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They’re at some club or another, swinging London crowd rapt around them, hanging on to Paul’s every word. And that’s when he hears him say it for the first time.
“Well, I suppose I’ve always thought it’s a bit like sex, you know. Like you wouldn’t do it with just anyone, would you?”
John hasn’t been paying any attention to the conversation, hadn’t wanted to come out tonight at all. But after a week spent dozing and tripping, and dozing and tripping alone in his music room, turning away all visitors and going nowhere, Paul had forced his way in and practically threatened to set fire to his favorite (admittedly filthy) dressing gown if he didn’t agree to go outside with him. So here he is, still just as miserable, but now surrounded by loud music, flashing lights, and a breathless crowd of sycophantic hangers-on.
There’s something in Paul’s tone, though, that snaps John right back to his surroundings. Something uncharacteristically shy about him, bashful even. A McCartney he sometimes feels is lost to the sands of time, appearing in front of him for one brief, shining, instance.
“It only works when it’s with the right person. And at least for me, I can’t do it in front of an audience.”
Paul lets out a nervous, skittering little giggle, and runs one hand through his long hair.
And it’s all so very him that it makes something clench painfully inside John, an old and familiar feeling.
Meanwhile, Thing One on Paul’s left side lets out a hearty chuckle and wiggles his eyebrows suggestively: “but you’ve only ever written with John, haven’t you, Paul?”
“Yeah,” Paul answers, nodding his head and looking down, around, anywhere but at John who is now boring a hole in his skull with his gaze.
It hits him like electric shock, then, what Paul is trying to say, what he’s implying. And that he’s saying it so casually and in this crowd of undeserving wankers too.
It’s also fucking rich coming from Paul, who is famously such a slag. A Macca about town these days, if you will. Here, there, and bloody everywhere, indeed. So, it’s not the best metaphor, is it? Not if it’s meant to convey something special, private, reserved for just one other person, like Paul is clearly trying to imply.
The conversation moves on and confident, untouchable Macca promptly returns to his rightful place at the centre of it. But John is left turning it over and over in his head, like a puzzle, heart thumping a few beats too fast in his chest for the remainder of the night.
And just like that, John suddenly becomes eager to get back in a room alone with Paul, with nothing but their guitars between them, or sitting side-by-side at a piano. It’s a feeling he hasn’t had in quite some time, and it drives away the malaise that’s been festering inside him for months and months now.
Paul is still half asleep on the phone the next morning when John rings him up, and clearly having trouble believing that John is up this early and calling him, let alone to get them together to work.
“You’re - - are you - - yeah, okay Johnny, I can come over,” Paul says slowly, softly, voice still sleep-rough. If John closes his eyes, he can almost pretend he’s there next to him, speaking right into his ear.
“Hurry up,” John grits out, and hangs up the phone.
John is making his second pot of tea when the doorbell finally rings, late morning now, but looking like the middle of the night with how grey and gloomy it is out. He makes his way to the front door, leaving the tea on the counter to brew.
Paul looks more than a little worse for wear, the collar of his thick black coat popped up around his ears as a thin shield against the pouring rain, stubble on his face, big round eyes barely open but bloodshot all the way through.
“Took you bloody long enough,” John gripes at him, as he lets him in. “And you’re looking rough, son.”
Paul doesn’t deny it, just shoots him a wry smile as he hangs up his damp coat, shakes his wet hair out of his face like a dog, and takes off his shoes.
“Come ‘ead, then, you’ll be in need of some tea.” John says, leading the way to the kitchen.
Cyn and Jules are down at her parent’s house in Liverpool, ostensibly to escape the horrendous London weather, but likely just as much to get away from John’s black mood. So, even despite the long suffering efforts of the housekeeper, the kitchen is a wreck, cupboards and drawers left open, morning papers scattered all ‘round the table, both clean and dirty dishes left abandoned on countertops. But John likes it more this way, feels more like his own home somehow, than the usual sterility of the place.
