Archive of Our Own

“Oh, oh,” she moans, pulsing around him. He almost misses that the next word out of her mouth is, “John.”

He feels the breath of his own surprised laugh caught between his mouth and her neck when he mutters into her skin, “M’Paul.”

“I know who you are,” she says back, her voice trembling with the exertion but completely lacking any sentimentality, “I like him better, but Suki got to him first.” 

Paul laughs again from the back of his throat as something hot shoots through his stomach that has him feeling extremely close and much less checked out than he’d been a minute ago.  

It’s several strange and filthy things all twisted together and coursing between his legs like branches of a lightning bolt that he isn’t exactly coherent enough to identify directly. A jolt behind his sternum at this connection he shares with her now that he knows they were thinking of the same thing, which he finds romantic in a perverse sort of way. It gives him something to click onto. He’s also intrigued and excited by any bird who knows herself well enough to shrug him off and be a little bit bitchy. It has him speeding up his rhythm and gritting his teeth. 

She gasps at the newfound intensity, grabbing onto his arm, and he tips his neck to whisper into her ear, “John.” 

It makes her moan and lift her lovely wide hips up to him, so he does it again, his voice hoarse and his sweaty fringe dampening the side of her face. This time she bites her lip and makes a sound like a sob, her hands finding his hair and pulling. She tosses her head back and is almost weeping out, “John, John, John.” 

He shifts to be able to keep whispering it in her ear, John’s name over and over. The syllable in his mouth tastes different now, a meal he’s had his whole life brightened anew by the right pairing of alcohol. Textures and flavors he hadn’t known were there sparkling across his tastebuds. 

“John,” he says again and again, and she sinks her teeth into his shoulder.

The new angle, too, has him deeper, and he realizes this is about to end before he’s ready. It feels delicious and insane and hedonistic to fuck a bird while they fantasize they’re fucking the same bloke. Like some sort of Greek myth about how an ancient natural phenomenon was created like a volcano or something. Scorched for ten thousand years. 

“John,” she whines, “Take me, John, take me.” 

He moves his head down to her chest, focusing on figuring out where she likes his tongue and slowing his hips to try to hold himself off. He wants to see how long he can make this last, hearing John’s name in a moment like this, which inevitably conjures John’s image, wretched and wanting, but having no reason to feel any regret about it. He’s just showing the lady a good time. 

She slams her clenched fists against the mattress, eyes squeezed shut, and cries, “Fuck! Fuck, John, fuck!” 

Out of air, he pulls up his head to catch his breath, and she takes advantage of this to flip him over onto his back grumbling, “Have to do everything myself around here,” and rides him until his toes curl. She is dead gorgeous, narrow eyes gleam in the lamplight, cheekbones like marble, and bobbed hair that bounces with her. 

It’s a pity, then, that he can’t stop imagining John, straddled in his lap. He can’t decide if he’d rather take him like this or be driven into the mattress, flickering back and forth between the possibilities on the back of his eyelids like changing film.

He’s found that if his mind lingers on any one image for too long, John’s mouth on him, John inside him, John taking his fingers, that the image threatens to become a memory, and if it becomes a memory, he might forget that it didn’t actually happen, and if he forgets that it didn’t actually happen, he might do what he has to fight the temptation to do every night and crawl into bed alongside him. He might lean across the space between them, only wide enough for their guitars, and kiss him. He might reach for his hand when nobody’s looking. 

“Oh, John, touch me,” her voice from above momentarily breaks him from the picture of John tipping his head back in pleasure, exposing his throat and swallowing hard, and Paul reaches between them. It makes her hips stammer for a moment and she hisses out John’s name, but then she’s grinding down faster, they’re both breathlessly gasping for John in a way that feels like steam between them. 

Just when he thinks he’s about to be done, she pauses abruptly and looks down at him, considering, bottom lip pulled between her teeth. If she doesn’t make up her mind soon he might have to push himself into that mouth, but before he can, she’s pulling off with no warning and he’s left reaching for her like ocean through his fingers. Like a note fading out into a darkened studio, which is odd because he usually doesn’t hear music when he’s in bed with birds. That part of his mind usually goes away. The only time it ever does.

“Wha-what?” his voice is in the rafters, but mercifully, she sinks back down onto him, backwards this time. Her spine curves, a chain of pearls, and he thinks it might be nice to lick the knobs of her vertebrae though he can’t sort out the angle to do so, grabbing handfuls of her plushness where she pushes back on his hipbones. When she starts moving, they both groan out, “John!” at the same time. 

This works for a while, her nails in his upper thighs, but soon he can feel her buckling with the strain of holding herself up and pats her side instructively. Melting back into the pillow, she throws one arm over her eyes and her other hand grabs his right wrist, which he can always make work, directing his fingers as he gets them going again. He watches as her breath gets shuddery and her attempts at John’s name become nothing more than movements of her lips. 

“God,” Paul hears himself murmur, picking up the pace as his own resolve finally crumples, “Johnny, Johnny.” 

With lazy fluidity, she moves the hand from her face to rub Paul’s chest through it as he breathlessly asks, “In or out?”

“Out,” she says, suddenly sounding totally unaffected, “I don’t have time to get rid of whatever you’d give me.” 

He laughs at that, too, because it’s funny, but it’s all high and airy, and he pulls himself out with one final gasp of John’s name. When he falls to her side, head on her shoulder, she casually pats his hair like he’s a cat and says rather curtly, “There there, go and get us cleaned up.”

Mystified, he finds himself on his feet before his legs have stopped shaking or he’s caught his breath. The hot water over the cloth turns his hands red but still can’t bring him all the way back to his body. 

When he returns with the damp cloth, she’s leaned against the headboard with an ankle crossed over the other knee, pilfering a cigarette from Paul’s bedside table, lighting it without even looking at him.

Maybe it’s the dim light or he’s losing his mind, but she looks an awful lot like John. 

“Planning on making yourself useful or just going to stand there gaping?” she asks, still not bothering to look his way.

“Right,” he moves across the carpet and cleans them both up, then sits on the edge of the bed to take her in, trying to remember how to collect air with his lungs. She blows a few clouds from her cigarette into the room, watching them and not him.

