Jude Feeny

max/jude - r - cracked lips and charcoal sticks

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 02:43:53 GMT

Title: Cracked Lips and Charcoal Sticks
Author: mustakrakish
Rating: R, for some bad words and sexual themes
Characters/Pairing: Max/Jude
Summary: The problem with Max is that he sits still these days much more than he used to.
Word Count: 1,494

The problem with Max is that he sits still these days much more than he used to. Which isn't really a problem, so far as Jude is artistically concerned. For someone whose hobbies include a lot of people study, and sketching out what he sees on a whim, frustrations run high in a house full of crazies who pretty much only stay put if they're sleeping. Jude could have just asked them to sit still, but then what the hell kind of art would that be? Poses weren't real.

Jude loved capturing those fleeting moments of real, when his fingers could snag into the memory of something long enough to remember what it had looked like before it moved. He had pages and pages of real across his walls. Prudence stealing a flower from Sadie's window box when she was sure no one was looking. A girl dancing throughout the park, suspended in the one moment where she'd swung around the statue. A little girl feeding pigeons. A small boy wailing because his balloon had flown away. A World War II vet slumped by the side of the road, ratty clothes and begging for some change.

Drawing Lucy before everything had been Jude's favorite. She just had these little moments, tiny quirks that made Jude fall more in love with her every day. The way her nose crinkled when she laughed, the way she always kept her hair down and long and softer than air. Little moments he'd catch her in, when she'd draw her slung over the back of a chair, humming some song or another and tapping her foot to some invisible beat. When she'd sit for hours on end, just petting Rocky, a soft appeasement twinging up her mouth. Little moments and Jude captured them all, posted them on his walls and admired with a smile.

It wasn't until after he was gone that Jude had come to his conclusion about Max.

Lucy had found her revolution, and she didn't stay still so much anymore, not at home, at least. Prudence had joined the circus and Sadie had taken off for her solo career and scrambling to cover all these new holes in the rent fee, Desmond and Jo-Jo barely had a second to spare to stand still enough for Jude to sketch. Without a muse, even the apples started to move around enough that you can't seem to draw them properly, and it was only in that moment of panic, failed still life scattered all over the floor, voices pouring into the room about Vietnam casualties and how easily could any of them have been Max? that Jude finally stepped back and realized he'd never gotten to draw the bugger.

He didn't want to picture Max over there. Didn't want to picture infinite jungle, swamp reeds rustling just enough to give away positions. He didn't want to picture fields of red, streaked crimson up lifeless faces and heart-shaped bombs pelting more and more every day, on the people, the soldiers, Max. He didn't want to picture any of it, but when he'd tried to remember the way Max's eyes danced when he smiled, all he could see were strawberry-flavored fields of lost lives, row by row and column by column of endless, endless graves.

But that had been then, and this was now, when a lot of all Max does is stare anymore, especially when he thinks nobody was paying attention. Cigarette drooping from slack lips and eyes fixating on a whole lot of nothing out the windows, Jude watches him from the couch, pencil in hand, head tilted in concentration. Max didn't do a whole lot of remembering where he was anymore; it wasn't as bad as the night terrors, but damn, that blank look in his eyes tugged at Jude worse than ever.

Jude barely sketches out the bridge of his nose before Max is standing, fag between his fingers, cautious look to his face. "What are you doing?"

Caught red-handed. "Just... trying to draw."

"Well, don't."

Jude doesn't even get to question why before Max is slamming the door to the next room.

The second time Jude tries to capture it, Max is tearing up the page before Jude can finish two line-strokes, and Jude flinches when the shouted warning comes out like a slap. He doesn't have the nads to tell him that, Jesus, he just wants to remember what he looks like before the ghost really starts to evanesce.

It's only when Jude tries a new plan of attack, on his third attempt, does he actually manage to succeed. His mum had always warned him that bad things come in threes, but all Jude can think about is how peaceful the guy looks for once, all drooped over and lazy with the afghan off the back of the couch draped across his shoulders. He's not upset, not angry, not hallucinating and made of all things fucking terrified. It's not Max, but it's sure as hell the closest thing Jude's found to him in a while.

Fingers stained with charcoal and flying fast as he can manage without fucking up, he's in his own little world when Max begins to stir. When Max begins to realize. Venom in his eyes, he's up in seconds. Jude thinks it's lucky they're alone, he's anticipating a shouting match and Max certainly brings the loud. "Stubborner than a fuckin' mule, that a Liverpool thing?" he seethes, but Jude's too quick for him when he snatches for the drawing. "Jesus Christ, Jude, I told you."

"I don't understand," Jude questions bluntly. He's not going to be able to hold the thing out of Max's reach for long. "It's just one fucking drawing, why is it so important to you?"

