jude. (thefixer) wrote in repose, @ 2016-05-02 06:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | *log, jude coleman, oliver king |
Oliver & Jude
Who: Oliver & Jude
What: Thievery and celebration.
When: Recently.
Where: Big house near the woods.
Everything had been carefully planned by the winner of Least Likely to Plan, and Oliver was bouncing energy since well before the sun came up on the morning of. He'd gone to work, with instructions for Jude and him to rendezvous at the house for the gathering of supplies. 'Supplies' was a very vague term, and for Oliver, it seemed to consist of a mug of instant cocoa, his sketchbook, and a pencil. He had not idea what Jude would have a mind to bring, and Jude probably didn't either, as he still didn't know where they were going. The sun was down now, blanketing a dusty blue over all of Repose with the wash of night, and Oliver, in the layers of a collared shirt and sweater, had taken an impatient position in the passenger seat of their vehicle while his brother fetched a jacket or keys or whatever else he thought necessary for a magical mystery tour.
He hummed a little impatiently, and scraped the rubber bottoms of his shoes against the floor mat, stretching his legs and flaying himself in dutiful mock sacrafice against the seat back while he sighed, impatient due to the entire two minutes he'd been sitting there. He watched the front door through slits, his mouth thoughtfully cornered, plotting. Counting down to the moment that loose ball bearing in his head came clattering to a stop, landing on decision.
Yep, there it was. Oliver pushed himself to the driver's side, barely managing not to spill his cocoa, and he laid an elbow against the car's horn while shouting out the window. "JUDE!, Come on." Oliver never had to wait for Jude, their relationship almost always operated the other way around. But on this rare instance, Oliver had been ready and planning since dawn, and now he was haywire energy going nuclear meltdown unmanageable in the passenger seat. Waiting two minutes was way, way long enough.
Least Likely to Plan leaned on the horn like his name was Impatience instead of Oliver King and Jude appeared on the horizon - summoned, duly proper - and clattered down the stairs that led to the house. He was mussed curls and he was still shrugging into the jacket (weighed at the pocket by a book, but that wasn’t social commentary on the extent of Oliver’s surprise, thank you, that was just leftover and security blanket) when he made his way down to the car.
This was not entirely the way things worked on an ordinary day, but Oliver was lemonade, alternately sharp and suddenly sweet and all things being considered, the angular boy in the front passenger seat was granular and saccharine today. Jude’s smile was ready-lit and hundred watt by the time he cracked the car door.
“Hello, hello. Impatience, why don’t you rearrange yourself into your own seat, so a man can take his please.” And Oliver’s essentials duly noted, nowhere to go without sketchbook and chocolate - Jude had a bar stashed in the pocket of his coat for emergencies (Oliver-related). He shrugged out of it the minute he turned over the engine and the fans roared cold air until they warmed. “So,” Jude’s collar was rucked halfway in and out from under his sweater, and his grin was impish-delighted. “Where’m I driving? Lead on."
"Venture toward the lake, if you will." Matter-of-fact and notably pleased that their adventure was underway. Once righted in his own seat again, Oliver drank more cocoa from the mug, bringing the volume to a safer level for travel. He secured the ceramic at the interstices of his knees, pinched between so that his hands were free to fasten his seatbelt. This was a measure of security insisted on so regularly by his brother that by now, Oliver took it upon himself without having to be asked. It was a chronological series of steps, first the seatbelt and then the adjusting of the air vents away from his face.
Now, the lake was not an especially far drive, and Oliver's instructions for a 'full tank' had been little more than a subtle ploy at deception. In fact, the pair of them could have walked to the lake if they'd needed to, but Oliver, all bones and brittle moods, did not do well with walking through the unnecessary cold.
Properly settled and adjusted in his seat, a slouch was taken, and the mug of cocoa was once again sipped with pleased sounds that punctuated every swallow. "You know the road with all of the lake houses?"
Venture, now was it? Jude couldn’t recall the last time they’d ventured. Some time and change ago, and he slid a sideways look at Oliver’s profile (long nose, elegant cheekbones, pleased expression) with a look of something in brown eyes that flickered and dampened quickly. The air was duly bid to point where it was meant to (not in Sir’s face, naturally, but in Sir-minor, or the boy obliging as driver thanks ever so) and Jude rolled the broken-down car forward by virtue of lifting off the brake.
