Archive of Our Own

He'd said no so often it had become part of who he was, like being left-handed. Sure, he'd caved eventually–he wasn't immune to peer pressure–but most of the time, he had declined.

This changed when John started tripping in the studio. At first, they didn’t understand; they wondered where he was, and learned George Martin had taken him to the roof. By the time they got there, he stood close to the edge, about to step over a guardrail reaching halfway up his shins, face lit by stars only he could see. Together, they led him back to the studio, pale in his colorful clothes and fan-gifted necklaces and wild hair. A mad king.

He shouldn't be alone, Paul thought, if you can call it thinking when you already made up your mind. "Let's go home,” he said. “I'll trip with you." As if they hadn't argued about it for more than a year.

Paul made sure to pick up John's coat and guitar. He took his arm, and together, they walked outside. When the cool air kissed his face, every part of Paul turned like metal particles following a magnet, from No to Yes, as they often did with John. This time, it happened particularly beautifully, as if to honor the song they'd been working on: Getting Better.

---

A month ago, he'd watched the sun set behind Mount Kilimanjaro with Mal, thick, delicious egg yolk orange (the breakfast of hitchhiking trips) dissolving into bruised purple. A sky like music. Mal passed him a joint. The flavor mixed with the taste of the air in Paul's mouth: a green, thick, far-away flavor that tempted him to travel further. Mal would go with him, no doubt about it, but eventually the question of the Beatles would come up. Mal didn’t give the impression of being ready for a world without Beatles. Was Paul? Oh, who was he kidding.

Before watching the sunset, he'd beaten a group of British soldiers at cards, feeling like a minor character in a movie, like John. They'd missed John in Spain, and Paul had felt so cut off from something he'd prepared to latch on to, so deprived all of a sudden, that he'd decided to take Mal to Kenya. And here they were. Gorgeous country.

If only it weren't for the buzz of half-shaped tunes in his head, or heart. Everywhere, to be honest. They wouldn't leave him alone. Sure, he could finish them on his own. But it was always better, much better, with John.

Needing John to make music was nothing new. Wanting him wasn’t new, either, that had always been part of them, almost right from the beginning. Fooling around, I guess you could call it, although it had never felt foolish to either of them. He wasn’t sure when the words had come to him, exactly, which allowed him to understand what it was, with John. And maybe it hadn’t been words at all, but people he met, other couples like them, two men pairing off, and not in secret, either. Just as partners, collaborators, for the night or for life or anything in between, like William Burroughs and his Ian, their love contained in their tape loop experiments as a matter of course. Paul had felt the recognition all around him, Burroughs-Sommerville and others’, their insight into Lennon-McCartney, and by then, in 1966, it hadn’t bothered him at all. Because it was just the truth: he and John belonged together. Not like brothers, or like something strange, a miracle or an error or what have you. If one of us had been a girl…thoughts like these, young and scared and confused, no longer had a home in Paul’s mind. Because this, this was new: not the needing or the wanting, but that he loved John. He did. Completely. The way you love someone you think is great, and beautiful.

And no one to tell! Except Mal, who'd let him ride on his back to celebrate their first US number one. He probably knew. There are people who know, and there are people with the ability to not know. Mal was a Knower. A strong, tall presence next to him in the dusk, joint fragile like an actual beetle leg in his mouth.

From Hamburg to here. Paul covered his face with his hands. He tried to imagine John's face, and found that he couldn't. John was still there, in the marrow of Paul's bones and the soft weave of his tissues, but Paul couldn't see him anymore.

Paul tried to take it in stride, telling himself that it would be a very John trick to pull to slip out of Paul’s imagination like that! All right, come back, Paul thought. John refused to show himself.

Making sure to sound steady, Paul asked Mal to find out where John was. Yes, right now. It doesn't matter, just do it. Mal took a chartered plane to Nairobi, sent a telegram, waited for the reply, and brought it to Paul. John was back home in England. Working on a new song.

The moment they saw each other again, they burst into a dance of exaggerated joy. When they finally did touch, it was rough at first, prodding and shoving. Finally, they put their arms around each other. They'd rarely done this before. But being reunited after so many weeks apart, they took the time to hold each other, and it felt so good it only made them hold on more tightly.

