Archive of Our Own

Do you believe in rock and roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?
– Don McLean, “American Pie”

Pete only rarely got to the end of his rope, but when he did he was a sight to behold.

“John, mate, I’m serious,” he said, at the end of a very successful day for him. He’d made another pile of money off the bets on the horses. Combined with the revenue from his restaurants he’d end the day far wealthier than he’d been when he got out of bed that morning. “You can’t spend all your time lying around here.”

“Why not? I’m the one who bought it for you. And it’s doing you plenty of good, isn’t it? I see the cars you and the missus are driving.” John strummed his acoustic, one of the few he’d managed to hang on to, and settled himself deeper into the cracked leather sofa in the front room. “I don’t hear anyone complaining about seeing a Beatle when they come in to make their bets.”

Pete sighed. Yes, John had bought the bookies for him, and yes, it was making him money hand over fist. No, no one was complaining about seeing a Beatle lying across the sofa playing his guitar. “That’s not the point. You ought to be doing more with yourself.”

“Like what?” John genuinely wanted to know. He hadn’t been doing much since the divorce finally went through and he was allowed to leave America with his tail between his legs. Pete should have been happy. For the first few months he hardly got out of bed. And he wasn’t even doing drugs anymore, aside from a little weed now and then, so he knew he would be sober when Sean came to visit. If Sean came to visit. “Got any ideas?”

“I don’t know. You’re a musician, how about making some music? Or selling some of your art, writing another book? Go on tour? Fuck, John, you got your second chance and you’re wasting it.”

“Or perhaps I’m enjoying life as a gentleman of leisure,” John said. “Spending my days with my best mate, playing music for free to make people smile. Out of the rat race of record labels and gobshite journalists. I don’t have a wife to run my life anymore. Let me enjoy my bachelorhood now that I finally have it.”

Pete sighed. He’d tried before to light a fire under John’s arse, but John always managed to smother it. He’d spent plenty of time snuffing out flames of creation and motivation before. It came naturally to him.

Pete drove John home, as he always did, and waited until John had gone inside before driving away. John rather liked his house. It was outside London but not so far away that he felt like he’d been cut off from civilization. It was the right size, too - not cavernously huge, like Kenwood and Tittenhurst had been, but not so small that he felt like the walls were going to close in and crush him, like his bedroom in the Dakota. He liked having neighbors on either side, even if he never saw them; knowing that they were there, living their own lives alongside him, was enough. John had a lounge with a big-screen television, a dining room he never used, a kitchen that looked like a kitchen and not the control panel of an alien spaceship, a bedroom that faced west so the sun didn’t get in his eyes in the morning, and a spare room that Julian had slept in a few times and Sean had never seen. It was a good house. It was what he could afford after the divorce.

When he married Yoko he was so smothered by his own assurance that he’d found his soulmate that he didn’t dream of asking her to sign a prenup. His lack of foresight came back to haunt him when she told him she was going to divorce him and hired the best lawyers his money could buy, and instead of responding by fighting her demands, he buckled under the weight of losing the one person he trusted to look after him, and he ended up divorced, lighter by millions of dollars, and estranged from the son he thought would keep them together forever.

John dropped his keys in the bowl by the door and checked the message on his answering machine. When he heard the voice, his lip curled. “John, sorry I missed you,” Magic Alex said, voice smooth as silk. “Give us a ring when you have a chance? I’ve got another investment opportunity for you. Double your last one, I promise. We’ll both be rich men.”

John deleted the message before Alex had finished talking. His last one, an investment into a promise of a stereo system that could cause audio and visual disturbances in the fabric of reality so strong it was capable of sending the listener back in time, had taken up most of what he had left in the bank. The one prototype had burst into flames when Alex tried to turn it on, and all it produced was a high pitched squeal as the tape was chewed into pieces and the smell of burning electrical wire. John was so humiliated, he didn’t even want to know where the rest of his money had gone. Alex could keep it. It was the price he paid for believing he could go back in time and stop himself from making the mistakes that had brought him to where he found himself: forty-nine years old, divorced, living alone, no career or family to keep him going.

After dinner, John took himself up the stairs to the walk-in closet he’d turned into a home office by moving a table, a chair, and a typewriter into it. He busied himself by getting to work on a letter to Melody Maker, his second of the month. John hadn’t written a song or a poem in years, or drawn a cartoon worth showing to anyone, but he could whip out a five page letter on Paul and why he was a cunt without even trying. It was his main hobby ever since he moved back to England. He never lacked for material. As the years passed Paul became more of a cunt and John never ceased to boggle. Paul made some of the worst music John had ever heard and still got to swan around like he was still the prettiest girl at the dance. Paul got to fail over and over again, with his terrible film and synth-heavy crap, and people still loved him. Paul got to divorce his wife after their fairytale love story, and not only did he come away with his fortune and his dignity intact, he then went jaunting off on a world tour that was raking in billions, and he never spared a thought for his old mate drying his socks on the radiator and cooking for himself every night.

John averaged three letters a month. Sometimes he signed his real name, sometimes not; sometimes Melody Maker printed the letters, but usually they didn’t. John knew that people hated Paul for no good reason in part because of what he’d said about Paul after the group split up, but they didn’t know Paul. John had shot his mouth off because he was angry and not thinking straight, but that had been twenty years ago and his anger had settled into a clear-eyed view of who Paul really was. An opportunist. A workaholic. Someone so addicted to public adoration that he couldn’t bear to step away from the limelight for even a year, no matter what shite he had to inflict on the listening public. A man who would swear to stay with someone for all their lives and then leave once he found some slag he could have babies with. A liar. A cheat. A ghost, a man made of smoke - John could get close, but never managed to hold on.

