Archive of Our Own

The first time John lays eyes on him, it’s the arse-end of summer—late July or early August, the sort of heat that rots your patience before it touches your skin. He drags Yoko down from the Dakota because the air in their flat doesn't move, while the patio at Café La Fortuna occasionally coughs up a breeze.

It’s their fourth visit this week. Fourth time they've exhausted every topic except the many, many ways they’ve disappointed each other, and even that’s starting to feel stale. What can he say? He’s a creature of habit and she’s a creature of moods.

They slide into their usual table. John’s got a cigarette lit before his arse even meets the chair. He’s craving a sfogliatella or an affogato, something sweet enough to cut through the lemon-tart look Yoko’s wearing, and then—

out of the thin, nothing-much Wednesday air, the lad appears. John's whole system jolts like someone’s jammed a live wire under his ribs, the way bodies do seconds before disaster, when you don’t yet know what’s happened but you know something has struck, clean and merciless.

“Fuck me,” he mutters, barely moving his lips.

Yoko doesn’t bother to look up.

He’s tall and fit and young, shamelessly young. Eighteen, maybe nineteen. Dark, thick hair, and shoulders, the kind you only get from lifting crates and trays day after day. And those eyes — big, bright hazel things — that go running riot through John’s veins even from across the garden.

John’s certain he’s never laid eyes on him; Christ, he’d have carved that face into the back of his eyelids.

The boy rounds the corner from the back with a grey plastic bus tub hugged to his hip, stacked with dirty dishes. He wears the snuggest pair of Levi’s any man has ever dared to wear, and a faded white T-shirt with the sleeves rolled just so.

John was nineteen once. He remembers rolling sleeves to show off biceps he was far too proud of. Started doing it the summer Paul came back from his cousins’ house, lit from somewhere inside, carrying himself like he’d discovered some private truth while he was gone. John hated him instantly, wanted him instantly, and whisked him off to Paris only to find himself pressed against him in a hot room with a narrow bed and a city that didn’t care what they were doing.

The boy, the new boy, doesn’t notice them; no reason he would. A busboy’s got better things to do than bother with them before they’ve even ordered. But John watches him anyway, hungry and irritated with himself for it, willing him to glance up just once.

He doesn’t. He wipes a table, whistles something cheery, and disappears back behind the bar.

Right there, among Sal's potted lemon trees, John thinks Oh, there you are, like he's just stumbled on the answer to a question he’s been asking since the day he slid out screaming into the world.

His name is Joe, John finds out later. New. Well—new-ish. He’s worked there once, disappeared, and now he’s back, picking up odd shifts whenever they’re short-staffed. Sal calls him Joey though the lad goes by Joe these days, thinking himself older. Carmela swears he’s a good kid. Works hard, never talks back.

Joe the busboy.

Joe, Joe, Joe.

If John had been a regular before, he’s a fixture now, the resident oddball haunting La Fortuna for a glimpse of that boy who refuses to materialize on schedule.

When he finally does—well. Sore eyes rejoice, trousers dance.

A pair of long, muscly legs descends the back stairs from the boxing club above the café, carrying the rest of Joe with them. He drops his gym bag behind the counter and doesn’t bother to wash up, just ties on an apron over the whole glorious mess and cracks on wiping the bar, sweat and all. John can smell the pheromones all the way from the patio.

John smokes to steady himself until Joe looks up, scans the tables, and walks in John’s direction.

“Can I—?” he says, gesturing at the dishes.

John makes a throaty noise. Joe bends slightly, reaching for a plate, near enough that John can see the sweat glistening in the dip of his collarbone. He takes him in shamelessly, greedily. A golden cross necklace dangles from his chest, catching a beam of late-afternoon light only New York can produce.

This — this — is why he loves New York. All the worn-out, angry, hopeful bodies packed together, and suddenly one of them looks like this. He'd thought Liverpool to London was a revelation, but London never coughed up a Joe; beautiful Italian men don’t sprout out of the pavement there.

“What’s your name, then?” John asks.

“Me? Joe, sir,” he says, wiping the table.

“Cheers, Joe. I’m John, meself.”

“Yeah," Joe scoffs. "I know.”

“You’re new, yeah?”

Joe’s eyes flick up at that, really look at him this time. Studies John’s face like he’s not sure he heard right, then nods.

John takes another long pull from his cigarette, gives Joe another smile. The boy goes pink for it, all the way up to his ears.

