Archive of Our Own

It was hard to believe it had only been a few days.

Paul idly wondered if this was how men had felt coming back from the war—as through their old life was something foreign, strangely detached from who they were now, a shirt shrunken in the wash that could no longer fit them. Wondered how he was supposed to elbow his way back into it without busting its seams.

Only a few days since he’d gotten back from Hamburg. A few days, or a thousand years?

He supposed that maybe the change shouldn’t be so drastic—same hard-nosed crowd, roughened by the sea and scarred still by the war—nor so fucked. He’d slept every night in a bed that reeked rawly of teenage boy, sweat and sex and John, great big Union Jack draped over him to keep his feet from freezing and dull the low homesick ache in his stomach. Washed up every morning in the ladies' toilet. Half out of his mind on Prellies for so long reality seemed wrenched crooked, ground too heavy at his feet and brain too heavy in his skull.

Still, reality meant his own bed and bath, good English food, Dot, Christ, sex with a real girl, no dead eyes and rough hands and alleyway shadows.

Shouldn’t be drastic, except—

Music. The Music.

Paul scuffed his foot along the pavement and sighed, watched his breath fog up in the razor cold air. He’d taken to long walks around Liverpool since he got back, a hollow lonely simulation of doing something. The day he got back, he’d tried hanging about the house, get reacquainted with his dad and Mike, spend some time back in his childhood stronghold. It’d driven him mad, mad in the way everything goes grey and sane and in the way he’d missed the craziness, the wild trips his mind would take in Hamburg and the way his world would follow, never sure if his guitar was making him crazy or the only thing keeping him sane.

Hamburg had changed music, had changed their music. Before, they might’ve been good, ragtag and a bit shoddy but hanging in there by bruising fingertips, but now. Now, after descending into whatever circle of hell got you hookers and beer steins and 20 minute Ray Charles—after eating, sleeping and shitting rock ‘n roll endless days and nights—now, they were on to something.

Course it all had to fall apart.

Paul stuffed his hands into his pockets and lowered his chin against the December wind, trying in vain to find some measure of warmth. He’d have to go back soon, much as he hated the idea.

Liverpool in dead winter was better than home with a hot stove and cozy memories and a dad who could sicken him with guilt. Da had been delighted to see him at first, searching his face gruffly with his black Irish eyes dancing, and Paul had known he’d looked the same; had felt the same. But then he’d finished looking and started in on how thin Paul was and the next day it was how Paul had been away quite long enough, anyway, and by the third day he’d been pressuring him to get a real job (and suddenly Paul was fifteen again, his mother’s picture rescued from shattered glass and his father standing stern over him).

But he had a real job, didn’t he? The band, and all that.

He wondered where doubt gave way to lying.

If a few days were a thousand years, a few weeks were an eternity. Each day steeped into his conscious as Hamburg faded further into his distance, dragging nebulous across more long walks and pale wintry sunlight, until the only thing he was certain of was his uncertainty.

In a week he first heard from George, who’d arrived back only just before Paul and looked at him like a technicolor ghost when they ran into each other outside the Casbah. A week ago he’d snarled at him for using his toothbrush and now he couldn’t think of anything to say to him. Asked after his mum and dad. Not a word about the band.

He hadn’t bothered to seek out Pete since they’d gotten back—didn’t see the use, really—and he reckoned well enough that Stu had remained behind with Astrid.

Paul had wondered where John was. The dingy image of John and Stu very alone on stage had flickered across his mind, already discarded by the time he could hear John’s raw cat scratch voice and thrumming guitar over the agonized twinge and throb of Stu’s bass. Was possible he’d stayed anyway as third wheel in AstridandStu’s budding perfect world, Paul considered that as the days ticked by and still, radio silence.

Didn’t consider, not for a while, that John was back in Liverpool but hadn’t bothered to get in touch with Paul. The idea was shocking, so clean apart from the Siamese twin johnandpaul they’d twisted into, but with time the surprise faded even as the question why did not. He found himself imbued with the same vague ambivalence, equilibrium at a loss, found himself wholly Paul again and maybe that just meant something less to him now. Much as he longed for John, his feet never carried him down that well beaten path to Mendips and his empty hours never afforded the moment to phone or visit.

It was the same with his guitar. His fingers ached for the bite of the strings and the raw edged strain of creation, but it stayed propped crooked in the corner, collecting dust and distance.

It was like....Hamburg had been a frisson of something wonderful, something so intense and sharp and beautiful that it rendered real life meaningless in comparison. They had been on the fucking verge of something there, Paul had felt it, but life had yanked them back down with a burning condom and a work visa before he’d glimpsed over the brink, and now he'd been left dangling, trying to come down from something he couldn’t identify.

Paul was coming down from the verge.

He wondered if this was how it hit old folks when life passed them by and they’d missed the breaks it had afforded them. Because life didn’t much break the way of shitty little Liverpool bands—they’d only made it to Hamburg because someone had fucked up, thought they’d booked a London act but ended up instead with the Beatles. Hamburg had ignited his ambition till his dreams burst in on him vivid and so close he could taste them, till it’d blazed out and now all that was left was that tiny, elusive glimmer of hope no reality could quench. Icarus flew too close to the sun and his wax wings melted; Paul’d always figured him for an arse, but now he got it—you dream too close and too real and it’s up to life to let you down.