When she finally turns to him she looks almost startled and affronted that he’s looking, like she’s almost forgotten he was there, “What?!”

“Can I see you again?” Paul asks, his own voice sounding scratchy and pleading. He always gets that way about the birds that aren’t that way about him, and he isn’t sure how to stop. 

She curls her lip just like John and goes, “No?”

With a burning flush, he feels his face fall, and her eyes shift back and forth from him to the city out the hotel window. Vancouver, he thinks, before his brain supplies Toronto.

“I live here and you don’t,” she says slowly, a mocking imitation of something like explaining the truth about Father Christmas to a child. 

“Could fly you out, you know,” Paul says, “Fly you out to see me.”

She snorts, “Or I could just turn on the television,” and stands up and starts getting dressed, cigarette dangling between her lips. 

“Well,” Paul tips his head, going for flirtatious, but he feels two steps behind so it comes out half-hearted, “Not quite the same, is it?”

“No, it’s not,” she fixes her hair in the mirror and says around the cigarette, “I prefer it when I can turn the sound down.” 

He’s too gobsmacked to reply, so he watches her more as she gathers her pocketbook and just calls an ambivalent “Toodleloo!” over her shoulder before heading out, the door clicking shut behind her. 

Paul blinks in the suddenness of her absence. Sat on the side of the bed with his mouth ajar, it takes him a long time to put on his pajamas and lie back on his bed, looking at the ceiling in a stunned sort of whiplash. It’s fucked, he thinks, really fucked. 

In occurs to him that he could go after her. That he probably won’t find her, but he’ll never get to do that again if he doesn’t try. Never get to finish with John’s name on his lips, not just on his mind. He reaches for his pack of smokes instead of going after her, only to find that she’d taken the last one.

He doesn’t even remember her name. Hers hadn’t been the name that mattered.

At breakfast, Paul is aware that he is chewing but he couldn’t say what he’s eating. Ringo tends to be an early riser, and given his appearance and the fact that there was no sound of the bedroom door, George had been gone all night, so John’s the last one up. The anticipation of seeing John, Paul knows, is worse than it’ll actually be. It is not as though seeing John after last night will be starkly different from any other night, thinking of John no matter whose hands are on him. Certainly putting a voice to it, in whatever roundabout way, can’t mean as much as all the years. And years. But the waiting has him wondering if John’ll be able to look at his face and hear it, the way they can hear melodies in each other’s heads before they finish humming them, now that it’s left his lips.

Of course, when John appears, frumpled and sleepy-eyed behind his glasses, yawning like it isn’t quarter to ten and they've got nowhere to be, Paul’s heart loses its nervous wings and starts to calm down. The kettle after it’s taken off the heat. John only ever manages to make him anxious when he’s alongside an idea Paul made up by mistake. Never when he’s really there. 

“Someone had a time last night,” Ringo says, chewing around a piece of toast and giving John a smug look.

“Hmm?” John’s scratching the back of his hair, his dressing gown hanging open over his t-shirt and flannels. 

“That bird wouldn’t stop hollering your name,” Ringo explains. Under his breath, Paul curses thin hotel walls.

“Oh, her? Must’ve misheard. She gave me one, and when I tried to return the favor all gentleman-like, she got shy,” John tells them, pulling up his chair and examining the table, “Kicked her out by midnight and had me first full night’s sleep in months.” 

Ringo looks confused, George suspiciously pours more tea, and Paul just watches helplessly as John butters his toast. When he glances up to find the three of them staring, he says, “You should try it sometime, sleep. Does wonders.” 

Paul feels like he’s crawling out of his skin on the plane. He restlessly paces the aisles and can’t stop whistling. Hovering over Ringo where he’s got his feet up reading the paper, Paul raps his fingers on the back of the seat. He’s itching for a cigarette or something as he starts undoing his tie. 

“Might be time to switch to decaf, son,” Ringo says, “Have yourself a decafternoon.”

With a burst of too-loud laughter, Paul goes to sit at the window a few rows down. He lets a huff out of his nose, and goes for his buttons, tugging off his dress shirt until he’s just in his t-shirt, and dropping back with a sigh. A few minutes later, John finds the seat next to him, sides pressed together as always. When he doesn’t look over at him, John tiptoes his fingers up his arm, sending something loose and fluttering in Paul’s chest.

Paul tips his head to watch John’s hand and tries to make himself feel the practical way he feels when girls touch him, thinking through the next steps between now and getting to bed matter-of-factly, but his head just trills with notes, his breath caught in his lungs. When John reaches the bend of his arm, he stops, alternating between scruffing his fingers in the hair there and pressing his finger tips down one at a time like he’s playing piano, his thumb finding a pressure point on the dip behind Paul’s elbow. John crosses one leg over the other and scoots his body somehow closer and says, “What are you thinking about, Paulie?” 

He doesn’t dare open his mouth because he doesn’t trust himself not to say what’s actually on the tip of his tongue after last night. He bites his lip and raises his eyebrows, letting his eyes skitter towards the top of the cabin before finding John’s again and pulling a face. John makes the face right back and then settles contentedly with his chin on Paul’s shoulder.

Before the second show in Montreal, Paul takes a French-speaking bird to the dressing room with him who looks enough like Juliette Gréco that he can imagine he’s in a moody film noir, and when he collapses next to her on the sofa, he doesn’t realize he’s done it again until she says in her thick accent, “It’s pronounced Joanie.”

With all the crap that took place in Canada, the idea of a few unexpected days off in Florida would be a welcome reprieve if it weren’t for how unsettled Paul’s been. It’s a bumpy, pitch black ride, and the air outside the Key West motel is balmy and damp in the buggy darkness, but the whip of borrowed wind from the Jacksonville hurricane keeps the palm leaves bent at an ominous angle, silhouetted starkly in the fuzzy light from the street lamps. 

Paul falls asleep within seconds of getting under the duvet and doesn’t wake up until early in the afternoon to the sound of scattering thunder and zipping wind. 

The sky outside his window looks an odd teal color that doesn’t match the heavy clouds. He isn’t surprised to see the others awake in the stuffy kitchen, John already pouring something directly into his orange juice. He reads off the carton in a terrible accent that sounds more like Texas, promising to squeeze your citrus nice and fresh, hand plucked right out of the tree. Paul laughs and laughs at him and rubs the sleep from his eyes. 

