Chapter Text
It’s almost midnight when John notices that the letters are gone. He’s thinking of maybe writing another one – it’s been a few months since he’d last written Paul a letter, and he’s starting to feel like he’s about to burst with all of the things that he wants to say to him that he can never speak aloud. Already feeling annoyed with himself for being unable to resist the urge to write yet another letter that he’ll never send, he pulls open the bottom drawer of his desk and slides aside the magazine that covers the basket that contains the letters. He stares down at the beige wicker basket for a long moment, trying to figure out what’s wrong with it, before he realizes suddenly that it’s empty.
An icy shot of adrenaline immediately floods his veins and he tosses the magazine aside, then the basket, searches every corner of the drawer and then the entire desk as if ten years worth of letters could have just slipped into a crack somewhere. Unsurprisingly, they did not. They’re gone, and given that John certainly hasn’t moved them, he knows that someone must have taken them.
Nobody else knows of the letters, and very few people are permitted to enter his study, so his list of possible suspects is very small. He briefly wonders if one of their assistants might have taken them, wanting to sell them to the press or blackmail him for money, but doesn’t think anyone who works closely with them would make such a stupid decision and none of them can enter his study when he’s not in it, anyway. So, he thinks it must have been Yoko. Maybe something to use against him in the divorce proceedings that she’s currently pushing through? Or, more realistically, as leverage to get more money out of him rather than just half of it?
He's about to conclude that it must have been Yoko and to go grab the phone to call her at her lover’s apartment in a fury when all of a sudden another thought occurs to him.
Two days ago he’d had Sean in his study with him. He’d been working at the desk, but Sean had been running all over the room, pulling drawers open all over the place, and John hadn’t really been paying him much mind aside from making sure that he didn’t hurt himself.
He could easily have opened the drawer with the letters and found them without John noticing, he realizes. He feels like an idiot for not having kept an eye out, but sighs in relief all the same. This is much better than Yoko or an assistant having found them. Sean has been obsessed with mailmen and the post recently; he’d probably just seen some letters and taken them to his room to play with or something. Sean’s been learning to read, but his comprehension level isn’t anywhere near enough to understand the letters that John had written, even if he did tear them open. And a good thing that is, too, because some of them were far from child-friendly.
It’s midnight, so he forces himself to try to relax and go to bed, waiting until the morning to talk to his son and find out what he had unwittingly done with John’s most private possessions. He has trouble sleeping, though, tossing and turning as he anxiously worries about the nanny finding the letters wherever Sean had left them, or the cleaners, or any one of the many other people who come through the Dakota on a day-to-day basis. When he does finally fall asleep he dreams of Paul, his pretty eyes wide with shock and perfect mouth curled up in disgust, the newspaper in his hands proclaiming in bold black letters: JOHN LENNON – HOMOSEXUAL.
John goes to Sean’s room first thing in the morning, before his nanny, Helen, has even arrived. He’s already awake, as he usually is, playing quietly with some of the stuffed animals on his bed. “Good morning, Sean!”
“Daddy!” Sean squeals, joyful as ever. John feels his worries ease, as they usually do, as his son runs over to hug him. He scoops him up and spins him around, kissing his cheek before putting him back down.
He crouches down to get on Sean’s level and puts on his ‘serious face’. “Sean, daddy was just looking for some important letters of his and he couldn’t find them. You took them, didn’t you?”
Sean jumps, eyes brightening. “Oh, yeah! I found ‘em in your desk!”
John sighs in relief, worries easing even further. “Do you know where you put them?”
“Of course, silly,” Sean huffs, crossing his pudgy little arms over his chest like John is being ridiculous.
“Oh, good. Can you show daddy?”
“Okay!” Sean chirps, grabbing John’s hand and pulling him out of the room. John’s not too worried at first, as Sean pulls him across the house, but the panic grows as they approach the front door. A petrifying thought has just occurred to him, and the terror of it grows thicker as Sean continues to pull him along, through the main entrance of the apartment to the grand foyer beyond.
