Archive of Our Own

John's breaking point on The Paul Thing ends up being a simple conversation.

It’s not even a conversation with the man in question himself, either, nor is it one with anyone who might have known, who might have directly asked. Somewhere deep down he'd thought for a long time that might be what would do it in the end – Cynthia demanding a real explanation for his detachment, Yoko digging in and tearing him open with her perceptive eye, or even George finally saying straight out what had seemed to hover with a sharpened edge on the periphery of every conversation they'd ever had. Instead, though, it's a conversation with Elton John that does it; Elton, who's barely known John six months, who's never seen him interact with Paul at all.

They’re in the grand main room of John’s beach house in Santa Monica, lounged out on the luxurious white sofas with drinks and remnants of past drinks spread out all around them. It’s the middle of the night and May’s long asleep, leaving them alone to get drunker and drunker.

The conversation has meandered for hours, drifting between topics loosely as if blown about by the slightest breeze. It had gone heavy with some talk of their childhoods earlier in the night, then lightened into a humorous exchange of anecdotes about encounters they’d had with other celebrities.

And then, for some reason that he himself doesn’t even understand, John asks Elton if he’s ever been in love with a man.

John’s terribly drunk by this point in the night, which provides a convenient excuse for asking the question that’s been bursting through his mind ever since Elton had made it pretty damn clear that he was pretty damn gay the very first time that they’d ever talked. John had never thought he’d find the audacity to actually ask outright, though.

Luckily, Elton doesn’t seem to be bothered by it at all. If he does find it strange, he doesn’t show it. He answers openly and goes into it a fair bit, just as drunk as John is – talks about his manager who he’s been with on and off for years, how he’d lost his virginity to him at twenty-three and hasn’t quite been able to fully extricate himself from their romantic entanglement since despite the many issues with their relationship.

“Never quite come back from your first, I think,” Elton concludes in a lilting drawl, taking a big gulp from his drink and then slamming it down on the coffee table with force and finality.

And John says: “It was Paul for me.”

Elton jerks so violently that his vodka cocktail, still clasped by the stem of the glass between his thumb and index finger, spills all over the table. John's terribly, terribly drunk – otherwise he would never have admitted such a thing, not in a million years – but a rush of adrenaline makes him feel momentarily stone-cold sober. Why did he say that? 

Elton clears his throat with a deliberate “ahem,” and spins dramatically around on the sofa to face John fully. He leans forward until he can plant one elbow on the coffee table, then rests his chin in the palm of his hand and drums his fingertips against his cheek with a series of theatrical flourishes. “That's going to be a story and a half, now, isn't it? Your first, truly?”

“Well,” John says, recalibrating. “No. Not exactly. We never slept together, obviously. I know that's what you mean.”

“Not necessarily. Mine was, but that's me.”

“I’ve loved him since I was seventeen,” John says, and then it's out there in the world for the first time, verbalized, made real.

He had known it, of course, somewhere deep down inside of himself, but it’s been the type of knowing where he'd only ever acknowledge it in fleeting glances out of the corner of his eye, an instinctive attempt to protect himself from the fiery burn of the truth. Looking it straight on for the first time is like staring directly into the sun, and he wants nothing more than to flinch away from the blaze of it. It's too late now, though; it's already burned like a brand into his retinas, inescapable.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Elton asks, sounding suddenly much more sober.

“No,” says John, and squeezes his eyes shut.

Elton, bless him, changes the subject with an ease that makes John’s previous confession feel marginally less Earth-shattering.

They move on, talk about music and the songs that Elton is currently working on and it’s fine, it’s all fine, but John keeps his eyes closed. He doesn’t want to see the ghostly echo of Paul lurking in every corner of the room. It’s still there, though, the truth of it, it’s all he can see.

John calls him the next day, once his hangover has mostly worn off. “I wanted you, do you know that?”

There's an extended silence on the other end of the line. He thinks for a moment that Paul must have hung up on him.

When he finally does speak, his voice sounds very, very far away. “What?”

“You heard me,” John hisses, hard-edged.

“Uh,” says Paul, clearing his throat uncomfortably. “Sorry, you wanted me to what?”

“Don't play dumb.” 

Paul makes a high, frustrated noise in the back of his throat. John is struck by how well he knows him, still; he can tell from the pitch of it alone that the frustration is mostly directed at himself, at his own confusion, and he realizes that Paul isn’t playing at anything at all – he actually doesn’t understand.

“Ah,” he says, rolling a cool, cutting sarcasm into his tone to cover for the softness that threatens to rise up instead. “You’re not playing dumb. You just are dumb.”

The irritation under the noise that Paul makes now is entirely directed at John. “Thank you ever so much for informing me of that, John. Are you going to tell me what you’re talking about, or shall I go? I have things to do, you know, and if you’re just calling to insult me –”

“I wanted you,” John repeats emphatically, entirely disregarding the lucky break that he’d been given, the opportunity to redirect the conversation before he fucked everything up irreparably. Not saying anything doesn’t feel like a real option, not now that he’s idiotically gone and faced the reality of his feelings. He’s never been good at keeping his mouth shut when he’s set his mind on something.

Paul doesn’t respond right away; John’s never felt a silence so heavy. Then: “I don’t understand what this is.”

“I’m telling you. Thought maybe you ought to know.”

Every moment of quiet is crushing, the weight of it only increasing with each excruciating second that ticks past.

“Alright, but telling me what though, is the question? Because I don’t know if you realize, but it sounds almost like you’re saying…” Paul breaks off and laughs weakly. It’s completely forced, unconvincing.

“Saying what?”

“Ha. Er, y’know. Like, want. But I know that’s not –”

“No, that is what I mean.”

Paul makes a confused, garbled sound.

“Just about my entire life, I wanted you. When I was too young to understand it, when it terrified me and I tried to hide from it, even then, I already did. You fucking – took my heart out against my will and just – well. Stomped all over it, I reckon.”

“John,” Paul says, in a voice that John’s never quite heard before. “What are you talking about?”

He sounds strangled, breathless, horrified and yet strangely awed.

John’s heart has taken off racing at a breakneck speed all of a sudden, pounding so hard in his chest that he worries it might smash straight out through his ribcage and fall onto the ground. He had been running on anger, numb to it all, so numb that he hadn’t even really realized what he was doing until right now. As the awareness hits he goes lightheaded with something adjacent to fear, a cold wash across his skin that freezes him in place. “Paul,” he says, because his mind has gone blank of any other word.

