at midnight on asphalt - Anonymous (2024)

John had always been consumed by abnormalities.

At first, it had manifested as an obsessive flipping through pages of medical journals in libraries throughout his teenage years — an assurance of ‘future doctor, me’ with a crooked grin to whoever sneered at him for it, or a more curt ‘f*ck you’re looking at?’ when he wasn’t in the mood to play nice. Leaning against the wall, sitting on the windowsill, at a table, on the rug, studying each picture and drawing of amputated limbs, malformed faces, bodies disfigured by some fatal error in their development.

He’d never been one for biology in school, but he’d sit by the window, head bent so low his nose would nearly press against the yellowed pages, and study each line, each wrinkle of skin, each pore. Each bruise. Each nub. Sneak the books home while the prissy librarians aren’t looking and hide them under his bed, never to be returned.

It wouldn’t be long until a variety of contorted, mutilated forms — not quite humanoid, but not quite animal, either — would wriggle into his sketchbooks alongside pretzeled female bodies. He’d pass them around to his friends just to watch them scrunch up their noses at him, or proudly present them to his art teachers just to see the discontentment in their eyes, the revulsion tugging at the corners of their mouths, to have them complain about him not doing his work again. Little Francis Bacon Junior, him.

It had come as no surprise to him, then, when at the age of thirteen, he’d quickly had to learn the two principles of survival: never let the other boys see you weak, and keep your eyes away from shirts stretched over back muscles or hairy arms exposed by rolled up sleeves.

“Give it back, you sod,” Paul squeaks, visibly trying to bite back the laughter bubbling in the back of his throat as he latches onto John’s wrists and tugs at him with such force that they both risk toppling over.

He’s never been good at resisting John’s penchant for lunacy.

“Don’t want ta,” he shoots back, aiming for taunting, yet voice void of any genuine power with how vigorously his breath is forced out of him as soon as he hits the ground.

“God, you’re just—”

In only a matter of seconds, John finds himself wedged beneath the brute on the rough carpet of their hotel room; not straddled, no — Paul’s always been sparing with touch, lest he be called a queer for it. With his left leg still on the floor against John’s waist, he hoists his right knee onto his chest, threatening to cave it in if John so much as squirms.

For just a moment, he tries to picture himself a man unable to tame his innate sad*stic streak even for Paul, and contemplates diving right into an assault, teeth first, sinking them into his jugular. Slicing an artery open with a canine — he can imagine the taste of it, coppery and foul, like when he chews his cheek raw — or biting his earlobe off. Wrenching his wrists from the weak hold and pummeling his face into a slurry of runny flesh and gore. Slaughtering him, because that’s easier to forgive than the alternative. He stays put.

As Paul successfully retrieves his notebook from where John’s startled arm lay limp on the rug and clambers away, tripping over himself like a newborn foal, John’s brain can barely register anything save for the leftover warmth of his friend’s calf where the length of it had rested on his torso.

All at once, it seems that every organ in John’s body contracts and the rotten thing deep in the pit of his stomach goes into bloom with a sudden burst of scorching heat. He’s gross. He’s disgusting. He’s no different than the queers, the ones who will cry and yowl in that sissy, black-and-white movie leading lady way; who will throw a tantrum when things don’t go their way. John hated fa*gs. Always did. Freaks. But the worst part is he can’t stop it, he can’t stop the violent bloom in his lower belly, and Paul is acting normal, like it’s fine. Blissfully unaware of it.

Paul demonstratively brushes off his notebook onto his shirt, nonplussed, as if to rid it of his mere essence, all the while John’s fingers itch to claw off every body part of his that had been desperately grabbed at as the other man searched for an easy win over him.

The apple tree in front of his childhood home forever remains at the forefront of John’s mind, even as the mere thought of home makes him ill now. Presence gone, but memory stagnant. Stable.

He still sees it in his dreams, sometimes, when his brain retches out a distant memory of home. Dreams so vivid they fool him into thinking he’s there, at times. He can’t recall the last time he’d dreamt of Julia or Mimi, but he’d see that apple tree, the one he’d hugged as a child so many times he lost count. The one he’d been tied to many times as the bandit or the crook in games he’d played with his friends. His strays.

There’d been a sick sort of pleasure, then, in seeing Paul’s face, normally so poised and smooth, be completely shattered in that accident. To see his mouth and nose encrusted with thick, oxidised blood; his left eye drooping from the bruised, swollen mass of aubergine flesh around its socket pressing on it. That’s what you get for running off with someone else, thinks John emphatically, a twisted sort of glee crackling around in his brain.

“There’s that bit there,” Paul tries explaining to him one day, his eyes pinned to the paper that lay in his lap and hand waving about, but not pointing at anything in particular. “The little...”

His voice tapers off to a sort of hum in his concentration. They’re sat on the edge of the bed side by side, with Paul absentmindedly tapping his unlit cigarette against his lip as he pores over the lyrics, and John fiddling around with a guitar string, trying to follow his line of sight for the bit he’s talking about, specs weighing heavy on the bridge of his nose.

They’re not quite close enough to touch — the leg Paul has curled under himself is just a hair away from his thigh — but their knees knock against each other when John wobbles it out of boredom. Paul casually shifts away, and the rusty springs of the old lumpy mattress underneath them groan loudly at the movement. His lips purse around his cigarette in displeasure at the sound. John averts his eyes.

“Yeah, it’s this one right here.” He yanks his cig away from where he’d been nursing on it and hums the tune he’d been thinking of, a few beats faster than they’d written it, just to get it out.

“D’ye need a light?”

“Huh?” Paul jolts, but his face betrays no emotion. When they accidentally skim each other again, this time grazing each other’s calves, John’s the one to budge.

“It’s just ye keep chomping that there,” he quips, gesturing in his general direction with a loose hand. The grin on his lips equal parts friendly teasing and a baring of teeth. “Didn’t think ye still needed a dummy at your big age.”

“Shut it,” Paul replies with no real venom, only an underlying sense of authority in his voice, and that is that. He doesn’t push.

It hadn’t come as a surprise to John, not really, when he first noticed it. He’d long known he was sick in the head; he’d been plagued by deviant fantasies for as long as he’d known what sex is — taking two girls at a time, girls who’d later begin figuring as mother and daughter in his mind, or doing it in public, or seducing a much older woman.

When he turned sixteen, he’d taken to f*cking short-haired frumpy girls against the cold granite headstones of the cemetery near the docks. At first, they’d be miffed at the request to desecrate a grave that way, of course, the good Catholic girls they were. Even so, the alternative of risking getting caught under their own roof by their austere mothers seemed a far less acceptable outcome, so they’d give in.

