Happy New Year, love! Oh goodness, this is... I dunno when it turned into the drabble that wouldn't die. (Perhaps it's my meditation on three extremely different types of sandalwood I've had over the years. Ummm.)
***
Sandalwood. Bay Rum. Spanish Leather. A dead man's smell, preserved in a dead man's room.
They both avoid it; Ron with a healthy revulsion, Draco with an unhealthy fear- as if, through some mysterious osmosis, through scent and sense alone, Lucius could return.
They leave the manor to the ghost of his smell, buy a Thames view glass affair instead. Crystal Palace, Draco calls it. They're in their jeans and tee days (Draco has to be brought around to those, but oh boy does he catch up fast), and their scents of choice, heady when they mingle, are Mago Armani and YSL Noir.
But give them a few years. Ron, the fêted Quidditch coach, he'll grow a little more staid. Draco will turn quicksilver and black, growing his hair out: no fringe, all sleek white Renaissance forehead, and he'll use something complicated and prohibitively expensive like Serge Lutens to fight Ron's Cool Water kink. They don't go well together, and they know it.
It's later, post-separations, fistfights, and a broad range of hexes-later, during a time of numb détente in Milan, in a hotel room so large it allows them to politely weave around each other, that Ron smells it.
Sandalwood. Ron squeezes shut his eyes as if they harbored his sense of smell. It's still there when he opens them. And there's Draco, in ambassadorial dress robes, perched on the edge of the mattress. Very upright, very pale, gloved hands in his lap.
"Oh god," Ron mumbles. "What. What now."
Draco's brow is furrowed in that way of his. "I thought," he says, smoothing down kid gloves, "I thought perhaps you're free this afternoon."
"Why?" He is, as a matter of fact. His contract negotiations have gone well.
"Come with me to Lucca?"
Ron looks up at him, wondering. Draco in his prime, Draco come into his inheritance... why should he ask, not order? Because he knows your arse is out of here, the moment he gets bossy, a voice in Ron says, but he quells it. "Fly or Apparate?" He doesn't want to go, not really; he's too comfortably parked here.
"Whichever you prefer." Draco's smile grows a little strained, sensing Ron's reluctance. Probably hoped for a different reaction.
Don't destroy this just because you can. It's another voice, one that prompts Ron to lean over and pat Draco's thigh and give those cool, dry hands a squeeze. "Apparate then." His instinct says fly, if only to get that smell out of his nostrils, but Draco hates flying when he's dolled up like that.
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regna
pt 1
Date: 2009-01-02 12:32 am (UTC)***
Sandalwood. Bay Rum. Spanish Leather. A dead man's smell, preserved in a dead man's room.
They both avoid it; Ron with a healthy revulsion, Draco with an unhealthy fear- as if, through some mysterious osmosis, through scent and sense alone, Lucius could return.
They leave the manor to the ghost of his smell, buy a Thames view glass affair instead. Crystal Palace, Draco calls it. They're in their jeans and tee days (Draco has to be brought around to those, but oh boy does he catch up fast), and their scents of choice, heady when they mingle, are Mago Armani and YSL Noir.
But give them a few years. Ron, the fêted Quidditch coach, he'll grow a little more staid. Draco will turn quicksilver and black, growing his hair out: no fringe, all sleek white Renaissance forehead, and he'll use something complicated and prohibitively expensive like Serge Lutens to fight Ron's Cool Water kink. They don't go well together, and they know it.
It's later, post-separations, fistfights, and a broad range of hexes-later, during a time of numb détente in Milan, in a hotel room so large it allows them to politely weave around each other, that Ron smells it.
Sandalwood. Ron squeezes shut his eyes as if they harbored his sense of smell. It's still there when he opens them. And there's Draco, in ambassadorial dress robes, perched on the edge of the mattress. Very upright, very pale, gloved hands in his lap.
"Oh god," Ron mumbles. "What. What now."
Draco's brow is furrowed in that way of his. "I thought," he says, smoothing down kid gloves, "I thought perhaps you're free this afternoon."
"Why?" He is, as a matter of fact. His contract negotiations have gone well.
"Come with me to Lucca?"
Ron looks up at him, wondering. Draco in his prime, Draco come into his inheritance... why should he ask, not order? Because he knows your arse is out of here, the moment he gets bossy, a voice in Ron says, but he quells it. "Fly or Apparate?" He doesn't want to go, not really; he's too comfortably parked here.
"Whichever you prefer." Draco's smile grows a little strained, sensing Ron's reluctance. Probably hoped for a different reaction.
Don't destroy this just because you can. It's another voice, one that prompts Ron to lean over and pat Draco's thigh and give those cool, dry hands a squeeze. "Apparate then." His instinct says fly, if only to get that smell out of his nostrils, but Draco hates flying when he's dolled up like that.