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They've crossed paths, of course. Before.
Before Bailey and his red mercury and Frank Moses stealing Han's plane, and having the nerve to get it blown up without bleeding out in return.
They've crossed paths; before and after Moses framed him, before and after his humiliation. Before a crime he never committed and after he rebuilt himself from the ground up.
He respected her, of course, even if she was MI6, because she was once the best wetworks agent in the world and only a fool wouldn't respect that. He was counter-intelligence, and while he never worked at her side, he still heard about her. When he and Moses were on the same team, with Marvin in the background when he wasn't hopped up on LSD, others, names he's forgotten behind iron bars and beatings.
Then Moses betrayed him, and it was never the same again.
-
"Eleven million people are going to lose their lives if you don't help me."
-
When every other day someone draws a gun on him it's easy to ignore this time, and just as easy to ignore that everyone in the plane cabin wants him dead. Except Moses. Ironically.
But she sits in his seat, gun on her knee, and uses his glass and drinks his wine and that at least - his glass - he can take back and he takes it from her with challenge in the set of his chin; holding her gaze or she holds his (he holds her gaze).
Victoria Winslow is not intimidated.
He didn't think she would be. He thinks maybe he likes her more for that than for her admirable record of kills, and a junior agent in some government agency might not have heard of her, but Han has, just as he's heard of everyone who has - at some point or another - run with Frank Moses.
-
"Show me something."
-
She takes the incident with Bailey and runs with it. He remembers the car - he has very little time for fun in his line of work, but that? That was fun. A fast car and a dangerous, beautiful woman. It's not the recipe for his downfall, but it could be if he's not careful. She takes the car, and then plane when it's little more than dust on the breeze and her comforting hand between his shoulderblades, and she runs with it.
"Han," she says in that English accent, drawing out the single syllable all warm and long like they're the best of friends, and somehow she has his number, "how are you? Listen, I'm on a job in Caracas and--"
-
"Do be a dear and come to Paris--"
-
"Are you sure you don't want to join me in Taipei--"
-
"I'm in Cairo and I really think--"
-
(He goes, every time.)
-
The first time he calls Victoria is after almost a year of helping her on jobs he's slow to realise she's more than capable of doing herself. He's slow, he tells himself, it's not that he didn't want to realise, he's just slow. When he mentions her capabilities (sharply, always sharply) she smiles slyly and reaches out to cups his cheek. "Oh, but I do enjoy the company, Han," she says, as if delighted at his sullen expression. "After all, it's not like you've said no, either."
"That's not the point."
"Then what is?"
He doesn't have an answer for that. Victoria's smile widens and she leans back in her seat. "So," she says, "tell me about our job in Krakow."
-
The safe house is little more than a dusty, half-furnished apartment hidden amongst warehouses and Han never would have thought it, but Victoria swears like a sailor when she gets started. The knife wound staining her clothing red definitely has her started.
There's a bottle of cheap whiskey in the kitchen and he grabs it, sitting down on the bed next to Victoria. "Let me look at it," he says. She pulls a face and gingerly shrugs out of her jacket. Blood has stuck the torn fabric of her shirt to the wound and she sets her jaw and unbuttons her shirt, letting him help her carefully pull the fabric away from her skin.
She turns her back - the wound - to him and her body is a map of scars. That's a language Han can speak. "How does it look?" she asks and he touches the flesh above the wound, where an old scar runs almost parallel to the bloody gash. He traces the line of it against her warm skin. "...Han?"
Han stops, stills, breathes. "It looks fine," he says hoarsely. "You'll never notice the scar once it heals."
Victoria laughs. "Because it'll be lost amongst all the others, you mean?" She rummages around in her purse and pulls out a tiny sewing kit. "It doesn't hurt to be prepared," she says wryly as she threads a needle and passes it back to him. "Best get to it, then."
"This is gonna hurt," he warns. He thinks he places his hand firm on the back of her neck to hold her in case she thrashes as he liberally splashes the wound with whiskey. His touch gentles as she stiffens instead, biting down on her pain so hard that barely a noise escapes. She is magnificent.
Victoria breathes through the pain. "Bloody hell," she says, "give me that." She snatches the bottle from him and downs several large swallows, before making a noise of disgust and shoving it back into his hand.
"If you lay down this will be easier," he says and she shoots him a smile - pain-tinged, but a genuine smile nonetheless - over her shoulder.
"I thought you'd be smoother than that," she says and laughs when he flushes.
"Just lay down," he mutters, pushing at her shoulder. She does as she's told - he counts that a win - and is quiet and still as Han stitches up the wound.
