![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
agentadvocate.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
booshslashhavenTitle: Suspend(ing Disbelief)
Pairing: Noel/Julian
Summary: Julian gets cheeky in suspenders in the back of a cab;
Noel ponders how transparent they are to onlookers;
A cabbie gets taken for a ride on a well played lie.
Word Count: 2'500
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Fluff, Foreplay, Flashbacks
Disclaimer: I do not own the Mighty Boosh and make no profit. Fun was had. No rights were owned.
* BASED ON THE INFAMOUS 2008 Men's GQ AWARD INTERVIEW *
[ WATCH IT FIRST! ]
Author's Notes: I created an actual fic this time, full length & everything!
( Definitely more "conventional" for me; 3rd person past-tense all the way. Shocker! )
Noel watched him fall into the cab like a sack of potatoes that had already turned into vodka.
Julian leaned to the side & threw himself across the empty seats, gazing up expectantly at Noel grinding his heels into the curb. Julian’s bangs were beginning to curl, covering the top of his right eye, leaving a sideways smile untouched.
“You’re a mess. You really are.”
Noel didn’t want to laugh. He wanted to be the sober objective party for a change.
Noel wanted to maintain some sort of reserve and not cave into the crooked and delighted expression across Julian’s lips as they cried out for him to get in, the actual words getting lost in the mire of others clamoring into cabs beside them.
He wished transparency wasn’t Julian’s strong suit. Tonight of all nights.
He wished his big hands hadn’t felt like hot irons on the small of his back as they tried to casually talk to Gordon Ramsay about football and manly things.
He wished Julian’s squinty albeit devoted stare couldn’t be felt through a sea of heads.
He wished he hadn’t repeatedly found Julian chatting raucously about how wonderfully talented Noel was to other comedians who grew bored when their names stopped being mentioned.
He wished Julian hadn’t made him laugh outrageously loud.
He wished he hadn’t been corralled like a sheepdog at the end of the evening and paraded out in front of Julian’s wobbly gait. He didn’t regret flipping a smiling David Walliams the bird as the doors closed behind them though. Everything had its saving graces.
Noel rested easy on the side of the cab and the proven truth that two grown men wearing spandex and feathers for a living can be everything in the book except suspect. Julian licked his lips and scratched his face obliviously.
They were eccentric, psychedelic child-men. They were outrageous, costumed, flamboyant and self-indulgent, but never in question. Recognizable everywhere art students lingered and goths congregated. They were the big comedy duo of the hour.
They were a duo, rightfully so. A team, a pair, a set, inseparable and singular. They were a couple.
Well- No.
They weren’t.
(Well, they were.)
But,
they weren’t.
(But they were)
Julian propped himself up on his forearms, motioning with his head, beckoning to Noel with his floppy, one-sided haircut. His stomach hovered above the seat, one knee on the cushion, one on the floor. He looked like a massive beige dog in suspenders, waiting anxiously, the epitome of expressive goofiness he only let slip in rare circumstances that were to be properly taken advantage of.
No one could touch them. Safe in pretending, safe in actual display. It all came out in the wash; gray and glitter, a slush of comedy and a decade’s long comfort.
It all looked the same on film. As real or as fake as you believed it to be.
Noel assumed the position - hanging half out of a cab, throwing an award in a bag onto the floor, bruising his elbow on the exposed hinge, pushing Julian’s cackling face out of the way to sit up against him, inappropriately close, smelling of sweat and fading hair product and the crumbs from crab cake hor'derves. Nothing ever changed, except the shape of the award in the bag.
Everything was electric flying by the widow as the cab started away.
He wondered what the fuck was to be done with the big tall mess breathing on his neck.
“You’ve been terrible. All night.”
Julian already had his arm propped up against the back of the seat, his hand creeping into Noel’s hair. Belligerently unrepentant. An expanding mass.
Noel’s forefinger slipped between a suspender and Julian’s warm dress shirt. Julian’s head tilted back, neck all stubble and chest gently heaving up and down as he closed his eyes contently, mouth agape.
Noel sharply pulled the elastic up, the band snapping back taught against Julian’s skin.
“All night.” Noel smirked.
“Jesus!”
Julian grabbed his chest with his free hand, inadvertently tightening his grip on Noel’s roots with the other.
Noel let out an abrupt throaty gasp.
