Arose

Author: Rave [@ | www]
Rating: PG
Pairing: Jude Law, Ewan McGregor
Note: For Contrelamontre soundtrack challenge.

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When they are on Jude’s car, parked at the side of the highway, passing a joint back and forth and watching the stars wheel, Ewan thinks: there is no place he would rather be than this, here, tonight, now, always. His back feels melted against the still-warm hood, his head back, throat open to the sweet summer night. Jude is speaking about nothing, lips slowing into sloping vowels, words that drift up and into the sky like bubbles. His perfect teeth flash white in the sillhouetted face, the delicate lines of his profile black against the pinwheel stars. In Ewan’s nostrils the summer-smell mingles with the sweetly acrid smell of marijuana smoke, and roses--

"Jude," Ewan interrupts him, feeling a giggle start to rumble somewhere in his diaphragm, "you’re wearing man-perfume."

Jude stops speaking for a moment, the joint in his hand dropping lazy gray smoke, then says affrontedly. "I’m not."

"You are, man, I can smell it." Ewan snorts with laughter, slides his hand absently under his shirt and over his stomach. "Do you think I don’t know what man-perfume smells like? You’re like a fucking rosebush. You’ve got, fucking, I don’t know. Spring-fresh scent."

"I think," says Jude with some dignity, "you’re so stoned you wouldn’t know a rosebush from a telephone pole," and there is a soft quick flare of orange light that slides over Jude’s cheekbones and lights sparks in the dark liquid of his eyes. He holds it in for a second, closing his eyes, cheeks black hollows, then exhales and the smoke blossoms out like mist.

"You don’t smell like telephone pole," says Ewan doggedly, "they don’t smell like anything."

"Well," says Jude, always reasonable, "how would you know? when was the last time you smelled a telephone pole?"

"Last night," says Ewan, "with your mother, haha," and rolls onto his stomach, the hood buckling a little beneath him. When he pushes onto his elbows he is only a few inches from the curve of Jude’s bare neck and shoulder and the collar of his white shirt.

"That doesn’t even make sense," says Jude patiently.

"You don’t make sense," says Ewan--it is as close as he gets, in this state of pleasant intoxication, to a retort--and it hits him very suddenly and strangely that this is true. Jude is crazy and beautiful and alien and always a little bit distant, even when he’s drunk, even now, as if he manages to hold onto that tiny piece of self-control that anyone else would lose after half a bottle of gin. It is achingly frustrating, that control, that keeps Jude's drunken kisses and hands agonizingly un-leading-elsewhere. And frustrating particularly because Ewan knows he is the same way, never quite inebriated enough to get lost, always knowing exactly what he is doing, and Jude never gives him the excuse to do something stupid and blame it on champagne.

And at the same time there is something peculiar and intimate about the way Jude speaks to Ewan; with Ewan he lets go the little details that no one else knows--they are playing pool once and Jude says, out of nowhere, "You know I’m allergic to olives," and Ewan says, "really? That’s terrible," and Jude says, "it doesn’t matter, for all I know they taste like piss anyway," but for a second, Ewan knows Jude misses the unknowable taste of olives, and understands. "Only green ones?" he asks, and Jude says, "all ones." And now--

Jude doesn’t make sense--Jude makes dollars, thinks Ewan idiotically, and snorts again, trying to muffle it with his hands against his mouth.

"What," says Jude thickly, "what’s so funny?"

"You make dollazzzz," says Ewan in a twangy American accent, cackling.

"I do," and now the laughter is spilling out into Jude’s silver voice, too, and he twists his shoulders and leans into Ewan’s ear and says, in sweet breath tinted gray, "I am wearing cologne, you know; you weren’t wrong."

Ewan looks up at him sharply. Jude’s face is hardly six inches from his own, green eyes glinting in the darkness. "Why?"

"Because," says Jude dreamily, and his fingers come up to curl under Ewan’s chin. The joint is smoking itself away on the hood of the car between them. "Maybe I thought you liked roses."

"Stoppit," says Ewan, and doesn’t move. "You aren’t. I’m not," not, even when his body is unfolding like a rose under Jude’s fingertips.

"Yes," says Jude. They are stoned on the hood of a car off the highway, under the stars in California and when Jude’s mouth is cool against the line of Ewan’s jaw and Jude’s hands are warm and unfamiliar under the waistband of his jeans he arches, hands clenching against Jude’s wrists; thinks: yes. Nowhere but here, this. now.

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