It’d be the same grave nearly every time — John was a one-trick pony in that way. The damp dirt would creak under his knees with every thrust and the broads would chew at their chapped lips in their plight to keep quiet, only their heavy breathing and the rustling of a dress shirt against a lifted tweed skirt audible over the low rumble of distant ocean waves.

At nineteen, John would start haunting the shadowy staircases of his art school. He’d slip out into the hall just to prowl around the flocks of sheepish girls that seemed endemic to any public space, clinging to every windowsill and corner like black mould, each one indistinguishable from the next. Every one of them making a spectacle of the same old practised routine: wringing their hands, flushing a deep red on command and hiding their faux high giggles behind narrow, spider-fingered palms.

He’d choose whichever one preened at him most, ignoring her hunched shoulders, slightly crooked fringe, comically long prudish skirt or large, bulbous nose, and prod at her with a charm only nineteen-year-old boys possess, all attempted suaveness with a fragile core and a litany of insults under their tongue in case they get rejected.

It wouldn’t be long until John had one of them up against a cold metal hand railing, hand under her skirt, long, manicured nails digging deep into his arms, on the brink of drawing blood. He’d keep his eyes fixed on the chipped paint of the wall as his breathing grew laboured over the slope of her collarbone. The curled wisps of her dishwater blonde or mousy brown hair trembling under his agape mouth like aspen leaves in the wind.

It almost seemed inevitable that his eyes would start trailing the junction of Paul’s neck and shoulder, exposed by the undone collar of his shirt, or the wrinkles in the fabric of his trousers as they stretched over his thighs.

As soon as they step out into the alley, the violent shivers kick off near instantly, right through their leather jackets — the late German autumn evenings not known for being particularly forgiving — and John swiftly regrets having gone out at all. It looks as though it’d been raining; the eaves drip a steady stream of water onto the cobblestone path, tiny puddles forming in the gaps of where the rocks slope down, and the air bleeds a moisture that can only come from a late October shower.

The both of them crash their backs against the wall of the shoddy club, still pulsing with disjointed conversations and out-of-tune music, though most patrons have long since left, exhausted and piss drunk. John pulls a cigarette out of a beaten up carton in his inner jacket pocket, fingers long itching for one, and sticks it between his lips. Paul doesn’t appear to be looking at him — damn John for never wearing his glasses, stubborn c*nt, — his head turned toward the whor*s that start swarming every corner the moment night falls, playing coy and fruitlessly trying to strike up conversation with anyone who walks past.

He still halfheartedly offers him a smoke through the unoccupied corner of his mouth as he sparks a flame, an edge of a whine in his voice that betrays he doesn’t really mean it — because he only has one left and knows he won’t be able to scrounge up enough to get more before next time. As luck would have it, Paul just weakly shakes his head no — though he doesn’t seem to be listening to him, either, gaze still far away. John shrugs.

“Couldn’t pull, aye?” he asks, peeling his eyes away from where the vague silhouette of Paul’s hips rests against the wall, slanted at an unnatural angle.

“Sod off.” The darkness of the alley and the distance between them are certainly working against John and his myopic eyes, but he can vaguely see the blurry pale blob of Paul’s face flush beet red. “You’re one to speak.”

“I’ve got mine now, son,” John tuts his tongue in pretend sincerity, as though that would stop him — so maybe he couldn’t, big deal — and leans in closer, a lopsided grin twisting his face. “Me bachelor days are long over, ’m afraid.”

Paul snorts at him, as if calling his bluff, and a curl comes loose from his gel slicked hair to rest on his forehead, beaded with sweat. He either doesn’t notice or simply doesn’t seem to mind, because he’s slow to tuck it back into the mass of hair it’d dislodged itself from. It feels nice to make him laugh.

“Tell you what, we go back in,” John starts before he can even think about it, sluggish with drink, a mischievous twinkle playing about in his eye. “Find yourself a nice boy.”

He doesn’t know what possesses him to say it, sloshed as he is; he regrets it as soon as it leaves his mouth. Especially now that the vague image of a stubbly chin against Paul’s long pale neck flashes through his mind unbidden, and instead of being struck with repulsion, something menacing coils low in his belly like a serpent.

Paul doesn’t seem to find the suggestion as funny as he does, either, and he doesn’t break out in giggles or jokingly threaten to pummel him for the mere implication like Pete or George would. Instead, his body goes rigid and his head jerks towards John, almost like a nervous tic. “Am no’ a queer,” he asserts in Scouse so exaggerated it’s almost theatrical. Devastatingly childish in how he lifts his chin in false bravado.

Both of them fall quiet for a second, Paul’s nostrils flaring and breathing noticeably heavier, somehow overpowering the muted racket leaking from the worn brick wall they’re leaning on. John’s back remains flush against it, while Paul contorts sideways so he can look square at him, gaze steady, like his very survival depends on his response. Like they haven’t known each other for years. Like he feels the need to prove himself to John, of all people. John scuffs the ground with his shoe, weirdly annoyed at the thought of it.

“Didn’t say ye were,” he concedes slowly. “Was a joke. Christ.”

Paul’s shoulders deflate from where they were tensed, as if he’d been expecting an ambush, yet his eyes remain wild. His vaudeville eyebrows briefly knit over his face, cherubic and flushed, before he turns away and presses his shoulder blades to the bricks again, and if John were more naïve, he’d peg it as a sign of embarrassment.

“And it’s not that grim, anyroad,” he decides, the leather of his jacket creaking as he shifts to a more comfortable position, fingers dancing around the cigarette wedged between his knuckles.

“What is?”

“Being a fa*g,” John says, too drunk to really consider it, and winces at his own choice of words before taking a long drag. “Not like they can help it, can they?” He adds for good measure as he tries to resist choking on the smoke, oddly defensive for reasons his drunken mind doesn’t dwell on.

A sharp stillness shrouds them. John drops the stub of his cigarette to the ground and crushes it with the pointed toe of his shoe, the crunch of wet gravel ringing out loud as the crack of a whip. The answer he’s waiting for doesn’t come, the other man — boy, more like — now seemingly entranced by the glimmer of wet cobblestone under the early moon, eyes pointed down. John shifts uneasily.

“S’not their fault they were bloody well born like that,” he presses, somehow eager to get him to agree. As if he has a damn horse in the race.

“Yeah. I guess, yeah,” Paul answers after a beat, shifting back to his painstakingly manicured Queen’s English, like he’s forgotten what they’d been talking about. For a second, he scrunches up his nose in consideration of what he’d just heard, like a child. “Just don’t get what two lads could… want together, like.”

John scoffs in almost-laughter, and an inexplicable pang of dread jolts up his spine like a crackle of electricity.

There’s a strange moment of clarity as he’s sitting around in a room full of people who are near strangers to him, offering them bits and pieces of his life in exchange for companionship. Disemboweling himself for them.