John made several attempts at writing, but he tore all of them out and tossed them in the bin. He was repeating himself. Melody Maker hadn’t printed his last letter where he accused Paul of ending Wings because he was tired of sharing credits with other people, so there was no reason they’d print the next one. He gave it up for the time being and went downstairs, intending to read or do the crossword but ending up dozing off in front of a block of music videos on MTV. He woke up to a familiar voice snaking its way into his ears. Paul was sitting in front of a stage, with lights going on and off behind him, looking so bashful and pleased with himself. “Two years on tour, and you haven’t lost any of your energy,” the interviewer gushed. “What’s your secret?”

“Oh, it’s no secret, it’s what I’ve done ever since I was touring with the Beatles,” Paul said. Like they were his backing group and he was the only star. “I just love performing live, y’know, and it’s the energy from the crowd that keeps me going.”

Yeah. That was it. Not the howling black void in Paul’s soul that he kept crammed full of screaming, tears, and underpants thrown by teenage girls and now by the middle-aged mums those teenage girls had been once. He was the one who had loved touring even after the rest of the group had gotten sick of it. He was willing to keep going even after the death threats. John watched Paul smile and nod, looking for the seam in the mask he put up, but it never slipped. Paul was a professional. He always had a mask up. One for the public, one for the groupies and the hangers on, and one for John that was so good John thought it was Paul’s real face until it was too late. They’d had fun in their early years, before they fell apart, when John got the same high from the crowds that Paul still craved, and they could cling to each other as the world beneath them shifted. John refused to tell Alex why he wanted to invest in his time travel equipment; he didn’t like to think about it himself. He wanted to go back to stop his younger self from pushing Paul away. They could have made it, if John had tried to hang on.

John felt a spark of inspiration. The memories came flooding back as he went back up the stairs to his office. He’d been his happiest with Paul when they were kids with nothing to their names but their guitars and their dreams. Paris, where they’d gotten their hair cut, drank milkshakes and ate burgers without thinking about diets or the environment, and fucked in that tiny filthy mattress until they left bruises on each other. The tiny gigs they’d played at Paul’s cousins’ pubs, in Caversham and in Ryde, working behind the bar for tips and sleeping on top of each other in the attics. The first tour of Scotland, supporting Johnny Gentle, with the girlfriends he said were his wife at each hotel, opening their eyes to what a man could get away with on the road. The nights before the world came to them and they only had each other, still some of John’s fondest memories, and the top choice for when he wanted a wank. John rolled a fresh piece of paper into his typewriter and started slamming on the keys.

Dear Sirs To Whom It May Concern,

I just saw Our Paul acting like butter wouldn’t melt in his little mouth on the television, still claiming that he’s just some kid from Liddypool who made it big and not the greatest fiend for attention since that bloke who walked between the Twin Towers on a wire. You know what his problem is, for Paul? He’s forgotten how it feels to play music for the love of it. All he wants is enough screaming and signs waving for him to get to sleep at night. He could go up there and blow his nose into the mic and they’d still fall all over themselves, pissing and coming in rivers on the stadium floors.

I want to ask Paul a question, but since we’re not currently speaking I suppose my only option is to put it here. Do you, Paul, remember the spirit of rock and roll, the things we swore to follow all our lives? Do you remember how it feels to play for one room of people, and not a stadium? I think you don’t. I think if you tried you’d choke and run back to your impersonal arenas where you don’t have to see the faces of the people you’ve disappointed. If you’re sure you can still hold your own as a musician, not a rock star - there’s a difference! - I’ve got a challenge for you. Let’s you and me go on a reunion tour. Not the Beatles. The Nerk Twins, remember us? Three dates: Caversham, Ryde, and Alloa. Let me know if you’re up for it. If not - well, I suppose we’ll both find out what you’re really made of after all.

From His Home Office in London,
Not A Stadium,
Or Even An Arena,
John Lennon

John stuffed the paper into an envelope and sealed it before he could change his mind. He put the letter out in the post in the morning, along with the other bills he had to pay himself because he couldn’t afford an accountant to do it for him. He forgot about it by that afternoon, playing “Sweet Little Sixteen” for some old tourist and his cow of a wife. Two weeks went by as John dragged himself through each day, living alone and missing everything he used to have, until his daily doldrums were shaken by Pete shoving that week’s issue of Melody Maker under his nose. “Have you been writing those pissy letters again?” he asked, shaking the magazine. “Looks like you finally got the answer you were looking for.”

John opened the Letters page. So they’d printed the most recent diatribe? He hadn’t realized. At the top of the page, in big letters, were the words Paul’s Response. Underneath, the editors explained.

When we decided to print the letter written by someone purporting to be John Lennon last week, we had no idea that the news would find its way straight to John’s old friend Paul McCartney - and we’re just as shocked as you that Paul took the time to respond! Paul’s satisfied that the author is who he says to be, so we’re printing his reply in the hopes that John will see this. You out there, John? We hope you are. Don’t write him off just yet, listen to what the man says!

Dear John,

If you’re up to it, so am I.
Meet me at the gate of Strawberry Field on 1 September, at 12:00.
Bring your guitar.