John digs out a big sturdy mug from the back of the cupboard and fills it to the brim with strong, piping hot tea, before adding a generous amount of sugar like Paul likes.
Paul grabs hold of it from him gratefully with both hands, and John sets to making toast.
They sit and eat, and sip mostly in companionable silence, Paul picking up random bits of newspaper off the table to page through, making little noises as he finds an interesting article and occasionally reading some absurd little tidbit entirely out of context aloud to John.
John is having a hard time looking away from him this morning, mind still picking at the things Paul had said last night. But it all just seems to get more jumbled inside of him the longer he sits here doing nothing but staring at Paul.
Mercifully, Paul doesn’t make him wait too long, finishing his breakfast quickly. And they leave everything where it is on the table to make their way up to the music room.
They work easily together, as always, and quickly get through the number that’s been pushing its way insistently to the front of John’s mind all morning. Paul stands next to him with one long leg bent up on the piano bench next to where John is sitting. He has his guitar perched up against his knee, and pauses only to jot down the various pieces of the song on a bit of paper so they don’t forget.
Once they have that one down, Paul immediately moves right into strumming a different tune. Something brand new that starts out very small, the same pretty little chord progression repeated and repeated. But then John plays a few notes on the piano, making it less pretty, giving it an edge, and it’s like it unlocks something. Paul lets out a low sound, a little groan of approval and relief, and nods his head vigorously at John to keep going, keep playing.
And he didn’t think there were things still left to discover about Paul, about himself, about the two of them together. But here he is, seeing something new.
Paul goes non-verbal sometimes, at the peak of writing a song, hands continuing to move deftly on his guitar, bass, or piano but mind clearly overloaded, stuck with too many thoughts and ideas, waiting for John to pull them out of him, one by one, until it’s all outside and shared between the two of them instead. And it’s the look on his face during it, taut tension slowly dissolving into slack jawed relief that brings it home for John.
Bloody hell, it is like sex.
And once he sees it, he can’t stop seeing it in everything they do.
Paul lets out a particularly obscene sound of approval as John does something on the piano he likes, and John suddenly loses all feeling in his fingers, rhythm going off completely and hands slipping off the piano keys in a loud jumble of discordant sound.
It takes Paul a few seconds before he realises that John isn’t just mucking about, that he has stopped playing altogether. When he does, he stops too. Then, there is nothing but the sound of the two of them breathing, suddenly very loud in the quiet of the room.
“John?” Paul finally asks, tentatively, still breathless from what they were just doing—not that John is at all sure of what that was anymore.
And when he gets no answer, John hears him set his guitar down against the side of the piano, clearly sensing that they’re not just going to get right back to it.
John’s mind is a mess, pulled in a dozen different directions at once. But his body moves of its own volition, towards Paul, always towards Paul. And he finds himself suddenly at face level with Paul’s crotch, head bracketed on one side by Paul’s thigh, strong and solid, where his left leg is still perched up on the piano bench.
He’s suddenly so aware of him, the physicality of him, in a way he hasn’t let himself be in years.
And it’s like he’s out of his own body and watching himself from a distance as he extends one hand out and places it slowly, deliberately, on the inside of Paul’s thigh, right on the inner seam of his jeans. He can feel the warmth below, the hardness of the tense muscles and tendons, Paul , so real and vital under his hand.
It makes his head spin just a little.
And again, as if someone else is in control of his body, he feels his hand inch slowly upward with the same kind of detached fascination that he might test out a new instrument to see how it works, what makes it tick.
When there’s no mistaking exactly where John is headed, when he’s nearly there, Paul finally reacts, letting out a small gasp that is pure shock, something a little broken at the end of it.
And it snaps John back to himself, back to reality, all at once.
What the fuck is he doing?
What the fuck is he playing at?
