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

[betterthanaplan]

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!]

Comments

[betterthanaplan]

"Baltimore's supposed to have a pretty good one," Duke said. "You've never been?"

[okteiviakom]

Octavia shook her head. "I haven't really been on the mainland much. I'm not sure I've actually gone far enough to lose sight of the causeway."

No, she knew she hadn't.

[betterthanaplan]

“Worried you won’t be able to get back?”

[okteiviakom]

"That's part of it."

It seemed like a fairly understandable bit of paranoia to her, considering.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke nodded. “And the other part?”

[okteiviakom]

"Too many people," she said. "I looked it up on Bel's phone once --" One day she'd have her own but guess that day hadn't come yet. "-- that over six hundred thousand people live in just Baltimore. That's overwhelming."

Not that she'd tested that theory.

[betterthanaplan]

"Cities do tend to get pretty crowded," Duke said. He was maybe wondering how easy it would be to break into the aquarium after hours. "If you pick, like, a rainy weekday . . . maybe in the winter . . . it might not be too bad."

[okteiviakom]

Now there was an idea Octavia would not dissuade him from.

She sighed. "That sounds like being cold and miserable to avoid being uncomfortable." Or panicked, but that was a step too far in what she was willing to say. "But, maybe. I didn't mean to let it hold me back this long."

[betterthanaplan]

"Maybe you can get one of those portal things? So you can get back fast if it gets too -- uncomfortable."

[okteiviakom]

"I don't know if I trust those, either," Octavia said - and yes, she could actually hear how many directions her paranoia was going with this, and so she made a slight face. "Sorry."

What for? She couldn't say.

[betterthanaplan]

"No skin off my back," Duke said. "No worries about going to sea though. Nice to see your priorities are in order."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia shrugged. "It's like space." Proper space, not being on a space station. "Open, vast, not filled with people looking at me like I don't belong."

[betterthanaplan]

"You know, I was just telling Jack the ocean could be like space. Good to know I was right."

[okteiviakom]

"You were."

Octavia wondered whether Jack's take on the comparison would be similar to hers. She knew Jack's experience of space was different, at the very least.

Maybe she should ask her, sometime.

She fell quiet for a moment, watching the water. A few thoughts drifted by, but one was insistent enough that it made its way out of her mouth. "Feels like we overdid the topic of why I'm a basket case," she rasped, with no small amount of wryness. Then she looked back over at him. "What did you do before you were this, a smuggler with a boat? Apart from the jailtime."

She'd picked up bits and pieces, but hadn't actually asked yet.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke shrugged, looking out over the water. "Grew up in a small beach town in Maine, about a thousand miles north of here. My dad worked on the docks, started taking me out on the water by the time I could walk. Sailing's pretty much the only decent thing he ever taught me."

[okteiviakom]

"Better than nothing," Octavia replied. So, so mildly. "But he didn't look out for you."

No, it was not a question.

[betterthanaplan]

"Not so's you'd notice," Duke said. "Had to spend more than a few nights looking out for him instead." He sighed. "He died when I was eight."

[okteiviakom]

"I'm sorry."

More for the rest than the death, honestly, but that was the beauty of not specifying out loud. Her tone had dropped back into a neutral, but there was an undercurrent of... something.

She sounded like she cared, was the thing.

Octavia watched him in profile for a few seconds more before turning her eyes towards the water, too.

"What about your mother?"

[betterthanaplan]

Duke let out a single, bitter laugh.

"Yeah, I don't talk about her."

[okteiviakom]

"Says enough."

For her not to press on any further with that. Instead, she fell quiet again, just watching the view for a moment.

[betterthanaplan]

“Been thinking of looking into a glass bottom boat,” Duke said, after left the silence sit for a moment. “I bet there’s some weird shit to see down there.”

[okteiviakom]

"That's an option?" Octavia asked, though immediately on second thought it was not that surprising. "Like a window right into the sea."

[betterthanaplan]

“Exactly. It’d be a smaller one than this, more of a skiff really. Though the water’s probably not quite clear enough up here. They’re a booming business in the Caribbean.”

[okteiviakom]

Octavia's brief pause and look to the side with an ever so slightly furrowed brow was her trying to place the Caribbean on a map in her head.

And then failing, of course. But, whatever.

"I can see why people would like that," she mused. "You get to see things without having to be in the water."

[betterthanaplan]

“‘In the water’ is a spooky place for a lot of people,” Duke said. “Am I right in guessing that you don’t swim?”