Chapter Text
On the week leading up to Paul’s 15th birthday Jim begrudgingly lets the two of them have a weekend off alone, to go to the beach. To that, John feels satisfied; proud and smirking even if he was begging Jim, proving he had been a “real good son” that month on his knees, shrinking under his crossed arms as Jim sits frowning and questioning on his high throne.
Paul had knelt next to him then, hands neat and folded on his lap, and asked Jim like it was a bargain, “I’ve done this, I've done that, it’s just 2 days, it’s not far—” something along those lines.
If Jim could’ve read between the straight lines of his face, which John doubted he would ever try to do, he would see a sort of scorn written in little rigid cursive along them. He knows that this was Paul’s act of getting back at Jim for a yell or a hit that he had simply thrown into the back of his mind. Oddly inviolate as it is to John, he knows how much it means to Paul.
Paul’s own humility, though perpetual, makes John believe that it was worth it for him. And despite all of his own humiliation, that made it worth it to him too. But it’s all assumptions, whether it meant much to anyone really, so he isn’t sure, and he wouldn’t ask either way. And for John anyways, it feels like he had won a point in scoring Paul against Jim with one shirk of obedience, so there's an answer in that itself, he thinks.
Anyways, of course Jim did say yes. Albeit begrudging and stern, he was ultimately dismissive, a care set onto something else: the taste of tobacco on his teeth, the smell of faintly growing mildew, something something for Paul to do.
“Fine. But you won’t get anything from me besides this,” he had said.
Paul nodded back then, head bowed, respectful in a way that could never be shedded, “Thank you dad.” He got up afterwards, a hand slipping on and across John’s shoulder as he passed, and walked away. The end of a transaction. Jim returned to smoking his pipe and flicked up his newspaper as John scrambled up after Paul, who stood waiting at the bottom of the stairs for him.
The image of Jim ironically makes him a good father; a strong and powerful man of the house. The ideal for some, though not for him.
John beams up to Paul when he catches up to him, a hand wrapped around the wooden banister of their stairway. Paul easily, naturally grins back. He turns to climb up as John nears him. John pushes up against him to follow, a firm hand on his back and then shoulders shoving against Paul. He turned around to look at him quickly with a glare of hushed disapproval, though the glint in his eyes betrayed his message.
As they passed Mike, who popped his head out curiously, they both waved to him. The act, gleefully synchronized or so, made them laugh. John’s not sure if they’re laughing at the situation or if it’s from being singed off of some thrill. Paul has to clamp a hand over John’s mouth to quiet him. John does the same. His smile seeps into the lines of his palm. John's finger twitches at the sensation.
When the door shuts behind them, John shoves Paul onto the mattress and Paul opens his arms to wrap around his neck. He lets his head burrow into the hold between Paul’s jaw and shoulder and falls down to lay beside him. Paul rests his cheek on the top of his head, rubbing, and lays his legs atop of John’s. He slides his hands under Paul’s shirt to hold him closer, intertwining their fleshy bodies closer, like the waxy vines creeping into their garden wall, corroding it, replacing the mortar by breaking it down.
“Say you love me, Paul,” John whispers into the quiet room, to no one else but Paul.
“You love me, Paul,” he says back.
John snickers and replies, “I love you too, John.”
He feels Paul’s laughter, quiet and more so breathy, against his chest in reply.
Paul allows them to lay there for long enough that he starts to fall asleep. He notices that Paul is also falling asleep, audible in the slowing tempo of his heartbeat, but he soon shimmies his shoulders to tell John to get off. John whines in the back of his throat and pinches his waist. He yelps, “No, get off. I have stuff to do!”
He kicks around, but the squirming only lets John hold him tighter, closer. John takes this chance to tickle him, fingers grazing across his ribs. Paul laughs harder, his whole body trembles as he struggles to pry John off.
His weakening shakes and heaving breaths makes John equally breathless and he watches, skin prickling up to his neck, at the tears forming at Paul’s closed eyelashes. John twitches, his body suddenly uncomfortable, and flips them over so that he sits on Paul’s back and Paul lays with his stomach down. He kneels on both of Paul’s forearms and leans over him so that his head hangs upside down in front of Paul’s pink face.
He feels Paul’s shallow breaths again, this time against his groin as he grins down at him. Paul blinks at him, waiting for something, and he laughs at the sight, nervous, amused.
“Shut up Paulie, you’re waking the house.”
“House is awake already.” He whispers back, lazily smiling, “But I might get our privileges revoked…”
“So shurrup.”