In a moment of mutual shock, their eyes met. Julian’s tongue darted out in an appreciation for unexpected karma.
He let it linger.
Noel felt the tug finally relinquish its grasp and stroke down the impending cowlick. He laughed in spite of himself.
“Don’t think you can make it all better now.”
Julian’s attention was locked on the fringes he ruffled into Noel’s hair.
In his sloppy amour, Julian wasn’t one to make verbal amends. He instead continued to dote on the displaced black strands.
“You did that all night. Don’t think you even noticed.”
“Yeah?”
He nudged himself closer, pulling unapologetically at the lapel of Noel’s blazer.
“Hey hey! Tailor bill!” Noel warned.
Julian tugged regardless until Noel slid into his hip.
He laughed out loud at the flash of fog and memory:
The clinking of buttons on linoleum and the sharp tear of fabric.
Julian licking Noel’s collarbone to the background noise of his fevered estimates of how much it would cost to have it restitched.
Fighting to get Noel to accept the money,
and when he finally agreed,
briskly shoving it down his own trousers,
sending Noel on an adventure to fetch it.
The coup de gras; watching Noel almost bite clean through his lip while paying for the alterations with the same notes, suppressing a smile so hard he looked as if he’d pass straight out onto the sewing machine beside him.
They flew upwards as the cab hit a pothole, both conveniently pushed farther into the corner of the backseat. The driver grabbed the green plastic beads swinging above the dash, adjusting the mirror.
Noel was a poor judge of how long to hold a grudge.
He let Julian press up against him, wide palm resting flat against boney chest through his thin t-shirt. Noel was sure the sudden quickening of his heartbeat was audible through the fabric.
Thick fingers continued to pick at his hair, as if searching for a bobby pin or lost coin. As long as his hands were constantly busy kneading some surface area, Julian remained dewy-eyed and satiated.
“We should celebrate.” Julian rubbed concentric circles at the back of Noel’s head.
The entirety of Noel already hummed.
He was so easily swept up into Julian’s momentum for anything. He’d always be undone by any suggestion that came out of his mouth; joke, sketch, idea, plot, innuendo, demand. No matter how cross he’d been with the mother-henning or grumbling disregard for publicity, he wanted Julian to touch the rest of him the same way he’d been tracing patterns into his scalp.
“I’m drunk.” Noel lied, voice soothing, accenting the ‘k’, absentmindedly yanking at a string on Julian’s cuff. “ . . . You should come take care of me.”
Julian lit up like a pinball machine, filled with lager.
An electric fish tank of glowing amber.
He tried to double back and conceal it, but he’d blown his cover when a twitch of his hand involuntarily pulled at Noel’s silver chain necklace.
“Is that what you want?”
They’d played at this identical game before, same surprise and fervor, only Noel had actually been unable to make it up all the flights of stairs to a musty sixth floor flat unassisted.
He remembered the sound of zippers on boots being undone, the condensation between his shirt and leather jacket sticking as he peeled off layer after layer. Julian clenched a string of bunched up pearls in his teeth and teetered on the precipice of balance. Noel tugged at the other end of the string and set off a chain reaction between their grasping onto each other and gravity.
He saw the blood speckle the floor as his bare kneecaps smashed against the hardwood, Julian tumbling down panicked beside him with his trousers half unbuttoned. Noel grabbed him hard like a parachute, digging his fingers into his neck to stifle the pain, laughing as he wiped his watering left eye into Julian’s beard.
They were partially blind in the dark, fumbling with belts gleaming in the recycled light from outside and rings catching facial hair and sideburns. Every part of Julian tasted like whiskey and was hot with sunburn. Noel bit onto Julian’s lip, hissing through a twisted half-kiss as Julian’s prodding fingers touched at the cuts. He scrambled up and managed to grab some ice to stop the joints swelling; he applied it by shoving the cubes his mouth and soothing his frozen tongue across Noel’s knees until the residual cloudy pink dribbles rolled down to his toes. Julian leapt forward to lap his tongue wet against the inside of Noel’s thigh, but instead slipped a sizeable chunk of ice under the opening of Noel’s y-fronts. The resounding cry was so furiously shrill, it’s said to hang over Camden Market to this day, lodged between the stale radio waves of 1990’s grunge and a permanent layer of smoke.