Sincerely,
Paul

John didn’t realize that his hands were shaking until he heard the sound of the paper crinkling in his hands. Shit. Shit shit shit, he’d shot his mouth off again and for once Paul had decided to listen to him. Buggery fuck, what had he done? He hadn’t played music at all in years, much less live, even for an audience that could fit inside an old pub. Paul had figured him out and called his bluff, asking him to travel to the place he’d immortalized and go on a three-date tour. John looked up at Pete. Pete had gotten him out of so many scrapes before - but they both knew he couldn’t help John out of this one. “Suppose it’s a bit late to fake my own death,” John said weakly.

“I suppose it is,” Pete said. “Well, at least you don’t have to tell your boss that you’re taking some time off work.”

The first of September was only a few weeks away. John let the quiet panic sit just under his skin and direct every move he made. The panic got him to pack a bag, which sat in the corner of his bedroom watching him sleep. He let Julian know that he would be traveling, and felt a mite better when Julian wished him good luck. He left multiple messages for Sean that were never returned. He was too nervous to leave the house most days. Instead of playing the guitar for punters and bothering Pete, he stayed in his dressing gown and watched music videos and soap operas on television. Paul had thrown him for a loop again. John knew he was well within his rights to be furious at the hold Paul still had over him but he was too shocked to think much about it. Paul could still stun him in his tracks, just like the day they met, and the night Paul grabbed his wrist and looked into his eyes to say I need you, and the afternoon he walked out of the studio in tears swearing that he was finished.

Pete let John grovel for a bit before agreeing to drive him up to Liverpool. They didn’t speak much in the car, John’s bag and guitar case rattling around in the back. John rested his forehead against the window and watched the signs directing them north fly past. When Pete rounded the last corner and parked across the street from the gates, John felt a brief wave of relief splash on him. He didn’t see Paul behind the wall of reporters and paparazzi. He was about to say to Pete that Paul had lost his nerve, of course, so they could go home, when a bloke with a massive camera on his shoulder moved and Paul was right there at the gates. John’s heart sank and started digging a pit into his stomach. Of course Paul hadn’t lost his nerve. He never had before.

Paul looked good for someone who’d been crisscrossing the world for the past year and a half. His hair was several shades lighter than it had been when they were young and needed each other like air, and it was curling down to brush against the collar of his jumper. He was balancing his guitar case on its end in front of him, his hands crossed on the top, and no tan line where his wedding ring had once lived. It had been, what, two years? Of course there wouldn’t be a line. John was surprised to see that he’d taken it off at all - part of him assumed that Paul would win her back or pine like a puppy for the rest of his life - but Paul had made a decision and stuck with it. Paul hadn’t pined for him either.

“No time like the present,” Pete said. He unlocked the back doors so John could get his things. “Good luck, mate.”

“Thanks,” John said, stomach turning to lead. He wondered if it was too late to back out, but stopped himself. He couldn’t let Paul have something else to dangle over his head.

The noise of the onlookers and the camera shutters hit John like a shove, and he nearly shrank from them, but his long-buried sense of public perception came back in an instant and he managed to look confident and relaxed as he approached Paul. “Good to see you,” he said, keeping his voice steady. “How long has it been, five years? Six?”

“At least,” Paul said, mildly. No chance of getting a reaction out of him while there were cameras present. “Glad you saw my response.”

“Well, what else is a gentleman of leisure to do besides read the papers?” John stretched, exaggerated, like he’d been keeping himself in a drawer for the past ten years. “Where’s your car, then?”

Paul’s car was waiting for them around the corner. “No driver?” John asked, as Paul unlocked the boot to load their things.

“We didn’t have a driver the first time we did this,” Paul said.

“No, we hitched. And rode in a van.”

“Can’t very well hitch now, can we?” Paul packed their bags and guitars, then closed the lid. “And the van was sold for scrap years ago. Come on. If we leave now we’ll be in Caversham by tea time.”

Paul filled the silence as he drove south. He’d reached out to the current proprietors of the pubs his cousins used to own and made the necessary arrangements, and got some professional Beatles researchers to track down the place they’d played in Alloa and booked the room there and the hotel they’d stayed in, and his company handled the ticket lotteries. Three shows, three days, and then it would be over. Their obligations to each other would be filled and they could go their separate ways. If they could ever really separate from each other, John thought. “How did you even see my letter?”

“One of my assistants subscribes. She showed me.” Paul let out a soft chuckle. “At first she thought it was just some joke.”

“You knew it was me from the start?”

“It’s not everyone who knows about the Nerk Twins. Or the concerts that smelled like piss.”

“Your researchers didn’t?”

“It’s not exactly going on Ed Sullivan, is it?” Paul turned and they were on the motorway. Paul, with more than one assistant, and resources at hand to hire people who knew more about his own life than he did. “Why all the questions? I took your bet. You won.”

“Did I?” John sighed. “You’re still a cunt, you know.”

“We’ll be at the pub in a few hours. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”

John didn’t want to talk. He stared out the window and wondered how a man could keep taking hits to his dignity without rolling over and dying. Paul had managed it, back when the group ended. He took the wife and kids up to his farm and rotted for a few months. John had felt sorry for him at the time, but distantly, like he hadn’t once been invested in every thought and emotion Paul ever had. He had Yoko, and Yoko brought so much with her: art, fashion, politics, the fights with Tony over Kyoko, the reliance on smack to keep them on an even keel, the decision to take off and leave everything behind as it suited them. He’d come crawling back, broke and alone, just like Paul had been, and now Paul was on top of the world again. Nothing had changed.

