Re: log: jude/louis
It was no campaign, no banners and buttons. Oliver would have to be evicted from one place or 'tother, and Jude rather fancied he'd show up for no pay if he were told there was none to be had. Oliver had more loyalty than Jude, faithful friend rather than loose alleycat (careful, please: we're verging on closer to truth than perhaps we really wish to be acquainted with) and so long as there was warmth and food and a roof, what did it really matter?
No the visit had everything to do with finding out how and why the man in the antique shop ticked. For its own reason and nothing other. And possibly because in the absence of an Oliver turning up on doorstep every morning, and the dearth of those willing to buy brass doorstops and oil paintings of someone's long-dead aunt, Jude was willing to bet the store didn't see a trade that roared so much as meowed.
Salaciousness of literature aside, that was reason enough. And a little flirtation did no one any harm; everyone so far as Jude knew liked to be in the sunshine a touch. There wasn't angling so much as the inquisitive, and besides, Sam spent so much time dangling her brother out to dry, Jude rather wondered.
"I don't think Oliver or I have the prerequisite skill-set. Love children, haven't the foggiest what to do with one." But that smile of Louis's - either the smile or the knowing that sang in and out of it, either really, both please and thank you - said he knew exactly that the mental images didn't precisely line up.
"Marketable skills all over the place. Do you arrest the furniture now and again, to keep your hand in?"