Noel knew that this time he’d have to do most of the looking after, but it would be worth the exponential burst of energy Julian seemed to hold in reserve especially for knocking Noel through the doorway and onto the floor.
“Yeah. I definitely do.”
Noel brought his face close to Julian’s, parted lips brushing against saliva and skin. His lip snagged against a rough patch on Julian’s, locking them together.
In the front seat, a man cleared his throat.
Noel leaned forward, taken by surprise and pushed into defense mode. He caught a partial of his reflection in the mirror and the driver’s steely glance. He cleared his own throat and mustered some startled nerve.
“Something wrong?”
Noel stiffened to make his reflection look bigger.
“I- ”
The driver was young; probably younger than Noel, wearing a weathered jean jacket with innumerable patches on the shoulder. Now caught in an inescapably awkward situation, his eyes not on the road but locked with the blues blazing back at him in the rearview. He took in Julian’s slumping frame once more and steadied his intended question.
“I was wondering.” He cleared his throat again, “I was wondering if you were them blokes with the show.”
The cab hit another pot hole and the worn bearings grinded.
“What show, mate?” Julian suddenly came to life, jostling Noel off his chest.
Noel put his fingers up to his face in anticipation of chewing his nails.
He knew Julian wasn’t argumentative by nature but put up a nerve-wrackingly pugnacious front.
“You know- The show with all the crazy shit. The merman and the gorilla and the green one that tells everyone to slag off that reminds me of my uncle. ... It’s funny.”
Julian’s posture softened a little. He ran his hand through his hair without breaking second-hand eye contact in the mirror.
“You like that show, yeah?”
“Oh yeah. I mean... You gotta know you look just like those two guys, you two. ...Right?”
“You know what, mate...”
Julian lay back against the leather and repositioned his arm around Noel’s shoulders, tighter than before.
“...Our lives have been nothing but misery since that show came on air.”
Noel took a chunk out of his cuticles.
Julian seemed to be genuinely smiling.
“Oh yeah?” The cabbie poked at a dashboard gauge as he spoke.
“Yeah. Nobody ever said I looked like nothing until everyone started watching all that. Now it’s all I hear. This one too.”
Julian motioned down to Noel.
“It’s all he gets, when we’re out. Like some sort of celebrity.”
Julian absent mindedly drummed his fingers on Noel’s thigh.
“Yeah! I guess, because I mean- I thought- ”
“You wouldn’t be the first, you really wouldn’t. I mean, he works in a shop on the high street. Gets stopped all of the time. It’s hilarious. The nose, I guess.”
Noel wasn’t sure if he should chime in or let Julian continue talking about him in third person. He was both shocked and surprisingly turned on by the tangible conviction Julian showed playing fast and loose with their identities. This was definitely a new game, but it automatically became Noel’s new favourite.
Julian shut his eyes for a moment to regroup, and then dug back in.
“I don’t get any guff from the boys at work, but all his friends tell me to drop the moustache. Maybe we’d get some peace then, eh?"
“It’d best be you, because I’m not going to dye my hair again.”
Noel grabbed ahold of Julian’s hand draped over his shoulder.
Their performance was bordering on turning them into a tidy household, but as the campy image swirled around the ether of the cab they knew they’d gone too far to reel it back in.
Julian was already the consummate bear, a bricklayer in flannel. Noel was tickled he’d been put in his rightful fictional place, a fictional maverick of fictional fashion. Utterly fabricated, but with a familiar taste of domesticity. Suddenly, they were living in a loft with a cat. They were a Soho George & Mildred.
“Well, we just won’t go out on Saturday nights for a while. Have a stay in for the next bit 'til everything dies down. No one’ll be into that shite for long. It’s all nonsense anyway.”
They’d spent their mutual lives in made up places. This was just a more vanilla version. Escapism with a regular teatime and blue China urn by the front door in Blackpool.
They watched each other loving each other loving the lie.
The cabbie’s head was ticking as loudly as the meter, eyeing them back and forth at each stoplight.
“This is your stop coming up, yeah?”
“Definitely.” Even through all of his bluster, Julian sounded relieved.
“I shouldn’t have said nothing. Sorry if I said sommat, because you seem alright and I shouldn’t have-“
“S’alright. Like he said. Happens all the time.” Noel bared all of his teeth in a closing argument smile.