It’s too dreary today to enjoy the pool, but they’ve been promised girls and a day off’s a day off, even though Paul still feels decidedly antsy. He lets John fill his glass with a generous pour, anyway.

The whole day is as coherent and choppy in his brain as the off-and-on rain outside. George finds a stack of vinyl, puts on Surfin’ Safari and Shut Down The Volume 2 repeatedly, and the girls come and go. If any of them are interested, Paul doesn’t notice because he and John are too busy trying to wedge nips of rum into a pineapple without spilling, which has proven to be a much more finicky process than they’d assumed. 

He doesn’t realize just how drunk he’s gotten until he’s trying to cut the pineapple with a blunt knife they found at the back of the tiny kitchen drawer and has to stop himself and stare at his hands for what feels like a good minute before he is sure he won’t cut off his thumb. 

The cheap record player makes Brian’s voice sound tinny telling them not to worry, baby for what seems like it must be the third or fourth time when Paul finally hands John the first drippy, misshapen slice. John bemoans, “Doesn’t taste of anything but pineapple.” 

Paul feels his brow furrow as George and Ringo come over to investigate the sour, sticky hash they’ve made of the coffee table. He hacks off another chunk for himself, the tartness stinging the sides of his tongue and sending drops down his arm and into a rolled up sleeve. “Huh,” he exclaims at the distinct lack of rum.

He cuts a piece for George, who chews the whole thing, one bite at a time and swallows without saying anything until it’s gone, and then he tells them, “You’re supposed to use watermelon.”

“Watermelon!” Paul says in unison with John, smacking his hand against his forehead, feeling the way his fringe sticks to the tacky pineapple juice on his palms. 

Upon receiving his piece, Ringo announces that he’s solved their problem for them before taking a bite and downing one of the miniature bottles, taking another bite and downing another bottle. 

It isn’t long after that when Ringo ends up being the first in the lav to go have a chat with the toilet bowl. Paul sends for cheeseburgers he doesn’t remember ordering when they reach their door.

By nightfall, Paul is sitting on the side of the tub, passing George water and burnt toast where he’s sat at the toilet bowl waiting to be sick. Paul’s got the bottle of whiskey at his feet and Don’t Worry, Baby is pouring through the doorway again. Ringo sings along badly. There’s a moment around the time when Brian is singing about how he probably should’ve kept his mouth shut when Paul thinks he might be sick, but John appears with a glass of water in one hand and a bottle of scotch in the other. 

“Still with us, Geo?” John asks passing George the water and bumping Paul until he slides further down the edge of the tub to make room. 

“Barely,” Paul answers for him. The rain outside has become something awful. A howl of wind, so loud it makes the whole motel feel like it’s going to creak apart and float away like driftwood, has Ringo running into the cramped lav, shutting the door behind him. 

“Windowless room,” he explains. 

“That’s tornadoes, you git.” John says adjusting his glasses. In this light, Paul can see the pineapple fingerprints on the lenses. 

“Storm’s a storm,” Ringo shrugs, crossing between them to perch on the sink, and Paul takes a sip from his bottle.

“Resident Hurricane expert, Little Richard Starship, everyone,” John sounds surprisingly perky, having been sick an hour back, he’s turned from the near belligerence he had been sporting when the weather first got bad to another wave of his happy buzz. Paul just feels slow blinking and a bit itchy. 

When Ringo stretches a hand out, Paul passes him the whiskey and sees the spot in the mirror where the back of Ringo’s head is reflected. He thinks how much time Ringo spends watching the backs of their heads and he makes him want to laugh. What comes out is a long, low snort that persists until Ringo hands him back the bottle. That’s when George is finally sick, and John says it’s his best work yet. 

“We’re in terrific shape, lads,” Ringo says, grabbing a hand towel from its hook by the sink and throwing it to George. The echoey clatter of the toilet lid closing makes them all jump, and John pretends to fall in the tub. With a sleepy sort of fluidity, Paul raises the bottle to Ringo’s declaration. John joins the gesture, his elbow landing on Paul’s thigh and suddenly all Paul can think about is the way his name felt in his mouth when he finished. He takes a too-long sip to hide his flush. 

“Bit like Hamburg, this,” George says, wiping his face on the towel and sitting on the toilet seat. 

“Well, with more meteorological events,” Paul says.

“You’re a meteorological event,” John giggles at his ear. Paul smacks his arm and John pretends to fall in the tub again.

“You’re all great, you know?” Ringo says.

“Don’t get soppy,” George insists. 

“No really,” Ringo goes on, “When you think about Hamburg and you think about now…” 

“You really are drunk,” Paul chuckles into the mouth of the whiskey bottle.

“He’s right, though,” John says, “At this rate, we’ll be famous someday.”

They all laugh. The room is incredibly small and increasingly dank, Paul just lets out a long sigh and feels himself go a bit lightheaded.

“Right, well, I’m turning in, fellas,” George says, pushing himself up to his feet. 

“What about the meteorological event?” Ringo asks, tilting his head in that lost puppy way he gets that first made Paul stop thinking he was too tough-looking to talk to. 

“I’ll take me chances with the fast air,” George opens the door and the only sounds from the other room are drizzles on glass and The Beach Boys fading out as they sing about wanting to shag their car or whatever. George pokes his head back in and says, “Rain’s done,” and then buggers off to his room.

Ringo just says, “Well then…” as he hops from the ledge of the sink. “Night lads,” he stops briefly to bump John’s shoulder with his fist just to watch him flail about like he’ll fall in the bath again, before heading to his. The emptying lav suddenly feels like it’s getting smaller and smaller.

Quicker than he should because it makes his head go spinning like the A-side winding down out in the other room, Paul bounds to his feet and lands on the toilet lid across from where John is on the tub, sat with their knees almost touching. The whiskey sloshes in the bottle he’s white knuckling and he feels like his insides are doing the same. He isn’t completely sure he won’t be sick, but the throbbing beat of his heart feels of more a pressing concern, so loud it can’t be possible for John not to be hearing it now that the chatter, the rain, and the music have all gone quieter around them.

“Skittish,” John observes flatly. 

Something is tuning up in his ribcage. 

