booshslashhaven | (no subject)

Title: This Will Make You Love Again
Author: Alice (

ailcia)
Pairing: Julian Barratt/Chris Corner, Julian Barratt/Noel Fielding
Summary: "When the joys of living just leave you cold. Frozen from the failing mess you've made your own."
Word Count: About 5000, I lost count after 67.
Rating: PG, probably.
Warnings: Slight hints of icky-het, little bit of clusterfuck.
Disclaimer: Don't sue me. They're not mine and I've only got £50 to live on til September. I'd have no choice but to kill you.
Author’s Notes: It's that time of year again, folk, exam time! Thus, I bring my latest procrastination to you (I've already made a mean sausage and lentil thing, and cleaned the kitchen (though that was largely due to the creation of the sausage and lentil thing)). This is for

lo0o0ony_lauren, who is my partner in this specific sort of wrong, and thanks to her for reading the first bit and liking it.

The city sort of looms around them as they stumble from one dead end to another, confused by all the lights prickling out from the darkness. Dark things suddenly appear out of the night, unexpected and dangerous, and it's starting to get cold. Wrapping his coat closer about him, Julian has to resist the urge to look all about him like a tourist. Noel doesn’t even do that anymore, so Julian can’t really let himself do it either. Anything you can do, and all that. Noel's not going to beat him at not being a tourist: the man who can't cook or drive or do anything except grin like a twat.

Julian keeps his head facing dead-centre, and doesn’t gawp at the high buildings or the illuminated statues. This place has got a fresher taste than London: less hairspray, less self-assurance. Thing is, is that he knew where he was, there. Here, he just tries to sneak past everyone, get them to assume he’s just part of it all. He doesn't think he convinces them. He doesn't really know why he's come, either... It's not like they're really his friends, is it? Well, they are, but it doesn't really feel like it very much, and Julian's not entirely sure who to blame about that. Probably himself.

"I thought you said you knew the way?"

"I was following Julian! And I'm not the one whose been here hundreds of times before, am I?"

"You telling me I don't know where I'm going?"

"I'm not. Berlin is!"

Julian grinds his teeth and resists the overwhelming urge to throttle the pair of them. He should have just left them in the airport lounge like he wanted to when they'd started spitting in each other's coffee. Dickheads. And now they are obnoxious, over-tired, cranky dickheads, and Julian is rapidly losing patience. He's not had much of it, recently; as soon as he sees them, his teeth immediately set on edge and he finds himself scowling at things that should make him laugh, things that have always made him laugh.

Like Noel. How many times has Julian shouted at him in the past month? Granted, a lot of the time, he was being a tit-end, but still... Julian doesn't like not liking Noel all the time. At the minute, all he seems to do is shout at him, using up the only right of their supposed friendship he’s been left.

They walk over a bridge. Well, he does. Those two run ahead and shove one another into the barriers. Dee throws her backpack at Noel's head as he deftly twists from her and she can no longer catch up. There is an almighty crack as the bag goes sailing past Noel's shoulder to the floor, shattering her headphones across the dim pavement on impact. Julian has to give her bonus points, though, as Noel's foot gets caught in the arm-loop and he goes tumbling downwards after it, another crack as his knee hits the stone. The yelp of pain is enough to send Dee's distressed and angry wails into hard, guilty giggles, her laughter echoing obnoxiously off the river beneath them.

Julian wonders if he can be bothered with the effort of throwing himself into it.

--------------

"Do they have to come?"

He hadn't meant for the polite request to sound that pathetic, and he glares at the tiny reflection of himself in the television screen. He sees the silvery screen-version of her, stood pale and long - ironing her top in her bra and jeans - far behind him, twist around. He feels her look on the back of his neck, but he doesn't give anyone the satisfaction of turning round.

"Don't want them to come?" Her voice is tremulous and cautious, tripping across the empty room towards him. He collects his selfish thoughts, pushing them to the back of his head, away from his mouth.

He watches her in the TV before turning, sending one arm over the back of the sofa. "I meant to ask why they were all coming at once."