After, once he's covered the wound with a dressing from the almost useless little first aid kit he found in the bathroom, Han picks up Victoria's bloodstained shirt from the floor and sloshes some whiskey on it.
"Huh?" she says sleepily. Between the wound and the chase, the impromptu surgery and the 27 hours since they last slept, she's about done in. He knows how she feels.
"I'm cleaning up the rest of the blood," he says, dabbing at her stained skin.
"That's my shirt though," she protests, "what on earth will I wear...?" He's thought about that too, although she's too close to sleep for his answer, and once he's cleaned the blood from her skin he shrugs out of his suit jacket and strips off his shirt, draping it over her. She sighs in her sleep, fingers closing around the material.
(He touches her cheek with the back of his fingers, then realises what he's doing and jerks his hand away.)
-
Han settles in the armchair in the corner, where he has a view of the door and the window, gun resting on his thigh.
-
"Han?"
His head jerks up along with the gun.
It's just Victoria. (Just.) She sits on the edge of the bed, wearing his shirt and he tries not to think it looks good on her and fails. She pats the bed next to him. "Come rest," she says. "It's been a day and a half and you're no good to me if you pass out from exhaustion."
He's tired enough that he doesn't question it, merely stumbles to the bed and lets her take the gun from unresisting fingers. "I'll keep watch," she says as he crawls onto the bed and he's nearly asleep the moment his head hits the pillow.
The last thing he remembers is the feel of her fingers combing through his hair.
-
"No."
"No?" she sounds surprised on the other end of the line. Not her fault, really, since he's never said no to her before.
"No," he repeats. He tells himself firmly that he has no need and no reason for guilt.
-
It lasts two days.
"Okay, fine, but this is the last job we work together."
"Of course, dear."
-
It might start with a shiny blue car in London, but it ends with a ludicrously easy job in Dubrovnik, in a room full of bodies with a briefcase full of intel. Han straightens his jacket and picks up the case; it was so easy he hasn't even broken a sweat.
"Do you have the package?" Victoria asks in his ear from her sniper's nest in an apartment across the street.
He stands in the window and raises the case and lifts his hand as if to tip his hat to her.
"Good," she says in satisfaction. "I'll meet you at the ferry."
They've become so good at working together that he doesn't even doubt she'll turn up.
-
Perhaps 'ends' is the wrong word, perhaps it's a start as well.
He doesn't doubt she'll turn up, maybe right now because the case in his hand means the mission is not quite complete, maybe because he's gotten used to the warmth growing in her smile, so subtle that he doesn't realise it's a thing until she's sliding her hand through his arm as he waits to board.
He doesn't know when he learned to sense her and sometimes worries that he doesn't feel she's a threat anymore. For all their jobs together over the past year, she's still the one called in for the official work and he's still the contract killer for hire off the books.
"Maybe I'll take a few days in Italy before heading back," Victoria says as they wait. "I have a villa near Amalfi." She squeezes his arm gently. "You should come along too. Have a bit of a holiday."
He doesn't mean to look at her in absolute horror, but--
"Goodness, you'd think I'd told you we were working for free. It was a suggestion, Han. I'm retired and--"
"Was retired."
"Am retired--"
"You take a lot of jobs for someone who's retired," Han points out.
"Well, I do get bored rattling around my house alone all day. It's nice to have a hobby."
He can't help but smile. "A hobby."
"Some people arrange flowers," Victoria says primly. "But I find that a tad… dull. Besides, the company's better with this. Come to Amalfi with me, you might actually have fun."
"I'll think about it."
-
"Are you sure they didn't have a cabin with bunks?"
"This is the last one they had available." Victoria looks critically at the tiny bed.
Han grunts. "It'll have to do then." He wedges the case between the mattress and the wall. "I'm going to sleep." He doesn't look at her as he strips off his trousers and shirt, right down to his boxer briefs and slides into the bed. The bed might be small, but he makes sure there's room enough for Victoria. He can spoon the briefcase if it gives her more room.
He is a gentleman after all. Or at least, he tries to be. Sometimes. When it's convenient.
After some noises that he assumes is Victoria disrobing - and he stares at the briefcase by his face, because when he closes his eyes his imagination takes over - she flips back the blankets, and he feels the cool of the cabin's air against his skin.
It leaves him bared and feeling strangely vulnerable and as a long silence behind him stretches out eventually he glances back over his shoulder. She's standing there in a nightgown, looking innocently at him. Then, even as he holds her gaze, she lets hers wander the length of his body.
Han raises his eyebrow when she meets his gaze again. He could say no and nothing would change. She might have over twenty years on him but he knows they're both too old for the games.