Thing is, it’s like Paul is living in his head sometimes. Seems to be turning up in his dream palace quite a lot, at least, much more than seems to be healthy or normal. Though they spend most of their time writing music, or laughing, or talking about normal things, like music or girls or sex, when they’re together, his dreams are everything but. It’s true; he’s had dreams where they’re nose to nose writing music, just like they do in real life, but there always seems to be something beyond it. Some unidentifiable undercurrent lurking behind every gaze and giggle, disrupting the fragile matrix of their routine.

Even these kinds of dreams quickly devolve into ones he seems to have most often — the ones where Paul is on top of him, f*cking into him, bed creaking wildly, and he doesn’t care about staying quiet. Ones where John is dragging his nails down his back like girls have done to him, leaving angry purple welts in their wake, because it’s just so—— whatever. Those dreams are wild and good, real good, but strangely tranquil, like he’s not really there. As if he’s watching a vague image of himself play the part. Submerged in a bathtub, a mirage playing out before him through the ripples in the surface of the water. Like he can’t feel pain, or pressure, or movement.

Sometimes, they’re sweet about it. Well, he’s heard Paul with some of his broads before; hard not to, with how often they’re trapped in the same room. Seemed real saccharine, whispering baby, sweetheart, darling, other slurred words of adoration into their skin. They’d ring out razor sharp over the girls’ pathetic mewls — it’d be all John could hear, that and his impassioned grunting.

He doesn’t know — can’t decide — how it would be with the two of them, if they were to ever do it. It’s not a thought worth entertaining, even — they wouldn’t. He sure as hell can’t control where his mind goes when he’s asleep, though. John thinks he’d prefer it rough, just so it wouldn’t be sappy. He’s no fa*g, and he’s sure as hell not a bird. He doesn’t need to be placated or comforted through it.

He can’t help but come back to the same conclusion every time — that maybe he could’ve tried it years ago. It might have worked, and maybe it wouldn’t have even needed to be — whatever. Maybe Paul would’ve also called him darling, or baby, all f*cked out and spur of the moment-like, if John had his mouth around him, swallowing him down, but it’s not like it was required. It could’ve just been a mutual tossing off. Maybe Paul would’ve let John do it to him, just work him with his hand, if he was drunk or high or desperate enough. John didn’t even need to be called baby, or anything. John didn’t need anything.

(Once, he dreams of Paul’s lips gasping the word angel into the junction of his neck as he comes, and if he wakes with his pants soiled like a teenager, that’s his business and his alone.)

Sometimes, the dreams lose their usual lust. There’s no desperation, no heat, no sweat. Those seem the cruelest. There’s a hand in his hair, stroking him slowly, and when he lets his arm fall back to rest on the mattress, his knuckles knock against a leg. There’s him: with John, near John, and even there, in the dream, John can’t seem to say it out loud. But when he gets the courage to say it into his knee, breath damp and hot against the fabric, he says it back. Louder.

It’s those that have his heart beating out of sync and his gut wound tighter when he wakes up than the ones where he’s on his knees, or has his hair pulled, or is rutting against another body.

The pleased grin that warps Wooler’s mug as he awaits a response betrays a confidence that doesn’t yet realise that John is not above waging a war. That John is not above busting his face — the glint of the chandelier on his artificial pearly whites so blinding it makes his fingertips vibrate — and slitting his throat, if he willed it so. That John is not above mauling him.

He wishes he could be like George and slag him off, not caring enough to aim for comprehensibility by toning down his Scouse anymore; to grimace and have the young, yet already deep-seated wrinkle by his mouth abruptly materialise from silent fury. He wishes he could be like George, the wee child he is, and let himself quietly be pulled off and maneuvered away without making a fuss, somewhere far, far away from a fistfight, from a quarrel, from f*cking—— peril.

Or he could be like Paul, and just pretend no one said anything, let his eyes go glassy and look right through him. The same way he’s always been an expert at ignoring things he doesn’t like. The same way he will keep his eyes pointed at a newspaper in a perfect mimicry of reading when Brian says something he doesn’t want to hear.

There’s a quiet moment, over the wall of noise and what must be the sound of blood bubbling in his ears, when John comes to and sees the c*nt pinned under him, battered and bruised. Sees the area around his grin that he’d been ramming his fists into — now less face and more thing, akin to the raw pork ribs hanging on a hook at a butcher’s — and he has a haunting premonition that this will really be it.

When someone finally has enough sense to pull him off and wrench away whatever object he’d picked up and started flogging Wooler with, rough in his clammy fists, his limbs are numb. He’s left to watch his body stumble over itself from just a few coordinates outside of where his heart beats, someone vaguely familiar clinging to its side, hauling it around like a drunkard and hissing alien words into its ear. Distant. Unfamiliar, like he’s looking over its shoulder.

The awareness comes later, when Cynthia’s gliding her hand up the gap between his shoulder blades and spinning her fingers into the damp curls at the base of his skull in an attempt to calm him down. His split knuckles still pulsing; blood still thrumming hot, close to feverish, in the nape of his neck.

He should feel relief, but he just feels cold.

When it’s over, he feels nothing. The searing heat that would have torn his ribcage to shreds years ago has long resigned to a dull ache: barely there, yet ever present. Like a phantom limb.

John doesn’t really know why Paul’s new plaything annoys him so. Jane. Carrot hair, a meek, sour expression colouring her face as she’s introduced to him. Well, he can guess. Young, for one. Real pretty thing, sure. Actress. Trim. Anyone would be lucky to get with a thing like that, and Paul just happened to swoop in and steal her at the right time. Paul’s twenty and on top of the world, unlike him, already bogged down with a wife and a newborn. Of course he’s jealous.

Paul’s twenty and on top of the world, and he doesn’t have vivid visions of f*cking his male best friend, and he doesn’t furiously jerk himself to them until he’s raw later. Paul’s twenty and normal, and Paul gets to have a pretty actress all to himself. Not that she’s that pretty; John could do better. They both could. But, John figures, it would make sense that he would be jealous of him.

When Paul pecks the top of her head and everything in John’s body curdles like milk, though, it sure as hell doesn’t feel that way.

It’s a wonder, really, how they just manage to clamber into Paul’s room with only the moonlight as their guiding star, without waking Paul’s father. The two of them have long since stripped to their underpants and tumbled into his narrow bed to sleep, each of their heads resting at the other’s heels, and Paul’s breathing has long settled into a steady lull; far from the hysterical giggles that’d been tearing his mouth and body apart even twenty minutes before.

John’s head, though, is still reeling with excitement, not even a tad calmer from how it’d been before, and it’s this night, like any other sleepless bright night before, moonlight penetrating the curtains and tinting everything a cold hue, that John finds he can’t fall asleep.

