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There's no time to ask why.
The little window above the sink is open, letting in the day's last rays of sun, laughter and clinking glasses from the garden. It's so bright, so loud, so lovely— and so all Paul can feel, looking at the scene in front of him, is a clinical sense of urgency.
He can't stop to breathe. There’s no time to ask why. There's blood on the tile of his auntie's kitchen, and there's blood on John's fist, and John's panting, straddling the wet red lump that must've been Bob Wooler a second ago, and all Paul can think is go, go, go.
He charges forward and pulls Wooler's legs, throwing John off balance. Only then does John look at him. His head swivels drunkenly around to where Paul's crouching behind him. His hands remain locked in place, his right wound back and balled up and his left clamped over Bob's mouth.
“Paul,” John gets out, mid-hiccup.
“Wash up,” Paul says, his voice quiet and thin as he shoves John off and gathers Bob up into his arms. He can't look at John. He needs… the attic for now, for the last leg of the party, then he’ll send Aunt Gin off to bed and go from there. She's had her share of wine tonight, Paul recalls. At this moment, she's probably helping herself to another glass outside. The party outside— John needs to be seen out there again. “You've got to— you can't both have left at the same time.”
John doesn't give any verbal indication he's heard him. Paul risks a glance back at him: John is sheet-pale and his gaze is far off. No time, no time. Paul puts a rough hand on John’s face, bugs his eyes at him in a way he hopes says, get back here.
John's eyes meet his, then, and there's this horribly pleading look in them. “He called me queer,” John mumbles. But it doesn’t matter now.
“Just— go out,” Paul commands, harsh as he can make his voice without raising it. “I'll find you later.”
John nods into Paul's hand, and it's all the confirmation Paul needs to lift Bob off the floor and lug him up the stairs, to the attic, and into a wardrobe.
Paul focuses solely on the dead weight in his arms. Lifting Wooler is a proper ordeal: Paul's got a few inches on him, but old Bob's broader. His feet drag on the floor when Paul finds he can't carry him bridal style any longer. His torso thumps on the hardwood when Paul drops him. Bob doesn't react. It occurs to Paul on the top stair that there's no point trying to move him with any more consideration than one would move a mattress.
John had turned Bob into that. With his hands.
It isn't until he's back out in the garden with Jane on his arm and "happy birthday" in his ear that Paul gets the opportunity to think again. The first thing he wonders is how, even piss drunk, John had thought to cover Bob's mouth.
They decide to make the drive out from Dinas Lane to the Mersey. It's hardly a conversation.
The party had dragged on another half-hour before folks started calling cabs, and Paul's eye went over to Mr. Epstein every other minute of it. Wooler's a friend of his, Paul knows. He came over at one point, asking about Bob. Oh, Paul's not seen him. Not since cutting the cake. Figure he must've gone after that.
Mr. Epstein went on to Billy J. Kramer, to Cliff Richard, to anyone who could point to the Cavern Club on a map. Luckily, the only person who was sure to know what time John went into the house was Cynthia— and she was on her own tour of the garden, apologizing for her husband's drunkenness.
At the night’s end, while everyone said their goodbyes in the driveway, Paul found her pleading with the bathroom door. Something about a babysitter, something about a promise. The only response she got was the echo of John retching into the toilet bowl.
Paul had shuffled up to her, asked if he could call her a car, all sweet like. Cyn let Paul send her away, and he thinks it must have been because it’s impolite to pick a fight with someone on their birthday. There's an ocean of manners between her and John, to be sure.
Just as soon as the click of Cyn's heels faded out, the heaving stopped, and John cracked open the bathroom door. His breath smelled foul, but color had returned to his face. And without missing a beat, he dropped his voice to a whisper to ask Paul, “Where'd you put him?”
Once he was sure Gin had gone to sleep, Paul showed him. And when John looked down at what was left of Bob Wooler, pale and crusty on the floorboards of the attic, Paul couldn't place the emotion on his face at all. Thick brows pinched together, aquiline nose scrunched. Mainly, John looked like he'd bitten into something sour.
“You reckon we bury him?” Paul said.
“I don't have the guts to hack him up,” John said, “d'you?”
“God, Johnny, no.”
“Then aye, we bury him.”
Paul thought for a moment— then posited, “Or, you know, there's the river.”