On some level, they never fully separated after this. They couldn't stop being together. With touring behind them, the world didn't own them anymore. They were back to being John and Paul, JohnandPaul, who played and wrote and ate and slept together. In Paul's house this time, sharing clothes and food and guests and Paul’s car when they drove to the studio around the corner; it was like a grown-up version of the days they’d spent at Paul’s house in Liverpool, Jim at work, Mike paid off to leave them alone, everything theirs, the band over for practice, and later, even better, them, talking it all over: the set list, their future, their songs. Fooling around, but not foolish. And, just like he used to bring sweets or gossip or new ideas to Paul’s door when they were young, John had brought something special with him from Almería as well. Paul's heart hurt when John played him Strawberry Fields for the first time. Let me, let me, let me, he'd thought, impatient to get his hands on the song, his mind tumbling over itself…

---

Mal drove them to Cavendish.

The house was theirs for now: JohnandPaul's and Mal's, who lived in the basement flat. Jane had left in January to tour the US with the Bristol Old Vic, and whatever mark she’d made on the house had since been covered by John and Paul and their music inhabiting the place as if it had never been intended otherwise.

They got through the gate and out of the car. Mal led the way. Paul led John by the elbow. The Scruffs must have picked up that something unusual was afoot, because, instead of crowding them, they parted to let them through, looking on in silence, eyes nearly as wide as John's. It was strangely moving.

It's like we're getting married, Paul thought. We're walking down the aisle.

Not much later, he and John lounged on the settee, and a pill dissolved in Paul's mouth. It tasted bitter, and left a numb spot under his tongue. Now there was no way back.

John looked into his eyes. Not too long. Not yet. When they turned away, two cups of tea stood on the table, golden surfaces shining like coins. The cups moved closer and finally merged into a figure-eight.

"It's starting," Paul said. John watched him, calm and patient. Still a little pale. He hadn't

completely returned from his time alone, Paul felt. Too many hours on that Spanish beach.

Paul leaned in to kiss him. Sweetly at first, then more courageously. Even now, part of him was thrilled to be allowed to kiss John. He would have spent his life wanting to, had John not allowed it, but as it happened, John not only allowed it: he’d begged, that first time. Eyes wide, both of them breathing quickly, knees touching, their faces so close, and he’d smelled the vaseline in John’s hair, and John whispered: Paul…won’t you…’cause I don’t think I can. And Paul had leaned in, and their lips touched, and that was that.

Paul hooked his leg over John's and half sat on his lap. This felt safe, John's hands at the small of his back. Martha's cool snout at his naked toes. The house was breathing and bustling silently, an anthill of choices grown from a blueprint. Around them, framed art stood haphazardly between record sleeves, like windows into Paul's mind.

"Look into my eyes," John said, his voice a deep, familiar rumble.

Paul slid off John's lap to sit sideways to him, legs across John's, and did just that: He dove into John's gaze while John did the same with him. They parted each other's souls going deeper.

"Paul," John said. "Finally."

"I know," Paul said. In love with this stranger, who was also his best friend, who was also the first boy with whom he'd been sure. He still felt it, looking back: the complete lack of ambiguity the first time he decided to think about John for no other reason than the kick of joy and terror deep inside his belly. What they had was so old, they'd never given it a name. But it had a name.

Paul tapped his finger against John's lips, and John kissed it. He wasn’t a mad king, he was a prince, his former swagger tempered to become fine and smooth, his movements flowing instead of bursting out of him. He was lighter than a year ago, but much more present, dressed in strong colors, pink velvet trousers hugging his hips, face chiseled without being hard, on the contrary: he looked gentler than Paul had ever seen him, safe and open and happy, the way he used to look only when he was asleep. Now he was wide awake.

Without taking his eyes off John's, Paul dragged his finger from John's lips to his chin and down his stubbly throat, over the jagged edges of his voice there, down to his chest. He was just about to unbutton John's ruffled shirt when something unexpected brushed against his wrist. It felt like the tail of one of their kittens, just after they'd taken them in: silky and warm and hairy. Flexible but with a will of its own, a spine inside all that softness.

Looking down, he saw that the thing that brushed his hand was a kind of string. It could have been made of wool, it had the same fuzzy shimmer wool did, but it wasn't real, of course. It couldn't be. It crept from between the buttons of John's shirt to the hem of Paul's. Its color was a warm turquoise.

John and Paul undressed, and looked at the thing connecting their naked chests.

Carefully, Paul pulled at it, his finger bent into a hook. The string lengthened, as if there was an endless supply of it.

"What is it?" Paul asked, only to say something.

"It's us."

That made sense. The center of the string, visible from up close, consisted of golden letters in both of their handwriting. Running his fingers along the string, Paul picked up reverberations he recognized as music. John took his hand and they both held the string.

"What do you think happens…" Paul said, and John finished the sentence: "…when we're writing? I don't know."

