fandomtownies | Luke's, Thursday

As you do

He was ~~sulking~~ ~~hiding~~ hanging out in a booth on the other side of the diner, nursing a beer.

Octavia showed up around lunchtime, though maybe towards the later end of what still counted for that.

She was also carrying a bunch of yellow flowers. They really popped against the black of her clothes.

"Greetings from Covent Garden."

Duke went from glaring idly towards his kitchen staff to a bright smile in a matter of moments. "Ha yun." He gestured to the flowers with his chin. "Yellow's for . . . friendship, I wanna say. Or are you just feeling extra sunny?"

"Not me, the shop," Octavia replied, with a half-hearted eye roll. "All the stock looks like this right now."

Which was part of her reason for heading out for her lunch break. But not half as big a part as thinking she might find him here.

"But, restaurants have flowers at the tables sometimes, right?"

"They do," Duke said. "And this place could use some classing up today."

What with the specials for the day and the open fire pit the cook had tried to set up in the kitchen this morning.

"Happy to help."

And now she was holding a buch of flowers out to him, yes.

Which Duke accepted with a little flutter of his eyelashes and a coy little moue. Because of course he did.

"They're beautiful," he said. ". . . I guess we can put them in soda glasses or something."

He was pretty sure they didn't' have any tiny vases. Not that he'd checked, though.

His being ridiculous was about as predictable as the snort from Octavia that followed it.

"Probably?" she shrugged. "I don't know much about how people usually handle them after they leave the shop."

"Put 'em in water in something. That's . . . about as far as I know." There were probably tricks to make them last longer, but he'd never really bothered to worry much about it. "Want to help me grab the glasses, or should we skip straight to the food?"

"I'm not in a rush to get back to being buried in yellow," Octavia drawled. Besides, this visit was about as much about checking up on him as it was about the food, even if she would never actually say that. "I'll help."

He had his suspicions on that front, but he wasn't about to call her on it. As she'd pointed out, it wasn't as though he was going to convince her not to care if he was okay.

He still moved a little stiffly, though that had improved by leaps and bounds since yesterday morning (in part thanks to Rey's inexpert-but-welcome massage efforts). And other than his staff's trolling attempts, he was doing a remarkable job at just not thinking about how he'd spent his weekend.

He passed her a small stack of glasses and a water carafe, keeping the flowers themselves to himself. (And occasionally leaning down to sniff them.) "Looks like we can do one glass per table, two flowers per glass. Very classy."

They were very nice flowers. Octavia had picked all of them out one by one, though that was another thing she would never actually say.

"If you say so," she replied with a faintly amused huff, already heading for the first table, to set a glass down at the center of it and then pour some water in it - both of which were things she did with perhaps a surprising amount of care.

Duke was going to spend way too much time selecting which two flowers went into each one, so . . . they were just going to be a weirdly delicate pair in here, today.

"Do not tell the staff I said this . . . but that goat stew actually smells really good."

Octavia snorted again. "Your secret's safe with me," she said, glancing towards the specials board. "Don't know, eating the enemy --" Sort of. "-- might even be therapeutic, just this once."

... Thank goodness she wasn't going to remember saying in that in a few year's time.

Duke shook his head, though his lips quirked up in an angry smile. “Fucker was rank. I don’t even want to think about him and food in the same sentence.”

Octavia's answering shrug was about as mild as it was easy.

"Okay," she said, moving on to the next table for another glass and water. "No eating the enemy."

“No matter how badass that sounds,” Duke said, selecting a couple more flowers. “I’ll have to get my symbolic revenge some other way.”

"You'll figure something out." For this very important revenge business. She glanced over at him. "Yu ste briyon."

Duke did not feel particularly briyon about any of this. With a bit of distance he was, in fact, feeling pretty stupid about it.

He'd been the one to suggest an ambush, after all.

He rearranged the flowers -- all two of them -- with intense focus.

"They do this giant straw goat thing in Sweden over Christmas that usually ends up set on fire. Maybe something like that."

"Not unless I get to stab it," Octavia replied, a tiny bit more lightly than she felt.

She went ahead and put the last few glasses down. One on each table, then the water, like a tiny repeating ritual. Once she was done with the last one, she stayed where she was.

And tried not to be obvious about watching him.

Duke was all too aware that she was probably watching him.

"Stab it, hang it from a tree, and set it on fire," he said, with a certain vicious satisfaction.

This would possibly lead to setting the preserve on fire, yes.

He sounded like her again.

Only, she didn't mind this version as much. Which... probably said more about her than it did about him.

She just nodded, and said, in her best low rasp, "That sounds like a plan to me."

"Throw in some booze, it'll be a party." Duke looked up from his flower arranging (these were going to be the most meticulously arranged pairs of flowers in improvised vases anyone had ever seen outside Instagram). "Just gotta figure out where to get a straw goat."

Edited 2020-01-10 16:46 (UTC)

Mod your diner

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OOC