A/N: This is post-ROTJ. I'm still struggling to dip my toe back into this pool following TFA. But it does feel like I'm getting ever closer. :-)
Expense Reporting
"Son of a-"
Leia Organa, walking down the hallway of her apartment, stopped short at the sound of an annoyed voice coming from an opened doorway.
"You've got to be kriffin' kidding me." She heard Han say as she turned and walked into their home office.
"What's wrong?" She ventured.
"This godsdamn accounting software system. I can't make heads or tails out of it."
Leia skirted around the small desk and snuck a glance at the screen. "ERS, Han. Really?" She asked incredulously. It was the New Republic's Expense Reporting System. "It's not that complicated."
"For you, maybe." He groused.
"I'm surprised, truly." She leaned her hip against the desk. "I would've thought that anything concerning you getting paid would be easily manipulated...I mean mastered."
"Funny."
"How'd you manage to get credits out of the Alliance all those years? There's was a similar system."
"I usually got paid in parts," Han grumbled. "Or I'd just scribble my charges on a flimsiplast. You of all people oughtta know that."
She thought for a moment. She did know that. She had even kept some of his more imaginative expense reports in safe keeping, strictly for prosperity's sake. Foolishly, however, she had thought that he had only done that for her benefit (or annoyance). It seemed she had been wrong. Turning to look at his screen, she was momentarily dumbfounded by all the error messages and red text. "By the gods, Han, when was the last time you balanced your accounts?"
He leaned back in his chair until it creaked. "I never so much worried about balancing them as I did with how far out of balance they could be before anyone yelled at me."
"It seems you might be close."
"You said it," he replied soberly and she turned her head to look at him. He shrugged his shoulders and added, "I'm not sitting here on my night off doing expense reports for nothing."
"An audit?" She guessed.
"No, worse." He sat up straight again and flipped through a few screens. "They're saying they won't release my payroll until I balance. I can't have my men not getting paid."
Leia smiled. Han was always more worried about everyone else than himself. "Get up," she said, swatting at his thigh. "Let me take a look."
"You don't have to-"
"I know," she cut in and slid into the chair that he had just (very easily) vacated. Quickly her mind was already absorbing and analyzing all the figures on the screen. She flipped through the few reports that Han had been working on. "For Sith's sake," she scoffed. "Forget the Alliance, how did you ever manage to keep your accounts? You know, like back while you were flying the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs?"
"Pfft," he snorted, but then got a dreamy, far away look in his eyes. "Me and Chewie, we…we had our ways."
Leia drew her full attention away from the screen and looked at him intently, narrowing her eyes.
"What?" Han asked indignantly. "I…had a book."
She raised her eyebrows. "A book?"
"Yeah, a book," he returned, crossing his arms against his chest.
"And what did it say? Run from Jabba?"
Han uncrossed his arms and glared at her. "Towards the end, yeah."
She made a noise, half-laughing and half-incredulous. This was amusing, if she really thought about it. Han was usually so extraordinarily good at almost everything he tried to do, except file expense reports, it would seem. Although, as she thought more on it, he wasn't really trying to file expense reports as much as he was trying to avoid having to file them and he had been extraordinarily good at that. She smiled, recalling how easily he had given his chair to her but also thinking that somewhere out there was another list just as long with error messages and red text outlining all of the things that Han Solo reluctantly did for her on a routine basis.
"Fair enough," she said. "It doesn't matter anyway. I can fix this, just...get me a drink, will you?" Han made to turn and leave as Leia thumbed through a few more screens. "And a sandwich," she added. It was going to be a long night.