Like they say, you never know how close you’ve gotten to something until it’s gone.

Paul swung his legs uselessly, watching the vague line of his reflection ripple in the still grey sea and listening to the remote caw of seagulls. He’d come to have a seat at the edge of the docks today, the precipice of so many far-away and forgotten dreams.

They could only get by for so long, and the Beatles had been stumbling over themselves the whole way. Long bouts without drummers, all but lost John when John lost Julia again, this time to an off duty copper and whatever came after, and then Stu, James Dean with a bass he could barely strangle a line from. How much longer could Paul expect, really.

He kicked out again, dug in his pocket for a ciggie, put it between his lips and then felt around for a match. The red orange glow as he lit up flared against the drabness of his surroundings, color in a grey world.

He supposed they could keep going on forever; there were enough of the shitty little bands still around that had long survived their mortality and clung on to their youth instead. The idea hollowed his insides with ice, brittle and bitter and so empty.

The smoke in his lungs burned fierce and welcome, mingled and lingered with his breath in the still, biting air.

He wondered, fatefully sudden, what John was thinking about now. Didn’t care what he was doing with his after, couldn’t quite stand the idea of seeing him, even—just wanted to know if he was thinking the same thing that he was thinking now.

Should call the surgeon, he thought, crazy in abstraction. See if johnandpaul survived the procedure, or if we function separate and alone like real people in real life.

How much longer before he had to return to real life?

“I’m looking for a job, just give me anything.”

The employment officer regarded him over glasses that slipped dangerously down his long, crooked nose.

“Have you got training or, or skills of any sort…past employment, perhaps, or from your, ah, schooling?” he asked finally, as though he couldn’t suffer to acquiesce Paul’s lack of firm ambition.

Paul suppressed his own twinge of annoyance. Oh yes, sir, I’m quite good at playing the guitar and I can sing like Little Richard. That’s from a past job, yes—I was in this band, you see, lived dreamed slept wept rock ‘n roll.

“Ehmm…No, not really, sir,” Paul said, unhurried and abstracted in the heavy phantom pain of Beatle Paul, weight like the wild shameful snarl of childhood secrets and their gradual, muted loss of meaning. He gave in under the man’s bland stare and set mouth, sought to elaborate. “I mean, ’ve finished school and everythin’, but how’s an A level going to help me ‘ere.”

“Well, any preferences, then?”

Preferences. No. He shook his head.

A single great silvery brow arched at him and the silence stretched thin between them, before Paul gave in again.

“No, haven’t got any, sir.”

“No preferences? Not the slightest idea what you’d like to do?”

He sounded tired where he was within his rights to be irritated. Tired and ancient, like he’d met a dozen Pauls before him and would meet another dozen after him. Without his guitar it was easy to feel faceless, be faceless. He looked at the employment officer, wondered if this was what he’d be like, forty years into a career he could care less about.

“Just give me whatever’s on top of the pile,” he said, and this time the other man gave in, fetched a slip from the mass of paper and envelopes piled up and scattered about his rickety desk. His glasses slipped further as he read briefly, then squinted back up at Paul.

“Sweeping yard at Massey and Coggins, then,” he said austerely.

“Massey and Coggins…?” Paul said, an echo devoid of curiosity. He doubted he’d react any different to a butcher’s or barber shop, not the way he’d agonize between Gibson or Les Paul, or argue with John about who was better, Elvis or Little Richard or the Everlys, and secretly agreeing all the while that the universe had no answer to such a question.

“A coil-winding factory,” the officer clarified.

Paul waited for the reaction he knew would never show.

It’d been his dad who finally forced him into it. Paul’d managed to stave him off a whole week with his job in the band before his dad had started coming down harder, more persistent—“No, you’ve got to get a proper job, son.” Paul had held out in his resistance, longer than maybe he should have, languishing in the empty spaces of time and thought where shiteatpissdrunkshowprellieshamburg had been, letting the band fade slow into the shadow of John’s lengthening silence.

His dad had thrown him out of the house, then: “Get a job, or don’t come back.”

So here he was, standing on the steps of the employment office with the scrap of paper in his hands, stomach carved out with hunger and a funny ringing in his ears as he tried to convince himself that this was it. He’d left off with the Beatles with a finality that liberated him from weeks of nothing but terrified him dully and agonizingly with the promise of more to come. He’d climbed down from the clouds and had his two feet firm on the ground again. Steady career; married to Dot, have children, then grandchildren, no high noon, just twilight descending year by year into night. He’d leave John to live crazy and die gloriously, maybe leave him to be washed up and bitter and alone, but when Paul had one foot out the door he would just be following in his dad’s footsteps one last time. His dad was a good man. He’d be a good man.

No more stumbling along from gig to gig, pulling birds easier than a look and a smile in their direction, getting pissed out of his head, living out of vans and for the stage and the wild raging thrill of rock ‘n roll thrumming through him, no more living for something he couldn’t reach—no more John—

The dream was over, dead and gone.