He can’t find anything else to say, can’t even think of anything other than Paul’s name, so he’s quiet after that for long enough that Paul eventually speaks again, says, “if that’s meant to be a joke, it’s not funny,” in a voice that’s shaking so badly that John can barely understand him.

“No, it’s…” John tries, but any attempt at coherence is lost to him. The sense of numbness is long gone now, that cold wash spreading and worsening until it’s cresting over into a nauseating panic.

“Wanted me how?”

With a herculean effort, John makes his mouth move, forces it to form words. “I never thought – I guess I thought it didn’t matter. But, I mean, whatever I tried to tell myself. It did matter. To me.”

“Wanted me how?” Paul asks again in a near yell, sounding almost as panicked as John feels.

“You know, you know that you know. Come on, you know.”

“I need you to say it. Go on. Say it.”

“Wanted you on your knees, wanted you up against the wall, wanted you in my bed, all of it, what does it matter? Fuck’s sake, Paul, you don’t want to hear it.”

“Is that why?” he asks, off on his own train of thought rather than there with John’s, as he usually is these days. “All of it. Is that why?”

“All of it?” John sneers, outrage flaring hot enough to momentarily eclipse his panic. “You fucking us all over, suing us, writing Too Many People? You think I’m mad about that because I wanted to shag you?” There’s a hysterical laugh high in John’s chest, just barely trapped and held back behind the barricade of his teeth.

“No, I know that. Christ. But the – the you and me.”

“Didn’t know there was such a thing, to you.”

Paul draws in a breath, like surprise, then says in a terribly wounded tone, “of course there was. It was almost like it was the only thing to me, really.”

“You were gonna marry Jane,” John says, and it would be out of left field if not for the way it lands like a ton of bricks, clicking straight into perfect relevance in the massive space between them.

“Yes, because that’s what people do. You didn’t tell me not to!”

“I did too, you know.”

“No, but… you said she’d be a bad wife, said we’d be miserable, said you didn’t like her, things like that. You didn’t say that you wanted – you didn’t say that it would hurt you.”

It would hurt you. For such short little words, they carry so much weight. As if how John felt was important, as if Paul would have cared.

“Would it have mattered?” John asks softly, so softly that the words drift down the line like snowflakes, sounding as fragile and delicate as he feels. He already knows what the answer is, but some pathetic childish part of him clinging to a tiny scrap of pathetic childish hope had taken over for a moment anyway, out of his control.

He already knows the answer, or at least he thinks he does up until Paul replies and says, “Christ, John, how could you even ask that? Of course it matters. Did you really think that hurting you was something I would ever intentionally do?”

John’s grip has gone so tight around the handset of the phone that the cool plastic groans against his sweaty palm. He presses it harder against his ear and the sharp edge of the transmitter digs brutally into the soft flesh of his jaw, but he makes no attempt to readjust it.

“Yes,” he says simply; it’s the truth. “I thought it must have been, it was all you ever did sometimes.”

Paul makes the tiniest little wheeze of a whine, as if he’s been punched hard. “How could you… how could you say that?” 

“I’m sorry if that’s hard to hear,” John snaps, not sorry at all and not even slightly sounding it. “Must be easier to live your entire life pretending that nothing you do ever affects anyone else, but that’s just bullshit and I'm sure you do understand that.”

“But you never said,” Paul whispers, “I didn’t know.”

This staggers him for a moment; intellectually, he’d always known that Paul hadn’t had any clue – hell, he’d barely understood how he felt himself for a long time – but he still jolts with an odd dissonant surprise anyway at hearing it spoken so plainly. Some bitter part of him had always suspected that Paul had known and resented him for it. Or worse, pitied him for it.

“So,” John replies when he’s gathered himself, refocusing and sharpening every remaining ounce of his resolve into one final push, “if I had told you how I felt, you would have broken it off with Jane, then? Really? And then with Linda, too?”

Paul is quiet for a long moment. “Linda’s my wife, John.”

“Yes, obviously, and that’s my whole fucking point.”

“Are you… asking something of me here, now?”

“Only to answer the damn question, Paul. Would you have?”

This time the silence goes on for so long that John thinks Paul might have just dropped the phone and walked away. At length, he finally clears his throat and responds, “Would I have given up having a wife and family just because you wanted to shag me, John, that’s what you’re asking? What do you think?”

“So it wouldn’t have mattered.”

“Of course it would have! I just – I don’t know, John. I mean, Linda and I love each other, you know. I would have had to settle down eventually. And even with Jane, you know, she loved me –”

“I loved you!”

Paul stops speaking abruptly. An odd clicking noise trips down the line, like something has caught itself fast in his throat. “Did you?” he asks faintly.

“Christ. Yes. The whole fucking time. Had no control over it.” John rocks forward with the handset still pressed hard against his face and flattens his forehead against the cool glass of the table in a futile attempt to ground himself. “Tried so hard to make it stop, but I couldn’t,” he confesses, and the pain of it tumbles helplessly out into his voice. “I couldn't.”

“Well.” Paul’s voice is high and tight with some sort of indefinable dismay. Maybe because he’s horrified by the realization, maybe just because he doesn’t know what to say; John’s too distracted by his own spiralling panic to puzzle out Paul’s. “That's different, um, than just wanting. Isn't it?”

“Is it? Does it change your answer to the question?”

Just like that, they’re thrown back into that heavy, heavy silence. Paul doesn’t reply.

“Well there you fucking go, then,” John concludes decisively. It dawns on him that he’s shaking, and that he’d better get off the phone before he lets Paul hear him break down.

Before he can muster the will to set the handset back into its cradle, though, Paul finally speaks again, says, “No, that's not… that’s not fair, you can’t tell me this now. I don’t – you’re not giving me time to think about it, how am I supposed to answer?”

“By saying the fucking truth, Paul, it’s not rocket science. You only want time to draft up some bloody politician’s spiel so polished it would make PM Wilson proud.”

John can hear Paul’s mouth open, then the click of his teeth as he snaps it shut again, repeated, over and over. John forces himself to wait as long as he can bear to even though it feels like every passing second is burning him alive.

“This was a mistake,” he tells Paul when he can’t stand to wait any longer, sick to his stomach with the truth of it. “I shouldn’t have said anything, I shouldn’t have called.”

“No, no, no, no,” Paul says so quickly that the words trip over each other, seemingly eager to speak again all of a sudden. “It’s okay, it’s fine, it’s all okay.”

“Oh, well, if you say it’s okay, then,” John snarls, venomous.

“Do you have to make this so difficult?” Paul snaps. “I’m trying, alright? This is a lot all at once.”

