Story Challenge #17: 6th February 2004
Five minutes; one word: "rhinoceros". [I'm afraid I was having too much fun with this story to stop writing after only five minutes. Anyway, the rules say, "Do not worry if you run over (or under) the time limit set." So I didn't. ^__^]

Priorities
A SW fic by Morgan D.
Plot suggested by Lekanthir

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Even stumbling on the hem of his pyjamas, Han reached the cockpit in record time and blindly pushed the buttons and pulled the lever that would take the Falcon out of hyperspace. The ship was jolting violently, leaning to one side and the other faster than the grav-generator could compensate, and the disturbance surely must have thrown them off course.

"Who the hell is attacking us?" Lando half asked, half yelped, as another jolt sent him flying against one of the back seats.

"Afraid this is an inside job," Han muttered. "Your pet is awake."

Lando's eyes grew round and scared. "That's impossible. I was told that 230 milligrams of azetorfentanyl would keep it down for at leas-- AACK!" This time the Falcon jerked backwards, and both men ended up on the floor.

"Well, obviously someone got it wrong," Han snapped. "You have more of that stuff?"

"We can't give it more so soon! It might kill it!"

"It's going to wreck my ship if we don't do something!" Carefully, the captain got on his feet and made his way back to his bunk.

Lando followed him, grabbing at the uneven walls for support. "What are you going to do, man? It took us six days to capture it. You can't damage it now!"

"Can't have a wild rhinoceros running around and making holes in the walls either."

"It's our gift to the Gubernator of Ommatophi," Lando reminded him patiently. "We can't go to her and ask for help with the Imperial Remnant in that sector without offering something valuable in return. That's not how Ommatophians work."

"We make a quick stop someplace else and buy her jewellery."

"She'll be insulted. She'll think of it as a cheap bribe. Ommatophian prostitutes are paid with jewellery."

Losing his balance when the ship bounced forward, Han hit his head against a bulkhead door. "Fuck! It's just a damn rhinoceros, Lando. Almost every system in the galaxy has at least three different species of rhinos. They're common."

"Not on Ommatophi, they're not. And I've heard from a reliable source that the Gubernator positively loves them. She had a couple of them and tried to breed them, but it didn't work, and the male died about a month ago. Don't you see, Han? When she sees the New Republic's token of goodwill to her, she's gonna beg for our permission to help us."

"Was that reliable source of yours the same one that suggested the proper dosage of tranquilliser to give the beast?" Han snorted.

"Forget about my sources then. The Council assigned me to get Luke, take a reliable freighter to Hakirff, pick a rhinoceros there, and go to Ommatophi. We did the hardest part already."

"And just how reliable will the Falcon be if that thing tears it apart?!" Finally getting to his bunk, Han found his pillow had been thrown on the floor by the ship's jarring, but that his blaster was still there.

Lando gaped. "You're not going to..."

"Stun it," Han grunted, setting the weapon accordingly. "That's all I'm doing to your precious rhinoceros. But I might be a bit harsher to you if you try to stop me."

Either because of the threat or because he couldn't think of other alternatives, Lando didn't protest. Instead, he gestured to the empty bed. "Luke still mad at you?" he asked, sympathetically.

That won him a vicious glare from the captain. "At us," Han corrected him. "Because of your damn goodwill token."

Of course, although they were both getting the cold shoulder from Luke, it didn't hurt Lando nearly as much as it did Han. The kid had been sleeping in another bunk since the hunt for the rhinoceros had started, and had been unmoved by Han's attempts at reconciliation.

"It's the Republic's goodwill token, not mine..."

"It was your idea, Lando."

"And a brilliant idea it is," Lando huffed. "I'm sorry, but Luke is the one who's being unreasonable here. He's a Jedi, dammit, he should appreciate my efforts at intersystem diplomacy."

Han wasn't in the mood for that debate again. Moving past his friend — and the firmly closed door of the bunk Luke had camped in —, he ran to the cargo bay, glad that the jolting had subsided a little. Perhaps the animal was getting tired, or perhaps the tranquilliser was still partly at work.

