In ‘80s London, the fantastical Julian Collier is a charismatic punk rock band frontman. Everyone is drawn to him, including Rahul, his best friend and bandmate, who has loved him for years.
When a mysterious upper-class stranger suddenly inserts himself into their lives, it becomes clear Julian isn’t entirely straight, and the two men struggle for Julian’s affections. But the best man might not win this fight.
Hoxton, London, UK
November 1987
The Barber & Pony was a poor excuse for a pub, as far as Rahul was concerned. The ancient booths held grime older than Rahul himself. The watery draught was just this side of unpleasantly warm. The air was so thick with smoke he could have cut it with a blunt butter knife and spread it on the pub’s stale pork scratchings. Even an oblivious bystander could have told you that Rahul Chaand detested The Barber & Pony; yet he had patronised the pub every single week since he had moved back to London three years ago. Sometimes more than once a week. Three, four times even. He came because of him.
He was at the bar tonight, as he was most nights, with his skinny elbows propped on the pockmarked mahogany, and head hanging between the sharp hillocks of his shoulders. Rahul came to The Barber & Pony because it was his boozer. Rahul would have followed him to the ends of the Earth, let alone a crummy pub in Hoxton. He knew it was pitiful. There was hardly anything about their relationship that didn’t paint Rahul in a distinctly desperate shade of pathetic. He’d come to terms with that long ago. It didn’t matter to him anymore. All that mattered to Rahul was that Julian Collier was upset. And he needed to be here for him, just as he always was.
“What’s this I hear about a row?” he said in a light, unthreatening tone as he slid onto the stool beside Julian.
“What’re you on about?” He was already slurring. That wasn’t a good sign.
Julian was, by nature, a sunshiny young man with few troubles to cloud his unburdened mind. He wasn’t a rich man. He wasn’t famous. He didn’t have a particularly successful relationship and his friend group was distressingly small. But he was beautiful, fashionable, and well loved. He was passionate about music, and the fact that he both sold records and played in a band did much to nourish his simple soul. But Rahul suspected the main reason that Julian was a happy person was because he was simply born that way. He came into the world with a sunny disposition that life and circumstance had often endeavoured to strip from him.
On occasion, however, a mood as heavy and dark as a storm cloud would settle upon his narrow shoulders, usually brought on by the emotional vampire he liked to call a girlfriend. Thankfully, these sulks tended to be mercifully short, and Rahul found himself to be adept at pulling his best friend out of them even quicker.
Having gotten word from Leroy about the positively massive row that Julian and his girlfriend had engaged in, Rahul had come as soon as he was able.
“He’ll cost me customers,” Leroy, the bartender, had told him after repeating some of the choice words that had been screamed. By the time Rahul had arrived, Aisling, the “girlfriend,” seemed to be long gone, though Julian remained at the bar, sullen and unmoveable as he sank deeper and deeper into his cups. Time for the ol’ Rahul-man to shine, eh? He fancied himself the Julian Whisperer. And it stood to reason. After all, no two people knew each other as well or as deeply as they.
“C’mon, small fry,” he began with the familiar nickname, one that was his alone to use. Julian, being of average height, was short to Rahul only, who at any given moment was the tallest man in the room. “I know you and Aisling have had it out again. What’s she think you’ve done this time? Ruined the economy? Started the Cold War?”
“Can’t do anything right, as far as she’s concerned,” he pouted self- indulgently.
“Tell me about it. It’s practically every other week she’s picking a fight. I’ll never understand why you put up with her and her nagging.”
“She’s not a nag, all right?” Julian contradicted. “She’s just got a point of view. She’s a modern woman.”
“All right, all right,” Rahul backed off, sensing they had not yet arrived at the well-worn territory of slagging off his girlfriend before they inevitably made up again. “A modern woman, sure. Do you want to talk about it? What happened? Maybe talk about it back at your flat?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he continued to pout, planting himself more firmly at the bar just as Leroy passed both Rahul and Julian fresh glasses of beer. Rahul shot the bartender an incredulous look to which Leroy only shrugged helplessly and retreated.
Rahul sighed and tried again. “Fine. We’ll stay right here. As long as we talk. You’re good at talking, Julesy. That’s what draws people to you. The Talker Extraordinaire, that’s what they call you. Silver-tongued. Couldn’t shut you up if I tried.”
“Wouldn’t let you try. I’d be too busy talking.” A smile threatened to break free, like the sun peeking out behind clouds. “You’d try to get a word in edgewise and bam, there I’d be, gabbing away.”
“Gabby Gabber. Gabriel Gabber to your friends.”
Just as Julian seemed ready to add another rung in the ladder of nonsense, his smile disintegrated like a sandcastle in the surf and the dark mood retook him. “She hates it when I talk like this, you know? Says it’s stupid. Maybe she’s right. I really am quite stupid.” His long, pale fingers fumbled out a cigarette, and, failing to find a lighter, let it hang limply from his lips.
Rahul sipped at his beer to cover his profound disappointment. He’d been so close to lifting his friend out of this funk. His fight with Aisling must have cut him deeper than he’d realised. They fought frequently, breaking up every other week only to make up again, but the fights seemed to Rahul to always be superficial things -- who left the toilet seat up and who used whose hair spray -- and the rows were just as easy to overcome as a result. Rahul blamed Aisling, mainly. Julian was as amiable as a fluttering butterfly unless he was provoked.