"If it's just one fucking drawing, why is it so important to you?" Max counters, and instead of going for the sketchpad he's suddenly at Jude, hands grabbing feverishly at the Limey's hoodie. "I'm beggin' you, man, you gotta stop this."

"Shite, Max, if I'd've known you--"

"You'd've stopped? Yeah, that's the first thing I want to enforce. Conditional catharsis. Just don't draw me, not--"

"If I could just--"

"--can't fucking let this go, can you, you little--"

"--want to know why--"

"It's not me, Jude!"

Jude's hands are splayed across Max's cheeks then, everyone holding tight and nobody seeming to care about the charcoal smudges Jude's fingers are leaving all up Max's cheekbones, ashy warpaint slicked all over like a brand. Max's nails snag into the front of Jude's shirt, all pleading and desperate as his free hand still grabs at the guy's shoulder like it's the only thing keeping him grounded in the world. "Shit, been practically a fuckin' shell since I got back, don't say any different, I'll punch your damn nose in." Max ducks his head against Jude's then, anti-hero bristling up his spine. "Just... you gotta give me a while, man."

And then there's that still. That once in a blue moon moment of quiet that Jude gropes for like oil-slicked hands grabbing onto the edge of a cliff. There's calm, and that eye of the storm sort of way Max stares Jude down, like he's back in battle and just trying to keep his shit together while those damn strawberry fields keep on filling, never stopping. There's that rift of space between them, ten acres of war that have had them in different planes for months and months and they've been refusing to acknowledge it. That rift of space, growing with every word they don't tell each other.

They're apart.

And then they're not.

It's that shot heard round the world that nobody's sure just which side fired it first, but even with that fast clash of bodies and lips and teeth, harsh as ever, Max doesn't feel like war anymore. It's Jude grabbing at Max's hair with the kind of urgency he thought you only saw in black and white movies. It's Max shoving Jude back onto the couch, cracked lips and charcoal sticks as he jerks open Jude's trousers. Jude's hips buck and Max's match flush, and when they collapse against each other, it's being fucked out without even taking somebody's pants off.

And then it's just that still again. That still in which there's the Max and Jude and Jude and Max dynamic, Max all tucked away into the curve of Jude's arm and lazy smoke wafting through his lips as he passes the cigarette to Jude. That still where Jude would definitely be taking advantage of this scene, any other opportunity, hands a blur trying to get it all out on paper and charcoal. But it's also that still where Jude just gets it, he's always just gotten it, and he's perfectly fine with the eidetic reliabilities for the time being, if it helps Max get that little bit of human back, maybe fill out the shell with a little less space and a little more light.

Heart-shaped bombs are at a still, and when strawberry fields are a way, way away, still doesn't look so bad on Max anymore.

max/jude - r - with a little help from my friend

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 22:26:32 GMT

Title: With A Little Help From My Friend
Author: mustakrakish
Pairing: Max/Jude, Max/Prudence mentioned in passing
Rating: R
Summary: All booze and a little play makes Max a very mischievous boy.
Words: 1,333

Jude is a fucking cocky little shit of a drunk, at his very best.

Max had to find that out the hard way, so far as he was concerned. Knocking back the rum shots, quite a few joints' worth of sweet-smelling smoke wafting throughout the room, a... possibly infinite amount of beer bottles strewn about, and maybe a couple of wasted boys to match, with access to some of New York's 'finest mind-altering substances of freedom and other fluffy things', was the exact term Max remembered referring to such as before the first effects of the booze had started to sink in. Or maybe after. What the fuck ever, it was half a bottle of hard liquor and a hell of a lot of brain cells ago. Didn't even matter anymore.

These damn parties, man, they always ended up like this. Well, close to always; Max wasn't so quick to forget his few romps with Prudence. Definitely not so quick to remember the many photo opportunities involving an empty thirty of Shlitz, Jojo in one of Sadie's bathrobes, and a very, very naked Jude Feeny passed out in the middle of the floor. Max had laughed his ass off at the guy's expense once he'd woken up the next morning and stumbled off for his room, the blush nearly crawling all the way down to his shiny, white apple of a Liverpool ass.

"Aw, what, the honeymoon's over?" Max had wailed after him in that horrified housewife of a voice. "That's not what you said last night, baby!" To which he'd received a very universal one-fingered salute through the crack of the door.

On any normal occasion, though, the party all died down and dulled to a quiet simmer, there always seemed to be those remaining two - Max and Jude and Jude and Max, usually in some various stages of disarray and undress, always seeming to be strewn across the other like boneless rag dolls with nothing much to care about in the way of moving. Even just now, there was a very jelly-like Jude slumped into the cushions, arm slung lazily around Max's shoulders, smoke slowly swirling upwards towards the ceiling as Jude let out a long stream of the stuff through his lips.