“Right here,” Sean says, pointing. He’s grinning proudly, but he’s pointing at their personal mailbox that’s installed into the wall of the hallway. The mailbox that connects to a bigger box for the whole building, a box which the postmen take out for delivery every day.
“Sean,” he hears himself say, standing still as a statue. “Did you mail the letters?”
“Yeah!” Sean replies cheerfully, still sounding pleased. “They all had stamps and addresses, so I knew they were ready to be sent. I know all about how letters work, so I mailed them for you!”
John has always had a hot temper, especially when something makes him feel out of control or afraid. With years of experience raising a kid under his belt, John has finally gotten better at containing it, which is the only thing that keeps him from losing it at Sean immediately.
“Go back inside, Sean,” he says sharply. “Go back to your room and wait for Helen, okay?”
Sean picks up on the shift in tone and his face falls, lip quivering. “Are you mad? I was helping.”
John has to take a deep breath. He feels like he’s about to lose control. “You shouldn’t send people’s letters without asking them, okay? Sometimes they’re not ready to be sent, even if they look like they are.”
“Sorry, daddy,” Sean whimpers, already crying.
John doesn’t have it in him to be a good father at this moment, as much as he wishes he did. “Go to your room, Sean.” Luckily, he listens this time, running back inside and leaving John alone. The door slams behind him and John already feels guilty.
He’s too busy panicking to fully process that yet, though. He’d thought that Sean having the letters was the best case scenario, but in an instant it’s become the absolute worst situation possible. The only thing that John could conceivably think of that would be worse than the letters getting to the press would be them going directly to Paul, and that’s what’s just happened.
He presses his hands against his face, shoving his glasses up onto his forehead, and screams into his palms. Then he draws in a deep breath and focuses, pulls himself together. Maybe it’s not too late to save this.
The elevator feels like it takes ten times longer than usual, now that John feels like there’s a time crunch. As he gets off, he runs into Helen on her way up. Good, at least he doesn’t have to worry about Sean being alone.
“Sean’s in his room. He’s a bit upset, give him some candy or something. I might be out for a while,” John advises her as he walks past, not slowing his pace.
The attendant at the front desk stares at him, wide-eyed, as he practically charges over to her. “Some letters ended up in my mailbox that weren’t ready to be mailed yet,” he tells her, as pleasantly as he can manage. “I need them removed.”
She looks a little scared. “Well, of course you can take a look in the box, but the mail’s probably already been taken for the day. They usually come around six a.m. to pick it up. Unless they were just put in?”
“No, they, uh, I think it was two days ago that they were put into the box,” he admits.
The woman winces, her hands winding nervously in front of her. “I think they’ll already have been mailed, sir. But we can take a look, follow me.”
Sick to his stomach, John follows the woman into a back room that is only slightly less opulent than the main part of the building. She wheels out a large box, about as high as John is tall and waves him over to it. “This is the building’s mailbox. It’s mostly empty, as you can see. They’ve most likely already taken it for the day. And, um, they would have taken it out yesterday as well. I can look for your letters, though, if you wish. To whom were they addressed?”
John can’t help but to glare at her, some of the intense feeling of helplessness filling him leaking out into rudeness. “I’ll look.” He’s certainly not about to tell her that they were addressed to Paul McCartney, is he?
“Of course, sir.” She stands in the back corner of the room, still wringing her hands nervously, as John digs through the small handful of letters in the box. None of them are his letters to Paul, of course. Those have just disappeared into thin air.
Except they haven’t actually disappeared, he has to remind himself. In probably only a few days, they’ll be in Paul’s mailbox, and he’ll read them.
He absolutely cannot read them.
“Thank you for your time,” he says curtly to the attendant, and then he goes to make some calls.
