fandomtownies | PARTY!, The Beach, Saturday Night

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PARTY!, The Beach, Saturday Night

The beach looked like someone had thrown an entire Pinterest board at it.

Strings of lights were strung between elegant poles, lighting up a fair portion of the beach (with the help of a few carefully-disguised generators, mind you). Large, stylized pots contained such multitudes of jasmine and lavender that at first glance they appeared to be bushes, instead - Seivarden's one contribution to the party.

Delicate paper screens carved the beach up into zones. Beach-classy lounge furniture sat on the sand, from chairs to sofas to even a bed or two. One corner held a stack of sheets, for anyone who didn't think bathing suits were appropriate eveningwear ('Togas encouraged!', the final Instagram post had said). Lucifer had supplied a ridiculous cooking setup for Duke in one corner, and a large bar ('open bar!' said the sign by it) stocked with almost every kind of alcohol known to man sat on the opposite side.

Even the water seemed to roll in like it figured it was part of an Instagram music video of some kind.

Seivarden had demanded a good party. And Lucifer had standards.

That it was extremely hot, that everyone had lost most of their wardrobe? That wasn't going to stand in the way of a bloody good party. There were ice cubes! Lucifer had brought a special freezer for extra ice cubes!

... and since it was Lucifer, no, he hadn't noticed the Truth Day thing yet.

[[ party! ]]

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Lucifer drifted by the spread and took something.

And drifted by again.

And again.

Okay, fine, Duke, he thought as he shoved another fig into his mouth. He was never going to disparage your cooking skills again.

"I take it you approve," Duke said, not quite as dry as he'd intended it to be. "I was actually kind of worried about that. Your opinion is important to me."

. . . Dammit, he hadn't planned on saying that bit.

... Well, at least that was the first time tonight that Lucifer noticed something being off.

"Well, you've nothing to worry about, this is excellent," he said, "Didn't realize you and your attractive but pretend-disaffected 90s grunge persona cared."

"It's not pretend when you actually grew up in the nineties," Duke said. "It is, however, a carefully cultivated defense mechanism."

"Yes, I know, you need a therapist," Lucifer told him, shaking his head. "And a more upscale restaurant, frankly. Denying people this is downright criminal."

"Diner's more my speed," Duke said, gliding right past that therapist comment. "Well. A bar is more my speed, but I'll settle for a diner. It'd kind of nice to be making money I don't have to worry about the government finding out about."

"Wasting your talents," Lucifer informed him. A pause. "So did you find what you went looking for?"

"No." Duke waved to the spread. "Which you can partially thank for all this, today. Sometimes cooking is soothing."

"Feeling a bit more soothed, at least?" Lucifer said, glancing over his face.

Look, he wasn't much of a people-reader.

Duke nodded. "Not really, no."

Dammit, truth day.

"What I did find out was -- a lot. Plus there was this whole bit where I got arrested for murder."

Lucifer looked pensive for all of half a second. "How about we grab drinks and you can tell me the whole story?"

"I suppose if I was going to tell anyone all of it, it'd be you." Duke sighed. "Yeah. I think I'm going to need to be a little bit drunk for this."

Lucifer pointed to a large lounge sofa, well away from the rest of the party, near where the waves hit the beach.

"I'll go grab you a bourbon," he said, "You settle in."

Duke looked over and nodded. "Thanks, man. I can see why she came to you."

"So did you," Lucifer pointed out dryly, "Though you were too drunk to remember."

Then he was off to the bar.

That saved Duke from confessing that he remembered more of that night than one might expect.

It took a lot of alcohol for him to get black-out drunk.

He headed for the sofa and flopped down, sprawling out and burying his feet in the sand. Out here, with some distance from the party itself, just the thumping bass and babble of overlapping voices and the glow of the party lights, he could almost pretend he was 21 again. At his first tropical beach party, soaking in tequila and freedom.

Hell, he was even dressed in as little as he would have been, back then.

This party had been a grand distraction amid an ocean of bittersweet, complicated nonsense. It worked perfectly as long as he was talking to neither Duke nor Octavia.

Much like that time all those months ago, they had a strange way of reminding him that he was alone.

Which was why, when Lucifer finally turned up at the seat with Duke's bourbon, he was holding a Long Island Ice Tea in his other hand. "Now you're getting the Greek vacation vibe," he said, a bit of forced cheer in his voice as he held out Duke's drink.

Duke accepted the drink with a faint smile. "In my experience, the Greeks are far less into improvised drapery. But I guess if you'd gone full nude-beach, there wouldn't be quite as big of a turnout."

"Oh, Seivarden and I had a spirited running argument," Lucifer said. "I thought the chance of an orgy was small but real, she thought everyone was just going to mill around looking awkward and naked."

He sat down.

"With this group . . . I could see it going either way. I think you'd end up with an orgy being watched by awkward naked people."

"Sounds like a good time to me," Lucifer said, crossing his legs as he settled in place. "You had a story to tell."

"Yes," Duke agreed on a sigh. "Unfortunately I do." He took a long drink of his bourbon. "Where do I start?"

Ah, delaying tactics.

"You left to go to Haven," Lucifer said, rolling his eyes. "Don't stall."

"Hey, there's a lot of backstory there, too. Some of which I only just learned myself." Duke sighed. "Okay, fine. So I went back to Haven. Trip up was fine. Uneventful. I'm super tempted to go on about anyway, but I'm pretty sure if I did you'd find some creative new insults for me."

"Yes," Lucifer said, nodding.

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