Re: antique store: oliver/louis
Oliver nodded at the offering of sugar, although the walk to the shop had been long enough and cold enough that even something bitter and plain would have been just fine to warm his hands on. There were winter bruises blooming around his knuckles, but that didn't stop him from draping one arm out of Louis' window sill. He watched the smoke, and really only inhaled from the end of a golden filter when it meant keeping the ember going. The ash grew long, and then longer. Oliver kept his hand very still, which was more difficult than usual because of the cold. When finally, his fingers curled inward, the reflexive need to remember they were made of flesh and not stone, the cigarette's long ash broke free and spiraled forgotten to the ground below. Oliver watched, eyes conspiratorially narrow for a moment before he flicked the filter and all out of his hand, and drew his arm back inside.
He pulled the window closed. Louis had asked him about his brother, and while Oliver had heard the question, he'd been too interested in the cold wind and the dead ashes to answer it. He suspected that only a minute had gone by, and that didn't seem like too long of a silence to Oliver. People used to wait months for responses when letters were held closed by wax seals and transversed oceans to go from sender to recipient. "He's my older brother, Jude. I have many siblings, but he's the only one that is here." Which was true and probably not worth sharing, but the words couldn't be taken back.
Upon standing, Oliver moved closer to where Louis stood and the tea was steeping. "You'll like him," it was a promise made not from foreknowledge of Louis' preferences, but from the fact that everybody liked Jude. Oliver thought those that didn't were deeply flawed individuals. It stood to reason that the two would meet eventually, Repose was smaller than it seemed most days.