"Oh, you don't?" Paul teased. Then he stood up. He'd wanted to go to the music room, but a different idea struck him. "Close your eyes and count to ten. No, twenty. Sixty. A full minute."

"Paul, no."

"See if you can find me."

"This is going to be a challenge. With the string and all."

"Come on!" Paul nearly jumped in place with excitement. He wasn't sure why he needed John to do this; he just knew he did, and since he'd agreed to trip with John, he felt John might as well agree to a game of hide and seek.

"All right, off you go," John finally said, eyes already closed. "If I end up finding anything or anyone but you on the end of that string, there will be hell to pay."

"I'd like to see that."

"Quiet. You'll give yourself away." John started mouthing what Paul assumed were numbers, counting down the seconds. Still in a silly mood, hissing and muttering, shhh, shhh, hmmm, Paul tiptoed around the dinner table. Then he climbed over it twice to make a cross with the string, which he kept on making longer by pulling on it. He could have done all this more easily by lengthening the string first and arranging it in a pattern, but he wanted to create a path for John, hoping he'd follow.

Up the stairs and into each bedroom he went, leaving a trace of loops and waves and lines. In the bathroom, he stood in the tub and turned on the shower, splashing water on himself.

Finally, up in the music room, he hid behind a new bean bag, draping the knitted throw Aunt Jin had given him for his twenty-fourth birthday over himself. Then he tried to make the string invisible. Let John find him by touch alone.

It didn't work. The string remained as bright as it had been from the start, snaking its way around the bean bag, and to the door. John took his time finding him. It meant he was following the route Paul had laid down for him, or so Paul told himself, nervous about it, as if it mattered. When the rush of water in the bath told him John was replicating his brief shower, Paul realized how turned on he was by the idea of John following in his footsteps, curious to feel what Paul had felt. He giggled to himself.

The door opened with a creak. Soft steps came closer. A weight dropped onto the bean bag, forcing Paul to roll back from its expanding sides. The throw was yanked away without warning, and there was John's face, looking down at him. John was grinning madly, wet hair sticking to his face. "Found you."

"Well done, Johnny."

John reached for Paul's chest and pressed his finger on the point where the string grew from it. Paul's mouth turned dry. John observed him, inscrutable.

"You want to write?" Paul said.

"I'd love that," John said, and lowered himself on top of him.

It was just them on the floor, Paul’s arms and legs around John, both still wearing trousers, the string rubbing between their chests. It was just them, rubbing against each other through their clothes like teenagers who escaped to the furthest bedroom to do…what? Just this: kissing and tasting each other, hips twitching, everything turning heavy and intense.

John looked down on Paul with an expression not unlike the way he’d looked at him before their first kiss, naked and open, wanting so much he couldn’t take it, and so Paul did. “Let me,” he said, as he always wanted to, around John, and reached for the buckle of John’s belt. As soon as he’d pulled the leather strap loose, John hurried to help him, and Paul wormed his hand inside John’s trousers, folding his palm around his hard prick and holding him, just that, rubbing and squeezing in small motions, the two of them next to each other, and Paul had to use his right hand. They both loved it like this, the agonizing quiet of it, the rising heat. John could come from just this, from Paul’s hand wrapped around him in the close confines of his trousers with no place to go and hardly any space to move: their closeness so intense it was enough. He was waiting for John’s climax rather than causing it, but he was causing it, too: by being there, by feeling every throb, by whispering to John how close he felt, how hot and good, and that it would happen soon, now, and that he couldn’t wait to feel it fill his fist, and to taste it later, how nothing else felt like it, nothing…

John came, arching against Paul with a deep groan that made Paul want to do it again, and again. While he kissed John and caressed him with his trapped, wet fingers (he knew better than to stop before John asked him to), he felt the string between them, pressed between his arm and John’s chest. Hastily, Paul pushed down his pants, and, without thinking, wrapped the string around himself. It was warm like a mouth, but fleeting, half-there, the friction tantalizingly shy of being enough to set him off. But it was them, wasn’t it, it came out of John and out of him, and that made it enough. Paul shouted, helpless, coming into the string and all over John, unable to stop, or so it felt like, suckling at the place where the string left John, vaguely aware of John’s hands in his hair, and his soothing voice, his praise, that’s it love, that’s it.

Afterwards, they were covered in a coat of slippery warmth: part water, part sweat, part them. John lay on his back, Paul on his side, right leg hooked around John's. The string had twisted itself into a long, tight helix squeezed snugly between them.

