Chapter Ten Tarzan Boy #3
“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill ya!” the harassed hooligan cried out. The three of them assembled, fists raised, and Rahul knew from experience what came next. A thorough beating. Julian obviously came to the same conclusion, because he grabbed Rahul by the elbow and legged it.
They ran for blocks, the thugs on their heels.
Even in cumbersome platform boots it was hard to forget that Julian had been in the football club.
Rahul was wheezing as Julian’s long, toned legs carried them past street after street.
They turned a sharp corner and Julian dragged them into a narrow alley between shops.
He shoved Rahul against the brick wall and put a cool, soft hand over his mouth.
They held their breaths. The only sound Rahul could hear was the pounding of his heart in his ears.
Not a second had gone by before the gang barrelled past the entrance to the alley, hollering about how they were going to murder that bleeding poofter and his Paki mate.
The sound of their boots against the pavement and their indignant exclamations faded into the night.
Even after their echoes had long dissolved into the darkness, Rahul and Julian still stood perfectly still, tensed and poised for flight.
As the minutes ticked by, Julian finally released Rahul, though he wasn’t able to go far.
The alleyway they had ensconced themselves in was hardly four feet wide.
Even with his flamingo-pink back pressed against the opposite wall, Julian was still close enough for Rahul to feel the waft of his laboured breaths.
They held each other’s gaze for a single moment, a moment filled with the same electricity that banded them together on stage. And then they burst out laughing.
They laughed long and hard until tears streamed down their cheeks and their ribs protested.
“Did you see the looks on their faces?” Julian wheezed.
“You’re mental, did you know that?” Rahul managed to get out.
“I reckon it was the Buzzcocks that did it,” Julian said, clutching his laughter-wracked stomach.
“Fuck the Buzzcocks, that was all you! You were bloody magnificent!” Rahul exclaimed, grabbing Julian’s narrow shoulders in his hands and shaking him.
He couldn’t explain in that moment how deeply he admired and loved Julian.
Just then, there was simply no other person in the world who was as tremendous, as brave, as gorgeous.
He tried to express that sentiment in the way he shook him, in the squeeze of fingers into the softness of his new coat, in the way he looked into Julian’s twinkling eyes.
The laughter between them died like the last rays of evening sunlight.
Suddenly, they were just two young men standing in front of one another, too close to be just friends, too far to be lovers, looking at each other with an intensity that couldn’t be so easily explained away.
Rahul focused incongruously on the way Julian’s mascara had streaked down one of his cheeks.
He couldn’t let go of Julian’s shoulders.
His stomach twisted as he recognized the heat that emanated off of the young man’s slender body, warming him in the cold of the dying winter.
Julian swayed in his grip, leaning ever so subtly forwards.
Is this what happened before a kiss? Neither one of them was drunk enough for it.
It would never hold up under their unspoken set of rules.
Rahul swallowed, his saliva thick in his throat.
If he kissed Julian right now, would Julian pull away?
If he told him he loved him, still loved him, had never stopped loving him no matter how hard he’d tried, no matter how much he’d convinced himself he loved Henri instead, would Julian remember?
Would he hold it over him? Would he care?
Would he let Rahul push him back against that brick wall and ravish his mouth?
“I should go,” Julian slurred, stumbling away, though a sly smirk still played on his feline lips.
“You all right to get home?” Rahul asked, earnest concern pushing aside any sinful thoughts.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Julian waved his concern away like flies in the air. “I’ve gotten myself home in worse states than this.”
“That’s not as comforting as you’d think.”
“Rahul.”
“Mm?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”
Rahul had nearly forgotten. His heart sped up anew, fantasies of pressing Julian up against the wall of the alley still fresh in his mind. “Y-yeah. Tomorrow. I’ll see you then.”
“Not if I see you first.” Julian walked backwards, maintaining eye contact even as his heel caught in a gap between the pavement.
“That doesn’t make any sense, Jules.”
“You don’t make sense!” He blew a raspberry, throwing up two fingers before scampering off on unsteady boots.
Rahul resolved to ring him in an hour just to make sure he’d made it back all right. Then he’d spend the rest of the night fretting over what tomorrow would bring, since the Julian who’d invited him and the Julian who’d told him he didn’t feel the same way about him were two very different people.