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Elton brings up Bernie at breakfast, licking jam from his piece of toast with a beguiling look on his face. He’d mentioned him last night, of course—”And none of this would be possible without my lyricist, Bernie Taupin; Bernie, take a bow!”—though John had been too busy fixating on Elton himself (wide eyes and rogue’s mouth, the tightness of his arse in white dungarees) to look for the mysterious Mr. Taupin in the crowd.
“You’ll have to meet him, I guess,” Elton murmurs, waggling an eyebrow, “if you’re….serious, about all of this?”
He goes from coy to genuinely shy in half a breath, a transition as disarmingly charming in broad daylight as it was hours before in Mama Cass’s garden, and John smiles stupidly in response.
“I want to know everything about you, Elton John,” he says, and he’s said that about a lot of talented men in his few years climbing the industry pole, but this time something in him genuinely means it.
John is planted backstage that night for the second show, his blood up with Doug Weston’s good whiskey as thrown at him by an exuberantly pretty man Elton introduces as Ray, who bounces in and out of the dressing room. Elton’s hand keeps drifting about as close to John’s as it can without touching, sending sparks into John’s throat like he’s a desperate sixteen-year-old meeting much older men in Glasgow bars all over again, and John has to remind himself, again and again, to keep his head, to stay present with this grinning armful of charisma who bubbles, slowly yet perfectly, like their shared ‘63 Dom.
He’s on his second glass and at least ten other new faces when the dressing room door opens to admit a slip of a man—long and straight dark hair, kindly peasant’s face, red singlet under an unfashionable denim jacket, a bottle of beer in one not-entirely-pale hand—he vaguely remembers seeing lean out over a balcony at one point last night.
“Bernie!”
Elton’s voice goes high, and his already pink face turns fully red. His energy, which has pinged around the room with every visitor, occasionally settling briefly—dangerously, deliciously—on John, focuses entirely on Bernie Taupin, and though he doesn’t throw himself at the man, John (no stranger to what it means to be infatuated with the impossible) can sense the utter devotion Elton feels for him, charged with a need that the sunny Bernie doesn’t seem to notice.
John drains his glass as Bernie, in a voice leavened with Northern England, says, “I swear, there are even more Beach Boys out there tonight.”
Elton laughs, loud and unforced, and takes a long drink from his own beer. John’s hands itch; he sits on one to avoid doing anything as revealing as straightening his collar. The shift in his body draws Elton’s attention back to him, and Bernie mirrors Elton, turning smiling blue eyes on John.
“Hello!”
Nothing more—no name, not even an offered hand, but warmth emanates from him nonetheless, touched through with curiosity. Bernie is utterly complacent, without any of Elton’s poorly contained energy, and yet he’s not quite boring, and John can for one heartbeat see what Elton loves about this hayseed poet.
“This is John Reid,” Elton says, as John realizes he’s done nothing but stare back at Bernie, and Elton’s voice is so very soft. John’s stomach fizzes, probably not entirely from the alcohol, and his muscles from his shoulders to his thighs tighten. “He’s in music management.”
Bernie’s eyes widen—it would be comical if John weren’t tense all over with barely concealed fear, because even this kid must know, must sense—and his smile deepens. “Oh my god, really, Reggie?”
The name takes John aback for a second; he looks at Elton in time to catch the dopey grimace on his face as he ducks his head. “He likes our music.”
Bernie looks directly at John, long enough to make John almost squirm, and then extends a hand, which John takes automatically in his. Bernie’s hands are broad and warm, and a burst of electricity runs down John’s spine. He bites his tongue to ground himself as they shake.
“Elton didn’t say it was a stage name, though I should have known.”
John cringes inwardly at the whine underlying his words, but Bernie laughs, releasing John’s hand. “Oh, that. Sorry, Elton.”
They turn, sunflowers following the sun, toward Elton, who is flushed and looking at the label on his bottle.
“Probably wasn’t a whole lot of time to mention it,” he murmurs, in a tone that reminds John of after, draped across Elton, their sweat sticking them each to the other, and John’s heart thuds as Elton continues, his voice wobbly, “though I certainly hope Mr. Reid will take pity on a poor struggling pianist in any of our future dealings.”
