Chapter Text
The light here is different.
Different from what?
Different. Just different. Different from the grey light in Liverpool when it appears in snatches between the clouds. Different especially from the light that comes in through the thick curtains hanging in Paul’s room in Forthlin Road – pale blue in the early morning, thin and yellow in the afternoon.
If Paul was here, he would understand. But Paul is not here, and John has to settle for the dry voice in his head that sounds like him.
In the other room, the shower cuts off. John has never been in a shower until this week. That’s different as well – nicer, maybe, than a bath, less work involved.
He feels very peaceful. He thinks absently of having orange juice for breakfast. Proper orange juice – so fresh the pulp is still floating around in the glass. Paul would probably turn his nose up at the texture but John likes it.
John likes Spain. He is different here too: just John, or – Joh-n, which is how Brian says his name, all posh, with the sharp ‘Joh’ drawn out long enough to almost swallow the rest of it, crisp and cut off.
Paul says his name all in one, slanting, like John – single-breath, the slight kick of his accent.
Paul. How is Paul?
Pick up the phone and ask him yourself.
Christ! What about the rates? You’re not a millionaire yet, John Lennon.
He’d half-thought about scrawling a postcard to Paul (and George and Ringo and whoever the fuck else would be hanging around when he read it) and sending it off with the ones to Mimi and Cyn-and-the-kid. But there hadn't been anything to say until last night and now he got caught up in imagining Paul’s face when he got it, the furrow appearing between his brows, the childish, anxious worrying at his fingers.
No good.
Much better to sink back against the soft pillows and listen to the vague sounds from the bathroom, Brian humming something tunelessly through the closed door.
Brian – that’s another thing different in Spain. Brian-in-Spain is relaxed, less skittish – although John hadn’t realised that Brian was particularly skittish in Liverpool, until seeing him here.
The bathroom door opens and Brian comes out. He stands in the doorway a moment, smiling at John.
“You’re awake, then.”
“You woke me,” John says. “Making all that racket.”
Brian grins at him. He’s clean-shaven, still damp from the shower, the top button of his shirt is popped open which is as much of a concession to casual as John has yet seen him make.
It’s just Brian, but it sits oddly, makes John feel clumsily hot and embarrassed and fond – Well, that’s what going to bed with a fellow will do to you. His skin still prickles from the rub of Brian’s stubble – It’s mere hours since he pressed his mouth to the hollow of Brian’s clavicle exposed by the gaping ‘v’ of his shirt.
“I thought I’d go round the city some more today,” Brian says, crossing to the dresser to fix in his cufflinks. “Do you want to join me?”
“Alright,” John says.
He doesn’t make a move to get up though and after a moment, Brian comes over and sits hesitantly on the end of the bed. He’s cut himself shaving, there’s a tiny mark beneath his left ear. Poor Brian, always so careful and still getting himself hurt.
“Is there anything the matter, John?” he asks. Joh-n.
“No,” John says.
He had gone to sleep feeling comfortable and sated and quite prepared to put off addressing the fact of what had happened until morning.
He had woken feeling more peaceful than he has in years, peaceful and happy, none of the crawling horror that usually followed his trysts with Stu, heavy-limbed in Stu’s creaky bed in Gambier Terrace or fumbling on top of each other in a dirty cot in Hamburg, struggling, as fast as possible before anyone came in.
He feels whole, himself entirely – Like throwing open a window and letting light in to a dusty room.
And Brian – handsome, clever Brian with his steady hands and practiced mouth.
“Eppy,” John says. “I’m not queer.”
Brian nods.
“I know, John,” he says. Joh-n. “Just a bit of fun, eh?”
“Right,” John says, although he means no, not just, not just a bit of fun, not fooling around. But Brian nods, understanding and sympathetic.
The problem when Paul is not around is that everything John says gets taken so literally.
“We don’t have to mention it again,” Brian says. “If you don’t want to.”
“Alright,” John says.
“Unless you want to,” Brian says, uncertainly.
“No,” John says. “No.”
Brian claps a hand on John’s leg. He stands up.
“Alright then,” he says, and they don't talk about it for the rest of the trip.
Paul. PaulPaulPaulPaulPaulPaulPaul.