John nodded. “There's the river.”
And that had been that.
Now, John is slouched in the passenger seat, Bob thuds in the trunk with every bump in the road, and Paul's left to drive through suburbs and saltmarshes. He bites his inner cheek, thinks again about that face John pulled in the attic. It was disappointment, he realizes. John had hoped the body was gone.
Somehow that inspires the only real anger Paul's felt all night. Had John honestly expected Paul to, what? Make it disappear? Spoiled Lennon, expecting a doting aunt to do his laundry for him.
John's going on about how it all went down: how he went into the house to search for another bottle, how Bob caught him, how John socked him across the face. There's a lot of gory detail about the crack of Bob's nose, the great big glob of blood that came out of it, the hot pounding in John's head. What John's failed to mention, though, is anything Paul actually cares about. That is, John still hasn't named the reason he did this.
“But what did he actually say to you?” Paul presses. It's insulting, that he has to ask this.
John frowns, and simply says, “Told you before.”
Oh, Jesus Christ.
“John.”
“Well, I did.”
Paul pinches the bridge of his nose. What happened at the party was a tantrum, he thinks. Grown-ups have episodes. But this? This was a brutal, adult tantrum.
Paul huffs. “Look, I’ve already taken a side, haven't I? I'm not going to—” Turn you in? Run away? It’s better left unsaid. The point is, “You just have to tell me why.”
Those words feel heavy, rolling out of Paul’s mouth. There's an ugly weight to the truth of them. It hadn't occurred to him till now that when he saw blood on John's knuckles, he could've screamed, ran, done any number of things that didn’t make him an accessory. But it felt to Paul that he'd already chosen what to do, years before any of this had actually happened. Maybe in Hamburg, maybe in Woolton. In any case, he hadn't meant to.
So really, it changes nothing, the why of it all. Paul deserves to know regardless.
John shifts in his seat, exhales harshly through his nose. He's deciding to do the decent thing, Paul guesses.
“He was prodding, you know, about Brian, and Spain,” John explains, proving Paul right. He puts on a deep, posh drawl with soft vowels, “‘Come on, tell us about the honeymoon.’” A smile tugs at the corner of Paul's mouth. He doesn't sound a thing like Wooler. Actually, he sounds a bit like Mr. Epstein.
Brian.
“He was up in my face,” John continues with a shrug, “and I was roaring drunk, and so I sort of, I dunno, saw red.”
A beat passes as Paul waits for some elaboration. Some account of Bob poking further, insinuating something lewder, maybe dragging sweet Cyn or baby Jules into it. But John's done speaking— which either means he's getting stubborn again, or he decked Wooler the moment he mentioned the holiday. Both are plausible. Both are stupid.
“'s that it?” Paul asks wryly. He knows it won't go over. This bastard, swaying in the front seat, not a care in the world, the number one LP in the country, and he was ready to toss it all away—
John scoffs. Big nod, wide eyes, demeaning tone. “Yes sir, constable sir, cross me heart.”
And then they’re talking over each other, Paul's voice lilting like an exasperated parent and John gritting out short, hard sentences. The words tangle together in an angry knot: it's stupid John he was talkin' like he knew me bloody stupid reason to go and like he and I were both to hit someone poofter doesn’t know a thing.
The knot keeps twisting, and twisting, until eventually Paul says, “I mean, in Spain, you were—”
“I wasn't,” John asserts with hostile finality. Loud, and bitter, and... just wholly unconvincing. Paul doesn't buy it, doesn't know if John even expects him to. John is telling Paul to shut it, and under normal circumstances, Paul wouldn't. Now, though—
John would never really hurt him. Paul knows this, somehow at the instinctual level. You've got to blink or else your eyes go dry, you've got to breathe or else you choke, John would never hurt him. That's Paul's baseline, but telling John that now would be a mistake.
So, too, would it be a mistake for Paul to finish his thought: you were with Mr. Epstein, weren't you?
He didn't assume anything romantic. Eppy didn't seem the type for it. Paul had figured, though, that John would seize an opportunity like the one Barcelona no doubt presented. John shouldn't have— not with their manager, not with a baby at home. But, see, that’s exactly why Paul assumed he'd done it. The thrill of doing the wrong thing.