They couldn’t have thrown money into an outstretched tattooed hand faster.
Noel took one long legged stride onto the concrete stoop, spinning around to meet his partner in crime eye-to-eye. He rest his wrist on Julian’s shoulders and leaned in until he could feel the tip of his nose brush Julian’s ear.
“Just two old poofs in a Dalston flat.”
Julian beamed, giving a quick glassy eyed glance down the empty street before resting a hand on Noel’s hip.
“You loved it. You’re a natural.” Julian slobbered into Noel’s ear. He repositioned his palm under the back of Noel’s coat, causing Noel to shiver.
“Where did that come from inside of your lager brain? Is that really us like that in your head?”
“No. In my head, I’m a carpenter. You’re a barmaid. It’s much more elaborate and medieval. We’re a bit of a couple about town in the village, but own a piece of land in-"
Noel subdued Julian’s rambling with a sloppy kiss of appreciation and a squeeze around the neck.
“A bit of a couple about town, eh?” he chirped, placing his thumbs under Julian’s suspenders.
Noel walked backwards towards the entrance, leading Julian with a tug and a cautionary nip at his cheek.
“A bit of a couple about town.”
Pairing: Noel/Julian
Summary: Julian gets cheeky in suspenders in the back of a cab;
Noel ponders how transparent they are to onlookers;
A cabbie gets taken for a ride on a well played lie.
Word Count: 2'500
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Fluff, Foreplay, Flashbacks
Disclaimer: I do not own the Mighty Boosh and make no profit. Fun was had. No rights were owned.
* BASED ON THE INFAMOUS 2008 Men's GQ AWARD INTERVIEW *
[ WATCH IT FIRST! ]
Author's Notes: I created an actual fic this time, full length & everything!
( Definitely more "conventional" for me; 3rd person past-tense all the way. Shocker! )
Noel watched him fall into the cab like a sack of potatoes that had already turned into vodka.
Julian leaned to the side & threw himself across the empty seats, gazing up expectantly at Noel grinding his heels into the curb. Julian’s bangs were beginning to curl, covering the top of his right eye, leaving a sideways smile untouched.
“You’re a mess. You really are.”
Noel didn’t want to laugh. He wanted to be the sober objective party for a change.
Noel wanted to maintain some sort of reserve and not cave into the crooked and delighted expression across Julian’s lips as they cried out for him to get in, the actual words getting lost in the mire of others clamoring into cabs beside them.
He wished transparency wasn’t Julian’s strong suit. Tonight of all nights.
He wished his big hands hadn’t felt like hot irons on the small of his back as they tried to casually talk to Gordon Ramsay about football and manly things.
He wished Julian’s squinty albeit devoted stare couldn’t be felt through a sea of heads.
He wished he hadn’t repeatedly found Julian chatting raucously about how wonderfully talented Noel was to other comedians who grew bored when their names stopped being mentioned.
He wished Julian hadn’t made him laugh outrageously loud.
He wished he hadn’t been corralled like a sheepdog at the end of the evening and paraded out in front of Julian’s wobbly gait. He didn’t regret flipping a smiling David Walliams the bird as the doors closed behind them though. Everything had its saving graces.
Noel rested easy on the side of the cab and the proven truth that two grown men wearing spandex and feathers for a living can be everything in the book except suspect. Julian licked his lips and scratched his face obliviously.
They were eccentric, psychedelic child-men. They were outrageous, costumed, flamboyant and self-indulgent, but never in question. Recognizable everywhere art students lingered and goths congregated. They were the big comedy duo of the hour.
They were a duo, rightfully so. A team, a pair, a set, inseparable and singular. They were a couple.
Well- No.
They weren’t.
(Well, they were.)
But,
they weren’t.
(
Julian propped himself up on his forearms, motioning with his head, beckoning to Noel with his floppy, one-sided haircut. His stomach hovered above the seat, one knee on the cushion, one on the floor. He looked like a massive beige dog in suspenders, waiting anxiously, the epitome of expressive goofiness he only let slip in rare circumstances that were to be properly taken advantage of.
No one could touch them. Safe in pretending, safe in actual display. It all came out in the wash; gray and glitter, a slush of comedy and a decade’s long comfort.
It all looked the same on film. As real or as fake as you believed it to be.
