The Perk, Sunday afternoon

[betterthanaplan]

Octavia was back. It'd be understandable to expect that Duke would be glued to her side, especially considering how hard he'd taken her disappearance in the first place. She'd barely been back more than 48 hours so far, after all. Hell, Duke would have expected himself to be glued to her side.

He couldn't explain why he wasn't. Why he'd felt the overwhelming urge to get away from his boat this afternoon, away from her pallor and silent, accusing eyes. Not forever. Just for a little while, an hour, probably less. Long enough to get coffee and a sandwich he didn't make himself. And then sit and watch one get cold and pick the other apart without really ingesting either of them.

He couldn't explain how angry he was (at her, at himself, at the island, at everything) or why he couldn't stop thinking about his goddamn father (sometimes people you loved disappeared and came back broken and needed you to fix them but wouldn't tell you why), he just knew he needed a second away from her, where he couldn't screw up and say the wrong thing (again). Where there were people who didn't need anything from him but his drink order and a decent tip.

(Sometimes the people you loved disappeared and came back broken and you just. Needed. Out.)

[open! You know, in case anyone wants some AGGRESSIVE MOODINESS flung at their characters]

Comments

[1000yearstoolate]

This was the perfect day to argue with the staff at the Perk to get some decent tea and possibly have some aggressive moodiness flung at her.

"You know by now that teabags are unacceptable," Seivarden sighed.

She hadn't noticed Duke yet.

[betterthanaplan]

Oh good, an external target for his ire that wasn't his traumatized girlfriend! (Sorry, Seivarden.)

"And you know by now that teabags are what they carry."

[1000yearstoolate]

"They actually do have loose leaf tea."

Seivarden gave Duke an irritated look.

"They just do this every time to piss me off."

[betterthanaplan]

"And what did you do to piss them off?" Duke asked. "'Cause in my experience, service workers don't just fuck with people for no reason."

[1000yearstoolate]

"I haven't had a 'be understanding' lecture in a while," Seivarden said, then added, against her better judgement:

"I thought Octavia was back."

[betterthanaplan]

"Fuck understanding. You could try not to be a dick." Duke shook his head. "She is. Got back Thursday night."

Or rather very early Friday morning.

[1000yearstoolate]

"That's good news," Seivarden said, turning gentler, and ignoring the first part. It still hurt; she had considered Duke a friend, but since Octavia had disappeared she was less sure.

[betterthanaplan]

Seivarden had turned out to be an easy target when Duke felt the need to lash out. Her buttons were just so bright and well-defined!

"Of course it is."

He didn't sound like he thought it was very good news right now.

[1000yearstoolate]

Which was odd, Seivarden thought. Had Octavia dumped him?

"How is she?"

[hatesparadise]

Would Danny like to be subject to aggressive moodiness? No. Was he gonna have to deal with it if he wanted coffee and a sub-par fried treat? Yeah, yeah he was.

"What are you doing here?"

[betterthanaplan]

Duke looked down at his dismantled sandwich, then up at Danny with a tired smirk. "Solving world hunger."

[hatesparadise]

"Uh huh," Danny replied, leaning against the counter as his coffee was poured.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke watched him with a raised eyebrow. "Did you need something, shortstop?"

[hatesparadise]

"Clever," Danny said, not reacting to the jab beyond that. He eyed Duke for a moment longer before paying for the coffee and donut. "You okay?"

[betterthanaplan]

Not even a little.

"I'm awesome. Why wouldn't I be?"

His girlfriend was back. He should be over the moon. (Except, you know, for the part where she was a wreck.)

[hatesparadise]

"You want me to come up with a list?"

[betterthanaplan]

"Yeah. Sure." Duke leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. "Give me a list."

[white_oleander]

Well. It would seen that Astrid picked an interesting afternoon to pick the Perk as a drawing spot. The tension in the air was not only palpable, she felt she could practically see it, jagged lines like how electricity smelled. And all of it either centering on or eminating from....What's His Name, the man from the diner, the man from the caldera, enough so that she tilted her head with unavoidable curiosity as she waited for her order. Which wasn't long, it was just black coffee, she'd add a little swirl of cream, a packet of sugar, before finding a table, finding a seat in the corner, facing him, where she imagined one of two things would happen: he'd remained wallowed in his own anxiousness to never once notice her as she tried to put a mood onto paper, or he'd be unable not to notice that weird, quiet girl frequent stealing glances behind the curtain of hair over her sketchbook to double check the details on his form, the lighting, the particular layout of crumbs left behind by an abused but unconsumed pastry.

She figured she'd wind up getting some good work out of it whichever way it went.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke noticed her alright, but not right away. And where he'd normally want to go over and see how she was doing, or at least appear as unthreatening as possible from across the room, right now he had quite enough on his plate with Octavia.

So when he couldn't take her furtive looks anymore, he leaned forward on his elbows and stared her down.

"The hell are you doing?"

[white_oleander]

So it was going to be the second one. Astrid's first thought was to pick from a plethora of easy, sarcastic answers, a what does it look like I'm doing? or a the can-can, but she was in the middle of shading part of the piece, and so those initial.responses didn't make the cut, and she tilted her head to consider her latest addition before an answer came at all.

"Drawing you," she said, honesty winning against sarcasm this time (Ingrid would have gone for sarcasm...or at least insincerity, so Astrid would go with neither of those things), and she sat up, pushed back her hair, and held up the work in progress, "see?"

She didn't know how much of it coild see, from there, especially since he as a subject actually made up very little of the frame, just a hunched, dark, angular figure in the corner. Most of it was the coffee shop, if.you squinted, all Kandinsky lines and shakes, an abstract rendering with unexplained lines and baubles, everything elongated, stretched out. Like through a fun house mirror that forgot the fun part.

[betterthanaplan]

That . . . was not an answer Duke expected. He blinked, straightening from his lean a little. "Seriously?"

Then she held up her picture.

"You might need to get your eyes checked, kid."

[white_oleander]

It wasn't often anyone said anything less than complimentary.about Astrid's art. In fact, the only.person she could think of who ever criticized it was Ingrid, and her last art teacher, who never felt a class was good until.someone was close to tears, and even she struggled to nitpick what Astrid put out.

She smiled a bit wryly, shrugged a shoulder, and set the sketchbook back down, picked up her pencil again.

"Maybe," she allowed, "but you can't really see how moods look."

[betterthanaplan]

"Huh." Duke hunched in his seat, wrapping both his hands around his coffee mug, though it had long since gone cold. "And, uh. That spiky mess is what you think my mood looks like?"

[white_oleander]

"Mostly what it feels like," Astrid correctly, "but yeah. Pretty much. It's a very Kandinsky mood, but without the music."

As she spoke, though, she frowned a little at the paper, reached for her little pink eraser, tried to refit a circle better into a square.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke took a long sip of his (stone cold) coffee and thought about that.

". . . Yeah, alright. I can see that."