“Here we go,” and had they really not adventured at all in the last few months? That was shocking performance. “Lake houses, yes, know it very well. Why, are we carousing that way, my man?”
"I told you, it is a surprise." Which might have been reason enough to grow suspicion or worry, if Jude was in the worrying kind of mood. Oliver knew that those moods were irregular, but when kicked to life, it was usually because of Oliver digging in his proverbial spurs. "We haven't done anything nice, just the two of us." Because the party from a few months back had been nice, but in Oliver's mind, Sasha's presence eclipsed that niceness in varying degrees of distrust and gloom.
"Its illegal, but not terribly so." Which he thought that his brother would appreciate. Oliver thought that conveying not terribly so would signify that this wasn't any sort of job. Twisting in his seat, Oliver rested his cheek against the seatback and watched Jude drive. Slowly, he began to outline the details. "There's a house on the lake, the numbers on the mailbox are 2427. Consequently, this is also the code to the alarm. The people who live there left two days ago for Barbados. The house is massive, and I have it on good authority that there is something inside it I want to show you."
Oliver smiled his most crooked smile, expecting Jude to be wary, but ultimately agreeable.
Illegal was not the watchword that the local sheriff might wish it would be. Illegal, in Jude’s experience, spanned a colossal spectrum ranging from the slightly-smudgey white on one end and the dark black pit of despair on t’other. He was quite comfortable strumming white to dove grey most days, with a hop-skip-jump into the black every now and again for the purposes of a job. Oliver’s not terribly dropped the present situation into the comfortable category, although he had a mind for blue lights, police cars and twitchy neighbors.
“Who else lives in the neighborhood?” Jude asked breezily. It was entirely expected that Oliver had cased the joint - Oliver having obtained the alarm code, it was probably a foregone conclusion. But careful is as careful-keeps-itself-out-of-jail-cells and he didn’t trust Repose small-town-whispers not to land him in one. “We haven’t, sunshine. And I know I owe you a grand day out.”
Oliver had insisted on waiting until dark for a reason. "There is a long bit of driveway and enough tree cover that neighbors won't be a problem." Which was to say that he didn't exactly know who all lived in the neighborhood, but he'd at least determined that neighbors shouldn't be much of a deterrent, not in the way that they might have been in the more modest neighborhood where cookie cutter houses sat side by side with very little yard between them. The mansions around the lake had land and tree cover, a sense of privacy bought at the highest dollar.
One might wonder how Oliver had come to find out about this suspiciously empty house, but all sorts came into Sonrisa, and the conversations that they had on their cell phones could be very telling, particularly when they were planning vacations with their travel agents, booking flights, and scheduling people to feed the cats. That was how he'd learned the address and the alarm code, because some people talked into phones like nobody else was listening. Oliver came to understand that as a trait of the absurdly affluent, to trapeze through life with very little attention paid to the waitresses or retail clerks that skirted around them. Sometimes he used it to his advantage.
It might not have been advisable to trust Oliver’s judgment in all scenarios. Oliver had an odd sense of what was essential and what was not (case in point: paint, tea, shades of blue, nesquik -- but not money, food, warmth or a roof) but in matters relating to chicanery and chaos, Jude trusted Oliver implicitly. They had weaned on cons, and this was small potatoes by comparison. The wheel wove through the flat of Jude’s palms as the car rolled toward the lake and the road eaten by degrees.
“How’s Sonrisa treating you?” It was curiosity that leaned into Jude’s voice with experimental weight. As much as Oliver’s grand love affair with paint supplies might carry the day, the woman of the hour was off elsewhere with a newborn and Oliver and routine were not glad bedfellows. (We do not question what precisely, is a good bedfellow to Olivers the world round) Sonrisa seemed to Jude’s prospecting eye, to be more demanding a mistress than the old antique store. The antiques place had less foot-traffic, more ancient pieces of furniture to fawn over and decidedly less work per paycheck.
“Are you still enjoying it, sunshine?” Which was really the point of all work, if there was one. Jude didn’t think much of working to time for the rest of one’s life, you did what you did to earn enough to come up with the next grand plan and then you dug in and spun off in a new direction like a top.
