betterthanaplan | American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, Wednesday

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American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, Wednesday

Duke looked up thoughtfully at the fifteen foot pink poodle that stared out through the windowed wall opposite the front doors to the American Visionary Art Museum. The wall behind him glinted in the bright sunlight, thanks to the massive mosaic that covered it, made of broken glass, metal, and miscellaneous found objects.

"This is already my favorite art museum, ever."

[for him who is downtown with him, or texts or calls or what-have-you!]

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“Oh yeah?” Duke said, very carefully neutral. “How’s the preserve treating her?”

"She's not in the preserve. Actually, she was bartending last night," Lucifer said, and held up a hand before Duke could respond to that. "Turns out this whole thing had little to do with the preserve and everything to do with her boat."

There was no longer anything neutral in Duke’s tone or expression. His face went rapidly from surprise to hurt to anger to confusion before he turned very resolutely back to the art in front of them.

“What do you think drives someone to make stuff like this?”

"Deluded religious fervor, not worth wasting our time on," Lucifer said dismissively. "Either way, apparently she finally found something that let her be stable for all of five minutes, and it involves being on that boat, so she was scared to leave it."

Not exactly what Octavia had said, but the general gist he'd gotten from it.

"Right, yeah, I get that," Duke said, nodding and staring much more intently at a photo of a sign reading "God is love" than said photo deserved. "I've had days like that myself."

He shifted abruptly on his heel and headed to a different part of the exhibit.

Lucifer sighed and stalked after him. "Duke--" he called.

"What, Luce?" Duke asked, sounding tired. "What do you want me to say? It's a boat. It travels. Kind of the point of living on a boat."

"I know. And I told her she should have just said that in the first place, I could've just-- gotten her a parking spot near our hotel."

He reached for Duke's shoulder. "I just," he started.

Settled on, "I'm sorry," instead.

"Yeah." Duke found himself staring at another art piece, this one a complex landscape done in pencil and crayon. "That's what she said, too."

Lucifer sighed.

His hand slid down Duke's shoulder and tried to reach for Duke's hand, instead. "We can go back to looking at the terrible art."

Duke kept staring at the piece in front of him, lacing his fingers with Lucifer's almost absently as he did. It was full of reaching, tentacle-like branches, with strange, flat looking thatches of green. They covered what looked like the ruins of a castle, or maybe a train station.

It was a strange looking place, fantastical and off-putting at the same time. A world taken over by alien plants.

It was, he realized, a lot like how he pictured the Ground must have looked. Before praimfaya part two.

"I've spent a year and a half trying to be anything she needed me to be."

"I know."

Lucifer didn't bother looking at the artwork. Oh, his face was aimed that way, but his eyes had slid to their corners to watch Duke.

"I keep thinking --" He cut himself off and shook his head. "It's stupid."

"No, tell me," Lucifer said, watching his face.

Duke closed his eyes. Took a long breath. Braced himself to feel small.

“I keep thinking —“ His throat locked down. He swallowed and forced himself to say it, even as his voice cracked. “‘How is that not enough.’”

A small shudder ran through him as he lost the battle not to keep couching his feelings in excuses or denials.

“Like I said: it’s stupid. Like she’d stay on the island because I haven’t earned her or something.”

Lucifer gave Duke's fingers a firm squeeze. And-- actually looked at the artwork, this time.

"I think," he said slowly, "that Octavia's never had a partner before and she's having a devil of a time learning how to."

Well. At least this thing wasn't ugly as sin.

"That sometimes you have to find ways to let people know that you choose them, even when it's difficult for you. You do it all the time, you can't help yourself. It's not-- strange feeling like something's off if you don't have it returned. Like it's your fault."

A pause. "It's not, obviously."

Duke huffed softly. “You know, I actually managed to stop for awhile. Turn off the part of me that wants to do anything to make someone else happy. Trick was, not to let anyone in.”

He opened his eyes and flicked a glance at Lucifer, squeezing his hand, then went back to studying the art.

“Then I got to Fandom. Where everyone wears their everything on their sleeve. Sometimes whether we like it or not.”

"Well, everything is debatable," Lucifer said, "But I see your point. Got you on the hook with freebies, did it."

“Guess so, yeah.” Duke sucked in a breath through his teeth. “And then I met her.”

"Heard fragments of that story," Lucifer said, mostly to fill the space while Duke worked his way to-- wherever.

“Thought she was too young for me at first,” Duke said. “I tried really hard to think of her as, like, a little sister or something. But she kept showing up, especially when I was feeling down, and the spark was so clearly there.”

"She has always been persistent, to say the least," Lucifer said, mouth curving. "Honestly, I'd have expected you two to jump each other in week one."

“She’d just turned 21,” Duke said. “And I work very hard not to be creepy.”

He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand.

“I know this isn’t her fault. I know she’s depressed. And working on getting better. But since she came back this summer — it’s like I don’t get anything from her. And I know love isn’t, like, some barter system of even exchanges or anything. I know that.”

No one had ever offered him as much back as he gave them, after all. Not his parents, not Nathan or Evi, not Audrey.

No one but Octavia, when she convinced him love was real.

Duke’s breath shook on his next inhale, and the hand on his neck started picking at the short hairs below his ponytail.

“But — man, I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

Any comments pointing out that the age difference between Lucifer and literally anyone else he'd ever slept with was vastly greater than that died about midway into the rest of what Duke was saying.

Curiously, the rest of it made him feel something almost like fear. He didn't understand that at all. Coupled with it was an impulse to let go of Duke's hand, but he stopped himself from doing so just in time.

The rest of him felt deeply out of his depth, and he was silent as he stared at the picture and groped for anything he'd ever been through that might be helpful.

Duke would not have interpreted Lucifer letting his hand go well just now, no.

“I feel like an asshole saying that,” he said, once it was clear Lucifer wasn’t going to speak yet. “You don’t just break up with someone because they’re depressed.”

And he loved her, and didn’t want to lose her.

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