okteiviakom | The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom, Sunday Evening

Entry tags:

The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom, Sunday Evening

Octavia was still planning to try sailing to Haven. She was just doing it concurrently with trying to figure out how all the places she'd been on the Ground fit on what the east coast looked in this time. The table she was sitting at in the galley was a mess of charts and notes, and in the middle of it all, there was a hand-drawn map. Octavia had sketched out the coastline, and had spent most of the day marking down both the present-day names she could find on her map app as well as the approximate locations of places from the Ground.

It was getting late, but she was still working on it. Right now, she was hard at work trying to figure out whether it could really be as simple as this time's Annapolis turning into Polis by her time.

... Okay, right now, she was kind of slumped over the table, her head cushioned on one arm.

Just resting her eyes, just for a little bit.

[ooc: For that guy that's returning. The tall one.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

"The mainland," Octavia replied.

That said it all, didn't it?

Duke flicked his eyes up to her. ". . . Kind of makes sense," he said. "You traveled through time, not through space."

"Apparently," Octavia replied, with a lopsided shrug that came off a little helpless. "I don't know why I always thought it was far away."

Truth was, she'd never given it much thought at all.

"Do you think you might want to go see it?" Duke asked. "What it looks like now?"

The Lincoln Memorial. Jesus.

"Lucifer asked the same thing last night," Octavia replied, with a brief flicker of wryness. Then she sighed. "But I don't know."

"Well. You've got plenty of time to decide. Island owes us some quiet."

If only it worked that way.

Yeah. Octavia couldn't fight her quiet snort, at that.

She shook her head, and looked down at the map. Her voice went a little far away. "I was trying to figure out where Polis was," she said. "When you showed up."

Had been, anyway. Before the almost-nap.

"Really. 'Cause it kinda looked like you were sleeping when I showed up." He tilted his head. "I'm going to go out on a limb and say you hadn't been doing enough of that while I was gone."

To that, Octavia could only offer a little shrug, without looking up.

That was the closest to an admission she was going to get.

"I haven't been doing enough of it, either," Duke said, sliding his hand across the table towards her. "Hopefully we'll both sleep better tonight."

He was tired enough that the inevitable nightmares about what had happened would hopefully hold off for awhile.

Octavia put her hand on top of his almost immediately, and finally looked up again.

"It was just a week, for me."

Was that supposed to convince him she'd totally slept enough? It probably wouldn't.

"That just means I had longer to get used to not being home."

He threw that word out far easier than she did, yeah.

And sober Octavia was more aware of that than drunk Octavia was.

She gave his hand a squeeze, then glanced down at his food carton. "Are you done?"

"Yeah." Duke slid the carton aside. "Let's go to bed, huh?"

Octavia slid hers aside too, and got up. Already tugging him to his feet, but gently.

That was about to be a theme.

"Let's go to bed, snogon."

He could use some gentleness in his life.

He wasn't nearly as graceful getting to his feet as he usually would be, and he swallowed a groan on the way, then paused to arch his back a little with a wince.

"I'm going to be one giant knot tomorrow."

Octavia let him stretch before she'd start tugging him towards the bedroom.

"I don't reallh know much of anything about massages," she noted, watching him. "But maybe you can tell me what to do?"

"Massage might just hurt right now," Duke admitted. "I have some tiger balm somewhere, though. Maybe just rub that in on my back?"

And get a good look at the bands of bruising from the steps.

"I didn't mean right now, anyway," Octavia replied mildly. In part to combat the immediate, useless worry that came with the words 'might just hurt'. "Whatever you need."

"Should be in the bedside cabinet," Duke said. He sat slowly on the edge of the bed, started to lean towards the cabinet, then stopped with a wince. "Little octagonal tub. Smells minty."

He was moving like an old man.

Octavia couldn't help the urge to press a quick kiss to his hair before she went to dig through the cabinet.

Didn't take very long. She held the little tub up. "This it?"

He was way too aware of that himself, yeah. Though compared to how he'd been moving earlier in the day, he was downright spry.

"That's the stuff." He started carefully pulling off his shirt. There was a little bruising on the center of his chest, where Nathan had pressed against his sternum, but it had nothing on the bruises along his back. "If you could rub some of that into the skin along my spine, that'd be great. Not too much, though, a little goes a long way."

Octavia nodded, her gaze flicking down to the bruise on his chest. She tried not to show much of a reaction, and was mostly successful.

Not so much when she crawled onto the bed behind him, and saw his back. Couldn't stop the instinctive hiss.

(There it was again, the guilt that wanted to convince her she could have stopped this if she'd just gone with him.)

"You sure you want me to touch this?"

"It'll be worse later if you don't," Duke said softly. "Just . . . a light touch."

He'd probably skip the nightmares tonight just by virtue of the fact that it'd be next to impossible to get comfortable.

"Okay."

At least it was something she could do. Octavia got a little bit of the balm onto her fingertips, and tried to just focus on what she was doing, not letting her eyes stray to the rest of the bruises as she worked the balm into his skin, down along his spine.

She kept her touch very, very light.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject