Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s funny, really, how the biggest things always happen so slowly.

And it’s something Paul’s known for a while now. He’s never actually spoken the words, but it’s something he’s known in that clinical, detached, aprender way. Like “Kittens are adorable” and “Being kicked in the nuts really hurts”. It’s just one of those things that’s so fundamentally true it’s stupid to even acknowledge it. If he said it out loud, people would stare at him as if he was insane, and then say “Ohkay. Obvious, much?” and he hates that.

Falling in love is like dying, and he isn’t the first to have that revelation either, but at least it means something to him. That’s almost like making it up on the spot.

He’s too lazy to pinpoint the exact moment he looked over at Art Garfunkel and thought “I’m in love with him”, but it happened gradually. And maybe it’s a self defense mechanism, because if he’d fallen as violently has he had for some girls in the past, he probably would have done something potentially destructive.

It’s really a culmination of a million little things that all work together to make a final result, like some sort of emotional pointillism. Maybe it has something to do with Art's laugh, or the way he laughs: loudly, at little things that aren’t really funny and drives Paul nuts. Maybe it’s his distracted humming, or his stupid improvised drumming sessions on any available surface, including Paul’s head. Maybe it’s nothing and everything all at once, but it happened all the same, so the whole debate is probably pointless.

The fact remains: Paul’s in love and . . . where can you possibly go from there? Because it’s changing, and if there’s one thing that makes him cringe it’s that things do change. One day he looks over and rather than thinking That’s Artie or even That’s my best friend he thinks That’s the guy I’m in love with and there’s nowhere to hide from that sort of quiet certainty. He’s tried.

It’s a lot like standing on a pyramid with no base, and nothing at all like a hurricane eye, and it leaves him disoriented and aimless for a good week where he avoids Art and smokes too much and generally makes himself miserable as a sort of penance.

Art has beautiful hands, all graceful lines and long angles, and they’re caressing the wheel in an idle, distracted way that’s making Paul’s libido do horrible things to him. He’s completely prepared to blame the heat, other drivers, stop lights, pedestrians, and the entire city of New York, in whatever order is necessary. Any one of those things conspiring to trap him in a warm car with Art for long periods of time is obviously an agent of evil. The only reason he doesn’t blame all of them in unison is that he isn’t quite paranoid, yet.

The thermostat has been sitting right at Too Hot for too long, they’ve been in roughly the same block for about twenty minutes, with Art dancing his hands over the wheel to avoid heat burns, and something about the whole scenario is playing out like a bad porn movie inside Paul’s head.

It’s as if his mind says “Okay. This is just too far. I’m sitting this one out, kapisch?” and takes a small trip to Reno, or wherever it goes when things get all pear shaped. Because he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t be jealous of the petting the steering wheel is getting under normal, brain functioning conditions.

He’s aware that he’s flushing a faint, awkward shade of pink and he squirms, trying his hardest to disappear entirely out of the car and out of his own traitorously vivid imagination, where Art’s hand slides smoothly off the steering wheel, dropping to lightly land on his thigh, resting there in a silent request for approval, fingers stroking delicately. He doesn’t mean to, but a faint mewling noise escapes his throat, eyes locking with Art’s for one dangerous, unguarded second where everything is clear as glass and heat waves.

“Paul, are you alright?” and oh, shit, that last little bit wasn’t his imagination, because Art’s squeezing his knee, face open and concerned and Artie. “You look flushed. And uncomfortable. Maybe just uncomfortable, I guess.” He cocks his head to one side, eyes narrowed and dark with the light behind them, unreadable.

“Um, yeah.” There are many very good reasons for him to never befriend anyone who’s incredibly perceptive. One being that he’s never been good at hiding his emotions. Paul’s gone and fallen in love, which is stupid, and awkward, and the sort of bone headed thing he’s come to expect from himself after years of being Paul Simon. Everything’s going smoothly – swimmingly, in fact – and then boom. He does something ambitious, or thoughtless, or just Paulish, and he’s right back to square one on everything, because Art’s kinda like that china shop in the cliché. One of them’s a bit too fragile, and the other one can’t be anything except what he is, and he’s tried.

“Artie . . .”

“Yeah, Paul?”

“Traffic’s moving.”

He does not allow himself to see some flicker of disappointment in Art’s eyes, doesn’t let himself dwell on the warm weight on his knee that’s still there, right up to the point where Art pulls his hand away to shift.

Maybe the car’s a little bit jealous of him, too, because it doesn’t respond as well as it normally does.

Paul Simon is not a possessive person. Not as a rule.

. . . Hardly ever, anyway.

But there are times like this where he can’t help but be. Possessive. When he wants to just grab Art and mark him, like a cat, rubbing his cheek over him until there isn’t a spot to be found that doesn’t say “Paul Simon was here.”

He recognizes that it’s not reasonable, but he also recognizes that reason very rarely coincides with emotion in all of the things that matter, so there you go.

He wants . . . something. Something he can’t understand or define. Wants it so bad his hands twitch and his teeth ache and every bad cliché he’s ever heard, every one he’s written to avoid. It’s a single minded drive that’s long since moved beyond obsession into something dark and not entirely healthy, and he doesn’t really care. It’s starting to define his character, and he still can’t bring himself to see it as bad, per say.

He wants Art. He wants his smile and his little breathless laugh and that sardonic quirk of his eyebrow. He wants it, and more than that, he wants to be the only one to have it. It’s selfish and egocentric and impossible, but it’s the only weakness he’ll allow himself that’s any of those things. It’s hard to believe wanting every part of one thing makes him bad; when it’s all he wants he’s a lot less greedy then people who want a little of everything, right?

…

Right?