“She never did,” Rahul exclaimed, aghast. “Did she really say that?” And, in a softer, more serious tone, “You’re not, you know. Stupid.”
“Must be. Else why would I keep making her mad?”
Rahul took pity on him and finally extricated his own lighter from his jacket pocket, lighting Julian’s cigarette for him.
“Because she’s horrendous,” Rahul answered the rhetorical question. “And nothing could ever make her happy. Even you. Now why don’t you tell me what really happened, eh?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Sorry?” Rahul’s face scrunched in confusion, pausing with the glass halfway to his lips.
“S’your fault, innit?” Julian grumbled, pulling his own lukewarm pint closer. “Me and Ash falling out. She was right. It’s always your fault.”
Rahul knew he shouldn’t take it personally. These were the aftershocks of his row with Aisling. But he couldn’t help the curiosity that welled within him. “How is it my fault exactly?”
“Aisling and me’d be married already if it weren’t for you being all… third-wheel. Always getting in the way.”
The words hit him hard and sharp in the chest, threatening to puncture his heart. He doesn’t mean it, he tried to convince himself. He’s smashed. Aisling’s upset him. He’s just having a bit of a tantrum, that’s all. It was with great effort that Rahul trampled the well of emotion threatening to bubble over and plastered on a placid smile beneath his moustache.
“You don’t mean that.”
“Do too. I use up all the good part of me on you, and then I’ve got none left for her.”
“You’re talking nonsense, Jules. Obviously you’re upset. I can see that. Let’s just get you home and we’ll talk about it like adults.” He wrapped his fingers around Julian’s upper arm, but the shorter man shook him off, swaying dangerously on his stool as he did so. He turned eyes on Rahul that burned blue as an electrical fire.
“That’s just it. You’re always trying to control me. You think you’re so much better than me, don’t you? Just ‘cause you went to your fancy uni and I stayed back here. Just cause your dad owned shops and I never even had a dad.”
“How could you think that I…” Rahul trailed off, shocked into silence. He had never, since he’d met Julian as a child, thought himself better than him. They both came from nothing. It was one of the founding principles of their friendship. And they still had nothing. Nothing but each other. Julian knew this, consciously. This wasn’t him talking, it was the booze, and Rahul had to keep that in focus before he lost his temper.
“Look,” he began slowly, carefully metering out his words. “You’ve had a long day, yeah? I know I’m around a bit more than I ought to be sometimes, but that’s because I’m taking care of you. You know that. Mel knows that. She asks me to take care of you. I’m sorry that Aisling has a problem with it, but that can hardly be helped. Next time you see her, tell her I’m sorry. Now. Why don’t you come with me and we can forget all about it, yeah?”
He reached for Julian again but this time Julian’s hand struck first, finger extended into a sharp point that thrust into Rahul’s chest like a very entitled dart. He poked him. “No. No no no. You listen to me,” Julian slurred. His blue eyes that had once burned were now melted back into glassy puddles that couldn’t quite focus on Rahul. “You don’t come in here like a… a… a jumped-up ponce with an anaemic caterpillar on his lip and tell me what to do, yeah? I’ll leave when I wanna leave. And you don’t control me, like Ash says. I’m my own man. I do what I want.”
Rahul flinched from the poke as if he’d been pushed. Anger surged in him like an ungrounded electric current. He chugged the remainder of his pint to keep his ire from boiling over and slammed the empty glass down on the counter. The resentment from years of Julian taking their friendship for granted began to rise to the surface. It was with monumental effort -- a deeper tribute to his love for Julian than Julian would ever know -- that he reined that rage into a dull simmer, something that would burn but wouldn’t scald. But even the bravest of wounded animals still lash out.
“You do what you want, eh?” Rahul snapped. “Or you do what Aisling tells you?” It wasn’t fair, of course, but hurt people hurt people, or so they say.
“Least I have somebody who tells me what to do.”
Rahul’s chest tightened. Julian clearly wasn’t playing fair either.
“I’d rather be alone than shackled to that girlfriend of yours,” he ground out.
“Or you’re just jealous.”
“Or you’re just an entitled little twat that can’t tell when someone’s trying to help him.”
“Trying to help me? Some help. Who asked you?”
“No one. You know what? Absolutely no one.” Rahul threw up his hands and stood, his heart pounding in his ear. He and Julian hadn’t fought like this in… he could scarcely remember when. They hadn’t even fought like this back when they’d… Well. Back then. Pulse thundering, he donned his coat and took off for the cold, drizzly London streets, not stopping to check if Julian was following him.
He still felt himself choke with guilt, however, when he made it halfway down the street and realised his friend had stayed behind. He would be fine. Right? Surely he would be fine. He’d been drunker than this on his own and made it home all right. He’d be fine… Wouldn’t he?
No, it wasn’t Rahul’s problem. If Julian wouldn’t let him help, then there was nothing for it. He couldn’t help someone who refused to be helped. Until he begged Rahul’s forgiveness and of course Rahul buckled like a flaccid accordion. Like he always did. Because it was Julian. And he was Rahul. And that’s how they worked. Or didn’t.
About the Author
As a queer, nonbinary, person of color, Nicky Silber has made it their mission to bring diversity into all of their creative outlets. Born in New York, raised in Mexico, they studied fine art in San Francisco and have worked in the video game industry since 2012. They currently live in the wilds of North Carolina with their young son and too many pets. Their only two goals in life are to continue to tell queer love stories and, to a lesser extent, finally knit their own sweater.
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