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He remembers John is there halfway through the Edinburgh set, when he turns for a towel and sees John’s face (smiling and serious, all in one) next to Ray’s, looming companionably in the wings. The impulse Elton gets then—to rush offstage, immediately, and throw John against the wall—takes two deep breaths to overcome. He forces himself to forget those blue eyes for the next hour, losing himself effectively enough in his work that when he really does stumble backstage, after two encores, John’s presence in his dressing room is startling.
“Fucking brilliant, Elton!”
Ray’s enthusiasm rings hollowly in his ears, considering that Elton cannot stop looking at John. John’s expectant smile eventually knocks Elton out of his daze, forcing him to turn briefly back to Ray.
“Oh, yeah, thanks, mate.”
He tries his best to carry on as he always does, bonhomie and a happy if nervous ceaseless chattering, for each of his visitors. There are no truly big names tonight, which disappoints him as much as it makes him kick himself for his presumption, because six months ago he would have been astonished by even one backstage visitor, by anyone. Bernie is absent, hauled off before the encores by tonight’s woman if Ray is to be believed, and without him Elton turns to John for witty repartee, a position John fills so beautifully easily. Elton feels like he’s stepping too close to a blazing fire, an indiscretion that will torch his career in thirty seconds or less, but he can’t stop either the banter or the heat that floods his body, pooling in his cheeks and loins.
He doesn’t take any of the powder John carries everywhere, but the evening blurs out nonetheless, the postconcert high quite as good as that of coke, and John somehow gets them both into the backseat of a car, no Ray in sight. John rattles on about restaurants but Elton, with his Elton Hercules John confidence that still mystifies him, instructs the driver back to the hotel, and John’s surprised look makes Elton sit on his hand to avoid reaching out for him.
“You’re not hungry?” John murmurs, leaning toward him.
Elton bites his lip as he looks up, into John’s breathtaking face, one he’d thought lost forever in America until John’s miraculous reappearance a month ago. His stupid brain throws up the most gloriously stupid response, and he indulges it without second thought.
“I’m starving.”
John coughs, colors prettily, looks away. Elton grins at nothing for the rest of the car ride, all the way up into the suite—an entire bloody suite—he’s got. As soon as the door shuts behind them, he grabs John’s hand, primary students en route to school, and, giggling, pulls him toward the bed.
“Holy hell, Elton,” John whispers, voice choked, falling onto the duvet. “What d’you—”
“Please can I—” it shouldn’t be this hard; Elton’s done it before, several times now, and he’s nowhere as good as John is but John hasn’t had any complaints, so why does it still take an effort, why is this scarier than a thousand Scots listening to his every word “—I’m fucking starving, John, God, the minute I realized you were back there I almost stopped the show—”
“Fuck, Jesus.” John reaches out to grab Elton’s hip, his touch scalding, and Elton whimpers as John pulls him onto the bed alongside him. John’s kiss is soft, despite the rasp under his voice, and Elton’s mouth opens at once, letting his tongue inside. When John eventually pulls away, Elton chases him, kissing John’s cheek as John smiles. “You are a menace, darling.”
Something about the darling makes Elton particularly weak, and he closes his eyes for a moment, luxuriating in John’s slow stroking thumb along the back of Elton’s hand. When he opens them again it’s to John’s head pressed against his chest, neat parting coming undone, tufts of hair at the back sticking up, and Elton removes his glasses, rubs moisture from the corner of his eye, his hand coming away mottled with the mascara he forgot to remove in his backstage joy.
He felt this soft need, or a touch of it, in that first hotel room in LA, and he keeps feeling it, night after night, no matter how many times he meets John. It’s scarier than the adrenaline coiling in his guts, and he forces himself to lean into it, a cocktail of stage high and tenderness as he slides his hands into John’s trousers, unbuttoning and unzipping while John groans.
“Elton—”
“I need to taste you.” Elton swallows, pushing John up the bed as John curses. Elton’s hands fumble down into John’s pants, and he sighs in relief at the surging warmth he finds there, twitching promisingly. “Please, off—”
John rips down his trousers and pants, his hands hot against Elton’s, batting Elton away in order to move back on the bed, settling half sitting up against the pillows, his filling cock on full display as Elton sprawls on his stomach by John’s hips.
