The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom, Tuesday evening

[betterthanaplan]

Duke had been oddly quiet on the trip back to Fandom, just leaning into the cool wind and spray from the water as the adrenaline finally started to work its way out of his system again.

He'd had no idea that cold, wet January weather could feel so good.

He ran his hand lovingly over the railing of the gangplank as he limped his way onboard the Rouge, dredging up a little smile. "Hey baby. You miss me?"

First order of business, shower. Then maybe food. Then sleeping for the next three weeks. He turned to head below decks, then paused, looking back at Octavia.

"Is Lucy alright? How many porgs did she eat?"

Okay, so the first order of business might actually be 'porg roll call'. Then shower, food, and bed.

[primarily for boat residents, which currently includes Octavia as well as Lucy and Duke, but can absolutely also be open. Mmmmm, aftermath]

Comments

[okteiviakom]

Octavia had let him be as quiet as he felt like being.

And she'd stayed several steps behind him on purpose when he made his way onboard. Both to give him space (this was his home, after all), and to give herself the space to watch him for a moment. Limping, exhausted, probably starving - but alive.

Her chest felt tight with how much that mattered to her.

She shook her head when he looked back. Half in actual reply, half to shake off something that threatened to surge up. "None," she said, softer than she'd meant to. "Taste of Thai, three times a day since Sunday."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke blinked at that, visions of Lucy going and looking pathetic at the restaurant servers popping into his head. He shook it off. Either Lucy had gotten more of a handle on modern Earth life than he'd thought, or Octavia had been looking after her.

He gave her a small, relieved smile. "Thank you. She's going to be so obnoxious about take out, now."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia smiled back, in her own faint and lopsided way, although it felt like it took actual effort.

"Maybe, but it saved the porgs." And gave Octavia a chance to do something, but she was much less willing to say that out loud. So she just inclined her head towards the hatch. "Come on. In you go."

[betterthanaplan]

"Home, sweet not-a-volcano," Duke agreed, though it lacked its usual jocular energy.

He frowned when he got inside and saw the state of his couch, looking over his shoulder at her again. "She needed that much watching, huh?"

[okteiviakom]

"I don't know what you're talking about," Octavia replied, mildly. While brushing past him to put her stuff back in her bag. There wasn't much there, anyway, beyond the pillow and blanket she'd commandeered from elsewhere on the ship: a book, a notebook, a T-shirt.

She really should've put everything back in order before heading out this morning, but that had felt too much like jinxing it.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke sucked in a breath when she started collecting her things, and reached for her arm.

"Leave it," he said softly.

He liked the idea she'd been here. Even if he wasn't up to looking too closely at why.

[okteiviakom]

When she felt his hand on her arm, Octavia set the notebook gently back down on the couch, and instead turned to look at him.

"Okay."

[betterthanaplan]

"Thank you," he said again, voice still low. He hadn't let him think about it much while actually in the volcano, but deep down -- he hadn't expected anyone to actually come get him. Him, specifically, instead of just rescuing the whole group.

He let go of her arm again when he felt himself start to shake -- stupid adrenaline -- and took a deep, steadying breath. "I -- really need a shower. You, uh. Gonna stick around?"

He was kind of counting on a yes, here.

[okteiviakom]

Yeah, Octavia had already gotten him out of a volcano today. Would she take off now?

Not a chance.

"Sha," she told him, nodding. "I'll see what the leftover situation is like."

[betterthanaplan]

"Cool." He tilted his head, flashing her another smile -- a shadow of his usual, but an attempt, at least. "Make yourself at home."

He was already stripping out of his shirt by the time he'd reached the other end of the room. It and all the rest of his clothes were filthy enough that he'd be joking about burning them -- if he weren't trying not to think too much about fire right now. He clearly wasn't much concerned with her ending up seeing more of him than usual; he dropped pants in the doorway to the bedroom, revealing an angry red bite mark over around one of his knees. But he still shut the door to the bathroom firmly behind him when he got there.

She could see all his skin she liked. That'd never been the part of himself he kept hidden from other people.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia watched him go, but lacking any fascination she might've normally felt about him stripping. All she could focus on was taking note of the bite mark, her gaze flicking up and down him for any other bruising or signs of injury.

He was meizen, he always was, but she was standing there with her sword still strapped to her back. Meizen wasn't her concern right now.

Only once she lost sight of him, she finally made her way to the fridge.

Food. Right.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke did his own assessment in the bathroom, hissing at the bite mark (that was getting so much neosporin), and poking at the red skin and other small bruises he'd collected over the last few days.

The bite was the worst of it by far. He'd gotten a few other bumps along the way, mostly from being thrown around; into the sack, into the wall by Krampus, into the wall again by Anakin when he hadn't cleared back from the pit fast enough. Most of the damage wasn't physical, though.

He'd felt safe here. He'd been at a school function, dammit, had been trying not to judge what he'd taken for a new teacher based on his creepy appearance. And because of it, he'd spent the last few days trapped and hungry. The volcano part was new, so that was what he'd latched onto in the moment. The trapped part, though. The hunger. Those had been way too familiar.

