Page 12 of Sunshine Boy

He cupped Julian’s cheek in his palm and Julian melted immediately, eyelashes fluttering closed and pale cheeks filling with colour. “All right,” Michael whispered. “I’ll give you a chance. Just one more. Understand?”

“Yes,” Julian practically whined before Michael covered his mouth with his own.

Julian kissed him back with a ferocity that spoke of hunger and pent-up desire. It did nothing but fuel Michael’s ego. Julian had wanted nothing but him, even when he wasn’t around, so much so that he was unable to feel release. And Michael had watched -- he’d watched him as he’d tried to jerk off but slumped back on the couch, frustrated and depressed. He’d give him his release now. He’d fuck it out of him. Something he could do now without fear as the darkness inside him lay dormant as a hibernating dragon. Even if imagining his hands tightly clenched around Julian’s throat wrung a bone-shattering orgasm from him as he bent Julian over the coffee table and fucked him senseless.

* * *

So Julian and Michael were back together. That was… yeah. That was fine. Absolutely and completely and totally fine. Rahul had no problem with it. Not even the teeniest, tiniest problem. Not even a Borrower-sized problem. Yes, he still thought Michael was a creep. Yes, he still thought Michael was bad news for Julian. But Julian was going back into this with his eyes fully open, or so Rahul hoped. He knew what Michael wanted from him. If Julian was to be believed, Michael had gotten exactly that from him quite a few times now. So there was no more warning Rahul could give. And he wasn’t about to try and protect him anymore. Julian was no longer his problem. These days, Henri was his problem. Julian was just his mate. And mates were sympathetic towards each other when they were on the outs with their partners and supportive when they were in their partners’ good graces. They didn’t obsess over whether they were with the right partner, or if their partner was trustworthy, or if they might end up with their heart broken. Even if he had had that momentary lapse and imagined it had been Julian he was making love to, nothing could take away from the fact that from now on they were just mates. Platonic, normal, blokey mates.

Rahul kept reminding himself of that as Michael dropped Julian off at the shop after lunch and the two snogged for what felt like fifty hours before Michael finally left and Julian entered the shop, lips red and swollen. Rahul huffed and turned the page of his novel. It was War and Peace this time. Let no one tell you Rahul Chaand wasn’t a bloody intellectual.

“All right?” Julian greeted merrily as he approached.

“Mm.” Rahul nodded. When Julian had taken his seat and propped his boots up on the counter, taking out a nail file and buffing away at his already short nails, Rahul supplied, “How’s the cretin?”

“Honestly!” Julian cried, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “You think the two of you could learn to get on.”

“Why should we?” Rahul baulked petulantly. “It’s not as though you and Henri are bosom buddies, are you?”

“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.”