A long day of phone calls later, John has made no further progress in locating the letters, and has acquired a nasty headache and a crushing sense of despair to boot. It turns out that once letters have been taken away by the postal service, no amount of fame or money is capable of stopping them from being delivered. He’s essentially co-opted his entire staff team away from the intense crush of work that is coming with the imminent release of his new album and has them all doing everything that they can to locate those letters, and still they’re nowhere to be found. Probably on a plane over the Atlantic somewhere, on their way over to Paul right now as he sits exhausted by the phone.
It's hopeless, he realizes, and gives up. When his publicist Elliot calls the next morning to update him that they’ve still had no luck finding the letters and that they’ve almost certainly left the country by now, he just tells him to let it go and get back to focusing on the album. It’s going to be released in under a week, they really can’t afford to be wasting time.
“You’re certain that there’s nothing damaging in these letters of yours?” Elliot asks, carefully. John had admitted that they were going to Paul, but had refused to provide any further details that weren’t strictly necessary.
“It’s not like Paul would take them public,” John mutters, rolling his eyes.
“Well,” Elliot hesitates for a moment. “The two of you have taken shots at each other before. If there’s sensitive information –”
“He wouldn’t say anything.” John is certain about that, at least. “It would hurt his own reputation too, and he wouldn’t risk that even if he wanted to destroy mine.” Paul would be so utterly disgusted by the truth that he would never consider letting the world see it. Even though it would really mostly reflect badly on John, Paul wouldn’t want that kind of attention drawn to himself. He’d be horrified at the mere idea. He’d loathe John for it.
He wants to laugh hysterically. No, he absolutely can’t let Paul read those letters. There’s only one option left, now, only one way remaining to stop Paul from reading them.
“Alright,” Elliot allows finally. He moves on, talking about the press release coming out the next day and the interview he has next week and updating him on the reception of his single that was released a few weeks earlier. John listens to the essentials, but cuts the conversation short, mind already elsewhere.
As soon as he’s off the phone with Elliot he calls up his assistant Fred and asks him to book him on the next flight to London. He hasn’t been back to the UK in almost ten years, but his green card’s gone through now so he can leave without having to worry about not being let back in, and he figures he may as well make use of it. He’s not about to trust anyone else with a task this important, anyway. He has to go do it himself.
Before John leaves, he goes to talk to Sean, who’s been left in Helen’s care for the last day. Luckily, she’s quite used to staying with Sean for long stretches of time when both John and Yoko are busy, which has been common lately with all the work that they’ve had to do on the new album, not to mention with their divorce. John tells her that he’ll be away for the next few days, but that Yoko will likely be back soon.
Then he has breakfast with Sean, talks to him more gently about the letters now that he’s had a day to process it. He apologizes for getting upset, though Sean seems to have forgotten the whole thing already. He makes him promise to ask next time, before sending any letters he finds. Not that John thinks it’s a situation that’s likely to happen a second time. He certainly isn’t going to make the same mistake again. No more letters, no matter how sure he is that they’re well hidden.
He gives Sean a hug goodbye, tells him he’ll see him soon, and then packs a bag as quickly as he can. The car is waiting for him when he steps outside, and he directs his driver to the airport, tells him to step on it. There’s no time to waste, not if he wants to get to Paul’s mailbox before he does.
With the time difference, it’s the middle of the night by the time John gets off of the plane. That doesn’t stop fans from finding him, though, and he’s stuck making conversation and signing autographs in the airport for quite a while before he can extricate himself and get in his chartered car. He prays that it’s not in the news by tomorrow, that he’s here. He already knows that it almost certainly will be.
It’s the middle of the night, and he’s thinks that the postal service probably comes by in the morning, but he’s shaking with anxiety, so he directs the driver straight to Cavendish. He gets out of the car and tells his driver to wait around the corner, not wanting there to be any witnesses to the fact that he’s about to sneak onto Paul McCartney’s property, although hopefully not even the driver knows whose house it actually is. Luckily, he’s professional to a fault and doesn’t ask why John is here or how long he’ll be expected to wait, just agrees politely and drives away.