She bites the inside of her bottom lip, one side puckering out in a suppressed smile. "Did you?"

She looks hilariously beautiful, stood there with her hair drawn back, half-naked and wielding an iron. He can't help love her. He feels his lips twitch. "No."

"Thought not," she sets the iron down, and drags the top of her head in a flourish. She crosses the room and the back of the sofa in the space of a breath, and suddenly she's everywhere: the smell of her hair, the tickle of her finger, the press of her iron-warm breasts again his chest. She overwhelms him. "Awkward sod that you are."

"Of course."

There's a pause, and Chris contemplates how they look in the blank television screen: they suit one another, like the white and black static there'd be if he reached forward and switched the set on. Intermingled and hopelessly inseparable in the snowstorm.

"You sure you don't mind? It's only for a weekend, and they get so worn out in London. I'm worried about them." Her words rumble up through his chest, and he stifles a shiver. He presses a kiss to the soft golden mop of her head.

"If they argue, they're out on the roof."

She tenses, and he feels tiny coils of unease beginning to grow in her joints. "Well, they're going to argue so..."

"So Julian and I can have a nice long chat."

She giggles, and an unexpected warmth flashes into his fingers. He rubs them up and down her cool arms.

All too soon, the buzzer interrupts their quiet. Chris goes to the intercom as Sue squeaks and runs to put her top on: a burst of over-excited noise greets him as he presses button, cries and cheers indistinguishable in their pleasure, and he can't help smiling. He presses another button and, almost at once, there is a tremendous clattering up the stone steps and a hammering on the door, making their still little flat shake with the force of it.

Sue darts out of the bedroom again, clapping her hands with anticipationg and delight, the biggest, widest smile on her face. As Chris opens the door, he knows she is jumping up and down on the spot. Before he manages to open the heavy black door fully, a tiny black and red blaze streaks past him, almost knocking him over. Dee barrels into Sue with enough force to knock the pair of them over and they lie, a giggling and giddy tangle of limbs and hugs. Chris is so busy watching them, he is almost surprised to find himself overtaken by a quick hug himself, his face buried in Noel's mountainous hair before he knows precisely what hit him.

"Alright, Chris?" The words are friendly and affectionate in his ear, and Noel squeezes him tightly.

"Not bad," Chris returns the hug, and realises he's almost missed him.

Noel pulls back and grins at him, before his attention wanders and, dropping the bags, he hurls himself on top of the twisting mass of girls with a roar. Sue's laugh bursts out of her as Noel and Dee launch an attack on her ribs, kicking her long legs wildly, before a swift coup has Noel suddenly wriggling under relentless fingers, looking very surprised as to how he got there.

A chuckle somewhere above him makes Chris turn, and he's facing Julian. It always amuses him that Julian never quite knows how to handle him - more often than not, it's only Julian who can tell when Chris is joking, but physically, Chris knows he alarms Julian. A moment's awkward hesitation, a few jilted false starts, and Chris finally receives the clumsy pat on his back he'd been expecting. His smile broadens, and he steps aside to let Julian in as a champagne bottle is uncorked to a choir of cheers somewhere behind them, and the night begins to whirl from there.

--------------

They lay, sprawled across the living room like trodden-on flowers. Outside, the morning had begun to creep into the sky, and the noise of the city was suspended by the very start of morning. Debris surrounded the five figures: layers of discarded clothing, empty bottles, scrupled up bits of paper and thousand upon thousands of CDs.

"I'm not having that in!"

"Why not? It's quirky, it's catchy... Everything musical we need is in there - what's the problem?"

"Too Bowie. People'd notice."

"Yeah, plus it sounds wimpy and a bit rubbish."

"Bowie is a spangly man, I'll grant you that, but has never been neither wimpy nor a bit rubbish!"

"Ask his missus."

"Er, shall we say Space Oddity?"

"Classic. And if you don't think it is, you're dead inside. Next?"

"Oh, tart's bollocks!"