It’s like all of his shame and fear comes flooding back in like a tsunami. And he doesn’t make the conscious decision to get up, or to leave the room, or to walk down the stairs, or to open the doors to the back garden. But that’s where he finds himself the next time he blinks, standing in the doorway taking big shivering breaths of the chilly evening air.
The cold air is bracing, sobering, all the things John wishes he weren’t right now, desperately craving a fag, or better yet, a joint, or even better yet, both, along with a very large and stiff drink. What he wishes for most of all is to dissolve into the ether and float away to someplace where he no longer has to deal with the indignities of his human body, vulnerable, and needy, and full of inconvenient desires.
He supposes this particular crisis is a long time coming. He’s not completely oblivious, after all. He’s always been aware of how he feels about Paul. And sometimes it still comes at him in waves, this sudden blinding desire for him, to possess him in every way possible. But he’d thought, after all this time, that he had it under control, that he’d made his peace with the situation, and that it could no longer shake him as it had done in his younger years, making him lash out in violence or make an utter fool of himself.
But now it’s like Paul has flung the floodgates open, made him aware once again of something he’d painstakingly trained himself not to be affected by out of a sheer sense of self-preservation. And it’s like he’s seventeen again and entirely defenseless against that face, that voice, that mind, so familiar and beloved even from the very first moment.
But in all the years that he’s kept such a tight hold on himself, over this thing between them, what he’d somehow forgotten about was just how sweet it could be. How sweet it could be to let himself love Paul in this way. He’ll occasionally still allow himself to feel it in a song, really let it out through his voice, his hands on his guitar, and find himself shaking with it afterwards. But it’s a fleeting, unsatisfactory thing. And he’s regretful every time it’s over and he has to put the feeling back into the box where he keeps it locked up.
Tonight, he’s not yet ready to put it away.
No, he’d rather stand here in the cold and just let himself feel it for a while longer, than to return back to reality. And maybe that’s why he ran away in the first place.
It’s not entirely surprising when he hears Paul’s unmistakable footfalls behind him, but it sends a jolt of panic right through the very centre of him nonetheless.
He’s not ready.
Paul steps behind him and goes to lean on the other end of the open doorway, facing John while John is still looking straight out at the void that is his unlit back garden at night.
John lets his eyes flicker towards him, and he notices bitterly that Paul has a pretty sizable joint dangling lazily out of the corner of his mouth, and that he looks impossibly soft around the edges, like he never even properly woke up this morning. Everything he could ever want right there in one convenient package, but just out of his reach.
John snaps his eyes back towards the darkness.
“You’re still here?” John asks, sounding cold to his own ears.
He sees Paul nod out of his peripheral vision, taking a long drag from the joint. When he speaks, it’s through a mouth full of smoke, “we didn’t finish the song.”
Of course. Fucking McCartney and his fucking impossible work ethic.
“Oh, fuck off, Paul,” says John, angrily turning back towards him. “Is that all you ever fucking think about?”
Paul just raises his eyebrows, and then he pulls the joint out of his mouth and offers it up to John, a shining peace offering.
And John is not a strong man, willpower already stretched well beyond its limits today. He takes the damned thing.
“What should I be thinking of instead, John?” Paul asks, leaning back on his hands against the doorframe, watching intently as John takes his first inhale.
Me, John’s treacherous heart responds, weakly. Sod the song and think of me instead.
“You said it was like sex,” is what he says instead, accusatory. It’s as if the weed has taken immediate and devastating hold of his higher faculties.
Paul looks confused for a moment, a questioning frown furrowing his brows as he tries to make sense of John’s apparent non sequitur.
He sees the exact moment when it finally dawns on Paul.
“Oh. You mean the other day at - - when I was speaking to that bloke - -”
John nods exaggeratedly.
“Yes, Paul, ‘the other day,’ otherwise known as just last night.”
“But what’s that got to do with anything?” Paul asks, sounding genuinely puzzled.
“I’ve only just noticed, you see.” John responds, taking another long drag from the joint, and then thrusting it blindly back at Paul.
