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English
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Published:
2022-11-02
Completed:
2023-06-22
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2,984
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7/7
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i wake with your memory

Summary:

a series of ways in which paul wakes with john.

Notes:

these are fairly short- just paul waking up over the years with john. sometimes his presence is physical, and sometimes not so much.

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

1957.

It’s a balmy morning. The air is thick and slow like honey, and as Paul wakes he realizes he’s shoved his blankets down onto the ground. He sits up, eager to get away from the sweaty mess of his bedsheets, and pushes his black, sticky hair out of his face as he reaches over the side of his bed for his guitar blearily.

Dimly, he thinks to himself he really ought to at least use the bathroom first, but the thought drifts across his brain as his fingers start moving across the fretboard.

Across the room, his brother groans irritably from his bed at being woken up before he’s ready. A beat later, his father calls from the kitchen, “if you’re awake enough to play, you’re awake enough to start chores.”

He pretends not to hear him for a minute longer, playing the first couple bars of ‘Come Go With Me’ idly.

A half hour later, after having a piss and washing up and pretending to start dusting the living room, he picks up the telephone receiver when his father goes to take out the rubbish round back and dials John’s number—which he’s memorized, embarrassingly, from how long he’s looked at it since John scribbled it down.

“Morning,” he says, when his aunt puts John on the phone. “So—I’ve thought about it, and—yes, I’d like to join.”

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

1961.

The sharp bite of a fall morning wakes him, gradually, because Lennon’s hogged the covers again. He shivers—the hostel is poorly heated, though not nearly as bad as it was back when they were in Hamburg.

“Johnny,” he croaks hoarsely, voice still thick with sleep. “You’ve made a damn sausage roll of yourself with the blanket, come on.”

If he’s learned one thing about John in Paris, it’s that he basically can’t wake himself up before ten in the morning. He just lies there, only his eyes, nose, and a few tufts of auburn hair showing, completely prone in his sleep.

There’s only one way he’s had any success at waking John up.

He scoots closer to John, until their noses are a hairsbreadth apart. Outside their window, Paris sounds fully awake—voices and cars and the Métro barreling along—but that sound has pretty much been a constant. He reaches up, the silver links of bracelet clinking softly as he tugs some of the blanket away from John’s face gently, and presses their faces close.

John sighs. Cigarette smoke clings to his breath, stale with sleep. After a moment, he mumbles something, but when his lips move against Paul’s skin he wakes up a little more.

“What’re you doin’?” He mumbles.

“Let me in, I’m freezin’.”

He nods, halfway a nuzzle, and gracelessly fumbles his way out of the tight roll he’s made of the blanket. When he manages to get free, he opens his arm and Paul scoots into the warmth.

“Sorry, Bunnie,” he says, face tucked against Paul’s dark hair.

Paul shakes his head, sleepiness draping over him now that the crisp fall air is at bay.

“S’okay.”

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

1964.

Their star his risen so fast and so overwhelmingly that sometimes Paul wakes in panic—like a meteor crash-landing into his chest, startling him awake. It happens today, short of breath just as soon as his eyes open, gasping and breaking into a cold sweat as he pushes himself up on his elbows.

He hasn’t had a nightmare; at least, none that he can remember. But the fear that grips him is real, digging its claws into his lungs, rendering them useless.

“S’alright, Paul,” says John from the bed on the opposite side, not even lifting his head. “Just a dream.”

It isn’t that, though, because the panic only comes when he’s awake. Maybe the dreams exacerbate the fear, but the thoughts that startle him into consciousness are real—that they can’t possibly keep this up. They’ll fade. They’ll lose everything. That Paul will fail or fall behind or be replaced.

He sits up, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes and trying to slow his breathing. It’s then that he hears the creak of John’s bed springs, followed by his feet padding across the floor.

Paul doesn’t lift his head from his hands until he feels the mattress sink beside him, a heavy arm draping over his lap. He looks down at John, laying beside him with his face pressed against Paul’s hip, auburn hair tousled, already halfway back to sleep. It settles him, slightly, and he brings a hand down to rest in John’s hair.

“Lay down,” John mumbles against him. “It’s still early.”

Paul does as he says, sinking back down into the bed and burrowing under the covers with John. John fixes his arm around him more securely and shifts to tuck Paul’s head under his chin.

“John,” Paul says, resting his forehead against the dip in his collarbone. He doesn’t know how to follow it up. It feels daft to admit he’s woken up, again, with crippling fear of failure.

But John doesn’t need him to follow up.

“This is what we’ve been working for all this time, yeah?” He says, squeezing Paul and rocking him slightly like he’s a kid. “We earned it. You earned it. If you spend all your time thinking about how we might lose it, you’ll never get to taste it.”

“I know…but…”

“I know,” John says, cutting him off gently. “Look. We did this. No one’ll ever take that from us, alright?”

Paul supposes he can’t argue with that. Even if it all fades tomorrow, they’ll still have the meteoric rise they had up until today. They’ve shattered records and expectations. No one will take that from them.

