Pelham Street
Category: Real Person Fic
Characters: Julian Barratt, Noel Fielding
Pairing: Noel Fielding/Julian Barratt
Genre: Romance
Rating: PG-13
Status: Complete
Length: <1k words
Pelham Street by spiderweb_kiss
“This isn’t fucking Sweet anymore, Ju. We’re not sitting on a r… a rainbow bedsheet with a bottle-with Jack Daniels!”
Too true, I think, and the cigarette shakes.
“What do you mean? I’m not asking for it to be like that—”
I’m not. I tremble and try to pretend it’s cold.
“What are you asking, then?” Noel’s voice is hard.
I collapse a bit. “I’m asking for you to admit it! I want you to admit it to yourself.”
“You’re talking in riddles, mate, you’ve gone wrong! Admit what?”
There is silence. Noel is too afraid to say it out loud; I am too. Unlike him, though, it’s not because I’m ashamed. Words are coarse and crude compared to what sex really is to me, especially sex with him. “Admit that you’re fucking me.” I say, finally. ‘Making love’ sounds stupid: Noel would run a mile if I said that.
The photographer we were with is long gone, leaving us to have this conversation bent around the corner of Pelham Street (because that way the bricks can scratch our skin and we don’t have to look one another in the eye). I am tempted to peer around the corner to see if he’s run off. Skateboard wheels rumble from across the road. “Noel?”
“I’m not fucking you,” he says at last. ‘Fucking’ comes out like venom, like vodka.
“Yes you fucking well are—”
“It’s not fucking! I’m in—”
“Noel!” I gasp, and bite my mouth by accident and taste the copper tang of blood.
“I am, too!” He barks out a bitter laugh. “I am… Thought I just fancied you at first. Being stuck with you all the time, was bound to happen, innit? Best friends fancy each other all the time. Still went and had a right fit about it, though, didn’t I? Then you go and snog me and confuse me ‘n all that—”
“You don’t have to say all this—”
“Yeah, yeah I fucking do! You go and make me feel like this and now you’re saying shut yer noise, Noel, before you go and ruin a good thing—”
I whip around the corner and pin Noel to his wall. He refuses to look at me, his mouth set in a hard line so different to his usual grin. “When we filmed Sweet I watched every scene you did,” I say. It’s true. I’d watched him writhe by himself on the sheets and slip his hands under the covers, I’d watched his naked hips move with that vulgar, beautiful grace. His eyes meet mine for the first time in hours and a brazen blue flame burns in them. It takes balls of steel to let someone film you fucking midair.
“Got you off, did it?” He snaps.
“Yes.”
“Pervert.”
“I took the rainbow sheets. I thought if I had those, I could sleep at night, pretending you were in my bed.”
Noel glares some more. “You could have said something, ‘stead of letting me fuck off back to my own room every night.”
“I thought you’d laugh.” I thought you’d say no.
I watch with silent fascination as his wrists flex against my hands; I release him and step back a bit. He pulls me into a kiss, backing us up against scratchy red brick and sharing the taste of smoke with me.
“Do you think he knew, when he cast us in those parts? For Sweet?”
“Knew what?” I ask, nonplussed.
“Knew we really were… Sleeping together?”
He didn’t say ‘making love’, I think to myself. But it’s better than ‘fucking’, better than something dirty and crude that only lasts a while. What’s more, we’re leant up against a brick wall and his t-shirt is probably filthy… and he hasn’t even complained yet. It must be love.