The squabbling filled the whole room: Noel, Dee and Sue were busy in their attempt to write The Ultimate Song, an experiment which had taken up most of the evening. Occasionally, one of them would burst into song - testing out lyrics shot through with laughter and the triumphant clash of glasses on teeth as they tried to out-do one another. They always sang when drunk: the pure delight of it all too much to keep inside.

Julian was slumped on the floor in the corner of the small room, half-under an old coat Sue had flung over him a few hours before. He watched them quietly, a warmth he couldn't blame entirely on the alcohol wrapping slowly around his chest. It was nice when they didn't argue... Well, when they didn't argue properly. They looked like they were enjoying each other's company and not just thinking up ways of hurting each other. It was with a flinch of pain that he realised this would only last a couple of days at the very most. But right then, with Dee cackling and Sue singing and Noel capering about... Julian could almost pretend this was how it was, how it always would be. He liked living in that particular fantasy; he'd gotten practiced at it.

A quiet cough above him made him jolt, whiskey sloshed over his hand. He licked it off and looked up. Chris had snuck up on him.

"All alone, are we?"

"We should put a bell on you or something," Julian said pleasantly, lips burning nicely with fresh liquor.

Chris smiled at him, a real twist of his mouth, not just a fake shadow of one for appearances' sake - the alcohol must have gotten to him, too. "What, and ruin my chances of being a spy for the Russians?"

Safe under the noise from the other side of the room, Julian laughed. Chris' wry smile grew wider, and he folded, sitting himself down next to Julian, their knees bumping against each other. He coughed, and produced a fresh bottle of whiskey, as if from thin air, placing it in front of them without a word. Julian smirked and, not to be outdone, fished deep into his jacket pocket for the new packet of cigarettes he'd had the foresight to buy at the airport: he placed the shining packet next to the bottle with an extravagant flourish.

He looked up with a smug grin, and Chris mirrored him.

"Touché," said Chris, and with a quiet snort he dealt the winnings.

Julian watched him, sitting up slightly as more whiskey was poured into his mug. He felt warm and fuggy, the alcohol loosening his tongue and burning his mind with questions he knew Chris wouldn't answer, and that he would never ask. Chris and Julian didn't talk: that was the unwritten rule of their acquaintance, for that was really all it was. They were merely friends of each other's friends, so why try and be anything different? So why did Julian feel a twitch of uncomfort whenever Chris glided into a room? Why did he care what this skinny little so-and-so thought about him?

"I'm not Noel."

Chris' words were abrupt, and Julian sat up a little straighter, drunkenly unsure as to whether Chris was actually able to read minds or not. What if he'd said that out-loud just then? And Chris just looked at him so serenely, he was then unsure as to whether he'd heard right in the first place. "Beg pardon?" He cringed at how stupid he must have sounded.

"I said, I'm not Noel."

Chris didn't look at Julian either time he said those words: he tapped two cigarettes on the packet at the same time, before putting them both in his mouth and lighting them. Only when he was passing one to Julian did he bother to look at him. Obviously seeing Julian was in no state for games, Chris rolled his eyes and explained, his tone achingly simple and open: "You're wondering why we behave the way we do around each other... You think it might be because you're attracted to me; you think it might be like how it was with Noel, don't you?"

It was only then that his indifferent look turned piercing. But there was nothing Julian could really say to that, anyway. They both knew it was true.

A too-fast rendition of "Come Spy With Me" broke out over the other side of the room then, and they both turned and watched as Dee clambered up onto the sofa and took the harmony to town. The volume was notched up, the speakers on the walls humming slightly with the surge of music. Julian felt numb and detached once again, the brief warmth of earlier having left him suddenly. He watched as Noel grabbed Dee's knees, and toppled her off the furniture and onto Sue, who squawked and spat most of her wine onto her legs. The giggles and the screams that followed, the absolute joy of it all... He couldn't find it in him to join in anymore. Julian wondered when all this had stopped being fun.