“I’m making it difficult?” John demands in outrage, though admittedly maybe he hasn’t gone about the conversation in the best possible way. “Me?”

“Yes! You – you can’t ask me this now, that was years ago, John, what’s even the point?”

Despite everything, that still hurts him, another layer of agonizing ache on top of all that’s already there. “Just… was thinking about it. Yesterday. And I realized I had to say it, that it wasn’t something I wanted to keep on my own anymore.”

“And you wanted to make sure I know it’s too late now, then? That I missed – fuck, what am I supposed to do with this? I think you’re being rather cruel, actually, if you just want to rub it in that –”

“Paul,” he interrupts, completely defeated and not even bothering to try to keep it from his voice, “let’s just forget about it, yeah? Like you said, it doesn’t matter now.”

“I didn’t say that,” Paul protests, but he doesn’t press any further.

“May and I might be heading back East to New York soon,” John offers. His heart is in his throat, but he manages to keep it from coming through in his voice; he sounds perfectly casual.

“Oh,” says Paul, “that’s nice.” He sounds normal too, like he’s gone and already forgotten about it, and John can’t even tell whether it’s an act or not.

“Look, I’d better go. Harry and I are going out soon, you know how it is.”

“Course, yeah. Well, uh, have a nice day.”

“You too. Bye now.”

“Bye –” click. John puts the phone firmly back into place in its cradle and then he’s alone, just like that.

He takes one long, slow deep breath in, and then he collapses flat against the surface of the table and lays there motionless until May eventually comes to get him after Harry arrives.

John is only granted a couple of months to recover before he sees Paul again. Before that, they talk a couple of times on the phone – short, empty calls full of pointless small talk stretched thin over a writhing tension that’s barely kept suppressed. Then in July, Paul calls to say that he and Linda are in New York after finishing their recording sessions in Nashville and asks if they can drop by the very next day.

The lack of warning is nearly more than John can take, though in truth it was likely the correct choice on Paul’s part – if John had had more time to prepare, he probably would have found a way to wiggle out of it, might have jetted straight out of New York and not come back until Paul was long gone.

As it is, he’s got a recording session for Walls and Bridges in the city that afternoon and then is back at the apartment in time for Paul and Linda’s evening visit.

They show up right on time and John is subsequently forced to keep it together for several hours with May’s presence as his only protection. He suspects that May knows more than he’s told her, more than she probably should, but she still definitely doesn’t fully understand the situation and therefore can’t be much help even if she would have wanted to be. He can’t quite land on an appropriate tone: when he tries to be funny, it comes out spiteful; if he goes for cheer, it just sounds manic; if he’s quieter, he knows he comes off as withdrawn and sullen.

As a consequence, he ends up spending the whole night bouncing wildly back and forth between contrasting moods while wondering how the hell Paul is managing to act so fucking normal. Maybe he genuinely had forgotten about John's confession, and he’d just been imagining that tension under the surface of their phone calls over the last two months. It was what he had asked for, of course, but John finds that the idea of Paul brushing it aside and away makes something sour to a rancid roil in his gut, leaving him feeling simultaneously humiliated and enraged.

By ten p.m., the feeling has begun to bubble up into something difficult to contain, slipping out in biting comments and sharp glances.

The other three are talking about the various places that Paul and Linda have travelled to in recent months, May and Linda going back and forth on the merits of Nashville. John is watching the second hand tick-tick-tick away on the wall clock, moving excruciatingly slow. He’s mostly tuning them out, trying to hide his vexation. Every time Paul speaks, though, he can’t help but to pay attention and it’s driving him crazy.

“The music scene there was really great,” Paul says, in response to something-or-other that May had asked. “The musicians were sharp as anything. Very professional and all.”

John clenches his teeth, feels his jaw twitch. It’s probably not supposed to be a jab against his level of professionalism or any negative reference to the clusterfuck that was their attempt at a recording session together last March, but it’s impossible to tell with Paul. It feels like one either way.

“So, do you plan just to stay till I'm passed out with exhaustion, then?” John gripes, as if ten p.m. is a time that has ever meant anything at all to them, as if rockstars like them aren't usually nocturnal or else as good as.

Tension drops into the room so fast it’s like a lead weight sinking in a pool. Paul stiffens, May shifts nervously. Linda blinks and says, “Sorry, John.  We didn’t realize you were tired.” She glances at Paul and it seems like something passes between them – John averts his gaze quickly. “Say,” she continues, drawn-out. “Before we go, I wanted to see the view of the street from your balcony. It must be lovely here.”

John frowns, irked. “Just through the kitchen, go ahead.”

Linda ignores him. “May, would you be so kind as to show me?”

May agrees enthusiastically and stands with Linda before John has the chance to do something to stop it. On her way out to the kitchen, Linda pauses and looks back at Paul again, something pointed in her expression. Paul seems to shrink, though John doesn’t let himself look at him long enough to be sure.

Instead, he pointlessly tracks May and Linda’s progress all the way across the room and through the door into the kitchen until it swings shut with a whistling creak. John stares at the door for far longer than necessary as he tries to delay the inevitable. When he can no longer justify staring at a stationary closed door, he reluctantly turns around to face Paul, slowly, inch by inch.

He’s greeted by the first sign the whole evening that Paul is anything other than perfectly calm: though he’s not fidgeting like he often does when he’s nervous, his hands are clasped a little too neatly in front of him, as if it’s taking a conscious effort to keep them still.

“You don’t want to see the view too?” John asks, because he has no clue what else to say.

“Not especially. Why, should I?”

“No. I don’t reckon your wife wants to either, does she? She thinks she’s being slick or what?”

He expects Paul to deny it, or else to imply that he should back off somehow, but he just shrugs and says, “Sorry about that.”

John looks at the clock again. It’s been about thirty-five seconds since he’d been left alone in the room with Paul. Forty now, almost. How much longer are May and Linda going to take out on the balcony? He can’t be alone with Paul like this, he really can’t handle it. What if he brings up the phone call, what if he asks John about it, what if he writes the whole thing off or tries to get him to take it back or –

“She just wanted to give us a chance to talk alone, I guess.”

There are a lot of things that John could say in response to that. What, alone with the man who recently told you he was in love with you basically his whole life? Does she even know? “Oh,” is all he actually says.

“Yeah, um.” Paul swallows, shifts in his seat. “I mean, I wanted that, too. To talk to you alone.”

John feels the blood draining from his face and knows that he’s probably paling noticeably. Fuck, he really is going to bring it up, isn’t he?