Noel assumed the position - hanging half out of a cab, throwing an award in a bag onto the floor, bruising his elbow on the exposed hinge, pushing Julian’s cackling face out of the way to sit up against him, inappropriately close, smelling of sweat and fading hair product and the crumbs from crab cake hor'derves. Nothing ever changed, except the shape of the award in the bag.
Everything was electric flying by the widow as the cab started away.
He wondered what the fuck was to be done with the big tall mess breathing on his neck.
“You’ve been terrible. All night.”
Julian already had his arm propped up against the back of the seat, his hand creeping into Noel’s hair. Belligerently unrepentant. An expanding mass.
Noel’s forefinger slipped between a suspender and Julian’s warm dress shirt. Julian’s head tilted back, neck all stubble and chest gently heaving up and down as he closed his eyes contently, mouth agape.
Noel sharply pulled the elastic up, the band snapping back taught against Julian’s skin.
“All night.” Noel smirked.
“Jesus!”
Julian grabbed his chest with his free hand, inadvertently tightening his grip on Noel’s roots with the other.
Noel let out an abrupt throaty gasp.
In a moment of mutual shock, their eyes met. Julian’s tongue darted out in an appreciation for unexpected karma.
He let it linger.
Noel felt the tug finally relinquish its grasp and stroke down the impending cowlick. He laughed in spite of himself.
“Don’t think you can make it all better now.”
Julian’s attention was locked on the fringes he ruffled into Noel’s hair.
In his sloppy amour, Julian wasn’t one to make verbal amends. He instead continued to dote on the displaced black strands.
“You did that all night. Don’t think you even noticed.”
“Yeah?”
He nudged himself closer, pulling unapologetically at the lapel of Noel’s blazer.
“Hey hey! Tailor bill!” Noel warned.
Julian tugged regardless until Noel slid into his hip.
He laughed out loud at the flash of fog and memory:
The clinking of buttons on linoleum and the sharp tear of fabric.
Julian licking Noel’s collarbone to the background noise of his fevered estimates of how much it would cost to have it restitched.
Fighting to get Noel to accept the money,
and when he finally agreed,
briskly shoving it down his own trousers,
sending Noel on an adventure to fetch it.
The coup de gras; watching Noel almost bite clean through his lip while paying for the alterations with the same notes, suppressing a smile so hard he looked as if he’d pass straight out onto the sewing machine beside him.
They flew upwards as the cab hit a pothole, both conveniently pushed farther into the corner of the backseat. The driver grabbed the green plastic beads swinging above the dash, adjusting the mirror.
Noel was a poor judge of how long to hold a grudge.
He let Julian press up against him, wide palm resting flat against boney chest through his thin t-shirt. Noel was sure the sudden quickening of his heartbeat was audible through the fabric.
Thick fingers continued to pick at his hair, as if searching for a bobby pin or lost coin. As long as his hands were constantly busy kneading some surface area, Julian remained dewy-eyed and satiated.
“We should celebrate.” Julian rubbed concentric circles at the back of Noel’s head.
The entirety of Noel already hummed.
He was so easily swept up into Julian’s momentum for anything. He’d always be undone by any suggestion that came out of his mouth; joke, sketch, idea, plot, innuendo, demand. No matter how cross he’d been with the mother-henning or grumbling disregard for publicity, he wanted Julian to touch the rest of him the same way he’d been tracing patterns into his scalp.
“I’m drunk.” Noel lied, voice soothing, accenting the ‘k’, absentmindedly yanking at a string on Julian’s cuff. “ . . . You should come take care of me.”
Julian lit up like a pinball machine, filled with lager.
An electric fish tank of glowing amber.
He tried to double back and conceal it, but he’d blown his cover when a twitch of his hand involuntarily pulled at Noel’s silver chain necklace.
“Is that what you want?”
They’d played at this identical game before, same surprise and fervor, only Noel had actually been unable to make it up all the flights of stairs to a musty sixth floor flat unassisted.
He remembered the sound of zippers on boots being undone, the condensation between his shirt and leather jacket sticking as he peeled off layer after layer. Julian clenched a string of bunched up pearls in his teeth and teetered on the precipice of balance. Noel tugged at the other end of the string and set off a chain reaction between their grasping onto each other and gravity.