The house was breathing. Outside its walls, the garden was pulsing with seed pods and night life, and Paul was building his courage. He finally had John back, and the acid was only showing him the endless, unbreakable connection he'd always known was there. It held them together, and it contained the two of them, because it was something they made, something neither of them had with anyone else—and yet. He and John had just found each other again, and music had put them under, and it was safe inside music and in rooms that became music rooms the moment they entered. Why risk the happiest time they'd had together since—it must have been in Caversham—with them together, and no one questioning it, not even themselves. Why risk it? Because the magic would end? Was that reason enough?

Paul had the hardest time thinking. The acid made him both sharp and stupid. Finally, it showed him an image, and that was helpful at least: his face, blurred and swollen, glistening with blood. December '65, In the bathroom mirror at his dad's house, the cheer of an endless Christmas party mocking him through the walls. Nicki Browne's perfumed scarf around his shoulders, soiled by his blood. His mouth and left eyebrow split open, and his eyes nearly as deep and level as John's, and black like his blood…

"Ready when you are," Mike said, standing in the doorway with his camera.

Dad’s face hovering over his shoulder, eyebrows raised, and gone again, so quickly Paul wasn't sure he'd been there at all.

"That's good," Paul told Mike. "Take my picture. This is life. This is the truth."

And Mike, looking stunned and a bit queasy, took pictures of the gashes on Paul's face.

There was no sound except the click of the shutter, and the rrr-chk of Mike rolling up the film. Paul was still only twenty-three. When I'm twenty-five, he thought with crystal clarity as he swallowed his blood, I'll make up my mind. One way or the other.

Now he was nearly twenty-five, and the string, oh, it had waited to reveal himself, but here it was. And what were a few more weeks. Maybe this was the moment.

But he still wasn't completely sure how to put it into words. He only knew he'd been proud of the pain, back then, facing himself in the bathroom mirror. Not ashamed at all.

He and Tara had bought mopeds that night, both of them high as a kite, and drove along the empty streets. At some point, they'd paused to smoke a bit of weed and decide what to do next. Tara carefully arranged his delicate fingers around his belt buckle and gave him a look Paul read as an invitation, and the next thing he knew, his face looked like this. This was the truth. This was life. He wouldn't cover this up.

The scar on his lip had long since healed under John's kisses. The clarity of that night was still there. He knew the tune, he only had to find the words.

He had to start somewhere, and so he did.

Wrapping his hand around the string, Paul said, "I felt it before. Something similar, at least."

John nodded against his shoulder. "Me too. All the time."

"All the time, eh?"

"You know what I mean."

"Always with the sweeping statements."

"Well, that's me. Sweeping away." John kissed Paul's shoulder. He sounded content.

Paul pushed off the ground, and floated into the deep. "I felt it in Tenerife…"

…when John had been off to Barcelona with Brian, and Paul on a volcanic island with George and Richie and Astrid and Klaus, burned and disoriented, the whole vacation haunted by ghosts—not just John and Brian fucking (Paul didn't bother with euphemisms in his own mind, not even then) but also Stu. John's other lover, if that's what he'd been. That relationship had been a bit murkier, and cleanly over by the time Stu died. With Astrid grieving Stu, the troubling thing was that Paul felt he and Astrid should comfort each other. They shared a similar sense of bereavement. But they hated that they did, and barely spoke.

To escape the silence, Paul went out for a swim. He went out too far, but he couldn't stop himself, because he kept thinking of Brian's hand on John's lower back, and of the morning John told him he'd finally told Brian yes, because he keeps asking, what do you expect me to do, and Paul had thought, he keeps asking because you want him to, but out loud he'd gone on about the baby, and Cyn—as if he'd have cared one bit for John's family if John had gone with him to Tenerife instead.

Being with John meant losing him, over and over again. He should have known, but in the beginning, he'd thought they were special, smiled upon by whoever made these decisions about people's hearts. Stupid.

He wondered what John was thinking in that exact same moment. If he was thinking of Paul at all.

That's when something clutched him at the center of his chest and pulled him into the depths. Going down, he flailed in a panic, swallowing a mouthful of water. Then his survival instinct made him kick his legs and swim for the surface. The tentacle or chain or whatever it was let go of him, if it had ever been real at all. Except he could still feel it, back on land, lying on the beach with his eyes closed and sore all over, pretending to be asleep so he didn't have to talk. The center of his chest ached for days.

"I wonder if it was us, even then," Paul said. "A kind of string between us."

"Must have been."

They lay in silence, wandering through separate memories. If it was, it was useless, Paul wanted to say, it was nothing. We should have been together. The words fell apart in his mind.