Must be the light, he reckons; his vision’s always been worse in the dark, even with his specs on, but it’s hard to go to bed now that he can make out quite a bit of the sun bleached posters on the wall or the cabinet at the far end of the room. If he just squints a little.

So perhaps it is that, combined with the familiarity of having a warm body so close to his, that has him unable to unglue his eyes from where Paul has the duvet bunched around his waist. Or his gaze gliding up the slope of his chest, where a thin white cotton undershirt stretches across it just a little. The forearm hastily thrown over his body, heavy and lifeless; its dark furriness making his stomach lurch in that weird way his princess-like face couldn’t.

When the light hits his skin just right, it glows fish underbelly-white. Pale and tender like the flesh of a cod, flayed open and washed crimson. Almost blending in with the shade of his shirt, or the linens strewn over and around his body like a failed embalming. His collarbone, too; how it moves under his skin amid his muscles — the narrow valleys behind them hollowing when he hunches — or how sharply his shoulder juts out even when it’s relaxed. A pang of something bitter crawls up John’s throat at the sight, like a rat in a drainpipe, and perches itself high up on his tongue. Skin stretched over a sharp carcass.

“Paul?” he calls out into the dark, and he really will say it this time, sleep-drunk and hazy, if only Paul calls his name back. If he doesn’t bite his tongue in time. He really will.

When all John gets in response is a vague, mostly unconscious groan, he rolls over onto his side and doesn’t say anything beyond that. Maybe it’s better that way, even — not having to confront him. Moments later, he starts his count again, and he manages to get to one, two, three, four, five, before the images he’s tortured himself with countless times come alive before him again, his throat itchy with the need to cough them away.

He doesn’t hang around fairies a lot — or, well, he does, they all do, but that’s only because their lisps are funny, and he and George can mock their swishiness and loose wrists when they turn their backs. He doesn’t talk to them much at all, though not for lack of trying; there’s only so much he can do to fight his profound helplessness in all things German. What’s more important is he doesn’t talk to them about any of that. He doesn’t ask about the gross parts, like who puts what where or why they even do it. That is to say, he knows the gist, he’s not daft, but if he really ponders the mechanics of it — of two boys in one bed — with Paul’s heartbeat at his heels for too long, his head will start spinning.

Point is, he doesn’t hang around fa*gs enough to know how that, or anything, works, and he doesn’t particularly like lingering on it. What he does know, though, is that it must feel good if they do it, and that’s enough to have him wondering. Even then, it’s not the same — it’s not, because John would be fine just having him in his hand, like he does to himself. Just out of some strange sort of adoration, maybe. Out of gratitude for finally having an equal. That’s it. He wouldn’t ask for anything in return — wouldn’t even let him if he wanted to. And it’s not even really queer that way, just helping a friend. Just that. Even that would be good.

One in four?

A sudden snort and the distant clang of a guitar hitting the ground startle him out of a pleasant reverie, and John grudgingly tilts his head down from where his neck is craned over the cushion of an armchair to look at the culprit. He must’ve been near dozing off right there on the floor; saliva coats his mouth sweet, and the parts of his legs where his pants had ridden up to show bare skin are sore with burns from the matted rug underneath him. The hard wooden carcass of the chair digging into his upper back, sure to leave an angry red welt in its wake.

Could’ve been a damn good kip, it could’ve.

“I can’t write like this,” the figure that lay sprawled out on the floor before him — Paul, it’s Paul — tells him, eyelashes fluttering heavy, scleras tinged red and voice so strained it sounds caught between a laugh and a cry. If it wasn’t for his back convulsing as a fit of wheezy giggles swept through him, John would think it was the latter.

Realising that he won’t be gratified with a response, Paul stretches his body out on the carpet like a cat in a yawn, with his arms above his head and back arching off the ground, chest heaving a surprised groan at the vertebrae in his spine clicking with the movement. The stretch has his foot knocking against John, who’s suddenly made aware of just how close their bodies are. Made aware of how it seems like they only spend time alone when they’re writing, these days, too, but the thought is fleeting.

“Got more?” Paul asks, languidly rubbing his face with one hand and tousling the clumps of his unwashed hair with the other. That, in tandem with the sigh at the edge of his voice, leaves no doubt that he means the spliff, vague enough as he is.

“Greedy, are ye?” John’s teasing has lost some of its bite, high as he is, but Paul wheezes out a light chuckle, the same way he’d always been quick to crack up.

The pleasant sound of his laugh has John’s eyes fluttering shut, and he tosses his head back over the seat of the armchair again, chest suddenly aquiver with the frantic urge to touch him. Instead, he keeps his hands to himself and feels his face warp into a smile, genuine like it hasn’t been in a long time. “All I had, son.”

He’s never been a man of strong resolve, that much he has to admit. Which is precisely why, all but a second later, he lets his palm plop heavy on Paul’s ankle, experimentally dipping his fingers under the hem of his pant leg. The limb jitters at the sudden intrusion, as if to shake him off, and John relents for a second before returning it to where it had found a home on the man’s skin.

Once he’s sure Paul won’t try to rid himself of his hand again, he allows his fingertips to inch up his calf little by little, the want eating him alive, only for him to jostle his leg again. He doesn’t open his eyes, though his eyelids twitch and he can barely hide the smile that threatens to break out on his lips. Like it’s a game they’re playing. Like it’s a game to him.

“All you’re good for, and yet,” comes a whine, a little late, and John lets his fingertips land flat just an inch above his knee, not daring to go any higher now that he feels his hands being tracked by narrowed eyes.

That pulls a snort out of John, unfocused as he is. Just as he’s getting used to the electric current of Paul’s body sizzling under his touch — he could get used to this, he could, he could get used to this—— oh, Paul’s pulling away, Paul’s gone, and he’s not sure if he can muster up anything else to say as an excuse to keep him nearby.

He’s left to mourn the absence of his body heat beside him, to listen to him trudging around the room — clumsy, yet weightless, like a spirit, like he’s not really there. To pluck at the hem of the rug seam by seam the same way he imagined Paul had picked at the curtains in his father’s room when he was a child as an act of defiance — his little brother telling John this story once with a smile, Paul himself quiet.

When Julia dies, it makes sense. It makes sense that he would get the last laugh in any way he could.

Paul’s worst trait, John decides after brief consideration, fingers clenching around a fork, has to be his dim-wittedness.

Just why he would decide that bringing his ditzy little chit of the week to dinner was the ordinary thing to do, he has no idea. All he knows is she’s here, perched on a chair at their table, with them, knees pressed together so tight they’ve almost gone white, like she’s been taught, proper, not touching her food and sneaking unsure looks at each of their faces, like she’s trying to figure them out.

