Lucifer's Mansion, Friday Evening

[okteiviakom]

A lot could happen in a week. Like Octavia doing a 180 on what she considered an appropriate venue for her and Duke's inaugural date night. Not that they hadn't had date nights before (although ones Octavia had probably refused to call that, with her own internal rules about language), but there were date nights, and there were date nights.

There were random events, and there were the beginnings of traditions.

(Hopeful ones, anyway.)

So there Octavia was, already at the house. She'd thought about cooking something herself, maybe paella like Lucifer had taught her to make once, but had ultimately decided against it. This all felt new enough as it was, without adding the unknown factor of her cooking into it.

The trusty Thai she'd ordered had arrived a moment or two ago, and was now sitting on the coffee table in the living room.

Now all she needed was her date.

[ooc: For that guy. No, not that one, the other one.]

Comments

[okteiviakom]

"Well, we're here," Octavia replied, managing something faintly wry. "That has to count for something, right?"

Not that she thought they'd been as lost as he and Lucifer had been.

[betterthanaplan]

Not as. But not not lost.

(Duke was still worried about her and that rogue trouble.)

“I’d say it counts for a lot.” He gave her a soft smile. “And, you know, maybe we can try playing with ropes sometime, too.”

[okteiviakom]

His shoulder was coming in handy again. Some of the... something cautious was back on the visible parts of Octavia's face, if not as pronounced.

"You think so?"

Sure, the three of them had done some light stuff with scarves over the years, but things beyond that...

[betterthanaplan]

"I think we won't know for sure if we don't try," Duke said. "But -- yeah. Yeah, I think so. It feels so good to hand myself over to Luce. I want to feel that good with you, too."

[okteiviakom]

"I..." Octavia said, eyebrows pulling into more of a frown, cautious turning more concern. "I don't know about that."

There was so much she'd kept far, far away from him for auch a long time.

[betterthanaplan]

"Oh." Duke felt a little silly being surprised. He swallowed it back. "Well, I don't want to do anything you're not comfortable with."

[okteiviakom]

"You weren't comfortable with it," Octavia murmured, helplessly.

Okay, so that hadn't been this. Excuse her cautiously kneejerking anyway.

[betterthanaplan]

"That was a long time ago," Duke said gently. "I'm -- I've processed a lot of stuff." He wished she were doing a little less hiding, but they could work on that. "And that was about orders, not so much about rope."

Lucifer did a fair amount of ordering, too. But what really went right to the sweet spot in Duke's brain was being helpless -- but also safe.

That was what he was hoping to find with her.

[okteiviakom]

"I know a lot more about orders than I do about rope," Octavia replied, quietly. But she hadn't pulled away, even with all her half-hiding. That was something. "That's... more Lucifer's thing."

Well. In that way where Lucifer's thing was whatever got his partners going, anyway.

[betterthanaplan]

"Lucifer likes giving us whatever we need," Duke said. "You and me . . . we gotta figure things out a bit differently." He tilted his head at her. "It doesn't have to be ropes. I think I mentioned once that maybe we could, like, play out a struggle for it? With scarves or straps, or even you just. Holding me down. And we'd use safe words, make sure neither of us ended up doing something we don't like."

[okteiviakom]

He had mentioned something like that before, hadn't he?

It felt like it had been a thousand years ago.

"Obviously safe words," Octavia muttered. Not really touching the rest right off the bat because she didn't immediately have the words.

[betterthanaplan]

"Obviously," Duke agreed. "We could do the stoplight system. Luce mentioned you guys have used that."

[okteiviakom]

That part was at least a little easier to talk about. Octavia latched onto it.

"Yeah," she murmured. "There's a safeword too, but the colors seem... Like less of a full stop, if we don't need a full stop. And 'green'..."

She chewed on her lip a little, thinking about it.

"Sometimes it works like a shorthand. Like we can skip a conversation we would otherwise have to have."

[betterthanaplan]

"Sounds like fun," Duke said. "We can start slow. Simple. Feel our way into it, maybe."

[okteiviakom]

'Fun' was pretty far from the first word Octavia would have used. But how could he know? He hadn't asked.

And she didn't entirely have all the right words to volunteer.

Octavia gave another vague hum. Pressed another kiss against his shoulder.

[betterthanaplan]

That was their perennial issue, the fact that Duke never knew the right thing to ask.

So he tried "what are you thinking?" again. It had worked pretty well last time.

[okteiviakom]

"I don't know," Octavia muttered. She nuzzled at his shoulder with a half-suppressed sigh. It was less about hiding - even if the effect was the same - and more about...

Trying to think.

About what she was feeling, and how much of that she could actually put into words.

[betterthanaplan]

"Okay," Duke said, nodding. "I can wait."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia kept him waiting for... a moment. Two?

And then she muttered, "Probably safer if you get your fun with Lucifer."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke nodded slowly.

"Safer for me?" he asked gently. "Or safer for you?"

[okteiviakom]

"Safer," Octavia repeated.

Two things could be true at once.

[betterthanaplan]

Lucifer had told Duke outright that he couldn't trust him anymore, and Duke was working hard at earning that trust back.

He was starting to think maybe he needed to do that with Octavia, too.

"Is there anything I can do to help make it safer for us?"

[okteiviakom]

He may well have been on the right track with that hunch.

"I don't know," Octavia said, once again. It was almost funny: just the previous evening, she'd watched him in his crown and she'd had thoughts, and yet now...

Now it all felt so far away and not for her.

She shook her head, straightened up a little. "I don't know. Maybe there isn't."

(Maybe she didn't work like that.)

[betterthanaplan]

That . . . that hurt.

Duke was careful to keep it off his face, though.

"Okay," he said. "You'll let me know if you think of something?"

[okteiviakom]

There was something about that 'if you think of something' that rubbed Octavia the wrong way, too. Plenty of unfortunate feelings to go around.

With another hum low in her throat, she straightened up the rest of the way, and reached out for one of their abandoned food containers, as if that would help her sort out her thoughts into anything... actually useful.

(She didn't want to be sending this whole thing downhill fast, but it was hard.)