He turned on the shower, just warm enough to keep from freezing, and tried to focus on how the water felt running over him. On the familiar sounds of the pipes creaking, the subtle dip and sway of his boat beneath his feet. He brought his hands up to rinse out his hair, and felt the accumulated dust and grease, the knots that had formed trying to sleep on the ground, and forgot how to exhale.

Octavia would have plenty of time to get the food situation in order. Duke was going to be busy in here trying not to hyperventilate for a little while.

[okteiviakom]

Well. It had been exactly a week since either of them had fallen apart in his bathroom.

Miraculously, there were leftovers. Not enough to account for the last couple of days by Octavia's standards, though - not that she knew how much they'd had to eat down there. If anything? She pushed the thought aside and got her phone out, placing an order for a couple of family-sized pizzas.

They did not argue with her when she said she wanted them as fast as humanly possible. Maybe it was her tone.

... And then, once again, she ran out of things to do. So she just stood there, for a moment. Then put her hands against the edge of the counter and shut her eyes tight and just breathed, and stayed like that for a moment, until she forced herself to straighten up, and to at least take off the scabbard and put it where the rest of her things were.

And then she sat down next to them, to wait for either Duke or the pizzas, whichever would happen first.

[betterthanaplan]

If Duke beat the pizzas, it'd be by a nose.

When the colder water got to be too much, he switched it over to hot. Then back again to cold when the heat got to him, too. It was good for sore muscles to switch from hot to cold, anyway, opened up the blood vessels. He was sure he'd read that somewhere. He bounced between temperatures three times as he scrubbed every inch of himself, washing and rinsing his hair over and over until he started to feel even again. Human.

After turning the shower off, he let himself drip for awhile, running through a few rounds of box breathing, then cleaned up the bite mark. He was dry enough to skip the towel by the time he headed back to his bedroom to get dressed again, in the softest, most well-worn clothing he owned: a denim shirt so sun-bleached and faded it was nearly white, a pair of long cotton shorts that left his calves -- and bandaged knee -- bare, and his favorite shlubby sweater. He left his hair down, letting it hang in his face, took one final bracing breath, and headed back into the galley.

"So leftovers," he said. "I'm going to drink, and I should probably put some food in me first. . . ."

[okteiviakom]

He didn't beat the pizzas. Octavia had only just come back down from getting them, though, when he reappeared.

"There's a couple boxes' worth of pad thai," she said, looking over. (Had she wondered, maybe worried a little about him taking so long? Yes. Was she going to ask about it? No.) "If you don't want something fresher."

Like pizza. She opened one of the boxes, and as soon as the smell hit her, she realized she was starving. Whoops?

[betterthanaplan]

Duke shut his eyes with a little moan. "Holy crap, that smells amazing."

He'd honestly worried that the volcano fumes would have ended up killing off his sense of smell completely. Fortunately, the fresh pizza was fragrant enough to cut right through the remaining olfactory noise.

"You're a genius, Tavi. Thank you."

He was saying those words a lot tonight, wasn't he.

[okteiviakom]

He really was. Octavia didn't know how to feel about it. She thought everything she'd done were just things that made sense to do. Nothing particularly thank-worthy about it.

"It's just food," she said, while picking up a slice. Which she planned to eat right here, standing by the counter.

She was also still wearing the Christmas sweater. Clearly she wasn't doing so well with relaxing into the situation of the past couple of days being over, just yet.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke came over to grab a slice for himself and leaned down to press a kiss to the top of her head.

. . . Oh. She still smelled like volcano.

"It's exactly what I needed," he said, trying to cover for how he'd pulled back a little more sharply than usual. "Goat-guy was not exactly generous wit the rations."

[okteiviakom]

It was a little hard to cover for something that happened so firmly within her personal space. Octavia's glance darted up at him, half a question, half just reflex.

But instead of saying anything (right away, anyway), she let her gaze drop again so that she could focus on getting several bites of pizza into her stomach so it would stop feeling quite as ravenously emoty, maybe.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke leaned against the counter, determined to savor his own piece.

. . . Yeah, savoring didn't really happen. At least there was plenty left.

"So, uh," he said, after several moments of just chewing in silence. "What, uh. What day is it?"

It'd gotten hard to keep track there at the end.

[okteiviakom]

"Tuesday," Octavia mumbled between bites.

After a pause. Keeping track had been easy, out here, but it didn't mean her brain wasn't all kinds of muddled right now.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke nodded. Took another couple bites. Swallowed.

". . . Fuck, that means I have class tomorrow."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia's half-shrug was particularly vague. "So cancel it?" she said. "You should rest, Duke."

She was pretty sure the moose wouldn't mind.

And if it did, she wouldn't mind having a word with it about it.

[betterthanaplan]

"Rest." Duke's laugh was a little sharp. "I barely did anything for four days."

He'd gotten thrown around a little, helped field dress a deer, and gotten attacked by a clown toy. That was, like, barely one thing a day!

[okteiviakom]

"... You were hanging over a pit filled with lava," Octavia pointed out slowly, looking up. "I'm not going to stop you from teaching, but don't tell me you feel rested."