Chapter Nine Why Can’t I Touch It?
Chapter Nine: Why Can’t I Touch It?
Julian was flitting about Michael’s flat like a goth butterfly. He would alight upon the armchair to retrieve his shirt, duck under the table to fetch his boots, dither in front of the hallway mirror to triple-check his reflection and tweak his hair to back-combed perfection.
Michael, reclining on the sofa with a copy of The Guardian and a cup of Earl Grey, sipped and said, “You’ll make yourself dizzy.”
“I can’t be late for work again,” Julian moaned for the fifth time that morning.
“Mel’s family and all, but even she’s had it with me.
She’s told me as much. She said if I don’t get it together she’s gonna start docking my wages.
I’m already short on rent this month as it is.
” He spirited away to the bedroom for some elusive purpose, voice getting louder as he disappeared from view.
“And that’s the third month I’ll be late on my rent.
I’m on notice as it is. I’ll have to give my landlord a blowie if I’ve any hope of not getting chucked out. ”
“You’re short on rent?” Michael asked as Julian reappeared. This was the first he was hearing about it.
“Yeah, sorry, I won’t be able to go out as much until I’ve got it sorted.” He leaned over the back of the sofa to peck Michael on the cheek. “So long as you don’t mind me staying over and raiding your pantry.”
“I can lend you money if you’re hard up,” Michael said, frowning.
Julian coloured and shook his head, edging towards the door. “Nah. You don’t have to do that. I’ll be fine. Honest, I will. I was only joking about giving my landlord a blowie.”
“Look, it’s fine.” Michael chuckled, rising from his seat to retrieve his wallet on the credenza.
He could never understand how proud the working class could be about matters concerning something as trivial as money.
He had it in abundance and Julian was in need of it.
It was only logical he should accept it when it was freely given.
“You don’t have to worry about paying me back.
Whenever you get around to it. Never, even. Consider it a gift.”
“No, really, Michael. Don’t.”
Ignoring his protests, Michael withdrew a hundred-pound note from his wallet and pushed it into Julian’s hand. “Hopefully that’s enough to cover whatever you owe on the rent. If not, let me know.”
Julian’s fist clenched around the note, his gaze distant and inward all at once. Michael thought he was trying to work up the courage to thank him, but when he finally spoke he said, “I wish you wouldn’t do things like that.”
Michael frowned, taken aback. “Things like what?”
“Like this.” He held the note in his fist between them, looking at his own hand as if he suspected it of being an imposter. “Just giving me money. Makes me feel like a whore or something.”
Michael blinked at him from behind his Cartier glasses. That had been the farthest thought from his mind when he’d made the decision to lend him money. Though some amount of bribery may have been in his subconscious.
Julian had repeatedly told him that nothing was wrong, but Michael had noticed a subtle yet distinct shift in him ever since the night of the double date.
It wasn’t the disgust or fear Michael might have expected.
Those were even sentiments he might have understood, considering how Michael had treated him.
Yet Julian’s change was harder to grasp.
He seemed to be… waiting for something. Michael would catch him sometimes, just looking at Michael, watching him.
Waiting. He would roll over in bed to find those enormous blue eyes laser-focused on him, searching his expression, trying to decipher him, trying to work out when the wait might be over.
Not having the slightest idea what Julian might be expecting, Michael felt increasingly uncomfortable and more than a little paranoid.
He had been particularly strict with himself since that night, keeping his darker nature on a short lead and doing everything he could to appear the attentive, affectionate boyfriend.
He had even stopped following Julian as much, telling himself he was trusting the young man and doing the right thing, as if the boy in question might somehow subconsciously sense how considerate Michael was being.
But with this bizarre scrutiny, every kiss Michael gave him, every kind gesture, every innocuous statement, Michael rethought and questioned: was this what he was waiting for?
No? Could it be this? Why wasn’t it this?
What if he changed it, did it differently?
Would it be “it” then? He was becoming increasingly more desperate, and it wasn’t as though he could simply come out and ask Julian.
The boy had already said that nothing was wrong.
If he insisted, Julian would simply become frustrated, possibly tell him he was projecting.
And what if he was projecting? He felt guilty, after all.