Once upon a time, John crouched down outside the poky off licence off Penny Lane to tie his shoe. Paul stopped walking to wait for him, still chattering, Paul – still young enough to wear school uniform, his tie loose and his sleeves pushed up past his elbows because it was summer, and warm. John looked up to say something snide and found that Paul was already looking at him. The clear, mid-afternoon light made his eyes seem almost green, wild and bright.
Paul has always been a very good-looking young man. That’s what all the aunts used to say.
John is not prone to introspection – actually, he tries to avoid it where possible – but occasionally bouts of it sneak up on him. He is dimly aware – Better to say, before Paul, before Stu, before Brian, he was only dimly aware that he liked men, he liked the way men looked, but he was only dimly interested in how it would feel to be with one.
Then Paul.
Then Stu, and John's interest in men became rapidly less hypothetical.
And now Brian, and John knows what a life with a man might look like: singing from the shower, someone else's razor and cream cluttering up the space beside the sink, deliberate space kept between them in public, strong hands in the dark.
He used to draw Cyn all the time, as practice and when he thought of her. Stu, too, oh, Stu. But other people, anyone, really – Georgie, with his sharp face and thick hair; Mimi, the jagged lines of her frown; the craggy man who drove the night bus. John has not drawn Paul, although most things he draws are adjacent to Paul because John thinks about Paul when he draws them.
That isn’t saying anything in particular because John thinks about Paul all the time.
In his head, John is eloquent and articulate and thinks beautiful thoughts about Paul’s smile, his sweeping lashes, his clever hands. They never translate. John won’t let them. He has a horrible fear that if he exposes the Paul in his head to pen and paper, he will corrupt and burn away, and then John won’t have either of them – the funny, handsome boy who smiles at John in John’s head on the very worst, the very grey days, or the funny, handsome boy who occupies his own space out in the world, free of John, who sleeps in far too late and borrows John’s t-shirts without asking.
Paul is a fixture. Paul is always there. Paul cannot be risked.
On John’s twenty-first birthday, so late at night it was almost morning, they lay side-by-side in a bed in Paris. In the darkness, Paul took John’s hand. He didn’t say anything, but he held John’s hand. John could feel the thick skin on his fingers where he pressed down on the strings of his guitar. John could hear his breathing, a little fast, a little uneven.
For the first time, for a strange, wonderful moment, John had thought that if he pushed himself up and kissed Paul, Paul would not be horrified. Paul might stay. Paul might want him to.
Paul is too large to balance on a might. So John had squeezed his hand and squeezed his eyes shut and eventually he had fallen asleep.
They had gone back to Liverpool and they had met Brian.
John is in love with Paul. Also, he loves Paul. People can stop being in love, but they can never stop loving. This is a distinction he has only felt it necessary to make with Paul.
John loves Brian, but he has never been in love with Brian. For the first month they knew each other, John didn’t particularly like Brian – a posher, bossier version of Paul with less hair and fancier clothes.
Neither Brian nor Paul would be happy about that comparison so John has so far kept it to himself.
Paul understands John when John doesn’t talk. No one else does. Paul even understands John when he does talk, which sometimes seems to be more difficult.
Brian is very brave, but he has to be. Brian is in a lot of pain, which is alright because John is too.
Brian smells like an expensive type of cigarette and a rich cologne, sandalwood and something warm, like oranges or cinnamon. Brian is a good kisser. Brian is much better at handjobs than Stu was, and better at blowjobs than anyone John’s ever been with, except possibly Cyn who’s had the benefit of practice.
When Brian gets out of the car outside John’s house, he holds out his hand for John to shake. John leans in and presses a kiss to his cheek – one last moment of Brian-bravery – and then steps back, tips a salute.
“See you soon, then,” he says. “You sure you don’t want to come in?”
“No, I want to go home and have a bath,” Brian says, already opening the car door. “You will talk to Paul, won’t you?”
“I’ve said I will,” John says. “Six times now.”
“Give my regards to Cynthia and the baby,” Brian says.
“Yes, I’ll give the baby your regards,” John says, scornfully.
Brian grins, and climbs back into the car.
“Ta-ra,” he calls.
“Bye,” John says, kicking open the front gate.
The car’s engine coughs and spits and then Brian’s gone, zooming too fast up the narrow road as John puts his key in the lock.