My unicorn got run over by a tractor

It was Duke's birthday.

It wasn't something he'd ever made a real big deal about. Most years he wouldn't even notice it happened until well after the day had already passed. But this year? This year, when he looked at the actual date, was one that couldn't be ignored.

According to math, today was the day that Duke turned fifty.

Of course, he'd traveled back and forth through time enough times -- and spent enough chunks of time in places where it just worked different -- that he had absolutely no idea what his "biological" age would be. For all he knew, his body had reset when Lucifer resurrected him and he was actually less than a year old. But his birth date had always been June 2, 1975. And the current date, Fandom-wise (and . . . maybe in this LA? His phone still kept Fandom time, as far as he could tell) was June 2, 2025.

Fifty years. Did he feel fifty? What did fifty even feel like? He knew what "old enough to just fuck off and die" felt like. He didn't feel like that. But hopefully he wouldn't have until he was in his 80s, anyway.

He sat sprawled on Lucifer's couch, a drink on the side table, and tilted his phone this way and that as he used the selfie mode to take in his "reflection". The silver at his temples didn't seem to have grown much over the last couple years, which he supposed was good. There were a few gray hairs in his beard these days, too. Where else was he supposed to see age? None of his parents or grandparents had stuck around long enough -- or lived long enough -- to even get old. He didn't have anything for perspective.

And again, time travel. So.

"Age ain't nothin' but a number," he muttered to himself. And tried to decide if the crows feet around his eyes were too prominent or not.

[for those in LA with him, for ALL the slow play, and look. Day-after is actually REALLY GOOD for me remembering this boy's birthday, okay??]

Most days, Duke was fine. Better than fine, even; he'd been essentially rebooted, after all. Turned off and back on again and all his caches had cleared and -- yeah, he honestly didn't know anywhere near enough about computers to make this metaphor work. He'd been in a dry dock of sorts. All patched up and back in shipshape.

Most days.

He couldn't remember most of the dream when he woke, his heart triphammering in his chest. Just the sense of utter helplessness that had accompanied it, and the sense that the gremlin man -- Croatoan -- was lurking at the edges, smirking in delight. He sat up in bed, trying to force his breathing back under control, and hoped he hadn't woken Lucifer or Octavia.

He really liked being fine. He wanted that feeling back, dammit.

HE slid out of bed, trying not to disturb anyone, and went to go hunt down a coffee.

[for the partners]

"There is a sickening lack of lingerie boutiques for guys," Duke declared as they approached the closest thing he'd managed to find to such a thing in about . . . five minutes of googling. "Absolutely sickening. Not that I'm above crossdressing, but still."

"Sing it, girl," said a passerby. Duke flicked them a smile before refocusing on his date for the evening.

"Shall we?"

[for the date, NFB due to distance, with possible NSFW images linked in the comments. Link above is perfectly SFW though!]

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!]

Duke was making great time on the OceaNyx. The wind was strong, the water a bit choppy but not alarmingly so, and the sun was shining. Duke sat at the stern, watching the sail and the whispy clouds behind it, breathing in the salt air for the umpteenth time.

It was exhilarating. Liberating.

Kind of . . . melancholy.

He missed his partners.

( Ye olde yelling at the sea trope )

[establishy, NFB due to distance.]

Duke had had some time since his last therapist appointment to start slowly processing what his therapist had said. Specifically what the man had said about what he believed was the foundation of Duke's issues. A diagnosis if you will.

Which Duke had finally made time to look up and read about after getting home from the diner. And mull over over a cup of tea.

Sure, it wasn't the first time someone had suggested that he had PTSD. He'd kind of just assumed he had that, by now. But C-PTSD. The complex version. The one most associated with survivors of hostage situations or child abuse.

He sipped his tea and stared into space. And wished it didn't make as much sense to him as it did. Wished he didn't check off quite as many of the usual symptoms as he did.

"Fuck."

[for the partners if they wanna]

Duke was back in the mansion already for another date night, this time with Octavia. He felt a little more like he was settling into the whole ‘being a functional adult human being’ thing, and decided to try a new-to-him recipe, samosas with tamarind and date chutney. He also made sure to have plenty of lassi on hand, because the samosas were going to be quite spicy.

And, well. If he was also regularly reminding himself to relax and breathe. . . . Date night with Octavia didn’t historically go quite as well as it did with Lucifer. But getting all up in his head about it wasn’t going to help with that at all.

[for her as is mentioned!]

Duke did not have a pineapple this time. Or flowers, for that matter, though he did bring a very nice bottle of wine for Lucifer, which he left in the kitchen for him to find.

Before wandering off through the rest of the mansion, getting more of a feel for the lay of the land, so to speak, and thinking about how to get his brain to accept the place as partially his as well as Lucifer's.

His boyfriend would be happy to hear it didn't involve netting. It . . . might involve an overabundance of plants that were inappropriate to the outside climate. And possibly multiple water features.

Duke didn't tend to do things by halves any more than Lucifer did, okay? He just . . . went about it slightly differently.

When it was time for Date Night to actually begin, though, he made sure to find his way back towards the kitchen. It wouldn't do to be late, after all.

[for him!]

It had been rather a nasty weekend for the folks living on the Rouge. Friday, of course, was facing down Mara, hopefully for the last time, and the fall out from that had lasted right through the next three days, with all three of them on egg shells with each other as they tried to deal.

Duke, especially, had been doing a lot of thinking. Too much thinking. About all the messy emotions he’d let out at Lucifer with nary a trouble — of his — in sight. The guilt alone should have us him babbling nonsense, and the denial, the grief, the anger, the defensiveness. . . .

But they’d touched him. They’d understood him. No one had started screaming in pain or finding their faces sewn up.

He was afraid to put words to what that meant.

He was also, once the lingering soreness of . . . whatever the hell “exploding” had amounted to, feeling physically better than he had in ages. So when his thoughts proved too much for him to sleep through, he made his way up to the deck and started working through some sun salutations.

He hadn’t noticed the dead plant yet.

[for the fellow boat people! Up a bit early EST for time zones and all the slow play purposes!]