Perhaps he was only seeing a change in Julian because he expected to see a change.
If that night had really changed how he felt about Michael, he wouldn’t continue to let Michael touch him, continue to enjoy their lovemaking, continue to come over to eat Michael’s cooking and cuddle up with him on the sofa as they split a bottle of wine.
So perhaps it was equal measures bribery and to assuage Michael’s guilt that he had offered him the money. But in many ways this had always been Michael’s final recourse. After all, what else did his family have to offer but that?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Michael said, trying not to sound snappish. “How is this different from me buying you dinner?”
“It just is,” Julian said, looking at Michael as if he’d grown a second head. “Being out on a date, treating me to a drink or food, that’s normal. That’s couple stuff. You’re not handing me money, giving me the price of dinner.”
“If it offends you that much, you can pay me back. Or do whores pay back loans now?” He was unable to keep the frustration out of his voice and winced.
He hoped Julian wouldn’t hold it against him.
He’d been trying so hard to be good. Couldn’t Julian see how hard he was trying?
“Look, you said yourself you won’t be able to go out as much so long as you’re behind on your rent.
So just look at this as my investment in our continued courtship. ”
Julian snorted. “Courtship? All right, Sir Lancelot. I’ll just pop round my parents’, get permission for you to walk out with me. Maybe have your family give mine a goat to ensure the match.” But he was smiling again, the heat gone out of him, so Michael didn’t take offence to his mockery.
He reached up and cradled the back of his neck, stepping into his space in the narrow hallway. He felt Julian’s muscles tense, ever so subtly, beneath his grip, even though his expression never changed. It was moments like these that made Michael question his sanity. What was it? What was there?
He tried to push these thoughts aside and not let them colour his actions as he leaned down and pressed his lips to Julian’s.
The dark-haired boy kissed back, teasing Michael with just a hint of his tongue before he danced out of Michael’s grip and backed out the door, grinning at Michael with an unspoken promise of more once he got off work.
It would have been no different from any other goodbye they’d shared, if not for that canny reticence in Julian’s eyes.
* * *
Rahul had been late, of course. Nearly an hour late by the time he finally made it in.
Mel had predictably blown up at him. He took it on the chin like a good soldier, even if he couldn’t have agreed less with Mel’s assessment that he was a “prickless wonder” who was better off “scouring bogs at Wembley.” And then when Julian was later even than Rahul had been, Mel predictably only tutted at him as though she were a long-suffering school marm and he her naughty pupil.
It made Rahul so mad he could spit. But he didn’t.
Because if Rahul Chaand was one thing, he was a man of class.
Yes, sir. A true gentleman. The kind you don’t see nowadays.
The eighties truly were the apocalypse that so many science fiction writers had predicted, devoid of manners and civility.
It wasn’t quite the motoristic hellscape Mad Max had envisioned, but Rahul thought he could fare pretty well in a post-apocalyptic society.
His father had taught him to drive and he’d passed the exam on the first go.
Not a lot of others could boast the same.
He was practically Evel Knievel. Out on the streets they called him Rahul “Speed Demon” Chaand.
“What’re you muttering about over there?” Julian asked, laughter written in his toothy grin.
Rahul’s cheeks heated, not having realised he had been speaking out loud. Again. He really ought to break himself of that habit before he accidentally said something too embarrassing to come away from. “Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”
“You did. I heard you. Pretending to read your little smart person book, mumbling away to yourself.”
“Your hearing’s gone, small fry. All that loud music finally done your ears in, just like I always suspected it would.”
“Did you say something about being a ‘speed demon’?”
Rahul chucked his heavy Tolstoy volume at him, and Julian caught it deftly out of the air. Bollocks. He’d forgotten Julian had done sports in school.
Julian laughed and flipped idly through the book’s pages before deciding it held no interest for him and dropped it onto the counter. “Honestly, I don’t know why you go on talking to yourself when I’m right here. You could just talk to me. I don’t care if you’ve just got a load of rubbish to say.”
“Thanks,” Rahul said acerbically.
“Come on, you know I talk rubbish all day long. You can’t even stop the rubbish coming out of me. I’m like a skip with great hair. If I stand outside for too long the bin men try and haul me away.”