It died peacefully for a week before it started rolling in its grave.

Work at Massey and Coggins wasn’t too bad, really. He’d swept yard a few days before he’d been scoped out as management material and started out on the shop floor. He was a shit coil winder but figured if they weren’t smart enough to realize that then it wasn’t his problem. He supposed management was better than sweeping yard, and that’s as deep as any of it penetrated his thoughts.

His coworkers weren’t so bad, either. Most were quite a bit older than him and looked at him like they saw themselves when they first started and Paul saw a specter of his future in them, one of the fellas who started and never left, maybe wondering a little what happened to all that time he’d had. He lived and worked quietly, early mornings and late evenings and family supper. Mike looked at him like he could see that same image of him, fifty years of Massey and Coggins under his belt, and couldn’t quite believe it, wide eyes and an ironic curl to his lip. His dad looked at him with relief more than approval. Paul knew he should be gratified but instead he felt a tight knot hot and low in his belly, sick with resentment that maybe Da just didn’t think he could make it for himself in the band, until it washed away against the dull ambivalent structure of his new life.

And then John started calling again out of nowhere.

The first time, Paul was in the midst of pretend-reading his book (had been on the same page for ten minutes). Mike finally answered it, throwing the stink eye at Paul over his shoulder as he went. Paul ignored him until he ducked his head back into the sitting room and told him flatly, “It’s John.”

Paul thought he registered shock, brief and white electric, before the bottom dropped out of his stomach and his brain beat violently against his skull.

John? Now? Now that he had—?

He motioned frantically to Mike to hang up, tell him that he was busy, tell him that he didn’t know Paul, something, anything, fuck, and yes, good, Mike was looking at him like he was a head case but he was backing off, so Paul went outside into the cold and snow to have a smoke. It took him three tries to light up and half a cigarette before his hands stopped shaking.

Later Mike asked him if he and John’d had a row or something, and Paul felt like he didn’t know. Not a row—just enough time apart, enough time away from whatever it was between them, for Paul to lock himself down in reality with brooms and coils and his father’s peace of mind.

The calls kept coming after that, a steady stream of increasingly rude and brusque messages entrusted to Mike and his father. Paul took drastic measures to avoid them, lied about taking Dot out or pretended to be asleep, and if he’d spent little time in the house before, now he spent next to none. John chipped away at his ordered little world, a missed supper here and there a late night winter walk that left him stiff-faced and dead-limbed. Liverpool shrank again in John’s shadow, the world wide open and out of Paul’s reach.

He knew he ought to call John back, but the idea of John, sharp and crazy and immediate, larger than life and just as real, scraped and twisted between his ribs until it stabbed good and bloody at his heart.

It hit him hard, the realization that he’d said goodbye to something more than his dreams, that something far deeper and more intricate had been broken inside him.

A few days more passed before he looked up from sweeping the yard to find John and George staring down at him.

He’d known in the back of his mind that this was going to happen one day soon, just settled into thinking it would never be that day, maybe the next one, or the one after that, but all that evaporated clear out of his head at the shrewd brown eyes boring into his and the familiar weight of that relentless stare. Paul knew without really looking, even, that John looked the same as ever, that he was wearing a new pair of boots and Mimi’d fattened him up a bit. Fury throbbed through him, there and gone but visceral, animal—how could he not have changed, when everything else had and moreover they (johnandpaul) had?

“What’re you lot doin’ ‘ere?” he said at length, wondered to find his voice, and kept up the even clean stroke of his broom. “I’m supposed to be workin’.”

“That all you have to fuckin’ say for yourself?” John said as soon as he’d spoken, his voice loud and abrasive and Paul heard the same anger he’d felt a moment ago, read it in the curl of John’s fists and the hard set of his mouth.

And suddenly Paul didn’t want to talk, was sick of fucking talking even as his ears strained and sang at John’s voice, because he knew what talking meant when John looked like that. George was hanging back, knew well enough not to get between John and Paul.

“What?” Paul said wearily, stilled the broom and looked over at him. John’s eyes narrowed.

“You’ve been ducking my calls, son,” John pressed. “Had to find out from Mike that you worked here.”

“’ve been busy,” he said mechanically, shifting his attention back to his broom, “Workin’ and all.”

The truth hung between them feeble as an excuse. John sneered.

“At this fuckin’ place?” He paused, the glare letting up some as he scanned Paul’s features, taking stock, a flicker of something else there and gone before Paul could put a name to it. And then: “What’re you doin’ here, Paul?”

And that hurt, fast and bruising—seemed cruel, egregious, to ask him that—and what kind of fucking question was it, anyway, how could John not know, when the band…when the band, when they—and now he was going to make him say it, say that…

Paul struggled for words against John’s sharpened eyes and impatient noise. “Needed a job, didn’t I, now that the band’s…”

“The band’s what—? We’ve got a gig a few days from now, Paul.”

Paul’s eyes popped in the surge of bright white shock, strained hugely as they swallowed up John’s face and the casual, irritated line of his mouth that ricocheted like a razor back down into Paul’s insides—whatwhatwhatwhat—HOW—

“Gig—?” He was floundering, he was…

“At the Cavern, yeah,” George affirmed.