“Oh, fuck you,” Elton whispers, his throat trembling, and John laughs and sighs as Elton kisses the head.
It’s not truly a comfortable position, but Elton, lost in the sweaty heat of John’s cock against his tongue, hardly notices. He takes in mouthful after mouthful of skin, hot and slightly sour and unmistakable for anything else, his own cock bursting behind his zip, John’s hands cupping his head and John’s moans echoing in his stomach, and he cannot believe how nearly he had none of this.
Since taking full managerial control John has been wound tight, which is probably only to be expected considering all the shit he has to do. Elton likes money and Elton likes John, loading bag after bag of cash into their life, and it’s not like Elton doesn’t know how to wind himself up, doesn’t dart offstage with every one of his veins humming with an exhaustion so deep it turns back around into energy.
They’re in America—Memphis, maybe?—and there are several soul musicians backstage with Elton, taking him delightfully seriously. Everyone else has cleared out, learning from experience that Elton, in poststage entertainment mode, lines on the dressing room vanity and a bottle of brandy up for grabs, can talk nearly endlessly. They have to wait until the crowds thin, until security pushes fans back enough that Elton can head to the hotel without drowning in people, and he’s two lines in, the back of his throat fully numb, when John appears from somewhere and announces that they’ll be cleared to head out in ten.
The musicians, laughing, swipe the brandy bottle and slink out the door, leaving a bright-eyed John alone with Elton.
“Doll,” he says, voice loose and loud and coked as he usually isn’t until after they’ve left a venue, and Elton grins distractedly, sitting down to scrub at the blusher high on his cheeks. “A good one.”
“But of course it was, darling.” Elton tosses the flannel down on the counter as John approaches, his face huge and winking alongside Elton’s in the mirror. “I am perfection.”
John’s hands tighten around Elton’s hips, one sliding under the waistband of the flared rainbow trousers Elton hasn’t yet taken off; his lips burn Elton’s neck. “So is my mouth.”
Elton doesn’t move as John gets down onto his knees under the vanity, lets him part his thighs and take out his mostly soft cock. Energy thrums around his body, show adrenaline and cocaine, and he drains his glass as John’s hands tighten around his cock.
There isn’t much time, he’s sure John said that, even if time is bright-edged and floaty at the moment, but John goes at him slowly nonetheless, more a massage than anything truly sexual until quite suddenly Elton’s down John’s throat, almost to his balls, and they groan in quiet tandem. He’s rapidly hardening, all his blood flooding downward, and he waits for John to suck, to take Elton to pieces.
The door handle twists, and the noise startles Elton badly enough that he jumps, pushing himself deeper down John’s throat. John is silent, his hands clenching on Elton’s upper thighs to hold him in place, and Elton blinks and watches in the mirror as Bernie’s head appears around the opening door.
“Reid said you’d be almost ready?”
“Hi!”
John sucks, and Elton chokes, frantically trying to turn it into a cough as Bernie, bright with cocaine himself, takes a step inside and starts rambling. John’s throat and mouth work, tight around him, and Bernie’s speaking, as if his best friend weren’t balls deep in his fucking manager just out of sight. Elton tries to answer but realizes he doesn’t even know what Bernie’s on about, sex or drugs or sheer confusion making him stupid, caught between Bernie’s chattering and John’s mouth. In the mirror his face seems to be someone else’s, red cheeks and glassy eyes, and John pulls off just enough to drag his tongue along the underside of Elton’s head until Elton bites the back of his hand to stop himself from crying out. Bernie stops speaking midsentence, laughing as he raises an eyebrow.
“Christ, Elton, really?”
John pulls one of Elton’s balls into his mouth, and Elton swears out loud, sweat hot down his back, sticking him to the chair. He closes his eyes to avoid meeting Bernie’s, mumbles apologies as John turns on his full power, licking Elton’s glans, one hand tickling his balls. Elton comes down John’s throat in a white flash, his head spinning, and when he finally gathers his courage enough to open his eyes, Bernie is gone.
“Probably time to go,” John says from the floor, wiping the edge of his swollen mouth, a hand stroking Elton’s ankle.