"Ah, Barcelona," John said.

"Ah, Tenerife. The stunning views from Mount Teide."

"Did nothing to separate us," John said, the faintest question in his voice. "Did it?"

“Came close enough, though,” Paul said. He remembered how it had been. As soon as the four of them were back together, they'd gone back on tour, because the wheels never stopped turning. He and John didn’t even have time to talk properly until their first night in some hotel room or other, and the walls had been so thin they had to scream in whispers. It had been the first time they’d screamed at each other.

"I thought you'd leave me," John said. "Not for the last time, either. No one put up with me as long as you did."

"Mimi."

"No, I mean—"

"Shotton?"

"Paul. I'm trying to thank you…"

"Well, don't! I'm not your girl."

John closed his mouth. Only their knees were touching now. Between them, the string had twisted itself up further. It looked like a mess. A beautiful, living mess, though, bright and strong.

"I felt it too," John finally said, touching his chest. "In Almería. When we did the movie. I couldn't sleep…" his voice trailed off. "I thought it would be good for me to be on my own for a bit. Figure out who I am, now. Because we can't go on like this forever, can we? As Beatles."

"Not in the same way," Paul conceded.

"Nothing about my life feels like it's mine anymore," John said. "The house could be anyone's. The life I have with Cyn, even Jules. I love them, but…"

Paul just let him talk.

"I thought being apart was the answer," John said. "Did I tell you, when I was young, how I would tell stories to myself, pretending I'd never heard them before?"

"I did the same thing."

"Yeah." John grinned, beautiful, mischievous. "Now we have each other."

Paul took his hand.

"Anyway, enough of that—" John cleared his throat in the exaggerated, hammy way he had when he was embarrassed. "Where was I? I was on a movie set, and I was on my own, and I was with strangers. And I forgot…There were days when I thought, if I walk away now, and get lost, I won't remember who I am. I'll stop existing." John spoke more and more softly. The last words had been nearly inaudible. "I know that's mad."

"It’s not mad."

"I felt it while I wrote Strawberry Fields. It was as if you were there, you know? And coming closer."

"I missed writing with you," Paul said simply. Except it was about more than writing. Writing was only the beginning of it.

John smiled, strangely satisfied. Sphinx-like. A mark from Paul's mouth on his shoulder, like a stamp.

Paul sat up. The coat of warmth he'd shared with John sizzled along his spine, and faded. He stood up slowly. The room expanded around him, the ceiling higher than he could see, carried by endless pillars. His naked feet touched stone.

"Paul?" John was far behind him, but quickly pulled himself closer, using the string that still connected them. Once he was with Paul, a deep blue sofa appeared in the distance, with two guitars leaning against the pillows.

"Fuck me, this is strong stuff," John said. "I wish I remembered who gave it to me."

They got acquainted with the guitars, which sounded clean and crisp, pre-recorded, even as they were just noodling around, as if they'd been played before, exactly like this, by them,and, remembering their hands, freed the sounds they knew were expected. Paul exchanged a look with John. They both felt it, both knew it. Without words, they decided on a song.

I've Just Seen A Face: the intro coming in on tip-toes, their guitars like two lovers tickling each other, giggly and silly, then came the verse: direction decided, the two of them running side by side. Falling, yes, I am falling…and she keeps calling me back again.

No need to be secretive about it: the song was about John, and the sudden end of loneliness, the arrival of love that had cut his life into before and after, the endless joy of having found him, despite millions of ways he could have missed this and kept out of sight…

Without noticing, Paul changed the lyrics:

And other boys were never quite like this…

John didn't miss a beat. He never did. He laughed soundlessly, delighted, their voices melded together as they were strumming their guitars. By the time the final chord ebbed away, the cathedral-like space around them was forgotten.

They sat, catching their breath.

Now, Paul thought. Before you lose it.

"Live with me," he said.

For a moment or two, John kept on smiling, weightless and blissful, like a child on a swing. Then it faded. "What are you saying?"

Paul lifted the string. "The same as this." John just stared. "Come on," Paul said, too chummy to his own ears, too casual, as if this conversation was about convenience. "It's good, isn't it? You staying over, us being close?"

"Right."

"That's what I'm thinking. We can…"

"No. We can't."

"At least let me talk."

"I don't have to. I know what you're saying."

"That's not fair. You've no idea—"

"It isn't going to work, Paul."

Neither of them had put down his guitar, and Paul heard it clearly: that on some level, they were still singing.

"What isn’t going to work?" Paul said again, shocked to see the string grow longer and winding itself around the sofa. "At least say it out loud!"