Oliver wasn't certain that one's work, or occupation of the moment, was meant to be enjoyed. Which is why he gave his brother something of a sideways look when he was asked. "I like it just fine," which was true enough, even if he suspected that his employment was nothing permanent. Of course, Oliver was very aware of his own importance to such an industry, but he wasn't convinced that Sam or her babydaddy(who Oliver related to be an enforcer of the rules) understood that.
The pair of them were not the type to endure that which they didn't derive some level of enjoyment from. At least, Oliver didn't think they were. "Are you still enjoying catering to daydrinkers?" He thought that his brother was easier that way, he seemed to enjoy people for the sake of understanding them. His good moods were no assembly required, and people responded warmly to it. Even Oliver was more talkative and generally brighter when Jude was around. Especially when Jude was around.
"I might do something else after Sam comes back to the store. I just don't know what."
The car bumped over the road toward destination with something croakier than a purr Jude would have liked to elicit from its engine. He was focused temporarily on this but he grinned all smiles to Oliver’s slanted skepticism for the pleasures of daily toil. Alright, alright. Not for his brother the satisfaction of the sweat, but still. It was an art-place. A veritable temple to Oliver’s own idols and false gods.
“I like it just fine,” he dimpled back at his brother. Cat was a treasure, and the bar Jude thought of affectionately, like a particularly spoiled pet. You fed it supplies, and Johnny Cash music and what larks, you had a fully functioning business. “Day-drunks included. Some of them have fascinating stories.” And he liked to listen. Not just for the sake of it (careful, we’re treading on eggshells around the bend) but because the composition of a really good cover relied upon a drop of fact stirred in with the flim-flam. Gleaning hard-by-luck stories from the men who crouched over their spirits and licked the last drop out of the glass? So much working material.
“Well, you could see a man about an art-class. Running one, over at the center,” he suggested, as the car nudged in toward destination. “Help a man here, Oliver.”
With the sky a dusky whipped indigo, Oliver catered to his curiosity and admiration of gothic paint palettes and he leaned into the dash for a tilted, keen glimpse of winter's night sky through the witch finger peek-a-boo shadows of bare tree branches overhead. There weren't enough clouds to make for a true dark, the moon was too out in the open tonight, too brightly reflecting off of the lake, but Oliver wasn't worried. He'd scouted the house already and knew that the closest neighbors were at enough of a distance to not be a problem. But he figured he'd have Jude kill the headlights when they got close, just in case.
Back in his seat and the look that he gave Jude was all sideways and sour. "Me? Run an art class?" Dry turn of tongue and eyes like unamused daggers, he didn't find the idea probable or funny. What a perfectly Jude way of thinking, and Oliver grimaced openly at the prospect. "Sure, it'd be fun to tell people what to do… but then I'd have to look at a bunch of shitty paintings. And not only look at them, I'd probably have to tell people they were good!" Oliver shuddered with dramatic horror, "No thanks. You're just going to have to support me until I figure out what I want to do with my life." The smile that twitched into place was sly with expectation of a brother's sigh.
All at once, he reached excitedly for Jude's arm, practically pulling his brother's hand from the wheel. "We're here!" Oliver pointed to a bricked mailbox that sat at the bottom of a very steep driveway. And on top of the hill, overlooking the massive lake, was a mansion completely dark.
Ah. Momentary passing note of sadness, that’s that, then. What Jude really wanted for Oliver was too prosaic to stroll into the life by the woods, take a seat and deposit feet on the furniture. A dealer. Not the illicit kind, but the kind with galleries upon galleries of paintings and walls of blank space and expansive checks. An art class provided wall space that were brickwork that wasn’t destined to tumble if someone (namely him) didn’t know how to keep them upright.
“Art class is out then,” and Jude sailed for breezy as anything, balmy skies and open seas as he planed the car in to the driveway and contemplated their treat, evening out, date-night conducted under the stars and by the body of water that was indigo gloom. “Lead on, lead on.” The rust-bucket of a car would sit noticeably out front but Jude wasn’t worried for two reasons; firstly the settling dark and second that the license plate was smeared with spatter. Not all intentional muddying of waters, but it helped.
“What are we after? Anything in particular?”
