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 ]]

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[betterthanaplan]

Duke blinked at her, a little furrow between his brow. He didn’t want to derail her if she was having deep thoughts, though, so he hummed a little and wiggled his toes again. Trying to give her space without making it weird.

[my_own_advocate]

"You miss us?" Lucifer echoed, leaning just so, so he could look at her properly.

[okteiviakom]

"I miss feeling comfortable, with you," Octavia replied, with an almost furtive glance at both of them, before she returned to gently flicking sand off Duke's toes, her other hand resting along his ankle. "Not at anyone else's expense, not like I guess I was, but... I haven't, in a while."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke let out a little huff. “I miss that too. I hope we’re headed in that direction now?”

[my_own_advocate]

"What do you need from us?" Lucifer added, frowning. "How can we help?"

[okteiviakom]

"I... don't think I would be saying this," Octavia replied, slowly, as she finally looked up at Duke properly, "if I tho-- if I felt like we were on the path to that."

She looked to Lucifer.

"I need space to feel like there's room for me to say what I think. And like it's safe to do that." And back to Duke. "Just like you."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke tensed. He looked down at his foot in her lap.

“I want that for you, too.”

He’d thought he’d been trying to give that to her. But apparently not.

[my_own_advocate]

Lucifer felt him tense. He gave Duke a squeeze. Tugged him in a little bit.

"What has made you feel like there isn't space?" he asked Octavia. Gently.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia inhaled a slow breath.

"These days, when we fight, no one leaves," she started. Her gaze was getting drawn down to Duke's foot, too, which she was really now just cradling in her lap. "And that's good. But... After things calm down, I feel like we just end up talking about how we fought. I feel like we don't go back to what the actual fight was about, so nothing really... feels resolved."

And another breath.

"And I don't want to make anyone feel like I'm trying to take up more than my share of space with how I feel about things, but I also don't know where the boundaries actually are, because I was never trying to do that in the first place, so I just... Feel like I have to focus on just not saying anything that might start another fight."

It was a kinder way of phrasing the way she actually felt, but the gist was accurate.

[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?"