“What the fuck,” Elton murmurs, unable even to make a proper question of it. His head is pounding, and he leans into John’s heat as John stands and puts a firm hand on Elton’s shoulder, pressing him down into the chair. “Fucking exhibitionist.”
John’s thumb brushes Elton’s mouth, and he bites at it half-heartedly, sighing as John, eyes glittering, pulls away.
“Personalized stress relief. For both of us.”
“Oh, please,” Elton grumbles. “He’s going to taunt me for weeks.”
“You’ll just have to get your own back, won’t you?” John waggles his tongue while Elton fights down a gurgling laugh. “As long as your head’s on straight, that’s all that really matters, darling.”
“And yours?”
“My head is worth much less money.” He kisses Elton’s forehead. “Time to leave. I managed late dinner downtown, and I didn’t even have to blow anyone for it.”
The world spins badly after enough champagne, Elton so drunk he hasn’t even bothered to get more coke. The weight of another tour coming to an end, another set of shows done and dusted, another period of nothing stretching before him, makes him half-crazy with weariness and nerves, far worse than any stage fright could be. He’s staring up at his own sitting room ceiling, ignoring the party roaring around him, when John’s hand tightens around his wrist, John’s head leans improperly close against his, John’s boozy breath fans across Elton’s face, fogging his glasses.
“Congratulations.”
Slurred, and Elton, aching quite suddenly for touch, leans in to kiss him, frowning as John slides away.
“Upstairs.”
Elton follows him, his pelvis inches from John’s arse as they ascend to the master suite. John refuses his advances until the door closes behind them, at which he throws them both onto the bed, undoing Elton’s belt and trousers in quick, fumbling motions.
“You want to fuck me.”
Not actually a question, though Elton, hiccuping and rapidly approaching cross-eyed, laughs as he attempts to answer. “Always.”
John does most of the work, pulls Elton’s cock out of his trousers and strips off his own to reveal his astonishingly hard prick. Elton is only vaguely aroused, but it’s been days since they last fucked, and John is so miserably angry half the time now, and he can’t trust himself with his own thoughts and feelings anymore; drunk and muted is the best way. Elton lets John suck him to hardness, smiles as John attempts to choke himself on Elton’s slowly thickening cock, growling when it doesn’t jump to attention as quickly as he’d like.
“Hungry, darling?”
John ignores him, burying his head against the inside of Elton’s thigh, his fingertips digging into Elton’s legs, and Elton titters and shoves his hands into John’s hair, pulling until John yelps.
“You want me to fuck you.”
“No shit,” John mumbles, spitting against the duvet. Elton flips them both, landing on top of John, bracketed between his legs, and stares at the long, lean lines of John’s body until John presses a pot of vaseline into his hands.
“Let’s go.”
Elton laughs under his breath as he slicks up two fingers and slides them directly into John, watching John’s eyes widen as he bites off a curse.
“Too much?”
“Shut up.” John twists, pulling Elton’s fingers in deeper. “I’m going to fucking explode—”
Elton takes it perversely slow, his hands clumsy with alcohol, his head ringing with premature hangover and all his pent-up confusion and rage and sheer emotion that comes with the end of every tour. John, wriggling and randy, white-knuckling the bedding by the time Elton exchanges cock for fingers, calls him name after name, and when Elton slides in, groaning at the tight heat, John’s laugh is tight.
“Thank fuck, you great lumpen—”
Elton bites John’s hip, vaguely aware of his own giggling, and grabs John’s leaking cock. He thrusts, badly off-kilter and unable, in his drunken state, to steady his rhythm, but John cries out as if it were anywhere near as good as Elton’s usual, and when he comes onto his own stomach a minute or two later Elton leans forward to lick it away.
“Fuck, come on,” John says, arching the long line of his neck, and Elton, his tongue coated in bitterness, focuses on the muscles from John’s chest to his chin as he drives himself into John’s arse and, in one final stuttering thrust, releases.
The afterparty is particularly raucous, and Elton, itchy from a boisterous if private quick show, does line after line, interspersed with tequila until he feels like his body is one large electric current. John disappeared fifteen minutes in, and Elton, still enraged from their morning argument about the upcoming Dodger Stadium arrangements, refuses to think on what or who John is doing until John himself reappears on the corner of the dance floor, alone, drinking straight from a bottle of tequila.
