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stowawayPairing: Noel Fielding/Julian Barratt
Word Count: approx. 35k (currently 31k and counting)
Rating: M/R overall, this chapter G
Warnings: for language, one sex scene, and utterly blatant crackfic.
Summary: Julian's a time-traveller, and Noel Fielding has known him his entire life.
Disclaimer: Noel and Julian belong to themselves; I just like to make them kiss every five years or so.
Mirrors: AO3
June, 1986: Julian is 18
--
Julian reads the equation on the page in front of him a second time, then a third, before finally letting his head hang with a sigh. His eyelids are growing heavier by the minute, threatening to leave him face-first in yet another textbook. He lets them droop closed now, pressing against them tightly with the heels of his palms. His temples are pounding. He finds himself wishing audibly, so fervently it could be a prayer, that this is just a headache and not another impending trip – and he refuses to think of it as slipping. Those two tiny letters, turning passivity into agency, are all that stands between him and the whims of a bitter teenage girl.
He’s travelled every night this week and last. His head swims constantly with what he’s been able to piece together from the pages of his grandfather’s great-grandfather’s diary, read and re-read between the endless hours of revision for his final exams.
He lifts his head slowly, unable to help a glance to his right where the dusty-leaved book rests. Over the past two years, he’s scoured every inch of it. He’s made notes and more notes, and has taken advantage of the past three weeks’ unrestricted access to his school’s library facilities to search as many old, moldering histories as he can.
He still has no idea what the curse actually means.
Without thinking, he draws the book closer, thumbing to a passage now seared into his memory: I curse you, Barnabas, first-born of Thomas. Let you and your son, and every first-born son to come, remember this day, until this day shall come again.
The first part is easy; it’s the final six words that are driving him ever more mad. At first he tried reasoning it through, the way his English teacher has taught him to analyse riddles and essay questions. The obvious answer would be a literal repetition, a slip back to the day of Lovina’s curse, but as far as he can tell from the scribblings in the diary, Barnabas never went back to that day and all his other ancestors only ever travelled to points in their own lifetimes, to places that involved them or their families. His father and grandfather, when Julian felt brave enough to bring up this ridiculous inheritance, both said the same was true for them. Julian has a strong suspicion he’s not going to be the one to suddenly break that pattern. He’s not remarkable; his gifts are maths and music, not crusading in time like some real-life Doctor Who.
He’s tried numbers, too, but they make any sense either. There have been 8300 Wednesdays since 1827 and twenty-three of those have been on April 4th. It can’t just be the day, or the date. There has to be something else, some key to breaking both riddle and curse. His eyes run over those words again.
“I don’t know what you mean!” he groans at the diary, frustration and exhaustion rushing through his body.
“You right, Jules?”
His dad. He lets the book drop back onto his desk, pushing it surreptitiously under a sheaf of papers as he turns toward the doorway. “Aye. Just maths.”
“Owt I can do?”
“No. No,” he repeats, sighing. “Thanks dad. I’m just - I’m so tired. These exams. This...”
“It’ll pass,” his dad replies, no need to hear the rest of the sentence.
“So you and pop keep telling me.”
“And just see if we’re wrong.” His dad steps into the dimly lit room and leans over to ruffle Julian’s hair, the way he used to do when Julian was young and couldn’t sleep, before time travel or curses had ever entered his vocabulary. “Put this away for now, eh?” he says, gesturing to the spill of crumpled paper, highlighters, and textbooks littering the desk. “It’ll do you no good to wear yourself out. And in any case, there’s more to life than A levels.”
“Should you be saying that?” Julian asks, squinting askance, and his dad laughs like it’s summer, tapping the side of his nose with his finger.
“I won’t tell if you won’t. Come on now. Off with you.”
“A’right, dad. Goodnight.”
“’Night Jules.”
Once he’s gone, Julian extracts the diary from under his maths revision notes. He shuffles the papers into a semblance of order, stacks them on top of the three heavy textbooks he’s been lugging about for the past two days, and finally lets himself flop back onto his bed. The diary falls just beyond his fingertips up near his pillow. Julian falls asleep within seconds.
For the first night in a fortnight, he doesn’t travel anywhere.
Word Count: approx. 35k (currently 31k and counting)
Rating: M/R overall, this chapter G
Warnings: for language, one sex scene, and utterly blatant crackfic.
