Chapter Six Bizarre Love Triangle #2
“Yeah, but that’s because Henri’s got his head so far up his arse he can lick his own stomach,” Julian griped, going back to filing his nails. Nail dust fell like a light snow onto his jeans.
“How dare you, sir!” Rahul responded. “Henri is an intellectual. It’s hardly his fault if everyone around him is too slow to stay on his level. He won’t slow down to keep pace with anybody. He’s a steam engine barrelling forward into the future. They call him the Locomotive.”
“Call him the ‘loco,’ more like,” Julian grumbled. “He’s a garlic ponce and no mistake.”
“Oh, because Michael’s so down-to-earth, is he?” Rahul countered, setting down his book. “Mr Cambridge go to a lot of car boot sales with you, does he?”
Since Michael and Julian had gotten back together, Rahul and Julian’s relationship had mostly gone back to normal.
While they’d still maintained a cordial distance, they had managed to thaw the barrier that separated them and go back to joking around and drinking at The Barber & Pony together.
But this business with comparing Michael and Henri was just grating on Rahul’s last nerve.
The two were nothing alike, and the fact that Julian hated Henri but loved Michael was utterly ridiculous.
“This is ridiculous,” Julian said suddenly, as if reading his thoughts. “We’re best mates, for crying out loud. We should at least be able to stand each other’s partners.”
“I -- Yes,” Rahul stammered, blindsided by the fact that Julian was taking his side. “My thoughts exactly. What are you getting at?”
“I keep saying that if you really got to know Michael -- without all that posturing and shit -- you two would get on. And you keep saying that I should get on with Henri. So why don’t we all go out on a double date or something, like normal couples or whatever?
We’ll get a chance to hang out with each other and spend time with our boyfriends at the same time and see them in a new light.
Or whatever. Yeah.” Julian seemed to warm to the idea himself as he pitched it.
“It could be brilliant. You know, show Michael how good you and Henri are together. And show Henri I’m not some Hoxton yob. ”
Julian sounded a little combative, but Rahul had to admit it was a solid idea.
Henri did, in fact, think Julian was a bit of an uncultured hooligan.
Though, to be fair, any time Henri had encountered him Julian had been nothing short of antagonistic.
This might be the chance they’d all been waiting for to show their true colours to each other.
And it’d be another opportunity for him to observe Michel’s character.
He hoped for Julian’s sake that he had been wrong about Michael.
“Yeah. All right,” Rahul said.
“Really?” Julian’s eyebrows rose in surprise.
“Yeah. Sounds like a laugh,” he added casually. “Come up with a time and place, and we’ll be there.”
The time and place turned out to be that Monday night at an Italian restaurant that was both too nice for Rahul and Julian and too shabby for the likes of Michael and Henri.
It was a candle-lit, tablecloth affair on the West End with a raucous sports pub next door whose football crowd could be heard cheering through the walls.
Rahul and Henri were early. Michael and Julian were fashionably late.
Rahul, who had been staring at the entrance as though he could summon his friend through will alone, caught his breath when he saw Julian and Michael enter the restaurant.
Michael always looked cutting edge, as if he’d stepped off the pages of GQ.
It was almost obnoxious the way he was at the forefront of men’s fashion, even his stubble artfully crafted to imitate those popular models and film stars on magazine covers.
But Julian… God, Julian looked amazing. He was sort of pulled into the restaurant by the overly confident Michael, while Julian looked uncharacteristically self-conscious.
Rahul was used to seeing him either decked out for the stage in outrageous kit that was more akin to fancy dress than a normal wardrobe or wholly dressed down in holey jumpers and washed-out jeans.
But date night Julian was something to behold.
In a velvet jacket and buttoned shirt, his face clean but for a hint of eyeliner, trousers invitingly tight and boots shiny, he was a vision that would have had adolescent Rahul salivating and squirming in his seat.
As it was, it was hard enough for Rahul to smile tightly at him and Michael as they took their seats across from him and Henri.
I don’t care, Rahul reminded himself. We’re just mates. Just mates.
Henri greeted Michael warmly with a kiss on both cheeks, clearly making more of an effort with him than he ever had with Julian.