There was an explosion inside of Paul that blew out his ears and seared his vision white hot, something enormous and indefinable blown into shards that daggered his stomach and lungs and heart. His blood welled up laced with anger and desperate with all the pain and regret he’d buried dark and voiceless as the last few weeks burned through his thoughts, ate up his mind. He’d thought it was over, had bid farewell to his dreams at the dock that day, and when something’s over there ain’t no going back. And John—John—

This is why we shouldn’t make decisions separately, Paul thought crazily. Everything ends up fucked.

But they were separate now.

The anger rose up something fierce again. John had gone somewhere and hadn’t taken Paul with him, and now he was where Paul couldn’t follow. A word could have kept them together, maybe for just a little while longer—but for a little while longer.

“The fuck, son!” he spat, before he even knew it, desperately fighting the rage back as it rose up his throat like bile. “When the fuck were you planning on telling me that?”

When were you planning on telling Paul that Paul and John’s band wasn’t over, you fucking git?

“Tried to call you, didn’t I?” John retorted, skinflint. “’s on Thursday—Wooler set it up.”

As sudden and huge as it had come upon him the anger dissipated, left him hollow and carved up and feeling older than he ever had in his life. Didn’t matter that John hadn’t told him—band would’ve ended anyway. The dream that lit up the Beatles neon and bright had withered up cold and miserable and dead. Very dead. And maybe Paul had killed it himself.

“Can’t go,” he said lifelessly. George gaped and John squinted at him like he was being thick on purpose.

“What d’you mean, can’t go—?”

“’ve got this now, don’t I?” Paul said, firm, funereal resolve rebuilding the core of him. It was a little lonely on this side of reality and he watched from a great distance as George stood there catching flies and John made a frustrated gesture.

“Well, fuck this, this is a gig—” His voice was brimming with the old fervency and there was a disconnect there that John was beginning to realize, which made him ache emptier than emptiness itself.

“I’m done, John,” Paul said. “’v got a job now.”

The finality of his tone crashed down hard between them, splitting the ground and shaking the earth at their feet. John stared wide and rough and intent at him like he was a new animal, like if he reached across to touch him Paul might snap and claw at him and leave him bloody. He’d already left him broken, Paul could see it in his eyes, watched with terrible fascination as he splintered into sharp pieces and jagged edges.

“What d’you mean, you’re done?” George said, into the silence like a bullhorn. “Done—? Done, with the band?” Silence was answer enough, and he burst out, “Are you fuckin’ barmy?”

Paul turned from John to him in relief, wide beetle black eyes looking at him like he was a loon and not a murderer.

“You’re givin’ it up. That’s it.”

“Yes, George, that’s it—”

“You can’t just fucking—give it up, give up now,” John cut in, low and dangerous and threadbare, an inch from snapping. “Not when we’re finally fuckin’ getting somewhere—”

“Don’t John,” Paul said painfully, gaze pending halfway between George and John. “I just…I can’t keep goin’ on like this forever, it isn’t fair to—” Fair to whom? To anybody, to Dot, to the children he’d never have, to the son his father deserved—“to Dad, or—”

“Oh, your fucking dad!”

“—he wants what’s best for me, John, a steady career, not—”

A weak choppy wave of his hand that was supposed to mean everything between them and John’s sneer was serrated like a knife.

“Well, face up to him for once in your fuckin’ life, Paul!” John snarled. “Just tell him to fuck off.”

“And he’s right, John,” Paul snapped. Sharp, half hysterical anger stung along his nerves—John had no right, talking about his dad like that—but he suppressed it; didn’t want things to end that way, didn’t want to say goodbye and fuck you too. “But this isn’t about him.”

“Then what the fuck is it about?” John exploded, and Paul was perversely grateful none of his coworkers were outside to hear it, this ferocious dying roar of his old life. A long pause pained them both as John glared at him, daggers and something too soft and hurt behind them, breathing hard. “Just come the fuck on, Paul,” he muttered eventually, after-tears rough, and it was unbearable to Paul, the vulnerability he heard somewhere, everywhere, in his voice. He was losing Paul as he’d lost first one, then both his parents.

Much the way Paul had lost his own mother and now lost John. He knew he’d come to terms with it and that John maybe never would. Dreaded that.

It was so hard to say no to John—the words were dredged up from some stony well deeper inside himself than he’d ever need or dared go.

“No,” he said. “I’ve got a steady job ‘ere and it pays seven pounds fourteen shillings a week. They’re training me ‘ere. That’s pretty good—can’t expect more.”

The dream is over.

A day after that Paul picked up his guitar.

It felt too comfortable in his hands, the way no brooms or winds of coil ever could, the last vestige of his old self and the siren song of crazy fearless love that transcended survival and gave him life.

A few chords and then his fingers were flying along the strings and the only thing holding him back from tumbling down the rabbit hole all over again was the lockbox reality he’d forced himself into, elbows tight and eyes grown accustomed to the gloom.