Paul's hands tighten on the wheel. If this is what John felt he had to do to punish the truth, if this was how disgusting he found himself…
Paul looks at John, John looks back at him, and suddenly they're not talking about Spain anymore.
Memories of Paris come to Paul in flickers. He thinks of a kiss on the steps of Rue Foyatier, of John's hand on his knee in a bar. Paul thinks of himself, watching the back of John's neck as he slept in their little room in Montmartre. Whatever Bob had made John out to be— well, Paul had to be something similar. At least, definitionally. At least, that's what people would think, if they knew.
Paul clears his throat, stares back at the road. “Is it that bad?”
It comes out weaker than he'd meant it to. So weak, in fact, that he can hardly blame John when he huffs out a laugh. If John were anyone else, Paul might take offense. But he knows John's laughing the both of them, at their mutual expense, JohnandPaul. It's only the two of them, here and now. Paul's not leaving, John's not judging. It's so nice, if they let it be. If they just stop talking. John's answer is in his laugh: it's not that bad, not really.
John wordlessly offers Paul a ciggie, Paul thoughtlessly accepts. John lights two. This bastard, swaying in the front seat. He's so difficult, Paul thinks, but being with him is just about the easiest thing in the world. It's almost as if the trunk is empty.
Here's as good a place as any. There's no one for miles. Paul eases up on the gas pedal and glances over at John, whose eyes don't leave the Mersey as he nods. Here.
The car rolls to a stop, and Paul looks, too, out at the water. A featureless white moon reflected on rippling black waves. It looks far too much like a dream. Maybe, just for a second, he could delude himself into thinking this is a dream. If it were, he could sit back and watch and be led. He could let it drag him along for months, and then he could wake up in London and record another album.
Paul wishes he could be the sort of person who lets themselves believe things like that. But staring at the Mersey, his thoughts are already barreling ahead. They'll haul Wooler out of the trunk, carry him to the water, set him down. There'll be an ugly rhythm to it, the two of them working in tandem. Me and John, Johnny and me, we're gonna toss that poor sod into the sea.
“I just can't believe it,” Paul whispers.
John sounds a bit choked up when he says, “Me neither.”
They sit idly for a long moment, neither wanting to be the first one out of the car. Eventually, Paul sits forward with a sigh and pulls on the door— but the click of the handle seems to spur something for John. Suddenly, he's hopping outside and opening the trunk before Paul can even set foot on the grass.
The two carry Bob down to the river just the same as they'd carried him down from the attic. John tosses his jacket aside and gathers up Bob's legs, while Paul wraps his arms around Bob's chest. He's got the worse end, he knows— Bob's top half is bloodier, and Paul has to walk backwards across the mess of rocks that make up the shoreline. However much John's sobered up since sunset, though, his balance is shit enough walking forwards. So it's safer this way, letting John be his eyes; Paul just wishes John had brought his glasses.
Paul can't let himself look down at old Bob's grisly, purple face. Barely a face anymore. Paul has to, has to keep his gaze locked on John, and it's a trip, being unable to look away. The little nudges John gives with his chin to direct him, the sound of the tide.
“Easy,” John says. Paul's about to ask him what for— when he feels cold water rush his ankles and fill his shoes. It sends a chill through his whole body, and it doesn't get any more comfortable the deeper they go in. When the river's up to his waist, Paul knows he'll be sneezing like mad tomorrow.
Christ, tomorrow.
“Here?” Paul asks. John furrows his brows and licks his lips, clearly thinking hard.
“Hold him a second,” John tells him, then lets go of Bob and crouches, feeling around on the ground. When he pops back up, he seizes Paul's hand and unloads a pile of rocks into his palm. When Paul doesn't move — because how could he move? — John starts stuffing Bob's right jacket pocket. “Like this.”
For Paul, the tide seems to stop at those words. How many times has he heard them before? Before John snatches his guitar or slides up next to him at the piano. It should go like this. A lump forms in Paul's throat, as he shoves fistfuls of rocks into Bob's pockets and thinks about those little moments with John. Sat together on his bed in Mendips, knees knocking, humming tunes.
It isn't until they've sent Bob floating south and sinking steadily down, that Paul finally swallows it: John didn't just throw a punch at a bloke in a bar. That sort of thing happens, where there's drinks and men. A black eye here, a bloody nose there. All of it was just... raging. It was a nasty habit, but it wasn't really real.