It’s a fairly sympathetic crowd, all told, and a very drunk and useless one in any case, and Elton is rapidly approaching the state of being too drug-fucked to give a shit about even a veneer of propriety. He abandons the pretty and pointless blond hanging on his every word, leaving him with a pile of coke and half a bottle, and sidles up to John, almost casually, leaning in under cover of the music.
“Fuck me.”
The words surprise Elton himself, or at least they would if he, face and throat numb, mind ping-ponging, could focus on anything for more than ten seconds. John snorts, taking a swig.
“Hello to you too.”
“I’m not joking.” He wasn’t aware of it until now, but he really isn’t; he needs something thick and grounding, something to spark off the wild white whirling around his brain. “I’d quite like to be split open by a cock.”
“Tequila’s a fun drink, isn’t it, darling?”
Elton grabs John’s elbow, and John’s eyes dart with the fear Elton hates so very much, John’s hyperawareness of fucking everything and everyone.
“Let’s go home.”
“Christ, Elton, it’s only—”
“Fuck me.”
“Jesus Christ.”
John pulls away, disappearing back into the crowd. Elton dogs him for twenty minutes, drifting from room to room, chattering at hateful strangers and catching John again in the garden, heavy with the scent of rotting flowers.
“I’m not joking.”
“This is sparkling conversation, dear.”
But John’s drunker than ever, his limbs loose and open and his hair wildly mussed, his attention gradually focusing in on Elton and Elton only. If he’s been chasing some slag, well, no man is as tenacious as Elton himself, and Elton grins as John calls for the car.
The LA mansion is empty when they arrive home, housekeeper and maids long since gone to bed, and Elton pulls John on top of him on a sofa.
“Want your cock.”
“So you’ve said.” John’s eyes are wild, his pupils blown, and he doesn’t resist as Elton strips them both. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Hopefully you.”
It takes several minutes to get them both hard, hands and mouths pulling and twisting and licking, and when John gets up in search of lubrication, leaving Elton sprawled on his back with his cock throbbing against his stomach, Elton growls. By the time John returns, Elton can feel his energy bursting at the edges of his skin, sour as well as urgent, and he leans forward to bite John’s shoulder as John works him open with slick fingers.
“Fuck’s sake, John.”
“What, you want it dry?” John’s voice is brittle, the angry side of drunk, and Elton's sourness surges further. “You absolutely can’t take that, you twat.”
“Should have asked someone who knows what he’s doing—”
John hisses, removing his fingers, and Elton, rage simmering in his throat, hisses back. “Fuck off.”
“Oh, come on, John.” Elton grabs his wrist, wraps his other hand around John’s trembling cock. “I’m just—come on. Please.” He tries to be earnest, though all the substances in him make it tinny and maudlin, a thin sort of regret. “You know I’m fucking taking the piss.”
“A bitchy queen like you? Of course you are.” John shakes his head, though he presses one finger back against Elton’s rim. “Learn how to take it properly, Christ.”
Elton grins, removing his glasses and flipping onto his hands and knees, leaning into the fresh intrusion as John adds further slippery fingers. John keeps talking, coke-addled rambling rubbish Elton is too high to pay any real attention to, when all he wants is something serious to cling to, thick and surging inside him, forcing him down from the cocaine. He focuses again when he finally feels the force of John’s cock entering him.
He takes cock rarely, a couple times a year if he’s particularly hungry for it and John is in the right mood. This time feels rougher than he remembers, and glorious for it, John’s hands bruising his waist and his hips hard against Elton’s arse with each thrust. Elton bites his numb lips.
“Do it.”
“I am, you fucking—“
John’s hand slaps Elton’s arse with his next thrust, and the jolt runs the knife edge of pleasurable and not, riding a sadistic line that makes Elton’s head ache even while his cock twitches approvingly.
“You like this, mounting a fucking star?”
John laughs, nails digging into Elton. “Don’t worry, I’m used to doing all the work.”
That makes Elton’s stomach hot, burbling up to his throat, the back of his eyes. He snarls, but words won’t come, trapped behind a fog settling over his head and limbs as John, draping himself heavily across Elton’s back, fucks him.