It was so wonderful his heart near burst from the rush of it, and he couldn’t reckon how he’d ever though of this as a job—it was too beautiful to be real, he never could have spent his days being this happy and right.

“Want to be like Buddy Holly,” John says, staring up at his ceiling as if it were starburst with the scattered secrets of the universe.

Paul nudges him, grinning lazily. “Martyred in a plane crash?”

“Piss off,” John says, too tight smile giving him away.

Paul’s grip squeezed into a stranglehold on the guitar’s neck at the sudden memory, bursting in on him clear as day. He made an effort to relax, plucked out a folk song instead, the songs his dad loved and that he and George grew up on. The thought of George was painful, but George wasn’t John.

“Everly brothers,” he offers after a minute, indulging him, and feels John’s shoulder dig into his, childish camaraderie.

“Chuck Berry,” John has at the ready.

“Little Richard.”

“Want to be like Elvis,” John says, the word rolling obvious and satisfied off his tongue.

“Well, who doesn’t, son?” Paul says. “Elvis is just so…Elvis.”

John stares at him flatly, intently, careful against the words poised against his lips. The soft thrill of confidence whispers down Paul’s nerves till his fingertips buzz with it.

“Me Aunt Mimi,” he says, low and abrupt. “She doesn’t want me to be like Elvis, or…or any of ‘em.”

“Course she doesn’t,” Paul reasons. “Probably wants you to be something respectable.”

“She thinks I’m a failure at seventeen,” John persists morbidly. “Wishes I’d gone to university.”

“Can you imagine, son?” Paul snorts, vision of John-the-swotty-student swimming in his mind’s eye until he catches the real John’s face. He’s watching Paul keenly and Paul’s laughter dies in his throat, reveling in the scrutiny like a cat in a puddle of June sun. “You’re not a failure. You’re just…yourself, you’re just John. And that’s who you gotta be, right?”

John’s smile is worth anything, sudden and secret and sweet.

“That’s something like what my mum would say,” he says. The eye contact gets to be too much, tingling up and down Paul’s body and pressing straight into his eyeballs and back, but Paul holds his gaze until John opens his mouth again. “What about yours, then?”

Paul remembers the terrible sense of tragedy that had twisted his insides into leaden knots and the long low ache as months and then years passed, like he was starving for something he couldn’t have. Now, in John’s bedroom, he just feels wistful.

“She wanted me to be a doctor or something,” he says. John cocks his head like he’s imagining it and Paul plunges on, thinking of John’s smile more than his mum’s kind eyes and wasted hands. “But I think she would’ve wanted me to be myself, too.”

“God, if it was my mother…” John mutters. He’s looked away, sudden storm clouds bruising his features. “How the fuck do you get off being so calm about it?”

A horrible pulsing silence curdles abrupt and thicker than air. Paul closes his eyes, but it tattoos an angry pattern of red and black dancing across his eyelids. He opens them again and lifts his eyes to John’s slowly.

“It’s gone and passed, John. Nothing else to do but move on, is there?”

Paul didn’t pick up his guitar after that. Instead, he packed it into its case with efficient coil winding hands and stuffed it in his closet.

His mum’d had expectations of him because she loved him, wanted what’s best for him more than he ever did himself, and it was the same now with his dad. If he didn’t see it like that before—

It didn’t matter. Now he did. And more than that, he had to have expectations of himself.

Notes like music plunked in his ears when his broom rasped across the yard and when his feet pounded and scraped against the icy Liverpool sidewalks on his way home, when he heard a bird chirp or an engine roar or the tea kettle whistle. Late at night when he tried to sleep the words etched themselves across the back of his eyelids until they tumbled about his waking mind.

Want to be like Buddy Holly…the Everly Brothers…Chuck Berry…Little Richard…Elvis. Elvis.

Want to keep straight and have a steady job and do right by my family, he tried.

Didn’t expect it to work. But he tried.

It was Wednesday when in the middle of clearing away his supper plate the phone rang. He answered without thinking; Mike had a date and his dad had gone off to bridge club.

“’ello?”

“Done with avoiding my calls then, too?”

John’s voice jolted through him like electricity shrieking along his nerves.

“John?”

“Don’t act so bloody surprised it’s me, Paul,” John said sourly.

“Why are you—” he began to ask, because, this was John and how could it be John when they’d ended things and it was over and what the fuck was left, but John cut in razor-edge sharp:

“Do I need a reason?”

“You know you don’t,” Paul said quietly, firmly, immediately wary of John’s mood; he struggled to find words to diffuse the tension. “I just—”

“Just was fuckin’ asking me why,” John finished for him tersely. Paul’s mouth twisted in irritation that he clamped down on in a prolonged, difficult pause. Had to stay neutral.

“How are things?” he asked at last, knew as soon as the words left his mouth that it was the wrong tack but he was in agony over the answer.

“Things are just fab, Paul. Just fuckin’ fabulous.” The heavy sneering sarcasm in his voice pressed him back into a wince and wrenched his mouth further, forced him more into the Paul of paulandjohn, moderator, peace keeper, John-calmer. He’d always hated that but he hadn’t resented it until now, now that John was fucking up such a rare and precious opportunity for them.

