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It starts with some stupid news reporter saying something silly about the Vietnam War on the TV. He uses the words peace and freedom interchangeably, and it makes John angry. He huffs and puffs about it to Yoko for a while, but she doesn’t seem to be in the mood to indulge him, busy with something or another, so he just changes the channel, looking for something more bearable to watch.
Peace is not freedom, he thinks lazily, as some game show host points out the right answer to a contestant. But then again, freedom rarely leads to peace, he continues to ponder, while some poor fella gets murdered on Columbo.
'The river Seine proves to be an attractive landmark with its many bridges…’
Maybe this is where it really starts. With a press of a button on the TV remote. With a stupid travel documentary. With his hand frozen in the air, his heart beating fast.
It’s just a quick shot, a flash of pavement, a street lamp in the background, a tall, leafy tree, with the river glistening to its right in the sunshine. It’s Paris. Undeniably, irrevocably, very much Paris. And John recognises that street corner, he’s stood on that bit of pavement once, grabbed onto that lamp post to keep his balance in his drunken haze, and fuck, he’s kissed Paul up against that tree.
But as soon as it has appeared, it’s gone, the magic of television and all, no way to rewind it. Not like John needs to see it again, not like he could ever forget it, every moment of it lives in his memory vividly.
He proceeds to watch the entire documentary, not listening to a word of it, desperately trying to decide whether he’s hoping or dreading to see something familiar, and well, yes, that’s the Eiffel Tower, the Champs-Élysées and that’s Montmartre, and of course, he recognises these places, he’s been there, many times - with Paul, without him, but not like that, never like that first time.
And the memories hit him, one by one, he doesn’t even need the pictures on the telly to aid him, it doesn’t even matter, because it all comes flooding back on its own, and suddenly John is sick to his stomach - from the pain, from anger (or maybe something else), he’s not sure.
It catches him off-guard that they were like that once, that close, that happy, because even though he knows they were, it just… It doesn’t seem real. Because so many of the good moments have been lost over the years and faded into the ones that hurt, the ones that are too painful to think about and yet he cannot forget, but here it is, these godforsakenly happy memories from so long ago, proving they weren’t always like that, Paul and him, sharp words and thinly-veiled insults masquerading as song lyrics. The realisation, the thought of milkshakes and shared beds, unbalances him more than he ever thought possible and he doesn’t know where to go from here.
He doesn’t remember how he gets up from the sofa, or if he turns off the TV or not. He doesn’t remember the rest of the day, or how he gets through it, he doesn’t feel like he’s present and here for any of it, like he had ceased to truly exist and was just reduced to thoughts chaotically swirling around in the air.
It takes him a couple of days of desperately pretending that everything’s fine to realise that it’s happening to him all over again.
He really wants to deny it. He wants to deny it more than anything in the world, but he just can’t help it. It’s true. Every symptom is coming back, as if nothing happened, like no time has passed at all. The fervorous thoughts, the familiarly warm excitement in his stomach, the need to mention him all the time, just to say his name out loud as many times as he can manage in a day… it's all coming back.
It feels exactly the same, it suffocates all his unrelated emotions and thoughts the same way as it used to, it consumes his whole being just as vehemently as it always did, from the very first moment, from the first time their eyes met, from the first bloody chord of Twenty-Flight Rock.
He starts catching himself just lying in bed during the night, not being able to sleep, because he needs to think about him. How pathetic, he thinks, his self-esteem lower than ever, and he's confused, because he doesn’t understand why this whole thing is happening to him. No, no, that’s not right, he knows why – he understands how his magic works better than anyone – he just doesn't get it why now. What happened, what changed? Did it ever really end? He tries to find a reason or an answer, but he fails. Maybe there is no answer, no reason. Maybe it's just one of his little tricks. (And he almost goes with that, because blaming him was always the easiest way out, and he would let him get away with it almost every single time.)
Because Paris isn’t fucking it, he knows it isn’t. Some bloody documentary can’t just make all of this happen, can’t bring all of this back. He’s seen pictures of Paris since, he’s fucking been to Paris since, and nothing happened. Hell, he’s seen Paul himself since; in the flesh, and from afar, on posters, on album covers, in countless family pictures, Mimi forcing him to go over another and another and another pile to help decide which ones should go into albums (and it didn't affect him back then, seeing him make Julian laugh in the background of a photo of John with a Christmas tree, hugging one of John's step-sisters at someone's birthday, George and him posing with a silly hat on in the garden at Tittenhurst, while Ritchie is rolling his eyes at them), and still there was nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing like this, anyway. Not the old obsession, where he feels like he needs him every moment right there by his side, in case there is something he wants to tell him, a half-forgotten melody he needs to share, in case he wanted to reach out and touch him, kiss him, own him (because he's fucking entitled, goddammit, even after so many years, he can't help, but default back into the way things were always supposed to be, Paul his and his alone, always and always).
And when was the last time he felt like this anyway, he wonders. It was before all of this, before the divorce, before the end, maybe before Yoko, or maybe not, he doesn’t bloody know, he doesn’t remember, and he feels like a lost child looking for his... mother? Father? Best friend? But he hasn’t got any of those, has he? He feels like crying, but the tears are not coming and instead the bile rises up in his throat again.
If he’s being completely honest, the only thing he knows for sure is that he does not want this. He didn’t ask for any of it, he could barely get away the last time. For god’s sake, he was finally happy, why, why, why is this happening to him all over again?!