God bless America.

"Later," Joe says and moves to the next table, where an elderly woman is following him with the keen eye of someone who’s seen a lifetime of handsome boys and still knows a good one when he walks past.

“Grazie, bello,” she rasps, accent thick as old-country wine.

“Anytime, Nonna.”

“I got-a granddaughter, eh,” she goes on, tapping his wrist. “Very pretty girl. I give you number, okay?”

“Any granddaughter of yours is too good-looking for a kid like me,” Joe sweet-talks, helping her up from the chair—careful and patient, steadying her arm as she shuffles away.

And he’s a fucking charmer too, John thinks, doomed and delighted, and orders another espresso.

Within days, Joe is upgraded to bar duty. John follows. He props himself on a stool and chats him up whenever the universe allows. Joe’s from Bay Ridge and sounds like it- the vowels are fat, the ends of words go missing. Five older brothers, a baby sister, a mother who fattens him up, a father who doesn’t say much.

A Virgo, God help us.

John stores every detail away like contraband.

As the day thins out and the customers with it, Joe curls over an Arthur Miller, whispering the lines to himself as he reads. Joe’s fingers drift to the chain at his throat, worrying it without thought, and when he pauses his reading, he reaches for a peach, ripe and round, and bites into it. John gets so hard, so fast he almost faints.

One day there’s a car accident outside, a proper smash. Everyone floods onto the sidewalk to rubberneck. Joe ends up beside him, shoulder brushing his, and John sees the boy lift his cross necklace to his lips, kiss it, then make the sign of the cross for good measure. John takes in the little ritual like he’s witnessing some rare, trembling creature he has no business getting anywhere near.

Eventually, the heat reclaims the street and the interest wanes. Back behind the counter, Joe wanders over again and sets down a clean tip jar.

“What’s that, then?” John asks.

Joe wipes his hands on his apron. “Oh — uh, yeah. I’m saving up for aerobatics lessons.”

"Aerobatics?"

“Stunt flying. Aerobatics.”

“Like a pilot?”

“I wanna do stunt work, like a stunt actor, y'know? There’s this place out in Burbank—teaches you the real stuff. Planes, high falls, car rolls… all that crazy shit.”

“So what — you wanna be an actor?”

Joe gives a half-cocked shrug. “I am an actor.”

“Oh aye? Have I seen you in anything, then?”

Joe leans closer, voice low. “Depends what you're watching.”

John’s pulse misbehaves, so he ashes his cigarette. “You’re in the wrong bloody city if that’s what you want, y’know.”

Joe smiles, easy. “One thing at a time.”

“You don’t make it in this business doing one thing at a time.”

“Like you would know?”

“Yeah, I bloody well would—” John bristles, and that’s when he sees it, the quick flicker of amusement at Joe’s mouth.

Cheeky bastard.

The kid’s taking the piss.

“Mind yourself,” John says. “That face’ll get you in trouble.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

It’s nothing. A nothing moment. The sort of thing that happens a hundred times a day. Except later, when he’s back home and the house has gone quiet, he can't stop thinking about him.

Joe’s birthday lands on a Friday, and Carmela will not shut up about it.

“Più zucchero! No, meno! Dio mio, do you want to kill him?” she orders the cook from the kitchen door. “Madonna, ecco perché faccio tutto da sola!”

“Carmela, please, it’s not a big deal—” Joe tries.

"Vuoi che tua madre dica: 'Ecco, Carmela non ha neanche fatto una torta di compleanno per mio figlio!'... Neanche morta!"

“Okay, okay, I’m goin’!” Joe says retreating.

“What’s she saying?” John asks.

“I have no idea,” Joe whispers.

Carmela clocks it anyway and clips the back of his head as he passes, muttering ‘scemo’ under her breath.

Eventually, she brings out something special and creamy and traditional — ricotta, citrus, vanilla, something that smells like somebody’s childhood — and sets it down in front of Joe. Joe’s face lights up. It lights the whole room, if John’s honest. They sing to him and he ducks his head as he blows them out. He cuts into the dessert, takes a bite, and looks up, catches John watching him.

“Here,” he says, nodding at the second spoon Carmela’s tossed on the plate. “Have some.”

John slides onto the stool opposite him, and they eat the thing together over the counter. They fall into a rhythm of passing it back and forth, taking turns without speaking, their fingers brushing.