Tonight, though, John has— fuck, he's actually—
And maybe it's not real right now, under the stars. But tomorrow, at the Cavern, when there's no one to welcome the dwellers to "the best of cellars!" as Bob always did. It'll be real then. That moment, when everyone in the club looks around and finds nothing, exists on the same timeline as John writing love songs in his bedroom.
“Should we..." Paul starts to ask, but stops instantly, realizing how daft of a question it is. Should we say something? What could they possibly say? Paul had liked Wooler, been grateful to him, but he didn't know him well at all.
John shakes his head and watches Bob disappear, finally, underwater. “Leave 'im. It's done.”
Anger pools in Paul's chest then, warm and murky. “It's not done,” he hisses.
To act like just because Bob's in the river, he won't follow John everywhere. He'll follow Paul, too. Right out of the water and back to his house on Forthlin Road. To EMI in London, even to some massive stage in America. One day, he and John will return to Paris, and Bob will be there. It makes Paul want to pout and cry and do everything a twenty-one year-old man's got no right doing. It's not fair. It's John's mess.
Paul knows why he couldn't have left John in the kitchen. He can't put it in to words, that reason, but he can't deny that he knows. John, though. John could've found the nerve to send him away. In the attic, he could've told Paul, just go home. Really, Paul knows that John would never have done that— but why couldn't he have tried, at least? For heaven's sake, why did he cover Bob's mouth?
“You, you must've known what you were doing,” Paul suddenly stammers. John snaps his head back to look at him. “Back at Gin's, you must've.”
John's eyes widen a bit in surprise, but he quickly hardens his expression. “Knew I was beating the shit out of him.” He can't stop himself from tacking on a sardonic, “Thank you.”
John looks away then, but Paul won't stop staring for a second. For once, he'd like John to admit to something.
“You were muzzling him as well. So he couldn't scream, like—”
John cuts him off with an agitated sound, a dismissive ach. “Don't say it like that,” he grouses. “You don't know.”
There it is again, that dismissal of the notion that someone could ever know him. And honestly, how dare he, when it's Paul he's talking to. Paul's cheeks run hot with the audacity of it. Emotion swells in his throat. There's nothing between him and John that isn't shared, not now. John must see that.
“At a certain point,” Paul insists, “when you were hitting him—”
“Swinging hands in the garden with Lady Asher, you were, you weren't there.”
“I mean, some part of you, under all the drink, must've known you were killing him.”
And with that word spoken for the first time all night, John breaks. He throws his fists down and shouts, spits, “And what, Paul??”
It's not a question, but Paul still tries to think of an answer. He finds himself stumped.
John's killed a man. He may have even meant to. And... what? What's changed? Everything ought to be different, now. But the next time Paul thinks of a melody, he knows he'll go to John. The next time anything should happen, he knows he'll go to John, and he's looking forward to it. It's just so easy.
Paul's trousers cling to his legs, where the river runs past. John's teeth are bared, and there's a dangerous glint in his eye. If Paul doesn't run now, what could ever get him to run?
“And nothing,” Paul says, his voice shaky and raw. His eyes feel like they're burning. “Nothing.”
John's eyebrows curl upward at that, a soft expression Paul rarely gets to see these days. His lips are parted, and his hair's going in three different directions, and Paul feels like he's been hit by a train. Fucking hell— John's beautiful. He's so beautiful, Paul can't stand to look at him a second longer. He puts his face in his hands and cries into his palms.
Paul hears splashes of water, feels cold, wet hands seize his shoulders. John whispers Paul's name, takes Paul's wrists, leads Paul's hands away from his face. Anything to coax him into saying what's come over him.
Paul explains it the only way he can think to: “I'm with you, you know. There's nothing you could do...”
He can't bring himself to finish the thought. Unfortunately, finishing Paul's thoughts has become John's lot in life. In the studio, on the stage— and now, down by the river, in the dead of night.
John's breath hitches, and Paul knows he's been understood. Forcefully, John tilts up Paul's chin.
“You mean it?” he asks, searching Paul's face for any shred of doubt, any crack in his resolve. Paul wishes he could give him one. Instead, he finds himself nodding.