Oliver had no mind for futures. If he was to be condemned with a future at all, he knew that he wouldn't be at it alone. If codependency was cold fat on the roof of his mouth, he'd tongue it forever. It was probably frowned upon, okay definitely frowned upon, but this society and its rules on boys becoming men… this society had never held him close. He'd grown up skirting the rules, circumnavigating the norm, and he'd been taught that one simply took what they wanted, entitlement or proper ownership be damned. Oliver wanted Jude around because Jude was the only one that ever wanted Oliver around, there was reciprocal comfort in that. Dark demons shared and secrets a'plenty, 'Me and You', pinkie promises, and heads rested on shoulders that would never sink or stray.
Their arrival was well-timed with the dark, and Oliver's face was all moonlight and shadowed hollows when he grinned one of his truer grins; it was a little lopsided, the Jude special. "We're here for something very particular," he assured before slipping out of the passenger seat. He got the door open with little trouble, suggesting that he'd known where a spare key was placed, a session of lockpicking would have taken longer.
Front doors, all heavy wood and crystal chiseled into geometric panels, opened to the cautionary beep of an alarm system ready to go off in less than a minute. But with the electronic code entered on the nearby Brinks box, the beeping ceased to allow for serenity in their new environment. Oliver left the light switches off out of caution, but he found nearby lamps on furniture and tugged all of their 'on' tassels accordingly.
The inside of the house was ornate and clean, vaguely art deco with gold lined through dark, polished furniture and equally dark marble tile. Through the foyer, and Oliver spun excitedly, catching Jude's arm when the other finally made his way up the front steps. "Come, come!" And tug, tug. The brightest smile to be seen, and eyebrows up. "You have to see it." Then slack, and he reconsidered thoughtfully. "Or do you want to explore first?"
They were riveted together rather than stitched, Jude and Oliver. Seamed down the middle, ugly at the joints where fused-together made moving around solo difficult and their roots were so deeply entangled around one another yanking one from soil would starve the other. But hey-ho, so codependency went and Jude had no intention of dangling his brother out solo into a future that looked grim and grey and unpredictable. Not when he’d come along for the ride regardless. The past was blood-spattered and low on light, the future sparkled like cut-glass crystal -- much, in fact, like the front doors of the treat in front of them both.
Oliver grinned true colors and Jude didn’t see art the way his brother did: possibility in wet paint and bared canvas but he saw the sunshine in the glint of his brother’s eyes and felt the little lock inside the concave hollow of his ribs unratchet in response. So he’d every expectation and anticipation of enjoying himself hugely, if only third-hand proxy to Oliver’s own. But inside and ducked through the foyer and Jude let himself be pulled and tugged, no warning about merchandise manhandled (or the haphazard nature of his own coat buttons).
“No, no, sunshine. Lead on. Show me this wonder.” Because he’d a mind Oliver would consume himself with twitchy energy if he didn’t display his treasure for full approval. “What is it and more importantly, where is it?”
"You'll know it when you see it," and the words echoed all assurance off marble arches and ceilings vaulted high into the shadows. They were cast in golden lamp light at eye level, but up there it was jazz smoke darkness, and Oliver thought in terms of gradients as he moved down one darkened hall. There were stairs that went up and stairs that went down, and Oliver without a map. He realized that they might end up having the tour first after all. Not that they had anywhere else to be on this night, they could take their time.
Oliver went up to the next floor, taking the stairs two at a time, in graceful bounds that provided no echo. There was carpet up here, and the creeping became muffled although it didn't need to be. Oliver peeked behind closed doors, discovering bedrooms and bathrooms and more than one office. None of these were what he was looking for, it seemed. For at the end of the hall, he turned with new determination for the stairs again, wordless.
Down, down, and his steps weren't nearly so graceful this time. He clattered and thudded and clunked past the floor they'd come in on, spiraling down to kitchen tile. Here, there were pantries big as carriages, and copper pans hung from the ceiling so shiny and perfect that they might not have ever been used. Through to the dining room, all big windows and gauze curtains, and beyond still.
By the end of the search, Oliver was becoming obviously irritated. His patience was notoriously paper thin, and he seemed about ready to pull all of his pretty hair out by the root until at last they came upon a pair of closed double doors.