Julian sat directly across from Rahul, while Michael sat across from Henri.
When the server came and left their menus, Rahul had a moment to wonder what they looked like.
Did they look like a group of mates out for a night?
Or did they look like what they were: two couples on a double date?
Rahul didn’t know why it bothered him. They were two couples, after all.
While he’d had some time to get used to the idea of being gay, he’d never had to contend with being perceived by others as gay.
For some reason it left him feeling exposed, as if strangers were looking at him with no clothes on.
Being gay had always been something he’d thought about or done in private up until now.
He couldn’t help wondering if the servers found him disgusting, or simply alien, or if they thought nothing of him at all.
It was just different, and it made him itch under his collar.
“Julian tells me you’re a writer,” Michael began magnanimously, even if his tone was a little clipped.
“Oui,” Henri replied, flipping open a golden lighter to ignite his slender cigarette. “I studied philosophie in school, and I apply a Sartre aesthetic to my writing. Particularly, I aim to evoke abstract existentialism.”
“That’s quite brave,” Michael said, warming to the subject. “Considering the current zeitgeist.”
“Ah, yes, this is why you write about murderers,” Henri said, not unkindly. “Sensualisme sells books, does it not?”
“Of course. Why else publish if not for the profits? Else I could write to my heart’s content and keep every manuscript in my wardrobe while making a living as a solicitor -- A bottle of Chateau Latour for the table please,” Michael added to the server, handing back his drink menu.
“Yes, sir,” the server replied with a slight bow before retreating. Rahul watched him go with some remorse. He was absolutely starving.
“Ah, a fan of Pauillac, I see,” Henri commented enigmatically from behind a curtain of smoke.
“I do prefer Pauillac over Pomerol. I find it to be much less acidic, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Bien s?r. Only, I have not met many who think the same.”
“You’ll find that when it comes to the Cabernet Sauvignon I am of singular mind.”
By now, Rahul was hopelessly lost. He looked across the table to find Julian’s eyes similarly glazed. Neither of them could have anticipated the two of them getting on so famously. Though it stood to reason, as both were erudite writers and gentlemen of formal education.
Rahul let the conversation recede into a background drone. He focused instead on Julian, whose appearance still struck him. He was just about to compliment him in a very platonic, friendly way when Julian leaned in and said quietly, “You look quite nice.”
Rahul’s heart leapt despite itself. Platonic friends, he reminded it sternly.
He had taken pains in his appearance tonight, of course.
He’d combed his hair, worn a shirt and jacket, just like a proper adult.
He was positively chuffed that Julian had noticed.
Chuffed in a platonic, friendly way, of course.
“Thanks,” he replied just as quietly, trying not to disrupt Henri and Michael’s animated conversation which had moved on to French revolutionary politics or something.
“You don’t look half-bad yourself.” That was platonic, right?
Plato himself might have neutrally commented on his mates’ looks, right?
Julian ducked his head, twirling a strand of his hair around a finger. Rahul frowned. That was Julian’s flirty mode. Was he… No. He wasn’t flirting. Not with Rahul. Couldn’t be. His boyfriend was sat right next to him.
“Cheers,” Julian responded coyly, eyes lowered. “Looks like our boys are getting on, eh?”
“Seems like. They sure can gab, can’t they?”
Julian snickered. “What was that about wine? Only thing I know about wine is white or red. And just barely, at that.”
Rahul laughed. “Me, too. Give me an honest pint any day of the week.”
“Right? Wine lists and all -- put a trough of beer in front of me, and I’ll lap it up like an alcoholic pony. I’ll go clobbering off, all four hooves out of joint.”
“Put a saddle on you and you’ll fall right over.”
“Oooh, what’s that?” Julian did an impression of a drunk horse -- which sounded more like Terry Wogan with a head cold. “Saddle? Geroff! I’m meant to run free like the wind.”
“Tout bien, mon coeur?” Henri said suddenly, turning to face Rahul.
“Mmm,” Rahul hummed. Henri gave him a chaste kiss before returning to chatting nineteen to the dozen with Michael.