The Marina, Cat Island, Tuesday Night

[my_own_advocate]

They had traditions out here on Cat Island - or, well, ways to entertain the tourists that came through here week after week. Spirits had flowed freely well into the evening, and dances and costumes and all sorts of razzle dazzle had come through the diner and engulfed the docks in light.

But somewhere near the end of the evening, close to the big finale, three people wandered further and further away onto the beach. Lucifer, of course, was carrying a cooler in one hand, and his long, thin teal shirt hung loose and open around his body.

He was smiling a bit.

"I think we're almost far enough away," he said.

[[ for them ]]

Comments

[betterthanaplan]

Duke nodded slowly. "That's . . . how I feel a lot, too," he said honestly. "Like if I say the wrong thing, it's like . . . setting off a bomb."

He let that sit for a moment, then wiggled his toes at her again.

"When I ask what you're thinking, or how you feel, I try to do it when I feel like I have space for the answer. The real answer. Even if it might hurt. When I'm telling you how I feel -- that's when I need that space. I hope that makes sense."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia looked up again, another slow inhale passing through her nose.

She really was trying, here. Even if she looked a little defeated, right now.

"Not really," she admitted. "Because what I just heard, what it sounds like to me, is that... You get to choose to take space when you need it. And I get to have it if you choose to ask me."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke shot Lucifer a helpless glance, swallowing back the desire to scream.

"O . . .kay." He frowned at her. "You understand you can ask for things too, right?" The side of his mouth ticked up, not quite a smile. "It'd be kind of nice if you did. You -- from my end, it seems like -- you usually just expect me to know, and then get mad when I inevitably get it wrong."

[my_own_advocate]

"You... can be a bit of a black box," Lucifer said, looking at Octavia. Did his arm shift into a more protective position? Perhaps. Though he didn't think either of them were completely right or completely wrong. "Which is why I appreciate you speaking up now, love."

He studied her. "Why don't you ask?" he said. "Or do you feel you can't? Or you do, and... well. You know. Things go tits up."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia was now trying really hard not to read too far into gestures. Really hard.

"I was told to my face that I make my feelings out to be the most important," she said, steady and even and pretty obviously forcing her voice to be that way. "That me expressing them feels like an attack that needs defending from."

Between that and getting shit for not expressing things made for a tightrope act she was clearly nowhere near mastering.

She looked from one of them to the other.

"And I already feel like I should've kept this to myself, too."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke hadn't pulled his foot from her lap. He'd stopped wiggling his toes, though.

"If you ask for what you need," he said carefully, looking at his own toes. "I'll do my best to accommodate. And if I can't, I'll try to tell you why." He looked up at her again. "I'd like to be able to expect the same from you, if that's okay."

That sounded a lot like the boundaries that Dr. Shin had demonstrated for him. He hoped she'd see it that way, too.

[my_own_advocate]

Lucifer really wished he'd moved to sit between them now, to more adequately distribute reassurance across the whole dynamic. Oh well.

"I think we may be skipping a step here," he said. "Like apologies or something."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia just wanted to fling herself into the ocean.

"Acknowledgment would be good, too."

[betterthanaplan]

Even when Duke moved carefully, took his time, he still did it wrong.

He closed his eyes. (They were starting to burn a little.) "I'm sorry," he said, voice soft and spare. "I didn't mean to imply that you weren't allowed to feel your feelings."

There was more he wanted to say. He was pretty sure if he tried to say it, he'd do it wrong again and make things worse. So he left it at that.

[my_own_advocate]

Lucifer pressed a kiss against his temple. "Thank you," he murmured.

He looked up at Octavia and raised his eyebrows.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia didn't know what she was supposed to do with raised eyebrows right now.

"Express my feelings," because unlike some people, she'd never had a problem feeling her feelings, as everyone here was sadly familiar with, "and why did it take you until someone told you to say that?"

