Chapter Thirteen Close To Me
They found themselves in Julian’s bedroom.
He’d tidied here too, which suggested to Rahul that he’d anticipated they might end up here.
He wasn’t sure what to make of that. A more sober Rahul might have tried to dissect it, but he was drunk on Julian and couldn’t seem to care.
To now-Rahul, it was just further proof that he was doing the right thing. That this was where he belonged.
Julian held his eye as he tossed his shirt and shucked his trousers, crawling backwards onto the bed with what Rahul recognized as his bedroom eyes.
Rahul had been here before, in Julian’s room, but he hadn’t really looked.
He’d known teenage-Julian’s bedroom so well he could have drawn it blindfolded.
He’d memorised all of the posters, the tacked-up drawings, the piles of laundry.
Adult-Julian’s bedroom wasn’t all that different, if he were being honest. The walls were different, though.
When Julian had been a kid, he’d once painted his walls black in a hormonal fit of rage.
Rahul had always found it quite oppressive, despite the many posters papering them.
The present walls were the same faded peach colour they’d been when Julian had moved in because he’d never gotten around to painting over them.
There were a couple of posters -- a mostly nude Iggy Pop, a princely Adam Ant -- but the wall real estate was mostly taken up by the overstuffed wardrobe, a few loose bolts of fabric propped up by an old sewing machine, and the heavily cluttered vanity.
The vanity’s surface was long gone beneath the makeup, hair sprays, pomades, straightening irons, and other less recognizable beauty products.
It was a little silly, in retrospect, that Rahul had never suspected Julian might swing both ways.
No straight man had this many hair products.
“Are you just gonna stand there or are you gonna come join me?” Julian asked, leaning back to intentionally display his glory.
As conceited as Julian may have been, Rahul had to admit that he was, in fact, quite glorious.
It had been ages since he’d seen him fully naked.
He was lean and toned, whipcord muscle over bone, just like when they’d been kids, only he’d filled in a little since then.
He wasn’t all skin and bone, but sculpted flesh and muscle.
Though he lacked Rahul’s bulk, he had a flat, defined stomach and powerful legs.
And his cock was lovely and flushed as it lay against his thigh, half-mast, circumcised head glistening.
Rahul wasn’t much of a writer, but he imagined he could write sonnets about that gorgeous cock.
Rahul wasted no more time and stripped himself bare, climbing onto the duvet and lying down beside Julian.
The latter bit his lip and nestled up against him, his long, slender fingers combing through Rahul’s coarse, dark chest hair.
He even leaned in and rubbed his cheek against it. Rahul couldn’t help but chuckle.
“You like that, small fry?”
“Mm,” Julian asserted. “S’nice. You’re like a wildebeest or a bear or something.”
“Never took you for an outdoors enthusiast, with your drainpipes and little Chelsea boots.”
“You don’t know. I could be a regular Davy Crocker.”
“You mean Davy Crockett?”
“Whatever. I’m here, I’m there. I’m like a hummingbird, me. You never know where I’m gonna be. Am I in the bush? Am I in the bin? No, I’m in your house! Look out!”
“They call you the Hummingburglar.”
“They call me the Crocker Catburglar.”
“Crockett.”
“Whatever.” Julian made a great show out of rolling his eyes before kissing Rahul’s shoulder.
“You really destroyed me, you know,” Rahul said suddenly.
Julian stilled but didn’t look up at him. “I know. I should’ve never punched you. Or said I hated you or --”
“No. Not then. When we were kids. When we were in uni.” He let that hang between them, waiting for Julian to latch onto it.
He knew the moment he did because Julian ducked his head, hiding his face from view.
Rahul continued. “That night we spent together meant everything to me. I was happy -- honestly happy for the first time in my life -- thinking we were finally together. Then you turned around and acted like nothing had happened, like it’d all just been some drunken mistake, and I was gutted.
It took me years to recover from that, you know. ”
“I know,” Julian muttered, sounding contrite. “It did me, as well.”
Rahul frowned. “What?”
