"What'd you get her for her name-day? Alderaan didn't do birthdays, as I recall," Lando asked, lounging in his chair. It was really the only way he ever sat, plus or minus having his boots propped up on the table's edge.
"Something appropriate," Han said. He liked to talk to Lando about many things, but Leia wasn't one of them. Not least because he could never forget how the other man had looked at her when they first met, how gracefully he'd grazed her knuckles with his lips. How long he'd held her hand and how she hadn't yanked it back.
"Oh no. That sounds terrible. 'Something appropriate?' You got her a pair of earrings, death-opals probably, or you kriffing fool, a little painting of ladulum blossoms," Lando said, laughing his sly, dirty, infinitely appealing laugh that had caught the attention of every nubile life-form in the galaxy.
"No, I didn't," Han replied.
"Qi'ra, she'd be easy—hang on, not like that, easy to give a gift to—she loved whatever was the finest. I found her in my closet once, trying on my capes," Lando said, smiling at the memory.
"So what? So did I," Han said shortly.
"Only the capes. We couldn't decide which suited her better, the indigo or the ruby silk," Lando said. Han knew was Lando was watching him now, to see how angry it made him. Less than Han would have thought.
"Leia doesn't want a cape. Nothing like that, I hope you know," Lando said.
"I know. I know her," Han said. He knew what it looked like when she smiled and when she didn't, why she didn't. He knew what she looked like in indigo silk and ruby and the cloth-of-gold Maz had sent after the small wedding.
"You got her something she wants but won't ask for then. Something she'd break her heart over, but nothing from Alderaan. Something that she won't know how to thank you for, but man, how she'll try," Lando said.
"Something I won't tell you about, because I know her. And I know she doesn't want you," Han said.
"No, she does not. Not the Princess," Lando said with a sigh. He wanted her but he liked her enough not to bother her. It wasn't for Han's sake that he hadn't tried and Han knew that too.
"Not the Princess anymore," Han said.
"No?" No one in the galaxy could say the word like Lando, insouciant and curious, unperturbed and disturbing.
"Not only the Princess. Not only my wife or Luke's sister," Han said.
"Just Leia," Lando said, her name like the honey from Naboo, the sami-nectar from Nierege, the ice-wine of the Corellian Highlands.
"No just about it," Han said. He'd never tire of saying her name, the way it sounded when she still had the curtains loose around their bed, whispered into her elaborately braided hair. When he kissed it into the delicate skin of her thigh or cried it out in his sleep, dreaming of carbonite's living death, when she answered him within his mind, some Force ability he was sure Luke didn't have, didn't even know about.
"Maybe you did get her something appropriate," Lando said, a rare respect in his tone.
"Hope so," Han said. He thought so, but he'd have to wait and see what Leia's dark eyes said, her sweet red mouth. She could have reminded him of Qi'ra but she didn't, she never had, never would.
"Say it like that, man, and you're golden," Lando replied.
"Say it how?"
"Like you're trying to tell the truth. That's all she cares about," Lando said and Han nodded. It was refreshing to hear Lando being honest and a pleasure that he was right.