"All right! The thing you have in mind! Happy now? We both know what it is, no need to make it all into some cheap argument, is there? You said it yourself, you're not a girl, so don't—"

"That's nothing to do with it, and you know it."

"Don't talk like this. Not on acid. Christ." John put down his guitar, or dropped it, rather. It disappeared into a glitch, and half of John's hand with it. "See what you did? Two perfectly good fingers!"

Paul, too, threw his guitar away, and watched it being eaten by a crack in reality. They stood on a disc made by the string. "I thought all of this was about the truth? Yes? Well, I've got some for you. You taught me what I want."

"Oh, you always knew. Judging from how you first touched me."

Paul stepped closer to him. "Being a bastard won't change anything."

"Might make you come to your senses, though."

"John. I'm not asking you to do anything unreasonable. People live together. It's not…you don't have to be married."

"You have to be man and woman, though. Don't argue, Paul, that's how it is."

"No, it isn't. And if it is, it should be changed. Anyway, we can do what we want."

John looked taken aback.

"There," Paul said. "You know I'm right."

Paul started pacing, the disc turning sluggishly under his feet. He burned with nerves and urgency, because right now, he and John were at a point where they couldn't fail; the world was theirs, they'd been tested and tricked and attacked and they'd passed with flying colors; they were in command; they were being taken advantage of by pretenders left and right and it didn't even matter, because they could make music and art endlessly. They were beloved and eccentric, a treasure, an institution, the final word and the vanguard, and whatever else the world wanted to see in them, but underneath it all they were human, with a life to live, and it had to be their life. Nobody else's.

And if the Scruffs could love them knowing they were living together, why couldn't the world? Why wouldn't it bend itself around them?

John shook his head in disbelief. "I've Cyn and Julian to take care of."

"You still can. Probably better, once you're done pretending—"

"You've Jane, and who knows how many others."

"As soon as I see her, I'll tell her it's over. She probably knows. She's left me before, you know."

"And the others?"

"There aren't that many."

They both had to laugh. There was a tune even in that.

"Paul," John said. "My dear one." He put his hands on Paul's shoulders. His cut hand felt like a claw. "You're too much for me. Always have been."

"No I'm not."

John let go of him and stepped back. Naked except for the string that lit his body in warm blue. Reality opened, and he passed through the gap, and then it closed itself. John was gone.

Alone.

As he'd been on the black pebbles of the Tenerife beach. In the noisy clubs of Hamburg. In his Liverpool bedroom, trying to call John. On a bus, determined to imagine a future by himself. What a laugh.

In German prison, vowing to remember the obscenities on the walls.

At a Happening, wearing a mask.

In France, with a glued-on moustache, under an assumed name.

In front of a mirror, bleeding and unrecognizable, but tasting himself.

If at any of these moments he'd believed John really rejected him, he would have accepted it and moved on. But something always held him back: the sense that John was waiting for him, just out of sight, as incomplete as Paul, waiting for life to pull them back together. Through the years, Paul had given a few names to this stubborn feeling of loyalty, some sweet and some not so sweet. Now he knew exactly what it looked like: a turquoise string emanating from his heart and hanging in the air like a cut up bridge, ending where John had disappeared. Paul reached behind it. His fingertips sank into an invisible cloud of cotton candy. And underneath…

(Paul closed his eyes, so he could feel more precisely what he was touching:)

A doorknob.

It wasn't as if he had a choice. He couldn't stay here on his own, in an unreal place, standing on nothing (neither Kenyan soil nor a disc formed of Lennon-McCartney string…), not without falling, and who knew where he'd end up. Possibly at the bottom of the beer mugs he’d played for this experimental music thing with AMM, just noise, really, a sweet, trippy sound going nowhere…

Paul turned the doorknob and threw himself forward. He fell through a couple of universes and rolled into his hallway.

The door to the music room was closed behind him.

He was home.

Massive quantities of string lay all around him, mountains of loops: in the hallway, the stairs, all over, in each room, even the garden. Paul imagined John running around, pulling at the string from his heart and gathering more and more of it and throwing it around so he would be impossible to follow. He wondered how long he'd been gone; not long, he guessed: John's scent was all around him.

What would happen to the string if one of them died? Nothing good, probably. Whoever was left behind would have to keep making it longer so he could move around in the world, always tied to where the other was buried.

Morbid. This was George Martin's voice, intervening from everywhere all at once. The string is not real.

