Chapter Two Making Plans for Nigel #2
As pint after pint disappeared down Rahul’s gullet, he found the drink loosening his lips and the topics straying to ever more personal territory.
They’d moved away from postmodernism and onto Henri’s background, the town he’d left behind, the future he was pursuing here in London.
He was a writer, Rahul learned, an abstract experimentalist who sought to gain more traction in the bleak, industrialist cityscape than in Nimes’ provincial pastures.
He was also fresh out of a break-up with a young man he’d left in France.
“Un putin,” he cursed without heat as he daintily pulled an olive off its toothpick with his teeth.
“Cheated on me with my uncle.” Henri chuckled at Rahul’s indignant expression.
“You puritanical English. I can’t blame him.
My uncle is thirty-six and looks like the Farnese Hercules.
More surprising he did not cheat on me sooner, n’est-ce pas?
” He threw back the remains of his martini and signalled the bartender for another.
“I’m getting over someone,” Rahul blurted, bolstered by drink and Henri’s frankness -- and his hypnotic green eyes. Henri raised his thick, dark eyebrows, indicating that Rahul continue. “My best mate.”
The Frenchman’s bow-shaped lips formed an “o” shape. In his tipsy stupor, Rahul couldn’t tell if it was surprise or comprehension.
“Been in love with him since we were in school,” he went on, probably revealing more than he should, but he hadn’t really talked to anyone about what happened, or his feelings surrounding the whole incident.
It was freeing, in a way, to have someone who was interested in hearing what he had to say, interested in him, someone who was willing to listen to his account and would take his side.
“I finally got up the nerve to tell him how I felt and he threw me over for another bloke.”
“Un moment,” Henri said, holding up a hand. “You told this friend of yours that you loved him, but he gave you up for someone else?”
Rahul nodded glumly. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, exactly what had happened. But it was the spirit of the thing. And anyway, he was too drunk to go into the whole story -- not to mention that the whole story didn’t paint him in the best light and he still wanted this boy to like him.
“Then fuck him,” Henri said with feeling and Rahul couldn’t help snorting. “Vraiment! To hell with him. If he can’t see what he’s missing, then he doesn’t deserve you.” He rested his hand on Rahul’s knee under the bar and squeezed. He didn’t immediately remove his hand.
Rahul looked from the hand to its owner and back.
No one had ever said anything remotely like this to him before.
That Julian didn’t deserve him? That alone filled him with champagne bubbles and summer warmth.
This amazing young man thought Rahul was worthy.
More than worthy. Desirable. And he showed it in his actions.
Even through Rahul’s naive and beer-addled mind, he could tell a come-on when he felt it through his jeans.
Even if no one had ever made a pass at him before, let alone someone this gorgeous and intelligent. And male.
Rahul had assumed himself to be gay because he’d never been interested in anyone other than a male before.
But that male had always been Julian. Since his sexual awakening at puberty, he had been blinded to anyone but Julian.
His whole world had revolved around Julian.
It still did. Or it had until Julian made it clear he didn’t return Rahul’s feelings.
These were now uncharted, Julian-less waters.
His libido was untethered. And now that there was an attractive man flirting with him, he found himself responding in kind even before he could entirely register what he was doing.
“That cheating bastard doesn’t deserve you either,” Rahul responded, a little ham-fisted.
“I know.” Henri smirked. “This is why I left. And this is why I am here.” He let his hooded gaze travel the length of Rahul, his eyes ending their long journey at Rahul’s parted lips.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he heard himself say.
“Are you?” Henri took a drag from his cigarette and let the smoke curl lazily out of his mouth. His hand was still on Rahul’s knee.
“Very.” Feeling quite daring, or quite drunk, or both, he put his hand over Henri’s under the bar. His skin felt smooth and cool. He wanted to put his lips to it.
At that moment, he realised there was an uncomfortable tightness in his bladder, one that had been there for some time. “Er, sorry, I -- I’ve got to use the loo. You -- don’t go anywhere.”
“Where would I go?” The dark-haired boy smiled enigmatically as Rahul rose and made his way towards the back of the club.
After relieving himself, he stared at his reflection long and hard in the mirror above the sink.
The alkaline light cast him in harsh white light and stark black shadows, making his warm skin appear sallow.
At least his thick hair was behaving. But, beneath it, his face looked foreign and forgettable.
The moustache he’d long hoped would add interest to his features and an air of gentlemanly distinction only made him look like a washed-up geography teacher.
What would that beautiful boy back at the bar want with him?
He splashed water on his burning cheeks and dried his face with the paper hand towels.
When he looked up, his face was still there, staring back at him with its unfocused brown eyes.
Feeling much worse than when he’d walked in, Rahul pushed his way out and found himself in the narrow hall that led back to the toilets with his way blocked.
Henri lounged against the corridor wall, smoking his slim French cigarette, hand in the pocket of his tight black jeans, looking for the world like a trendy, bored, Parisian bohemian.
When he caught sight of Rahul he pushed lazily off the wall and dropped his cigarette to the floor, snuffing it out under the heel of his black, lace-up boot.
“D’you need to use the loo?” Rahul gestured behind him with a thumb. “There’s plenty of urinals, you didn’t have to wait in the --”
Henri shut him up by grabbing him by the front of his jumper and pulling him down into a searing kiss.
Rahul had never kissed anyone aside from Julian before.
He’d never even been interested in kissing anyone other than Julian before.
And though it had been seven years since, he could still vividly recall the details of their last encounter.
Rahul would therefore have been capable of cataloguing each individual difference between Henri and Julian’s kisses.
He would have… if his brain had at all been capable of thought in that instant.
His brain was only supplied with enough blood to formulate the thoughts “we’re kissing” and “Christ, this is nice.” The rest of his blood dove, predictably, straight to his groin.
His senses were overwhelmed with the swell of music, the rich scent of leather from Henri’s jacket, the sharp vermouth on his tongue.
Rahul’s hands clutched involuntarily at Henri’s hair, half expecting it to feel like fine silk, but instead finding the shaggy mop of curls as thick as treacle.
Despite being nearly a full head shorter than Rahul, and as wiry as a whippet, Henri easily manoeuvred him back against the corridor wall.
His sure fingers carded through the short hair at the nape of Rahul’s neck, up underneath his T-shirt to palm at the small of his back.
Rahul envied them. He hardly knew where to put his hands.
He wanted to put them everywhere at once and ended up unable to decide and just kept them in Henri’s hair, which admittedly felt almost too nice to give up.
Henri’s thigh pressed between Rahul’s, nudging the hardness there and making Rahul gasp into Henri’s mouth.
He still couldn’t quite understand what was happening.
Even though they had probably been talking for hours, it seemed to Rahul as if they’d only just met.
The Frenchman had shown a passing interest in him that could have been construed as flirtation, but he couldn’t have dared imagine it might progress from such a coy exchange to something so…
graphic. It felt as though they’d skipped a half-dozen steps.
And just like jumping the last few steps down to the landing, he was left feeling breathless and dizzy.
He knew fifteen years pining away probably wasn’t the standard, but four hours was probably rushing things a bit, wasn’t it?
Out of the corner of Rahul’s eye, back towards the club, he thought he saw a figure standing there, glowering at the two of them. It appeared to be a lanky figure in a sparkly jumpsuit.
When Rahul managed to pull away from the kiss enough to turn his head, the figure was gone.
Henri used the opportunity to kiss and suckle at the tender spot on Rahul’s neck just below his ear, and Rahul decided he’d probably imagined it.
After all, he’d been imagining Julian for years. It was high time he stopped.