The galley of the Cape Rouge, Tuesday afternoon

[betterthanaplan]

Duke was doing homework. Therapy homework. Duke had never done a lick of homework in his entire public school career, but here he was, pen whirling between the fingers of his left hand, staring down at a sheet of paper with three columns on it, doing homework.

It mostly involved the pen twiddling. And drinking. There was rather a lot of drinking happening. More drinking than he'd felt the need to engage in in a long time, actually.

And here he'd thought that regular therapy would make him want to drink less.

(It had. His regular talks with Linda were a major factor in the fact that he hadn't felt the need to drink heavily in so long. But this was -- this was homework about his mom. And whenever possible, Duke preferred to do anything thinking about his mother with bourbon within reach.)

[Open to the partners, or any visitors who might stop by!]

Comments

[my_own_advocate]

Lucifer... was still in the bedroom, glaring at himself - and the stupid Santa hat - in the mirror. "Come on," he bargained, "I'll put you somewhere nice and warm and I won't shred you like your hatty bretheren. I promise."

He pulled off the Santa hat.

A new one appeared in its place.

He shouted a curse in what was probably ancient Aramaic - he wasn't paying attention - and hurled it at the door.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke had decided to ignore his own hat after a single attempt to remove it. He rolled his eyes up at the ceiling for a moment, then took a swig of his bourbon.

“Give it up!” he called. “Fandom always wins!”

[my_own_advocate]

"I'm not going to let it do this to me!" Lucifer bellowed back. "This bloody manipulative-- landmass!"

[betterthanaplan]

At least it was a distraction from thinking about his mom.

"Right, and if you're just determined enough, threatening or coaxing the hats will totally eventually work."

[my_own_advocate]

The door to the bedroom swung open for the first time that morning. "You're not helping," Lucifer informed him.

Naked. In a Santa hat.

[betterthanaplan]

Very distracting.

"I was trying to get some work done," he said idly, leaning his head on his hand and twiddling the pen again as he gave Lucifer a very thorough once-over. "So, you know, neither were you."

[my_own_advocate]

"What are you even doing?" asked Lucifer, who hadn't processed a single thing that wasn't about his wardrobe since roughly 10 AM that morning.

[betterthanaplan]

"Homework."

Duke's tone expressed many things about what he thought about that.

[my_own_advocate]

Lucifer stared at him. "What?"

[betterthanaplan]

"For Linda. I need . . . emotional grease."

He swapped the pen for the bottle and took another swig.

[my_own_advocate]

"Emotional grease," Lucifer echoed dubiously.

[betterthanaplan]

"To get my feelings 'unstuck'," Duke said, complete with finger quotes around the bottle. "Apparently avoiding thinking about my mom isn't helpful."

[my_own_advocate]

"Well, I avoided thinking about mine for millennia, and then She came back and put a hole in the good Doctor," Lucifer allowed.

[okteiviakom]

One of the good things about going to therapy in another universe that was also weird was that it was surprisingly easy to explain why you were wearing a Santa hat you couldn't take off.

Octavia would have still preferred to visit New York without one, but sometimes Fandom needed to Fandom, apparently. Could've been worse.

(There'd been one or two weird looks when she'd gone swimming at the pool after, though.)

She was tired when she got back, anyway. And that had nothing to do with the hat, and everything with therapy. "Ha yun," she said, soft, when she made it down into the galley.

[betterthanaplan]

"Ha yun, gona," Duke said, watching her. Thankful for another excuse to ignore the (still almost empty) paper in front of him. "How's your day been?"

[okteiviakom]

"You know," Octavia said, drifting closer, peeling her coat off. "The usual, for a Tuesday."

Therapy and swimming. Her hair still looked a little damp, under the Santa hat. (Which in turn looked perfectly dry.)

[betterthanaplan]

Duke nodded absently, doodling something in the top right corner of the paper. (He was still trying to work out a good three feather tattoo idea that didn't look like he was trying to go native.)

"Have a good swim?"

His own Santa hat was all but forgotten, except for how it kept the hair out of his face without him having to tie it back or tuck it behind his ear.

[okteiviakom]

"It was okay," Octavia replied, with a little shrug, as the coat got dumped aside on the couch, for now. "Hat was kind of annoying."

[betterthanaplan]

"Yeah." Duke nodded. "Lucifer's been fighting with his all day."

[okteiviakom]

Sigh. "Of course he has."

She wandered closer. Mostly so she could absently put her hand on his shoulder and give it a little rub, but also for a glance at what he was working on. "What's that?"

[betterthanaplan]

Duke gave a sigh of his own and leaned into her. "Therapy homework."

[okteiviakom]

That just called for Octavia winding her arm over his shoulders.

She made a little noise of recognition. "You too, huh?"

[betterthanaplan]

"Me too."

It wasn't his first bit of homework that Linda had given him. But it was the bit he resented the most.

"She wants me to think about my mom."

[okteiviakom]

"Oh," Octavia said. It had something of a 'well, shit' quality to it.

She leaned a little closer to him.

[betterthanaplan]

"Yeah." Duke's tone was dry as he wrapped the hand that was meant to be doing the writing around one of hers. "Hence the bottle."

It was a good half empty now.