“Honest, the tour must be making me barmy or something,” Paul says. The place where John had propped an elbow on his thigh still feels like it has its own pulse. 

“No more than the rest of us,” John replies.

“Feels like I lost control of the part of my mind that controls my tongue,” Paul tells him.

John asks, “How do you reckon that?” 

“Something keeps popping out of me mouth,” Paul narrows his eyes and starts thinking through the process of standing up again. “With them two gone, who knows what it’ll be next.”

John just looks at him for a while through dirty glasses, like he can’t quite makes sense of what’s being said. His face changes into something a little sillier, and Paul has to force himself to look down. “What, you aren’t afraid I’ll hear something I’m not meant to.” It should be a question, but it doesn’t sound like one.

“Aye,” Paul’s studying the green-blue tile on the floor, the lines blurring and unblurring in his vision. 

“Come off it, Macca,” John takes a sip of his scotch and then leans back to set the bottle on the floor of the tub, “Know everything about you already.”

“No you don’t,” Paul scoffs, his mouth makes a put-on smile, his eyes still focused on the tile, which could be moving, but he doubts it. 

“Course I do,” John bumps their sock feet together on the floor in Paul’s line of sight. 

“I love you,” Paul says without ceremony. When he says it, he finds that it’s actually quite easy. As natural as drawing breath, which makes the gravity of it take a second or two to register. 

He looks up at John who blinks a few times behind his glasses before touching Paul’s foot with his again and replying in a drunken, chummy sort of way, “Aye well, love you, too, man.”

“I love you,” Paul repeats, forcing himself to hold eye contact even though it feels as if he’s staring into the sun itself or right into the beating center of the hurricane up in Jacksonville, “And I want you.”

John’s mouth forms a tight line, and the rosy drunk color leaves his face. He’s unfamiliarly unreadable and so far away across the little bathroom.

“There,” Paul says, taking another swig, “Now you know everything about me.”  The whiskey stings his throat like it’s got glass in.

“You like birds!”

“I like birds, I can like birds,” Paul’s nodding, his ears ringing with the unspoken if I think of you and if I snap away the pieces of myself that matter. Instead, he isn’t sure this is really happening, realizing how many times he’s said it now is downright incomprehensible, and even so, like he’s trying to run the numbers up on it, he says, “But I love you.” 

All Paul can do is stare at John’s nostrils which flare and unflare for a few breaths. Then John’s pulling himself to his feet and shaking his head, ripping off his glasses, and pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes.

“That’s not bloody funny, Paul,” he says urgently.

“M’not trying to be funny,” Paul can feel his head rolling on his neck in a way he has to catch like when he falls asleep sitting up on the bus. There are millions of notes in his head all fighting with each other, notes he can’t even tell for sure if they exist.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” John is muttering, his palms still on his eyes, the rise and fall of his chest getting faster and faster. 

Paul makes himself to stand, nearly toppling backwards, the dim room spinning, any residual drumming of rain outside drowned out by his heartbeat. His heartbeat feels incredibly abstract right now like he’s been possessed by it. Like it’s not a sound but an entity that counts the space between them.

Before his hand has even grazed John’s sleeve, John is jerking away from him, uncovering his face. The look there holds none of the bitterness he might have expected if everything didn’t feel like fragments of every moment they’ve ever shared. He just looks a bit wounded and confused, and Paul must be even drunker than he thought because he could swear he sees John’s eyes glint with moisture.

“Don’t like this joke,” John says, blinking furiously.

“Told you. S’not a joke,” Paul slurs out.

“It had better fucking not be,” John’s trying to sound pissed off, but his voice catches, and he bats a tear from his own cheek like it’s a gnat.

It makes Paul feel as though his lungs are flat notes that are going to jump from his throat, and he hiccups a little, tears pricking at his own eyes. Seeing Paul’s about to go, makes John’s face twist as another tear escapes. Paul feels his own face getting damp at the sight of it, and somehow John manages to add, “Because I loved you at St. Peter’s.” He clears his throat a little after his voice pitches up towards the end there, and it makes them both chuckle stupidly at their own tears.

Paul drags his sleeve over his eyes and says through his wet laugh, though it hardly comes out as words, “Me, too.” 

They’re laughing and crying, stood there facing each other in the lav, every time they think they’ve collected themselves, one of them starts up again, the other stumbling behind. 

“Daft,” John sniffs and laughs at himself, tipping his head to look at Paul more closely, “Should’ve said something.”

“Wanted to, you know,” Paul’s still a bit teary, “Every day.”

“You’re a prick, you know that?” John wipes an eye with his fingers, “An absolute bastard.” 

“‘Ey, you could’ve said something just as soon!” Paul’s voice comes out sounding a bit loopy.

“I tried!” John insists. 

“When?”

“Always!”

“What?!”

John’s laughing harder than he’s crying now, his head back and his teeth flashing. It makes Paul laugh, too, how hopeless they’ve been. It feels like a song he heard years ago and will never remember enough of the melody to ever find again when Paul realizes he could’ve kissed him in Paris. Could’ve had him in their rose-wallpapered shoebox of a room.

As though he’s thinking the same thing, because they are always humming the same tune, John laughs out, “Christ, the nights we wasted sharing pillows with each other’s feet.” 

“You have nice feet,” Paul says. 

John gives a startled, perplexed chuckle, and then there’s a long, lingering silence. Everything sneaking up on them. The temptation to hide behind his hands hits Paul like a heatwave, but he finds, oddly enough, that he simply can’t be bothered.

It’s John who takes the short step to close the distance between them, reaching to pull the door closed at their sides and then tucking his head with a resigned sigh into the crook of his neck. Something shimmers and deflates a little inside of Paul because he knows in that not talking way they do that if they weren’t stood here in this crummy lav, drunk beyond measure that they would have kissed just now. Instead, he lets his arms wrap around John, embracing him like he’s always wanted to, tight and sure with a hand rubbing up and down his back and the other slipping up into the base of his hair. 

“Mmm,” John hums, borrowing closer and closer until Paul is almost absentmindedly aware that his jaw is being kissed. 

“Ah…hmm… that…” is all Paul can say, so he just lifts his head up to give John better purchase. He can barely keep his eyes open, sweeping off balance until he’s leaned back against the door, John follows against him. Paul hasn’t the foggiest how they’ve any restraint left, but their breathing is fairly steady and their movements unusually small. 