John's eyes stop darting from corner to corner, then. Wonder turning to hunger, his gaze settling on Paul's lips. He snakes an arm 'round Paul's waist and pulls him in closer.
“What if I did this again?” John challenges him. His breath is hot and boozy on Paul's lips, and Paul can't help but whine, it's so terrible. “If I rung you up one night and said, ‘Paulie, it's happened again.’ Would you still come?”
Paul hears a hundred questions at once. What if I did it on purpose? What if I did it in front of you? What if we did it together? These thoughts aren't even his, Paul's convinced. John is thinking at him, and Paul is hearing it in his own head.
“Would you?” John asks again, louder but wobblier.
And what a nightmare— Paul really would, wouldn't he? It's all too much for him to hold, and it comes spilling over as a pathetic sob.
“Yes,” he admits, blubbers, “oh, God.”
John mashes their mouths together in a desperate kiss. Rough and devouring, like he's trying to swallow Paul whole. Paul melts into the familiarity of it: the beery taste of John, the rough feel of him.
John's lips are buzzing against Paul's own. His hands are freezing hot on Paul's face. Paul invites in all his wanting eagerly, tilting his head and tangling his fingers in John's hair, but for the life of him, he can't stop crying. He can't do anything to stem the flow of tears, can't help but whimper into John's mouth. He's all apart, blown into bits, burning, slipping—
And John must feel it, too, because soon he's dragging his lips to every corner of Paul’s face, licking the tears away, whispering things in between. “'s all right.” A kiss on Paul’s cheek. “'s all right, love.” A kiss on the line of his jaw. “It's the same for me.” A kiss on the underside of his chin.
Paul's eyes flutter open at that. The same for me. Same, shared, halves, whole. That steadying, all-encompassing truth. He needs John to hold it with him, to carry the legs. He needs to hear it from John.
“Tell me,” Paul says with a shudder, teeth chattering from the cold.
John still seems to take it as a command. “Fuck, you're everything,” he tells him frantically, voice every bit as wrecked as Paul's, “I'd do anything, anything for you.”
It's not what Paul expected him to say— and it's so brilliant that it just about knocks the tears out of him. Paul had used the word "nothing" before. As in, nothing you could do would make me leave. As in, there's nothing I wouldn't do for you. And here John is, saying "everything" and "anything". Equal and opposite. How perfect is that? Bloody perfect, his John.
In that moment, Paul makes a decision. He balls up John's shirt collar into one fist, yanks him forward.
“Show me, then,” Paul says, and it's as much a declaration as it is a dare.
He feels John's pride in the shared air they're breathing. That mischievous, glowing pride Paul's earned from John over the years by shoplifting cigarettes, by screaming into mics, by getting on his knees. He practically runs on it, so John must run on it too, and to hell with it all, Paul wants John to show him.
But then John's stepping back, pulling a sad, involuntary little sound out of Paul. “Happy to,” John says. “In the car.” He crooks his head in the direction of the shore, makes a show out of shivering.
Oh. Right. Still in the Mersey.
Paul steals one more wet, bruising kiss before taking John's hand and leading him out of the river. It's a pain, wafting through the flow, trying not to trip on the rocks. If only they were somewhere tropical, where they could get off in the water without freezing to death. Somewhere like Spain, a very bitter part of Paul whispers at him.
Oh, but John wouldn't do anything like this for Mr. Epstein. He wouldn't lay Brian down the way he does Paul, when the two finally reach the car and fling open the door. He wouldn't climb up on top of Brian, nibble at his ear, his neck, his collar bone. No matter what they might have done together, there'd still been space between them. Not like with Paul.
He strains in his pants despite the cold, thinking about giving and giving to each other till they're indistinguishable, till there's nothing left. John undoes the last buttons of Paul's soaked shirt, long fingers traveling down to his hips, his thighs. And Paul thinks he could die, just from this, just like this—
“What d'you want, love?” John asks lowly, against Paul's chest.
Instantly, two words bolt out of Paul's mouth: “Kill me.”
The second they're out, Paul's chasing after them. “I mean,” he sputters, “'m not, I just—”
He can't catch up with what he's just said, the magnitude of what it means. It's left him now, settled in John instead— and John has lifted his head to stare at Paul in disbelief.
