betterthanaplan | The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom (and Beyond!), Wednesday afternoon

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The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom (and Beyond!), Wednesday afternoon

Duke had plans with Octavia today to show her the ocean -- or the parts of it that could be easily reached from Fandom in an afternoon, anyway. So while he waited for her to arrive, he puttered around his boat, checking over the engine and bilge pump, plotting a couple possible routes on his charts, and checking the weather reports and tides for anything that might give them trouble.

Everything looked good for a lovely day at sea. He put together some beer and snacks, and sat back on his favorite bench with his ukelele while he waited.

A pair of porgs hopped up on the crate by his feet. He did his best to ignore them.

[for one!]

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Duke noted the shift with a little inward smile. He liked the sound of his boat's engines too.

"And I missed him. Damn. I've been starting to wonder if he really exists."

He wasn't. He just liked to tease.

It earned him a withering look, even if it was lacking most of its bite. And was a lot soft around the edges.

Okay, it wasn't very withering at all.

"You'll wish he didn't if he decides to come at you, acting like an overprotective big brother."

He wouldn't be the first one Duke had had to face.

"For what? We're just hanging out. Having fun."

"That's also what I said," Octavia replied, in a tone that counted as 'brightly' to her. "But, 'he's not going to let anything bad happen to me' and so on."

She was definitely quoting something there. Something she'd heard a thousand times.

But, she shrugged. "I think he remembered I can protect myself, though."

"Not letting anything bad?" Duke asked. "Or not letting anything?"

They were making their way out of the harbor now, and the boat rocked slowly up and down over the swells. An ocean breeze came through the open doors on either side of the wheelhouse. Engine noise was part of Octavia's happy place -- these things were Duke's. Something relaxed in him out here that never did when he was on land.

"Brothers. What a pain."

The first guy Octavia ever kissed had found himself tied up in a tree for a night. So there was a time it really had been anything.

"His sister, his responsility," Octavia said, but the distant, distracted quality was back. Her eyes were no longer on him, but on what she could see through the windows.

Something about the breeze reminded her of the dropship doors opening for the first time.

"Your life," Duke argued. "Your choices."

He watched her watch the water for a moment, then looked on ahead himself, steering the ship slowly around towards the wild side of the island.

"But what do I know? My brothers were never even a little bit protective."

Things might have gone a bit differently growing up if they had been. Or if any of their mothers had been willing to take on their kid's half-feral half-brother.

"Your brothers sound like idiots."

Octavia felt it was a fair assessment, and not even a particularly rude one, under the circumstances. His brothers should've looked after him, end of story as far as she was concerned.

Her gaze stayed on the water. "But I don't know if mine had a choice." His life had changed irrevocably the day she'd been born, after all.

That tended to happen when siblings came along, yes.

"You're not wrong. I don't think I would have done too well with anyone trying to be protective of me, though."

His parents hadn't ever really bothered. And when Nathan tried, all Duke could see was a rejection of everything he'd had learned to be in order to survive.

To be fair, becoming a cop was a terrible way to try to protect a criminal.

"Why's that?"

She did actually glance over to ask, but just about only for the second it took to ask that.

It was a fifty-fifty split between not wanting to miss how the island looked from out here, and just finding it easier to talk about these things while looking away.

There were definitely topics in this world that required a complete lack of eye contact.

Duke shrugged, keeping his own eyes on the water. (He was trying to steer! He had an excuse.) "Let's just say I've never done well with authority."

Octavia huffed out some vaguely, wryly amused noise.

"Me neither," she said. "Authority took a while to fully understand that, though."

“They always seem to think they can fix you by throwing more authority at you, don’t they.”

"And all it ever does is make you want to tell them to go screw themselves even louder," Octavia agreed.

She closed her eyes. The rocking of the boat was an unfamiliar feeling, far more pronounced than the subtle way the Ark had always felt like it was breathing under her feet.

She was taking a second just to feel it.

Duke glanced over and frowned. "You feeling okay? Some folks get seasick."

Octavia shook her head, then opened her eyes, glancing back at him.

"Just homesick, I guess." Kind of, anyway. "It's stupid and it'll pass."

She was also grateful not to be seasick.

Duke tilted his head. "What's 'home' like for you? We talking post-apocalypse or space station?"

There was probably some symbolic value to her looking out towards the island at that question, even though that wasn't why she didn't.

"I don't really use that word much, actually," she said after a pause. "But I only ever had one place I called that, and that was on the Ark." Wait, he probably didn't know that name yet. It was easy to guess, but: "That's what the station was called. We had this little cramped one-room place for me and Bellamy and Mom, and that was home."

She shrugged. "This reminds me of that, I guess."

Duke decided not to take 'cramped' as an insult. "Lot of bobbing over swells in space, huh?"

That wasn't the part she was reminded of, anyway.

"Not exactly," Octavia drawled. "But it still feels a little like the station's alive under your feet."

Duke nodded. "Ground's too still," he observed. "That's part of why I still sleep on the boat even when I'm at port."

Also because, like, his bed was there. And if he had to pay for a boat slip anyway, why bother shelling out more for a hotel room?

"It's home for you," Octavia said. "Right?"

"Best one I've ever had," Duke agreed. ". . . Admittedly that's not a very high bar."

"The quarters I just called my home was my prison before I was in prison," Octavia noted with a rather dark sort of muted humor to her tone. She shook her head. "Your low bar is safe with me."

Duke rolled his eyes. "Do not get me started on prisons. I've been in several."

Both literal and metaphorical!

"What'd they put you in for?"

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