After what must be several excruciating inarticulate minutes, John reaches Paul’s ear with his tongue, and Paul feels his breath hitch and his body push even closer. It’s only then that he feels John’s hands on him at the hem of his trousers, creeping to tug at where his t-shirt’s tucked in.

When he feels John’s calluses on the damp skin at the small of his back, Paul gasps, all the heat that been slowly pooling up between his legs waking up. He automatically presses himself against John’s thigh and is met with a satisfied groan and the motion matched. Paul’s heart skips over itself, which he’d assumed was an expression until the first time John’d leaned into him at the piano back in Woolton, and he presses his lips sloppily against John’s hair. 

It picks up pretty quickly then, all pretense and hesitation shattered, and John’s palming him through his front in such a way that Paul just feels like if he hadn’t known John played guitar, been the one to teach him properly and everything, he’d be able to tell by how he’s got his hand on him. For as drunk as he his, everything up until this moment had almost felt like lucid dreaming but his whole body is humming into complete clarity bits at a time, like hearing birdsong get louder and louder after a storm. 

Any mists left depart on sight when John gets down on his knees, opening Paul’s trousers and shifting his pants down in a precise gesture that seems incredibly graceful for how drunk they are, and he thinks only momentarily about the hard blue-green tile on John’s knees before he’s in John’s mouth. He has to slap his own hand against his face to stop himself screaming, his head hitting the back of the door hard.

John’s mouth should be the eighth natural wonder of the world, and Paul almost tells him this but as his tries to pry his hand away from his face, another scream threatens to make itself known when John takes him deeper than he’d known was strictly possible. He bites on his own hand and looks down at John, head bobbing, and their eyes lock at the same moment, and that’s nearly enough to send him over the edge. He runs his free hand into John’s hair and pulls, just to make John hum again, and he’s humming a tune Paul knows he recognizes but more with everything else than his brain. It makes him shift forward and up into John’s mouth, and John nods, so he keeps doing it. The absurd thought that he’s fucking John’s voice glitters through him, and he has to bite onto his skin harder. John grabs onto the seat of Paul’s trousers and speeds him up.

The hum around him gets louder and that’s what does it. He watches enchanted as John swallows and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, helplessly sinking back against the door until he’s sat on the floor, eye-to-eye with John. John gives two little scoots forward and presses their foreheads together, and Paul wants to kiss him just to taste himself there, but his hand finds John’s knee instead and he holds on. 

There’s an uncoordinated stumble out to the couch, still surrounded by the trappings of the day, empty bottles, discarded layers, somebody’s bikini top that Paul has to throw out of his way as he lowers himself between John’s legs where he’s sat. Paul might feel distantly worshipful like this. If he still bought into that sort of thing.

It should seem like he’s never done it before, but for all the times he’s imagined it, gotten off to the very fantasy of it, watched birds do it to him thinking through what he’d do to improve upon it, by the time he gets John in his mouth, he feels like he knows his way round. Most of it’s as predicted, the salty smell and the tug at the corners of his mouth, and the sounds he can pull from John when he changes the beat. 

He hadn’t accounted for how much John would move, all twitchy and babbling, pulling hard on his hair bucking into Paul’s mouth without meaning to, the sweet burn when he hits the back of his throat. But he finds that it’s actually quite fun. How everything is with John, a little unpredictable in a way that makes having him all figured out feel like a tiny victory the size of a perfect skipping stone.

Paul hadn’t accounted, either, for the weight of him on his tongue, just the general shape. It’s more than holding wine in his mouth like he was instructed to by those posh blokes in Paris the one night they’d splurged, making eye contact and trying not to spit merlot onto the stark white table cloth through laughter. It’s a weight that, when he presses the flat of his tongue against it, makes John have to choke back a scream.

“Jesus, Macca, you done this before?” John asks incredulously, voice raspy.

Paul pulls off just long enough to go, “Do dreams count?” and that sends John’s head thrown against the back of the couch with a groan, his neck a stunning white curve against the gloomy darkness, and all Paul can do for a moment is watch the bob of his Adam’s apple. 

He could ask John the same thing then, if he’d done it before, but part of him, the part like a trap door hidden in plain sight that opened up the moment John had said it back in the lav, knows that the first part of the answer would be yes and the second part would be a name he doesn’t want to hear right now. Or ever, frankly, rest his wayward soul. 

But it’s only a trace, not bright enough to blaze what’s happening, before he swallows John whole again, his lips meeting the circle of his fist, and John’s singing a strung out lick of nonsense. Paul’s so lost in it, he doesn’t remember to do the whole routine with the eyeslashes and all. When he looks up at John, he’s really looking at him and only him, there’s no imaginary audience version of himself watching in the back of his mind to make sure he’s hitting his marks and pouting just right. He just watches John, blissful and anguished, so he feels like he’s watching for the first time entirely and with his whole being, without half his attention divided back onto himself, what it looks like to make somebody come.

And when John does, Paul wants to hold it on his tongue like the wine tasting, but he’s too drunk, and he can only get part of him down and he’s a sputtering, laughing mess at John’s feet. And he doesn’t feel sexy or charming or windswept or anything because he isn’t thinking about being sexy or charming or windswept, it’s just fun. It’s just John. It’s finally just John.

Paul wakes the next morning swimming through the swamp of his hangover, trying to figure out if last night was real. He blinks in the bleary Florida sun through the windows, absorbing the wallpaper and making everything almost seem green like they’ve been trapped in a greenhouse to sweat and wait. 

He’s on his back, hands clasped over his chest, an ache in his side that he has to crane his neck to investigate, only to see John using Paul’s hip as a pillow, cheek pressed against him and mouth pinched in slumber. John’s knees are tucked against his body, angled in such a way that only his feet are dangling off the edge of the couch. His leg aching and numb where John’s got most of his weight, Paul tries to shift up, but is trapped, John so fast asleep he’s lost to the world. 

The profound scratch at the back of Paul’s throat when he tries to say something is the first clue that last night did in fact happen outside of his mind this time. It makes something that feels like sunrays or champagne bubbles race from the pit of his stomach and fill his lungs.

