The beach, Tuesday morning

[betterthanaplan]

As far as Duke knew, everything was right and fine in his world. He was going to get to teach the class he'd chosen this summer (he would be very disappointed to learn about the ungulates), his relationship with his roommate was unchanged (this was technically true! since she'd erased his memories several times by now), and he and Octavia were as solid as ever (why even include this on the list?). So he was in a great mood when he showed up for beach yoga this morning, despite the fact that he was going to ask Rey about rescheduling, since his yoga class for the school was going to be on Tuesday mornings as well.

It was a perfectly lovely day. The ocean was just rough enough to be interesting, the porgs were gamboling happily in the sand, and Duke's muscles burned pleasantly through his warm-up stretch. Really, he hadn't been quite this content in a long, long time.

[yes, I'm evil. Open! The thread with Danny will be chronologically the last.]

Comments

[thatwaslucky]

Rey was there mostly on time. Her portal had been a little later than she'd planned on, but she was overall in a good mood after a weekend back home and some training this morning.

She still felt late, though, which was what got the, "I'm here," when she arrived.

[betterthanaplan]

"You are," Duke said with a smile. "How's it going?"

[okteiviakom]

Octavia had preserve plans for today, to balance out all of yesterday's shopping (all two stores of it). But it was also Tuesday morning, and she wasn't in a rush.

So a beach detour went wonderfully with her plans.

"Ha yun, deimeika."

[betterthanaplan]

"Ha yun, natshana." Duke came over to greet her with a quick kiss. "Here to pick up a few more poses?"

[thatwaslucky]

"Good. A little rushed," she said with a shrug. "You look like you're doing okay."

[betterthanaplan]

"Doing just fine," Duke agreed. "Where you rushing from?"

[okteiviakom]

Octavia did her best to make it a little less quick.

"Mm, maybe." There was a sword strapped to her back, kind of betraying her plans for the day even before she said anything about them. "I'm headed out to the woods, later."

[thatwaslucky]

"I just got back from home about twenty minutes ago," she said. "They said my original portal was delayed by a yeti somehow so they had to get me a later one."

Who knew.

[betterthanaplan]

". . . A yeti." Duke shook his head. "Why am I still surprised? You head home for the weekend?"

[betterthanaplan]

"Sounds like fun. I bet you could do with a little warm up here first, though."

[thatwaslucky]

"Yeah. It'd been a while, I thought I should check in."

She'd missed people like crazy.

"It was nice. Quiet."

[okteiviakom]

"Probably," Octavia admitted, as if she took any convincing. "Think my shoulders might appreciate it."

[betterthanaplan]

"Quiet seems to be a theme right now." He was going to regret saying that. "But I don't imagine you get a lot of it in the middle of a rebellion, so I'm guessing everyone appreciated it."

[betterthanaplan]

"Probably," Duke agreed, moving to give said shoulders a good rub. "I know a few good shoulder openers."

[thatwaslucky]

"People are doing things elsewhere in the galaxy, so at least at base no one's shooting at us. Yet," Rey said lightly. "How was your week?"

[okteiviakom]

Octavia couldn't help her little sigh. Look, she carried tension in her shoulders pretty much all the time. It was sort of her thing!

"Good."

[betterthanaplan]

"Also quiet." At least as far as Duke remembered. "Other than a bunch of animals picketing graduation because they were jealous I only taught hat-making for birds."

[hatesparadise]

Yes, Duke's collection of young, emotionally stunted women was certainly A Thing. That did not feed into any suspicions at all.

"Duke Crocker?" Danny called out, tilting his head up a little because this island was inhabited by giants.

[thatwaslucky]

"Oh." Yeah, she was absolutely not trying to hide that grin. "I guess you've got future classes figured out then."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke had noticed. He rubbed harder, working into the muscles with his thumbs. "Hear you did a little shopping yesterday."

[betterthanaplan]

Look, it wasn't Duke's fault that young, emotionally stunted women made up a large percentage of the island population.

He turned and looked over the new guy, who had a very familiar vibe. Duke knew a cop when he saw one.

. . . You know, when they didn't look like Rosa.

All of his old practiced defenses snapped into place, and he gave Danny a broad, sarcastic grin. "May I ask who's calling?"

[betterthanaplan]

"Nope," Duke said, far more firmly than he had any right to, considering it hadn't been his idea to teach bird haberdashery in the first place. "Got my yoga class all set up. They, uh, assigned me Tuesday mornings, though. So we may want to pick a new time for our practice here."

[hatesparadise]

Swear to god, Duke. If you took off running, Danny was gonna punch you a whole lot. He hated running on the beach.

"Detective Williams," he replied, holding up the badge that still said Hawaii Five-0 on it. No way in hell was he giving up this badge.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia rolled her eyes, even though it was kind of distracted.

"Shouldn't believe everything you hear on the radio."

[thatwaslucky]

Squirrel haberdashery. It could be a thing.

"When were you thinking?"