"Man, bet your girlfriend back home is a total sex pot," Max mumbled aloud, staring up at the ceiling for a few long seconds. "I mean, chicks are totally all over that whole tortured artist thing you got going on, right?" A devilish smile was thrown in Jude's general direction. "Total panty peeler, am I right? Hey, hand me some of that."

Jude passed the joint over with a quirk of a grin, giving a half-hearted shrug as he rubbed at his chest. "Never really thought about it," he admitted, contemplatively. "Molly's good and all, but. It's not really all in the looks for me."

"Christ, don't lie to a guy about that shit, Jude, no guy thinks that much with the upstairs brain."

"I'm being serious," Jude replied indignantly, and shook his head. "Fuck, if a person's a real babe, the most beautiful person in the world, but they open their mouths and all that comes out is a whole lot of nothing--"

"You'd still bend that over, man, you see some stacked fox of a girl shaking her fun bags at you, I don't care how much of a bimbo she is, you hit that--ow, motherfucking," he ended in a curse a he dropped what little was left of the blunt into the ash tray, blowing on his fingers where he'd just been burned by the tip. "Dude, are you saying you're a homo?" he finally asked, rather unceremoniously, frowning down at the other male. "Is this you telling me you're a homo? Because that's totally okay, I like homos. I have no problem with homos."

"Shite, this is just you getting into me skivvies now," Jude laughed out loud. "Fucking perve."

"Well, hell, I mean, if that's you talking about your lacy unmentionables," Max retorted. "It's what all the other chicks are all cruising for these days, might as well toss my hat in the ring too."

"Bully you could," Jude challenged with a nudge. "Jude's unmentionables need far more practice than you've got going for you, that much is for sure."

Max actually cacked right out at that. "So is that a dare? Or a double dare?"

"I'm serious."

"Why, Judey, how cruel." Max sat up, that same devil-may-care smirk drawing up his lips. He put on his very best Southern belle drawl and," Y'all just might be insultin' a girl's ability to pleasure a man!"

There was a very decisively pale color to Jude's face when Max chose that moment to let Little Miss Innocent delve into something far more perverse, and made a grab right for the front of Jude's trousers.

Max just snorted, accent momentarily forgotten. "Little Jude's the only Little Anyone you've gotten your hands on, isn't he?"

Jude's answer, or lack thereof, was more than enough.

"Right, so, a short lesson in man on man relations," Max announced, fingers tugging open the fastenings of Jude's slacks with a free hand as he licked the other and shoved it between Jude's legs before the guy could even muster a protest. "Handjobs," he specified, as he roughly grabbed for Jude's cock and gave it a hearty tug. Jude was automatically letting out a sharp gasp, and Max grinned in his very best triumphant manner, fist already starting into a steady rhythm. "Or, uh." And he paused, frowning at Jude. "I'm sorry, or is this not enough practice for you yet?" Jude's eyes successfully bugged.

"I swear to fucking God, if you stop right now, I'm going to do you in right here."

"That's the spirit," Max declared aloud, jerking at Jude's pants. "But an experienced guy like yourself is so over something easy as this, am I right?"

"What are you--"

Max ducked his head down, and Jude immediately braced himself against the back of the couch, jaw falling slack as something decidedly very warm and very wet was dipping its way around... damn. "Max," Jude blurted, his other hand grabbing at a fist full of the afghan draped over the back of the sofa. Max's hand slid up Jude's front, under his buttoned shirt and tweaking experimentally at a nipple.

It didn't exactly last very long. Even half-assed and wasted, Max's tongue certainly knew its way around a pecker. Maybe Max was a bit more of a poofter than he tended to let on, Jude thought to himself, half-baked and fleeting as he rocked his hips up towards the guy and laced his fingers into Max's hair, crooning out some kind of muttered warning just in time for Max to sit up and finish the job with his fist. "You just came in your pants, high schooler," he reiterated just for Jude, flopping back onto the couch and retrieving a cigarette as though nothing was anything breaching the neighborhood of weird. Lighting the end and taking a drag off, he blew the smoke out through his nose and eyed Jude more than a little lecherously. "Don't worry. Next lesson gets even more fun." Jude's breathing had his chest rising in fall in pants, and he let out a breathless laugh and ran shaky fingers through his hair.

"Jeez, you two," they heard in a husky sort of chuckle then, and both glanced over in unison to see Sadie clad in her trademark fringed robe, grinning like mad and grabbing for the coffee pot to pour herself a cup. Max automatically threw her a lewd smile right back, hand reaching back for obscene regions as Jude's cheeks were flushing that same bright pink of a color they'd been when involuntary drunken stripping was involved. "Get a room next time, you hear? Won't have any of that in my living room."

Mug clutched her in her hands then, she started back towards her own room, smirking in that knowing sort of way and kicking her door closed behind her.

"And make sure you clean up that couch!"