Lando was only a step behind. "You think that will work? Stun guns didn't help us at all when we were trying to capture it."

"Because we couldn't get too close. This time I won't even have a choice." He would have to aim at the neck, one of the few areas not covered by the thick armour-like skin of that species — an area that wouldn't be visible to him if the rhino attacked him.

"What if it gets sick? Being stunned right after waking up from azetorfentanyl sleep..."

"What if its horn makes a hole in my chest?" Han spat. "Get your priorities straight, will ya?"

"You both should be rethinking your priorities, you know," said a gentle voice from the room before them.

The cargo bay. Whose door was wide open.

"Luke?"

The young Jedi was standing barefoot a mere five feet away from them, wearing nothing but the trousers of his pyjamas. No blaster. No lightsaber.

Only a six-feet-tall, twelve-feet-long rhino that weighed over thirty-five hundred pounds standing right in front of him and sniffing his hand.

Han raised his blaster.

"Don't even think of it," Luke warned him, hiding the sharpness of the order in a velvety tone.

Knowing all too well that the gentleness was for the rhinoceros' benefit and not his, Han forced his arm to relax and lowered the gun.

Luke's eyes were closed, and his lips murmured inaudible words. The rhinoceros breathed heavily, noisily, impatiently. It moved away from Luke, running to a wall that now sported dozens of ugly-looking dents, jarring the ship once more. But this time it stopped before hitting anything, shaking its enormous head in irritation.

After a moment, it went back to Luke, and brushed the side of its frighteningly sharp fore horn on the Jedi's belly.

Han held his breath, afraid to break the kid's concentration. Predictably, Lando had insisted on picking the rhino with the longest horns they could find — being rewarded with some snide and not-too-friendly remarks from Luke about men that tried to impress women with size. The chosen one had two smooth, slightly curved horns on its broad snout: the fore horn was twenty-four inches long and nine inches large at the base; the other was about two-thirds these dimensions. They seemed specially designed to yank a man's entrails out of his body.

From where he was standing at the cargo bay's door, Han could clearly see the animal's neck.

But he could also see his lover's determination to calm the rhino down without violence. If Han were to shoot the animal now, he would be sleeping alone for a long, long time.

Eventually, the rhinoceros stepped away and lay on its side.

Lando let out a deep sigh of relief. "You think you have things under control here, Luke?"

"I certainly don't," Luke growled. He kept his voice low, but the angry edge of the last few days was back full-force now that the rhinoceros was asleep. "I'll have to stay with him for the remainder of the trip, and you ought to pray that he doesn't get annoyed at my presence at some point."

"There's still three days before getting to Ommatophi," Lando groaned.

"If this party didn't get us completely off course," Han corrected him.

Luke shrugged. "We can be back on Hakirff in half a day."

"WHAT?!" Lando blinked.

"Hush!" Han spat. "You wake that rhino up again and I swear I'll throw you out through one of the missile tubes."

"You want us to go back?" Lando hissed at Luke. "You can't be serious!"

"We shouldn't have taken him away from there in the first place," said Luke through gritted teeth. "Has it ever occurred to you that there might be a reason why there are no rhinos on Ommatophi? A reason why the Gubernator has failed to breed them there?"

"The woman is outrageously rich," Lando argued. "She can provide whatever a rhinoceros needs to live well."

Luke shook his head. "This is wrong. It feels wrong in the Force. We must return him to his territory, now."

Lando just couldn't believe his ears. "If we go back now, not only we'll have to find something else to give the Gubernator, but we'll also get there about a week later than we're supposed to. The New Republic needs Ommatophi's help, and the first thing we're gonna hear when we get there is that we can't be trusted to do what we promise to do. You want to jeopardise our entire mission because of one stupid animal?"

"I'm not a politician, Lando. I'm a Jedi."

