Anonymous asked:

Prompt- Duke, Rose, and her parents talk about her affair. Set in the Duke universe. What can I say, I just love drama.

Drama is always the answer, though, I find it hard to imagine someone just sitting down and discussing their infidelity with their parents very frankly so … This might be slightly different than you're expecting?

Warnings: written on my phone, been drinking Strait and Narrows, infidelity

When Rose arrived for her scheduled Tuesday night dinner with her parents, she was surprised to see Duke's car in their drive. The surprise quickly turned to anger when she realized what he was doing here.

She raced up to the house, forgetting the bag of promised groceries in the front seat. She threw open the door to the house and called out for her parents, just as Duke came into the hallway from the dining room.

"What are you doing here?"

"Making sure everyone knows the truth," Duke said, his eyes colder than she'd ever seen them. This was not the Duke who picked daisies and tucked them behind his ears, who loved the taste of cotton candy, and liked to walk barefoot in the mud. It was not the Duke she knew.

"My parents?" she said weakly. "Why?"

"If I don't get to know why, you don't get to know why."

Duke shoved himself past her and out the door, storming down the drive and to his car. Rose just watched him go, knowing she deserved it. She deserved pain and humiliation. She just wished he knew that she hadn't ever meant to hurt him and if she could do it all differently, she would do it to save him from being entangled in any of this.

"Rosie?"

Rose turned from the open door to look at her father.

"Duke said that you stepped outside your marriage," Carl said. "That you … Your mother is devastated. She considered Duke a son."

"I don't know what to say," Rose admitted. "I'm sure what he said was true, even if he was mad, and he deserves to be mad. I still don't think he'd lie. It wasn't the right thing to do but Duke and I weren't right, in the long term. It shouldn't have been something like this to make me realize it, but - Oh, Dad, don't … Don't cry."

"You should go, Rose," her father said. "No one feels like dinner tonight."

And, so, Rose left. She called out "I love you" to but never got a response. The feta cheese she'd picked up for the salad warmed in the car seat as she went down the road, not sure about where to go, not knowing where she want wanted to go, but knowing she didn't want to go home. So, she called the one person she could always count on.

"Rose, what's up?"

"I just needed to hear your voice," Rose admitted. "It's been one of those days."

"Well, you've always got me," Rachelle said, "even on those days."