It’s not her. Would be a right fox, too, young thing — if only she wasn’t making these f*cking cow eyes at Paul. Fidgeting, like this is a date. Like she’s important. Like she’s not just one of the hundreds of slags Paul has had this year alone. Like she has a right to a seat at their table, earned it, somehow, and Paul cares about anything to do with her beyond getting into a warm c*nt for the night.

As she leans into him and grazes his shoulder with hers — on purpose, he’s sure, all these types know is conniving and vamping around — he can sense something unraveling deep within. Less like a flower blossoming and more its bulb getting crushed by a car tire, petals flattened and torn. Dirty tracks running them. Vicious, like the widening jaws of a spreading fire. Like his own mouth before he says something he can’t and won’t take back.

He shouldn’t be surprised by Paul smiling back. He shouldn’t. He is, and when Paul looks back at her, the flickering light of the candles on the table dancing in his eyes, John scrapes his teeth on the fork so loudly that George scowls at the noise. Shrugging nonchalantly, he keeps chewing, even though his throat feels like it’s been wrapped in barbed wire. Keep him under lock and key, John thinks. If he could.

For the first time in years that he’s been entirely sober, John stops to think that perhaps it had all been a mistake. A fluke. That it could very well have been the drugs frying his brain, crossing some wires for him, and laying off them for good just might fix him.

The revelation dawns on him right as their arrival to India marks a week. He knows this because he’s got a good memory, and because he’s been counting every single day since the stupidest decision he’s ever made in his life: taking a shovel to the ground of his garden, dumping his stash in there — the psychedelics and the grass and whatnot — and tucking it away with the same damp, loamy soil, before getting on the plane the next morning. He’d buried all of it, because he was convinced this trip would change his life. Yet, the longer he has to go without so much as a joint, all jittery and alone with his sober thoughts, the more he curses himself for what a moron he can be.

Which is how they ended up at the long dinner table in the ashram, clattering dishes and forks, politely asking each other to pass the salt, please. All fifteen, or twenty, or thirty or so of them, he didn’t bother counting — acquaintances, friends, family, lovers.

Paul’s there, too — though it doesn’t feel like he’s any of these at this point — a couple of seats away, laughing and lifting a cup to his lips to take a sip. Perched on the very edge of his chair, its hind legs teetering with every sudden movement, like he has to be ready to spring up and flee at any moment. Like a timid woodland creature. It’s a funny image — Paul wobbling across a frozen lake like a fawn, knock-kneed and barely upright — but he hasn’t the energy to crack a smile.

Here sits John, too, picking at the scraps of food on his fork with the tips of his teeth, and it’s almost as if Mimi can transcend time and space with how he can hear her tutting at him and telling him not to play with his food, voice like steel, or feel the phantom of her swift backhand on the back of his head. Good thing she’s not here, then, he thinks before picking at another chunk of egg on his plate, because there’s not much else to do around here. Besides stealing glances at everyone’s faces, but he’s sure to make them brief enough so they don’t think he’s staring. As if it’s a big deal.

In his hunt for faces to look at, he spots Cynthia, copper-haired Cynthia, quietly chewing by Pattie one seat over to his left, like a cow grinding grass with its molars, jaw tight, but he takes great care not to let his eyes cling to her. There’s this unspoken damper between the two of them. He’d snapped at her earlier this morning; she’d awoken with the bells before the sun had even breached the horizon and gently tousled his shoulder to get him out of bed for morning meditation. Her hair had already been brushed and laid flat on her head, a wisp of it falling in his face and tickling his cheek when she bent her head for a whisper, and he’d said—— something.

It’d been venomous and bitter, that much he can tell. He can’t remember now. All he knows is he felt the weight on the other side of the bed relent and the quiet shuffling of feet on the floorboards grow silent. An apology from him, a sincere one, is not even in the realm of possibility, most of the time, and she knows this, so it’ll be a few hours of silence at most before they go back to normal — normal for them now being an awkward sort of distance, with Cynthia still desperately trying to lull him into a steady life, a family life, a home life, and John evading her as best as he can. Slipping through the cracks of her fingers every single time. Dragging himself out of the bear trap on his hands and knees. But John doesn’t mind. Doesn’t even care much, really. Hasn’t in a long time.

Paul. Magnetic as ever — still, maybe even more so than when he’s high off his mind. John doesn’t even attempt to avoid his face, though it seems wrong now, somehow, and he realises he’s staring when the man lifts his eyes up at him and smiles. They crinkle in the corners, a lightness in the movement that’s both memorized and unfamiliar, and the scar that’s almost faded stretches slightly along with his lips. It’s hard to even spot if you don’t know what to look for, really, especially with it being mostly eclipsed by stubble now, but John’s never forgotten. A blemish in his otherwise perfect face; proof that he can be human, too — at times.

Once his gaze starts slipping from the chip in his front tooth to the bone of his wide, unmistakably masculine wrist, he snaps his attention back down to his plate, almost making himself motion sick with the swiftness of the movement. It’s a woozy type of feeling — being up early in the morning, no coffee, no acid, no co*ke, trying to parse the hushed chatter well enough to at least focus on a single strain of conversation, none of them that involve him. That soon proves to be impossible, so he gives up, but still times his chuckles just in time to seem involved. Normal. The same.

Now that he’s sober, painfully sober, John thinks that perhaps there’d never even been a time before—— this, whatever it is. At least, he can’t recall; it’s hard to even remember a life before Paul, now that he’s so far removed from it. Or George, that is. Or Rich. At that.

Sometimes, it drives him up the wall to think that no one’s noticed. That his wife doesn’t think it uncouth how he’d rather spend time with a man at the other end of his bed than with her. That her husband would rather lure him into their shared bed under the pretence of writing songs in private —— like there isn’t plenty of space to do so somewhere else, with the excuse that it’s too hot out, too humid, the sun’s too bright still. Just to have him there. Just to have him on his bed.

As John lies in bed on his back, a thin sheet neatly spread over him and hands knit over his stomach, he comes to the conclusion that something has to change. Something that’s easy. Easy and possible to achieve, even if it’s temporary, just to keep himself from crawling out of his skin.

He can’t wait until all of it shrinks into a pebble; a tiny organism, all pulse and no substance, left to quietly swell in the cavern of his chest. He can’t wait, really. Until it’s but an anecdote John could tell him one day, when they’re old and frumpy, each of them crawling with a litter of grandchildren — can you believe I fancied you once, you old c*nt? — but it doesn’t seem very funny now. Not when he could very well snap from the feeling, stuff his pockets full of rocks and wade into the river flowing just a mile or two away. Let the water swallow him.