Han shifts, holds out his hand. "Come here."
-
"You know, I wonder... why you've never asked me to call you Cho-bai."
He raises his face and blinks incredulously. "Do we have to have this discussion right now?"
Victoria props herself up on her elbows and looks down at him. "I'm only curious. 'Han' seems a little... impersonal, particularly given the circumstances." She strokes his side playfully with her ankle.
"I - only my mother called me that."
"Ah." She's biting back a grin at his embarrassment, he can tell, and she reaches down and cups his cheek, touching his wet mouth with her thumb.
-
Her body shows signs of age and he'd - maybe he'd thought that would repulse him, if he thought about it at all, but it doesn't; she's fit and sleek and he's not really sure what he expected.
It certainly wasn't to find her just as attractive as he found her skills with a gun. Her body is strong against his, and she's beautiful, and even as he closes his eyes and drifts off he thinks she could kill him in his sleep if she wanted to.
She doesn't, of course, and when he wakes he's annoyed to find that at some point during the night he's become the little spoon. Her breath is warm on his shoulder.
-
"What about the Russian?" he asks. Gruffly. Han knows that she and the Russian - well, there's something.
"Oh," she says, "I am very fond of the old dear," like they're not in the same age bracket. Or at least he thinks they are. He's not paid to judge ages. He's not paid to do much of anything beyond killing. Anything else is off his own back. "I would rather it if you didn't hurt him. We have history."
"'History'?" His tone is flat and she laughs like it's something else entirely, reaching out to cup his face in both hands.
"Of course. It doesn't stop me having history with you, darling."
He wants to kill the Russian, slowly and painfully. He's never been good at sharing.
"Promise me you won't hurt him," she says sternly.
He sets his jaw.
"Han. Promise me."
-
He wonders if she's weak enough to love him.
(He doesn't wonder about himself.)
-
"I told you this was a terrible idea," Victoria shouts, hauling Han into the back of the van. She ducks at a spray of gunfire, and then clambers in after him, dragging the door shut. "Drive, Marvin!"
"You never said he was coming too!" Marvin shouts back, punching the accelerator so hard the wheels squeal and the back of the van fishtails.
"You'll be fine," Han hears her say to him over and over as she supports his body.
He holds his guts in and turns his face into her neck, inhaling her perfume. Consciousness, at this point, is merely an illusion.
--he's on that beach again, mouth and nose caked with blood, gun pressed to the back of his head. He can feel the coarse, wet sand shift under his knees, then his cheek when a boot strikes him sharply between the shoulderblades--
"Don't wanna die," he mutters.
--I don't want to die.--
"You're not going to die, darling."
--the gunshot is loud in his ear but there's no new pain, just sharp sand sprayed onto his face, and he flinches. "You're not going to die. Now go," an unfamiliar voice says. "You have your life, run. Never return." He staggers to his feet, stumbles, falls, gets up, and runs. He has his life. He has his life, he has his--
"I should never have let him agree to this job," Victoria says angrily. He can't tell who she's angry at. "They don't give someone guilty of espionage just a few years in jail."
He hears Marvin say something about a rule never to take jobs in Seoul to start with, and then all he hears is white noise.
-
The next time Han sees Victoria, she's standing at the top of a flight of stairs, red carpet under her heels. Bedecked in pearls and fur and a gleaming silver dress, shimmering like a scalpel as she smiles benignly over the rim of her champagne flute at men in tuxedos who eye her appreciatively.
He knows immediately why she's there. It's the same reason as he is.
Or the same person, at least.
It's novel for him to have to keep someone alive for 24 hours, and he doesn't doubt he can do it even with Victoria Winslow on the hunt. She sees him where he stands at the bottom of the stairs and it's not self-consciousness that makes him smooth the front of his jacket and return the acknowledging tip of her glass with a razor sharp smile (he knows he looks good and he knows what she likes and if that's what it takes to distract her from her target he'll use it willingly).
It's easy enough to keep Bernassa alive during the fancy meal - Han swaps each course with another person sitting at the table, all genial smiles and false warmth, and no one keels over from poison - scanning the tables for anything out of the ordinary. Victoria sits at her own table, her back to him, and he's hyperaware of every movement she makes.
It's when they're leaving that he knows she'll be a problem. There's the exit route he'd planned out, but she knows him now. She knows how he plans a job. "Change of plans," he says, gripping Bernassa tight above the elbow. "We're going this way."
The man is a little drunk and he stumbles at the sudden change of direction. "But you said that there was nothing to worry about."
