The beach, Tuesday morning

[betterthanaplan]

It was Tuesday, and Duke was determined to be perfectly fine and normal now that it'd been a week since the whole volcano thing ended.

Which meant it was time for beach yoga. Somewhat more intense beach yoga than normal, at least while he waited for Rey to arrive, since going for anything too meditative was still giving him too much time to think about things like dangling helplessly over a lava pit hoping the rope-chewer or Ms. "Delicate Wrists" didn't plunge them all to their dooms.

So. Working towards Warrior III it was. Because nothing said "my life is no longer precariously dangling by a thread" like pretending to be a table while balancing on one foot.

[open!]

Comments

[thatwaslucky]

"Morning," Rey greeted him, watching for the moment since she didn't recognize at least most of this.

[betterthanaplan]

"Hey." Duke was definitely going to end up with a line of porgs on his back when he got to Warrior III. "Jump right in if you want."

Or don't, since, you know, warm ups were a good thing to do. . . .

[thatwaslucky]

She nodded, but did take a moment to at least stretch out her legs first, since it seemed like all her time these days was being sent sitting cross-legged with books.

"In a second," she said. "How are you doing?"

[betterthanaplan]

"I'm fi --" Duke cut himself off with a faint growl. Right. He'd told her he wouldn't do that anymore. "I'm." What was an honest answer to that question that didn't make him feel like a weakling? ". . . Getting there. Trying to be normal. Mostly not sore anymore, so. You know. That's nice."

[thatwaslucky]

She was really proud of him for that, actually.

"Getting there is good. Did Saturday help?"

[betterthanaplan]

"You know, it really did." He wasn't sure what that said about him, that stabbing, hanging, and burning something in effigy had made him feel better. Probably nothing good. "Nothing like a little revenge to clear your head, huh?"

[thatwaslucky]

"Maybe sometimes," Rey agreed after a moment, because it wasn't like she'd seriously wanted to kill a guy at all. "Sometimes it's needed. And, it was straw."

So no actual harm done!

[betterthanaplan]

"True. And now I know who to go to when I need Scandinavian folk art."

[thatwaslucky]

"I still can't believe you have a guy for that," Rey said, deciding she was good to start following along with his poses.

[betterthanaplan]

"Perks of the lifestyle," Duke said. "I've got a guy for most things."

[thatwaslucky]

"Are the other things that specific?"

She enjoyed that this one was.

[betterthanaplan]

"Most of my guys are multifunctional," Duke admitted. "The guy who does passports can also write prescriptions, that kind of thing. I've found the less criminal they are, the more likely it is that they specialize."

[thatwaslucky]

"That actually does sound pretty handy," Rey admitted.

Coming at it from a totally innocent perspective, of course.

[betterthanaplan]

"It really is. Hence covering networking when I took over for Rosa's class last month. Only an idiot tries to actually go it alone."

You know, for anything that wasn't, say, childhood emotional trauma.

[thatwaslucky]

"You remember who you're talking to, right?" Rey said after a pause.

[betterthanaplan]

"The girl who keeps trying to run off to fight an evil empire," Duke said. "With a team because now she has a choice."

[thatwaslucky]

"That wasn't the plan," Rey admitted. "I kept trying to get back to Jakku."

Which would have been stupid, but for entirely different reasons.

"I just licked i to this."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke nodded and shrugged -- a nice trick when mid-pose. "Hey, everybody's got to learn sometime, right? Maybe your luck is just how the Force decided to help you out."

[thatwaslucky]

"Something like that," Rey said. "Doesn't matter now anyway, I guess."

Aside from still having a tendency to try and go at things alone a ton of the time, due to being almost constantly disappointed.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke was entirely too familiar with that feeling, yes. And while he may have a "guy" for just about everything, that didn't mean he trusted any of them to do more than provide that thing for the right amount of money. . . .

"How's all that going, by the way?" he asked. "Any progress on the empire-destroying front?"

[thatwaslucky]

Rey shrugged- less impressive than when he did it. "Time moves slower there, so there's not much change since I got the books. Right now I'm mostly getting updates on supply runs and things, though I know Poe wants to bring me back out there more. So maybe I'll have more soon."

[betterthanaplan]

"You know my offer to help still stands, right?" Duke asked. "Not that I have any idea what I could do for a fight that spans entire planets."

[thatwaslucky]

"That's how I feel most days, too," Rey said with a wry little smile. "Thanks. I could also see if they have any leads, too."

[betterthanaplan]

"Hey, at least you've got that lightsaber now. Don't think I missed that you were taking toys out with that thing last week."

[thatwaslucky]

"It's just the practice one. Master Skywalker practically dared me to figure out how to turn the safety off, so... I still use my staff."

And she would, for narratively way too long.