okteiviakom | The Cape Rouge, Later Friday Afternoon

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The Cape Rouge, Later Friday Afternoon

Octavia had urged Lucifer to fly Duke back to the boat. Something about safety, and security, and a defendable spot that was closed off and sort of separate from the rest of the island --

So in one word: control. Which Octavia was grasping for, had been grasping for from just about the second she'd laid eyes on Mara at Selkie Peak. Something she'd thought she'd had, with the portal idea, only to immediately find out how wrong she'd been.

Making Lucifer get Duke home as soon as possible had been another flaily attempt at it.

Of course, as Octavia had come to realize very soon after, it meant she'd had to let both of them out of her sight. She didn't know if Duke had come to yet. Didn't know anything, except that this was the fastest she'd ever crossed the island, trying to race an angel back to port.

Her heart was thumping like thunder in her ears and her lungs ached when she burst onto, then into the Cape Rouge.

And yet: "Lucifer! Is he still out?"

[ooc: For the two modded with permission! Follows this. Note to squirrels: That Octavia and Lucifer got Duke back to the boat is fine for broadcast, everything else NFB pls and thank you!]

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Something squeezed in Lucifer's throat. The wild urge to do just that, get up and walk out and never come back, twisted up within it.

"I'm still here because I keep hoping if I hold on long enough, one day this will be over," he said. "That this isn't a desperate race to the bottom. Because I love you and I do not want you to be alone."

But it had been years of this, and every day eroded something inside of him.

And so Lucifer got the same question Octavia had, years ago after the volcano. Though this time, voiced on a sob, it came out more desperate than lost.

"Why?"

Why did they love him, of all people? Him, who came from a bloodline that had been toxic for generations. Who'd been damned by the narrative the moment his old babysitter had told him about his death.

And if they did, why didn't the people who'd been meant to love him, the first 35 years of his life?

It wasn't the first time Duke had asked him something like it. Every time, Lucifer had produced-- lists and lists and lists of reasons.

"I just do," he said. "And I can't just-- switch it off."

Duke swiped his hand over his eyes, smearing tears into his cheeks.

“Then why do you think I can?”

Lucifer swallowed.

"I just want you to be safe," he said. "To stop taking responsibility for those who won't take responsibility for themselves. To-- to value your life as much as we do."

“I value my life, Luce. I just also want to help when I know I can.” He took a shaky breath. “That’s how I value it. I wish you could accept that.”

"Valuing your life as something you can sacrifice on the altar of people who won't return the favor is not what I meant, Duke," Lucifer said.

He got up off the sofa, finally. To go find himself a bottle of something.

“Yeah. You’ve made that abundantly clear, Luce. I know you don’t get it. But I wish you would accept it.”

"Accept it?" Lucifer pulled a bottle of scotch from the cabinet blindly. Popped off the top, and took a swig. "Have I not been here every day since you came back from Haven, making sure you were all right, that you were comfortable, that you found a way to alleviate the troubles knocking around your head?" he asked, turning back to Duke in an almost-violent swinging motion. "Or the depression before that? Did I not obediently shut up about your brother when you demanded it? Have I not kindly demurred every time you've asked me what I needed recently?"

He gestured at Duke with the bottle. "You don't want acceptance, you want me to agree with your self-destructive behavior. You want me to pat your head and sigh and say yes, it's awful, but you're being such a good one about it."

“Kindly demurred.” Duke echoed. “Yeah, nah, nothing says love like kindly demurring when I try to care for you for once. You want me to change, Luce, and that’s not going to happen. I care about people. And I won’t apologize for that!”

"Yes, thank you," Lucifer said, and barely controlled the urge to fling the bottle at the wall. "It is abundantly clear you don't think of me as people."

Edited 2024-10-06 19:25 (UTC)

Duke’s head jerked back like he’d been slapped.

“. . . What?”

"What?" Lucifer retorted. "Am I wrong?"

“Yes!” Duke yelled. “Fuck, Lucifer, what the hell?!”

Lucifer took another violent swig of the drink and seriously considered dramatically storming off - though whether towards the deck or towards the bedroom, he had no idea. That confusion kept him locked in place, at least for another moment.

"You wanted to know what I need, well, I spent most of date night begging Octavia for it," he said. Another swig. "For a promise I have some kind of future with at least one of you. But I can't ask that of you, because you've been quite clear that all those other people come first."

Duke shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “What?” he said again, then held up his hand to forestall an answer. “That’s not — the problem isn’t that they matter more. The problem is you don’t seem to think they matter at all.”