John can feel the moment Bernie grasps it, the subtle shift in his stance, the stifled noise, all familiar from pubs, clubs, back rooms where everything is negotiated in the smallest of gestures. John is absolutely sure, in the way he’s learned to be from repeated hard experience, that absolutely nothing about Bernie Taupin is bent, and there’s the tension in Bernie to prove it—and then, just as suddenly, a relaxation.
“Yeah?” Bernie speaks directly to Elton, as if John were not present, and there’s fondness in his voice that makes John blink. “Well, God knows we need all the friends we can get.”
Elton’s shoulders sag with relief, and John has the sudden urge to reach out for him, to claim Elton as his in a way he has never dared to in public with anybody else. He resists as Elton turns toward a trunk on the floor.
“Did you see tonight’s outfit, Bern?”
“Oh, God, is it as stupid as last night’s?”
Elton, laughing, yanks out a red jumpsuit and holds it up for approval, revealing his name in sparkling letters across the back. Bernie gags—jokingly, though he catches John’s gaze and raises an eyebrow, and John, who has so far found Elton’s wardrobe intriguingly absurd, lifts one in return.
“Amazing, mate.” Bernie shakes his head, looking away from John. “Heather’s waiting out front, so I guess I—”
“Yes, of course,” Elton says, too quickly, tossing the jumpsuit onto the back of a chair, and John slides off the whitewashed brick wall to step closer to him. Elton rewards him with a bump of shoulder against shoulder; John’s stomach turns molten, and he trails his hand, casually if not quite casually enough, along Elton’s arm, watching as Elton’s eyes close in bliss. “We’ll be fine.”
“Yes,” Bernie whispers, barely audible above the rush of John’s blood in his ears, and John decides that this is a benediction, that he will come back to the Elton John show as soon as life allows. “You will.”
It takes too long to find Elton again; John thinks, again and again, of reaching out for him, but he’s kept Stateside for a hatefully long time. When he finally returns to London, it’s in search of a genuine star—a moderate one yet, but fast rising, songs clogging up the airwaves and headlines in bold type across newsstands. The relief John feels upon finding Elton wide-open and desperate, the same charisma darting from under shyly lowered lashes—with the same propensity to sink his teeth, quite literally, into John—fills John with awe.
Elton is clay, liable to bend in the hands of just about anyone who offers him attention, which makes him an exquisite performer and an exquisite lover, almost embarrassingly attentive. John fears that this flexibility might too easily turn to fragility, might smash in on itself like so many stories of rock stars of late, and Elton has too much skill and charm to bear thinking of him as broken pottery on the ground somewhere. Elton deserves to burn bright and long, and John, after his years of scrabbling up from Scottish fuck-all, deserves Elton.
Life with Elton is exhilarating; he has gobs of money and little taste, and John, for the first time in his life, finds that he has the ability to live the thousand expensive dreams he’s nurtured since he first noticed high society and realized that was where he belonged. The manor Elton eventually settles into becomes a blend of both of them, art and kitsch; it’s a high-wire act, this life of theirs, star and live-in manager, a house of cards liable to implode with the slightest breeze, and yet somehow it doesn’t.
They throw a housewarming party when the decoration is finished, and the night ends with John, nerves worn thin from days of negotiating contracts, filled by a stoned-out, handsy Elton, who pets John’s hair for a solid ten minutes after they finish. When Elton eventually drifts off, John is still antsy, the comedown from their stash of cocaine even less friendly than normal, and he gets to his feet and wraps himself in a blue silk dressing gown before padding into the hall.
There are still guests somewhere—John can hear moans echoing from what sounds like one of the other bedrooms—but all he sees as he descends are empty glasses and dirty plates, stacked drunkenly across every available surface. In the sitting room, sprawled across a sofa, his head dangerously close to one of Elton’s china dog figurines, is Bernie Taupin, nursing a glass of water.