He sits up a little and looks around, the clock on the counter tells him it’s almost seven in the morning. The pile of pineapple rinds on the coffee table has attracted one lonely fly that buzzes in wobbly, lethargic ovals. Paul shakes John awake with his leg, “Look,” he says, as John smacks his lips sleepily and reaches around for his glasses, “The fly’s drunk.”

They decide to have a dip before anyone else is up or the rain returns. Paul changes into the pair of trunks that has the best chance of hiding the spots where John left marks on his inner thighs. He can feel John’s eyes on him as he moves to the edge of the pool and puts a testing foot into the green-blue water. It’s a bit cold from the stormy September night and there are a few long shards of palms floating at the top that haven’t been fished out from yesterday’s wind. But the sun is out and limey, so he dives in. 

At first, his whole body chills, plummeted under the water. As he moves his limbs, the sunshine catches up and he feels like he could keep sinking and sinking forever and not let out until he’s found the other side of the earth. He comes back up to the surface, and shakes his hair from his face, watches the ripples on the pool, and right when they still, John jumps in beside him causing a great splash over Paul’s entire body. When John emerges, Paul slams a fist against the water to splash him back before he can even open his eyes. This back and forth goes on for quite some time until John slips under the water and swims to the other side of the pool. “Truce?” Paul calls, and John cautiously paddles back towards him, only they both splash each other simultaneously once they’re close enough. 

When their laughter subsides, they tread water for a long time, face to face, held by the water around them and each other’s gaze.

“What are we going to do about it?” Paul asks after a silence between them filled with tropical birdsong.

“Whatever we want to do about it,” is John’s reply. 

What Paul wants to do about it is find a time traveling police box like in that new show that he catches bits of on the telly back home sometimes with the old man who is actually an alien and, rather than go to some distant planet inhabited by creatures that are all metaphors for Hitler, find himself back on a summer day in 1957 and drag John by the front of his checkered shirt behind a tree or something and get started right then and there. 

Instead of saying that, Paul takes in a huge breath and ducks his head under the water, looking through the green-blue at John’s chest, freckled and lovely and doubled in his watery vision. Then John’s face is before him, noses nearly touching under the water. They shift back and forth to observe the ways the dappling sun distorts their faces like strange fish with strangely sized eyes. Just when he thought they’d run out of new ways to see each other.

They break back up to the air at the same time, hair gelled down across their eyes. Through the gaps in his fringe, all Paul can see is John’s toothy smile. 

“May have been blitzed,” Paul says, letting his fringe drip in his slightly stinging eyes, “But I meant what I said.”

He can sort of see John angling his head so he can look at him from behind the damp curtain of his fringe, “Oh you did, did you?” 

“Aye,” Paul says. John dips his chin just below the surface of the water like he’s playing the mouth organ to blow a gargle of messy bubbles in front of him, and Paul titters out a laugh without opening his mouth.

“Do you still?” John asks, sucking water into his cheeks. He tips his head back and spits a fountain-like arc of it, landing just beside the place where Paul’s arm submerges.

“Yes,” Paul says, parting his fringe and looking at him properly, “Do you?”

“Oh yes,” John says in one of his dumb overdone voices that’s somewhere between an Irish accent and the specific intonation of that batty old woman who used to serve them chips, “Rarely have I meant anything more, so have I.”

John pulls his leg through the water and hooks his ankle behind Paul’s calf and draws him closer. Paul lets himself glide towards John, echoing the gesture with his opposite foot around John’s opposite leg until their legs are a kind of circle. There’s still about a foot of distance between their faces, and John’s running a hand through his own hair to finally get it out of his face. He squints at Paul with pool water on his lashes making them all clumpy and dark as anything. Paul can feel his own mouth hanging open and his heart thumping under the water like it’s trying to burst from his chest and swim over to John.

At some point, when they aren’t dripping anymore, Paul pulls on a t-shirt and jeans and gets his guitar and tries to play along with the breeze in the palms. John’s reclining on the pool chair next to his, eyes closed behind his sunshades, and Paul can’t stop looking at the sun warming his skin. After a while, John pushes his shades down and meets Paul’s eyes.

“Are you…?” Paul asks.

John shrugs and returns his sunshades to his face, and Paul wants him to take them off so he can see his eyes. It’s easier to hear him that way. “Half of one,” John replies, before reciting after a short pause, “Six of one half a dozen the other.”

For a second as brief as a sparkle on the pool or a dampened string plucked, Paul wishes everything else he feels for him could go away and he could just have a friend who was a bloke a while he trusted to ask follow-up questions. How do you know? What does it feel like to want, really want, certain birds rather than just wanting a feeling? Do you also have to decide you want them before you want them? Or do you just start wanting them like I do with you? 

“You?” John asks.

Paul just shrugs, too, and says “Dunno.” which is true, and “Haven’t thought about it that way.” which isn’t. John can tell, but doesn’t press. 

John goes to get his guitar then, and they sit wrong ways in the pool chairs to face each other, criss-crossed legs, passing riffs back and forth to figure out if they can play it instead of talking about it.

Just when Paul thinks he’s got something that sounds exactly like what the Florida wind might play if it could play the palm fronds, he looks up at John, and John is staring at him over the frames of his sunshades. Paul doesn’t have to prompt him with words, just straightens up and blinks against the brightness of the sun rays that have picked up all the red in John’s hair, and John says, “Strange, this. Getting to meet you all over again.” 

“Mmm,” Paul nods, “Not starting from scratch, though.”

“No,” John chuckles, “Boxed cake mix, we are.”

“Ready in minutes,” Paul says.

“Just add eggs.”

A babble of commotion from the deck is the only thing that can tear Paul away, and he looks over to see George and Ringo with birds and bottles in tow.

When he turns back to John, even obscured by the sunglasses, he knows they’ve just had the same thought.  John pulls on his linen button up and they join the others. Stealing a smoke from George, Paul goes through the motions of flirtation and charm with the girls but his eyes barely leave John on the other end of the deck. 

They only stick around long enough to not make it seem as though they’ve bolted. Five minutes after John disappears, Paul puts out his smoke and makes chipper excuses about needing a shower. He doesn’t hear much other than the squawking of the parrots or whatever they are in the palms fading behind him. His heartbeat is implausibly steady.