Paul talked to fill the silence, monologuing in place of a conversation. The tour had been so much all at once, after almost ten years of not touring. If you’re going to do something, why not go all out? He’d brought along the band he’d put together for his last record and they were a tight little unit, he was very happy with them. He was also very pleased with himself that he’d gotten so many big venues to serve veggie-only meals at the concession stands; if he’d changed just a few minds, then it was all worth it. The hardest part was not having the kids come along with him for the first time, but they were all grown or almost grown and they had their own lives. John gave Paul a few sidelong glances as he was talking. Paul was looking straight ahead, hands on the wheel in the proper position, but something about the way the short lines around his eyes were sitting told John that there were parts Paul was leaving out. Linda, of course. They’d divorced just before the last album came out, and then Paul was running off to tour around the world. Not having her there would have been a big change. John knew how it felt. He’d woken up next to Yoko one morning and before he knew what was happening he was alone in a hospital room a hundred miles away.

The current owners of the pub in Caversham had everything set up for them. There was an empty spot against the wall on the other side of the room from the bar, with two chairs and a microphone, just like there had been thirty years ago. Upstairs, the loft looked more or less like how John remembered it: one wardrobe, one chest, one bed, one chair. John looked down at the bed and wondered if it was the same mattress as the last time he’d been there. Paul started bustling around, unpacking his bag, putting his things away. “Can you stop moving for five minutes?” John asked, sitting on the bed and bouncing himself until he heard the springs whine. “Why are you even unpacking, anyway? We’re only here one night.”

“I started doing it on the last tour. Makes me feel more at home.” Paul closed the wardrobe where his next day’s shirt was hanging. “Well, we have a few hours. We ought to put a set together and rehearse a little.”

John couldn’t protest. He hadn’t played his guitar in months. They sat cross legged on the floor. Paul produced a notepad and a pencil, and wrote out the titles of the songs they were confident enough about. Nothing released after 1962, and no Beatles songs: Elvis, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, American blues and girl groups, “Wabash Cannonball” for John and “Twenty Flight Rock” for Paul. Enough for a forty-five minute show, easily. John tuned his guitar and worked the knots out of his fingers. He’d once treated his guitars like they were more precious than his own children, keeping them clean and polished, restringing them himself. He’d grabbed this acoustic from a closet without thinking twice. Where were his other guitars, the Rickenbacker and the Epiphone? He suddenly realized that he didn’t know. Paul’s fingers danced over the strings. He never let himself get out of practice.

The pub was packed to capacity that night, an hour before the show was scheduled to begin. There were more people gathered outside, looking through the windows. The BBC and ITV had reporters with cameras and recorders waiting. There was no stage to wait behind, so John and Paul sat in the tiny kitchen behind the bar. Paul paced, strumming his guitar and making warm-up noises with his mouth, trilling and chirping. John sat on the floor, trying not to be sick. The last time he’d played live was to support the joint album he’d made with Yoko, and the reviews had sent him straight down the neck of a whiskey bottle. At eight o’clock, Paul turned to him and smiled. John recognized the look on his face. It was the one he put on when he wanted John to slough off his paralyzing doubt and get on with it. “Let’s go,” he said.

The sound of a hundred people packed like sardines into one room was louder than fifty thousand at Shea Stadium. At least it was to John’s ears, so used to silence. He sat on the right and Paul on the left, guitars mirroring each other. “Good evening,” Paul said. “Thanks for coming out. We’re the Nerk Twins and we’d like to play a selection of classic rock and roll songs for you.”

The ice in John’s hands melted as they went through the set list, taped to the floor between their feet. Paul belted out “Long Tall Sally” like they were back in Hamburg playing over the fights and drinking, and John found the courage to sing “Anna” with his eyes open, looking at women in the crowd and seeing them melt. They dueted on “How High the Moon,” the one song they remembered singing at their first Nerk Twins gig. The cheering and clapping made John’s incipient tinnitus act up, but when they were singing they could have heard a pin drop. John watched Paul as he sang Cliff Richard and Eddie Cochran. The passion had never left him, it had carried him around the world and brought him back to the tiny pub where it had all begun for them. He could feel Paul watching him, too, as he sang “Please Mister Postman” and “Some Other Guy.” Maybe he wasn’t as bad as he thought he was. Maybe it had never left him too. They stood and bowed at the end of the set. Paul stayed to chat with the reporters and take pictures; John disappeared up the stairs to their shared room.

John hadn’t thought much about the sleeping arrangements until it was time to go to bed. They changed facing away from each other and got under the blankets back to back. There was something about top and tailing that didn’t feel right at their advanced ages. John remembered full well what he and Paul had done to each other in smaller beds than this; they could be mature enough to sleep with their heads next to each other. “That was good, wasn’t it?” Paul said, voice sounding like was hoping for a nice chat. “That was the sort of thing I wanted to do when we were still in the group.”

Making music with Paul had never been the problem. The money and the women and the deaths got between them. “Crossing something off your list, then?”

“No. It wasn’t about me.” Paul shifted, pulled the blanket, but John wouldn’t let him have any more. “I was wishing the kids were there to see us. Yours and mine.”

Julian had his own life and career to get on with, and John didn’t feel right trying to get any closer than he already was. He’d clawed his way to a weekly phone call and the occasional visit when Julian was in town, he didn’t feel like he had the right to ask for anymore. It hurt to think too much about Sean but that didn’t stop John, when he rang New York and didn’t get an answer, when he sent birthday cards but never got one in return. He didn’t exactly blame Sean for not noticing, considering the damage he’d done before he left, but whatever Yoko was telling him wasn’t helping. Especially if she was telling the truth. “Your girls are all grown-ups now, yeah? And your son, he’s, what, thirteen now?”