"This must be it," said in such a way that this had to be it or Oliver was going to burn the damn place down. He twisted the handle, pushing open one door and then the other. Taking Jude's hand, Oliver pulled him along into a room that was dark and tall. It smelled old in a papery, musty way that was more nostalgic than unappealing. "Get the light," there was surely a switch somewhere on the wall.
And once pulled from the darkness, the surprise would be revealed: a private library. There was a leather sofa in the center of the room with a rug and some lamps. The walls were only shelves, no windows, just books upon books upon books. There was a rolling ladder so that one could reach the very top where titles were otherwise unintelligible from the floor level. Upon inspection, the books were all well-cared for, especially the early edition vintages.
Jude followed. Of course he did; he always would. Follow the leader, wasn’t that the game? Oliver with his head held high and triumph a gilt-glint in his voice as he thought he held the winning hand to rule them all. Boy-king, and he thought momentarily of curtains trailing dust, of statues crammed into corridors, artistic stone drapery cheek by jowl with chiseled manhood, and of boys who lived in shadows. Oliver had always been princeling, and his was not to reason why, his was but to do or die -- or something to that effect. Artistic license.
Jude strolled, instead of twisted up, his air casual and his chin turned toward the sights. Good tour, albeit thin on inviting lecture on the portraits. Seeing the inside without the people was like peering through the keyhole at part of a room instead of the whole: personality missing.
But Oliver’s patience was fracturing, the egg-shell rupturing to show membrane and Jude’s hand in Oliver’s was warm and sure, his fingers a squeeze against the fine-boned spread of Oliver’s knuckles. “Get the light, Jude. Please, Jude. It would please me very much if there was light, Jude.” Teasing, lilting as their hands broke apart and Jude breathed in enough dust to fill his lungs with memories of book-stores the world over.
He flipped a switch and the room flooded. And oh, Jude stopped very still indeed. His sneakers squeaked to nothing, he had one hand outstretched for Oliver but the fingers curled to palm and he withdrew it as he gazed up at book after book after book. Logic (fickle mistress, here and there and gone when it suited her) dictated that the place was expensive. Heavy on first editions, very probably. But he ran fingers along old, supple spines and stroked gilted letters with loving care.
“Oliver.” Weighted. Measured out. There were rooms of expensive portraits out there, he’d seen them. But Oliver was in artificial light, surrounded by stacks. Jude’s smile was incandescent, blinding. “This is your surprise?”
Oliver's breath was a huff at the teasing. How his eyes would roll in the dark, annoyed but forever-adoring of the words that ran like water from a brother forged through pain, the only kind he knew. He could tell that the room smelled different, but he didn't note the musty scent at anything remarkable. There was a new penny weight to Jude's heels as the brother breathed deep, and Oliver turned in the still-dark, thinking that this must be what he looked like in a room of fresh paints.
Of course, there was nothing to see until a second later when Jude hit the lights as commanded. And Oliver, preening, victorious, first place victor in the game of gift giving! He collapsed back against the clawed foot sofa mid-room, or mid-library technically. "Yes," he said while pushing off his shoes and folding his legs under. There was a book on the table nearby, and he picked it up using the hem of his sleeve, curiously flipping.
"I thought that you could take what you want. Or maybe nothing at all, just read here all night." His eyes were vibrant rich from beyond the book's binding. Wouldn't that be insane of them to do? Take nothing at all.
Oliver flipped, and tilted his head at some printed words while reciting, "If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me." And then an examination of the cover, followed by flippancy's eye roll. "A poet."
Jude’s love-affair for the printed word was long-standing and carved deep, to the core of him. It had begun long before con-jobs and sticky-fingers, boys taught by the ring of a bell and the tug of strings (boys taught what the dark held, and how to make someone believe what wasn’t true). It pre-dated Oliver and it belonged to the little boy of before, his mother white-faced, his mother smelling of lavender and illness who read out stories as she stroked his hair. Jude’s love for books was simple, all-encompassing.
Oliver’s jubilations (delightful as they were, and they were always ever thus) were largely unseen, because Jude indulged in a long breath of brittle pages and supple vellum. He stroked one book out from the shelf, palmed it open, ran a fingertip along print that hadn’t seen human skin-oil in some time. “Maybe nothing at all, am I hearing you correctly?” Jude’s eyebrow cocked, his voice was amusement hollowed out into surprise.