Elton returns to himself when he comes, a guttural release that has him swearing at the sofa cushions. John growls and comes himself a minute later, deep inside Elton, and does not immediately pull out.
“That’s it, love,” Elton whispers, his vision bright and blurry, pressing his face into the sofa. “You’ve got to earn your salary somehow.”
John pulls out, silent, and gets to his feet, smacking Elton’s arse as he goes. Elton, aching, smiling at nothing, wraps his arms around a pillow and waits for the bliss of blackout.
The glass crashes satisfyingly against the dressing room floor, though the teapot shatters even more prettily. Elton leaves them for John to deal with and settles down with a spliff, and he’s mostly high by the time they roll onto the plane, though his rage starts anew at the sight of John, his arm draped around some cunt's shoulder, slinking aboard.
He waits until they’re at cruising altitude and the booze is flowing before dragging a protesting John back into the bedchamber and slamming the door shut behind them.
“Three fucking costumes missing—”
“Tired of rowing in front of the kids?”
Elton pushes John against the door, ducking to avoid the retaliatory swipe.
“And the sound was fucking rubbish—”
“Already sacked, you twat.” Anger drifts off John in tight, hot waves, turning his face into a rubber mask, a parody of whatever beauty Elton once found there. He shoves Elton off him, not bothering with another slap. “Any other complaints, or shall I just give you something else to throw?”
Elton squeezes John’s arm. “If you did your fucking job correctly—”
“I’m neither a roadie nor a sound technician,” John retorts, prising Elton's fingers off one by one, “and the whole crowd was too loaded to give a shit anyway. Just like you.”
Elton’s head pounds, as it always does, and his chest is hot with frustration and the black jagged hole where Bernie should be, which a thousand spliffs and a bottle of Jack Daniels can’t seem to erase. He grabs John’s hip and digs in, tightening his grip when John raises an eyebrow.
“You stinking little pig.” John’s face is still angry, though it’s sliding back toward the warmer end of the spectrum, most of the grotesque mask slipping away, and his fingers are nimble as they slide around Elton’s waist. “Get some elsewhere, you slag.”
“Fuck off,” Elton snaps, unbuckling John’s trousers. “Go away if you don’t want it.”
John stays, of course, bearing Elton against the wall as he wraps his hand around both of their cocks. Elton hisses at the drag of skin on skin, a hot and sweaty pressure trapped between their pelvises, and nips John’s neck, working his way toward a hickey while John tosses them off in unison. It’s been months since they separated, since he finally freed himself from John’s pathetic, boorish unfaithfulness, and Elton hates himself for breathing in John’s whiskey-drenched scent, cologne drowned in alcohol and weed and the rising tang of sweat, hates how delicious it is, how surgically perfect John’s strokes are, how clever his fingers are around Elton’s cockhead. He cannot keep track of how many people he’s fucked since, but none of them were this good. Of all the stupid shit to happen today, this is by far the stupidest, but Elton can’t stop something once he’s started, and there’s no Bernie anymore to interrupt, no Bernie to keep a lid on anything at all—
Elton comes fast, digging his teeth into John’s shoulder as John groans, and the feeling of their spunk mingling together is disgusting, sticky bitterness that John wipes on the wall next to them as he pulls away.
Elton, hit with a wave of exhaustion, collapses onto the fur-covered bed, dimly aware of his softening cock as he hears the sounds of John doing his trousers back up. With the anger bubble burst, an unsteady silence descends, broken only by the hum of the plane engines, and Elton winces through a particularly strong throb behind his eyes.
“Clean yourself up before you leave.”
Elton yearns for something to throw, settles on punching the bed instead.
“Fuck off, Mummy.”
John chuckles as the door closes behind him.
The album is out, Elton’s vague sense of disgust with it isn’t strong enough to resist the power of cocaine, and the champagne is Dom ’63; Elton would curse John out for that except for the fact that John hasn’t appeared once all night. (It’s just as well; all he’d do is call it MOR shite, in his infuriating burr, and Elton can’t accept that about this album, not this time. Everything’s got to work again at some point.) One of the studio’s tea boys has flung himself on Elton’s graces, as he’s done for weeks, curled up alongside Elton on a sofa and ferrying him lines and glasses of champagne, and he’s pretty and cleanly tested and good with his mouth but it all makes Elton feel vaguely unsettled, the ghosts of Renate and those poor doomed other studio boys lingering around him.