John stands for a moment, staring up at Paul’s high wall and imposing gate with his hands on his hips. He can’t exactly buzz the intercom system and ask the gates to be opened for him. He looks around for another way in, but eventually groans out loud as he realizes that there’s nothing for it. He’s not as spry as he used to be when he was young, but adrenaline fuels him as he scrambles up the wrought iron gate, tips himself over to the other side. His hands are red and raw and his back achy as he lopes nervously across Paul’s front garden.
He wonders for the first time if it’s possible that Paul has some type of security system. He hadn’t used to, when John had spent a lot of time at Cavendish back in the ‘60s, but then it’s been twelve years since he’s been here. To his relief, he makes it to the mailbox by the door without any trouble or interruption and carefully checks it. It’s empty, though. He supposes that anything that had come in the morning before had already been collected by the McCartneys. Hopefully none of his letters – it’s only been three days since they were sent, it’s probably too soon, he tells himself, but he still feels uneasy. He’ll be back early tomorrow morning, he decides, to check it again after the mail delivery for the day.
He has the driver take him to the hotel that’s been booked for him, where he lies in bed hardly able to sleep once again, too busy wondering what the hell his life has come to. He has a new album coming out in five days and has promotional work to do for it, but he doesn’t intend to leave London again until he’s gotten all of those letters back.
He should probably let it go, really. The thought of Paul reading what he’d written makes him want to melt into the ground and disappear forever, but it’s not like Paul hating him more than he already does will make any noticeable difference in his life. They’re already not close friends anymore, and rarely talk even on the phone. They don’t talk about anything important either, staying in carefully safe territory like their kids and their house chores. Their conversations are like a minefield, really, always just one slight misstep away from an explosion. Would it be such a great loss if Paul never called him again, didn’t answer if he ever tried?
John tries to tell himself no, it wouldn’t be, but of course that’s a lie. Paul’s always been the most important person to him. He’s got Sean now, which helps, but as much as he’s tried to dedicate his life entirely to his son the fact remains that the only other thing that matters all that much to John outside of him is still Paul. He’s tried everything that he can to change that: Yoko, drugs, bitter feuds in the press, every cruel word he can find, denial so thick that he could bury the whole of New York in it, but nothing has stuck.
He's pretended the opposite, pretended that he couldn’t care less, and he’s done a good bloody job of it over the last decade too. He thinks that Paul, at least, has believed his ruse, has never suspected that deep down John has always been cripplingly hung up on him. Paul certainly never would guess that John is still as in love with him as he was at twenty, wouldn’t even have any idea that John had been in love with him at twenty.
Of course, that all changes if Paul reads those letters.
He’s not going to read them, though. It doesn’t matter that all he has of Paul is a phone call every month or two, maybe a visit every couple of years – it’s better than nothing. He’s tried to live without Paul entirely, he already knows that he can’t do it.
If he had to have the knowledge that Paul knew the deepest reaches of him – the barest, ugliest parts of his soul – and hated him for it, John knows that it would be too much to bear. He can’t let it happen.
There’s so much in those letters that John can’t even begin to comprehend the extent of the ramifications that Paul reading them would have. Hell, he’d written everything in them. Every single intimate thought, romantic and pining and sexual too. He remembers clearly one particular entry that was simply a long stream of consciousness essay describing how desperately he wanted Paul to fuck him, and goes red with the thought of it. Imagines Paul’s disgust and horror deepening into fury as he stares at the letter. Worse, imagines him showing it to Linda, them laughing over it.
“Fuck,” he swears out loud, turning over in bed to look at the alarm clock. It’s almost five a.m. He may as well head back to loiter near Cavendish, he supposes, to wait for the postal service to show up so he can sneak in after them and check the mailbox.