Bernie has been omnipresent lately, even moreso than usual, reminding John of a particularly clingy mutt from his childhood. In many ways he’s Elton’s other side, half of the enormous juggernaut John is trying to sustain, and he’s not a bad guy; his humor, when it comes, is often taut, rather like Elton’s own, and if he doesn’t talk much to John, well, he doesn’t exactly need to. John and Bernie have created a shorthand of their own in the past months when it comes to Elton, the dark star holding them together in orbit around him.
Bernie looks up, his eyes almost sober, when John enters. As ever, he says nothing.
“Break that and he just might have your head,” John finally says, his voice raspy. When Bernie stares, John nods at the porcelain dog. “I don’t want to find out how much it cost, ugly as it is.”
Bernie laughs. “I suppose it’s his money to misspend.”
The words could be cruel; they equally could not. John knows he’s susceptible to paranoia while coming down, and his head has the dull throb that presages a hangover if he doesn’t either sleep or drink more. Bernie surely knows better, thinks better of John, than what he could be implying, and John must stop spinning pointless worries.
“You’ve probably noticed that this house, being rather large, has many better places to sleep than a sofa.”
Bernie looks him up and down, lingering on his mussed hair, and John refuses to blush. This is not the first time Bernie has caught either him or Elton postcoitally, and it will not be the last. Part of the unspoken deal is that Elton and John will not hide from Bernie, and Bernie, however grudgingly John wants to credit him in moments like this, has accepted this with absolutely no visible qualms.
“Sort of sounds like they’re already occupied.”
It’s said with a wry smile, and John gives him one back, since it’s the truth.
“Don’t worry about the knickknacks, mate.” Bernie yawns into his glass. “I sleep very still. I’ll close up the house, or whatever you’re on about, before I pass out.” His face softens, though there’s a quick bitter twist of his mouth—there and then gone again—that mystifies John. “Don’t leave him alone up there, yeah?”
Something in his tone raises the hair on the back of John’s neck. “Do I ever?”
“I hope not.”
Bernie does not meet John’s eyes. John draws his dressing gown more tightly around himself before returning to Elton.
At some point—after the third or fourth tour, maybe, more time spent on the road than anywhere else; after the rare days standing still become consumed with paperwork, and managing offices full of other people, and business—life with Elton is exhausting. Elton runs endlessly, collapsing only for brief hours abed, to rise with exactly as much energy as the day before and the day before that, and increasingly he demands John’s presence, without ever saying as much—when John is gone, Elton tends toward stupidity, booze and cocaine and parties that threaten his ability to perform, and yet when John is there, Elton takes the bit between his teeth, stubborn as if it were his God-given right as a chart-topper to also be a pain in John’s arse.
John’s life revolves around Elton John, the star, easing every whim of his into existence to keep him going, and it makes intimate life with Elton John the man hard to handle. John’s lost his temper more times than he can count, sometimes in surprisingly nasty ways that don’t really bear thinking about, and as he’s a safe target, he’s been on the receiving end of Elton’s pent-up fury. Public life is such that their only escape valve is each other, and if that means flint and steel rubbing against one another, sparks and the occasional outright porcelain-smashing, bruise-raising barn burner of a fight, then that’s what it means.
John misses easy sex, sex without vast expanses of backstory behind it, sex that isn’t a preview of some argument to come or a strangled attempt to capture what used to be natural; he needs company less fraught than Elton’s, if he’s to keep them both moving forward. Elton has the stage, so he can’t and doesn’t complain that John has other men; they never speak of it in words, but why would they need to?
John, on edge after a day of negotiations for the upcoming set of concerts at Dodger Stadium, returns to the LA mansion to find it empty but for one of his secretaries, loitering aimlessly around the front hall, big eyes and arse. The man—James, he reminds himself—responds gladly to John’s push against the wall, bending his knees with a rapidity that makes John’s blood heat (with lust, not anger) as it hasn’t in weeks, but Elton has been particularly fractious and withholding lately; what John really wants is control.
He digs his fingers into James’s shoulder, hauls him upright and holds him in place with an arm across James’s stomach as John gets on his knees.
