The beach, Wednesday morning

[betterthanaplan]

The Rouge had been extra creaky this morning, a fact Duke was blaming on Lucifer's whole "so how much effort do you have to put in to keep your home from sinking?" thing last night. It made for a twitchy, sleepless morning, and he found his way to the beach extra early to try to get away from it -- only to be constantly haunted by the sound of slow approaching footsteps in the sand with no apparent source.

So. It was just one of those days in Fandom, then.

He considered leaving. He was still annoyed at Rey from last week. But if he held a grudge against everyone who got judgy at him, he'd never speak to anyone at all. And he tried to keep his appointments as a general rule. He knew all too well how much it sucked to have people just not show up when you expected them to.

So he was here. Doing a rather twitchy yoga warmup. Ah, Fandom.

[open!]

Comments

[thatwaslucky]

Rey had no idea what she'd be walking into today, but she showed up like normal with a, "Hey."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke startled faintly—he’d been focused on studiously ignoring the footsteps, and had assumed she was more of that until she spoke—and looked up with a nod.

“Morning.”

[thatwaslucky]

She noticed the startle, but it was kind of the day for it.

"How's it going?"

[betterthanaplan]

"Well, the island's doing a thing again, but other than that, I'm good. You?"

[thatwaslucky]

"Good," she said. "The thing Fandom did that was actually a problem is over now."

[betterthanaplan]

"You mean the dancing pumpkins?" Duke asked. "Or did I miss something?"

[thatwaslucky]

"The powers thing," she clarified.

[betterthanaplan]

"There was a powers thing?!"

Duke avoided his own like the plague, so he could maybe be forgiven for not having noticed.

[thatwaslucky]

"Yeah," she said, figuring he must've been avoiding radio too. "A bunch of people lost some of our powers for the weekend."

[betterthanaplan]

". . . Huh." People in Haven would kill for that sort of problem. "I'm a little sorry I missed that."

[thatwaslucky]

"Maybe next time it can skip me and affect you instead," she said.

It'd be good for him. It'd been tough for her.

[betterthanaplan]

"You didn't lose your connection with the Force, did you?"

He could see how that would be disconcerting.

[thatwaslucky]

"Not exactly, but I couldn't access it to do things I apparently do most often," she explained. "So some things were fine and then they wouldn't work at all."

[betterthanaplan]

"You had to do stuff the old fashioned way, huh?"

[thatwaslucky]

"That part wasn't so bad." She minded that she wasn't able to do it. "How I related to people was harder."

(Not that it had stopped her from spending half the weekend flirting with a pirate.)

[betterthanaplan]

Duke would love to hear all about that pirate flirting.

"Oh yeah? How so?"

[thatwaslucky]

She took a moment to figure out how to explain it.

"I pick emotions up from people all the time. Most of the time I don't even realize I'm doing it. I could walk into a party and know everyone's excited to be there and pick out the one person who isn't. So not having that was kind of like walking around... like when you've been around a loud noise too long and you can't hear clearly."

[betterthanaplan]

"So sort of . . . muffled?" Duke guessed. He wasn't really sure how he felt about Rey picking up on his emotions all the time. Which she was maybe picking up on?

He was going to be overthinking this for ages, now.

"Must've been weird. But that's all cleared up again, you said."

[thatwaslucky]

She wasn't focusing on it, she'd pick up nothing unless there was a sudden change. She really didn't notice it most of the time.

"Luckily, yeah. Back to normal for me."

[betterthanaplan]

"And you're not hearing any . . . weird noises today or anything?" Duke asked.

Come to think of it, the footsteps had gone away once she got here.

[thatwaslucky]

"Oh, yeah," Rey said. "That is kind of normal at this time of year, though."

[betterthanaplan]

"Yeah, and last time the clowns ended up trying to stab people. So you can see where I'm a little worried."

[thatwaslucky]

"I'm more concerned about tomorrow there. I don't have a bad feeling about anything today." Totally normal thing. "This may be the creepy calm before the storm."

[betterthanaplan]

"Does that mean you have a bad feeling about tomorrow?"

[thatwaslucky]

"No. I just remember there being a lead-up to the murder clowns last year," she said.

It was possible she was getting too used to all of this.