"I lied."
Bernassa splutters with outrage. "You lied to me? I don't pay you to lie to me!"
Next time, Han decides, he's sticking to killing people. Keeping whining wretches like Bernassa alive isn't worth the money.
He's not surprised, as unpredictable as their route out of the mansion is, when he peers around a corner and sees Victoria waiting for him in the middle of the hallway. She doesn't even pretend she's not holding a gun.
"Hello, Han," she says.
"Stay here," he barks at Bernassa. He advances down the hall towards Victoria, knife in hand.
"Not another step," she says sharply. The knife leaves his fingers as she pulls the trigger. His shoulder jerks as the bullet hits him arm, but she staggers too, her hand going to her leg.
He pulls out his gun as he continues to advance, training it on her. "Han," her tone is warning now, her own gun aimed at his chest.
But she doesn't pull the trigger and nor does he. He stops, a few steps away. "Han," she repeats, softer.
From behind he hears the scuff of Bernassa's foot against the carpet. The man was no good at obeying orders; Han could kill him for that alone but for the eight figure paycheck. "Kill her, you idiot!" Bernassa shouts.
Han could kill him for that too.
"Do you know who he is?" Victoria asks softly.
"They don't pay me to know that."
She looks sadly at him, and he feels like he's disappointed her in some way. He forces down the urge to apologise. "You're not even curious?"
"I just want my money."
That too seems to be the wrong answer. Frustrated, he jerks his gun up, aiming right between her eyes.
"Just pull the trigger!" Bernassa's shrill now, petulantly so.
"He's got connections with a paedophile ring operating out of Jakarta." Her voice is soft, only for his ears and he looks at her sharply. "It was in my briefing," Victoria says. "It's not the reason why I was employed, but it's enough for me."
It's enough for Han, too. Without turning, he aims back and pulls the trigger. He doesn't need to look to know the thump on the carpet is Bernassa's lifeless body.
"There." Victoria smiles. "Don't you feel better now you've done the right thing?"
-
She has a room in a hotel on the other side of the city, and the jacket she has him pick up from the cloak room hides the tear and spot of blood from his knife on her leg. The blood on his black dinner jacket isn't so obvious.
"You barely even grazed me," she says accusingly when she hikes up her skirt to check out the damage.
"I just wanted you to know I was serious," Han protests.
"That's not serious, that's little more than a love tap. I put a bloody bullet in your arm."
Victoria shoots him angry looks as she opens her suitcase, pulling out a substantial amount of first aid supplies. Nothing like the one they'd had in Krakow. She'd been expecting trouble then. From him, and from far more than a graze of his knife. He wonders if she'd truly thought she'd ever be able to make it back here.
"Here, let me--" He reaches for the bandage but she smacks his hand sharply.
"I can deal with this little cut myself. Just… sit down."
Once Victoria's dealt with herself, she turns to him, much calmer now as she helps him out of his jacket and shirt. Her hands are warm and linger on his skin. The bullet passed through the muscle in his arm and she makes a noise of relief that it's little more than a flesh wound. Still, there's a furrow between her brows that he wants to smooth away with his thumb almost as much as he wants to kiss her. She glances up at his face as she cleans his wound and her own expression softens.
He wonders what's written all over his face when he looks at her.
She leans in and kisses him. With the touch of her mouth he forgets bullet wounds, forgets he won't be getting paid, forgets everything but Victoria. Han reaches for her, her dress silky under his fingers and--
She pulls back, laughing fondly and touches her fingers to his mouth when he starts to protest. "Oh, I can never stay angry at you. Let me deal with this first." She touches his arm.
-
Victoria trails her fingers through the sweat on Han's skin, tracing the line of the scar across his abdomen. "I thought it would be worse," she admits.
"You found me a good doctor." She - and Marvin too, if he had to give credit where credit was due - had kept him alive until they could get him out of South Korea. He'd known he was taking his life into his hands by returning to Seoul, but it had been years and he'd thought--
She shrugs, walking her fingers up the line of his ribcage. "He knew what would happen to him if he failed."
Han slides his hand up over her shoulder, the delicate arch of her collarbone, and he's not even thinking as he slides his fingers under the pearls she still wears - the only thing she wears and it suits her - and curls his hand around her throat. "Darling, please," she says. "We both know you could kill me easily like this. And we both know you don't want to."
Victoria wraps her fingers around his and tugs his hand down to her breast. Han lets out a low, guttural noise and rolls to cover her body with his, and her fingers tangle in his hair.
-
"Falling in love is like jumping off a cliff. You just have to believe and let go."
-
Han lets go.