John would never hurt him. There's that impulse again, popping back into Paul's head. John would never.
He could, though. If he wanted to. He could wrap his big hands around Paul’s neck and squeeze. He could beat Paul into pulp. He could… Christ, he could kill him. That leather-clad hoodlum on the bus, that lad with the goofy grin. John could truly kill him. The thought of it has Paul leading John's hand down, bucking forward into John's palm. God, Paul thinks, “John.”
John groans at the contact. He lets his head fall, pants into Paul's waist. Hungry and helpless and so, so fond; the way he palms at Paul's cock through his trousers, the waver in his voice.
“You are cracked, son.”
Paul smiles, a little dopey, and thinks about quipping, says you. Says the one who mauled a bloke like a rabid mutt, who's still got his blood under his fingernails. But really, John's right, and why bother deflecting when it would just be so much hotter to say—
“Yeah. Only for you.”
Because he's always been slightly mad about John. Schemed for his attention. But... yeah, no, it's more. He's cracked for John. Lost in him, completely. And once that's out there, once that gate's open, there's no shame in imagining the carseat beneath Paul's head is a kitchen tile.
John finally pulls Paul's zip down, gets his hand around him proper, and Paul can't recall anything anyone else has ever said to him. The only memories left in his head are of John's lip busted after a scrap in the Reeperbahn, raw sores on a good-looking teddy boy's knuckles. All this time, Paul thinks. He's liked it all this time.
John strokes him fast and sure, his lips traveling further and further down as he works him in his hand. Paul can feel the point of John's nose in his bush, the heat of his breath between his thighs— and fuck, yes, John's mouth on him. John swirls his tongue across the head before sucking Paul down, taking the length of him. Reflexively, Paul's hand shoots out to grasp at John's hair.
Paul's only dimly aware that throughout it, he's speaking. And as he feels himself getting close, that string of oh fucks and oh pleases suddenly becomes, “Stop, stop, stop—”
Torturously, John pulls off. A strangled gasp escapes Paul. Frantically, he tightens his grip in John's hair and props himself up to look at him. He's met with worried eyes, swollen lips Paul needs back around him again.
“No, please, please, I didn't mean it,” Paul begs, but all the while, he just thinks, shut up, shut up, shut up.
If John were really killing him, he could shut Paul up. Oh— now, there's an idea. There's a hot bubbling at the bottom of Paul's chest the second he thinks it, and he nearly laughs with just how nice and wrong it feels.
So, Paul slaps a hand over his own mouth, pretending it's John's. Digging the pads of his fingers into his jaw, muffling a moan.
And thank God it's John who's with him now, that absolute pervert John Lennon. The sight of Paul has a shaky groan rattling out of him, and he dips his head back down, takes Paul back into his mouth in one swift motion. Paul feels his cock slide against John's tongue. He's a heap of flesh underneath John, a pile of nothing.
With one last ragged sigh of John's name into his own palm, Paul comes into John's mouth. He allows himself just three breaths worth of rest before he's pulling on the steering wheel, hoisting himself up, dragging John into another kiss. He slips a hand under John's briefs, a little uncertain.
Sure enough, John's still painfully hard and beautifully slick. His lips are red and numb, and some sweaty strands of hair are stuck to his forehead. So lovely— and all of it, Paul's to take. To ruin, if he wanted.
“Look at you,” he croons as he tosses John off. “All mine.”
And "yours" barely sounds like a word by the time John finishes.
Sunlight hits the sticky leather of Paul's car, and John asks him if he's scared.
Paul wants to swipe at John's arm for that one. What kind of daft question is that? It was Paul's party. There'll be nothing but questions. If it was any other guy's birthday, any other aunt's house, maybe Paul could rest. Maybe if old Bob Wooler had a reason to leave town.
(If Paul's being honest, the one thing keeping him from total terror is the fact that Wooler was himself a known queer. Another sad notch in the whole thing, but those sorts of blokes do just disappear, sometimes. This is Liverpool, after all.)
'Course I'm scared, is what Paul nearly says.
Christ, but when he actually looks at John. He's sat opposite Paul, his back against the passenger door and his knees against Paul's own, parted so that both can see the other's face. John's face— the vulnerability pinching at his brows, his nose, his lips. Suddenly, Paul can't be sure what he's really asking.
“Of what?”
