betterthanaplan | Lucifer's Mansion, very early Sunday morning

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Lucifer's Mansion, very early Sunday morning

None of Duke's dreams had been exactly kind lately, but they'd at least mostly stuck to a general anxiety-dream structure. Wandering the stark white hallways of the barn, shouting for Audrey, unable to escape the looming spectre of a trouble, which in dream logic seemed to mostly take the form of a generic "boogey man" figure. The sort of thing that left him discombobulated and out of sorts throughout the morning, but not the sort that would wake him abruptly in a way anyone else might notice.

His was really only a matter of time before his luck there ran out.

The white floors bucked beneath him as he walked, swaying and dipping like a ship tossed in a storm. The world through the identical windows was black and roiling, filled with debris and unidentifiable bodies.

"Audrey!" Duke shouted. "Audrey, we're going down! We have to abandon ship!"

A flash of blonde, darting through a doorway. Duke dashed after her, but every time he turned a corner she was just up ahead, vanishing around another one.

"Audrey! Audrey!!"

He couldn't catch up. He couldn't get his legs to work properly. The floor pitched up violently then dropped, and Duke fell --

He surfaced by a rocky beach, and fought his way to land, sprawling out to catch his breath. His limbs still weren't working properly, and there was noise all around, explosions and screams clogging the air like dust. He choked on it, drowning, until a hand appeared in front of his face. Duke took it and let it help him stand, only noticing once he found his feet that it was coated in blood.

Nathan smiled, his teeth red. His face was red, his jacket soaked through. His eyes were cloudy and dead.

"Did you really think you could leave it behind?" he asked.

Duke snatched his hand away, panting, and watched as the blood vanished into him. As Nathan vanished into him. "No." He choked on the word. "No --"

"It's how it always had to be," a voice said, coming from everywhere. Duke spun. It was Vince, it was Lucifer. It was Dwight and Gloria and Claire and Danny and Rey. They stood all around him, bloody and scorched and dead, and Audrey, they were all variations on the theme of Audrey, like Lucy and Sarah and dozens of others, stretching back into eternity.

"Did you really think it wouldn't follow you?" they asked.

A scream across the sky, and Duke looked up. The meteor storm. It was crashing all around, smashing through the school, through the Gull, through the Devil's Nest and Luke's and every place he'd ever felt he belonged. And one came hurtling down at the beach, straight for the sand, straight for Duke, he could feel the heat as it burned through the atmosphere, could feel his clothing burning away --

He woke with an abbreviated cry, an explosion rattling the inside of his head. He lay where he was for a moment, panting and choking on his too-rapid breaths, staring at the slice of sky visible from his spot in Lucifer's bed.

It was glowing red with the sunrise, and for a long moment, still stuck in the dream, Duke was convinced it was fire. That the meteors had come to Fandom, and everything was burning. . . .

[for those in the bed -- or the house -- with him!]

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Octavia had already opened her mouth for a 'we don't have to talk about it right now', so...

Now she just closed it, instead.

Duke had already had his own reservations about how much he drank, this last fall. He'd even tried to cut down a little for awhile, so her mentioning it was a bit of a shock to his system. A reminder that he probably needed better coping mechanisms than booze.

Or leaning on his already traumatized partners.

He shifted, uncurling his legs self-consciously. "Yeah," he muttered. "Sorry 'bout that."

Lucifer expelled a sigh. "I'll wait until later with the booze," he said. "I'll handle breakfast first."

A pause.

"Later."

Maybe it was for the better, after all, that Octavia hadn't told either of them where she'd been yesterday.

She tried to pull Duke closer to her, but it had the air of a suggestion. It was his choice.

"Later," Duke agreed, on an exhausted sigh. He used the excuse of getting comfortable to keep from following the impulse to curl up into Octavia again. She had enough on her own plate, she didn't need his issues, too. "it's too early. We should stay in bed."

"Something we can agree on," Lucifer said, pushing some of the blankets out of the way.

... and held them up for Duke to crawl under in a rare display of chivalry or whatever.

Octavia let them both do whatever they wanted to do.

She was just... there, for now. Wondering whether more sleep was already a lot cause.

Duke slid under the covers, then proceeded to shift about restlessly, his desire for close contact at war with his desire not to be a burden on his partners. He knew it was stupid, that they didn't see him that way, but he'd spent too much of his life making sure he only ever needed to depend on himself to relax easily once he'd realized he was starting to lean on other people.

Finally, he ended up on his back, his head still close enough to Octavia's to feel her breath against his cheek. He rested on hand on his stomach, the other under the covers, fingers reaching for Octavia's legs.

"You ever get bad dreams, Luce?" he asked softly, staring up into the darkness.

Lucifer slipped in under the covers after him. He had no particular qualms about moving in close enough that his leg brushed against Duke's.

"Rarely," he said. "But... yes, sometimes."

It was a two-way street, Duke.

But Octavia wasn't going to push closer for her own comfort, either. He'd made his choice and she was honoring it.

She pushed her hair back from her face, and just listened.

That would have been easier for him to accept if anyone else in his youth had ever treated it that way.

"What are they about?"

"I..." Lucifer made a helpless gesture with his hand. Started with something simple, resolved.

"Back in Los Angeles, I had this recurring dream where the Detective found out what I was. Through my face, or my wings," he said, "And then she'd trip and fall off my balcony."

Edited 2021-03-22 18:44 (UTC)

Duke grimaced. "Shit. What'd Dr. Linda say about that?"

"Hm? Oh, she was utterly unhelpful," Lucifer said. "First she said I had issues, then she said some nonsense about me being terrified of losing the Detective, and eventually we agreed this was clearly about Father and my best bet was to find a way to give Him the old finger again, but she didn't have any ideas."

In case anyone here had wondered how Lucifer's therapy sessions often went.

. . . Yeah, Duke was just running that back and forth in his head, trying to translate through the Lucifer-ese.

"Ah. Right then."

Octavia finally rolled onto her back, looking up at the ceiling.

"Agreed," she rasped very quietly, "or did you just ignore what she'd said?"

"I mean, it was clear what the problem was," Lucifer said, nonplussed. "Father forced those wings on me, and..."

A short pause.

"All right, so we found out later He didn't actually do that. That was all me."

“And we found out you were all full of self-hate,” Duke said softly. “So . . . maybe you were afraid what you are might hurt the people you care about.”

Clearly not a topic Duke knew well for himself or anything.

Octavia was pretty sure Linda had been exactly right. But she knew better than to engage Lucifer in any kind of an argument over it right now.

She rubbed her hand over her face, instead.

Lucifer snorted.

"Either way," he said, choosing to sidestep the topic entirely, "I don't have any grand 'sky falling on my head' nightmares like the two of you. Perhaps one of Hell once or twice, but those are just depressing, not 'wake up screaming' horrifying."

Duke blinked. "I didn't -- there wasn't actual screaming, was there?"

He kind of prided himself on not waking up screaming, actually. That was the sort of thing that let way too many people know about your potential weaknesses.

Octavia's voice was quiet and mild again.

"Nothing that woke me, at least."

"Well, wake up noisy," Lucifer allowed. "But then I'd have to qualify it with 'not dirty', and I feared that might obliterate the moment."

Duke snorted, perfectly happy to let said moment get obliterated, thanks.

"That definitely would have been a way nicer way to wake up."

Octavia figured some kind of quip would've gone great here.

She couldn't think of anything.

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