Except then Paul asks, “why did you and Yoko decide to separate?” and that throws him for a loop. Is that some roundabout, spineless way to ask John something else entirely, an attempt to imply that it had been because of his feelings for Paul that he and Yoko had split?

“We just needed space,” John says plainly, an easy, canned line that they’d both used several times.

Paul gives him a flat look. “Come on, I’m really asking.”

There’s nothing close at hand to fiddle with, so John resorts to thumbing over the seam around the wrist of his denim jacket as an excuse to avert his eyes. “It wasn’t working – we weren’t working. Yoko thought we were hurting each other’s images, and that we’d be happier apart.”

When Paul responds, he’s dropped his voice down in register to match John’s hushed tone. “And did you think that too?”

John’s thumb stills in its path along the jacket seam. “No,” he admits. “I mean, I went along with it, but I didn’t think I’d be happier. I really didn’t, but, um. I am, actually. Happier.”

“Right,” says Paul. John glances up at him, a bit confused by the lack of a proper response, and finds him looking lost in thought, eyes distant. “Sorry,” he says when he notices John looking, jolting back to focus. “It’s just that, well. It’s me and Linda.”

“What?” John asks incredulously, completely bewildered.

“She thinks that we’d be happier apart.”

That’s enough to get him gaping open-mouthed at Paul. The sentence makes logical sense, but has the odd effect of making him even more bewildered despite that. “Does she?”

“Yes, and, um, the thing is, I think I think so too.”

“You think you think so?”

“Yeah, well, it’s weird because I always thought that it would just be, I dunno, simple for me. I’d find my one person – my woman. Get married and then, you know, that's curtains. Happy ending. But it’s not like that really, in the end. So I thought, maybe you’d… since you’ve been there. With Yoko. And, ah, with Cyn.”

John can’t quite manage to close his mouth or hide his shock even in the slightest. It feels almost like it must be some sort of test, or a sick power play or something, telling him this after what he’d confessed over the phone. Surely Paul and Linda aren’t actually planning on separating, not when they’ve seemingly been so bloody happy together for the last six years, when they’d seemed perfectly fine today.

“You’re really going to split up? You’re serious?” he asks stupidly, embarrassed by his lack of composure but unable to help it.

Paul bites his lower lip, his teeth a neat white row against the plush pink jut of it. John looks away. “We really do care about each other, but it’s like what you said about you and Yoko, I guess. Just not working. It’s alright, though, because we talk about everything together, you know, and we’ve been talking a lot and she thought that I’d be happier if we stopped trying to make it work when it clearly isn’t. I know she’s right, too. I guess I just wanted to see what you thought.”

He's asking what John thinks about it? This still feels like it must be some sort of fucked-up test, though he’s almost certainly just being paranoid.

He’s watching the clock again as a justification for keeping his eyes off of Paul. It’s almost been five minutes, now. “It doesn’t matter what I think,” he offers delicately, “It’s your decision. You have to consider – and I know you really struggle with this – how you actually feel.”

“Right, yeah.”

There’s a sort of anticipation in the air that makes it clear that Paul is waiting for more, so John swallows his trepidation and adds, “it sounds like maybe you already know, though. You agree with Linda, don’t you? So – it might feel, y’know, big and scary but it’ll work out in the end. Or at least it always has for me.”

Paul exhales heavily, relief threaded through every note of it. “Good. That’s good.”

John risks a glance over and sees that he’s finally relaxed from his previous stiff posture, like a weight’s come off his shoulders. Like the decision’s been made. Like he’s splitting with Linda.

Like he’s single again.

“Why did you want to talk to me in particular about it?” John asks carefully, the closest he’s willing to get to bringing up the phone call. “You must have lots of other people who you could have asked.”

Paul frowns. “Yes, but why would I care what anyone else had to say?”

“Why would you care what I had to say?” John shoots back. It seems like the obvious question to him, but Paul looks surprised.

“I just thought that maybe you… would help it all make a bit more sense. How I’m feeling, or what comes after, or –” There’s the touch of a question in his tone, but John doesn’t understand it and Paul can clearly tell because his expression shutters. “It’s silly, I guess, nevermind. Thanks, anyway.”

“Yeah, well, glad to be a help,” John returns in a goofy, squeaky voice. He heroically refrains from making any jabs at Paul for failing at his marriage, even though a version of him from a couple of years ago would have been crowing about it to every news outlet he could get himself heard on.

Paul still has that somewhat more relaxed demeanor of a man who has made a decision, but he’s frowning too, looking a bit put-out for some reason. “John?” His voice is small, tentative.

John digs his fingers hard into the thick denim fabric of his jacket. “Yes?”

“You don’t ever still, um,”

“What?”

Paul bites his thumbnail, then tears his hand away from his mouth and lowers it with a deliberate effort. “You’re happy with May?”

“Very,” John assures him, trying to sound soothing without being patronizing. “Don’t you worry yourself, Paulie, you’ll find a new girl in no time at all.”

Paul exhales heavily again and his shoulders sink, easing him further out of any remaining tension that he’d still been holding; it doesn’t seem quite like relief this time though, strangely. “She’s lovely. May.”

“Yeah, she is,” John agrees with the lilt of a question.

“Think I’d like to see that view too, actually. Let’s go find her, shall we?” Paul asks loudly, suddenly springing to his feet and bursting into a flurry of hurried motion.

“Oh, sure, um, this way,” John manages, still reorientating himself to the drastic shift in mood that had happened in just a couple of seconds. That’s the end of that conversation, then. John supposes that he should be impressed that Paul had managed to maintain it for as long as he had, really, what with his track record.

They join May and Linda on the balcony and Paul seems perfectly normal again, just like when he’d arrived. As if nothing had happened at all.

It’s only about half an hour later when Paul and Linda leave with little more than the polite goodbye of an acquaintance. Linda gives him a hug; Paul doesn’t.

John lies awake in bed for hours that night, May curled up asleep in his arms. He can’t stop the erratic beating of his heart, not even as he repeatedly reminds himself that he probably won’t see Paul again for several months at a minimum. As much as he’d initially wished for it, he'd never truly thought that Paul would ever end things with Linda, not with the way he had always used to talk about his eventual marriage.

It would be enough to make a much stronger man than John question things, that’s for sure.

But then, they’d never brought up the call, or what John had confessed. They hadn’t touched on it, hadn't even hinted at anything.

John is beginning to wonder if he’d imagined the whole thing – maybe it had been some bizarre vivid dream and he hadn’t actually told Paul anything at all.

The several months minimum that John had set ends up being an understatement, if anything. Paul is in England for all the rest of that summer and fall, and even their semi-regular calls taper off into maybe one a month. In the news, he’s often photographed smiling either with Linda or with other members of Wings, and in interviews he explains that they’re recording more music, working on a film.