Right now, though, all he needs is to—— get away from here. He doesn’t know what he was thinking, going cold turkey, but it’s certainly not helping — heartache doesn’t bode well with the constant sort of soreness in his bones that comes with withdrawal, one that eats away at him like rust at metal.

He spares a look at where Cynthia lay curled up at the very edge of her side of the bed, like she’s scared to bother him any more than she already has. At her back, rising rhythmically with each breath, stirring loose clumps of her chestnut hair that she’d long since given up on massacring with bleach to complete whiteness, just to please him.

He might have to start with her, it seems; ask for another room, maybe. Somewhere he could be alone and not have to think. Might do him good.

He’d imagined it happening in lots of different ways; that’s what happens when you’re sick in the head and have too much free time.

Paul’s hands woven tight around his wrists, holding him down, knee between his legs or, in better, nicer fantasies, hoisted onto his chest, threatening to crush his ribcage under its pressure.

His palm snaking up John’s sternum to rest on his neck, then pressing down until he hears him gasp for air, or pulling his hair until his scalp burns, holding him down so he can’t escape. Forcing himself down his throat, when he’s really close.

“I could—— do you want me to,” John begins, and almost chokes on the words, despite trying really hard not to. Like a dimwit. It sounds more like a statement than a question like this: do you want me to. Period. No question mark. No lilt in his voice at the end to make one.

Paul’s eyes dart up at him, alert, like he can tell what he’s getting at before he’s even said it, except he can’t, not really. Not anymore. Long gone are the times when they were almost a shared consciousness, glued at the hip like Siamese twins, which makes him think that maybe he should have tried it when Paul would still listen to him. When he’d hang onto every word he said like a puppy and didn’t yet need a life of his own. When his face was still pudgy with baby fat and he still wore those horrid wide-leg trousers, when his hair was still short and cow-licked tight to his scalp. When he still had his dad controlling every f*cking thing about him. Maybe he could have had something, at least a little, then.

The split second when he could have finished his sentence fast enough for it to not be weird passes, so he inches his hand a little closer to Paul’s leg on the bed instead, steadfast and confident, and Paul must understand, because his eyes flash with a brief recognition. Betrayed, as always, by the one organ, the one body part he could never truly control; could never mold to fit his prerogative. It’s gone as quickly as it appears, and he morphs his mouth back into a more neutral line from where it’d been slanted down unknowingly. The harsh wrinkle running by one of its corners smooths out in a heartbeat, his eyes brightening again.

Glasses, John’s discovered, are a beast of their own. It’s a torturous existence, really — being able to see after years of having to get used to talking to humanoid blobs and damn near ramming his face into whatever he’s trying to read. He’d always hated his specs: hated the way they weighed down on his nose and left angry welts on it in their wake, hated how they fogged up whenever he drank tea, hated how they made him look smart, and hated how he needed them, most of all.

And what a strange thing, good sight: he can see every single one of Paul’s pores, or his early wrinkles, or the peach fuzz lining his skin. The ambiguous curve of his furrowed eyebrow, betraying an emotion he can’t quite put a name to, but sees many shades of — the same way an apparition of his father always seems to only haunt certain angles of the mirror. Truth is, he can see all of it, and he thinks he prefers the other world, the blurry one, to the one he sees with his glasses on. Would make it easier, he laments.

Paul tries hacking at the tension with a giggle; an empty, airy thing, like the dulled blade of an axe. The same kind of laughter as when he hears something he’s not privy to, but attempts to fake understanding to fit in — eyes wide and sparkling in that meaningless way, tongue peeking out to wet his lips in a way that always made it hard not to look. John can already feel him preparing some kind of pointless drivel to steer them away from the conversation — d’ya think Richie has any on him? I could kill for some, I could — but it’s clear Paul knows that if he doesn’t confront it now, he might just end up carved into ribbons by John’s teeth and nails alone.

Before he can decide on what to say next, just to disturb the quiet, something that wouldn’t make him sound depraved, Paul finally responds by humming in vague understanding. Remaining maddeningly put together and neutral, like John’s never been able to be. As if he simply has to always be better than him in every respect. Seems right hellbent on it, at least.

“Guys don’t do that,” he says at last. Just a little late, as if he only just managed to make sense of what he’d heard.

“Sure do,” John shoots back, eyes flashing in challenge. Because they both know damn well that it’s a bullsh*t excuse — what with Brian, and the hundreds of the queers they’d been secretly giggling at while exchanging conspiratorial glances from the time they were in Hamburg. The thought that Paul must be cursing himself in his mind for saying something so daft brings a sort of comfort to him.

As if that wasn’t enough, Paul refuses to move his leg from where John’s pinky scrapes against it with every shift, like John knows he wants to — because he’s trying to prove a point, maybe, or to convince himself that he’s not scared of queers at all. The same way he’d always been desperate to be liked, most of all, and would subject himself to anything to achieve it.

Something sinister deep in John has him wishing he could reach out and land his wide palm high up on his thigh, menacingly close to the heart of his lower half, just to watch him squirm. Reach out and squeeze his flesh. Hard. Like he’s crushing a bug.

“Well,” Paul starts again, and then falls quiet, like he’s racking his brain for what to say next. Then — “Some do.” Like an olive branch. In that irritatingly diplomatic way of his, as if he feels the need to appease him.

“Bet it feels real good, too,” John keeps pressing, because Paul probably already thinks he’s a freak. Because two can play that game — the game of Paul’s invention: a race of consistently steering conversations away from what you don’t like, degree by degree, so you don’t have to look at it with a naked eye. So you don’t ever have to think about it. So you don’t have to think about why your friend never seems to like your girlfriends much, and why his eyes always seem to linger on your mouth.

It doesn’t look like it works quite as well for him, as he doesn’t get rewarded with a response. The only indication that he’d been heard at all is Paul lifting the back of his hand to his face, lazy, and rubbing his nose with it haphazardly, as if caught in a spasm. Every single one of his movements intentional, premeditated, but played off as if they weren’t. He remains deep in thought, and John can feel himself hunching, like he’s five and trying to hide behind his auntie’s skirt again.

“That’s not how that is, though. With us,” Paul tries placating him, like he’s done for years now, like John’s a lit fuse, and it’s funny, it really is. He must be so used to defending them all — defending John — from being called poofters, that he doesn’t seem to realise he’s trying to defend John from himself. “Not us. Y’know?”

It’s hard to keep his glare from turning vacant, what with his glasses slipping farther down his nose, but he doesn’t have half the mind to push them up. He might prefer it like this, too — because he’s not as tempted to peek down to where Paul’s legs bounce nervously, spread ever so slightly, or how his shirt hugs the small pouch at his waist where he’s filled out over the past few months; he can’t afford to be distracted. That, and it’d be near impossible to cross his legs and have it go unnoticed while pinned under Paul’s rapt gaze like a butterfly.

