The Devil's Nest, Friday Night

[my_own_advocate]

Octavia was back.

Lucifer wasn't going to rush to Duke's ship like some kind of desperately besotted lover - she had Duke for that. Still, that meant he came to the Devil's Nest a bit... jittery, and happy to let the soulful songwriter he'd hired for the night do most of the playing.

Well, all right. For a bit. Eventually he was probably going to get cranky and cut in.

But for now, he was hanging around by the bar, drinking, with a sign up that read All pear liquor cocktails 25 percent off.

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[1000yearstoolate]

"You're not playing tonight?" Seivarden leaned against the bar next to him, smiling as Tiny put a glass of whisky in front of her.

[my_own_advocate]

"I'm a bit distracted," Lucifer said lightly, "Doesn't make for the best touch on the keys."

[1000yearstoolate]

"Distracted?"

Seivarden had actually brought Lucifer a flower, as a kind of 'let's forget about the Ibiza disaster and let things get back to normal' gift. The timing didn't seem quite right, but she could hardly pretend it wasn't there.

"I brought you this," she said, holding out a small bouquet of violets. "I thought you might prefer these to snapdragons, but I might be wrong."

At least an attempt at joking might make it better.

[my_own_advocate]

"Well, it definitely works better with the suit," Lucifer said, reaching for the bouquet. He wasn't going to make a big deal of it if she didn't.

[1000yearstoolate]

"It won't chew on it."

Seivarden sipped her drink. "So, what's distracting you?"

She hoped this wouldn't end up being some sort of argument about her inability to listen.

[my_own_advocate]

"Octavia's back," Lucifer said. Beat. "Allegedly."

[1000yearstoolate]

"Allegedly?"

Seivarden might not actually like Octavia, but that didn't mean her going missing hadn't bothered her, although, if she was really honest, it was mostly because it made two of her friends upset.

[my_own_advocate]

"Duke said so, but his texts seemed a bit out of it," Lucifer said, "And I haven't seen her yet. I was hoping the alcohol might draw her out."

[1000yearstoolate]

"Don't you think they need some time together?" Seivarden said. Gently.

[my_own_advocate]

"She could at least bother informing me that she's alive," Lucifer said, rolling his eyes.

[1000yearstoolate]

"You have a point."

Seivarden took a sip from her drink.

"Doesn't living for millennia make you patient?"

[my_own_advocate]

"No, it just gives you more time to be bored out of your mind," Lucifer said irritably.

[1000yearstoolate]

Normally she would have offered to be a distraction for boredom, but even she knew better. She fell silent, taking another sip of her drink.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer might have actually been willing to put some money down on the fact that she probably wasn't someone Lucifer would want to deal with that evening, but, well, tough for him. Because enough of her was optimistic (or stupid) enough to sort of hope she'd lose that bet.

"You know what?" she said, a sort of pleased pride in her voice, after spending some time at the bar and waiting for a good moment to go say hi. "It definitely took some doing, but I'm glad to say I managed to talk Tiny into at least ten percent off my fancy Japanese pear soda, since I can't actually, you know, get a cocktail..."

Summer just couldn't come in here without complaining about the drinking age; that was just a fact.

[my_own_advocate]

Well, the narrative would argue with that earlier narrative, bar for the fact that dealing with Summer had suddenly become a complicated affair, and Lucifer needed more complicated affairs like he needed all of the alcohol in this bar to explode right this minute.

"Turtle and Canary isn't far. You can always sneak a few of those tiny bottles of rum into the club," Lucifer said, eyeing her.

Did Turtle and Canary carry liquor? Who knew.

[somethingwithturquoise]

And one narrative might suggest that another narrative was making the overall narrative out to be a far more complicated thing that it really was or needed to be.

But that was neither here nor there, and Summer met that look with a bright smile. "I can think," she said, "of at least a few other solutions to this problem that involve a lot less sneaking booze in from either my places of employment, although I'll give you credit, where it lacks in convenience, it does have an appeal for...illiciteness."

For now, though, it was probably good she was just rocking the pear soda because she almost always just did some mega pre-gaming at Caritas before heading over.

But her smirk softened a little and she took her turn to eye him, almost like a gauge, before asking, "So...how're you doing?"

[my_own_advocate]

"Fine," Lucifer said, and if he sounded a bit suspicious, well, he didn't think his narrative was exaggerating anything, because Summer was, in a single word, weird.

"Nothing to complain about."

[somethingwithturquoise]

And it was Summer's turn to maybe be a little bit suspicious, because, in her experience, Lucifer was, in a single word, complainy.

"That's good to hear," she said, and she meant it, even if she didn't at all really believe it, and then there was a pause, a sort of hesitation, which she covered with a sip from her soda because she had definitely waffled on this a little bit this past week, and she knew the last time she'd waffled on something with Lucifer, the better choice had been to just not.

But that kind of reserved caution had never really been her style, and she didn't think she was really planning on letting it become her style any time soon.

"Soooo," she ventured, annoyed by the sudden disappearance of the confidence she'd had when she went over this in her head before, but charging forward anyway, "next week is my birthday. I'm planning this big thing on this great party planet I know, and I was wondering if you'd want to come."

[my_own_advocate]

Lucifer wanted to say yes, because party planet sounded like an excellent distraction right now. But it was Summer. What if it was a trap?

It could be a trap.

"A whole party planet?" he said, grinning. "Well, that's a level of ambition I certainly admire and would love to see come to fruition."

It was probably a trap, but letting his suspicion show on his face was likely to lead to a repeat of their previous awkwardness and he was quite allergic to that, so he would show. No. Weakness.

[somethingwithturquoise]

A trap for what? What the hell did he think young women did for their twentieth birthdays?

But Summer grinned a little, because that was a much better answer than 'it's not like I have anything better to do' or any of its ilk, which also saved her the big pain in the ass of a locked-and-loaded rant about it if that's what she wound up with.

"Good," she said. "It's next Friday. Portal leaves at seven. And Seivarden's coming, too, so if it winds up being too lame, the two of you can go find some sexy five-breasted aliens to go bang or whatever.

"But it won't be," she added loftily, with a solid confidence that she had been determined not to waver despite the shaky foundation she'd built it on, "because it's my party. Obviously."

[my_own_advocate]

He didn't know what it was a trap for! Then it wouldn't be a trap, would it?

"Oh, I have the utmost fate in you," Lucifer assured her, "I assume there will be jello."

[somethingwithturquoise]

"There doesn't always have to be jello," Summer pointed out, because she honestly was not about to make jello shots for her own birthday party, but if some kind soul had the forethought to do it as a nice homage to the hostess, that would be pretty sweet. "And besides, where we're going, that'd be sort of a risky thing because there is definitely the chance of accidentally injesting another party-goer instead. But they do have special extraction stations for those kind of incidents."

[my_own_advocate]

"Five-breasted women and 'extraction stations'," Lucifer said, grinning again. "What kind of party planet are you taking us to, miss Smith?"

[somethingwithturquoise]

"An intergalatic, multidimensional one, Mr. Morningstar," Summer responded, as if there could even be any other kind of party planet. "And it's settled right outside of the jurisdiction of the former Galactic Federation's reach, so, unless something really big has happened out there since the last time I was there, it's a bit of a no-man's land, and they definitely take advantage of it. Just don't get mixed up with any alien fly mafias or Gromflomite assassins, and you should be fine."

[my_own_advocate]

"How is the alcohol?" Lucifer inquired.