betterthanaplan | The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom, Monday afternoon

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The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom, Monday afternoon

As tempting as it was to just stay in their little vacation bubble at sea, Duke and Octavia did have things to do back in Fandom now that the school break was over, so the Cape Rouge chugged back into port in the late afternoon to dock at her usual slip.

It was immediately beset by porgs.

"Alright, alright," Duke said, a laugh underlining the exaggerated annoyed tone of his voice. "I know, I know, how dare I exile you from your homes. I'm a cruel, cruel man."

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"That is . . . a hell of a way to live forever," Duke said, grinning. "I'm sure Octavia's managed to leave her own impression on you, though."

"Now, I never forget a good lay," Lucifer said, ignoring that last part for... reasons. "That would be rude. And disrespectful."

"But I'm guessing there's a lot of competition," Duke said. "So I guess I'm glad to hear I rank."

"You do have that whole charming 'my hair is down and I'm up for anything' vibe," Lucifer said merrily. "... I can recommend the water slides in Boracay, though. But I hear the bat caves were... well, shit."

"I don't think I've been on a water slide since I was like --" Duke paused, frowning as he thought back. "-- possibly ever." They didn't have a lot of them in Haven, and he hadn't really made them a priority once he got out into the wider world. "But yeah, I've seen plenty of bats. That guano ends up everywhere."

"And they arrange trips to go wade through the guano, apparently," Lucifer said. "I'm still struggling to grasp why."

"Because tourists are impressed by the stupidest things," Duke said. "Seriously, man, when I was a kid I used to make extra cash by giving tours of the sea caves back home. They're literally just large, smelly holes in rocks, but people went ape over them." He smiled. "Especially when you tell them they were frequented by, like, pirates and bootleggers and shit."

Some of them probably even were. But all Duke knew as a kid was that they were large, smelly holes in rocks.

"And?" Lucifer asked, grinning. "Are they?"

Duke shrugged. “Probably at some point. Not in the 80s though.”

"Sounds like something a pirate would say," Lucifer said. "Even a young, budding one."

"More an enthusiastic hopeful in those days," Duke said with a wry smile. "More of a tiny con man than anything else. I hadn't even mastered picking pockets yet."

"But learning quickly, if I'm reading behind the lines correctly," Lucifer mused.

"Well, I had to pay the bills somehow."

Because grade school kids were well known for having to pay bills.

"Had something of a mortgage, did you?" Lucifer said, amused.

"Something like that," Duke said, shrugging. "I've been on my own for a really long time."

Lucifer blinked, and... tilted his head. "Absent parent issues?"

He had absolutely no idea what those were like.

"Dead parent," Duke said. "The other was just . . . deeply uninterested."

That was about the kindest way he could describe his mother. Also the closest he was going to get to describing her without much more alcohol involved.

"I know what that's like," Lucifer, who never had a problem oversharing sober, said. "Mine stood by and watched while Father threw me into hell."

"Literally, I'm guessing," Duke said. ". . . Wait, hang on, you have a mom? Man, the Rev totally glossed over that part when I was growing up."

"The Goddess of all Creation," Lucifer agreed, fiddling with his cuff. "They made us - and the universe - the old-fashioned way, actually. So of course that got scrubbed from the books."

Duke blinked thoughtfully at that, perfectly happy to be talking about something other than his own parental issues again. "Yeah, no, that's way too pagan for the good Reverend. And not nearly patriarchal enough."

"Have you never asked yourself why they call it the 'Big Bang'?" Lucifer sighed.

Duke laughed. "Fair enough. We really do have some weird things in common, huh."

"Well, I did invent daddy and mommy issues," Lucifer said, almost uncharacteristically wry. "Sad to see them proliferate."

Duke heaved a sigh. "Yeah, I'd rather think that they invented them and foisted them on us."

It was not his fault his parents had given him an abandonment complex, dammit.

	
		OSZAR »

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