John tries not to think about it too much: he focuses on his life in America, on the music he’s making and the people he’s meeting and the events that he’s going to. He talks to Yoko sometimes on the phone, but never sees her, and in her absence sleeps with a host of people of both genders in addition to May, who never calls him out on it, if she even realizes.

He performs with Elton live on stage for the first time in years that November in Madison Square Garden, given no choice after having agreed to do so if their collaborated song “Whatever Gets You Thru The Night” reached number one, which it had. John really hadn’t expected it to and had barely thought twice before making the bet with Elton, which he ends up regretting quite thoroughly. He could have tried to back out of it, of course, but it wouldn’t have felt right, especially after Elton had been such a good friend to him for the last year.

Though they had continued to spend a lot of time together, Elton had never again brought up John’s confession about Paul after he had initially declined to talk about it. He hadn’t forgotten, though – it was glaringly obvious in the careful way that he handled their conversations anytime something even tangentially related to Paul came up, and in the sad, thoughtful looks that John would sometimes catch Elton directing at him when he thought he wasn’t looking. But he never presses John on it and he's grateful for it.

So when he forces himself out onto stage with Elton that November, so nervous that he nearly throws up, there’s no one else that he’d rather be performing with. Not even Paul. Who he’s not thinking about anyway. Obviously.

His night is rather thrown off when Yoko shows up in person and congratulates him on the number one record, but he still goes back home with May at the end of the day. He fucks May for hours after the show, mostly to keep himself from wondering if Paul had seen the news about him performing, if he’d seen pictures or footage, if he would call soon to talk about it.

If he had been successful at blocking out thoughts of Paul that night – which in itself is arguable at best – any attempt to continue to do so flies out the window just a couple of days later, when the news of Paul and Linda’s separation finally officially breaks. There had been speculative articles for months, but neither of them had confirmed anything until Linda had been caught out with her new beau that weekend, at which point the jig was finally up.

He calls Paul to check in on how he’s doing, but he doesn’t seem to have much time to talk. He has the kids with him and Mary and Stella are fighting over something, so he has to go after only a couple of minutes. He gives him a hurried congratulations on the number one song and on the show before he goes, but John is still left feeling rather empty and unsatisfied afterwards.

It’s not until December when they see each other in person again, and then only briefly, when Paul is in town to sign the dissolution papers for the band. John doesn’t go to sign on the same day as Paul and George do – if asked, he’d have some quick excuse as to why, but really he just doesn’t think he could handle being in the same room as his old bandmates for the first time in ages while he signed that very same band out of existence.

He marginally prefers what happens instead, a short run-in at George’s party that evening at the Hippopotamus club in Midtown Manhattan. Paul has come on his own, but a young woman finds her way onto his arm early in the evening, mirroring May on John’s as they make agonizingly stiff conversation for a while. If John had only seen a snapshot of it, no audio, it might have looked for a moment almost as if it were a decade earlier, he and Paul at a party with matching women on their arms; but May and Paul’s lady do most of the talking, in stark contrast to John’s memory of their younger years when any woman unfortunate enough to have tied themselves to one of them would be left standing there awkwardly while John and Paul wrapped themselves up in each other. It’s better, of course, to not be ruining anybody else’s evening with their destructive exclusivity like they used to. Still, John can’t help but to miss those days so badly that he aches, a feeling that’s far from unfamiliar.

He wants to ask Paul why he hasn’t been calling as often, what he’s been up to, how he’s faring without Linda. He wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him hard and ask if he even cares about him at all or if he ever did, wants to demand that they circle back to that stupid fucking conversation in May even though it had been John who had shut it down, even though he knows that there’s nothing good to say anyway. All the same, he wants to demand more out of him – at this point, so what if it’s only more disappointment? Even that would be better than nothing at all.

He doesn’t do any such thing; he waves George over when the conversation is reaching the threshold of unbearable, making it unbearable in a different way but at least taking away the temptation to start screaming at Paul about the fact that he’s in love with him. At the end of the party he hugs George and half-hugs Paul, fleetingly and mostly for show, and then gets into his car with May and leaves him behind.

It takes a tremendous effort not to look back through the rear windshield to where Paul is standing at the curb in front of the club, by now surrounded by women fawning over him. John wants to watch him shrink away until he’s nothing but a tiny distant point on the horizon, but he forces himself to stare straight ahead instead, unblinking, until his eyes burn with the tears that he refuses to shed.

John signs the dissolution papers for the band himself, on his own, and then goes back to LA with May in the new year, gets back to his life there of partying and drinking and sleeping with whoever comes his way. He gets word that the dissolution has officially gone through, that The Beatles are officially over. He doesn’t call Paul. He doesn’t think about Paul. If he does start thinking about him, he takes more pills until he’s too blitzed to think about anything at all.

The routine is vaguely manageable, if undeniably unsustainable in the long term. It’s unceremoniously interrupted soon enough, though, when Paul materializes at the door of his beach house as if by magic one day. He shows up on a random day in late January without even so much as a call in advance – as if being given barely a day of warning last time wasn’t bad enough.

“Hi, John,” Paul says, standing alone on the front stoop with his hair blowing in the light breeze. He looks like something out of a dream, in a periwinkle silk shirt with several buttons undone and tight white chinos fastened by a shiny suede belt that’s cinched tight around his narrow waist. He’s lit golden by the sun shining brilliantly down from above.

John blinks. Then he blinks again. Paul is still standing there, eliminating his initial hypothesis that he’s having some kind of drug induced hallucination.

“May I come in?” Paul prompts in an overly polite tone when John has failed to respond to his greeting for several seconds.

He doesn’t say anything, still speechless, but he must have swayed back a little on his feet or something because Paul smiles pleasantly as if he’s been given permission and walks past John into his foyer. He toes his shoes off and places them neatly by the door, parallel to the wall.

John trails after him into the main room, a bit ashamed at the mess that greets them. May has been gone for a few days, visiting a friend or something – or maybe just sick of his moping, he wouldn’t blame her – so the disaster is worse than usual. John fights a wince as he watches Paul survey the room with a pinched expression. Eventually, he sits down primly at the edge of the largest sofa, pushing aside a pile of clothes to make room for himself.

“It’s polite to let someone know before they have company, you know,” John says, breaking his silence as he collapses down on the sofa opposite Paul, kicking a spare guitar that had somehow ended up there onto the floor. “And I just woke up. Haven’t gotten the chance to tidy up after the party 'round here last night.” It had been a party for one this particular time, granted, but Paul didn’t need to know that. Plenty of times there were tons of people around anyway.

