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This is the thing about Julian. He's normal. He's a normal bloke - that's his thing. The only abnormal thing about him stands about 5'9 in high heeled silver boots and clings to his arm in public while cackling loudly about ponchos. The only abnormal, special thing about him. That's how it is, Julian is only special by association.
Julia is beautiful, and a grown up, and she makes him laugh. When they meet he says "Hello, I'm Julian," and she replies that she is as well, almost. She doesn't cling, doesn't cackle, and standing next to her Julian feels like every idea that he had as a young man of who he'd be and what his life would look like have come true. He feels entirely comfortable, almost entirely normal, and special only in the every-day, boring, amazing way that everyone else is.
Noel, he knows, does not know quite how to handle it. It amuses Julian, actually, the way Julia intimidates Noel, the way he so obviously wants to impress her, the stilted conversations and awkward silences. Julian finds it oddly soothing, in a way he can't ever bring himself to mention to either of them. He doesn't go out of his way to break the silence.
So when he sees pictures, endless pictures, of Noel under the arm of Russell Brand, cackling and clinging and the both of them actually wearing a set of matching fucking ponchos, all he can really do is laugh and decide that karma is an ugly bitch. He imagines the two of them sleeping together, and it doesn't hurt as much as unexpectedly seeing, for the first time, the ads for their supposedly one off stand up show the next time he's in town. He feels rather irrationally as if Noel should have asked his permission first. He sends petulant text messages. You might have bloody told me. Twat.
He snaps at Julia when she suggests they watch it. When Noel, a bundle of excitement and anxiety that Julian likes to think no one else would be able to pick up on, asks him what he thought of it he lies and says it was brilliant, that he laughed so loud it woke the boys up, that he's sorry for being such a grumpy bastard lately. He blames it on the sleep deprivation. He says to pass on his congratulations to Russell. He's sure that he delivers these lines perfectly, but Noel still shoots him a look that's a little confused, a little lost.
They let it go. They let it all go.
They go away together for a weekend, rent a cottage in the arse end of absolutely nowhere, ostensibly to write and re-connect and write, and Julian feels absurdly guilty about... about fucking everything. He texts Julia - I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. He feels like a wanky melodramatic tit.
Noel's late, so Julian crawls into the only bedroom's overlarge bed and tries not to feel stood up. Tries not to send any more ridiculous messages - you are coming, aren't you? He's exhausted, and he's sure that if Noel actually shows up they won't be sleeping much, so he lets himself drift off now. They rented a place with only one bedroom, because that's how they always used to write back when the spark was still so hot it burned Julian, blinded him to look at. They wrote in bed together, in Noel's shitty student flat that he took far too long to outgrow, surrounded by paintings that were ominous in the dark and ridiculous in the day, on bed sheets that were at once faded and too bright. They didn't have sex. They barely touched. They wrote that awkwardness into the world they were creating, their own private world that was so personal, so much about them and the things they couldn't speak about even with each other in that too-small too-big bed, that showing other people, when they did, felt like inviting an audience full of strangers in to watch you have open heart surgery.
In bed in the strange one-room cottage that they're renting, Julian dreams that Noel is next to him, blue-black hair and skinny wrists and high heels that he doesn't take off even in bed. Smelling, still, after all these years, of paint and cheep beer and Julian's after shave. But that's the way dreams go, isn't it? It's all nostalgia, things that don't really exist any more. Your brain fulfilling wishes you never knew you had.
"I'm sleeping with Russell Brand," Noel says, and Julian smiles sleepily.
"I know." I'm sleeping with Julia, he wants to say. Sometimes.
He feels Noel's fingers, his bitten, painted nails on his face. In his hair, in the overgrown stubble of his beard. He tries not to think about what it will be like to wake up from this dream and find that Noel's not really here with him. He thinks about the sheaf of cheap lined paper packed in his suitcase, the brightly coloured box of biros, and feels so stupid and embarrassed that it hurts.
"You're freaking out, you grumpy old sod, aren't you?"
"No."
"Ju, I can hear it." There's laughter in Noel's voice, and it's hurtful and infectious all at once. "Is it Russell?"
"No."
"Liar."
Julian sighs, and doesn't open his eyes. "Why is it all so complicated?"
"It's not. Sex never is."
It's not about the sex, Julian wants to say. But he thinks that might not quite be true, even though it is true. It hurts his mind to think about it. Noel touches his forehead as if he knows. "This thing with you and me," Noel says. "It's the most complicated thing I've ever known. If we were having sex it would be simple and normal and boring. But I kind of like that it's not. Don't you?"
They're never this honest with each other outside of dreams. It's a little bit bittersweet. "I love you," Julian sighs, because it's a dream and so he can, he doesn't have to define things properly or cling to a sense of normality that, when waking, he feels sure he'd drown without.
"I hope you've brought your guitar," Noel says, and his breath is warm against Julian's face. "Because I've had the most wicked idea for a crimp on the journey up."
Julian laughs.