Chapter Nine Why Can’t I Touch It? #2
Rahul laughed along with him, enjoying the levity that came with spending time with Julian. It made a nice break from Henri’s dour intensity. It’s fine and well to enjoy a bottle of red wine, but sometimes you just wanted a can of fizzy pop to refresh yourself with.
“Or maybe you’re busy saying all sorts of smart things to yourself and you don’t think I’d get it.”
“Now you really are talking nonsense,” Rahul admonished.
“You’re smarter than me. Everybody knows it.
I don’t mind. I like being mates with the smartest bloke around.
” Julian nudged Rahul’s elbow with his own where it rested on the counter.
Rahul expected him to flash one of his usual cheeky grins, the kind he’d been teasing Rahul with since they were kids, but what he got instead was a coy little smile, one that saw him bite his lip and quickly look away.
Rahul swallowed heavily, hearing his own throat working in the sudden quiet. “Come on, Julesy. We all give you a hard time, but you know you’re far more clever than you give yourself credit for.”
“Nah. You’ve heard Mel. I’ve got nothing but candy floss up here.” He tapped his own forehead.
“Jules --”
“It’s fine. Honestly. I’ve had loads of time to come to terms with being the thick one around here. It doesn’t bother me anymore. Really.”
“Jules.” He filled his voice with as much command as he could.
It worked, and Julian turned to look at him.
He was smiling still, but there was just the slightest edge of exhaustion to his eyes, a subtle dulling of their brilliance.
“You’re not stupid. Could a stupid person write such incredible songs?
Or know so much about music? Or remember every ridiculous fact about Adam Ant? ”
“His mum used to clean Paul McCartney’s flat. Imagine that!”
“See what I mean? Could you store that much useless information in your noggin’ if you weren’t at least a little bit clever?”
Julian ducked his head, grinning despite himself. “Yeah. All right. Thanks, Rahul. You really are a diamond, you know that?”
“And you’re a glittery ponce.”
Julian barked out a surprised laugh that turned into a full belly laugh.
He shoved Rahul’s arm so his elbow slipped off the counter.
Rahul shoved him back, laughing himself, nearly sending Julian sprawling.
They kept laughing and shoving until they were breathless and their ribs ached.
Mel even had to shout from her office for them to keep the ruddy noise down, didn’t they know there were people trying to work around here?
As their laughter finally died down, they found they were just looking at each other, neither willing to be the first to look away.
Rahul was struck for the millionth time by how beautiful Julian was.
Truly. Especially on days like today, when he was fresh-faced and dressed down, just the subtlest shadow of stubble on his jaw.
He looked more real. He looked like something you could reach out and touch, rather than the ephemeral faery flitting from one moonlit grove to the next.
On days like today he was just the boy Rahul had fallen in love with -- a South End yob with a core of sweetness running straight through him.
Julian’s gaze lingered past the point of decency.
A platonic friend would have looked away by now.
A platonic friend wouldn’t tilt his head down to look at him from under his long, dark lashes, or bite at his lip again so it turned vivid pink between his teeth.
They’d been having a lot of moments like this since the night of the double date.
He wasn’t sure what it meant, or if it meant anything, or if Rahul was simply seeing things that weren’t there.
Julian had been a mirage for so long that he’d long given up hope he was real.
Rahul was the first to break the heated line of eye contact. He cleared his throat and reached across Julian to retrieve his book. Julian didn’t move out of the way, so when Rahul’s arm extended it brushed across the warmth of his chest. Within his own chest, his heart somersaulted.
“Hey, you know, speaking of glittery ponces,” Julian began, his voice uncharacteristically rough around the edges. “The new Cure’s finally come in.”
“Has it?” Rahul replied, voice uncharacteristically squeaky.
“Yeah. Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. Brilliant title, eh? NME says it’s tops.”
“Good for them,” Rahul said, already tuning out as he tried to find his page in the novel.
“Only I was thinking -- and you can say no if you and Henri are busy or whatever -- but I was thinking you could come over and have a listen to it with me.”
Rahul nearly dropped the book in his lap. “You want me to come over? And listen to a record with you?”
“Yeah,” Julian said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, two spots of colour blossoming on his cheeks.
“If you’re not busy or anything. It’d be like old times or whatever.
Or like, when you came over with Bête Noire.
So I guess not like old times, but like recent times.
Or all the times? I dunno. You don’t have to.
Just thought it’d be nice. You should say something ‘cause I could go on all day if nobody stops me. Honest. I once had a teacher put gaffer tape over my mouth just to --”
“Yeah, all right.” It all came out of Rahul in one, exhilarated breath, like a ghost frightened out of his body.
Julian’s head snapped up. He narrowed his eyes at him suspiciously. “Did you say ‘all right’?”
“You can hear me mutter ‘speed demon’ under my breath from across the room but suddenly you can’t hear me say ‘all right’ when I’m right next to you.” Rahul rolled his eyes even as his heart was hammering a tattoo onto the inside of his ribs.
“So you did say ‘speed demon’,” Julian said, grinning like mad.
“Tosser,” Rahul grumbled, burying his nose in his book once more as he pretended to ignore Julian’s cackling.
“So I’ll see you Sunday, then? Five o’clock at mine?”
“Whatever.”
“Whatever or all right?”
“Fine. All right. I’ll see you there.”
“Good.”
“Great.”
“… Speed demon.”
Rahul kicked the leg of Julian’s stool out from under him and sent him sprawling. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t get up and Mel had to actually come out of her office to tell them both to shut the bloody hell up or she’d beat them to death with their own bollocks.
Rahul wasn’t sure why the prospect of being alone with Julian again, with a record playing between them, filled his gut with skittish butterflies.
Maybe it was because the last time they had, he could have sworn there’d been a moment.
A single, charged moment where nothing but Julian’s lips had existed and he’d felt -- no, he’d known -- they’d been a hair’s breadth away from…
something. Something extraordinary. Or maybe it was the fact he knew that his mission to get over Julian was, if not stalling, then actively failing, despite the fact they both had perfectly wonderful partners.
Or maybe it was because Julian was looking at him like that.
Looking at him in a way that suggested he saw him and wasn’t merely looking at him.
It was the way he’d looked at him that one hot, sticky afternoon in Rahul’s room in 1975 before he’d kissed him.
It was the way Rahul had been wishing he would look at him every day since then.