“Noticed what?” Paul asks, taking it back from him with a clumsy hand.
“Oh, just that you’ve been getting off on it this entire time. Thinking about it like us shagging.”
Paul’s face colours ever so slightly.
“But - - but that’s not what I - - but we haven’t actually - -” Paul stammers.
“Right, I know. Exactly.” John responds, cutting him off. “And why do you suppose that is?”
“John,” Paul starts, like he’s shocked, like John’s been unfair somehow.
But John knows it’s a fair question. He waits him out.
“John, are you - - are you really asking me why we haven’t - -” Paul starts, incredulously, before finishing in an almost whisper, “why we haven’t had sex?”
Deliberately missing the point, as always.
“No, Paul,” John responds with a sigh. “What I’m asking you is why you’ve been playing pretend all these years when you could’ve just had the real thing anytime you wanted.”
And there it is, all out in the open. Self-preservation be damned.
“John,” Paul gasps for a second time, but like John has really has shocked him this time.
Good, John thinks. He knows what Paul is like, how adept he is at avoiding an issue, and he doesn’t want to let him squirrel his way out of this one.
“You do know what you sound like, don’t you Paul?” John says, now turning properly towards him and moving closer. “But I don’t suppose you know what you look like? How you look at me? So desperate and needy, practically begging. And then what you’re like when I’ve finally given you what you need? Like the cat that got the fucking cream, you are.”
Paul’s face is properly flushed now and he’s breathing hard, eyes heavy lidded and staring at John from beneath his long lashes.
John reaches out and touches one pink cheek, gently pushing back the hair that’s fallen there.
“You never wondered what the real thing might be like?” He asks, soft now.
Paul closes his eyes then, and John recognises that look. It’s the look Paul gets when he’s feeling something big and can’t articulate it, when he needs John to make a choice for him, be the brave one.
John plucks the nub of a joint from between his lips and lets it fall onto the ground.
He closes the last of the distance between them.
Paul’s lips are very cold, practically frozen. But they’re also impossibly soft, like a bird’s, and tasting pleasantly of marijuana. And then Paul is opening them up with a little gasp that John feels all the way down to his toes. And just like that, John is inside the warmth of him, and he can’t hold back his own desperate noises any longer. It would embarrass him if it were anyone else, but Paul has already heard every sound John’s mouth is capable of making.
It’s absurd how quickly it all goes right to his prick, how he can feel so instantly desperate for something he’s managed to live his whole life without. His left hand is under the back of Paul’s shirt, fingers inching into the waistband of his jeans, right on the round swell of his arse. His mind is spinning with possibilities, all the things he suddenly wants to do.
He feels Paul let out a shiver and push closer into him. And it reminds him that Paul is standing here in the cold, barefoot and with nothing on but a thin t-shirt and jeans. He pulls himself back with effort, viciously satisfied when Paul clings to him, making needy little sounds in the back of his throat.
“I know, darling, I know,” John says, kissing the corner of his lips, his neck. “But I’m only going to take you upstairs. It’s fucking freezing here.”
“Upstairs?” Paul asks, voice rough and breaking halfway through the word, like he’s been belting out Long Tall Sally for three hours straight. The sound hits John like molten lava right to the base of his spine.
“Yes, upstairs, where I can take off your clothes and lay you down on my bed, have my way with you,” John says.
Paul shivers again and pushes his face into John’s neck.
“I wish you wouldn’t just say things like that.” He says into John’s neck.
John smiles, putting one hand in the back of Paul’s thick hair, “and why shouldn’t I?”
“It makes me feel all strange, like I’m shy or something.” Paul says, sounding stoned and soft and very young.
John smiles even harder, “and haven’t you ever been shy before, Paulie?”
He fondly thinks back to a teenaged Paul that was shy, still ill at ease with his own growing limbs, and his even more rapidly growing talents.
Paul groans. “Stop that, you’re not supposed to make fun of me.”