“When’s your birthday?” Joe asks, licking cream from the corner of his mouth.

“Soon.”

“How old you gonna be?”

“A gentleman doesn’t ask,” John says lightly. “And a lady never tells.”

“Can’t be more than like…” Joe squints at him, head tipped. “Thirty.”

The way he says it, like he’s offering John a kindness, makes him feel suddenly ancient.

“How old are you?” John asks, still recovering.

“Twenty.” Joe drags his thumb through a smear of ricotta and licks it clean. John’s mouth goes dry. “My ma woke me up this morning with a cake that said twenty-one. She got mixed up again.”

“Again?” John laughs. “How many times has she aged you up?”

“Couple. Too many boys in the house, I guess. She says we grow up too fast. Hard to keep track.”

John’s about to answer when the radio cuts in, soft at first, then unmistakable. The opening bars of Hey Jude cut through the café like a hand grabbing his collar. Joe freezes mid-chew, eyebrows lifting as he turns to John.

“Isn't that you?”

John fights the urge to grin. “Yes, sweetheart, it is.”

“It’s good.”

“Why, thank you, angel. That one was Paul’s, though.”

“Is that bad?”

John watches Joe as he drags the spoon clean with his tongue, slow and thoughtless.

“Bad for him, maybe,” John murmurs. “Who’s Paul?”

Joe laughs, startled. “What?”

“Never met a Paul in me life.” He leans in. “There’s no one in my life but you, baby.”

Joe grabs the dish towel off the counter, and flicks it at John’s face—not hard, just enough to make his point. John catches the towel, grinning like an idiot despite himself. He’s about to say something else when the bell over the café door jingles. A bloke appears in the doorway. His eyes find Joe immediately and don’t let go.

Joe straightens up immediately, smile fading. He mutters, “Excuse me,” and disappears outside, out of sight.

When Joe finally returns, John smashes his cigarette out on the counter harder than necessary, feels the grit of it under his thumb.

“Boyfriend?”

Joe's fingers keep busy with the knot of his apron. “Somethin’ like that.”

“I know him,” John says, too quickly. “He’s the bouncer at Cork.”

Joe looks up, surprised. “Yeah. You know it?”

John nods.

“I work the bar there. Never seen you.”

“It’s been a while,” he adds, like that explains anything.

The Cork. John’s been there often enough, skulking in the dark like a truant schoolboy. It isn’t the best gay club in the city, but it’s busy enough. Everyone’s just another arse in a pair of jeans, another mouth shouting for a drink.

John feels something tighten under his ribs. Something like jealousy, though he can’t quite justify it. A dull, irrational anger — not at Joe, but at the sudden clarity of it: this thing he’s been nursing has edges. Limits. Joe’s world stretches well past this room, past these afternoons, past John altogether.

Fuck.

He's too old for this shit.

Joe turns to the coffee maker and makes him a cappuccino. When he slides the cappuccino across the counter, there’s a heart in the foam. He takes a towel and goes back to drying plates.

“Had one like this in Rome once,” John asks. “Y’ever been? Italy?”

Joe glances over his shoulder, shaking his head. “Closest I got is Jersey.”

“Fancy it?”

“Italy? Yeah. I mean… sure. Why not?” He hesitates, then adds, “My Nonno’s from Sardinia. Came over when he was a kid. Used to talk about it all the time.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Said every morning his ma’d squeeze juice straight from the orchard. Whatever was in season. Apples, peaches, apricots.”

“You’d like that?” John asks, softer. “Waking up to that every day.”

“Yeah. Sounds nice. Simple.” Then he tilts his head, studying John properly now. “Did you like it?”

“Jersey?”

“Italy,” Joe presses.

“Couldn’t tell you,” John says. “All bleeds together after a bit.”

“Huh.” Joe nods, not sure what to do with that. He reaches for another plate, dries it slow, eyes flicking back to John when he thinks he won’t notice.

“Your coffee’s gonna get cold,” Joe says.

John turns the cup slightly. “Don’t wanna wreck it.”

“It’s a cappuccino, not the Mona Lisa. I’ll make you another.”

John turns the cup again, slow and deliberate, as if there’s a right angle where it’ll all come clear. The foam’s collapsed now, milk bleeding into coffee, past saving. He takes a sip.

It’s perfect.

Of course it is.