No, but listen, George, Paul murmured in his head as he made his way to the kitchen, climbing across hills of turquoise. It's not real, but the thing it's showing us is real. With some delay, the shock of being cut off from John set in. Paul was close to tears and shaking with nerves, but underneath the gooseflesh and gasping breath, he was calm. His body —thin, furry, and sensitive—covered up something older. Something solid. He would call it his soul if he could believe in such things. Whatever it was, it took over.

Slowly and systematically, he looked for the matches, and found them in the drawer with the daisy sticker on it. He tried to strike one, not trusting himself, and was pleased when the flame hissed to life. He lit one of the stovetops. He had to let John know that he'd made it back. Inhaling through his nose, he braced himself. Then he stretched a bit of string in both hands, and held it over the blue flames.

The string didn't change at all. But Paul felt a pleasant warmth enter him through his chest, and spread throughout his body. He hoped John felt it too, and understood what it meant: That Paul was there for him, and waiting.

After a while of this—Paul was pleasantly glowing by now—the mass of string started moving. At first, it was only small twitches here and there. Then whole nests unwound and straightened. Someone was pulling at the other end. Paul watched and waited, pleased to see the mess retreat. At some point, he remembered to turn off the stovetop. And when he felt it was time, he tugged at his part of the string, encouraging it to shrink and help things along.

It took a long time to untangle the string, requiring Paul yank at it and crawl under and over it to loosen a few of the more complicated knots, but in the end, it was done, and the wild turquoise overgrowth had been replaced by a single hovering line. The string, as it was now, didn't lead to one of the upstairs rooms. Neither did it lead to the front door or the basement. It led to the garden. No: It led to…

"The dome," Paul whispered.

John was waiting for him on the raised floor: a pale figure lit by moonlight streaming through polygon-shaped panes of glass. He looked small and unreachable, all alone up there, and at the same time glowing and powerful, as if everything around him existed because he imagined it. But then he adjusted his glasses, and Paul saw he was still human, still John.

Paul climbed up to where John was sitting. His climbing prowess had always impressed John, who at one point had claimed Paul could grow little tenterhooks from his hands and feet that helped him scale walls and roofs and trees and drainpipes; it had become a story between them, a game, John's theories about the supernatural properties of one James Paul McCartney. None of them published in his books.

No sooner had Paul made it up to the floor that John, who'd sat nearly motionless so far, pulled him in his arms. They lay down together, their bodies fitting each other perfectly. Finally, Paul could breathe again.

John kissed Paul's brow. His lips were as warm and familiar as the sound of C major. He was the center of everything. He might as well have kissed Paul's heart.

"It was strange being on my own," John said. His hand lay curled up in Paul's neck. His voice, soft as it was, reverberated through both of them. "I nearly forgot who I was. Then it got worse: I remembered. That's where the song came from."

"I wish I'd been there."

"You were."

"Was I?"

"You’re in every song."

"In your tree."

Another kiss, teasing and sweet. Then John withdrew—nothing overt, only the slightest change in posture and breath. But Paul felt it nevertheless. It said: It's enough Paul. It's all we can have. And it was more than most people could have, and not long ago, Paul would have agreed. But that had been before they'd directed an orchestra and took the reins together and discovered they could combine song fragments of theirs and bring Tara back to life, but on their terms. Before they discovered how right it felt to arrive and leave and sleep and wake up together.

And before certain experiences Paul had had on his own.

"My travels were interesting as well, John."

"Were they now, Paul."

"When you're away from home, you sometimes realize. You sometimes see. Find out things."

They lay side by side on their backs now, John's arm around Paul's shoulders, both of them looking up at the sky. Just the tiniest hint of blue started bleeding into the black.

"What things?" John asked.

"About me. What I want, maybe."

The string between them lay still, warming them.

"It can be hard to face," John said. "What you want."

"Oh, it's not…not just facing it, you know. More…" The memories came to help him: his foot nudging Mal's under the table, guiding that big hand to his leg, Robert adjusting Paul's scarf as if he had every right and appraising him after like he would a piece of art he considered showing…"More like living it."

John turned to him. Still high as the moon, wide as the universe, large enough to swallow Paul whole. But when he spoke, his voice was the same sandpaper warmth as always. "Who?"

It took all of Paul's breath and courage to answer. "No one you know." (French, dark curls, experienced hands and mouth, tobacco smell of his chest, fingers where Paul needed them, twice. His strangled whine when Paul fucked him. His incomprehensible praise, panted into his ear. Leaving no warmth in the morning, only a shape in the mattress, and half a pack of cigarettes.)

John's lips formed the words. No one I know. The lack of anger, the reassurance of the string, helped Paul to continue: "You were right, you know. I always knew."