“John, for God’s sake, don’t get like—”

“Like what?” John jumped in, too quick for the words almost, breathing down the phone and reedy into Paul’s ear hole. “So, how’s the old man, eh?”

“You’re drunk,” Paul realized. John ignored him.

“Right proud of his ickle Paulie, I bet. Got ‘imself a proper job and got away from that nasty Lennon.”

“You’re drunk, John,” the gravity of his tone dragging John back down from his manic spike and into something more brutish, morose.

“You sound like a fuckin’ bird, Paul,” John sneered, contemptuous. “Sound like Cyn, for fuck's sake—” he strained his voice high and shrewish, got Paul’s back up faster than anything—“You’re drunk, John!”

“Well! You’re not making any bleeding sense!” he barked, kicking at the sideboard as the heat climbed high into his face.

“I’m making fuckin’ sense, let me tell you,” John retorted, loud before his voice twisted lowly into something bitter and harsh as a straight shot of whiskey. “He’s been trying to get rid of me for years, Paul. Ever since I showed up with the fucking drainies and cigarettes, and the band, and, and—fuck knows what else he blames me for…Thinks I’ve fucked things up for you, maybe fucked you up.”

“That’s a load of shit, son,” Paul scoffed, weak against John’s rant but that was all he knew to do, shut him up and leave him to sober up and maybe in the morning he wouldn’t remember. He had to stick to his gun, one bullet and all. “And you know it.”

“He does, and you know it. That’s why he—”

“He didn’t fuckin’ do anything, John!” Paul insisted angrily. Took a deep breath and let it out so his nostrils flared and his being centered, pressed back from the phone. “It was me, I told you it was me. Can’t help it he was right.”

“The fuck he didn’t!” John exploded, coming full circle to vicious now. “He treats you like a child, Paul, and you let him.”

“I’m his son, John, bloody Christ. He treats me like his son.”

“Then why won’t you grow up and tell him to fuck off? He can’t hit you, he’s an old man, you can kill him.”

“Fuck off yourself!” Paul snarled, and the force of his voice staggered them both into silence for a long while. Paul kept breathing deep and letting it out hard, realized once his brow smoothed and his fingers loosened that he didn’t even know what they were talking about, anymore.

“Why are you calling, John?” he asked finally. He thought he caught a ragged breath sigh through the grainy connection.

“’s Wednesday,” John said eventually. Quicker than an instant Paul knew what he meant, knew quicker than he could bring himself to admit.

“So?” he said.

“So, tomorrow’s Thursday,” John pressed.

“So?” He could almost see John’s eyes narrow as he called bullshit.

“You bloody well know what I mean, Paul; don’t play daft,” John said, and Paul pictured the knit of his brow and the hard set of his jaw sharp as a photograph. He felt helpless against what he had to say, anguished that he had to say it again.

“You know I can’t go, ‘ve told you already.”

Silence. And then—

“Either come tomorrow night or you’re out.”

Thursday dawned as one of those days that couldn’t decide between snow and shine, settling for weak grey sunlight that shifted dismally through the endless whirl of clouds.

Days like this were ten a penny in England, but Paul noticed it nonetheless as he waited for the morning bus to carry him to work, a mirror of his mood: swirling and colorless, vaguely ominous.

“Either come tomorrow night or you’re out.”

John’s words circled in an infinite loop round and round his head. Part of him wanted to scream that he was already out because it was fucking over, for him anyway. Deep down a secret part of him clung to the idea that it wasn’t over yet. All of him wanted to black John’s eye, break his fingers and pry them away until he was forced to let Paul go.

More than anything, he found himself thinking about John.

He couldn’t say when he’d stopped thinking about the band and started thinking about John on his own—or if it’d been that way all along—but what he was sure of, he could drop the band in a moment, could grind his shoe down until the sole was painted with Beatle guts, just so long as he and John could stay together. In principle it unnerved him, made him feel guilty as hell on George’s behalf. But then—that was what the band had always come down to in the end, whatever end, hadn’t it? John and him. Lennon/McCartney.

With a pang he remembered the way he’d scribbled their moniker across the pages in his notebook—“Another Original by Lennon/McCartney.”

His fingers trembled then flexed and tightened against the hard wood handle as he jerked the broom along savagely, concentrated on the arc of motion and the flush of exercise in his arms and back. He’d been so good at that, narrowing his focus, steeling out the shit that came into his head sometimes, had learned after his mum died to tune his mind as sure as he tuned his guitar. He guessed he’d just lost that slower than everything else these past few weeks.

John.

No good now.

Because John.