He closes his eyes and tries to settle against John’s warm weight.

“Alright.”

Chapter 4

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

1967.

He can already hear the fans outside. He supposes some of them might have hung around all night. It’s just a fact of life at this point—but it unnerves him whenever John stays the night.

As usual, John is out like a light. He barely stirs when Paul rises out of bed, throwing on his house coat and setting about picking up their discarded clothing.

Jane is in America for work, and so John’s been around pretty much constantly, eager to be away from home. As far as he can tell, the fans don’t seem to make much of anything out of it—and there’s nothing, really. But even so, as he opens the window by his piano to let in the mild March air and the smell of wisteria, he eyes them warily.

It’s only a bit of fun. They were sort of…recklessly infatuated with each other as boys, but they’ve grown up now. He knows John so well, so thoroughly, down to his marrow…it doesn’t feel strange at all to get in bed with him. It feels natural; two people who’ve come to inhabit each other so completely inevitably seek that sort of physical intimacy in one another, no?

He sits at the piano bench, glancing at John sleeping serenely on his bed. His mustache makes him look quite grown up and serious when he’s still and quiet like this, but when he laughs and jokes and makes faces it makes him look goofier.

He smiles in spite of himself, playing a couple light chords on the piano.

The year is only a few months in…but he can’t help feeling positive about it. It’s been shaping up quite well, after all.

He and John have been quite well. Both individually and—in a manner of speaking—together.

His fingers glide along the piano keys more intentionally now—in key of C minor, a bit dreamy. If he could capture all the times he and John had taken off hitchhiking in a series of notes, how would he do it?

Paul jumps when John’s voice calls out to him from the bed, his hands hitting a sour chord.

John simply barks out, “Corny,” in his gruff, just-waking-up voice.

“Fuck off,” Paul says affectionately—but he corrects course anyway. B minor maybe? Or no—just a little too slow, perhaps? “How’s this?”

He slides into a faster tempo, glancing over at John who’s sitting up now, half his hair sticking straight up from sleeping in one prone position all night. He blinks the sleep out of his eyes, reaching blindly until his fingers stumble over his glasses on the bedside table.

“Still corny, just faster,” he says, rising but keeping the blanket with him, tugged securely around his shoulders.

He sits at the piano bench with Paul and puts his hands on the keys as well.

Paul’s stomach flips. It’s been a while since they sat together with an instrument this way—but John’s been coming around somewhat.

He mimics what Paul’s been doing in D sharp.

“Something like that,” he mumbles, trailing off and retracting his hands into his blanket. “Whatever you were doing, I can’t do it like you.”

“‘Course you can,” Paul counters, picking up the song again in the key John offered. He’s right—it’s better. “I’ll have to do something with this.”

John doesn’t say anything to that, just listens as Paul explores the general shape of the song. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees John’s gaze flicker to the window a few times.

“They can’t see us here,” he says, measuring the space from the window to the piano bench with his eyes. “Right?”

“They can’t, Johnny.”

John nods and, after a moment, rests his head on Paul’s shoulder—heavy, like he could go on sleeping upright here while Paul plays.

“Good, then.”

Notes:

i don’t write music, don’t @ me lmaosndjjdjs

Chapter 5

Notes:

been a while 😭❤️ sorry about that

Chapter Text

1969.

Paul knows the end is near. Every morning he wakes reluctantly, his head so heavy the effort it takes to lift it is monumental. Linda is empathetic, but Heather wakes early and needs attention, so she doesn’t have the time to coax him into consciousness.

She’s gone from the bed by the time he’s committed to fully inhabiting the waking world. Her residual heat still lingers on the bedsheets and he turns on his side, resting his hand upon the wrinkles she left on her side of the bed.

He dreamt last night. Not his usual desperate, desolate dreams where he stands alone on a stage and makes a fool of himself trying to get the thinning audience to stay, to give him another chance. Last night, he dreamt of being a boy and weeping inconsolably. In the dream, as is sometimes the way in dreams, he was both himself now and himself as a fourteen year old, the two Paul’s co-existing in one form like an optical illusion.

His mother had appeared to him in the dream. She’d gathered him up in her arms and rocked him as she wiped the tears from his face.

“Hush, now, love,” she’d said to him, taking his face in her hand. “You’ve done enough. Let it be, now, darling. Let it be.”

The words ring in his head now, lending themselves to a melody he’s had percolating in his head for a while. As always, his first thought when a song starts to take shape in his head is John. He must tell John.

But then again he hears: Let it be.

It’s all coming apart. Lennon-McCartney. The Beatles. John himself. And no matter how desperately Paul clings to it all, no matter how desperately he attempts to hold them together, he knows he can’t prevent the inevitable.

He’s got to let it be.

Chapter 6

Notes:

surprise! i'm still at it

Chapter Text

1973.

 

It’s still dark when the ringing wakes him. In his state of sleepy disorientation, he stumbles out of bed even though the phone is right on his nightstand. 

