26 Fics in 26 Minutes

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A story for a song by a band starting with every letter of the alphabet. Ranging from angst to fluff to humour to porn to general whimsy. Encompassing Boosh, RPS, Nathan Barley, Robots in Disguise, and Asylum, and probably a few other things too.

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Ant and Dec – Let’s Get Ready to Rhumble

Contents

Ant and Dec – Let’s Get Ready to Rhumble

It’s there, right there. He remembers hearing a routine once about how you could feel an argument coming–”There’s a row in the room, get out of the room!” – but you couldn’t avoid it, and this is it. It’s in the way Noel sighs like a teenager every time he asks him to do anything, even small things. Move your ashtray off my paper. Take that cup out to the kitchen. Turn that down, it’s half ten. A great big sigh, a rolling of the eyes, and then he does it, stomping about and banging everything as loud as possible.

It’s a crackle in the air, the feeling of a storm about to break, just everything tense and strained and at breaking point. He finds himself wandering around the house moving things, waiting for Noel to come back. Doing things he knows will piss him off. Hiding the remote right down the back of the sofa. Putting his favourite mug in the saucepan cupboard where he won’t look for it. Deleting the presets on the radio. It’s childish, and while he’s doing it he can sort of feel himself watching himself, a higher level of his brain standing by with its arms folded, shaking its head. He justifies it by deciding that he needs to get the row over before it builds up any bigger, that they need to row about the radio or the washing up so that they don’t row over something more life-shattering.

But it’s sort of fun now. It’s like a test – how well do you know your boyfriend? You think? Okay, give me ten ways to piss him off, right now.

Julian puts the top back on the toothpaste, screwing it on as tight as possible. Noel has weak and weedy little fingers, especially first thing in the morning.

He moves to the bedroom, bundles up Noel’s old magazines and throws them in the bin. Picks his old T-shirts up off the floor and puts them away neatly, but folds them rather than hanging them up, sharp creases slicing through the painted designs.

The kitchen – this is the part where he starts to worry about his own sanity. He makes toast, and then, using a knife, scrapes as many crumbs as possible into the margarine tub, and stirs it about. Then he wipes the knife off on the inside of Noel’s Marmite jar.

Maybe he could unpick some of the stitching on Noel’s jacket, so the arms will fall off as soon as he reaches up for something. Maybe he could mix peroxide into his shampoo. Or reset the Sky+ so that it stops recording VH1: Behind the Music and starts taping Two Men in a Trench instead.

Mercifully, he hears the front door slam before he can go too far, and Noel clomping up the stairs, huffing and puffing away, muttering to himself moodily. He sits on the sofa, puts his feet up on the coffee table (shoes, Julian, shoes!) and just waits.