"The problem is there is no difference between the two when your answer is always to break yourself to pieces for them," Lucifer-- snapped? Said? Something with both desperation and anger in it. "But they don't have to handle the clean-up, do they? They don't have to watch you stumble about for months, trying to be fine, failing to be fine. They don't have to feed you when you're struggling to find your appetite, they don't have to calm you and wipe your bloody brow when you're mired in nightmares, they don't have to wake up every morning wondering if this is a day you'll actually get off the ship or it's going to be a day when you can't get out of bed."

He took a sip. Lowered the bottle. Looked Duke in the eye. "They can just make their demands, get their pound of flesh, and trust that you'll wander back in, ready to give more, the next time they need you. Meanwhile I can't even bloody say I want to burn that place to the ground without you jumping down my throat for wanting to change you. Or implying I want to murder a woman who, may I remind you, has had every chance to leave the town that has done nothing but kill her friends and family for the past few years."

Duke could have said something about what it was like to hear his celestial boyfriend threaten biblical violence on his hometown — but he actually barely heard that part.

Not with the first part of what Lucifer said ringing in his head.

“Stop it, then. If it’s such a chore. I’ve been caring for myself for a long goddamn time. I can do it again.”

"I don't want you to!" Lucifer thundered.

Trust Duke to take entirely the wrong thing from all that.

“Then let me be me!” Duke fisted his hand in his hair. “I’m not like you, Luce, I can’t just say ‘these are my people and fuck everyone else’. I’ve tried that and it sucked! So yeah, I’m going to make sure a kid gets to grow up knowing how to cry! I’m going to hug the woman I think is one of my best friends! And if it turns out that I end up a walking mess of fucking troubles then that’s what happens! I’m not trying to kill myself. I’m not trying to get hurt! But I was born a Crocker, and my boyfriend making me feel like shit for making the best out of that that I can doesn’t fix or change anything!!”

Lucifer stared at him. He held it for a moment or so.

"No future it is, then," he said stiffly.

And, drink in hand, he turned and marched towards the bedroom.

Duke didn’t try to stop him. He didn’t go after him. He waited until Lucifer was out of sight and then dropped, all the terror and rage and grief of the day swamping him at once.

Audrey was gone. She’d broken through long enough to tell Duke to let her go, and now she was wherever Mara had ended up with no way back. Octavia was troubled (oh fuck Tavi was troubled!) because Duke had exploded (he’d actually exploded; he couldn’t remember that part, just the sharp bitter terror and knowing that he wasn’t finished, which was plenty) and now Lucifer had walked away.

And Duke was alone. And empty.

He knelt on the floor of the galley, one hand braced on the floor, the other still fisted in his hair, and tried to remember how to breathe.

Lucifer had opened the door. Shut it behind him. Waited.

But no one came. So eventually, he sat down on the floor beside the bed, drink in hand, his back pressing up against the nightstand. He stared up at the ceiling and tried to remember how he'd gotten here.

He felt very small and unloved. I've been caring for myself for a long time, and wasn't that damning? Knowing that at the end of the day, all of his effort didn't matter, because Duke would just keep going regardless, more focused on fixing everyone else's problems than--

He slid his arms around his legs. No. It would be best if no one made it here any time soon.

Octavia had heard the yelling. Not all the words, more just the noise, but enough to get the gist of it. As if she wouldn't have been able to guess.

It had kept her from coming back in.

Instead, she'd stood near the entrance, looking back towards her little on-deck garden set-up. Most of it was still fine: that she'd used a lot of separate pots and containers had turned out to be a blessing. Kept it contained, what had happened when she'd knelt down to prune one of the plants.

(Because she hadn't known what else to do. Because the little garden had done so much to center her, these past several months. Everything else had been hard, and complicated, but there'd been life there. Simple.)

As soon as she'd touched one of the leaves, the entire plant had dried up, from its tallest part all the way down to its root, and even the soil around it. Like she'd sucked all the life right out of it with just her fingertips. It was just a dried, dead thing now.

Octavia felt almost nothing.

But she only came back inside now that the yelling had stopped.

Duke looked up when he heard her coming, dropping his hand from his hair (taking more than a few strands with it) and sitting back on his heels as he tried instinctively to force himself back together.

Messy emotions led to messy troubles getting out, and Octavia wasn’t as . . . durable there as Lucifer.

“He went to the bedroom,” he rasped. Staring at the porthole on the opposite wall.

If he looked at her right now, he’d lose his grip on everything all over again.

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