Paul’s never been known for violent emotion. Even rage always tempers itself as a mild annoyance by the time it finds release from his mouth. There are some things he’s simply not built for, weight lifting and reaching tall cabinets and succumbing to sudden explosions of feeling. He is simply not made to do it.

Everything done must be done with temperance, and so the first time they kissed they were slightly drunk, disassociated from the concept of future or consequence.

It happened because Paul stumbled, and Art caught him. It happened because he was flushed, and dim light filtered through his hair and gave his features a haloed, beatific look. It happened because his eyes were concerned and stained glass opaque, and also simply because Paul wanted to. It was easy as sighing, a second to lean forward and a second to do it.

He didn’t push, and Art didn’t pull away, and for a moment it was the most perfect, effortless thing he’d ever done. He didn’t need thoughts or rationalizations to know it was perfect, he just knew.

It wasn’t premeditated, which is the only thing that saved it from being a cliché when they examined it later.

Pride has very little to do with Paul’s life.

Neurotic, needy, self loathing, yes. Prideful? About what?

But there are some things even he won’t do, he tells himself. Some lows nothing can drive him to. He does not beg. He does not cry in public. And he does not miss Art Garfunkel.

He doesn’t. Nothing can convince him that he does. He doesn’t miss Art's skin, or his scent, or any of those stupid, annoying things he does that drive Paul crazy. He doesn’t miss them because if he did it would be too much like letting Art win. And if there’s one thing that makes Paul's battered ego dig in its heels, it’s admitting that he needs Art. He doesn’t. Art needs him a Hell of a lot more than he needs Art, and if he tells himself that enough times it’s going to become true.

It’s looking like Art’s little rebellion is becoming more and more of a deliberate move, an intentional distancing, and damn if that doesn’t hurt more than anything else about this whole damn ‘Catch-22’ debacle. He doesn’t let it hurt him, because there’s some scrap of dignity he needs to hold on to.

Paul is not a proud man and he does not let himself miss Art. And he doesn’t let himself see that Art misses him, because he made his bed and he’s going to lay in it, come Hell or high water. He does not read regret between the lines of rare letters, and he doesn’t hear the longing in his voice on even rarer phone calls, and that’s fine with him. For once in his life he’s too proud to look at what he’s missing, and the real irony of the whole thing is if he did, if he would just swallow his ego for ten seconds, he could probably stop this thing from becoming a chasm a continent wide. And that’s the worst part about his whole inner hissy fit.

There are so many things Paul Simon hates about concerts; it’s hard to list even one.

He hates the bright lights, the unmerciful eyes in the back of the venue. He hates the heat, the way he sweats and stinks, but mostly it’s the light. The bulbs are so brilliant they strip away any comfortable illusions about himself that he’s built up and he’s just there. A short, balding, awkward Jewish man, timid and naked, hiding behind a guitar and an image that isn’t even his anymore.

He hates the microphones, the way they sit together like two old companions and remind him of all the things they’re not, anymore. How one is tall and one is not, and he always knows where he’s supposed to be. He hates the taste in his mouth, the feigned intimacy with the damn mesh. It makes him throw up after almost every concert. It tastes like blood in the back of his throat.

He hates the silences between the songs that he’s expected to fill. Dammit, they’re his songs, and they should stand alone, except he’s supposed to be an entertainer too, and he’s not. He’s in the wrong business, but he loves the music so impossibly much; it’s his trade off to make, his choice, and his price to pay.

He hates being away from his family. He hates the traveling and falling asleep in a different state than he wakes up in, and only seeing those yellow lines in the distance. He hates the cramped quarters with Art, because he used to love the cramped quarters with Art. The question of ‘Where do we go from here?’ hangs sharp and pungent in the air, and he hates how he can’t answer it.

Mostly he hates the look in Art’s eyes, the way he’ll just stare thoughtfully, and Paul will have the nerve to think ‘Yeah, maybe’ when really it’s ‘No. Never again’. He hates the questions, the haunted, blue grey ‘Why don’t you love me anymore?’ that Paul can’t answer because he doesn’t even know himself anymore. He does still love Art, and he always will, but then again he doesn’t, and he can’t, so saying it is like a spell with its own unraveling worked into the fabric of it. It can’t exist. He can’t do that to Artie. Not again. He’s not that selfish anymore.

For most people, falling in love is a gradual thing. Paul Simon fell in love, in that moment, without any of the messy preambles.

Oh, he had loved Art before, and he knew it. But he had gone through the process 30 years ago. And sometime in between, he had forgotten. Not that he ever stopped, because ceasing to love someone wasn’t in Paul’s nature. He had always known he was in love with Art, but in the past 20 years it had lost its meaning. He knew it in the same way he knew the sky was blue; it was important to know, he knew it wouldn’t change, but he’d never really felt the need to go out and check, just to be sure.

He had lost that vertigo, butterfly of doom in the stomach, heart twisting sort of love, and was left with this: He loved Art simply because he always had. It was love without real purpose, as though he might as well have loved a chair.

Now they were face to face, and the random, aimless feeling that had long ago turned into itself and existed solely for its own sake came swelling back without any of the precursors. Those emotions didn’t just let love grow; they were the building blocks. And now he was stuck at the top of a temple whose base had eroded years ago, stuck in that moment between Wiley Coyote stopping the chase and realizing he wasn’t on the ground anymore. All he could do was hang on to something as time tore down the walls with tyrannical dispassion, leaving him to rebuild.

The last thing he expected to hold onto was Art Garfunkel. But there he was, warm and living.

It was something he’d never have enough of saying, now that the taste was on his tongue. “I love you,” he whispered, and for the first time since the late 60s, he really knew what it meant when he said it.