fandomtownies | The Devil's Nest, Tuesday Night

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The Devil's Nest, Tuesday Night

There was always that one moment in your vacation where the whole affair began to get a bit dull and your own thoughts encroached on it entirely too much. And then you wanted a change.

Lucifer was there. Well, specifically, he was sitting behind the piano with his sleeves rolled up and a cigarette poking out of his mouth, playing something a bit more contemporary than some of his recent performances. It wasn't an obvious choice for his first singing performance, no, but it communicated his need for a change of emotional scenery quite well, he felt.

"Off with your head. Dance 'till you're dead. Heads will roll, heads will roll on the floor..."

The Devil's Nest was open.

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Duke normally did his Tuesday drinking either at home or at Caritas, but he was feeling faintly social and didn't really want to run into Rosa right now, so he headed for the Devil's Nest instead. Besides, Octavia had said the actual Devil could be found around here, and Duke was just irreverent and pissed at his hometown revered enough to think that meeting the Adversary was a great idea.

The fact that there was a very attractive man playing piano was making his night look brighter already.

"Nice, uh. Fingering."

That was totally a piano term. Sure.

Well, it was, and it was also the kind of filthy pun Lucifer could appreciate.

Though Duke would have to wait until he finished that song with a loud, dramatic chord before he bothered to respond. "Yes, I get that a lot," he said, tossing the newcomer a wink and a smirk as he reached for his drink across the piano. "Thank you for noticing."

Duke did not mind waiting. It gave him more time to watch.

"It's hard not to. You are . . . very noticeable."

Ah, blatant flirting. Excellent. Good to know he still had it. (Though for once, Lucifer didn't actually say that part out loud.)

He swung his legs to the side so he could get a good look at the newcomer, and, ah, now there was a look that reminded him of the 17th century in a charmingly nostalgic kind of way.

"I do my best to brighten up the place with my presence," he said, grinning shamelessly. "Though I suppose I should thank you for helping me put an end to this establishment's dreadful lack of attractive people who actually know how to flirt."

"Thank you, I try." Duke dipped his head in faux modesty. "You know, I've noticed that, too. For an island full of very pretty people, there's a serious lack of game going around."

"It is depressing, isn't it?" Lucifer sighed. "They come in here, they stare, and then they leave."

A pause. "Tiny, the man's hands look empty. Get him a drink, why don't you?"

"Bourbon, please," Duke said to Tiny, then turned back with a shake of his head. "And that's just rude. They should at least say hi. Introduce themselves." A beat. "Hi. I'm Duke."

"Lucifer," he greeted cheerfully. "Co-owner of this club, whether Eric likes to admit it or not."

Duke's grin went, if possible, even wider. "I've heard you were here." Fuck, but the Devil was handsome, wasn't he. It made sense, now that he was thinking about it. "It's a pleasure. Been a big fan for years."

What with being a criminal and kind of a hedonist, and all.

Lucifer pulled a brief face. "Not the 'wear ragged cloaks and coat yourself in goat's blood' sort of fan, I hope," he said.

"No, because that would be disgusting," Duke said. "I was thinking more 'do what you want and fuck the authorities.'"

Lucifer grinned, delighted. "And make that a double-entendre if you can at all get away with it," he said, taking a sip from his drink and thinking very much not about any authorities of his acquaintance. "You'll have to pardon my caution, but I've seen enough masks and off-beat bloodplay for a lifetime, and mine is on the long end."

Duke absolutely had. Unfortunately, Nathan was too pissed at him for even angry sex anymore. And he had well and truly blown any chance he ever might have had with Rosa pretty much day one on the island.

"I can imagine." Duke shuddered theatrically. "I guess the religious types are just as obnoxious on both ends of the spectrum, huh."

Lucifer had come here to avoid thinking about the Detective, and so avoid thinking about her, he would.

"So dour and boring," he said, sighing loudly. "You'd think between the altar wine on one end and the drugs on the other, and all the illicit affairs on both, they'd loosen up on all the ceremony after a few centuries, but no."

"Nah man, it's all about the ceremony with those sorts." Duke had been hoping to avoid thinking about the Reverend, but his mental discipline was not quite on par with Lucifer's, and so he definitely was ending up thinking about him. "Well, alright, it's actually all about power. For instance, the power to make people sit through big ceremonies."

"When all of that time and energy would be much better spent having an air-clearing orgy or two," Lucifer sighed. "So many humans think they enjoy having power when they seem to lack the power to enjoy themselves at all."

Aaaand now Duke was picturing Reverend Driscoll in an orgy. Thankfully, Tiny was on hand with that bourbon, so he could take a nice, large drink to banish that thought with.

"Anyway. What brings the Devil to Fandom?"

"I'm on a vacation," Lucifer said, brightening up. "I've been in Los Angeles for some time, and I needed--" to run away from his problems, "--a change of scenery, a few less hipsters, that sort of thing."

Or he'd picked a place at random that seemed like it was roughly the opposite of LA and ran for it. Po-tah-to, po-tay-to.

"And yourself?"

"Sailed in to refuel back at the end of August and got roped into teaching." Duke shrugged. "Decided I liked it here -- and didn't feel like getting trampled by the administration moose -- so I stuck around."

Lucifer had turned around entirely by now, leaning back in his seat by the piano to watch Duke with a pleasant smile. "Sailed in?" he mused, taking a sip. "I do always hear good things about handsome seamen."

Lucy.

"You have a ship around here?"

That got a broad smirk and a chuckle from Duke. He could appreciate a good, terrible pun with the best of them!

"I do," he said. "The Cape Rouge. Only boat in the damn harbor, you can't miss her."

"You'd be surprised, I'm not one for long walks by the pier," Lucifer said. Ugh, fish smell. "I did notice something pleasantly pirate-y about you. You just... sail around, looking for any port in a storm?"

"I usually have a bit more of a plan than that," Duke said. "I'm a businessman. Imports and courier work, mostly."

Which was the nice way of saying "smuggler".

"I've known a few good people in imports in my time," said Lucifer, who was well aware of what those words meant. "You wouldn't happen to courier beverages or recreative substances every now and again, would you?"

"Sure," Duke said, smile never slipping, even as he switched into business mode. "Why, I used to supply the owner of the scrapyard with regular shipments of high quality tea from India."

He knew tea wasn't at all what Lucifier was inquiring about. He also knew better than to broadcast his shadier dealings out in the open without putting at least a little more effort into feeling a customer out, first.

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