Lando seemed to be on the verge of strangling the kid. Instead, he turned to Han with a strained smile. "Man, I don't envy you. I thought I did, but really... You think you can try and get some sense into that pretty, empty head of his?"

For the last minute Han had been merely staring at the waistband of Luke's pyjamas, which lay way below his waistline, just half an inch from exposing too much. Now that the rhinoceros was asleep, Han replayed in his mind the scene of that huge horn rubbing against Luke's naked skin, giving it a totally different context.

The argument? Heh. They had lost that battle before it had even started.

"Go get Luke a mattress and pillows, Lando. If he's going to rhino-sit until we get to Hakirff, we'd better make him comfortable."

Luke grinned. The first grin Han had won from him in a week. It was more than worth the murderous glare that Lando was sending his way.

"Brilliant," the gambler was muttering furiously. "Absolutely brilliant. Thinking with your horn, aren't you, Solo?"

Feeling sudden flames burning his face, Han pushed his friend back from where they had come from. "You shut up and get the stuff, will ya? And bring the thick blanket that's on my bed too."

"Alright! Alright! I'm going! Don't push me!"

When he turned back to the inside of the cargo bay, Han found Luke sitting cross-legged on the floor, softly petting the rhinoceros' snout. With such a hard skin, it was unlikely that the animal could feel the feather-light touch.

A caress wasted on a rock. Life wasn't fair.

"I suspect you want me to reward you for finally taking my side," Luke murmured.

Han sighed. That would be the wrong way to put the issue. "No. But I am hoping you will forgive me for not listening to you before. I miss you."

"I know you do. And you're still not listening."

"Yes, I am."

"Please. Even Lando noticed it."

Han wanted to come nearer, but he didn't dare to. He wasn't sure if it was because of the rhinoceros or of Luke's cross mood. "If you think I've come to my decision just to get you back in my bed, then you're insulting both of us."

Luke raised his head to look him in the eyes, his expression blank. "How come?"

"Yes, you look incredibly sexy right now. And yes, I'm incredibly horny right now, for the lack of a better word. But one: I want you outside this rhino's range of attack as quickly as possible, and forcing you to keep this up for another three days is out of the question. Two: I might have noticed that this was a bad idea when this animal started demolishing my ship."

"You could always find another freighter and give him a higher dosage of tranquillisers, if that's your point," Luke shrugged.

"Three: it might have occurred to me that this Gubernator probably keeps her rhinos imprisoned in a space roughly larger than the Falcon's cargo bay. I might have realised — belatedly, I admit it — what you meant in Hakirff when you said that we were robbing the rhino of his horizons."

"..."

"And four: maybe I've spent these past lonely nights wondering why you feel so strongly against this, to the point of denying yourself the pleasure of my company..."

Luke arched an eyebrow.

"...and the rare privilege of being kept awake by my loud snoring," Han amended. "I could tell that this was more than your usual stubbornness. But I couldn't think of any good excuses to contradict Lando and the instructions from the Council. I'm sorry, but 'it feels wrong in the Force' just isn't enough to convince people, Luke."

"I didn't think it would be enough to convince you," Luke admitted, his eyes avoiding his lover's.

"So maybe I'm not as bad as you think I am," said Han in a lighter tone.

The Jedi grinned again. "Maybe not."

"Thanks."

"Do you have a good excuse now? What are we going to tell the Council?"

"That taking a wild rhinoceros from its homeland to turn him into a politician's pet feels wrong in the Force. Right now I couldn't care less if they're gonna be convinced or not."

"And what will we do about the Gubernator?"

"We'll think of something."

Luke was doing a mighty effort not to laugh out loud. "My, my... you must be really horny..."

Either distractedly or deliberately — Han couldn't tell —, the kid was brushing his fingertips along the length of the rhinoceros' longest horn, up and down.

Han's mouth was suddenly very, very dry.

Without another word, he spun on his heels and marched back to the cockpit, to alter their course and get them back into lightspeed. The faster they hit Hakirff, the sooner he would get to play rhinoceros with his sexy Jedi.

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