“Yeah?” He croaks into the phone. “McCartney. This is—McCartney house.”

He hopes it isn’t a crank call. He’s in no mood; Stella’s going through a clingy phase again which means Linda keeps spending her nights falling asleep in the chair in her room keeping her company.

“Mr. McCartney,” says the operator’s voice. “I have a transatlantic call for you from New York City from Mr. John Lennon.”

Paul suddenly feels very awake. His stomach twists anxiously—is everything okay? Is John okay? He must be if he’s calling, but still…

“Oh—right, okay.”

“I’ll connect him now. Hold, please.” The line clicked, then clicked again after a brief silence. “Mr. McCartney, you are now on the line with Mr. Lennon.”

“And whoever the CIA agent assigned to me is too, don’t forget.”

Calls from John are incredibly rare, and often they are contentious at best. Paul’s mouth is dry with anxiety, though John sounds fine as far as he can tell. Paul sits on the edge of his bed, running a hand through his hair.

“Has something happened, John?”

“Hello to you too,” says John. “It’s been a minute, you know.”

“Sure,” says Paul slowly. “But it’s three in the morning here, so…”

“Oh, fuck, sorry,” John says, as if he genuinely just didn’t think about that. “I forgot. I thought it’d be more like six.”

“Okay? John, I don’t wake up until nine on a good day.”

“That can’t be. You’re a family man now, right?”

Paul sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. 

“D’you actually need anything or can I just go back to bed?”

The line goes quiet. Paul wonders if he’s offended John, but if he tries to start a fight about it, Paul will just hang up. He doesn’t have patience for games, and he’ll always love John but he’s tired of the constant and unpredictable yo-yo of John’s attention.

John clears his throat, palpably self conscious all at once.

“…Just wanted to hear your voice,” he admits softly.

If Paul had still been standing, that would have knocked him clean off his feet. As it is, the air rushes out of his lungs, fingers tightening around the phone receiver.

“Ah…”

“I’m home alone tonight and I feel—I dunno. Unsteady. Can we just chat for a while?”

“John…”

“No fighting. I swear. For old times’ sake.”

Old times feels like putting it quite lightly. It’s been more than a few years now since the last time John called Paul just for the pleasure and comfort of his company. Paul hadn’t even known he could still offer such a thing to John.

But Paul has always been a bit weak for John. No sense denying it at this point. No sense fighting against it, either.

“Alright,” he says, settling back under his covers. “But don’t start shouting in my ear if I fall asleep, got it?”

There's relief in John’s voice when he answers, “Got it.”

Chapter 7

Notes:

TW/CW: death, grief

we knew it was coming, and here we are. thanks for reading this❤️

Chapter Text

1980.

It’s dark when Paul wakes up, but he’d been anticipating it. Today is the year’s midnight: the winter solstice. There are still hours until the sun will even consider rising.

It’s been almost two weeks since John…

Well.

Since John.

On the rare occasion that he manages to sleep, he always wakes with the cold, empty hope that he’s finally abandoned the fucked up nightmare he’s been living. Though he knows, realistically, that he will never wake from the nightmare, he doesn’t know how to snuff out the pathetic hope that it will end. That John will come back. That he’ll surprise everyone somehow and come right back from the grave because it would make more sense than this reality  

It’s selfish, but he can’t help thinking as he stares up at the shadows on the ceiling: this is the rest of my life now.

Every morning, for however many more mornings he lives, he’ll have to wake up to the reality that John is gone. He can try to run from it throughout the day—he can mind the children, he can spend time with Linda, he can go to the studio and fill his head with music enough to snuff out the dark thoughts—as he has always done, he reckons.

But there is no running from it in the stillness and silence of morning. The whole house is asleep and Paul lies awake, barely keeping afloat in the mire of his grief and anger and pain.

He hasn’t cried yet. Not really. Even two weeks in. Linda’s waiting for it, he knows. She watches him sometimes when she thinks he’s not looking, like a breakdown is imminent and she’s ready to catch him, to put him back together the way she did when he first lost John…in a sense.

It’s funny now how stupid he feels for having grieved that first loss. It was preventable. If they’d just swallowed their pride a little…

But what does it matter now? John is a memory and without him, Paul is what? Numb. A shadow. The hollow outline of the man that once was Paul McCartney. Even at their most distant, he and John were part of each other. He knows how it sounds, but it’s true. If souls are real, his and John’s were so thoroughly intertwined that no amount of distance, no amount of anger could ever have made him feel like they were truly separated. As if their souls were taffy pulled further and further, but never snapping.

But without John at the other end of his soul, he feels like his has become a ragged thread. Insubstantial. Nothing.

Paul has too much to live for to sink into those thoughts. He knows he has to get up before they suck him in like quicksand. He has his children, he has his friends, he has his loving wife…and he has his music. But he cannot fathom the future without John. It doesn’t make sense.

Even now, lying in the dark December morning, he can hardly believe the sun will bother to rise.

But it will. John is dead and, for some reason, the world keeps on turning.