John holds Paul’s head between his hands, his fingers grip onto bunches of feathery black strands. He tugs on Paul's hair, and Paul closes his eyes and silently opens his mouth, a mimicry of a moan. John feels something jerk in him at the sight and knocks his head onto Paul’s. Paul smiles, an impish little grin that makes John scoff, and pushes him off by a nudge of his arm— or at least John obeys at the slightest change in his body.
They tussle around, wrestling, with locked hands and legs, and knocking knees and ankles against each other on the bed, until Paul hears some approaching footsteps. His attention snaps to the door then back to John before he mouths a frantic “Move.”
John pushes himself off and stumbles to the foot of the bed to grab their shared Alice in Wonderland book. Paul glances around before grabbing his textbook and opening it to a page with some loose leaves sandwiched between it. He scrambles to sit on the edge of bed, pulling and combing at his hair to tame it a bit, and hangs his leg off by John’s shoulder. For a second, he starts to snigger even as the footsteps approach them. John punches his shin. He kicks him back right before the door opens.
Jim walks in, one foot across the threshold, Paul stares up at him, strangely humored. He surveys the room before he looks at Paul, eyebrows pinched, then at John. “You two are making a lot of noise, quiet down.”
“Yes, I’m sorry.” Paul says, quiet and gentle. John nods obediently to add to the effect.
He looks around one more time before sighing and turning around, closing the door with a click as he leaves.
John looks up at Paul. He's looking at the page smiling widely, the issue already discarded from his mind. John raises his eyebrow at him and his grin widens, “No— look. It’s that phallic page you drew on me homework.”
He flips it around, pinching two sides of the paper, to show John. The page was, indeed, phallic filled, crudely drawn on top of some delicate careful handwriting that went on about some book or some thing.
John hums, “Made you redo the whole thing.”
Paul shrugs, “It was crap anyways.”
John remembers that day. He had stared at him for a few minutes, close to an hour, from across the room. There was a sudden absence of sound and he had looked up in response, over the guitar on his lap, never really stopping his strumming. Paul’s leg was jigging up and down and his thumb was in his mouth as he absently sucked on it. He was stuck on something— head wrapped around something more insignificant, more personally important to him. John walked up to him then and grabbed his pencil to scribble on the paper in dark, hard lines, irreversible. Paul stared at it blankly for a few seconds, then he abruptly looked at John, with a telltale shine in his eyes, before yanking his pencil back to add on his own grotesque penises on the paper.
John reaches out his hand and Paul gives him the paper, he puts it onto some random note-covered page in their book, all red and blue inked underlines and lines mingling with gray graphite, and holds the whole thing up between them, like an accomplishment. Paul titters and claps for him.
Paul gives a small smile, then sighs, tired, or bored rather, and pushes himself off of the bed to walk his bag, hand in hair in thought. John climbs onto the bed and lays down on his side. He watches Paul as he bends over to rustle around for his work and pats the bed as Paul turns around. Paul moves to sit in front of his stomach and John curls an arm around his waist as Paul leans back his weight onto him.
They stay like this for the rest of the night, with John fidgeting and circling around Paul as he taps his pencil and writes.
He watches the wrinkling and unwrinkling of the little patch of skin between Paul’s eyebrows and the quaint glances aimed towards from where he lays. John traces the silhouette of Paul’s curved nose and round cheeks and chin with his pupils. Paul presses his knuckles to his lips to seal the smile that’s bubbling up. John feels sticky warmth burning in his chest like tar.
——————
They leave at night.
Well, Jim had agreed morning, but who was he to notice?
They started to shuffle around, weaving through doorways and et cetera, getting ready and throwing loose shirts and shorts to each other, after dinner.
John even made the courtesy to dry off the dishes with Paul and when they finished Paul flicked his wet hands onto John’s face. The droplets landed on his glasses, and he grimaced in annoyance. John whipped his bum with the towel he’s been using in retaliation. Paul smacked the back of his head, clicking his teeth with his tongue in disapproval and dodging John’s next whip with a twist of his hip. Before John could do anything again, Paul tore off his gloves, throwing it on the rim of the sink, and darted away, sticking out his tongue and scrunching his face back at John. John chased him down the halls, their pairs of feet stomped across the carpeted floors. No one bothered to raise their heads at them, eyes barely batting at their usual antics.
Anyway, that night, at some odd hour, John finds himself sitting on Paul’s bed watching him dig through his drawers to find the right stuff to pack. He hugs his duffel bag close to him, his chin shoved atop its pinched opening, as he follows Paul’s movements.