"Paul," John whispered.

"I know. But it's who I am. I don't want to be normal. I don't want to go back to normal." Saying it out loud was soothing. It took him back on a drive with Mal, eyes on the road, the hum of the engine in his body and mind, and outside a landscape where he was nothing, not famous, just a strange fellow from abroad. Right then, he admitted it to himself: He loved John because he was John, but he also loved him because he was a man.

He was the one in four.

He'd had to laugh, thinking, I'm probably the last person in the world to see it..

Mal smiled, lost in his own thoughts, hands easily resting on the wheel. Part of Paul had expected the world to notice the thing he’d just admitted to himself, but it appeared it didn’t. Paulk’s truth didn’t warp reality in the least. It didn’t break Mal's strong back, and didn't cut short their long drive.

"Paul, oh Paul," John said. "What a conundrum."

"Yes, well. Not that much of one, if you think about it."

"No."

"I meant it when I said I'll tell Jane. I don't want her to hear over the phone. I'll visit her next month. I'll tell her then."

There was something like awe in John's eyes, and the slowly rising sadness of someone left behind on the platform while the train was pulling off. Paul recognized it, because he'd felt it himself in the past, and would feel it again in the future. But the string between them was glowing turquoise and golden, and no matter if it was real or not, they couldn't lose it. They could stretch it around the world, and it would hold. But they could also, they could also…

"Do you want me?" His voice broke with nerves, like it had in the recording studio, the first time George Martin had ordered him to take over the refrain.

John turned on his side and looked down on him. Brushed his hair back from his forehead. "You know I do.”

“But do you, really."

Like a flash, an image of the two of them appeared before him, older, sharing a picture frame. George Martin's voice said: A couple. He saw John and Cyn un-signing their wedding certificate, pen moving backwards, a painless erasure, the kind of thing only acid can give you.

"I'm not asking you to do anything public," Paul whispered. "I'm just asking…"

John traced his brows with his fingers. "Mr. No One I Know wasn’t good enough for you?"

"Not even close."

John regarded him, taking his time. "I'll let you down, Paul. If they'll hate us for being two queers, I'll end up believing them. I'm untouchable as long as I'm speaking, but once the others get a word in, I crumble, or worse. You've seen me do it, it's hopeless. I don't think I can face it. The world and its questions, and everything. Not even for us."

Paul had never loved John more. The way he could turn on himself, and see so clearly, where Paul was all muddled. But they'd always been strongest together, even when they were apart. That was the thing the string was showing them. They mustn't forget.

"You can do it," Paul said. "Because I can do it. And we're connected."

John gave a shivery smile, the way he did when Paul was so close to convincing him, and he only needed a little more. "What if it's still there tomorrow?"

"It better be."

"Paul. What happened to you?"

"You did. This is your trip we're on." He pulled John into his arms until John lay on top of him, shielding him, as he'd done so often. They kissed each other deeply and slowly, sharing each other's warmth. Eventually, John leaned on his elbow and cupped Paul's face in one hand, serious and not in a hurry to say anything. They weren't like that; everything they'd ever done under and over and without any sheets, they'd only done because they weren't like that.

But they were, both of them. They were connected.

John moved his weight. Freckles shifted like stars on his shoulders. "Yes," he said without smiling, but with a glowing, deep warmth in his eyes. "Yes." And they kissed each other again.

By the time they stopped kissing each other, the sky was as pink as their skin. Condensation crept up the windows of the dome. John prodded at the string between them. "I wonder what happens to it when we, you know."

"Make love," Paul said.

John swallowed and blushed, for a moment as awkward as he'd been as a boy, when they first tried it on without the others. But he didn't look away. "Yes," he said. "Make love."

"Let's find out."

Later, they sat in the kitchen, drinking tea. Paul couldn't remember who'd made it. A deep, delicious ache ran through him, and though the string was no longer visible, he felt the pull between himself and John. He sniffed the back of his hand when he brought the cup of tea to his mouth, and sipped his tea, tasting the leaves and himself and John and the sweet air inside the dome.

John was watching him. "Are you trying to forget?"

"No. Do you want me to?"

"No.”

Once they'd finished eating, Paul led John back to the garden. Spring was in the air: a green impatience thawing the earth under his feet. Restless but well-drilled to obey their exact cue, the trees were keeping their buds closed.

When they'd made love in the dome, the string had stayed between them. It hadn’t changed at all. Now Paul could believe it never would, and it didn't scare him. He turned to John and touched his chest. "It's still there."

"It's there," John said, mirroring his gesture. “It’s still there.”