unpretty:

unpretty:

hi i’m kitty i don’t know anything about star wars whoops

---

“What am I looking at?”

Lando leaned forward and laced his fingers together. “My taxes.” He paused, then gestured to Han. “Our taxes,” he corrected, with an unnecessarily rakish grin.

Leia squinted at the datapad. “Tax fraud.”

“Oh, no no no. Absolutely not. My accounting is impeccable.”

“I don’t see how it could be,” she said. “He’s a smuggler.”

“Hey,” Han began. He shut his mouth when Leia leveled him with a look. He opened it again to persist, but saw that Lando had a shit-eating grin as he watched their argument-in-potentia. Han glowered at Lando, and made him grin wider. Han huffed, hooking his thumbs on his belt.

“Legally, he’s a long-haul transport navigator,” Lando said, and Leia snorted. “Because he has a spouse at home—me—he qualifies for a higher income deduction as well as a few credits unique to the profession.”

“Wait, credits?” Han asked.

“Because he’s my dependent,” Lando continued, ignoring him.

“The hell I am.”

“That puts me in a unique legal position—not many people know about this, but in order to incentivize long-haul transportation, a spouse who claims a long-haul transport navigator as a dependent qualifies as a household caretaker, which is a kind of head of household that’s able to claim significantly more not only for themselves but for any other dependent spouses they may happen to have.”

“But his transport isn’t legal,” Leia said, fascinated. Han was pretending to understand the conversation, which would have been more convincing if he weren’t already fiddling with a kinetic sculpture on one of Lando’s shelves.

“It’s art.”

“What?”

“As far as my taxes are concerned,” Lando said, “Han transports art. They can’t prove that it isn’t. And I’m always careful to get the valuation right.”

“How do you know what I transport?” Han asked, indignant. A piece came off the sculpture in his hands. He looked down at it, then looked at Lando. He made a hasty attempt to reattach the piece. The entire sculpture collapsed. Han took his hands from it, and attempted to lean casually against the shelves with his elbow to block it from view.

“They call me,” Lando said.

“No,” Leia gasped, delighted.

“Yes,” Lando said, grinning again. “They know I’m his partner. They know I can’t be sure I’m getting my fair share unless I know exactly what he’s getting. So they call me.”

“What!” Han stood straighter, his brow furrowed and his face all twisted into an incredulous pout of anger.

“They might have been able to catch him smuggling,” Lando said to Leia, still not addressing Han.

“They would never,” Han sneered.

“But they’re never going to get him on tax evasion. There’s no way he would have been paying taxes on his own.”

“It never even occurred to me that he would,” Leia said.

“I’m right here,” Han reminded them.

“So you can see why I can’t divorce him,” Lando said.

“I don’t follow,” Leia said.

“My household caretaker status is the foundation of all of this,” he said, pointing to the datapad. “I divorce Han and the whole thing collapses.”

“Collapses how?” Leia asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Cloud City goes bankrupt.”

Han choked.

“How many people have you married?” Leia demanded.

“Leia, you know that you’re my favorite wife-in-law,” Lando said, “but I don’t think I’m comfortable discussing that aspect of my personal life.”

The pile of former-sculpture slid from the shelf, and clattered to the floor.

Han pretended not to notice.

i have to get some use out of this degree SOMEHOW