He sharply inhales at some point, annoyed, Paul looks back in a glance, before waving his hand, dismissive, and returning to his shuffling.
John tosses his bag to the side and kicks himself off the bed to cross to Paul. He throws his hands onto Paul’s shoulders with a rather loud smack and Paul jumps, a breath caught in his throat. John shakes him and he hisses quietly before pulling his hands up in surrender and dropping whatever garment he was holding. John grins to the back of his head before he leans over his shoulder. Paul bats his face away though, and he obliges, stepping backwards a step.
With a sigh he picks up something again, then turns his head around, this time actually looking at John, and sticks his hand out. John, conditioned as he is to Paul, looks around without much thought to search for Paul’s own bag. When he spots it, he grabs it and hands it to Paul, who makes a small huff of a laugh before turning back and starting to pack on his own. John doesn’t think that over much and goes back to sit on the bed with a flop. He continues to watch Paul. This time Paul rolls a few sweaters against his stomach, one worn and burgundy and another pale, creamy and white.
John taps his foot, agitating the ache in his ankles as he crosses them over each other. Paul shakes his head, John thinks he’s mumbling something to himself, before stuffing the two rolls into his duffel.
After a while, when the ache became a bit more unbearable, John got up to stand by the door, a guard or soldier like. After another moment, he slips out and lingers by the doorway. He listens to Paul shift around inside, fabric rustling and whatnot, as he picks at a piece of peeling paint off the wall by his eyeline.
Paul’s little padding footsteps tiptoe behind him, he hears it and reaches behind him to grab the corner of Paul’s sleeve. Their fingertips knock together and it catches John off guard. He flinches at the contact. Paul breathes a laugh before holding John’s fingers, tight, in his palms, fingers warm and trembling. He lets himself be led by Paul down the stairs flight by flight.
The manner in which Paul holds onto the banister, as normal as it is, catches his eyes. He watches the fleeting touches ghosting over the wooden railings as they descend. John attributes it to Paul being on edge, but staring at Paul’s ducked head and smooth neck in the night distracts him from worrying.
They have time for nerves anyways, it’s not something to spare concern to now.
The two of them follow each other through the door, with Paul exiting first, then waiting for John to lock the door before trailing behind him as he pulls out their bicycles from the side of the house. John glances up, the bikes gripped in each of his hands, at Paul’s nervousness and his duffel, somewhat barely under overstuffed, held back out of the way and under his arm, and smiles at him. He pulls one of the bikes to Paul so that a hand could be freed, Paul takes it from him after hitching his bag up on his shoulder. John moves past him towards the road. As he shifts by, his leather jacket catching on Paul;s cotton shoulders, he pinches Paul’s nose, his cold and round nose, and happily watches him blink and scrunch his face into a smile.
The night right now is not bad– as in not cold– but John still rubs his hands, as he’s sitting on his bike, and huffs into it. Paul rides down the little driveway and up next to him, duffel now slung across his back. He looks over at Paul, who’s shifting on his seat and pushing back his sleeves so they sit on his elbows, exposing his forearms knitted with growing hair, and traces the folds of his pants as they wrap taught around his thighs and bending knees and fall past his ankles.
“By god! You’re just wearing slippers.”
“Well… yes.” Paul brings out his foot and turns it, like a spectacle, and it really was a spectacle, in front of them. They’re gaudy things, all odd straps in odd wraps around his pale feet.
“Won’t kill me.”
“Might. You’ll trip and skin your toes.”
Paul shrugs with a smile, lighthearted. John doesn’t really mean it anyways, he just didn’t expect it.
John stuck out his tongue before kicking off. He hears Paul kick off not soon after. They go some off direction, none in particular, just down the street. In his head, John’s following the vague path that he and Paul had traced together some night a while back, hunched and hushed under the covers over a map with the desk lamp turned down and dimmed.
The wind streaks through their hair, but it’s more so because they’re biking, not because of nighttime weather. With the streets being empty, they themselves also streak past each other, winding ahead and around the other like a pair of snakes, or worms, it’s more fitting for them probably.
Whenever Paul rode ahead and let himself linger there for a second, glancing back at John from over his shoulder, the bulbs of yellow streetlights shine down on his face, bouncing off each curve and deepening each indent. They reflect in his eyes and it makes it notably more apparent that he’s looking at John. It makes John clammy and he could only try to contain his nervousness by breaking out into a laugh.