“I’d done it on purpose, you know. I’d been curious about boys for ages and I’d sort of figured you fancied boys too -- I didn’t know you fancied me, mind -- and I took advantage ‘cause we’d both been drinking.
I thought, if anything happens, I can always blame it on the booze.
Then I baited you into kissing me and things got out of hand and we ended up…
you know. I was well gutted in the morning.
I thought I’d cocked it all up. I’d gone and ruined our friendship ‘cause I’d been curious and selfish and whatever.
So I thought, if we act like nothing ever happened we can get back on track and maybe Rahul won’t think I’m such a shit.
But it didn’t matter, ‘cause I couldn’t stop thinking about it, could I?
I had to stop talking to you altogether just to forget about it.
Once you came back, I thought for sure you’d be able to see the poofter in me.
But you just seemed hurt or whatever, so I thought I ought to try and put it all behind us and get back to how we were. ”
Rahul’s mind was spinning, his entire consciousness reeling as it tried to rearrange his reality based on this new information.
It made sense but was, at the same time, so bizarre as to seem like a dream.
If it hadn’t been for how tightly he was squeezing Julian, how he could feel his very real flesh beneath his fingers, he would have thought the whole thing a hallucination.
“Even after you said how you felt, I didn’t know I felt the same,” Julian continued, his face still hidden from prying eyes.
Rahul focused instead on the crown of his head, where he could see the hint of sandy-blond roots coming through.
“It wasn’t until you were with Henri that I felt like someone was squeezing my heart.
Every time I saw you together, it was like I was suffocating.
And I didn’t know why, until one day I had this thought: Rahul deserves somebody better than that stuck-up nonce.
He deserves somebody like me. And then it hit me. D’you know what I mean?”
Rahul tucked his fingers under Julian’s chin and lifted his face to meet him. Julian’s crystalline eyes were a little shiny and unsure around the edges. Even after he’d had the life fucked out of him by Rahul, he was still anxious about sharing his feelings. It was simultaneously adorable and sad.
“Julian,” Rahul began earnestly. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love you, you big berk.
” Julian exhaled a laugh at that. “I don’t care what’s happened before and I don’t care what happens after this.
I love you. And if there’s nothing else you can count on in this life, there will always be that. ”
“Rahul,” Julian said, voice tight with emotion, before plunging forward and capturing Rahul’s mouth in another bruising kiss.
Rahul let himself be kissed. He let Julian instil in him every feeling he’d been too afraid to share with him until now. He let Julian take from him what he needed. Assurances, love, desire, loyalty. He let Julian find all of it.
For Rahul’s part, his decade’s long desire had been sated.
His desperation had passed. He was now ready to be a vehicle of Julian’s pleasure.
He was ready to be everything Julian needed.
He was ready to assume the role he’d spent fifteen years preparing for.
Use me, he thought, pulling Julian on top of him, his snow-white skin against Rahul’s caramel.
Take what you need. Then take it again. I’ll always have enough for you.
They kissed until the heat rose between them once more.
They kissed until they writhed. They kissed until their erections brushed, sensitive and overstimulated.
Rahul buried his hands in Julian’s fine ebony hair, a small part of him wishing it were the soft honey-brown he’d fallen in love with.
Julian kissed Rahul’s neck, hot breath tingling his ear.
He sucked a sore spot in the sensitive flesh there and Rahul gasped, nails biting Julian’s pristine white back.
“Rahul, c-can --” he stuttered in Rahul’s ear, pelvis rolling lazily against Rahul’s hip. He swallowed hard. “I want to… Can I…”
The ghost of Julian still lingered in Rahul’s veins, and he retained a sixth sense for what the love of his life needed.
He nodded jerkily in assent and Julian understood.
He stretched crosswise over the bed to the end table and retrieved a condom and another jar of Vaseline, this one a little closer to full -- which really said something about Julian’s sexual habits if they almost always began and ended in the living room.
It was Julian’s turn to roll the condom over his own straining erection and massage the lubricant between Rahul’s legs.