But that was the beauty of their relationship, wasn’t it? If one gave up on dreaming, the other was there to remind him what he was giving up on. In that, John had replaced his mum, he supposed, always there to encourage him, tell him to do what he wanted and bugger the rest—they’d only made it this far because of it, because they kept each other sane, or insane, whichever way you liked—and now…

His life flashed before his eyes. He’d keep on working at Massey and Coggins, get to be management, maybe end up at another factory in Liverpool, didn’t matter. He’d get married to Dot in a few years, maybe a few months, didn’t matter when he couldn’t tell the time apart anyway. They’d have five children named after his aunts and uncles and Dot’s mum, and the years would leave them wrinkled and grey and old in their little council estate. They’d badger the kids about marks and university and smoking and sex until they’d married them off and finally realized they were there for something their kids didn’t need from them anymore. His grandkids would fish for stories, and he could tell them he’d been in a band when he was their age, the one with the funny name he’d explain to them—“Beatles, like beat, not like beetles.” And explain that he’d left because…because…

Because that’s what adults did.

Because he’d gotten cold feet and packed in just when they were fuckin’ getting somewhere.

Paul was on the verge again, not the one they’d clawed up to in Hamburg, but another one that was greater, inevitable, quiet and blind on both sides, nothing but himself there to tell him where to go. He realized distantly that his hands were shaking, that his eyes were unseeing and he was holding the broom still.

John’s voice echoed sharply through his mind.

Either come tonight or you’re out.

He wanted to stay with the Beatles. To stay with John…

(tonight or you’re out)

Because that was him. Because music was him and rock and roll was him and being a Beatle was him. Because if he couldn’t keep the dream alive a little longer, what was the point of dreaming, and what was the point of living?

The Paul with the wife and the pipe and the slippers and the broad responsible shoulders shriveled until he was only old and sad and lonely, living through snatches of the past that grew more and more distant as Paul came into himself.

Then, with his dad’s warnings still in his mind, he dropped the broom and bunked over the wall of Massey and Coggins, never to return again.

The scene as he burst into the dressing room was like something out of an old life made fresh and new and visceral—dingy light and black leather and grey wreathes of smoke that stung his nostrils. It was as if Massey and Coggins had never happened; as if he’d just nipped out for a smoke before their next set at the Kaiserkeller.

Pete was lounging moodily at the table, talking to a new boy Paul recognized as Chas Newby—panic closed his throat and squeezed his ribcage for a moment, before he saw the bass and realized he was filling in for Stu. He’d forgotten about Stu. John leaned against the wall edgy underneath tight affected indifference, smoking with his arms folded and eyes fixed firmly on the ground. As the door swung open a jolt went through him and he went tense like a coiled spring, but he refused to look around.

“Paul!” George, sounding vastly relieved as he looked up at him wide-eyed and grinned crookedly; he’d been watching the door openly, hand wringing the neck of his guitar. “You’re late, you are.”

“Well, I’m bloody ‘ere, aren’t I?” he retorted, smiling easy and simple for the first time in weeks, the muscles in his face stiff. His eyes trained back onto John, who didn’t look up. “What’s the set?”

“Well, ‘Long Tall Sally’ for one, now that you’ve bothered to show up,” George said, and his smirk was starved of its usual bite, too young and open. “Just the Hamburg set, mostly, only without all the extra bits loaded in.”

“Once you lot are bloody finished,” John said, straightening: it was time to go on.

And the gig was good that night—even if it hadn’t been Paul wouldn’t have given a damn as the rock ‘n roll revived him and thrummed fierce and alive in his veins, the sounds of the band, of goddamn music and the shouts of the crowd bringing him so high he wasn’t afraid anymore of when he’d crash back down.

John was still mad at him, that much punching through him as John stayed terse and stock still at his microphone, knees locked wide and guitar tensely ferocious, the sound harshly beautiful the way only rock ‘n roll could be beautiful. It-John-terrified Paul in its intensity.

He didn’t want to get stuck alone with him, not like that, so he hurried to get his guitar packed up as one by one the others left, but his fingers were unpracticed and stupid with the tension locking his spine up; George lingered a little to talk, down from the high already but still happy enough to see him, until he yawned wide and jaw-cracking and drifted out.

Paul’s heartbeat thudded in his ears as silence descended swiftly and it was just him and John left. He half wanted John to say something, anything, take a swing and bruise Paul up until they both were better for it, half wanted to just get the hell out if his case would just bloody close up properly—

A hand came down over his, contact firing sudden and immediate along his nerves, as John crouched beside him. “’ere.”

“I’ve got it,” Paul protested, wasn’t sure if it was the look John gave him or his prying fingers that wrenched his hand away.

“Just let me bloody do it, son,” he muttered as he made quick work of it and then stood up. “There.”

“Latch was stuck,” Paul observed, cotton-mouthed and careful as he got to his feet. John followed the movement, brown eyes sharp and intense and there was nowhere else for Paul to look as his gaze drilled deeper and deeper into Paul’s skull, into Paul. The moment expanded, stretched taut with significance.

“You came,” John said eventually, rough and direct and forceful enough to kill the words crowding jumbled in Paul’s throat.

He made no answer, could make no answer. John’s lips thinned and his brow furrowed, chin lifting defiantly.

“For good?” he asked.

Paul swallowed dry as sandpaper. This was it, then; John was asking now. He hadn’t asked before, neither of them had, had just let the band scrape by, forward and sometimes back, loose and careening between new beginnings and old ends. Elation popped along his nerves, jerked and flared until Paul felt sick with it, eyes burning up inside his head and pricked sudden and crazy with wild stupid tears he fought back.