(Maybe it would've helped if she'd tried to take another deep breath or something, here.)

[betterthanaplan]

"Because I'm not a mind reader," Duke snapped. "And as I've been helpfully reminded of repeatedly lately, I'm apparently very selfish. So yes, you have to tell me things when you want me to do them."

He looked away -- from her and from Lucifer.

(He didn't pull his foot from her lap, though. Or pull back from Lucifer's weight at his side. )

[my_own_advocate]

"Oh, for me's sake," Lucifer groaned. He almost pulled away from Duke, purely to make his point, but at the last second he abandoned the idea. "Will you both shut up for a moment? No wonder this keeps going bloody wrong!"

[okteiviakom]

Well, Octavia had been about to say something.

And now that thing had an uncomfortable chance of festering as her mouth snapped shut, instead.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke stared down at his knees and waited. Feeling a bit like he'd been sent to the principal's office.

Only, you know, he actually cared what the two people here thought of him.

[my_own_advocate]

"Neither of you are listening to each other, you're just waiting for your time to speak," Lucifer said irritably, "Which, I'll remind you, is supposed to be my fatal flaw. So can we please all listen, show an actual interest in everyone's feelings, acknowledge them, maybe even ask some questions before we start flinging our own grievances at one another or, me forbid, get pedantic about a choice in verbs?"

[okteiviakom]

So much for taking a breath.

"If you think it's pedantic that I would like to feel like what I was saying was understood," Octavia replied, measured tone sounding particularly forced, "then you should maybe get right back off your high horse."

[betterthanaplan]

And here Duke had just wanted to protest that he thought he had been listening. He'd offered her boundaries when she'd asked. And when she didn't like them, he'd rephrased them. Then apologized when they said he needed to do that.

Now he flicked his eyes between the two of them, wondering how Lucifer would handle this part of the 'nitpicking words' argument.

(He felt frozen in place now, muscles tense in what had started as a relaxed sprawl on the sand.)

[my_own_advocate]

"It's not pedantic to want to know you were understood, darling, it's pedantic to sharply correct him on his specific word choice when you know he's not as precise as you are and then, rather than let him answer, immediately follow it up with an accusation," Lucifer said flatly.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia's jaw tightened a little further.

Although what she said was, "Well, you're gonna think whatever you want to think, so I'm not going to bother."

[betterthanaplan]

"Okay, come on," Duke said. He screwed his eyes shut and shook his head again. "Octavia. This is why it feels unsafe sometimes when you express your feelings. Because if we disagree with you at all, you snap or clam up or pick at our words until you're the victim."

. . . Fuck, that was not going to help anything at all.

"Ask us for what you want. Luce and I are very accommodating. But we're not perfect beings, for fuck sake. And that needs to be okay."

[my_own_advocate]

"You could just say, 'Duke, I need to know if you understood what I meant, because for me, expressing feelings and feeling things are two different things'," Lucifer said. "And then we would, in fact, bloody well listen and stop thinking whatever we were thinking."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia got up so abruptly and with such little grace that it sent sand flying. Sorry about your abandoned foot, Duke. Except maybe not really, after that victim thing.

(Far less offensive than probably several of her choices in this conversation, but, well, something had snapped there.)

She suddenly couldn't see very well through the blur in her eyes, so she addressed... their general direction. "Well, you can think in peace, now." And she grabbed her shoes and turned to stomp off further down the beach.

(Something that didn't feel safe right now was letting them see her crying.)

[betterthanaplan]

Duke curled in on himself, foot and all.

"Are we supposed to chase after her now?" he asked. Lucifer, nominally, but also the universe at large.

So much for their track record of people not leaving.

[my_own_advocate]

"Not you," Lucifer murmured. "Though darling? May I suggest taking a moment to reflect on the word 'victim' here?"

He kissed the top of Duke's head. "I'll talk to her," he said. "I'll leave you the wine."

And he gingerly attempted to disentangle himself.