“Holy shit—”
James whimpers as John none too gently pulls his trousers and pants out of the way and swallows down his cock.
This is not the first blowjob John has given in this foyer—an extremely high Elton has had him on his knees in much the same way, on multiple occasions—but it’s the first time he’s had James. John’s mind is crystal clear as he works his mouth around James’s cock, all thoughts of frustration and rage drowned in sweaty flesh that could blissfully choke him if he wanted to, if he made it—
The front door opens, too quietly and decorously for Elton but audible to John’s heightened senses nonetheless, and John almost doesn’t stop. Only James’s panic, his hands scrabbling at John’s forehead to push him off his cock, forces John to give up, bile rising in his throat as he turns to face the interloper.
The sight of Bernie, mouth open, spare set of keys dangling in his hand, only makes John angrier.
“Taupin.”
Bernie gawks. James, fumbling to tuck himself back in, pauses to look between John and Bernie and, with a sudden shudder, scampers off.
“Didn’t know you were expected home so soon, darling.” John’s voice burns his lips, though he fights to keep camp, comically and unthreateningly fey, as he gets to his feet. “Did you have a good day?”
Bernie’s utter confusion is amusing more than frightening, even though John’s Glasgow-honed instinct upon being caught in flagrante is still to spit insults and run, prepared to turn on a dime to fists if flight isn’t an option. John remains planted in place, his twitching hands behind his back, and waits to see what option Bernie will choose.
“I didn’t—Elton said it would be empty—”
Through the open door John hears a drunken laugh, still somewhere down the drive.
“You can go in my house, Bern!”
Bernie jumps; John sighs, his anger diverted as quickly as it rose, to be replaced with the iron control that keeps both him and Elton from falling into the sort of trouble they can’t extricate themselves from. “Himself, as ever. Did you get him plastered?”
“What? No, we—”
Elton bounds through the door, pushing past Bernie to see what the hold-up is.
“Oh, hello, darling dearest, didn’t know you were in.” His voice is jovial, though he barely spares John a glance before pelting upstairs, unhesitating on four-inch heels. Halfway up he shouts, “Choose a bloody record, Bernie!”
John belatedly notices the brown paper packages under Bernie’s arm, which Bernie, judging by his startled look, forgot.
“Anything half as good as Captain Fantastic?”
“I—” Bernie swallows, clutches one record to his chest, exhales. The sound of a door closing behind Elton echoes downstairs, and this seems to steel Bernie’s nerves. “What the fuck, Reid. Why?”
John smiles, though it makes his jaw, which would still be around James’s cock in a better world, twinge. “Do you really think you could possibly understand anything about men like Elton and me?”
Bernie’s head jerks; some days he’s so very aware of what he can’t give Elton, John’s noticed, and it always shows as uneasy unhappiness in those deep eyes. He can’t dissemble nearly as well as Elton or John can, but after a few breaths his face settles into something halfway normal.
“I think we’ll try the new Fleetwood Mac.”
Airplane air only makes John’s headaches worse, and he’s been airborne and eating paracetamol like boiled sweets pretty much nonstop in the months since Dodger Stadium. Whatever sense of restraint Elton once had seems to have been left at the bottom of the LA pool. (It’s a minor miracle that Elton was not talented enough to kill himself, and it’s a testament to John’s skill that nobody who was not in that garden knows about Elton’s dramatics.) Attempting to control him since then has been unpleasant from beginning to end, and John’s not sure what being kicked out of Elton’s bed has done to Elton’s stability, though at this point John would increase his own salary again if Elton asked him for sex.
Miles above the earth, where Elton’s ability to damage himself or others is limited, is one of the only places John can attempt to relax, headaches or no headaches. There’s a steady supply of Laphroaig, which takes the edge off so long as John doesn’t stop drinking it, and Elton stays cheery with his white lines (which John has sworn off using at altitude after one batch had his hand around some hapless roadie’s throat; something about bad air and cocaine pushes him right to the edge in seconds flat). On this particular flight John has attempted to push a few pert-arsed hangers-on in Elton’s direction, though Elton, in gold hotpants and winged shoes, is so deep in his mixture of booze and coke that he’s spent much of the flight sprawled across the couch, chattering at the ceiling and ignored by most everyone around him. When the latest attempt returns to John’s side, pouting, after a few minutes, John decides to keep him for his own.
