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It’s a rarity, in a way most things have to be these days.
The irony of it is sometimes laughable, sometimes staggering; a pun, and yet here they are, bugs under a microscope, wings yanked akimbo and pinned to a corkboard. For all their means, a lack of freedom. Schedules and police escorts and lead-lined vans. Buzzard reporters. Sometimes they can feel like roadkill, still twitching, attracting vultures.
But even trapped bugs will fling themselves against jar walls, so they’ve found ways to escape. Days when they don’t have anything lined up till the afternoons, and even then typically only because something’s fallen through, to Brian’s uneasy dismay. He’ll grant them permission with a nervous nod, mind already elsewhere, no doubt scrolling through his mental rolodex of who to call to recoup whatever degree of notoriety he’s convinced himself they’ve lost with half a day’s break. They watch him wander off, then scramble to get their coats.
(They don’t invite the others, and the others don’t ask. They’ve all earned their space to breathe; some just prefer breathing in time with the other.)
It’s easier in cities that aren’t London. It somehow usually coincides with when they’re booked up in Liverpool, and that makes it even more nostalgic, even though they didn’t do this before. Before they kept to record shops and pubs and the local newsagent, places not so soft. But now they slip out of the hotel at daybreak, visitors to their own hometown, hair tucked in caps, legs hidden under long coats, and fall into step with the other stoic, sleepy men heading to work.
They arrive at the storefront just as the shopkeeper is turning the open sign over. Bookstore owners always look the same, no matter the city: an unhappy old man more wrinkle than man, who doesn’t care a fig who they are so long as they’ve got clean hands.
As predicted, he grunts at them, unimpressed, as they nod their way inside the dim-lit, must-smelling shop, the bell over the door chiming. There's a teen shopgirl behind the till whose eyes widen as they walk in, but she doesn’t make a peep. Paul flashes her a smile as they breeze past; John acts as if she doesn’t exist, though in places like this, she might as well not. He’s already transfixed by the hedgemaze of cherry wood shelves sprawling out in front of them, for them to explore for the next few precious hours.
(They never seek it out, but Paul does get a little thrill of pride whenever he walks in and thinks about there being a book somewhere in here that John wrote. And him the foreword. Sure, their records are on the radio every three minutes, and if not on one station then another, but it’s different, to have a book. More accomplished, somehow. Respectable. Rock n’roll, there’s always someone to turn up their noses. But a book? No one can sneer at that.)
In unspoken agreement, they always wander together. Which is what takes them so long, because Paul will go to shelves that John’s not interested in— seeking out avant-garde books recommended to him by Peter, that he didn’t want to buy at the Indica, wanted to pretend he already knew about— but John will follow anyway, staying pressed shoulder to shoulder like their sleeves are sewn together. He’ll scoff or make rude jokes about the titles Paul pulls out and Paul has to bite his cheek to keep from laughing, read the covers twice over to make sense of the words, sometimes dallying longer just to tease, make John huff and puff. Then, finally, title acquired, they’ll drift over to their shared favorites, the broad flat art books and worn-spine classics.
Here, Paul browses too, but mostly he watches John, because it’s one of the rare places he can get away with it. Everywhere else, John’s got his hackles up, always bracing like the world’s going to jump out and take a swing at him. But here, he can lose himself. Paul watches as his shoulders unwind for the first time in weeks. Fingers gently tracing gold-tipped covers, thumbs licked to flip pages, held close to his nose because of course he didn’t wear his glasses, even though that’d probably be the best disguise of all: foreign to everyone but Paul.
The thought always makes his chest feel thick, like he’s swallowed wrong, or like his tongue’s too big for his mouth. Today, Paul darts a glance around— they’ve been here an hour or so already, but the shop is still blissfully quiet, empty save for them and the owner, back in his office, and the shopgirl, tucked behind her register, out of sight. So Paul takes the book from John’s hands and puts himself there instead.
John’s hands grip his waist without the slightest hesitation, trusting Paul, and that has another lightning bolt zigging through Paul from his hair to his toes, so he backs John up against the shelf, the softest of thuds when his shoulders collide with the books. John smirks, but the expression in his eyes is so fond it steals Paul’s breath. He slides a hand under John’s collar to feel the rabbit pulse he knows is just under the skin.
“Something I can help you find, sir?” John asks, faux-posh, the not-quite-entendre dancing in his gaze, and Paul takes great delight in rolling his hips forward like a wave against John’s, watching his mouth part on a hitched breath, leaning in to murmur, lips feather-light along skin, “No, thanks. Seems I’ve already found it.” And then their mouths meet.
They obviously can’t take things much farther, so the moment lingers like dust in the air, light motes suspended, until there’s a creak from somewhere in the shop— a warning, maybe, from the tragic heroes and star-crossed lovers surrounding them— and they step apart like pages separating.
Eventually, time catches up to them, and they meander back to the till, and the shopgirl rings up their selections and tells them the price, and Paul takes out his wallet. Paul always pays, at these places. Elsewhere, John buys him drinks (pints; banana milkshakes) or food (chips at the docks; a croissant in a Parisian cafe, so buttery flakes of it stuck to Paul’s fingers for an hour) and the occasional little trinket (“caught me eye, thought y’d like it” always a deliberately casual confession, begging not to be looked at, and Paul indulges it every time, even though every time it sets his stomach to electric shocks)— but bookstores, Paul pays. He likes the way it makes John’s cheeks darken, his smile go shy. God, Paul is so far gone, there’ll be no getting himself back.
He winks at the girl when she wraps the books in crinkly brown paper and hands them over, co-conspiring, guaranteeing her silence with their now shared secret, though whether it’s the same secret is another matter. He’ll never know, of course, and he’ll forget her and this little part of him she now keeps as soon as they step back out onto the sidewalk— riskier, now, busier, as the rest of the day hurtles towards them. In fact, he’s already forgetting as he turns and passes John’s books to him, the world narrowing to where their fingers brush.
(Maybe Paul will write a book one day, too, about something like this. Till then, the songs will have to do, John meeting him in the middle, with the rest of the story.)
The bell chimes again, seeing them off.