“Almost. He’s with Linda down in Sussex. Heather’s out on her own, doing her pottery. She’s really very talented, you know. Mary’s working for MPL. Stella’s at school. She wants to work in fashion.” Paul let out a soft sigh. “And I’m living in a house that’s too big without them.”

“Yeah, I know how that feels.” A thought occurred to John. “Don’t tell me you took my bet because you didn’t want to go home to an empty house after your big tour.”

“I never said that. You’re putting words in my mouth.”

“I’ve put a lot in your mouth over the years, Paul, words are the least of it. Come on.”

Paul let out another sigh. It was so much easier to get him to open up about his feelings in the dark. When the sun was out he would rather do back handsprings into traffic than get real with anyone. “Fine. I’m sick of living alone, and I miss my kids. But what else was I going to do? Hang around my ex-wife’s house like some punter hoping my kids will pay attention to me? That’s what happens when you have kids, they grow up and leave, and you have to get used to being by yourself again.”

“But I bet you weren’t expecting you’d find yourself single at the same time.”

“No, I wasn’t. We’re in the same boat now, aren’t we?”

The smell of dusty cotton was filling John’s nose. The attic was settling around them, creaking and sighing. “Don’t sound so pleased with yourself. Your divorce has nothing to do with mine. Now shut up and go to sleep.”

“John,” Paul said, but John punctuated his words by yanking another fistful of blanket away from Paul and curling tightly into himself.

Paul fell asleep quickly. John heard his breathing slow down. John lay awake, thinking about how his marriage had ended. Touring to support the joint album had been his idea so he felt responsible when the bad reviews came crashing in, bursting their bubble. They said he was relying on his name instead of his art to sell tickets, that he was recycling old ideas. They said he was a legacy artist now, and legacy artists who couldn’t put on a good show weren’t worth the trouble of paying to park at the arena. Legacy artist. They weren’t saying that about Paul. John trashed a hotel room in Italy and got kicked out of the country. Yoko moved into a separate bedroom and sent Sean to one of the apartments downstairs to keep him away from John when he was drinking, and he was drinking almost all the time. Eventually John went into detox at a hospital upstate; when he was allowed to go home, Yoko was gone and a process server who’d been waiting at the front gate of the Dakota served him with divorce papers. Six months later, relieved of millions of dollars for the emotional anguish he’d inflicted on his family, he was on a flight leaving Kennedy Airport without getting to say goodbye to his son.

John fell asleep thinking guiltily of Sean and woke up in the darkest hour of the night. The bed was moving underneath him, creaking softly. At first he thought that Paul was getting up to use the toilet or coming back from it - they weren’t young men anymore, of course - but it kept going. And going. It took John a second to realize what was happening. Paul was having a sneaky wank right next to him. He always was a dog, John thought, more fond than annoyed. He would have done the same thing if he had any semblance of the libido he’d once been frightened by. They were back in the bed where they’d first touched each other. If Paul was commemorating the occasion, John wouldn’t let on that he knew about it.

They’d been sharing wanks as part of the larger group for over a year when they arrived in Caversham for the first time, and sharing beds for about as long. John was used to waking up with a hard-on, and he’d gotten pretty good at taking care of his needs without waking Paul. Sometimes he looked at Paul while he was pulling on himself, imagining what he might do with those delicate features and slender fingers, if he could. The night after the Nerk Twins debuted to tens of mildly interested pub goers, John had gone to bed and woken up with an erection. As he was pulling his dick out of the slit in his briefs, he felt the bed shift. “Go back to sleep,” he said, as Paul rolled over. “I’ll be quick.”

“Let me,” Paul said, snaking his hand over John’s hip and taking his dick in his hand. “I’ve seen you watching me, you know.”

John lay on his back and let Paul caress him, teasing over his hot skin and stroking him until he could feel his heart beating in his pelvis. After he came he returned the favor, pulling Paul on top of him and wanking him in the warm space between their bodies, Paul’s come spilling over his thighs. They cleaned up, and went back to sleep, and didn’t talk about it in the morning, because there wasn’t much to talk about. Nothing wrong with a mate helping his mate. They kept up the facade for over a year, until they went to Alloa.

John rolled over. Paul didn’t notice, so focused on his needs. John pushed his hand over Paul’s hip. “Let me,” he said. “For old times’ sake.”

“You don’t have to,” Paul said, as John massaged the soft skin where his hip became the joint of his thigh. “John. You don’t have to.”

“Maybe I want to,” John said, walking his fingers over and rubbing the place where he felt Paul’s pulse throbbing in the vein that ran through his dick. “Did you ever think of that?”

Paul still came like a shot out of a starting pistol. When he had finished John rolled onto his back, his own cock standing at attention, eager to be touched by another person for the first time in years. He looked at it admiringly for a moment, glad that it still worked. Before he could say anything Paul was up on his knees and climbing on top of John, leaning forward and opening his thighs just enough to close around John’s cock. They hadn’t done this in an age; John couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten between Paul’s plush thighs. It wasn’t the kind of thing a man forgot about. Not even the spring in the mattress digging into John’s back could distract him. He could still grab a handful on Paul’s hips, to hold onto him. If they got too sweaty Paul might slide off; it had happened before. “What got you hot in a place like this?” John asked, as Paul began to roll his hips, squeezing around him.

“Remembering the last time,” Paul huffed, brushing his hair off his forehead. “Getting off with each other.”

“Nobody around now. They don’t live in the pub. Don’t have to be quiet.”

Paul nodded. “You know how often I’ve thought about this?”