He’s half talked the boy into accompanying him for dinner upon landing when a haggard shadow appears in the corner of his eye. He ignores Bernie for as long as possible, but Bernie remains longer than the boy does, smiling grimly as John’s prospect swans off to join a group gathering around one of the guitarists.
“Unlucky.”
John rolls his eyes. “There are plenty of women around, aren’t there, Taupin?”
Bernie grimaces. “Too right.” He scratches at his five o’clock shadow. “You don’t need to look too happy about this, but I think I’ve had enough of this party for a few months.”
It takes John a moment to process, and when he does, the idea of no Bernie is—it’s an idea. He can’t decide if not having Bernie around will help or hurt Elton; they barely seem to interact currently as it is, though sometimes John will find a particularly high Elton clinging to Bernie, long after the rest of the entourage has gone to bed. The bigger question—the one that actually matters, of course—is what Elton will do for work if Bernie doesn’t return.
“How long is a few months?”
“What, d’you want an exact timetable?” The sneer that stretches across Bernie’s face is new, though its bitterness is strangely alluring. “I don’t know, John.”
His Christian name on Bernie’s tongue is somehow even newer than the sneer, though far less charming. Before John can respond, Bernie rambles on.
“How long does it take to dry out, really? It might take him months—”
“Him?” Heat flashes behind John’s eyes, though he works to keep his voice low. “I don’t remember hearing anything about anyone but Bernard Taupin taking a break.”
Bernie’s hand grips John’s arm, and he does not back down when John glares. “You do not control me.” He breathes in, hard and audible against the noise around them, and John’s hand curls into a fist. “You don’t even really control him.”
“Why do you think Elton Hercules John even still has a career?” John’s at the point where he can either whisper or scream, and he will not let Bernie fucking Taupin, absolute pinnacle of a groupie, drive him to a scream. He can see Bernie’s eyes widen at the acid dripping, so softly, from John’s lips, and John’s body trembles with the strain of holding himself in. “Who do you think keeps his millions of dollars from disappearing before he can even get his pudgy little hands on them? Who do you think keeps his name out of the papers when he waltzes off to some club he shouldn’t be within five miles of? Who keeps him happy?”
Bernie laughs at that, removing his hand, and John leans forward to grab him before controlling himself. Bernie, of course, notices, lifting an eyebrow. “It sure as hell isn’t you.” He shakes his head, though he doesn’t stop meeting John’s eyes for long, driven by some curious determination John has never seen in him before. “I don’t know why you do what you do, Reid, but it has very little to do with Elton’s happiness, and you’re about to drive him straight into a wall.”
John stares, the long and searching look he knows drives subordinates to their knees, figuratively and literally; Bernie holds out a hell of a lot longer than any of John’s secretaries, though he eventually looks away, directly at Elton, who’s staring blank-eyed into space.
“You want him?” John, making a decision, speaks before he can stop himself, a dangerous place for anybody to be, but especially him, John Reid, poofter Scottish nobody who now controls more money than his entire village saw in a year, who’s blessed with stubborn intuition and cursed with uncontainable temper. Some things cannot be controlled, and he suspects that at this point Elton is one of them, even for his beloved Bernie. “Take him.” When Bernie blinks, John continues, “Elton is a big boy, you’re right. Take him on a fucking retreat, if he’ll have you.”
Bernie’s only response is to walk toward Elton, and John drains his glass and heads to the bar for another, snapping at the bartender, little though it does to calm himself. He remains taut for the long minutes that pass until he hears Elton’s bitchy laugh and turns to see Bernie, pale, getting to his feet.
John empties his glass in one long swallow and abandons it on the bar, looking for a boy to order about. This one is tall and tan, and at one glance from John he prances over to the couch, leans over Elton’s shoulder, warm and sultry. Elton, fiddling with his glasses with trembling hands, returns the boy’s smile with a cross-eyed dazzler of his own.