“Couldn’t leave you to muck it up, could I?” Paul said at last, scuffing his shoe and averting his gaze till he could get himself the fuck over it.

“For good, Paul?” he insisted, tone thunderous even when his voice wasn’t, and still Paul couldn’t look at him, even when he felt John’s eyes scrape up his cheek and settle on the hidden sweep of his lashes.

“Yeah. For good.”

He coughed against the roughness in his throat, chewing his lip raw until he thought he might have to leave to keep his dignity in tact—embarrassing himself in front of John was worse than death and twice as absolute, he’d never hear the end of it—but John caught his hand and pulled him back, fingers clenched gently, almost, around his, held between their bodies.

Paul’s face flamed but there was no fighting it this time, he knew as much now.

“Chose me over him in the end, then.”

It was the slight questioning lilt in his voice, the barest hint of that vulnerability, that made Paul look up at him at last and then he met his eyes—something in them made him naked and exposed and pretense fell away, leaving Paul soft and breakable but Paul, just Paul.

“No, I just chose you,” Paul said softly, solemnly. John blinked at him, then abruptly his other hand came up to grip the back of Paul’s neck and he was kissing him, soft lips and a fierce mouth.

Paul’s lips parted in pure shock and then suddenly John’s tongue was teasing inside and before he knew what was happening he’d begun to return the kiss clumsily, tilting his head into it and opening his mouth filthy wide, trying to give John everything he wanted because that was what he wanted too. Their tongues met and then the kiss was frantic and wet and good and just fucking beautiful—his eyes slid shut and he pressed in closer against John helplessly—

Being with John like this wasn’t like being with any girl, didn’t compare to anything else, fused dirty sweet at the mouth and pressed so tight together it was like they were trying to climb into each other’s skin. John touched him bluntly, knowingly, mouth taking his roughly, relentlessly, hand lewdly fearless, possessive, as it stroked down the nape of his neck and dragged down his spine to the small of his back and the swell of his arse, yanking pleasure up into him like twanged guitar strings, until the world bled back and it was just them, together alone. It was like songwriting—that moment when they looked into each other’s eyes and were filled with the sweet, wonderful knowledge that they were right—only more intense, sunburst inside of him, dancing golden light and warmth filling the empty spaces of his mind—

John caught his bottom lip, sucking it between his teeth before biting down, fingers gripping tight against Paul’s clothes and hips jerking helplessly against his. Paul’s knees went weak and his brain fluttered in his head—too much, it was too much, he was dizzy and fevered and couldn’t fucking breathe anymore—

“John,” he moaned, whispery, raspy as he broke away and a tiny string of spit formed obscene between their mouths. His lips were swollen and bruised stupid and wet against their ragged mingled breathing. Their foreheads leaned closely together. “Fuck, fucking…you.”

“Fuck, your mouth,” John muttered, half crazed like he was almost laughing, fingers stroking the back of his neck and into his hair, eyes dark and hungry as they searched his face. Paul leaned in to kiss him again, so slow and soft and achingly sweet that Paul shut his eyes against it. Each slide of their lips swirled through him like spun sugar, so lovely and warm and…

And suddenly the sensation was gone and John was gone and Paul felt absolutely bereft.

“Open your eyes, you daft git,” John said, more open and affectionate than Paul had ever heard him.

Paul obeyed sleepily. “What…”

“Got to catch the bus, love,” John said, smirking as he looked Paul over like he was pleased at the state he’d worked Paul up into, jelly limbs and heavy eyes and red lips puffed up to hell. Well, fuck him; let him look.

“Bus,” Paul repeated slowly, feeling slower still.

“Unless you fancy walking to Allerton?” John pressed, cocking an eyebrow at him as he grabbed his guitar case. “Well? Come on then.”

Paul picked up his own guitar and they stepped out into the frigid night air. Liverpool was the same place it had always been, the same as it had been all those walks he’d taken, just not so lonely anymore.

As they walked stiff legged down the sidewalk, Paul felt his youth rushing back through him, settling in and soaring high. He was seized by a wild fearless exuberance reality told him was stupider than shit and a step closer to death than not living. He exulted in it. Breathed the free air again.

“We were fuckin’ great tonight,” he said, knocking his guitar case against John’s.

“Course we were,” John said, grinning at him wide and crazy and knocking the cases back harder, and maybe it was a little like their way of holding hands. “We’re the fucking Beatles, aren’t we?”

“The fuckin’ Beatles,” Paul affirmed faithfully, own grin near cracking his jaw.

“The fuckin’ Beatles!” John shouted, and an old woman’s eyes bulged looking at them as they passed her in the street, laughing loud and relieved and delighted.

“’ey, John,” Paul said, nudging their cases one last time, more gently, as he felt his grin fade into something softer, dafter, companionable.

“Yeah?”

Paul waited a beat to get the voice right. Get the moment right. “Where are we going, Johnny?”

John turned to smile at him in the bluish moonlight, and Paul’s breath caught and heart ached at the beautiful, simple sincerity of it.

“The toppermost of the poppermost, Paul.”