When he doesn’t see John in the little living area, he instinctively he veers into the room John’s been sharing with Ringo and finds him propped on the radiator under the window with his knees pulled up to his chest.

“Hullo,” Paul says. 

John doesn’t acknowledge him, just keeps looking out the window. So Paul takes a quick breath and lets his feet cross in front of the beds to John’s side. The two of them look down at the rag tag party below for a little while, the linen of John’s shirt clinging to the stretch of his arm. Paul wants to touch it, and when he does, John turns his head up towards him with a few slow blinks and a shaky breath. Cupping the back of his head, Paul bends down. And kisses him. 

It’s everything and nothing like he’d imagined it to be because it somehow doesn’t feel like a first kiss, but it feels like the first time he’s ever kissed anyone. There, some soft little voice sings, it is.

John sits up further to kiss him back, a gravelly sound pulled from his mouth and into Paul’s when their tongues find each other. It is as if they’re inventing something between them all caught up in the music and their own odd language that wouldn’t make sense if they tried to explain it to anybody else.

At once, the tempo changes from curious to desperate as John gets to his feet with a growling moan into their kiss, his hands tugging uselessly at Paul’s t-shirt until it’s up an over his head, their lips barely parting. John’s nails graze over his chest and arms and to chest again and back, hands bumping against Paul’s as he clumsily goes for the buttons of John’s linen. The cream-colored fabric is just slick enough with John’s sweat and pool water for it to feel a little obscene between his fingers, and John is still wriggling his wrists free as Paul attaches his mouth to the bowl of skin above John’s collar bone and sucks and suck.

“Oh bleeding Christ,” John hisses, “You bastard.”

Paul laughs against John’s skin, warm and smooth and tasting of summer and sleep beneath his tongue. 

“Of all the…” John mutters, flailing the arm still stuck in the sleeve. Without lifting his head, Paul grabs the fabric and yanks it free, letting it drop to the carpet. John pushes him to the nearest bed then, his back landing across the mattress. Before the gasp is entirely out of his mouth, John’s climbed into his lap and slams their lips back together, smiling so hard their teeth get in the way. 

Paul latches his hands to John’s hips and pulls him closer until they brush each other through swim trunks and denim. The dull friction is enough to send static through Paul’s system, and they have to break their kiss long enough to groan into each other’s mouths. He didn’t know it could be this good before he’s even got his trousers off.  Always suspected it might be, though.

They both open their mouths to crack a joke at the same time, but their eyes searching each other tells them it’s coming up empty, which makes them laugh without needing to have even gotten a joke out, and they’re kissing again and rutting against each other. John’s hand goes to the sun-damp hair at the back of Paul’s neck and pulls, sending tingles across his scalp and down his spine. 

“Oh, fuck,” Paul breathes on John’s lips, which are sun-chapped and scratchy as his stubble, leaving his whole face feeling pink with the scrape. But he relishes it, every trace John leaves behind distinguishing this from the imaginary. The mark he’s leaving at his neck, the nail lines down his back. Souvenirs that make you remember you actually left and came home instead of just planning the destination. And it’s better with John than it is otherwise because what he leaves behind is more than just a sugary cloud of perfume. John’s body is sturdy and so far from water in his hands that it reminds him he’s in his own body. 

He surges off his back and into the kiss with a suck of air through his nose, and John lets himself be pushed back against the pillows with a needy whine Paul knew was coming. His hands scramble over Paul’s body like he can’t make up his mind where he wants to go until he’s got thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans muttering, “Off, off, off.” 

It takes longer that it should for Paul to finish undressing them because John won’t move his hands out of the way, and because Paul is shaking furiously with the thrill of it. The swoop of his stomach when they’re free of the last of their layers and there’s nothing between them anymore but the years and the songs.

Paul is breathless, gawking at John beneath him and John is squinting up at him, busy hands still skittering across his body to make up for the blurriness. 

“Gonna keep staring at me, are you?” John asks all low and scratchy. “Or are you thinking of doing something?”

“You gonna let me?” Paul says, swiping John’s hands out of the way so he can lower himself onto his chest. They both moan when their bodies come together, the drag and pull as John’s hips meet Paul’s, the crescendo when they press against each other between their legs. Paul’s arms pulse with the effort to keep himself up, fingertips bent into the sheets, but John grabs his biceps and pulls them flush. 

“Oh, that’s it,” they say in unison, a gasping sound that would be like a laugh if this hadn’t just all become incredibly, impossibly good.  They kiss and cant against each other, one of John’s legs and both of his arms wrapping around Paul’s back like he’s trying to glue them together, a palm plastered between his shoulder blades, the other sliding downward from the small of his back. Paul feels his brow furrow as he kisses him hard, their tongues tasting each other’s moans. He has to pull his mouth away like coming out from under the green-blue water, finding the spot above John’s collar bone that’s blossomed with his mark. 

John’s making these ridiculous sounds that don’t sound like anything until they sound very insistently like, “More. Need more.”

“How…?” Paul asks, pulling his head up, sweaty fringe on his forehead.

“We’ll take it in turns,” John nods, because of course they will. “You start this song, I’m done for if I try to move.” 

Paul swallows hard, the very notion makes his head swim, their bodies still rocking against each other beneath them, “Aye, yeah, okay, fuck. Yeah,” is the best he can do at words. John kisses him again.

They scrounge around clumsily in the bedside table until John comes up triumphantly with a tub of petroleum jelly and smacks it with a thud into Paul’s palm. Between John’s legs, he sits there for what feels like a few too many seconds looking between John and the Vaseline in his hand. John’s just leaned back on the pillow, eyes heavy and letting out the longest sigh, half contentment half goading Paul to hurry along.

“Right,” Paul says, unscrewing the cap, which is stubborn in his sweaty hands, the effort making John laugh tremendously and unguarded, which sends so many colors and notes tumbling around Paul’s stomach that he hams it up a little, continuing the business with it long after he knows he’s got it unscrewed.

Everything clicks into something much more intense when Paul gets his finger into the tub, past the second knuckle, and John watches with black eyes and quick breath. 

John’s hand finds Paul’s hip, to brace himself thumb bruising into the gentle slope above his hipbone. 

