fandomtownies | Covent Garden Flowers, Thursday

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Covent Garden Flowers, Thursday

Octavia actually practiced making tea today. Not only that, but she actually took her time with it, following both the instructions Seivarden had given her as well as consulting the internet on her phone to get it right.

It had nothing to do with any desire to please Seivarden, though, and everything to do with Octavia's need for something to immerse herself in. She'd actually managed some sleep last night, but that only made her feel more alert, not less... whatever the muddled, anxious feeling roiling around in her should've been called.

The tea was a good distraction. But it still only took up a fraction of her day.

The preserve was calling her again.

Covent Garden Flowers was open, and Octavia was listlessly trying to keep herself busy. Somewhere towards the back of the shop, ferns seemed to be multiplying as the day went on.

[ooc: Open, with some SP during my afternoon!]

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Octavia loosened her hold as soon as she felt him turning. But she leaned right back in once he had.

"Isn't my mom dead?" she replied in half-echo. "Yeah. She is." She closed her mouth, pausing for a breath through her nose before she continued. It made her next words into a sigh. "But I dreamed of her every night for like a week, and then... She showed up at our door."

Fandom.

Duke's mouth worked for several moments before he could respond. There were too many things he could think of to say, from the flippant (mental note, don't dream about dead people) to the ridiculously stupid (how?!) to the simply inadequate (that must've been hard).

In the end he didn't say anything at all. Just wrapped his arms around her tight and let her tell it in her own time.

Octavia would've accepted any of those responses. But she would've been lying if she'd claimed the one he went with wasn't her favorite. Her voice dropped into a murmur. "Bel didn't even want to talk to her. It was..."

She trailed off. There wasn't really a word for that weekend. Not in English, not in Trig.

Another inhale. "My point is -- I know it's not the same. But, I was a mess for weeks, after that. It's a shock, it brings shit back."

It wasn't the same -- Duke's mother wasn't dead, Octavia's had cared for her in her own fucked up way -- but it also was the same. In all the ways that mattered.

Duke pressed his face into her hair, feeling her braids against his cheek. He didn't know what he'd done, who he'd tricked into believing he deserved someone like Octavia, someone who moved through the world on the outside the way he felt on the inside: too young, but too old; reserved, but bursting with fire. . . . He took a long, slow breath, and then another, just hanging on.

Until something brushed across the back of his neck, startling him. He picked his head up without letting go and looked around.

"Okay, seriously, there are way more ferns here than there were when I came in."

"They've been doing that all day."

Her voice was a tired mumble.

"I think it's for me."

"Like to comfort you?" If they were attacking, she'd have killed them by now. . . . "That's -- sweet. I guess. Kinda creepy. But sweet."

"I think they know I should be in the woods," Octavia sighed, letting her head drop against his shoulder. "Well, not should. Want, maybe. I don't know."

The key was that she'd clearly been in Fandom too long since she was so casual about assigning intentions to plants.

"Yeah. . . ." Duke said. "Sticking with 'creepy, but sweet'. And being very glad Luke's hasn't been flooded by well meaning tidal pools or something."

"I still like this better than when the orders get messed up and we get a store full of roses or something."

She was still dreading the day she'd walk in find white lilies everywhere.

"A bit less overwhelmingly fragrant, for one thing."

"For one thing," Octavia agreed.

Before a big sigh.

Duke rubbed her back.

"So. We're both . . . 'off'. What do we do about that?"

"I don't know." And it was annoying her a little bit, yes! "Usually, I just... Wait it out."

Duke let out a slightly shaky laugh. "Yeah, that sounds way too healthy for me."

Did it help at all that 'waiting it out' usually translated to 'waiting until repressing the thing starts working'?

Anyway.

Octavia picked her head back up so she could actually look at him. "Anything you wanna do?"

"You mean other than just get the fuck out of Dodge?" Duke asked. "Talk about . . . literally anything else."

"Well that should be easy," Octavia replied, with a heavy drawl.

In fairness, though, even she liked their odds better now that they'd actually addressed the elephant in the room.

"Let's see," Duke said, settling his arms more comfortably around her as he looked into the distance. "Oh! I should tell you about the terror birds."

"The terror birds," Octavia repeated dryly.

This already sounded like some prime Fandom bullshit.

"Giant, eight-foot tall, carnivorous birds predating the ice age," Duke said. "We made them floppy sunhats."

Yeah, Octavia was going to take a moment to process all that. She was much too tired for her face to go on much of a journey, but there were definitely a couple of twitches.

"... Of course you did," she said. Eventually. "Please tell me at least one of your students ran away."

(If she'd ever sit in on one of his classes, Shuri would obviously be her favorite.)

"Not that I saw. I'd already stared the lead bird down by that point, though."

He was very proud of that, yes.

"One of them did tase the suckers, though."

Octavia was also proud of him for that.

"Good," she decided. "Assuming that didn't just make it mad."

"It did not. I'm a little afraid of that student now. She does make the prettiest hats, though."

"Well, she has my approval now."

Was Octavia extra glad it had been one of the girls? Damn right she was.

"Hats or no hats."

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