Paul’s eyebrows raise slightly – he’s being too defensive, shit, he should have maintained his silence until Paul was forced to speak instead. Too late now. “I spent far too much time in your bedroom when we were teenagers for this to upset me,” Paul gibes lightly.

Jesus, there’s something wrong with John, but even the mention of bedrooms is enough to make him go lightheaded. He looks away deliberately. “Less cocaine there, though,” he offers to the floor, wishing that he had cleaned up last night’s leftovers before Paul had arrived. By snorting it, preferably – he feels half-delirious for several reasons but hadn’t had time to get high yet that day and so is devastatingly sober.

“Christ, imagine, that,” Paul laughs. “Us as teenagers with coke.”

“Wouldn’t have survived it, I don’t think.”

“Ah. Yeah, for the best we didn’t have any. The prellies were bad enough.”

John hums in mild, passive agreement. He’s noticed some sort of ugly reddish stain on the floor, besmirching the clean planks. He should call that cleaner that Yoko had found for the place, get her to come by. He can’t quite think of her phone number, though, and May’s not around to ask.

Paul clears his throat and shifts noisily. He’s fidgeting too, moving closer to the edge of his seat to close the space between them – John’s still looking at the floor, but the midday sun streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows paints Paul’s shadow onto the ground and he watches him through it. He’s clearly building up to something, or trying to.

John allows himself a half-glance, just to frown at Paul while he asks: “What? Are you expecting me to offer tea or something?”

“No, no! Sorry, just… I’m, uh. I’m here to talk to you about something?”

“That a bloody question, you asking me? How should I know why you’re here?”

“No, it’s not. I’m here to talk to you.”

“Yeah, what about?”

“Um. Do you think you’re going to stay in LA?”

“Eh, who knows?” John asks rhetorically, deciding there’s probably no harm in answering this one. “Here, New York, Paris, wherever I feel like, I guess. Nothing’s tying me down, really.”

“Paris?” asks Paul, voice shooting a little high. John hadn’t even meant to say it, certainly hadn’t meant anything by it – it had just come out, thoughtless. Turns out there had been harm in answering after all, because now Paul’s looking at him roughly as if he had confessed that he loved him all over again.

“Wherever the wind takes me,” he sing-songs, leaning back and kicking his feet up onto the coffee table in a desperate attempt to look unbothered.

“And you’re, um, alright?”

“Of course I am,” John snaps. He’s a liar and he’s pretty sure it’s glaringly obvious, what with the state of his home and the sallow tint that his face has been taking on of late. “Though, you know, I think May’s fucked off and left me and I’m only realizing it now.” He’s only thinking out loud, really, talking to himself. Unfortunately, Paul is right there with perfectly functional ears and so of course he hears it too.

“I noticed she wasn’t around,” he says. “I thought you – in the summer you said you were really happy with her. You must be upset?”

“Must I be?” John asks, rhetorical once again. He’s watching the fuzzy edges of Paul’s shadow across the floor, trying fruitlessly to tease out some insight into his brain from it.

Paul clears his throat, discomfort palpable. The silence stretches out thickly into the space between them. John’s heart is doing something terrible and traitorous in his chest, somersaulting around like it’s a gymnast competing in the Olympics, pounding hard against his ribcage with a question of why are you here, why are you here, why are you here.

“Right.” He looks up at Paul, anger taking over firmly enough that he forgets himself and faces him directly. “What are you here to talk to me about, really?” He’s prepared for disappointment, but his stupid fucking heart won’t fully give it up with the hope either.

Paul stares right back at him for several long moments, something beseeching in his gaze. “You know,” he pulls idly at the skin of his lower lip with his thumb and pointer finger, “I lied about my songs.”

John scoffs. Paul ignores him and continues. “I’ve never really understood it properly, the idea of needing to have written songs about something. To me they’re just – words, made up, y’know? But then people are always asking, who’s this one for, who’s that one for, and everybody else has answers, when it’s about their songs.” 

Paul’s pulling at his skin more insistently now, digging in his fingers, biting at his fingernail where it cuts against his teeth. His gaze is bouncing unevenly around John’s face, refusing to settle. “Other songwriters always have something, and I just… I never did, actually. Well, sometimes I’d write a little story, y’know, Rocky Raccoon or She’s Leaving Home. But the ones from, I dunno, my perspective or whatever – when I was asked about them, I’d just lie.”

At that John sits up a little straighter in his seat, unable to help himself. He wants to find out where Paul is going with this.

“I mean, I’d say songs were about Jane or about Linda but it was almost never true. Even when things were meant to be about them, they still never felt like they actually were, you know?”

“No,” says John, who has at least on some level written every single fucking song in his life for the same man and never once been able to forget it.

“I figured it was just different for me. My songs didn’t have meaning, my love songs weren’t about anything more than an imagined feeling. Everybody who said they had to be based on something was wrong, because they clearly weren’t.”

“Fucking great, Paul. So you write imaginary love songs without feeling anything. Do you think that’s something to brag about?”

“No,” Paul replies slowly. “That’s not what I was saying. It’s more that, um, I got to thinking and I sort of realized that maybe they were about something after all. You know, maybe there was someone the whole time.”

There’s a strange itchy lump in John’s throat all of a sudden and it’s fizzing its way both down into his stomach and up into his mouth, a sharp metallic tang on his tongue. “And who's that, then?” he snaps. His chest hurts. He doesn't want to know. He absolutely has to know.

“When I write,” Paul swallows, “even when you're not there, you are. I can't write any song without thinking about you. I didn't realize until recently why. What it actually meant.”

John blinks in confusion at the seeming non sequitur. He opens his mouth to ask Paul what the fuck he's on about now when it suddenly dawns on him so forcefully then that it's like being hit by a semi-truck: Paul is trying to say that it's him.

He’s doing a terrible job of saying it, but that is what he’s saying, isn’t it?

John looks back down at the shadow on the floor. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are no miraculous insights to be gleaned from it, so he returns his attention to Paul’s ever-inscrutable face instead and sets himself to trying to read something from it, anything at all.

The first thing he notices is that Paul is still pulling at his lips as if he doesn’t even realize that he’s doing it. The pressure he’s applying with his nails brings an angry reddish colour up into his skin that practically begs to be kissed away. His eyes are intent, nervous, locked on John. In all honesty, he doesn’t seem particularly blank-faced for once – he should be easy to read right now. The realization dawns on him, as he scrutinizes Paul’s expression to no avail, that maybe it’s him that’s the problem, and maybe it has been the entire time. He should be able to read Paul, should know what he’s thinking, but he just plain doesn’t have a clue. If he wants to know, he’s going to have to coerce him into saying it properly somehow.

