betterthanaplan | The deck of the Fin and Tonic, Tuesday afternoon

Duke had gone into town this morning, and come back with an acoustic guitar. It'd been ages since he'd last played, so he set about turning and warming up with unusual focus before eventually starting to play something relatively simple.

"Sorry
Is all that you can't say
Years gone by and still
Words don't come easily
Like sorry, like sorry. . . ."

Should the narrative pretend that his song choice was random? Obviously it was not. It had been running through his head for days.

[for those on the island, and likely slow play!]

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From:

okteiviakom

Octavia looked confused. "... What?"

Sorry, it took a moment for the relevant memory to surface from beneath everything else that had been going on lately.

"Oh. From -- that's who you mentioned before, right?"

From:

betterthanaplan

“Right,” Duke agreed. “One of, uh. A couple songs I’ve been thinking about.”

From:

okteiviakom

"You've been thinking about songs?" Octavia asked.

It was more of a prompt than anything. It didn't take a particularly bright person to figure out why he might've been thinking about that song in particular, after all.

From:

betterthanaplan

“I have,” Duke said. He set his hand between them. “I like songs.”

From:

okteiviakom

"You like songs," Octavia echoed, something gently wry about her tone.

She slid her hand on top of his.

From:

betterthanaplan

"Not every song," Duke said, with a faint bobble of his head. "But a lot of them, yes."

From:

okteiviakom

Octavia gave him a tiny nod back.

"But you've been thinking about specific ones."

From:

betterthanaplan

"I have," Duke agreed. "Like the one I just played. And some others."

There was another Tracy Chapman one in particular he had in mind, but he wasn't certain he'd earned it, quite yet.

From:

okteiviakom

"You wanna tell me about them?" Octavia asked, giving his fingers a little squeeze. "And... What you've been thinking about."

From:

betterthanaplan

"I do," Duke said. He shifted his hand a little so he could squeeze back. "Can I ask first what you think of the one I was just playing? It's okay if not. I'm . . . curious."

From:

okteiviakom

"I... was trying not to read into it," Octavia admitted, looking past him as she thought about it. She shrugged, too. "Which I guess says something."

From:

betterthanaplan

Duke nodded. "It seemed . . . appropriate," he admitted in return. "For both of us. Words haven't been easy, have they."

From:

okteiviakom

"No," Octavia agreed, as her gaze returned to meet his. "They really haven't."

From:

betterthanaplan

“I’m going to try to listen better to yours,” Duke promised.

From:

okteiviakom

Octavia nodded.

(It wasn't like he could promise anything more than that. Neither could she.)

"And I'm going to..." she started, then drew a breath. "To try and ask more questions. If I feel like you're not getting what I'm saying."

From:

betterthanaplan

"Thank you," Duke said. He squeezed her hand again and tried to use it to tug her a little closer. "And if you want to, we can talk more about boundaries sometime, too. Maybe try to figure some out together?"

From:

okteiviakom

The immediate discomfort somewhere in Octavia's gut at the mention of the word 'boundaries' probably said something.

She ignored it, for now, shifting closer with his tugging. Even if that only left her with a vague hum for a response.

From:

betterthanaplan

"We don't have to," Duke offered. Because vague hums tended to say a lot, from her. "And there's no rush. Either way."

From:

okteiviakom

"It's... kind of a hard thing to even comment on," Octavia admitted, carefully, as she tried to lean against his side, "without just getting into it."

From:

betterthanaplan

"Okay," Duke said slowly. He didn't really understand that, but he also didn't want to set -- or drive -- her off. "Do you want to change the subject?"

From:

okteiviakom

Octavia just had doubts about how much beyond the key word of 'boundary' she'd managed to communicate to him, before, in the middle of how wrong things had ended up going over New Year's.

So, complicated.

"Can we just... sit, for a while?" she asked, with some hesitation.

From:

betterthanaplan

"Yeah." Duke nodded, offering her a little smile. "I'd like that."

From:

okteiviakom

"Okay," Octavia murmured.

And tried to move his arm so that it was around her.

From:

betterthanaplan

It took Duke a moment to work out what she was doing, but once he did, he gave her a firm sideways hug.

"I know you said 'just sit'. But ai hod yu in."

He didn't think she'd complain about that small amount of talking.

From:

okteiviakom

"It wasn't that... strict, this time," Octavia muttered. Mostly, it had been a way to get out of feeling like she needed to force some sort of topic of conversation out of herself.

She settled her head against his shoulder.

"I love you, too."