He started slightly as a cool hand touched his, and turned to find those huge brown eyes staring straight through him. Julian couldn’t think of anything to say, couldn’t untwist his throat to explain himself. But it didn’t seem to matter to Chris, who stood and made it clear Julian was to follow him. Julian stumbled to his feet, knocking the empty glasses over as he did so, clumsy as ever.

Sue sat up from the giggling heap at the noise, rocking back on her heels and beaming at them. “Where are my men folk off to, then?”

“Get some air,” Chris leaned down and snagged the whisky bottle.

“They’re going to shag on the roof!” Dee’s excitable shriek was followed by a bizarre cackle of laughter, as if it was the most ridiculous thing in the world. Julian felt a kick somewhere near the bottom of his chest as Noel laughed along with his girlfriend, grinning idiotically up at him, but Chris didn’t even blink. In fact, he looked rather amused and wagged his index finger at her.

“Yes, but you can’t watch, Deedee: you’ve not been good enough.”

“Fucking spoilsport,” she threw her boot at them, but it missed and she grinned happily all the same, hurling herself back onto Noel and picking up yet another CD.

Julian didn’t realise he was staring until he felt a hand grab his arm, pulling him away from the warmth of the living room. They stumbled up the stone steps, through the door that was supposed to bang when it was blustery, and suddenly they were on the roof.

Vast and concrete, it swept out wide before them, punctured by TV aerials that jutted up from the stillness. The rooftop was entirely lit up by the pink sun emerging in the sky, and it seemed to blaze in the light. The cold morning air knocked into them, and Julian felt his breath escape him as he looked across the rooftops of Berlin which were slowly filling up with warm light.

“Look up,” Chris urged quietly, and Julian obeyed without question, stumbling backwards a little as he bent his head all the way back.

The previous night was not yet gone from the sky, and while the horizon was a new dawn, the top of the sky as still a deep, inky blue, bleeding down through purple, pink, orange and yellow where it hit the edge of the landscape. There was not a single cloud near them, up here in the middle of the sky, and the sun and the stars vied for Julian’s attention and it was like nothing he’d ever seen before. Or something he’d known for years but had completely forgotten.

Chris’ breath drifted across his neck, and Julian shuddered as the words fell across his skin and fingers lightly trace his arm.

“Bet you didn’t think that was still there.”

And he hadn’t.

---------------

Clarity of thought is not something most people are blessed with.

He's got it, but instead of being thankful like any normal person, he tries to make himself a martyr because of it. Tries to pretend it makes him the poor, tortured artist... And it pisses Julian off, because he seems to spend half his life wishing he understood the way his brain works, and Chris just knows. Chris just has to look at a person to know precisely what they're thinking, and why, and what that means, whereas it takes years of struggle before Julian can even work out if he's being tricked or not. Look at Noel: Julian had really fallen for that one, hadn't he?

All those years thinking he was the most important person in the world to Noel. Thinking he mattered, thinking he loved Noel, thinking Noel loved him back - as a best friend, as a comedy partner, as a quick shag, whatever: Julian had taken anything and everything Noel had cared to throw him. Like a proper little lapdog, knowing he was just another accessory and hating himself for every night he was paraded about for people.

But when Noel had stopped bothering with him when the cameras were off… That is what had really hurt. Noel had suddenly elevated himself to something beyond Julian’s grasp, and hadn’t bothered with him properly since. Why should he? Julian is just Julian: boring, stable, grumpy, unimaginative, unexciting. How could he compete with the glitz and glamour of all those band-people, all those bright young things? How could he even talk to Noel, who’d become so perfect, so dazzling, that Julian couldn’t bear to look at him any more? Everything was so fake now, wasn't it? Every smile of his, every question, every offer, every invitation... I was clearly just for show. Noel didn't want to bother with him any more.

He sips his tea with a frown, ignoring the flicker of betrayal in his stomach. He dampens it down, because he knows that if he truly lets himself feel it, it’ll hurt all the more. It’s probably a good thing, anyway: they probably have very little to say to one another anymore.

"He still loves you, you know."