He finds himself not sleeping, not eating or drinking; he doesn’t want to do anything any more. Most of the time he is just sitting in a corner with a guitar, not even playing or anything, just staring at a wall, pretending to be dead. The worst of all is that he keeps imagining him. All those picture-perfect memories are whirling around his mind, making him dizzy – such little details he never thought, he would remember after so many years, things about him, stuff he never realised he even knew about.
Like his hair. He never thought much about it up until now, but now is different and apparently now he remembers things. Like how he used to love the feeling of running through his fingers those dark locks when he was close, almost there, right on the edge, whispering his name in sweet agony. Or how it always tickled his naked shoulders, when he was calmly sleeping in his arms, how he would wrap a strand around his finger, watching as the orange light of a street lamp reflected off its softness and-
He remembers other things as well. His eyelashes, for instance. He remembers how black and long they were. Very, very, very long. He also remembers his fingers, his beautiful, thin fingers. And his smooth skin, and his big, hazel eyes, and his smile and the way he talked, and his music, his melodies that he couldn’t even bring himself to envy anymore, because he felt lucky to be in the room when they were made up... he remembers everything. And everything about him is just so unbelievably fucking beautiful. He’s sure, he's going to throw up this time.
(Too beautiful, perhaps.)
He stops himself for a week or two, but then he just can’t resist it any more, he has to listen to his music. His voice. He starts dreaming about his voice, and when he is not asleep, he just turns up the volume, shuts his eyes and… he likes to think that he is singing only to him, for him, about him. And if he really concentrates, it actually does feel like as if he was in the room, lying on the ground, right next to him, smelling like cigarettes and fate and belonging.
Are you a fool or is it true? Are you afraid or is it true?
And he really wants to just tell him, stand outside his house in the pouring rain, in some stupidly cathartic way that’s worthy of Paul, shouting and screaming, that no, it’s not true. He’s still thinking of the past and his heart starts beating so fucking fast even if he just hears his name, and yes, he is a fool and yes, he is afraid, but it’s not true. He still loves him. How could he ever just… not?
Only he's – and always has been - really really terrified. And perhaps not strong enough. You’re one weak, cowardly little bastard, Lennon, he tells himself, but that’s nothing new really. Because when he had begun losing control, not wanting to do anything any more, just being with him, kissing him, holding him, watching him sleep, and abandoning the rest of the world, he just couldn’t stand it, it all became too much, too dangerous, too out of control and... That’s why he left after all.
Why leave me standing here?
Left him, left the band, left everything, not looking back. It was so easy. Just give it all up, forgetting himself in Yoko’s kisses. It was new, it was so exciting that he believed that he can’t be wrong. He felt like he could breathe again. And he loved Yoko and she loved him back and she showed the world to him. She taught him to live freely, in a way, he never experienced; free of Paul, of everything, every pain, he’s ever known. But it wasn’t freedom. Not really. Peace, maybe? But he’s not stupid, he knows those two are not interchangeable. He snickers to himself, into the quiet hum of the afternoon; the blinds are lowered, the bitter pain of the realisation that he’ll never be free of him feels all-consuming.
He spends the next month in the delirium of missing him more than he thought it was humanly possible to miss someone - and he’s had practice, he’s lost his fair share of people. But then he starts to remember other things, the fog of close-up memories of him clears almost as suddenly as it came to penetrate his every waking moment, and fuck, maybe this is worse, even more painful than before.
Many times I’ve been alone, many times I’ve cried.
Now he remembers the tears, of course he fucking does, all the hateful words that he'd actually meant at the time and… he breaks. Well, that’s what it feels like anyway. Like he’s some broken toy, forgotten in the corner of some abandoned nursery no one ever bothered to clean up. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry that I made you cry.
This phase doesn’t last long though, because his self-hatred for what he did to Paul quickly turns into self-hatred for still loving him now.
He hates that he can’t control his thoughts, he hates the urge to call him, and he hates that he’s thinking of him when he’s having sex with Yoko, that he wishes with every single kiss it was him and not her.
Yoko knows, he’s sure that she does (maybe not exactly what it is, but she knows who it is, surely - it’s not like she hasn’t lived through this particular, most cancerous one of John’s many madnesses before), but she doesn’t ask, and John can’t really blame her.
And in the end, no matter how many times John thinks it over, it all comes back to peace and freedom, and bloody fucking Paris.
It comes back to all those memories, their memories, all the laughing, dancing after midnight, the cigarette smoke, the jokes and continental breakfasts in the bar and... of course, he also remembers all the carefully told secrets, two young boys’ deepest desires, sweet little whispers in the dark, something exciting, something… well, not exactly new, not at that point anymore, but something free.
They were free to do anything, because… because no one cared. They slept outside, under the stars in the freezing night and they kissed until their lips were chapped and they fucked, because they could, and… no one cared. They said all their childish dreams out loud, they held each other’s hands, tight, not believing their luck to have found each other, and maybe it was peace in a way, the freedom that they had there, because for a moment, in Paris, for those few fleeting days, fame and fortune did not matter, there was nothing to be angry about, nothing to go to war over, and that was what John wanted for the world, that was the kind of peace he wanted to bring to people- no, that he wanted people to find for themselves. In Paris, or wherever else. And maybe sometimes they did mean the same thing, even if they weren't interchangeable. Because that was what both peace and freedom really meant to John Lennon. Paris.