Humor glows in John then, blossoms all throughout him. A tilt of the head, a widening of the eyes. He puts his hand on his chest, rolls it noncommittally off to the side. A jerky kind of flourish, with an eyelash flutter to boot. Paul knows right away what he's saying, can even hear the camp voice John would put on if he'd said it aloud.
Of ME, dearest darlingest.
For a second, Paul tries to think outside himself, imagine he's George or Mike or someone, listening in to this— exchange, he supposes, because 'conversation' doesn't quite describe it. It's fucking unintelligible. Paul imagines he's his dad, seething over the never-ending jokes and half-thoughts he and John communicate with.
And his dad really thought that was something John did to him. Such a bad influence, he was even devolving Paul's ability to speak proper English. Always, that Lennon's trouble, and what Paul should've said then was, Da, I'm trouble.
Really, that there is Paul's answer to John's question. But what comes out is, “I caught frogs, you know, when I was younger.”
John blinks.
“Well, frogs is contagious,” he says.
So, their telepathy does have limits.
“I was little,” Paul explains. “I thought, National Service is coming up. So I thought I'd better get used to killing things. You know, work up the nerve.”
That was true. Frogs were an easy target, lots of them around with no one to miss them. He used to think that if he'd killed enough of them, he'd no longer hate doing it, and then he'd be ready for the military. Pretty Paulie, always the sissy, but the boys calling him that wouldn't be half as ready as he was when the draft came.
Paul sniffs, a sharp inhale through the nose. “I stuck 'em on a barbed wire fence. All in a line, like.”
He draws a little line in the air with his finger. To demonstrate. And John's got this crooked grin on like Paul's the best, strangest thing he's ever looked at.
“What for?” John asks.
“You know how boys talk, at school—”
John waves his hand. “No, I mean, why string 'em up like that?”
Automatically, Paul shrugs, says, “Dunno, really.”
He cringes a bit after he hears his words back. John deserves a better answer than that, but, well… it's just mechanics. Frogs are slippery. Hands are slippery. Fences are sharp.
That was the worst part about it, how slimy and squirmy the frogs were. The act of grabbing and sticking them, Paul never did stop hating. Though, there was a kind of satisfaction after it was done. It felt nice to have a secret little place, this small, gory patch of fence, that looked the way he sometimes felt. So opposite to the weakness the lads saw in him, to the steadfastness his family saw. It was like something inside him was on the outside now, captured in the image of the poor green buggers impaled.
So not entirely mechanics, in all truthfulness. Paul takes a steadying breath and amends his answer, “Liked it, I s'pose.”
John nods, a little urgently. Not just acknowledging what Paul's said, but agreeing, making sure Paul knows he agrees.
“I showed it off to Mike once, the fence,” Paul continues. “And I just saw it in his face, him thinking, ‘Oh, my brother's a nutter.’ I think I sort of knew he'd react that way. But, you know, I didn't have anyone else to show it to, back then.”
He knows he's rambling a bit now, but he doesn't want to give his admission room to breathe. Whether he liked it or not, that's not the point he's trying to make here. What he wants to just come out and say is, this thing that's in John, that John is so scared of— it's in Paul, too. No sense in judging each other for it.
Paul sighs. “You see what I'm getting at?”
John doesn't even need to nod for Paul to feel the understanding pass between them. And he thinks John's about to seal it with a kiss, too, because now he's lurching forward so he's nose-to-nose with Paul, lips ghosting over his— but then John smirks and says, sickly sweet, “You wanna be my little froggie?”
Paul actually does swipe at John's arm, then. “Mhm, right,” he monotones. “Exactly. Fuck off.”
“Give us a ribbit.” John shoves his chest, starts croaking at him. Paul kicks his leg in retaliation, and it only spurs John on to make louder, creakier noises right in Paul's ear.
Utterly ridiculous, John is. And Paul just loves it. All he wants to do, and all he does do, is catch John's lips in a kiss. Slower than before, not in any rush. Every moment, Paul thinks, should feel like this. He could fall asleep right now, in the wee hours, all twisted up with John, or he could find the energy to bend John over, make them both come their brains out a second time.
When they break apart, though, it's obvious John's got something else on his mind. He knocks his forehead against Paul's, gaze pointed straight downwards, a shaky breath escaping him.