John gave him a good squeeze, and thrilled in the noise that came out of Paul’s mouth. “Not as often as I have, babe.”

John was rewarded when Paul lifted off him after he came. Even in the dark, the only light coming from the streetlamps outside, John could see that not only had he covered the insides of Paul’s thighs, he’d managed to coat the backs of them too. He lay on his back, sweat cooling and heart slowing to normal, as Paul splashed around in the bathroom cleaning up. When he came back and got into bed John gave him a cheeky grin. “You know how many times I’ve had a wank thinking about this?”

“Probably about the same as I have.” Paul gave him an affectionate shove and lay down. “Go back to sleep. We’ve got a show to rest up for.”

John fell asleep, relieved of the tension he’d been carrying with him for weeks. He woke up feeling sated and pleasantly sore, but when he saw Paul getting dressed briskly he began to worry. Was that all Paul was looking for, a quick return to their youth just to get it out of his system? Was that why he said yes to this brief tour? “Morning,” Paul said, zipping his fly. “Breakfast is on downstairs. We should be leaving here in about an hour.”

“An hour,” John said, stretching and feeling a twang in his back. He wasn’t twenty years old anymore. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

Paul kept up the talking in the car as they drove down to Ryde. He was so pleased with the show the night before: their playing, the way their voices twined together, how the audience drank it up like mother’s milk. John looked out the window for a while, until he got tired of Paul patting them both on the back, and said, “Are you going to say anything about me wanking you last night?”

“Is there anything to say?” Paul replied, voice cool but his hands tightening on the wheel, and his thighs flexing as if remembering who’d been between them the night before. “It’s not like it was the first time we did anything like that.”

“No. But it was the first time in about twenty years, in the place where we did it for the first time, so unless we were possessed by the ghosts of our younger selves then I think it’s pretty significant.”

“Well,” Paul said. If John wasn’t mistaken he was turning a little pink. “I suppose I just got to thinking about the first time - you know, having you next to me again. And I got a little excited.”

“Excited is a funny word. You let me put my dick between your thighs.”

“And you volunteered to get me off.”

“Nice that we’re on the same page,” John said, reclining his seat back. “If we can stay there for the next two days, we’ll never have to speak to each other again after.”

Their room in Ryde was smaller than John remembered. It was little more than a crawl space with a bed and a dresser. How did two lads close to six feet tall each fit in it? That was before they got used to big houses, massive apartments in the sky, and farms that stretched on for hundreds of acres. They had dinner, served by the smiling owners of the pub, and rehearsed in a broom closet behind the stage. It was a real stage, a platform about a foot off the floor, and it came with the two chairs and microphone like in Caversham. The fans and the reporters packed in; people who were turned away at the door by security plastered themselves to the windows and had pints sent out to drink in the street. Just before they went on, Paul scribbled a new song onto the list and handed it to the bartender to tape between the chairs. “What was that?” John asked. “You didn’t ask me if I knew that one.”

“Just follow my lead,” Paul said.

The first half of the set was the same as it had been in Caversham: “That’s All Right” and “Long Tall Sally” for Paul, “To Know Her is to Love Her” and “Be-Bop-A-Lula” for John. They dueted on Ray Charles and Cliff Richard songs, and sang Lonnie Donegan rocking to the beat in their chairs. After John finished “Cumberland Gap,” Paul started into his mystery song without missing a beat. He was doing something John had never seen him do before, as he picked up the tune and started hobbling along. Paul was playing the melody of the song on the bass strings and the rhythm on the treble strings, sounding like two players in one. He was singing about leaving home and losing love. John had never heard the song before, and he wondered where it had been all his life. “I’m going up north, I’m going up north this fall,” Paul sang, eyes closed, the audience reaching a state of rapture so pure they were about to start levitating. “If love don’t change, I won’t be back at all. My honey babe, I’m leaving you.”

Paul had run away up to Scotland when the group ended, and didn’t come back. Didn’t come back to John, because he put all his time and his attention into his wife and the children that kept coming, and the music that people ate up but that always had something missing in it. He’d left John because he’d taken John’s pronouncement of wanting a divorce seriously, but he’d never taken John so seriously before. John had expected him to come back after he’d cooled down, but he stayed gone. John didn’t know what to do without Paul there, so he tried to get Paul’s attention. He wrote songs castigating Paul and complained about him to anyone who’d listen. On the rare occasions Paul took the bait, John was ready to tear him down again. They had gone around in circles for twenty fucking years, until one morning Paul saw a hook he just couldn’t resist, but instead of John reeling him in Paul had managed to pull him back into the water.

John waited until they were lying in bed to ask. “What was that new song about?”

“It’s an old American standard. I heard it when I was recording in Nashville. I just never got around to recording it.”

“Were you always planning on pulling it out to teach me a lesson?”

“Teach you a - what are you talking about?”

“Don’t act all coy with me, Paul. I’m the one person on earth who can see through your act.” John sat up and looked down at Paul, lying on his back and frowning. He could just make out the shapes of Paul’s face in the dark. “You ran off to your farm and never came back, but you decided out of nowhere to take the bet, and you get me to wank you last night? You’re showing off. You still get to pull my strings, and I let you, which tells me I was right to avoid you for all these years and try to build a life without you in it.”

“Yeah? How’d that work out for you, John? You spent years doing drugs and making music you ended up hating, you stayed with a woman who would have sold you for a pack of cigarettes to prove that you didn’t make a mistake dropping me for her, and now you’re broke and living alone, writing those pissy little letters to Melody Maker like a peacock waving his feathers trying to get my attention.”