Luckily for John, the mail carrier comes along Cavendish Avenue early enough in the morning that there’s been no sign of stirring in the house, and he’s easily able to scale the wall again and check the mailbox without being noticed by anyone. Unluckily for John, none of his letters are delivered that day, or the next day, or the day after that, either.
Every morning, he sneaks onto Paul’s property by climbing over the gate, half wondering if maybe someone should warn him that it’s remarkably easy to break in and that he should get better security. He’s accrued a laundry list of scrapes and bruises from climbing in and out, and his back has started to ache something awful, but he’s still yet to intercept any letters. Of far more concern, he’s increasingly worried about being caught. The more times he has to do this, the likelier it becomes that he gets unlucky, has bad timing.
He's settled into a kind of routine, though. In the morning, he makes his trip to rummage through Paul’s mail, then spends the rest of the day in his hotel room, handling as much of the work around his new album as he can over the phone. It works out well enough, aside from having to cancel an interview or two. He’s fortunate to have a great team working for him, who are able to handle most aspects of the release without much trouble.
He calls Sean every night, before he goes to sleep, then returns to Cavendish early the next morning. For almost a week, he keeps up the routine, growing progressively more anxious and mystified about the lack of the letters. Maybe Sean hadn’t actually sent them, somehow, and all of this had been for nothing. Or maybe he’d written the wrong address on all of the envelopes? The wondering all leads back to the same conclusion: no. No, Sean had definitely sent the letters, and John certainly had not gotten Paul’s address wrong.
So there’s only one possibility, really. The postal service is just very slow, and they’ll be here soon. If there’s any chance at all of the letters ending up within Paul’s reach, he has to be there to intercept them. He can’t leave London.
---
September 20, 1969
Dear Paul,
It’s funny, isn’t it, how we can say one thing and mean exactly the opposite?
‘I want a divorce’ is what I said, and what you heard, and what I wanted you to hear. It’s funny, how what I really meant was that I wish I was married to you. For real, not in this symbolic way of ours. I tried to convince myself for the longest time that it could be enough, just to have your friendship, if nothing else, to know I was the most important person to you like you are to me, even if I could never have you the way I really wanted.
It was never enough.
I’m selfish, Paul, more than you could possibly comprehend. I had so much and still, all I’ve ever wanted was more. All I’ve ever wanted was you.
I guess one day, it just became too much, that I couldn’t have you the way I wanted, the way that you let Jane have you, you let Linda have you. Even though I’ve known you so much longer, even though you were mine first. She doesn’t even know it. You don’t even know it, do you? It hurts so fucking much, Paul, you have no idea.
So I’ve decided that if I can’t have all of you, I’ll have none at all. I think that it’s the only way that I can survive.
Still, if you tell me you don’t want me to go, I won’t. You wouldn’t even have to want me like I want you, I know that’s impossible. I just need you to tell me that you want me to stay. If you just don’t let me go, choose me for once, maybe I can continue on this way a while longer. Even though it’s killing me.
But I don’t think you’ll ask me not to go, will you? You don’t even care enough to bother. And Yoko gives me an escape, the only escape I can see. She can’t replace you, she never will be able to, but I’ll pretend, because I have to. There’s no other choice left for me. Not if I’m going to survive this. Survive you.
I think she suspects it, Yoko. I won’t ever say this out loud, though, not to anyone. It’s bad enough in my own head. Even the drugs can barely drown it out, and Christ, I’ve tried every drug there is to drown you out.
Still, these words that I want to say to you won’t go away. I would sooner die than actually say them to you, or to anyone at all, but they need to go somewhere, so here we are. This letter to you that I will never send.
To say it, the truth, just this once. Paul, I love you.
If things were different, if the world was different, you would be mine, you know. I would be yours. Well, I already am, and always will be, whether you know it or not. I’ll pretend I’m not, but I know nothing will change it. I’ll never be free of you. But by God, am I trying to be.
Love,
John