He’s surprised his mobile, new as it is, still works after the ring round he’s had, promoter after promoter, soothing words he’s only half paying attention to. Yes, the tour is still on; since when does the press report on celebrities with anything like accuracy? No, it wasn’t a heart attack; how on earth did a chest infection become a heart attack? Yes, they need the extra nights; demand’s gone through the roof now that people remember their bright, shining star is only human; of course Elton’s good for it. (Of course John’s good for it.)
He spends a minute in silence, ear aching from the pressure of the phone, considering which friend to ring up for a late dinner rendezvous after he’s ensured Elton hasn’t been found by some bloody reporter; the car is almost to the hospital when the mobile rings again.
“Reid.”
John recognizes Bernie’s voice at once, though it’s been well over a year since they’ve spoken, never mind seen one another in the flesh. His reply is snappish.
“I don’t remember giving you this number, Taupin.”
“Where is he?”
John leans his head against the window, closing his eyes. “Do you honestly think you have the right to ask me that question?”
“Do you honestly expect me not to care?”
“Fuck if I know,” John says, his voice ominously pleasant, though Bernie barrels on, as bullheaded as Elton when he wants to be.
“Where is he?”
“He’s fine,” John repeats for the thousandth time that day. A knot has hardened directly over his heart, the stress of cleaning up after Elton’s stupidity, and he takes a breath before deciding that Bernie should absolutely share in this misery. “He’ll be home tomorrow. I have no idea what possessed you to call me, demanding I drop everything and everyone else I’m dealing with in order to help you, when you’ve made it perfectly clear you want nothing to do with Elton John anymore. You won’t even live on the same continent as him, and you want me to, what, soothe your feelings? Send him some flowers in your name? Pass along some lyrics to think about from his sickbed?”
“Fuck you, John.”
It’s almost cheerful, and John, sensing a proper volley in the offing, opens his eyes. Before he can reply, the line disconnects.
Elton is sleeping, or pretending to, when John checks in, and the nurse assures him there have been no visitors. (He decides to believe her, as there’s only so much rage even he can take in one day.) He heads to dinner, loses himself for the night in a beautiful blond who knows little about Elton John beyond the name and absolutely nothing about John Reid or Bernie Taupin.
He checks on Elton at home just before dinner the next day, fielding calls straight up to Elton’s door. The housekeeper lets him in without a word, though he knows the guard on the gate phoned ahead to alert her. The house is brightly lit, silent but for distant noise from Elton’s wing. The entry hall has mostly disappeared under flowers, and full vases litter the route to Elton’s suite.
John opens the bedroom door without bothering to knock, finding Elton sprawled, snoring, on top of the duvet, Chopin pouring from a record player next to the bed. (Elton has redecorated at least twice since John slept in this room, switching out artwork and upholstery and even the very bed itself, but John’s pretty sure the record player is still the same one he bought Elton that first Christmas.) Elton is hospital grey in color but well alive, and John’s about to leave when he notices the bouquet of blush-colored roses—Elton’s favorite, as John and few others know—on Elton’s dresser, Reggie typed on the envelope nestled among the petals.
Elton doesn’t stir as John opens the card. Inside is one line, impersonal florist typing, the sentiment nonetheless scalding.
I love you, brother.
John, his pulse throbbing in his temples, leaves it ostentatiously open on the dresser next to the vase.
Twenty years he’s spent as Elton’s fixer, knowing every flicker of Elton’s mood, every one of his tastes, the routine of Elton’s day, month, year, long after he stopped sharing Elton’s bed. He’s outlasted innumerable boyfriends and platonic friends and collaborators, bound to Elton by legal contract and yet somehow more than that, divorced parents kept together by the shared custody of Elton’s mess and the need to contain it. That Elton has any place in the world at all after his exuberant, extravagant fuck-ups is due in large part to John, who manages the details so that Elton can ignore them.