Julian jumps about a foot in the air as the quiet voice comes from behind him, then he whirls round, shouting before he knows what he’s done. “Stop doing that!”

Chris smirks, seeming genuinely amused by the reaction he’d gotten, and Julian notices he doesn‘t apologise.

He wanders into the living room - still slightly musty with the smell of smoke, alcohol sweat and fun from the night before - wafting the clean smell of coffee into the stale room. He leaves the curtains drawn, but sits on the floor in the sliver of light that sneaks through between them. The shaft of sun falls across his leg and runs across his foot, but Chris seems oblivious to it, sipping his coffee and leaning back on the sofa.

Julian watches him cautiously, still not entirely convinced the man isn’t a witch of some kind. He’s known him (sort of) for years, but it’s not entirely out of the realms of possibility.

Chris looks up and across at him, and raises an eyebrow. Julian realises he must have been gawping, and shuts his mouth abruptly. He takes another sip of tea, giving himself time to think of something to say, to calm himself back into neutrality.

“Where’s Sue?”

“Still in bed. She’ll have a head on her.”

The more boisterous trio of their party had not gone to bed till all the alcohol in the house had been drip dried, only a couple of hours previous. Chris and Julian, instead, had stayed up on the rooftop, watching in comfortable silence as the sun bleached the darkness away from the sky, swallowing the night up whole, warmed by whisky and company alone. It was like two strangers, sitting away from the world, sharing only silence. Then they’d parted, and gone to their beds.

Chris hadn’t touched him again since the brief drift of lazy fingers, and the obviousness of this puts Julian on edge. It hadn’t seemed to matter up on the roof, but now, hours later and back in the complicated reality Julian will never understand, with everyone still asleep upstairs, uncertainty makes him all the more awkward.

And he’s not helped by Chris is playing his bloody mind games again. Julian doesn’t like being handled and manipulated and read, and he intends to tell Chris so. But when he opens his mouth, the anger he’d intended to express had already melted into new words. Why does his brain keep doing that to him?

“What do you mean, he still loves me?”

Chris sets his coffee down on the coffee table, and looks at Julian as if confused even though Julian knows he's not. He never fucking is. “Exactly what I said.”

Absolutely typical. Julian feels a flash of frustration and annoyance, and it seeps into his words before he can help it. He’s so confused - nothing makes sense where he thought he knew it all - and Chris isn’t even bothering to help him.

“Well, how ‘exactly’ do you mean?”

Chris’ dark eyes narrow, and his lips curl into the cruel V-shape he only ever gets when he’s cross. “I’m not explaining everything to you, Julian. Just take a look.”

After that keeps cold and silent, and looks away from him, as if Julian’s irritation and confusion doesn’t even warrant his attention or recognition. Real anger leaps up Julian’s throat: here’s another one he’s not fucking good enough for.

Plus, he was clearly lying. Noel quite clearly didn’t give a dick about him. If he did, Julian wouldn’t be feeling this miserable. Noel has to be to blame. He doesn't talk to Julian anymore. It’s not like it’s rocket science: for a supposedly clever man, Chris is really fucking stupid sometimes.

He realises he’s shaking, and he wants very much to lash out at Chris: but he knows hitting someone in their own house is rather beyond appropriate etiquette, and that if he tried to shout at him, tell him what a twat he can be some times, he’d not know how to say quite what he meant, and that would be another thing Chris and Noel could pity him for.

So he sits in completely stubborn silence, and fumes until Chris wanders out the room again, seeming to have forgotten he was even there. The sounds of Noel and Dee having an argument over the correct application of jam at breakfast time filters through the subdued house. Somewhere in the house, Sue is singing 'Gangster's Paradise' in a startling falsetto. But Julian feels nothing.

--------------

The beats of the DJ swamped the crowd in the tiny club, reverberating off the enclosed walls, making the music all the louder and more confusing. Thick, filthy tunes and wailing rhythms made people scream and laugh and dance and fling themselves about the small room, till no one knew which way was up or down. A million and one substances swam through Julian’s veins, and he couldn’t quite figure out if he felt on top of the world, or like he wanted to die.