“But you’re just so darned cute, Paulie-kins - -” John starts to say in a silly high-pitched voice.
Paul surges back up and cuts him off with a scorching kiss, opening John’s mouth roughly with his tongue, and biting his lower lip. If the earlier kiss was soft and devastating, this one is downright obscene.
Screw it, John decides, he’ll have him right here, against this doorway.
Paul pulls away.
“Can we go back to the music room?” Paul asks, as if they’ve just been having a normal conversation.
His lips are very red and swollen, wet with their combined spit.
“What?” says John, dazed.
“You were going to take me back upstairs, remember?” Paul says, very slowly, as if John is soft in the head. “Could we go back to your music room?”
“Alright,” John drawls, as his brain finally joins the programme again. “But only so long as I don’t have to write a song first.”
Paul rolls his eyes at him.
He watches as Paul closes and locks the garden doors, and then lets him take his hand to lead him upstairs. He lets the satisfying sight of Paul’s round arse keep him occupied all the way up.
A few minutes later, he has his one hand down the back of Paul’s jeans and Paul’s tongue in his mouth, and it’s like they’re composing a song and performing it together all at the same time. If Paul makes a sound John likes (and he so often does), John tries to get him to do it again, using his mouth, his hands.
And they’re grinding into each other in a shared rhythm, Paul’s long leg wrapped around John and pulling him in impossibly tight while John pushes forward.
Eventually, John moves himself off and to the side so he can look at Paul’s face as he palms the bulge in the front of his jeans, feeling the hardness underneath. Paul lets out a choked off little moan, and throws his head back. His eyes are shut tight and his face is flushed.
It feels impossible that he’s real. That this is really happening.
John slowly unbuttons and peels back his jeans, and sticks his hand inside his pants to pull him out carefully.
“John,” Paul gasps, turning his head to trail his wet lips down to John’s neck, biting there, “John please.”
John has always loved the way he says his name, something slightly rounded about it, so uniquely Paul. But he’s never heard him say it quite like this, and it’s intoxicating.
John takes his lips again as he wraps his hand around the length of him, and then they’re back in rhythm, John’s hand squeezing tightly around the length of him as Paul thrusts up into it.
He lets Paul continue to fuck his hand as he pushes his own erection lazily against the side of his hip. When Paul’s thrusts are becoming frantic and he’s panting into John’s mouth, no longer coordinated enough for actual kissing, John pulls away slightly, just to get a look at him. He lets out an involuntary groan at the sight of him, lips swollen and bruised, prick red and leaking into John’s fist.
“Fuck Paul,” John groans. “Fucking look at you.”
Paul opens his eyes then, just slightly, staring at John from beneath his eyelashes. And John knows that look too, quietly pleading, begging him to know what Paul needs because Paul no longer has the words.
And then John also knows for certain that he’ll never be able to write another song without flashing back to this moment, seeing the similarities. He knows that seeing Paul like this has probably ruined him for life.
Then, he’s right there with him, fucking desperate too. He lets go of Paul’s prick so he can strip him properly, and take off his own trousers and pants too.
But when he finally has him in front of him, naked, the full expanse of him, it stops him unexpectedly short. He’s seen each part separately and all together more than once, has even drawn him, often having nothing better to keep him occupied on long and tedious bus or aeroplane rides on tour. But seeing him all laid out here on display for John, is something else entirely. Part of him is tempted to get his sketchpad out and draw him like this, so that he’ll have something concrete to remember this moment by forever.
When he’s done memorizing the contours of his body and he finally looks back up at Paul’s face, he’s not expecting to find him staring back at him so intently, eyes impossibly soft, almost vulnerable.
“You just gonna watch me all night?” Paul asks quietly.
John reaches one hand out to cup his face, drawing his thumb across his swollen lips.
“Actually, I was thinking of drawing you.” He mutters. “But I think I’d rather fuck you first and then I can draw you afterwards.”