John opened his mouth to protest the facts of his life without Paul, but he stopped, and recalibrated. “Letters? Have you been reading them, Paul? Before I dared you to go on this little tour with me?”

Paul sat up. He looked all of his forty-eight years, and then some. “I wasn’t lying, my assistant did start showing them to me,” he said. “Months ago, when I was touring. Every time they printed a letter bitching about me. She’d have her boyfriend or her flatmate forward the issues from the office to wherever we were playing. I’ve read them all, John. The ones you signed, the ones you didn’t. So I know exactly what you think of me.”

“Paul,” John said, suddenly feeling ashamed. He was only trying to tell himself that he wasn’t a failure. “I didn’t mean it. Really. I just - you always seem to land on your feet, whatever happens. I try and I try to make it work but I’m always alone.”

“Alone,” Paul sighed. “Yeah. I know how that feels. Ever since Linda left. I played to sold out stadiums every night and went back to my hotel room, alone. Just me and the walls. Every night, for over a year. I thought it wouldn’t be so bad, since we had the same thing when we were in the group, but we always had each other back then. I only have myself now.”

John softened. The last of his anger and resentment began to drain out of his heart. “Is that really why you said yes to this? You weren’t having me on?”

“Better than going back to an empty house, at least for a few nights.”

“You’ve got money. You could go and talk to a therapist about this.”

“If I’d gone to a therapist I wouldn’t be sitting here with you, would I?” Paul smiled, a little fond and a little sad. “Well, there it is. We’re both ridiculous.”

John pushed himself closer. “But I’m sitting here with you,” he said, before dipping his head and catching Paul’s lips in a kiss.

They didn’t have lube, or condoms; the bed was small and too hard; they were both pushing fifty and nowhere near as limber as they had been the first time they’d been in Ryde. The first time, Paul had brought a tube of lotion and John had lifted a package of condoms from a chemist, and they kept each other quiet with rounds of theatrical shushing as they worked their way up to fucking each other. They weren’t ready for John to get fully inside Paul, but he did push his cock between Paul’s soft arse cheeks and tease around his hole until they both came, and held each to kiss and rut frantically until they came again. Now, twenty years on, John lay down and spread his legs as far as his hips, not as loose now, would allow Paul to fit between them. Kissing Paul was good as it always had been, like feeling a tiny spark every time their lips met, and the warmth of his skin made John feel like all his anxieties were being pulled out of his body. He could feel his heart pounding in the tips of his fingers. Paul’s cock pushed into his thigh. “Don’t stop,” Paul moaned. “I need you.”

“I always needed you,” John said, rolling his hips up into Paul, the head of his dick dragging across the thatch of hair between Paul’s legs.

They fell asleep tangled together. John woke up with kinks from his neck down to his tailbone, but Paul was still clinging to him, so it was worth it.

It was nearly ten hours by car from Ryde to Alloa. It would have been easier and quicker to fly, but Paul noted that they didn’t have the privilege of flying anywhere on the tour with Johnny Gentle, so they left Ryde early and only stopped when it was absolutely necessary. They filled the time with listening to the radio and swapping old stories. John found that he wanted to talk to Paul now. His mood had improved by leagues. The last show was that night; he had so many good memories of the first tour of Scotland; he’d fucked Paul the night before. It would be good to go back to Alloa one more time, and see if the feeling from thirty years ago would come back.

There was just enough time to eat a couple of sandwiches and tune their guitars before sitting down in their chairs. The Town Hall was packed with women who may have been there to see Johnny Gentle and his nameless group back in 1960. “Good evening,” Paul said, adjusting the mic stand as a hush fell over the crowd. “We’re Paul Ramon and Long John Silver. But you can call us the Nerk Twins.”

John and Paul had each added a song to that night’s set. The first half was the same as the first two nights, but after “Mister Moonlight” John cleared his throat and reached for his highest falsetto. He hadn’t sung “Be My Baby” in years, maybe not since the session in Los Angeles, but he could still hear the woozy, drunken horns and Keltner’s powerful bass drum swelling behind his voice. He’d been so desperate, back then: for love, for attention, for Yoko to stop dangling their marriage over his head. Paul had come to see him, to try and convince him to go back to her. She’d asked him to go on her behalf. John hadn’t been impressed by her sending Paul of all people to do her dirty work. It felt like a hit below the belt. He’d gone back, of course, because he was always going to do the easy thing and return to the person who was willing to run his life for him. Until she got tired of him. She wouldn’t have considered taking a bet like this for one second.

”Come on, baby, do it nice,” he sang, watching Paul from the corner of his eye. Paul was smiling. He was thinking of the night before, and the first night, and all the nights they’d shared. He was thinking, hoping, about what lay ahead for them that night. Maybe he was thinking about what they’d said to each other the first time they’d been in Alloa. By the time John reached the last verse and felt his throat begin to strain he could feel his shirt sticking to his back and the crotch of his jeans tighten with sweat. The room was silent except for him and Paul. He had the whole room mesmerized. Sod all the people who turned their noses up at him ten years ago. They’d never had control of a crowd before.

Paul had the next song. His fingers danced lightly over his guitar, playing the song John had once claimed to hate in front of Yoko but had loved since the first time he heard Paul singing it, before the world got their claws into them. It was so soft, a word he’d use derisively in public but with the highest praise in private, because Paul was soft only for him and he for Paul. Hadn’t the world started turning for them both when they met? “And there was music, and wonderful roses, they tell me,” Paul sang, and all the women in the room sighed and wished for roses. They had no idea that John had gotten them already. Love all around, that had been singing just for him for so long, and he’d been half a world away ignoring it.