He saw the blood speckle the floor as his bare kneecaps smashed against the hardwood, Julian tumbling down panicked beside him with his trousers half unbuttoned. Noel grabbed him hard like a parachute, digging his fingers into his neck to stifle the pain, laughing as he wiped his watering left eye into Julian’s beard.
They were partially blind in the dark, fumbling with belts gleaming in the recycled light from outside and rings catching facial hair and sideburns. Every part of Julian tasted like whiskey and was hot with sunburn. Noel bit onto Julian’s lip, hissing through a twisted half-kiss as Julian’s prodding fingers touched at the cuts. He scrambled up and managed to grab some ice to stop the joints swelling; he applied it by shoving the cubes his mouth and soothing his frozen tongue across Noel’s knees until the residual cloudy pink dribbles rolled down to his toes. Julian leapt forward to lap his tongue wet against the inside of Noel’s thigh, but instead slipped a sizeable chunk of ice under the opening of Noel’s y-fronts. The resounding cry was so furiously shrill, it’s said to hang over Camden Market to this day, lodged between the stale radio waves of 1990’s grunge and a permanent layer of smoke.
Noel knew that this time he’d have to do most of the looking after, but it would be worth the exponential burst of energy Julian seemed to hold in reserve especially for knocking Noel through the doorway and onto the floor.
“Yeah. I definitely do.”
Noel brought his face close to Julian’s, parted lips brushing against saliva and skin. His lip snagged against a rough patch on Julian’s, locking them together.
In the front seat, a man cleared his throat.
Noel leaned forward, taken by surprise and pushed into defense mode. He caught a partial of his reflection in the mirror and the driver’s steely glance. He cleared his own throat and mustered some startled nerve.
“Something wrong?”
Noel stiffened to make his reflection look bigger.
“I- ”
The driver was young; probably younger than Noel, wearing a weathered jean jacket with innumerable patches on the shoulder. Now caught in an inescapably awkward situation, his eyes not on the road but locked with the blues blazing back at him in the rearview. He took in Julian’s slumping frame once more and steadied his intended question.
“I was wondering.” He cleared his throat again, “I was wondering if you were them blokes with the show.”
The cab hit another pot hole and the worn bearings grinded.
“What show, mate?” Julian suddenly came to life, jostling Noel off his chest.
Noel put his fingers up to his face in anticipation of chewing his nails.
He knew Julian wasn’t argumentative by nature but put up a nerve-wrackingly pugnacious front.
“You know- The show with all the crazy shit. The merman and the gorilla and the green one that tells everyone to slag off that reminds me of my uncle. ... It’s funny.”
Julian’s posture softened a little. He ran his hand through his hair without breaking second-hand eye contact in the mirror.
“You like that show, yeah?”
“Oh yeah. I mean... You gotta know you look just like those two guys, you two. ...Right?”
“You know what, mate...”
Julian lay back against the leather and repositioned his arm around Noel’s shoulders, tighter than before.
“...Our lives have been nothing but misery since that show came on air.”
Noel took a chunk out of his cuticles.
Julian seemed to be genuinely smiling.
“Oh yeah?” The cabbie poked at a dashboard gauge as he spoke.
“Yeah. Nobody ever said I looked like nothing until everyone started watching all that. Now it’s all I hear. This one too.”
Julian motioned down to Noel.
“It’s all he gets, when we’re out. Like some sort of celebrity.”
Julian absent mindedly drummed his fingers on Noel’s thigh.
“Yeah! I guess, because I mean- I thought- ”
“You wouldn’t be the first, you really wouldn’t. I mean, he works in a shop on the high street. Gets stopped all of the time. It’s hilarious. The nose, I guess.”
Noel wasn’t sure if he should chime in or let Julian continue talking about him in third person. He was both shocked and surprisingly turned on by the tangible conviction Julian showed playing fast and loose with their identities. This was definitely a new game, but it automatically became Noel’s new favourite.
Julian shut his eyes for a moment to regroup, and then dug back in.
“I don’t get any guff from the boys at work, but all his friends tell me to drop the moustache. Maybe we’d get some peace then, eh?"
“It’d best be you, because I’m not going to dye my hair again.”
Noel grabbed ahold of Julian’s hand draped over his shoulder.
Their performance was bordering on turning them into a tidy household, but as the campy image swirled around the ether of the cab they knew they’d gone too far to reel it back in.
