Re: oli + jude: house in the wooods
[Jude's focus was precision, please and thank you, cultivated through fixation upon single point throughout chaos (chaos embracing usual terminology best suited to pain but the boy has glossed over and shellacked that down to the point of forgetting - the fact remains, precision). Precision slicing away all circumstance save watching Oliver step across boards as if plank across crocodile-d waters, as if this remained a dare, a contest between boys for whom bravery was more than slicing open a finger and co-mingling blood, (small scar at the base of Jude's thumb notwithstanding). Jude held in a sigh of not-relief, watching the way Oliver sallied around small space. The art-store did not exhale, Jude did not believe it held out arms and drew him in. Sanctuary was perfectly desecrated and no high priest of brotherly bond could undo it so.
Oliver didn't want to come back. And this token did not divulge lack of surety, Jude did not think his brother precarious any longer, balanced on knife-edge. It was just tide of guilt, gently consuming strip of land borne out of delay and certainty in theory. Jude occupied wall and switched focus.
He'd had a handful of people in town he'd slept with interchangeably and so it went that Oliver chose to change from paint-and-charcoal Pygmalion's muse to the living breathing worship with hands instead of paint. But so too, this was different, thank you. Oliver's fledgling had wings, had hope of skies, if Jude thought his brother true - Jude's relationships were makeshift and quick, balanced on the liquid joy of the physical and floundered without. Hello, Sasha. Oliver, Jude thought of as true, foundations rocky, but bound and determined to construct upon. And was this fledgling, or new bird? Meet the family was notional secondary stage, wasn't it? Jude blinked hazily into the warm light of the store.]
If you want me to, of course, sunshine. [He hadn't ever brought someone back to meet Oliver, obvious intention sketched out in strands of spun-sugar, Jude's flirtation and fornication was self-contained, boxed in. He thought about blood-stains, about the bruise-petals around a boy's thin white wrist and tear-tracks in dirty face. Jude's smile expanded, encompassing hope.]