It takes John ages to drag himself out of bed the next morning. When he finally does, he moves through the house in slow, drifting circles, as if he’s forgotten what each room is for. His gaze snags on odd corners, forgotten glasses, the curl of Yoko’s shawl on a chair.

The newspapers on the dining table are a messy sprawl, headlines shouting for attention he refuses to give—until he sees it. Paul and Linda, golden as ever, looking like an advert for Good Clean Living.

Beatle Paul spotted playing croquet with in-laws.

Croquet!

Paul’s smile is easy, familiar, almost intimate—the sort that always promised more than it ever delivered. John once believed he could prise it open, crack the shell, find the glowing centre and live there. But Paul keeps whole worlds locked behind that warmth, tidy and inaccessible. All those years of John thinking, If I just hold him a little tighter, maybe he’ll stay.

But Paul never did. He’d wrap himself around John when it’d suited him; he’d fuck him, sing with him, to him, for him—but he never chose him. Never looked him in the eye and said, This is it. You’re it.

John touched him everywhere but where it mattered.

Linda beams beside him in the photo, hand hooked into Paul’s arm. Always touching him, she is, like she’s afraid he might float off if she lets go. John wonders if she feels it too—that hollow behind the smile. You can hold him, sure. You just can’t keep him.

Poor lass.

John folds the paper away carefully.

Croquet.

Odd, the strange universe he’s ended up in.

Yoko sits down opposite of John as if she’s been in the room the whole time, coffee cupped in both hands. Her cigarette is the only thing offering a plume of movement in the vast, still air. She feels a thousand yards away, across the flawless expanse of the dining table. She is an island, he thinks, and he's watching her from another continent.

They've bought up entire wings of the Dakota, rooms and rooms and corridors over corridors. Most of them, completely empty. This grandeur is her masterpiece—the world’s most expensive padded cell for the world's richest lunatics.

“Where’ll I go if you leave me, then?”

If. When. Potato, potahto.

She looks at him properly now, not unkindly. He falls apart like this every other month and she’s used to the spectacle. Might as well be watching rain hit the window.

Last spring she’d told him she thought she was marrying a lion, to match her lioness. He’d asked what on earth gave her that idea.

They’ve never been the same since.

“We didn’t get a pre-nup,” he says, half accusation, half plea.

“Then I won’t leave, and you can stop asking.”

Potato, potahto.

“Paul looks well,” she says, flicking a glance at the crumpled newspaper.

John’s jaw tightens. “Aye. Sun shines on the blessed, doesn’t it?”

At some point John starts to think he’s seeing him everywhere — the city turning into a hall of mirrors, Joe’s face slipping into reflections that don’t belong to him.

One afternoon he steps out for cigarettes, heads west, not thinking. Halfway down 72nd he catches sight of a familiar back dressed in army fatigues of all bloody things, moving fast against the crowd.

John slows, heart misfiring. When he reaches the corner, Joe has already disappeared behind the bus stop, leaving nothing but the ordinary street behind.

He goes to a tea-leaf reader, just to see what happens, killing an hour. He drinks her builders tea from a fancy little cup. She turns it in her hand, this way and that.

“Something will come to a halt soon,” she tells him. “All at once. Like hitting a wall.” She peers again. “Be careful where you lay your heart these days.”

He thanks her for pointing out the bloody obvious and puts the money down. Outside, a lorry tears past close enough to shake the glass.

Late September takes everything in the city down a notch. John gets exiled outdoors by Carmela like a stray cat, something about getting the bar varnished. It’s a nothing afternoon, just him, plus Mark and James, his neighbours from the Dakota. They’re a matched set, those two — sharing one long, rambling conversation about people John’s never met. John doesn’t mind. Listening is easier than thinking.

It isn’t until Mark calls Joe for more water that John startles back into his body. Joe steps over, sets the pitcher down with a soft clink, and the faintest smile lifts the corner of his mouth.

John answers it without thinking, a smile small and helpless.

Mark watches the exchange, amused. “Thank you, Joe,” he sing-songs.

When Joe steps away, James chuckles into his iced tea. Mark gives a low whistle through his teeth.

“Looks even better in the flesh,” James says. “Don’t he?”

John doesn’t look away from the doorway. “What?”

“On film it’s all a little… put on," Mark says, rolling the glass between his palms. "But in person he’s sweet. Polite, even.”

“Film?” John asks.

