by these things, thinking it'd make things easier between them. Boys are confusing.

She gives a little shrug, conceding the point. "A good way to live, then? To let yourself be what you want to be in a given moment? It sounds more fun than following all the rules, right up until people start shooting."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

It's him settling. If he cant get her to want to jump into his arms, some light teasing is better than nothing. What can we say, we all knew long before this moment that Han Solo was wired in a different way than most.

"Can I tell you a little secret?"

[brave_heart_verity]

Light teasing can be fun. It'll let them remain friends when he moves on to more obliging targets. Anyway, historically, she's a lousy girlfriend. He should be counting his blessings she's not inflicting that mess on him.

"Mm-hmm. Always." He has her full attention now.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

No comment. He hasn't really had a girlfriend, but one, though there have been a few flings. Something, something, insert a metaphor about two ships passing in the night here.

"Sometimes the shooting is the fun part."

In a sense. In some instances. It's not as if he doesn't regret the loss of life on some level, but, sometimes he needs to cheat death to truly feel alive.

[brave_heart_verity]

These things can take time. Better to wait for the right one, she thinks anyway.

She considers that, then admits, "I don't think you're the only one who feels that way. Maybe I will too, if I'm ever in that kind of situation."

Cheating death hasn't made her feel great so far. She doesn't have high hopes that it'll change. But something's got to give.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Well, she'll at least know that he means what he said. That in his eyes, it's the truth. Certainly, youth plays a part in this attitude too.

A Han Solo who had spent, even a few years, fighting the Empire and burying friends might have a different perspective.

"I guess that the thing we should hope for is not finding out."

[brave_heart_verity]

Sincerity is one of her favorite things, it's true. But she's learned to be cautious. Loki was charming and very sincere, and look where that got them...

"That would be the responsible thing, yeah. But if the choice is between being your friend and not finding out, I'm choosing you every time." Hell of a time for her to make eye contact again. Like she's being serious or something.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Hrm.

He finds himself looking for the subtext of what Verity says a lot more than with other people. Half the time he thinks he's reading too deeply into what she's trying to say. Putting meaning and feelings where they didn't belong. The rest of the time he feels like he's missing the point entirely.

"Well." He says, his brown eyes looking perhaps a bit softer than usual. "I can promise that you'll have someone watching your back who would hate the thought of a blaster pointed at you."