“I’m… we’re not like that. Y’know.”

“Mm. Aren’t we?” John’s aiming for snide, the hard wit he’s famous for, but his voice teeters on the verge of cracking.

They aren’t. He knows they aren’t, they both know it, but hearing it scalds his brainstem just the same. Has him short of breath, just a little. Has the knowledge curling high up in his chest, jittery and unwelcome, threatening to send bile up his throat if he doesn’t get away from him now.

There’s no air in this room. There’s not enough air in this room, he thinks, and he can almost feel a density settling low in his skull, like the very embryo of a migraine. The same tension as the one in his organs as when his clothes start hugging his body in strange spots, or the one that’d sear him from the inside out when Brian, dead Brian, would pin him under his gaze — unseeing, yet oddly piercing. Analytical. Down to the bone.

He hears a terse practised giggle, like Paul realised a few beats too late that he had to react, mind struggling to catch up to the implication, and John wants him to die. He does. He wants him to croak, and Paul should be taking to wringing his fingers in nervousness right about now, too, the choreographed knobhea*d he is — that is, if he was the type to. But he’s not, so he remains infuriatingly put together, not taking his pretend innocent gaze off him. As if John wouldn’t skin himself alive in front of him right now.

He thinks it might be him.

Their shows always end the same: applause and squealing loud enough to risk blowing their eardrums out, and then they leave for a drink at the nearest club — one that won’t be swarming with rabid girls from the audience, where the alcohol will be strong enough to get sloshed right quick. The one they’re at this evening, too, is seedy, and dim, and too warm — warm in a way that makes curiously sub-zero sweat bead on his nose, yet not enough to make them slip off their jackets.

And so, it’s a night like any other; or, rather, it would be if John hadn’t gotten into one of his moods, one where his chest shrivels up with sorrow, and all the drink serves to do is make him more miserable. The two of them, Paul and John, John and Paul, squeezed into a booth together, nursing their drinks. Nearly alone, save for the girls they’d been persistently courting the entire night, one each — the other two of their little troupe having f*cked off somewhere quite a while ago now, likely bummed out by John’s presence alone.

As he gives what’s left of his drink a swirl, he can’t help but mourn their absence. It doesn’t help that he has to watch Paul as he lay draped in his seat with his tie loosened, finger hooked under it like it’s still choking him, his girl pressed up right against his side, legs crossed like John knows he does when his body betrays him. The bottom half of his face looks almost green in this light, what with the 5 o’clock shadow he’d forgotten to shave — or simply figured it wouldn’t even be that big of a deal, not shaving for two days.

His girl’s hair is light, light like Cynthia’s when she comes back from the salon, an expectant smile splitting her face, and something vile knots up above his stomach at the realisation. Something so big and ugly it almost pushes his lungs in — the thought that she’s probably already laid in bed, mumsy nightgown pulled over her body and hair splayed out over the pillow, picking at her nails because she can’t fall asleep. That she’s waiting up for him, thinking about him, listening for the familiar scuffing of his shoes on the drainpipe running up the wall of her house. That she might even put out tonight, if he had half the mind to turn around and come back right now.

Any guilt John might have felt at that is quickly chased away when the girl who’d been pawing at him for most of the evening shucks off her flats and hauls her nylon clad legs onto his lap, one after the other. He’d always preferred bleach blondes, the Bardots — hair so fair they glow a stark white in the sun — but she’s nothing if not a darling little thing, too, though her hair is dark and chopped short and her lips a tad thin for his liking. The seam of one of her stockings is twisted around her calf, slanted down the side of her ankle, strangely bothering him, but he knows better than to try and fix it.

The thing is, girls are pretty, pretty in a way he couldn’t live without, but nearly tasteless — like touching lips to glass or to paper, so it must be—— different. With a man.

Just… different, he decides as he eyes the sweat droplets at the base of Paul’s neck and along his hairline, gleaming even in the dim orange light. His neck stretched out clean across from his own body; nose nestled in the shoulder of the pretty thing clinging to him, lips mouthing a wordless whisper against her skin. Fluttering his eyelashes, like he always did, in that sissy way he knew women liked — for whatever reason. Their flapping quick and sweet, like the tremors in the wings of butterflies.

For one, girls don’t sweat. Girls always smell nice — like detergent and soap and perfume, and some other essence he always thought intrinsic to girls. Girls are clean and soft — they wear dresses that hike up when they sit, and they do so with their knees pressed together, all elegant and feminine. Girls curl their hair — or whatever it is they do to make it stay all nice like that — and twirl it around their fingers when they’re nervous.

They don’t have moustaches, or, God forbid, beards that start to grow in every few days after shaving. They don’t have coarse, pig-like bristles covering the lower half of their face that shine blue in the light, they don’t have nicks left behind on their jaws where the razor ran too close to the skin, and they wouldn’t shudder if he ran his tongue over the sores. They don’t have Adam’s apples that jump when they swallow, or when they’re nervous, or when they’re grazed by teeth.

This line of thought has John jittering, harder than the bass of the music already had, skin whirring where his knee and wrist meet the table, where his heels touch the ground. The melody somehow making it worse now, whatever it is. Whatever is making him imagine, against his better judgement, what that would taste like — the heat of Paul’s saline skin flat against his tongue. He forces his eyes back to the girl settled in his lap. “What’s your name again, love?”

“Elaine,” she offers, accentuating it with a smile, one he’s strangely familiar with. One he’s seen on the snouts of foxes in picture books before. A glint of teeth at the corners where her lips, bonded with lipstick, come apart slightly.

“Pretty name for a pretty lass,” John says, close to her ear so she’s sure to hear him over the noise, and wraps a tentative arm snug around her waist. Careful to land it low enough to make his intentions clear, but above what would warrant a slap and her storming away — he can’t risk doing all that now that he’s got eyes on him, and such.

His eyes can’t help flickering to where Paul’s seated, whispering sweet nothings to his own. The fact that John can’t hear what he’s saying somehow peeves him more than him not sparing John a glance even once the whole evening, or not starting some sort of rapport with him to amuse the girls into infatuation. Like he always does. Like they always do.

“Hold your horses, son,” he blurts before he can stop himself, a tinge of unintended bitterness in his voice, his previous playfulness waning when Paul fails to even tear his eyes away from her. “Wouldn’t want you two shagging on the table, now.”

His broad goes scarlet as soon as the words leave his mouth, dislodging herself from where she’d been pressed up against Paul, some semblance of shame getting to her, and John finally feels like he can breathe. All the while Paul barely lifts his head from here they were necking to scoff at him, an eyebrow arched over the ever-present disarming twinkle in his eye, like he doesn’t get it. A sudden pinch pierces his arm ever so subtly, courtesy of his own bird — as if there’s something in it for her — and the gesture is so familiar he thinks he might have seen a flash of pale blonde just then, something twisting sharp in the hollow of his chest.