Sober Elton is disconcerting, a faint ghost of their earliest moments together, all of the insecurity boiling over and yet none of the charismatic shyness, no hint of innocence. He doesn’t know himself, has never known himself, but finally wants to learn, as he tells every reporter he meets, an open book of neuroses for the world to pick through, a public therapy case. He mesmerizes even in this naked state, because Elton is incapable of doing anything else, incapable of putting on a bad show even without chemical assistance, and somehow his neediness is as compelling as his most absurd costumes, his bitchiest antics.
John has kept his own cash squirreled away against the end of Elton since long before Elton first threw himself into his pool. That the end of Elton comes with Elton still very much alive—with Elton thoughtful and sincere as he hasn’t been in years, making plans for a new album even as he sends a termination letter through their lawyers—is what sends John over the edge.
Elton refuses to speak to John at all, maintains a stony silence no matter what channel John tries. John, high day after day as he hasn’t been in years, refuses to give in, and weeks into the breakup he’s granted a meeting at Elton’s lawyer’s office.
He sobers up for two days in advance, arriving punctually and only faintly lethargic with withdrawal. He regrets his sobriety as soon as he enters the meeting room and finds himself face to face with Taupin, alone.
“John,” Taupin says, welcoming, extending his hand. John takes it before he can think better of it, his stomach roiling at the easy warmth of Taupin’s broad palm against his. “Glad you could make it.”
John opens his mouth twice before finally finding words on the third attempt. “Bernie.” He tries a smile, though it feels plastic even to him. “I didn’t know you’d been called to the bar.”
Taupin laughs, disturbingly calmly, his gently lined face open and easy, his greying hair swept back from his face in a tiny ponytail. Only his eyes show any sort of deeper emotion, anything that might connect to the two goddamned decades he’s known John. “We didn’t want to make it too formal.”
“We?” The habit of taunting this man is burned too deeply into John to stop now. “Is there a happy announcement I’ve missed in the past few weeks?”
Taupin doesn’t stop smiling, though his eyes grow sadder, suddenly, the old regret that no amount of rehabilitated Elton can relieve, and John counts that flicker as a victory, even if he suspects it will be the only one he’s allowed today. “This is a professional dissolution, isn’t it, John? Elton and I have been one credit line since long before the Troubadour.”
“And only half of that famed partnership could make it today?”
Taupin shrugs. “Really, what is there to say?” Generosity gives way to a jester’s sense of mockery—Elton’s sense of stage humor—that John had almost forgotten he was capable of. “The lawyers said you had something for Elton?”
John has ten thousand things for Elton, some of which might even be kind, somewhere, because he genuinely loved that bizarre firecracker in the silver spangled shirt, Elton kissing him ineptly, wonderfully against the closed door of John’s hotel room while John buried his hands in Elton’s denim jacket. Looking at Taupin, however, all he can remember is a haze of drugs and temper, the fight to keep them moving forward and never backward, broken porcelain statuettes, matching bruises and black eyes, those vertiginous few years he’d thought he’d sealed away.
He has a distinctly ugly vision of that buried period splashed across some headline, put there by this new press-friendly, sober Elton, and he knows—decides, though to judge by Taupin it’s not his decision to make—that this moment will be the closest he ever again gets to Elton John.
“Twenty years is a long time, Bernie. All I want is closure.”
Taupin nods, almost beatifically. “And I’m glad to give that to you.” He clears his throat, and the sound makes John, for one white-edged moment, want to reach across the table to strangle him. John keeps his hands folded across his lap, breathing deeply as Taupin cocks his head. “Anything else?”
“Nothing today, thanks very much.” John gets to his feet, straightening his jacket. “A few of my other clients are nearly as needy as Elton, so if you don’t mind.” He struggles against instinct before succumbing to the brief pleasure of bitchery. “Have a good life, Bernard Taupin.”
Taupin’s face holds not much of anything now, though he watches John closely, with a touch of curiosity bubbling through. John turns his back fully on Bernie Taupin, tries to ignore the final words that follow him, beating again and again against the inside of his skull, back down to his car.
“We’ll be fine.”