The suite is huge, its glitter and glamour faintly exhausting to look upon, and Elton would bitch about being in New York several days earlier than necessary but, again, no John. It’s been weeks since Elton’s little scare, since Bernie’s stunt in the restaurant, and if being forcibly removed from coke for several days had any good effect, it was John’s fucking off to the end of a mobile line, where he can be a pain in the arse remotely instead of in Elton’s face twenty hours a day.
And yet his absence, three nights before the start of this stupid MSG run he fought so hard for, weighs on the edge of Elton’s brain, no matter how many glasses or lines he accepts. When he finally extricates himself from the crowd, he can’t focus on the boy, curled under his arm as they snog on Elton’s bed, hot hands and mouth wandering ever downward, and in a sudden fit of pique Elton sits up, pleads a ferocious headache, and kicks the boy out, ignoring the crushed look on his face. He sits alone, swigging Dom from the bottle and listening to echoing party sounds from the other rooms, for twenty minutes, and he’s floaty and yet still depressingly conscious by the time the door opens.
“Sulking again?”
John is in shirt sleeves, champagne flute in hand, face ferocious. Elton looks at his untucked shirt and grins.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
“Two promoters are asking for you.” John steps closer, slides the bottle from Elton’s grip, and empties its remaining contents into his own glass before tossing the bottle onto the bed. “I told them to fuck off.”
Elton snorts. “On your knees, I gather.”
“Do you want it, is that your fucking problem?” John leers over the edge of his flute, his eyes half crossed, and Elton laughs in his face. John doesn’t blink. “Need a trustworthy cock to take your mind off the staggering unfairness of your life?”
“Don’t you have some call to make?”
“Oh, am I interrupting?” John looks ostentatiously around the room, gulping down champagne. “Where’s the studio brat? Hiding under the bed?”
“I kicked him out.” Elton fights down a hiccup, pushes the empty bottle onto the floor. “He takes a fucking hint.”
“If you want me to go, Elton, say the word.”
Get the fuck out. He thinks it, loudly, from the bottom of his drunken well, chants it in his head as he hauls John down onto the bed beside him, straddles his hips. John grabs his chin, crushes their lips together, his tongue thick and heavy in Elton’s mouth, and it’s been years but they still know each other, the taste of John bright and easy, forgotten until this moment and yet immediately familiar, alarmingly good. He presses himself down, dragging their clothed cocks along one another, and smiles as John moans, one hand kneading the meat of Elton’s arse as the other fiddles with Elton’s glasses.
For a long moment it’s early morning in LA, Elton’s heart beating its way out of his ribs while John kisses him, gentle and sure, removing his glasses so tenderly that Elton fights back tears. And then his mind is racing, leaping forward, his cock painfully hard, frotting John through fabric while Get the fuck out runs on repeat through his thoughts, crowding out everything else until his hips finally still.
He rolls off John, panting, the world around him brutally sharp, as clear and close as the disdain on John’s face.
“Get out.”
John doesn’t argue as he sits up, shaking his head, a thin smile on his lips.
“Not quite that fucked up, I see. Remind me—is this what you’re like sober, darling?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not to me.” John shrugs, gets to his feet, though his eyes dance, unsettled, alcohol and some emotion Elton refuses to name. “But make up your fucking mind either way, would you? Getting hard to run a business out here.”
He slams the door behind him, and Elton rips his glasses off his face himself, throws them on the pillow. He wants a line, another bottle of Dom, the tea boy, a young and generous John splayed on his cock, thick and hot in Elton’s mouth, the man he loved and hated so deeply when his heart was still as bright as his costumes, instead of this miserable managing tormenting nothing he’s had for twice as long as he ever had anyone’s love.
Too late, he reminds himself, burying his face into the bedding. He’s got shows to worry about, an album to flog, his endless course to run. The music. The only thing he hasn’t completely fucked up, the only thing that keeps him sane.
He drifts asleep wondering how quickly things would fall to pieces if he simply stopped running.