Summary: Julian's a time-traveller, and Noel Fielding has known him his entire life.
Disclaimer: Noel and Julian belong to themselves; I just like to make them kiss every five years or so.
Mirrors: AO3
--
Point A lies on the curve C, expressed by the function f(x) = x2(9-2x). Solve for A.
Julian reads the equation on the page in front of him a second time, then a third, before finally letting his head hang with a sigh. His eyelids are growing heavier by the minute, threatening to leave him face-first in yet another textbook. He lets them droop closed now, pressing against them tightly with the heels of his palms. His temples are pounding. He finds himself wishing audibly, so fervently it could be a prayer, that this is just a headache and not another impending trip – and he refuses to think of it as slipping. Those two tiny letters, turning passivity into agency, are all that stands between him and the whims of a bitter teenage girl.
He’s travelled every night this week and last. His head swims constantly with what he’s been able to piece together from the pages of his grandfather’s great-grandfather’s diary, read and re-read between the endless hours of revision for his final exams.
A curse sets out through six generations on a Wednesday. Assume time is the spiral f(x) = ln(x) and that the curse follows the regular pattern, [r(t) = lnt]. Solve for x, where x equals the root of the curse.
He lifts his head slowly, unable to help a glance to his right where the dusty-leaved book rests. Over the past two years, he’s scoured every inch of it. He’s made notes and more notes, and has taken advantage of the past three weeks’ unrestricted access to his school’s library facilities to search as many old, moldering histories as he can.
He still has no idea what the curse actually means.
Without thinking, he draws the book closer, thumbing to a passage now seared into his memory: I curse you, Barnabas, first-born of Thomas. Let you and your son, and every first-born son to come, remember this day, until this day shall come again.
The first part is easy; it’s the final six words that are driving him ever more mad. At first he tried reasoning it through, the way his English teacher has taught him to analyse riddles and essay questions. The obvious answer would be a literal repetition, a slip back to the day of Lovina’s curse, but as far as he can tell from the scribblings in the diary, Barnabas never went back to that day and all his other ancestors only ever travelled to points in their own lifetimes, to places that involved them or their families. His father and grandfather, when Julian felt brave enough to bring up this ridiculous inheritance, both said the same was true for them. Julian has a strong suspicion he’s not going to be the one to suddenly break that pattern. He’s not remarkable; his gifts are maths and music, not crusading in time like some real-life Doctor Who.
He’s tried numbers, too, but they make any sense either. There have been 8300 Wednesdays since 1827 and twenty-three of those have been on April 4th. It can’t just be the day, or the date. There has to be something else, some key to breaking both riddle and curse. His eyes run over those words again.
“I don’t know what you mean!” he groans at the diary, frustration and exhaustion rushing through his body.
“You right, Jules?”
His dad. He lets the book drop back onto his desk, pushing it surreptitiously under a sheaf of papers as he turns toward the doorway. “Aye. Just maths.”
“Owt I can do?”
“No. No,” he repeats, sighing. “Thanks dad. I’m just - I’m so tired. These exams. This...”
“It’ll pass,” his dad replies, no need to hear the rest of the sentence.
“So you and pop keep telling me.”
“And just see if we’re wrong.” His dad steps into the dimly lit room and leans over to ruffle Julian’s hair, the way he used to do when Julian was young and couldn’t sleep, before time travel or curses had ever entered his vocabulary. “Put this away for now, eh?” he says, gesturing to the spill of crumpled paper, highlighters, and textbooks littering the desk. “It’ll do you no good to wear yourself out. And in any case, there’s more to life than A levels.”
“Should you be saying that?” Julian asks, squinting askance, and his dad laughs like it’s summer, tapping the side of his nose with his finger.
“I won’t tell if you won’t. Come on now. Off with you.”
“A’right, dad. Goodnight.”
“’Night Jules.”
Once he’s gone, Julian extracts the diary from under his maths revision notes. He shuffles the papers into a semblance of order, stacks them on top of the three heavy textbooks he’s been lugging about for the past two days, and finally lets himself flop back onto his bed. The diary falls just beyond his fingertips up near his pillow. Julian falls asleep within seconds.
For the first night in a fortnight, he doesn’t travel anywhere.