Holding his breath like plunging in water, Paul ducks his head to John’s navel, licking circles and laughing from his chest at the way it makes John go all fluttery beneath him. He works his way down from there, navigating the hair and chlorine and sweat and his own bite marks from last night.

When he presses his first finger inside, they melt together the way the palm trees fold to the autumn breeze.

For a long while, Paul thinks that this might be all it will be and it would be enough, feeling the last inches of himself that John is baring to him. Just finding the notes inside John with his finger tips would still be better than anything that’s come before. But then Paul gets something right, really right, a twist of his wrist and a crook of his knuckle at the same time, and he feels John open up to him, lifting his head from the pillow like he’s back from the dead with a reedy gasp. 

“Another,” John grunts out, eyes huge and astonished.

They work up to three, the slick of him unimaginable around Paul’s fingers. The challenge of John’s movement remains as electric as it was last night, requiring all of him there, really there in this giddy new place they’ve found. He murmurs encouragement down at him, “That’s it, love, ‘atta boy, you’ve got it, there you are,” but can barely hear himself over the eclectic symphony of John’s sounds and he clenches around him. Mostly it’s just gibberish non-words, then trails of curses the likes of which Paul’s hardly heard spilling into deranged laughter before sounding a bit like he might honestly be praying, and then more incoherent gasps until he’s saying something that sounds like, “So long, so long, waited so long.”

Paul puts his right hand in John’s lower abdomen while the other keeps working him and rubs shapes there, shushing him until John bucks his hips up with a low groan and goes, “Now, right now, need you right now or I’ll…”

“Alright alright,” Paul’s laughter is ripped out of him as he slips himself up, a curl in his stomach at the soothed ache there he’d been too caught up on John to even be properly aware of. Beneath him, John’s gritting his teeth and holding his knees open, raw exhales and hot red down his face.

When he lines himself up and presses at John’s entrance, Paul feels his whole chest swell like foamy green waves, and he has to pause to look down at John, who’s biting his lip hard and staring up at him with dark, glassy eyes.

“You alright?” Paul whispers, and John nods swiftly. “You sure?”

He nods again, and reaches up and places a hand on the side of Paul’s face, and it’s the gentlest thing anyone’s ever done and it’s John and it knocks the wind clean out of him. “Are you?” John asks.

“Aye,” Paul replies, feeling John’s fingertips tuck into his hair, “Sure, I’m alright. I’m sure, alright.” 

“No going back from this,” John says, a timid warning in his voice behind the scratchiness. 

“Don’t want to go back.”

“Then come on,” John grins, “Go with me.”

Paul tips his head in a bitten back laugh, “Know the words now, do you?”

At that, John nudges Paul’s lower back forward impatiently, the fleeting press of tenderness swept away by a darting mischief. Paul slides all the way in and lowers his head to watch it happen, nose brushing John’s as he lifts up to do the same. 

Then he does it, he feels it all the way down in his toes first, but it soars through him, and he’s opening his mouth and saying John’s name again, this time on purpose, to him, and he indulges every curve of it in his mouth, “John.”

Only it’s better now because at the exact moment it leaves his lips, there’s the counter harmony, John returning the most peaceful, eager, “Paul.”

It’s what’s been missing all along. And he’s known, is the thing. All along.

They find their rhythm slowly and all at once somehow. The way they always do, grinning and panting and holding each other like it’s nothing and everything. 

John’s legs are hooked around his middle and every time he moves, his hands find a new plane of Paul’s body. They moan and mutter against each other, and somehow they’re able to make jokes that Paul can barely even keep track of but patters back nonetheless, because that’s what they do. He’s tight and warm and wanting and deep and right around him and Paul isn’t sure he’s ever felt anything like this. Isn’t sure he ever will again, but just as certain somehow they’ll keep finding new chords every time. Every time.

He feels John’s heels in the small of his back and hears the need in his tone as he says Paul’s name over and over, each time, miraculously, the same second Paul says John’s.

It unties and dismisses some sort of longing Paul thought was inherent to his being when John reaches out and takes Paul’s left hand in his to wrap it around himself. Only a few more melodic thrusts and they’re finishing the song together, and Paul is falling on top of him, and John is holding him. Their names in each other’s ears with the intention of it bursts through Paul’s skin and sets him on fire and cools him off again all at once.

After a few luxurious minutes squeezed together, Paul rolls onto his back, hands dropped against the pillow on either side of his head like he’s been run over, and maybe he has. Maybe he’ll never move. Maybe he doesn’t need to, when John looks at him like that. 

“Don’t suppose it gets much better than this,” John says at the same time Paul murmurs, “If that isn’t the best thing ever….”

They find each other’s eye contact in the afternoon sun, and Paul’s never felt warmer. They catch their breath, not breaking from each other’s gaze. Like they’re both afraid the other might disintegrate if they look away, but yet so palpably positive that the other is there. Because Paul has never been more positive he is there anywhere he has ever been. Paul tips his knee in a little triangle so he can press it against John’s and he has to swallow back a flood of words that would never quite be enough.

A shadow crosses over John’s face then, his expression twisting, and he sits up rigidly. The key lime light makes stripes on his shoulders through the plastic blinds, and Paul angles his head to watch his profile. John’s eyes are fixed on a point at the foot of the bed, his body taut with the abrupt tension. 

His hands above his head on the pillow going all pins and needles, Paul lets a few long exhales through his body, as John’s erratic breathing speeds up. When John opens his mouth, his fists are balling up the sheets.

“Don’t,” Paul says before John can speak.

“Don’t what?” John’s voice is rough.

“Don’t say something meant to fuck this up just so you can get the fucking it up over and done with.”

“I wasn’t….”

“Hey,” Paul kicks him through the duvet, “Just add eggs, remember?”

Slowly, John cranes his neck to look over his shoulder, and Paul raises his eyebrows, feeling the corners of his mouth twitch into a smile. A long exhale escapes John’s lungs, and then he’s grinning down at him and crawling alongside his body to kiss his face with hard scattering kisses, laughing through his nose.

And the music in Paul’s head is clearer now, the way he can look at the off-white clouds long enough he can start turning them into the shape of something against the teal-green sky. It’s a song, one of theirs, and he laughs.