“John?”
“I couldn't ever do that to you, you know,” John rasps out quickly. “Not actually. Not you. I just can't.”
Paul's heart aches; the evasiveness of John's demeanor, battling the raw emotion in his words. Paul feels compelled to assure him.
“I know, Johnny. I wasn't literally— I wouldn't ask that of you.”
John shifts on his knees. His eyes dart down to his hands, then back up to Paul, and Paul wants desperately to hear whatever he's gearing up to say. He holds John's hand, hopes it's something to him.
“But if you,” John starts. Stops. Starts again, “I reckon if you caught one, I'd string him up for you.”
And now it's Paul's turn to blink uselessly. Oh, John.
“A frog?” he manages, barely able to hear himself.
The corner of John's mouth twitches. “Frog. Toad. Whatever.”
Paul can't breathe. This suggestion, this offer— Paul's throttled by it.
John's gaze now is so dark. Paul thinks anyone else might feel trapped by it, wonders if anyone else would catch the nervous rise and fall of John's adam's apple. Other people, they'd always look at John's curls and leathers and drainies, and they'd just want to take a swing at him. And now Eppy and Cyn have got him in a fine-pressed suit and a wedding band, everyone wants to sand down all John's edges.
Paul's not other people. He feels in every corner of him a familiar burning, a red-hot desire for John: for him exactly as he is, for the soft parts and the hard parts, for all of him.
What a way to have all of John.
Apparently, though, Paul's taken too long to respond. “Oh, hell, Macca, I'm only joking,” John's saying now, dropping Paul's hand and splitting into a fake, sideways sort of smile. No, come on, not this—
“I just thought, 'cause you're barmy, thought you might like hearing that. Turns you on, doesn't it? You tart.”
“Yeah,” Paul says immediately. Open, earnest, casual. “It does. I like it.”
His matter-of-factness gives John pause. Probably, now would be a good time for Paul to give some sort of a grand speech, but all that profound, cosmic shite, he doesn't really know. All he can say is the truth, simple and sappy as he sees it.
“I just like everything about you. Can't help it.”
The whites of John's eyes go pink and damp at those words. Paul catches John mutter a little Christ under his breath, and again, Paul feels a twist in his heart. For all John's wisecracks and bruises, Paul knows he really does enjoy soft touches and joined signatures and hearing I like everything about you. John had been the one who'd first put his pride under and proposed they write together— and that gives Paul enough courage to put forward a proposal of his own.
“We could do it together, couldn't we?” Paul says, hugging his legs to his chest, shifting closer to John. “Catching a frog, I mean. I've got ideas.”
John barks out a laugh, watery and bright. “Oh, ideas,” he parrots, wiping a hand over his face. “You've got ideas. Another Lennon-McCartney, eh?”
“Right,” Paul giggles, “the B-side to this one.”
He throws a hand out to the window, the river beyond it, John mimics the gesture, and that's what sends them right over the edge, devolving into uncontrollable laughter. We're fucked, Paul thinks, and at the same time, he loves me.
John pulls Paul forward by the back of his head, starts placing sloppy kisses along his jawline. “Why stop there, baby, let's make an album,” he coos in a gruff, silly voice. He bites at Paul's neck, and some breathy sincerity sneaks in when he speaks again. “Yeah, let's kill some bloke together.”
John says it like he's testing how the words feel on his tongue. A shudder creeps up Paul's back: the thrill of doing the wrong thing.
Before tonight, Paul thought he'd found space to tuck away every bit of wrongness about this thing he and John have always shared. John's a man, John's a mate, it's always better with John. All were slotted in empty crevices in the cupboard of his mind, in between bigger things. But this— Paul'd have to move everything to make room for this.
Paul tries to picture it, his mind as a kitchen cupboard. Overstuffed with delicate china. A hoarder's stash. An attempt to move anything, he realizes, will have everything tumbling out and smashing on the ground. And really, is that any way to live? He sees John in that imaginary kitchen, with gorgeous, bloodied hands. Paul thinks he would shatter it all, for John.
In the quiet of the car, he rests his head on John's, mumbles into his auburn hair something about John's 23rd in October. It doesn't really matter. Paul's got John in his arms and "happy birthday" in his ear. It's hard to see anything else mattering.