There’s still some in his glass, but he’s lost his appetite, so he drunkenly sloshes it around just to watch the liquid shift around wildly. What he’d been drinking weighs in his empty stomach sour, weaving the beginnings of what he knows will soon be a terrible ache, as his broad—— Eleanor, Christ, whatever her name was, toys with his collar, impish; crimping it together, slowly rumpling its crisp whiteness under her fingers. And he’s a good man, he is — because usually, if a bitch was bold enough to do something like that to him, John would smack her hand away and push her legs off his body, or do something equally as unpredictable and stupid. This time, it’s a welcome distraction, so he lets her.

It catches him by surprise, like it always does — like it does when he’s drunk, or distracted, or needs something to make him even more miserable. Except this time, he lets himself think about it, tingles of arousal surging from his fingertips and pooling low in his body, insistent and almost painful now, an anticipation so potent it throbs like a stab wound. So unapologetic it becomes dread.

John keeps drunkenly trying to picture the harsh scrape of stubble on his lips (hard to do with no point of reference, but he thinks he’s got it) or the low rhythm of a heartbeat in his mouth (that one’s easier), when he could be at home, f*cking his girlfriend, or even pushing the broad in his lap up against the wall. Far beyond catching himself at this point, even if he tried, the rotten c*nt he is. Wondering what it would feel like — his head spinning — to nose at the spot where Paul’s hair starts behind his ear, like the bitch all over him is. Like it’s… Like he’s some kind of——

When she pulls on his shoulders again, patience running low, trying to goad him into a kiss, he doesn’t resist.

Eastman looks—— bland. Just dull. Flat.

She doesn’t look like — or seem to be, at that — much of anything at all. Where he might have seen what attracted Paul to homely Dot or his little actress Jane or the countless long-legged whiny harlots after her, he really can’t see the appeal of her bread crust coloured hair, faint eyebrows or freckle spotted face. Her uncannily vague smile as she introduces herself to him, like he doesn’t know who she is. Like she doesn’t know who he is.

John’s courteous enough to breathe out a lighthearted ‘pleasure’ — he can be nice when he wants to, by God, he can — but disregards her hand when she extends it in greeting, pretending he doesn’t see it, and lets his tired body slump in the cab seat like a sack of flour. The headlights of the cars speeding past look almost magical like this — divided and fractured into thousands of glittering shards by the beads of rain trickling down the glass, and it’s really miles more entertaining just to watch water droplets race each other to the bottom of the window than to involve himself with the—— situation in the cab.

He doesn’t understand why Paul is bothering to have her in the car with them; he doesn’t understand her yank accent, and he doesn’t understand why she’s sitting there, quiet and demure, knees together, deliberately leaving some space between herself and Paul. He doesn’t understand why this realisation has him smugly pressing his own knee into Paul’s, just to prove he can. Just to prove Paul won’t shift away — he doesn’t.

John thinks to look away a split second before he sees her eyes dart to his, just barely avoiding their gazes meeting. Pointedly glueing his eyes to the rain-pelted car window, he slots the knuckle of the nearest finger between his lips and lightly gnaws at it with his front teeth like the taut skin on an apple.

It feels like a kind of disease, a car collision, watching Paul try to keep up the small talk with the driver. What with John and the photographer silent, save for a few breathy chuckles on her part, he’s left to do it solely by himself — to shout pleasantries at him over the nondescript, ear-piercing jazz blaring from the radio, jittery and delirious with drugs as he is, the f*cking numbskull. Arsehole. c*nt.

Her left knee knocking into his thigh with every turn of the car. Them sneaking small curious glances at each other. John feels ill.

He gets wed without much fuss. They show up at the bureau, John’s posse trailing behind, Cynthia with one of her girl friends at her arm, and the papers get signed promptly. Then follows a chaste peck — less a proclamation of love and more proof the elopement happened — and Brian hands a bouquet of roses to Cynthia, whispering his congratulations to her. All thoroughly rehearsed down to the smallest movement, like everything else about him.

It’s almost embarrassing how taken aback he is when George and Paul step forward from where they’d been looming behind him, their arms awkwardly clasped in front of them, and pat him on the back. Both beaming, eyes sparkling in genuine joy, nearly mirror images of each other. George rattling on about married life, kids, something about hoping he still has enough time for them all. Like it’s an achievement. Like it’s something to be proud of.

As she smiles at him, tight-lipped and virginal, he remembers how he’d begged Mimi not to give her her blessing to marry him. Blubbering about it, too, snot dripping and all, like a f*cking—— like a broad. Like a child. As if it’s hard. As if it matters.

He never could stand the heat; the scorching July sun. They’re at some hotel with a quite luxurious pool and a few girls in swimsuits lounging around in the sun, red from the heat and still dewy from where they’d been coyly splashing about to impress them in some strange way. No shows in sight — done enough of them already — which means they’re free to kick back, drink, smoke, get high, and pick up girls who seem to be offering themselves up on a platter.

John doesn’t care for it much. John’s lying in the shade on a lounger and looking out toward the pool. John’s looking at Paul. John’s looking at Paul, who’s lifting himself out by the arms with little effort, and stands over him — like some drenched, dripping effigy. A deity. An angel, his halo the sun’s crown around his head. Rippling heat and blinding light. Too alive to be likened to a marble statue, nose flushed red, beads of water glittering atop the line of his eyelashes.

The beads of leftover water caught in the hair on his chest glitter in direct sunlight, and he might just lose his last bit of vision if he looks at him any longer, white and ablaze with sunlight on his skin. His eyes don’t dare linger on his body, even through his sunglasses, so he pulls his gaze back to his face.

The warm water that drips from him sizzles on John’s skin through his clothes where it’s unbearably heated by the sun, like butter when it hits a hot pan. The underside of Paul’s chin adorns itself with a narrow sliver of fat when he tucks it in, and it might just be him overheating from the sun’s persistent scorching of his skull through his jet black hat, but he finds he wants to press his lips to it. Just to feel it.

The expanse of skin seems almost vulgar when he’s so used to sneaking looks at his torso where his shirt rides up, or trying to look normal — or unaffected, or aloof — when they’re in a dressing room, stripped to their knickers and buttoning crisp white shirts up their chests. Keeping his eyes away, though, is difficult just the same. For a moment, he considers he quite likes this vantage point — Paul staring down at him from up above — but the thought has his belly pooling with something he’s not sure he likes, so he forces it away.

Just as he’s about to pull his hat over his eyes, Paul grins at him, all long teeth and ragged breathing, and something in his chest splits open.

The first time John lets another man press against him, it feels like dying.