“So, what does it mean, then?” he asks, feeling horrendously transparent but unwilling to go on guessing.

Paul’s mouth flattens into a thin line. His jaw twitches. Finally, haltingly, he says, “You really fucked me up, do you know that? That phone call. What you said.”

John clamps his jaw shut so tightly that he can physically feel his teeth creak under the force of it. “So it’s all my fault then, is it? Everything that’s ever gone wrong in your life?”

Paul startles, his eyes widening in a way that gives him an irritatingly endearing resemblance to a baby deer. “No! Christ, John, where did you even – I’m only saying that I haven’t been able to stop bloody thinking about it.”

John’s head is starting to pound from how hard his teeth are clenched. Paul is looking at him like – like he doesn’t even know what. He curls his left fist into the cradle of his right palm and squeezes hard.

“It wasn’t fair,” says Paul. “That wasn’t fair.”

John shakes his head, the only thing he can manage.

“You telling me like that,” Paul presses on, “going and saying you used to love me only after it was years too late for me to do anything about it.”

“You did something about it anyway, though, didn’t you?” John explodes, restraint cracking straight through down the middle. “You’ve really gone and split with Linda! Don’t tell me that’s not – even if it’s not related at all, you have to understand how it fucking feels, Paul!” The words tumble haphazardly out of him, accusations that have been bouncing around in his head for months and months, bursting out of him now with force. Even as terror is already starting to settle at the thought of what might come next, he feels a weight lifting from his shoulders at finally letting it out.

“And now you’re here, alone,” he continues, still too loud, “looking at me like that, with that fucking face, dressed like – ugh! – here to talk to me about the fact that you've written all your songs for me, apparently! Care to explain that to me properly?”

Paul stands, steps towards the sofa where John is sitting, and there’s a moment there when John’s entire body lurches like he’s falling and he’s about to hit the ground. He’s frozen on a razor-edge of impossibility with Paul right in front of him, looking as delectably gorgeous as ever and also more like he’s about to kiss John than he ever has before in his life at the same time.

Except then something brightly panicked sparks up into Paul’s eyes. “Actually, um,” he squeaks out, “there was something else. I actually came – for a different reason.”

The tone of his voice sets off a warning bell in the back of John's brain. Dread tightens like a clenching fist in his chest and curls into a heavy weight that drops down into the hope that was rising in him, dragging it back down into the depths. “And what was that?” The question comes out flat, tired.

Paul hesitates. He’s the one taking a turn avoiding eye contact now, watching John’s hands instead of his face. “Yoko wanted me to talk to you.”

“What?” John asks, the only thing he can possibly think to say. His voice sounds floaty, far-away in his ears.

“She came all the way over to Scotland to see me. She wanted me to pass a message along – to tell you she wants you back, John. She says she’d take you back, you could go home to her. She just had a few conditions that she wanted me to –”

“Conditions?” John interrupts, too loud and already sounding borderline hysterical.

Paul’s gaze snaps up, not quite scared but certainly on edge, clearly starkly aware of John’s less-than-stellar reaction. He’s stiffened, but seems to steel himself before pushing on. “She wants you to woo her again properly. And, um, leave all this partying and such behind, obviously. Go back to The Dakota.”

John shoots up from his seat. He wishes he could manage to project a cool indifference, to drive Paul away with something so casually cruel that he finally goes and never comes back, but holding himself still is utterly unthinkable in the face of this. “Get out of my house.”

“John.”

The standing was a mistake; he and Paul are face to face in the middle of the room, barely a foot apart. “What, so you jumped up to do her bidding? Since you apparently know what’s best for me?”

“I’m only trying to help. I figured you would want to know. I mean, she’s your wife! I know you love her, so I just thought –”

“You thought? You thought? Hell, what do you know about what I want?”

“It…” Paul looks so uncertain, it makes John feel sick. “It seemed like the right thing to do. You’re killing yourself out here.”

John laughs humourlessly. “Am I?”

Paul goes resolutely quiet, but his gaze drifts left to where several unfinished lines of cocaine sit plainly out on an end table.

John’s too ashamed to even use the silence to sink in another hurtful jab. He won’t say it, but he knows that Paul’s right. He can’t go on like this, especially without May. It’s almost like it’s 1968 again – he’s spiralling and alone and Yoko seems to be the only lifeline he’s got. It makes him feel pathetic, which in turn only makes him angrier.

“Why do you think she sent you?” he snarls. “She could have just come over here herself to tell me this. Or called, even! We talk on the phone all the time. But no, she got you to do it.”

“Look, I don’t know why she asked me, John, but she did.” 

“Of course she asked you.” John pinches the bridge of his nose, though it does nothing to stave off his growing headache. “She’s not stupid, that’s for sure.”

He can see it spread out in front of him now, the only clear, visible path that he can imagine to the future: Going back to New York, giving up the partying, getting back with Yoko. He might even be some form of happy, that way. Paul is right about one thing – he does love Yoko, and he knows that she loves him too. He has dedicated himself to Yoko before and he could again, and it would be something real even though there will never be anybody who can compare to Paul, not to John. At the very least, Yoko would give him the stability he desperately needs.

He hadn’t wanted to go back, but she must have realized that – from their phone calls, maybe. That’s why she’d sent Paul. She’d known that it was the only play that might work. And she was right: it is working.

John just wants all of this over.

“Alright,” he says shortly, and then only because he has to be one hundred percent sure, asks “Do you think I should go back?”

To John’s surprise, Paul falters. “Well,” he swallows, “of course it must be what you want –”

“I didn't fucking ask what you think I want, I asked if I should.”

“Why, um. Why are you asking me?”

John would laugh, if he wasn’t so close to crying. “Why would I care what anyone else had to say?”

Paul starts and there’s a light of realization in his eyes that shows he’s recognized his own words turned back on him.

Something relaxes in his face, and then his lips part and his mouth shifts in a way that looks almost like it could be about to drag itself up into an astonished little smile. “I don’t – John. John, I don’t think you should.”

The relief is so strong that John's legs nearly give out under him. Still: “Why?”

“Well, you split up once, didn’t you? She’s a wonderful woman, of course, very strong, creative, smart and all. But she’s – you’d be miserable getting back with her, wouldn’t you? You said yourself that you’ve been happier without her.”