Dee had chosen that moment to launch herself onto his back from the bar, her laughter ringing in his ears and setting his skull on fire. As she jumped off him and whirled off into the distance, lost in the nightlife, Julian decided it was that second one.

This was wrong: he wasn’t in London, he didn’t have to do this anymore. He only came to these things for Noel, and Noel had disappeared without a word to him. Just given him a drink and then vanished, and Julian was sick of trying to look for him. He’d been cast aside, no one cared that he was alone in a place he hated. These were supposed to be his friends - his best friends - and they might as well have been strangers in the night.

Suddenly feeling desperately sick, Julian didn’t care when he crashed into people as he stumbled through the warm bodies and toppled out of the club. It was a relief when the freezing cold night hair hit him in the face. Using the wall for guidance, he pulled himself along it till he was away from the front entrance of the club, and people who could see him make a tit of himself. Spiderman would have been proud.

The thought made him laugh too much. He blinked and tried not to pass out, clutching at the cool wall for purchase, resting his forehead against the scratchy brick surface, the pain keeping him there.

“Had enough?”

This time, Julian did fall over as he jumped: he legs got tangled up with one another as he turned and he ended up sitting on his arse on the pavement, looking up at Chris.

“I have had so much enough.”

The words made sense to him, and he no longer cared if they did to anyone else. He was sick of trying to please these arrogant fuckers, sick of them wanting something he couldn’t give them, and making him feel like shit for not being like them.

There didn’t seem much point in trying to stand again: the world was suddenly too heavy on his shoulders for him to sit upright, and he slumped under the weight of his feeling. A wave of depression crashed over his head, and he curled his body to rest his forehead on his arms on his knees. He’d managed to not feel for so long, and this was why. He hated this, hated the bleak feeling of loss when the world made him feel stuff again.

A scuffling noise next to him made him glance round. Chris was suddenly sitting close, very close, staring off into the distance. Then, in one quick motion, his dark head was suddenly resting lightly on Julian’s shoulder, as if that was all the comfort he could bring himself to give.

They sat like that, awkward and upright on the cold pavement, with Chris’ hair tickling Julian’s nose, for who knew how long. Julian lifted his head from the top of Chris’ head, and looked at him intently. Chris was wide-awake, his eyes sharp and entirely focused, they snapped to meet Julian’s gaze at once and Julian was surprised by the amount of feeling he found in that look.

Immediately cautious, Julian sat up a little straighter, pulling away from Chris. He had no idea what was going on, but he knew he didn’t like it. No one bothered with him anymore: those were the rules. Least of all Chris, who no one but Sue really knew and no one got close to. It was going to be a pity shag, it had to be.

“What do you want from me, Chris?” And there was that bizarre note of anger again; Julian heard it in his voice as if he were listening to a bored announcer on the radio.

“I want you how you were, before you forgot it all and no one could get near you.” Chris’ words were so simple, his tone so mild, that Julian couldn’t think of anything to say for a few minutes.

“I don’t want to use you.”

“Get a grip, Julian, you couldn’t use me if you tried.”

And, just as suddenly as the night had tilted, Chris was kissing him. It wasn’t the most amazing kiss: neither of them were entirely with it, twisted and unsteady across the dirty pavement. Their noses clashed, Chris accidentally bit Julian’s lip, and Julian felt the wince under his lips as his stubble scratched Chris’s chin. Julian tried to lift a hand to Chris’ face, and nearly lost his balance while doing so, knocking his face further into Chris’ with a muffled yelp.

It wasn’t perfect, but something unfurled deep within Julian’s chest as those dry, hard lips met his. Something warm that crept along his blood and pushed the emptiness away, wrapped it up in something he couldn’t understand, and probably never would. But now, he didn’t seem to mind so much.

When they pulled apart, their breathing heavy and Chris’ chin bright red, Julian was smiling.

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The end: comments very much appreciated!
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