The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom, Tuesday evening

[betterthanaplan]

Duke had spent most of the day yesterday -- most of his time since seeing Nathan off on Sunday, in fact -- out at sea. He'd probably still be out there if he hadn't made plans for today, both the now-usual yoga with Rey in the morning and his dinner date-thing with Jack.

Not a date-date. Jack didn't think it'd be a date-date, did she? He was pretty sure she didn't see it as a date -- she wasn't really the romance type. Not that he'd object if she did. He and Nathan weren't exactly exclusive, and Nathan was a thousand miles away, and Duke was definitely overthinking this. He wasn't sixteen anymore.

This was a casual dinner between friends. Or, alternately, an intervention. Apparently it was his life's mission to fix people with no taste for the finer things in life.

He stirred his red sauce and checked the eel on the grill. Everything was just about ready.

He propped the door open so he could keep an eye on the galley and headed out onto the deck with some beer to wait for Jack.

And kick another of those damn porg things off his ship.

[for the one mentioned in the narrative. And thus ends my mini-spam]

Comments

[betterthanaplan]

"He's . . . real something, alright. He has this tendency to just -- ignore everything that doesn't fit into his view of the world."

[biotic_psychotic]

"Kinda noticed how he was on-purpose not noticing Fjord," Jack said, "Which.. I mean, at least he was polite about it. Some people ain't." Little amused, "Seemed a little more interested in Sparkle and Hernando. I take it that's the whole small uptight town thing?"

After a moment, she asked, "Are you okay? Seeing him again after ten years when you weren't expecting to?"

[betterthanaplan]

“Yeah, you don’t get a lot of men making out with each other in Maine. Or — any.” Duke lifted one shoulder, not making eye contact. “I’m fine. We ended up screaming at each other in the hotel hallway. It was, I don’t know. Cathartic or something.”

[biotic_psychotic]

Jack tilted her head in thought and then said, "Were you two a thing before? This wasn't something that just like, happened here after ten years of not talking? Because, uh, if it was then I'm callin' bullshit on that entire 'I'm fine' thing."

She wanted to call bullshit on it anyway. Duke's body language said he wasn't. Instead, she offered, "I'll take screaming to silence any day of the fuckin' week, though. If that screaming happened right before he left here, gonna call bullshit twice on the 'fine'."

[betterthanaplan]

“Yeah, we were a thing before. As much as he was willing to let us be.” As in all things, Duke was pretty sure he’d been way more into Nathan than Nathan had been into him. “And seriously. I’m fine. Hell, we didn’t even end up throwing punches. That’s about as good as we get.”

[biotic_psychotic]

"That's better'n if it had been a sudden thing," Jack acknowledged. She was getting the impression this relationship wasn't what you might call healthy.

"You make plans to go see him? Maine's not that far," she wondered.

[betterthanaplan]

She would find that most of Duke's relationships were not what you might call healthy.

"Nothing concrete. School's got a vacation coming up soon though, right? I might head up then."

[biotic_psychotic]

"You're not gonna go on the trip?" Jack wondered.

[betterthanaplan]

"What, like as a chaperone?" Duke shook his head. "Yeah, no. I've got shit to do anyway. It's hard to keep up with business when you're sticking in one place, even if you're only working there once a week."

The fact that he kept finding himself making plans wasn't making that any easier either.

[biotic_psychotic]

"Fair enough," Jack said, "Though I gotta laugh at 'chaperone'. I mean, none of the teachers would let a kid get hurt but other than that, they don't hover."

[betterthanaplan]

"School has standards in who they hire after all, huh?" Duke mused. "Bunch of teenagers let loose on an unsuspecting foreign town. You've got me almost wishing I were going. That's got to be chaos."

[biotic_psychotic]

Jack snorted. "You'd think, right? The kids here self regulate their shit. I did radio for a term and were there ever any ragers or crazy Saturday night shit? Nope. We took them to Iceland. Found out Kiki can turn into animals when I tried to steal her. She was a puffin at the time. The kids behaved. It's weird."