“Would I?” John muses, stepping in ever so slightly so he crowds into Paul’s space. “You were literally just saying that I’ve been killing myself out here. Go on, what's the real reason?”

Paul’s expression goes tight again. Scared, maybe. The wall clock above the fireplace ticks steadily away to a 4/4 time signature, marking the wait with a trace of the music that never seems to leave them. Then, finally: “It would hurt. Me.” Paul looks like he might be about to give himself an aneurysm from the strain of saying it, but he does say it. “I don’t want her to have you. I want me to have you.”

John closes his eyes and inhales so deeply that it fills his whole chest. In that moment, it feels like it’s the freshest air he’s ever breathed.

God, if that isn’t the best thing he’s heard in his entire life, he has no idea what is. “Do you now?” It comes out bizarrely smug, confident – he sounds almost amused, a far cry from his racing heart and plunging stomach.

Paul blinks, and bright spots of colour rise into the high points of his cheeks. “I know it’s stupid. I know, alright? That call, you were only talking about the past, and now I’m all – but you know, if you had asked me then, I would have fucking done anything you wanted, John, Jesus. It’s five years too late and you don’t love me anymore and still I can’t bear to be with anyone else, just at the idea of you ever having wanted me.”

Okay, never mind. That is the best thing he’s heard in his entire life. Except: “Five years too late?” He supposes he had sort of phrased it as if the feelings were in the past, not wholly unintentionally. It shouldn’t be all that surprising that Paul had taken it as fact, but John manages to be surprised anyway.

Paul is frowning now, lip trembling just slightly as if he’s fighting off tears. “You broke up the band and married Yoko and left me behind to get over it and you'd never even told me. I didn't know! You never gave me a chance! Can't you see how unfair that was?”

“It didn't work,” says John. He sounds giddy, a striking contrast to the heavy sadness in Paul’s voice.

“Huh?”

“Breaking up the band, marrying Yoko, moving away and leaving you behind. You think it worked? It didn't.” Paul’s jaw has fully dropped; he looks utterly gobsmacked. John has no difficulty at all in reading him for the first time in a long time, and it’s enough to lift the last remnants of his sour mood straight up into the stratosphere. “I'm starting to realize that nothing ever will.”

He finds himself grinning from ear-to-ear even as Paul continues to gape dumbly at him, confused but unmistakably hopeful. “You think it's too late?”

“Isn’t it?” Paul asks, gone breathless. The sun from the windows is hitting him from behind at a forty-five degree angle, haloing him in a gorgeous golden glow.

John wants to touch him, so he does. He brings his hands up through the narrow space between them and rests them, just gently, on Paul’s biceps over the silky fabric of his obscenely revealing shirt. “If I told you it wasn't. What would you do then?”

Paul’s face is shifting now so that he’s smiling too, the giddiness flowing through John’s fingertips into him. “Then… I’d tell you I feel the same. I wanted you too. I do want you too.”

“Fucking hell.” John draws his hands up until he can take Paul's face gently into his hands, then just cradles it there for a long moment. He takes his time, tilts it to the left, then the right; Paul goes easily, doesn't resist. “You're beautiful,” he says, not a confession now but rather a simple statement of fact. Paul reddens gorgeously and seems to shift somehow closer, his cheeks pressing more firmly against John’s palms.

“I can't believe you thought I could ever stop loving you.” John’s pinky finds the pulse point just under Paul’s jaw and presses in there. He can feel Paul’s heartbeat through it, going lightning fast, thrumming up into his hand and then up his arm towards his own heart. “I never will. I'm not capable of it.”

“Yeah?” Paul asks, sounding so plainly raw that John is helpless to feel anything but adoration for him.

“God,” he breathes and slides his spare hand up to card his fingers through Paul’s hair. “God, yeah. I love you.”

And Paul says: “I love you too.”

John stares, dizzy and exhilarated, as Paul rolls his head against the pressure of his hand at the back of his head, exposing the long line of his neck. Watching him, John’s growing awe crescendos into reverence and then finally cracks open just enough for desire to rush in like air into a vacuum.

On an impulse, his grip tightens and pulls at Paul’s hair, dragging him in even closer so that they’re only a couple of inches apart at most. Once again, Paul goes willingly, pliant under his touch. “I never thought I'd ever be able to have you,” John whispers.

“You always have, the entire time. I’m yours.”

John draws his thumbs along Paul's face in broad swoops from his temples down to his chin, feeling the supple give of the soft skin underneath his touch. He’s in disbelief, can hardly think straight. “Mine,” he murmurs, and the word tastes so unbelievably good on his tongue. It’s the one thing he’s wanted most, and most consistently, throughout his entire life: Paul to be his.

“Can I –” Paul starts, seeming to almost flinch under John’s hands. He doesn’t understand at first, so overcome is he by the intensity of the moment crashing over him. Except then Paul repeats the motion and he realizes that it’s not so much a flinch as a jerky movement forward, bumping their foreheads, aligning their noses.

“Christ,” John gasps, realizing, “yes. Please.”

Paul moves again, more decisively, ducks in even closer. Their lips brush so gently that John initially isn’t sure if he’s imagined it or not. Paul is staring into his eyes, and they’re so close now that John can see nothing else but the green-flecked hazel of his irises, the deep black of his pupils. And then Paul’s eyes slide shut and he’s kissing him.

It’s a proper kiss, nothing hesitant or shy about it. It’s immediately overwhelming, all of it, the feel and the taste and the smell, God, the smell of him. It feels almost like he’s taken a hit of some seriously potent cocaine, sans the stinging, bitter aftertaste in his throat. Had it injected straight into his brain, more like. Probably doesn’t need the real stuff anymore, probably never will again.

One of Paul’s arms comes to wrap around his waist, drawing him in until their bodies are flush together. He deepens the kiss, opening entirely up to him with no hesitation. “I love you,” Paul professes with such certainty that John suddenly can’t quite remember how he’d ever once doubted it. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

They stumble back – Paul’s pushing him, or maybe he’s pulling Paul, he doesn’t even know – until they fall back into the sofa that John had been sitting on earlier.

Paul ends up on top of him, fully in his lap, clinging to his shirt so tightly that it feels like he might tear the fabric. “If you’re going to rip my shirt off,” John gasps between kisses, “We should probably go up to my bedroom.”

“Oh,” says Paul unevenly. “I guess we could. Or we could just stay right here. That’s faster.”

His grip tightens and, well, John doesn’t have much of anything to say to that. Paul is right, it would be faster. And he’s waited long enough.

“Good point,” he concedes, and reaches down to help Paul take his shirt off.