“Big words, Johnny boy. Big words.” Paul says, and then he puts his calloused left hand around John’s prick, and pulls him in closer.
And John blacks out a little. It’s almost like a part of him wasn’t expecting Paul to actually be into this, to touch him and really mean it. But now that he is, he can feel Paul wanting him, needing him. And it’s a heady feeling, better than any drug-induced high he’s ever experienced.
“Fuck , John, did you really mean it?” Paul asks, gasping as he rubs their pricks together. “Are you going to - -”
“Not gonna make it,” John grits out, regretfully.
Paul groans and puts his head in John’s neck, and keeps rutting up against John.
But then just as they’re getting back into a nice rhythm, Paul comes to an abrupt stop, making John cry out in frustration from the sudden lack of friction when he’s so close. However, John should know never to doubt Paul when he has a vision because Paul is turning over to face the back of the sofa, and then scooting his arse back until John’s prick is nestled between his thighs, right below his arse cheeks. And then he’s squeezing his thighs together impossibly tight around John, the tightness eliciting a deep moan from John.
“C’mon Johnny,” Paul says, breathing heavy, “fuck me.”
And John loses it, grabbing hold of Paul’s hip and thrusting hard into his fleshy thighs, his leaking prick slicking the way. It’s close enough to the real thing, and Paul is moaning like John is actually fucking him, head thrown back onto John’s shoulder, that he knows he’s not going to last. He only just remembers to grab hold of Paul, jerking him off in time with his own thrusts. And then it’s over embarrassingly fast for both of them.
When he’s done, he almost comes again right away when he takes in the sight of his own spunk painting the back of Paul’s hairy thighs, his pale arse.
“I’m going to draw you just like this, covered in my come,” John says, intending it to be dirty but it comes out a little too sincere.
Paul turns over to lie on his back, facing him, and his face goes a little pink.
“Alright,” he says easily, nodding.
And John has to kiss him then, because Paul is always most beautiful to him in his contradictions. As much boyish and bashful as he is forward and obscene. John can just imagine him happily splaying himself out for John to draw, baring a hole filled with John’s come, but blushing if John calls him darling or baby.
He loves him so much, and for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t feel like he’s suffocating with it.
“You were right, you know,” Paul says, when John finally pulls away.
“As I so often am,” John responds, automatically.
Paul rolls his eyes, but his hand continues to card through John’s hair gently, and he speaks in a low, contemplative tone.
“I did wonder what the real thing would be like, you know, for years. And I’d look at you sometimes while we were writing or on stage together sharing a mic, and I’d get this sudden urge to kiss you or to - -” and he blushes, “or to put my mouth on you or something daft like that.”
“You can put your mouth on me anytime, baby,” John responds because he always knows how to ruin a nice moment.
Luckily, Paul ignores him again and forges ahead.
“I guess I thought you already have so much of me, I was scared of what it would mean if we closed that last bit of distance too.”
“And now? Are you still scared?” John asks, no longer joking.
“Well, I reckon it’s too late, isn’t it?” Paul responds, cupping John’s face delicately as if it’s something precious.
“You’ve got me now, Lennon,” he mutters softly, placing a sweet kiss on John’s cheek.
And John doesn’t know if he can trust any of this. It’s been a long day and Paul is still a little stoned and more than a little fucked out, he may not really mean what he’s saying. But he wants to believe him, knows that it will devastate him if it turns out to not be true.
So he pulls him back into a kiss, and lets himself make plans for the rest of the night, the rest of the week, the rest of their lives. They will doze for a while before going down to the kitchen to eat, and then he will take Paul back up to his bed and fuck him properly. And then, when the early morning light is filtering into his bedroom, he will draw him while he sleeps. Later still, after Paul wakes up, they will finish the song they started this morning. They’ll go on to write a thousand more, and will sing together until they are old and gray, and Paul is as blind as John was on the day they first met.
He closes his eyes. They doze. They share a dream.