The Cape Rouge, Tuesday... Noon?

[okteiviakom]

Right, to recap: Octavia's weekend had been replaced by one very long day. On Sunday, she and Duke had landed back in Fandom, and she'd failed to sleep much during the night, leading to her then passing out for most of the day, instead. And then she'd gone out to the Nest, gotten drunk, come back to the boat, and failed to fall asleep properly again until it had already been close to Tuesday morning.

And now that she had finally woken up again, she had no concept of what time it was, anymore.

But she knew her head hurt, and she felt nauseous and a little jittery. All of which felt like... oddly grounding things, after the past couple of days. Maybe it was the way her body finally felt fully as awful as the rest of her already had.

Anyway, she was keeping a close proximity to walls as she made her way out of the bedroom, finally, and towards the galley. Just in case she needed the support.

[ooc: Open!]

Comments

[my_own_advocate]

Lucifer turned his head. He pressed a kiss against Duke's forehead.

He was still incredibly angry. He was just... learning something about feeling two very strong emotions at the same time.

[betterthanaplan]

And Duke . . . was getting used to people being able to feel two strong emotions about him at the same time.

(Maybe if folks growing up had been better at showing them, he might have learned that much earlier.)

"I wish I could say we -- I was done with it all. But." Duke stopped, swallowing against the taste of copper in the back of his mouth. "I don't think Haven will ever be 'done' with me. Not until. . . ."

Until the thing all three of them were working so hard to avoid.

[my_own_advocate]

Lucifer was... quiet.

"You know how I feel about that," he said, after the silence had dragged on too long. "No point on wasting more words on it."

[betterthanaplan]

"Yeah." Duke swallowed again. He felt so sick. Anxiety and troubles blending into a tornado in his belly. "I'm scared, Luce."

[my_own_advocate]

It broke his heart to hear that from Duke, of all people.

"I know, love," Lucifer said quietly. He stuck to his promise - no pointing out that Duke could have opted out at any point until this weekend, and chose not to. "But you're here now. Safe, for the moment."

He slid his arm around Duke. "We're going to keep it that way for as long as we can," he said. "And we're boarding ourselves up in the pillow room for the rest of the week."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke loved the sound of that. But, trying to stick to his new personal rule of realism:

“It might not be safe,” he said softly. “There’s so much I don’t know about how all the troubles in me work. If I hurt Tavi. . . .”

[my_own_advocate]

Lucifer sighed. "If something seems about to go amiss, come to me," he murmured. "I can handle a few troubles."

[betterthanaplan]

"If nothing else, we know you can take me out," Duke agreed. That wasn't what Lucifer meant, he knew, but it was what he was counting on anyway.

[my_own_advocate]

Lucifer eyed him. "Let's not immediately jump to fatalism on all fronts, shall we?"

[betterthanaplan]

"I mean, we've proven that it's hard for the trouble to keep going if the troubled person is unconscious." Duke shrugged. "Hopefully that'd work on, like, the stitching thing, too."

[my_own_advocate]

"What is the stitching thing?" Lucifer said, frowning.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke shuddered faintly. "People who, uh. I guess told me things I didn't want to hear? They'd get their -- faces. Sewn shut. Like between one blink and the next, their eyes or their mouth or their ears would have these ugly black stitches on them."

[my_own_advocate]

Lucifer pulled a face. "Well, that seems unnecessarily visceral."

[betterthanaplan]

"Yeah, it's . . . pretty horrifically hardcore."

[my_own_advocate]

"I promise to knock you out if anyone gets... stitched," Lucifer said.

[betterthanaplan]

"Thank you," Duke said. "And I . . . will be doing my best to just. Accept reality as it is."

And so his ability to accept and express natural human emotions began to narrow.

[my_own_advocate]

Lucifer sighed. "Now that just sounds depressing."