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He hadn't been a wookiee for months. They'd called him "beast" and he'd made it true, starvation and deprivation combining into madness long before they’d started sending deserters into the pit with him. Deserters who’d still been imperials at heart, deserters who feared him and tried to kill him, so that there was nothing to do but kill them first.And then, when they hadn't given him rations, when he'd been out of his mind with fear and hunger, well...The human was soft and pale and hairless under the filth and the imperial issue armor. Chewbacca helped him strip down to bare skin and stepped out of the way so the water would cut through the mud."Ugh," Han said, his whole face twisted up in an exaggerated grimace of disgust. "Do you even still have fur under that mess?"Chewbacca shrugged, his "Probably," undercut with a soft growl that meant it didn’t matter. Han had saved him.Abruptly, he gave in to the ridiculous impulse to manhandle the smaller being around and pour a glob of the standard issue shampoo directly into Han’s hair. Chewbacca had been a monster for too long, and this, grooming, combing mud from fur with his own two hands and feeling the heat of another being with the pads of his fingers as they brushed against hidden skin, meant civilization, or maybe it meant sanity, or maybe just family.It didn't matter what it meant; the warm feeling that had started growing in his chest when this creature, pink and vulnerable, had spoken to him welled up and overflowed while Han stood fidgeting and complaining as Chewbacca washed his hair.The mud was gone from the rest of Han’s skin by the time Chewbacca made himself pull his hands away, and he could see bruises coloring up from red to black on Han's back.He dropped his hands to his sides and rumbled an apology that didn't really translate into Basic, the purr that underscored the comment meaning true-regret and an inquiry into how much pain he'd caused all at once.Han blinked at him. "That's all right," he said after a second. "We made it out, didn't we?"Chewbacca ran his hands through Han's hair one more time and took a decisive step back. "We did," he replied."Alright," Han said. "If you're done, that makes it my turn."Chewbacca didn't have a chance to ask before Han had leaned out and grabbed the entire shaving kit they'd broken into for their shower and set it down precariously on a tiny shelf nearer where the water was spraying."Turn around," he said. "You work on your front, I'll work on your back. I'm pretty sure you've got an entire planet's worth of mud in your fur."Chewbacca considered a proper protest, considered shoving Han out from under the stream and taking care of himself, but instead he rumbled a token protest-thanks-please-you don't have to, and Han flashed him a quick grin before he buried his hands in mud and gently started to tug at the matted, tangled mess that Chewbacca had let his fur become.The shower was silent for long minutes, and then Han made a little noise of frustration."Damn," Han said. "How attached are you to the current length of your fur?"Chewbacca jerked hard at the idea, and had whirled on Han before he realized what he was doing. "No," he snapped.Han put his hands up and shoved his wet fur out of his eyes. "Hey, hey, no one's shaving you bald and making you dress up like a human. You've just got this big section that's all matted up beyond even my considerable abilities, and I was going to cut out the worst of it."Chewbacca looked at Han, not for the first time wondering what was wrong with him. Humans weren't like this. Humans hadn't been like this since before the Clone Wars. Humans, maybe, had never been like this."C'mon, big guy. Trust me?"And, it was stupid and insane, but Chewbacca did.People didn't ask monsters to trust them, which meant that somehow, Han still hadn't realized he was dealing with a monster.Chewbacca growled a playful warning, testing Han's humor, and forced himself to turn around."Tell you what," Han said. "Your unspecified 'dire consequences' there can be that if I mess this up, you get to give me a haircut. Deal?""Deal," Chewbacca replied firmly, and then he settled in to listen to the snick-snick from the tiny scissors Han had found in the shaving kit.It didn’t take Han very long to finish, and when he was done, he ran his hands through Chewbacca’s fur with startling care, tugging at a handful here and there and making Chewbacca wish he’d done more than just wash Han’s tiny excuse for a mane.“All done. I do excellent work, by the way. You’ll be the best looking wookiee in any room you enter. Everyone will be swooning over your haircut. It’ll be a fashion statement!”His hands ran down Chewbacca’s back one more time before Chewbacca lost all control and whipped them both into the refresher bulkhead.Han grinned up at him, that same cocky-terrified grin he’d given him when he’d promised Chewbacca he had friends and a place to go, and Chewbacca couldn’t stand it.“You’re crazy,” Chewbacca rumbled, wondering if Han really understood as much of his native tongue as he pretended to.“Yeah, maybe,” Han replied, still grinning, and he curled his fingers into the fur at Chewbacca’s shoulders and tugged there too. “But hey, I’m the crazy who got us off that mudball.”Han carefully maneuvered them around and reached for the switch to deactivate the stream, bringing his injuries back into sharp view and highlighting the pale naked skin of his back.Chewbacca reached out and ran a finger down Han’s spine, worried about the worst of them.“Okay, big guy. I realize this is a little weird considering how I was pretty much just doing the exact same thing to you, but I’ve been on that mudball for a long time, and this is probably the best refresher I’ve seen since I washed out of the naval academy, so you should maybe…”Chewbacca did it again and Han shivered.“... Stop that before this gets really embarrassing.”Chewbacca did it again, hand splayed wide so he could absorb how very much smaller than him Han was. Smaller than any wookiee, small and shivering and making an adorable little noise that Chewbacca really liked even if it was a noise no wookiee throat could ever hope to emulate.“Chewbacca, look, just because… just because I saved you…”Chewbacca murmured a protest that Han misunderstood.“Just because my plan saved us both doesn’t mean you need to-- You don’t owe me anything.”Han was wrong: Chewbacca owed him his life, maybe even his dignity, but he wasn’t grooming Han, wasn’t pushing the grooming exchange to something more just because Han had had a plan and the balls to yell at a crazed monster in a mudpit.Instead of answering, Chewbacca gently tugged his hands away from the shower controls and Han blinked up at him. “Okay,” he said. “So we’re doing this. Not many imp wookiee groundpounders though, so forgive me if I need a quick refresher.”Chewbacca laughed and pulled him so his bruised back was cushioned in the wet fur of his chest, running his hands both down Han’s front, where a little extra fur was trying to make a showing against all that soft naked flesh made pink by the water pouring over them both.Humans weren’t terribly different from most other bipedal sentients, and Chewbacca found Han already coming to attention, felt the soft twitch against his palm. He rumbled a purring promise that he’d watch his claws.Han jerked at that, his eyes sleepy-frightened from the sudden shot of pleasure seconds before Chewbacca had scared him.“Claws?” he demanded, and Chewbacca ignored him and buried his face against Han’s neck, careful of his fangs without a fur ruff to protect his partner, and Han leaned back again.Chewbacca was already hard himself, and Han’s little writhe back against him brought the small of his back perfectly flush against him. Chewbacca groaned his satisfaction at the friction and pressure.Bare skin, he thought, was perfectly serviceable.“Not that different,” Han mumbled, and he moved again. “Piece of cake.”Chewbacca stroked his human experimentally, gratified by the sound of that same low sweet meaningless noise of pleasure. Han tipped his head back and Chewbacca didn’t have to remind himself not to bite down because everything else was so strange, but he did grind back into Han and this time they both moaned.It was a piece of cake, Chewbacca thought, finding a rhythm that Han responded to in kind, grinding down against him while stroking him firmly and holding him up in the tiny enclosed space of the shower.It had been a long time on that mudball for Chewbacca too, so when Han went still and stiff and made another adorable wordless cry, he only had to shift his grip to Han’s hips and rut up against him a few more times before he came, too, and they slid to the floor of the fresher together in a heap of limbs and fur. Chewbacca cuddled Han carefully into the curl of his body so he wouldn’t press the bruises on his back into the fixtures.“The Empire classifies wookiees as sub-sentient,” Chewbacca said with the quivering growl that meant explanation and a soft flourishing whine that meant apology.“Lucky I’m not with them anymore then, huh?” Han replied.Chewbacca couldn’t hold back the noise of satisfaction and relief that surged from his throat in response, and Han twisted to grin sleepily up at Chewbacca.They sat there until the spray cut off abruptly. Han surged to his feet, peering up at the showerhead. “Damn, that’s the entire tank emptied, and the mud’ll take ages to filter out. They’re going to space us.”“Who,” Chewbacca asked, now certain that he could tease this human who wanted to groom him and more than groom him. “Your friends?”Han laughed, sharp and higher pitched than any wookiee could laugh, and it sounded like home.