Mementos were worth experiences like this one. Jude’s eyes were hungry. “You can’t knock poetry just for being poetry, trouble. Someone loved someone, that means something.” He found the Dickens section, and dug out Oliver Twist from the section, a flutter of pages and a gasp of dead air as it slid out from its gap. “This one. We’re taking this one home.”
And there was the rub. Jude's loving of books was something separate from Jude himself. Oliver didn't really know how to explain it, but it seemed to him that Jude enjoyed books for the sake of books. Oliver didn't wholly realize that it might have been a love from the life before the house in the city. He thought of it as something extra, something Jude-specific and Jude-enjoyed. Oliver liked art, he like variances in blues, and he he liked the shapes of hands, but all of that seemed less than the way Jude liked books.
Oliver thought that his brother liked books because of all that came before, that his passion was organically grown out of something honest, Oliver feared that his love of art wasn't really the same. On gray days, he suspected that it might not even count as love. Had books been thrust upon his brother in the way that art had been diligently piled upon Oliver? Paint hadn't exactly been unwelcome, not in the way of so many things that came later, but sometimes it didn't feel natural, it didn't feel like his own. Sometimes he felt made.
Am I hearing you correctly? And Oliver smiled from the couch, lazy content like the mirrors and art they'd passed during their excursion to the discovery of the library was small potatoes compared to planning the perfect break-in. "Love doesn't mean anything when both of the people are long dead." He clapped the book shut and returned it to the little table in similar placement. But he wasn't so pessimistic, as he grinned when his brother found some prize to take away with them.
"I knew you'd find something."
Jude hadn’t deconstructed Oliver’s art, pulled flesh from bones until he could see what it was built from. There was art, the forced kind: studied by way of art museums and galleries, small boys with hunger pangs and cramped fingers all dutiful in a line like a class at school. And then there was the art that Oliver made which was sublime, invention. He didn’t invent, per se, he just embroidered on a theme and creativity for creativity’s sake, well. Jude was all eyes and no hands, and he threw back a smile at cat-with-cream brother that was sunshine itself.
“You give me the best of presents, brother mine.” Because after all, Oliver knew him best of all and his gifts were the through-through of a man bedevilled by blue fits and moods, who swung wildly as he tilted at windmills. Jude hugged the purloined copy of Twist to his belly, and thought wistfully of taking the entire Dickensian collection.
“Love means all the more when people are dead.” Contradiction in kind, and Jude sat alongside his brother and twined an arm around his shoulders. “They can’t fall out of it, if they’re too dead to think about it.”
Unselfish, a miracle brought to breath by the sort of powerful love that Jude spoke fondly of. Oliver didn't intend on taking anything for himself, he didn't even intend to scour the many floors of the house to seek out safes or jewelry boxes. For him, this was enough. An arm around his shoulders, enveloping Oliver in that indescribably Jude smell of lingering bar fly smoke and paperback novels. And it did feel like a gift given, this breaking and entering, this theft by moonlight.
Nevermind that it was criminal and nevermind that the book wasn't Oliver's to be gifting out. There was something to be said for that kind of thinking; the best moments were stolen ones.
Possession was all that mattered until it mattered little, but Oliver knew that Jude held on. Jude collected while Oliver neglected, Jude was forever picking up after him and putting things back where they belonged. Oliver suspected that Jude's uninterrupted bedroom was maintained meticulously, although he'd never checked.
"Well, I won't love you at all when you're dead." In case Jude was wondering. With Oliver's head upon his brother's shoulder, that was said with a very informative of air. Subtitles reading, 'So don't die. Not ever. Not even a little bit.'
He didn't want to disturb their position, and Oliver's next exhale was a little forlorn. "We should go."
But go they must. And with care, because hello, jail-time was as good as death at interrupting care-worn rituals of love. Jude ruffled Oliver's hair, and promised faithfully not to die, at least, not immediately. And once fingerprint traces erased, books reshuffled, Oliver shining like a tiny piece of heaven beside him in fine form now his surprise had been pulled off whole, home. To the house the other side of the water where the book would be treasured as dearly as it had been forgotten in this haven.