Julian was already the consummate bear, a bricklayer in flannel. Noel was tickled he’d been put in his rightful fictional place, a fictional maverick of fictional fashion. Utterly fabricated, but with a familiar taste of domesticity. Suddenly, they were living in a loft with a cat. They were a Soho George & Mildred.
“Well, we just won’t go out on Saturday nights for a while. Have a stay in for the next bit 'til everything dies down. No one’ll be into that shite for long. It’s all nonsense anyway.”
They’d spent their mutual lives in made up places. This was just a more vanilla version. Escapism with a regular teatime and blue China urn by the front door in Blackpool.
They watched each other loving each other loving the lie.
The cabbie’s head was ticking as loudly as the meter, eyeing them back and forth at each stoplight.
“This is your stop coming up, yeah?”
“Definitely.” Even through all of his bluster, Julian sounded relieved.
“I shouldn’t have said nothing. Sorry if I said sommat, because you seem alright and I shouldn’t have-“
“S’alright. Like he said. Happens all the time.” Noel bared all of his teeth in a closing argument smile.
They couldn’t have thrown money into an outstretched tattooed hand faster.
Noel took one long legged stride onto the concrete stoop, spinning around to meet his partner in crime eye-to-eye. He rest his wrist on Julian’s shoulders and leaned in until he could feel the tip of his nose brush Julian’s ear.
“Just two old poofs in a Dalston flat.”
Julian beamed, giving a quick glassy eyed glance down the empty street before resting a hand on Noel’s hip.
“You loved it. You’re a natural.” Julian slobbered into Noel’s ear. He repositioned his palm under the back of Noel’s coat, causing Noel to shiver.
“Where did that come from inside of your lager brain? Is that really us like that in your head?”
“No. In my head, I’m a carpenter. You’re a barmaid. It’s much more elaborate and medieval. We’re a bit of a couple about town in the village, but own a piece of land in-"
Noel subdued Julian’s rambling with a sloppy kiss of appreciation and a squeeze around the neck.
“A bit of a couple about town, eh?” he chirped, placing his thumbs under Julian’s suspenders.
Noel walked backwards towards the entrance, leading Julian with a tug and a cautionary nip at his cheek.
“A bit of a couple about town.”
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-02-26 01:33 pm (UTC)It was very original and believable and I hope you write more!
(Feel like I should point out that there are a couple of teeny britpicky things though, i.e Dalston not Dorston, notes instead of bills for money etc)
no subject
Date: 2011-02-26 08:18 pm (UTC)Quality feedback though! I never thought I'd spend so much time writing about the interior of a cab, but I think hazy is the best word to describe the atmosphere. Cheers!
no subject
Date: 2011-02-26 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-26 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-26 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-26 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-27 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-27 08:08 am (UTC)That's a great honour to bestow up on me.
I also think belligerent Julian is the best type of Julian, next to drunken amorous Julian. Cheers!
no subject
Date: 2011-02-27 07:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-27 08:10 am (UTC)That comment. Unf. In less than 15 words, you've made my day.
I was worried it would get steamy & no one would care about the dialogue with the cabbie, but I think it serves it's purpose.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-27 09:33 am (UTC)Oh no, as deliciously decadent as all the 'steamy' was (seriously... rowr.), it was so so beautiful to see them both imagining themselves together in another life, so to speak. Made it seem all genuine, not just part of their humour.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-27 09:54 pm (UTC)What a gorgeous, delicious line.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-27 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-28 06:33 am (UTC)You just have the most beautiful details - the way you talk about julian's eyes and the story about the tailor and lying to the cabbie god I am your biggest fangirl from here on out - this is my favorite thing you've written!
I want to marry this fic.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-01 04:57 am (UTC)I'm THRILLED you liked the part with the carpenter/barmaid scenario; it was a whirlwind ending I just threw together, trying to catch what a smart-assed Julian would say on a street corner at 3 AM XD
Thanks SO much! This means a lot, especially to be told that you have a fangirl! Trust me; I'm your biggest fangirl!
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 10:11 am (UTC)AAAAAH!
Them pretending to be lookalikes! :D
And the whole "they are a couple but they're not but they are" thing! So good! :D
no subject
Date: 2011-03-05 11:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-27 07:24 am (UTC)-glitter
no subject
Date: 2012-08-13 02:42 am (UTC)