[betterthanaplan]

That was very weird, actually. ". . . Are we sure they're actually teenagers?" He shook his head. "Fuck, I had to basically order them to break rules in class. Why am I surprised?"

[biotic_psychotic]

Jack looked at him and considered what to say before she answered. "This place ain't exactly safe but it's a damn sight better than what most of those kids came out of. I expect 'em to cut the fuck loose here just because they can, you know? Breaking the rules might be hard for 'em, though. I could see it. Worst they'd get is a couple detentions."

She snorted, "Shit, man. I'd have broken every rule in this place so hard they'd have to make new rules just for me and then I'd have broken those fuckers, too, just to prove nobody was the boss of me and that I wasn't scared of anything. I can see where it'd be different for other kids, though. If this place is better, they're not gonna wanna do anything that might get 'em kicked out, you know?"

[betterthanaplan]

Duke tried to picture himself going to school in Fandom instead of Haven and just -- blanked. It didn't work. Where would he even get his bootleg liquor? The nearest foreign country was a thousand miles away!

"There'd've been a whole lot more douchey pranks if I'd gone here," he finally said, shaking himself out of it. "A gremlin crammed in someone's locker at the very least."

There would have been no Nathan, though. That was the big thing. He could not picture being a teenager without Nathan around. It just -- didn't compute.

[biotic_psychotic]

From the raccoons probably.

"Yeah?" Jack smirked, "Lemme know when you figure out how to get your hands on a gremlin without gettin' bit yourself. They're smart little fuckers. I kinda like 'em."

Small, venomous, kinda vicious.. of course she loved them.

"Kids up there remind me a lot of my kids back home. I kind of miss all my little shits."

[betterthanaplan]

"I would've found a way. I was a determined little shithead." He shook his head. "The kids here remind me . . . not even a little bit of the kids back in Haven. Which is kind of why I like them."

There was a whole generation gap and the perspective of age to consider there as well, but yeah. Haven High had been cliquish and very, very monochrome.

[biotic_psychotic]

"Not like the kids I came up with either," Jack said, maybe a touch too blandly. "The ones I teach, though, yeah. That I see reflected. Biotic kids have the same sort of.. bruised around the eyes look, for awhile, when they first get to Grissom. Shellshocked, sort of. We sort 'em out. Same thing here, and the kids don't even have to sit through some boring-ass maths class."

[betterthanaplan]

"They just have to learn their math on the fly, as god intended," Duke joked.

Because yeah, that whole 'shellshocked, bruised around the eyes look' bit actually did sound like Haven. From elementary school, anyway. By middle school they'd all learned how to repress like champions.

[biotic_psychotic]

"You probably have uses for like, algebra and shit," Jack acknowledged, "Boat and all. Someone like me sure as fuck don't. Once maths gets to letters instead of numbers, peace me right the fuck out man."

[betterthanaplan]

"Algebra's just regular math backwards," Duke said. "But yeah, it's useful as hell when you're dealing with stuff like tide charts on the regular."

[biotic_psychotic]

Jack sorted, "I sure would say it was 'backwards'. Kinda weird, though, to think of someone doin' all that stuff by themselves and not with, like, an AI or VI for support."

Which was, oddly, a compliment.

[betterthanaplan]

"What, tide charts? Or algebra in general?" Duke shrugged. "Math isn't so hard, really. I think people just get all tied up in abstractions. When your income depends on being able to calculate how fast you can get from Bermuda to Boston, you pick up on it pretty quick."

Or Duke was a lot smarter than he gave himself credit for. Probably a mix of both.

[biotic_psychotic]

"Both," Jack said with a shrug, "Where I'm from 'ship' would mean 'astrogation charts' instead of tide charts. I guess some people could do that shit in their head. I'd just ask EDI."

[betterthanaplan]

"And if the EDI breaks down?" Duke asked.

The prospect of breakdowns was no small part of what made him leery about space travel, really. If the Cape Rouge's engine broke down on the water, he might be drifting, but he'd at least still float.