The hotel was a few minutes away from the theater. The first time, John had thrown a fit and insisted that he and Paul have a room for themselves and that George, Stu, and Tommy share another because he and Paul were going to write and needed their sleep. Not that they ever did any writing or sleeping. Johnny Gentle was off with the wife he wasn’t really married to. They shoved a chair under the doorknob just in case. Now, in the small room that perhaps was the one they’d slept in thirty years ago, they began to undress and get ready for bed. Paul started talking first. “What were you thinking about doing, now that it’s finished?”

“Haven’t really considered it, tell you the truth,” John said, leaving his dirty clothes in a pile to take care of in the morning. “This little foray back into the public eye was enough to think about. Why do you ask?”

“There’s more that you could be doing than writing angry letters about me.”

“You’re right. I’ll start writing angry letters about George. You know he still hasn’t apologized for what he left out of his book.” John sat down on the bed and pulled his sleep shirt down over his chest. “I’m sure you’re going to rush off and record a few more albums before going on another year-long world tour.”

“I wasn’t planning on it. Thought I might go home for a while. Get used to having the place to myself again.” Paul put his clothes into the bag and left the next day’s outfit on a chair before getting under the blanket. “You’d be welcome if you wanted to come round.”

John lay down. “You’ll leave a plate of biscuits out for me? Do up the spare room?”

“You’d sleep in mine.”

“And you’d have the spare?”

“Fuck off, John. I’m trying to make a real offer.”

“Why? You feel sorry for me? You think we ought to run off into the sunset after spending three days together?”

“Because I want you back in my life and back in my bed for good,” Paul snapped, eyes narrowing. “I took the bet because I thought it was my only chance to get you alone, and it worked, and it’s pretty fucking obvious we still want each other, so you can drop this act that you’re too good to spend time with me, John.”

“Feels like you think you’re too good to spend time with me.”

Paul grabbed John’s wrist and gave him a good yank, catching him by surprise, so he rolled over on top of Paul. They were nose to nose. John tried to repress the warm feeling suddenly blooming in the bottom of his stomach. “Or maybe we’re both divorced and alone and went on this three-date tour so we could ignore how lonely we really are,” Paul said, lips right there for the kissing. “And we really are better when we’re with each other.”

“Don’t go getting all soppy on me.”

“If you can honestly tell me that I didn’t meet your expectations, then you don’t ever have to speak to me again.”

John couldn’t. He let out a soft snort. “You know I never had any real complaints,” he muttered, before throwing his weight to one side and rolling them over so Paul was on top of him. “It’s deja vu all over again.”

Paul smiled. The first time they’d slept in Alloa, they’d locked themselves in the room they insisted on having for themselves and fucked when everyone else was out at the pub. Paul had asked first. “How long do you think it’ll last?” he had said, while John was at the window smoking a cigarette.

“The group? Until the money runs out. If the money ever starts coming in. I suppose once we’re really skint we’ll have to go out and get proper jobs.”

“Not the group. I mean, well. You know. You and me.”

John exhaled smoke through his nostrils. He could have gone for a pint, if Paul wasn’t naked in their bed. “Until we feel like killing each other.”

“You think we could keep writing together even if the group doesn’t make it?”

“I suppose. What are you getting at?”

John looked over at Paul. He was sitting up in bed, elbows resting on his bent knees, looking all of his eighteen years: pink cheeks, hair mussed. John softened. He ground his ciggie out in the ashtray and climbed back into bed, lying on his stomach and looking up at Paul. “I think you and me are going to be with each other for a long time,” he said, meaning it. His life had been small before Paul walked into it, his songs simple, his future dim. Paul brought the light and the fresh air and the music into his head. Even then, when they had no idea what was waiting for him, John knew that Paul was the reason he was going to do anything at all with his life. “And we’re going to make it because we have each other.”

“You mean it?” Paul asked, but before he could say anything else John was pulling him down to kiss him.

Presently, John exhaled. “You always did manage to motivate me,” he admitted. “Get me off the sofa. Make sure I didn’t fling myself off any rooftops.”

“And you always got me to slow down. Think about what I was doing. Made me want to impress you.”

“You think we’re stuck with each other?” John asked, lifting his legs to wrap around Paul’s hips. “Because I don’t see any way out, babe.”

“I didn’t say yes to you because I thought we were finished with each other,” Paul replied, lowering his head, and they didn’t talk much about anything for the rest of the night.

They left early the next morning; it was a long drive back to London. In the car, they avoided any station with news or reviews of the Nerk Twins’ three shows. They were happy with what they had accomplished, and they didn’t need to hear what anyone else thought. They didn’t get back to London until it was almost dark. Paul pulled the car up outside John’s house. “Well, here’s you,” Paul said. “If you changed your mind.”

John looked at his house, where he’d never lived with anyone, had both his children over, or had any fond memories. The windows were dark. It didn’t look like a place he wanted to spend any more time, if he could manage it. “Not tonight,” he said. “In the morning I’ll come back to get my things.”

“You still want to come back to mine?”

“I still remember where the kitchen and the toilet are. It won’t be hard to figure out where the bedroom is.”

Paul smiled. He put the car into drive and kept going towards Cavendish Avenue. John thought about all the time he’d spent living in the same city as Paul and how he’d spent no time with Paul. That was going to change. He was going to change. No more angry letters - he wasn’t angry anymore. No more lying around playing guitar for tourists - he had a life to get along with. No more living in a house that had no warmth - he had Paul. They could still rock and roll.