James leans back, enjoying himself. “Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you’ve never watched one.”

“Watched what?”

“The films,” James says. “Everybody’s seen ’em.”

“Your little friend here moonlights,” Mark says, then lets it hang. “He does adult entertainment. Porn.”

“How,” John says. “He’s—” He stops himself. He doesn’t know what he was about to say.

James fishes a pen from his pocket, scribbles on a napkin, and slides it across the table. "Here, try there. They'll know."

Mark smiles, sympathetic. “We’ve all had our hearts ruined by a beautiful boy at some point.”

“Yeah,” James says, clinking his glass against Mark’s. “Practically a rite of passage in this town.”

He finds the shop on 69th Street—which, frankly, is asking for it—a narrow place wedged between a locksmith and a bakery, the sort of storefront you could walk past a hundred times without noticing unless you knew exactly what you were looking for.

A bored clerk behind the counter gives John a once-over that lands somewhere between suspicion and amusement.

“Er…” he looks down at the scribbled note. “The Brooklyn Stallion?”

“Aisle three, second row,” the clerk replies, flat as the linoleum.

He walks the aisle marked Local Talent scanning boxes stacked two deep, rows and rows of bodies oiled to a shine. He's not sure what to expect until…

“Fuckin’ hell…”

Joe—his blushing flower Joe, except of course he isn’t his—lies entangled with two moustached blokes twice his size. Alfresco, as it were. In flagrante, so to speak.

It’s instantly, almost stupidly, obvious why they call him the Stallion. As if the universe needed to pile on more evidence, after those painfully tight, hand-me-down Levi’s Joe wears.

John picks up one of the cases, turns it slowly in his hands. That answers another question, then—he hadn’t hallucinated Joe in army fatigues. In nearly every film, Joe’s a soldier on leave.

The cardboard warms beneath his fingers. There are stills on the back—Joe gripping someone’s shoulders, Joe arching in a way that sends a ripple straight through John’s bloodstream.

New York, as always, over-delivers.

He just about wanks himself half to death that night. As far as gay porn goes, it's the garden variety sort: blowies, buggering, threesomes. Vanilla, really. Still works, though. Each time the titles roll on he stops, breathes, wipes his face, lights another cigarette and slips the next reel into the projector.

Somewhere between the second film and the third, he’s fallen in love with Joe’s hands—big, firm, roaming free and grabbing hips, shafts, cheeks. They're beautiful. He can’t look away.

And then there’s the tattoo—an enormous, bejewelled cross inked clean down the length of Joe’s back, stretching from his shoulder blades down to that V at his waist, flexing and warping with every thrust.

Joe’s hardly a thespian; half the time he looks like he’s waiting for someone to shout “cut” so he can go grab a sandwich, but John can’t stop watching and spills into his hand with a groan four times that night.

Didn't even know he could still do that.

He goes to The Cork, now a man on a mission; if he’s going to be serious about this, La Fortuna just won’t do anymore.

Joe’s not there.

So he returns the next night, and this time he finds him tending tables, flitting from one pack of men to the next like a hummingbird. They paw at him, press money into his waistband. He just thanks them and walks away.

John eyes a seat at the far end of the bar, the quietest corner in a room that doesn’t really have any, and decides it’s his. One sharp Teddy Boy glare, revived from the grave, is all it takes to send the poor bastard occupying it scuttling off. John orders a scotch, wedges a toothpick between his teeth for old time’s sake.

Joe comes back behind the bar with a stack of glasses, looks up, and grins when he sees who’s claimed the seat.

"You're back—"

"Fancy seeing you here—"

They stop, laugh, grinning like idiots.

“Haven’t seen you around much at the café,” Joe says, leaning in so John can hear him.

“Yeah. Ships in the night,” John shrugs. “You’re a busy bloke, you. Industrious.”

“Flying lessons,” Joe reminds him.

“I’ve never worked a proper day in me life.”

Joe snorts. “You were in the Beatles.”

“Aye, but I never had a boss,” John says. “’Cept for me Auntie Mimi, and she doesn't count. Always figured if it all went tits up, I’d find meself a rich fella. Let him keep me fat and happy.”

“Well… you don’t need that now, right?”

“Now I’ve got a wife who keeps me thin and miserable and doesn’t put out.”

Joe presses a hand to his chest. “Tragic.”

Someone whistles for him from down the bar. Joe turns, slides a beer down the counter.

“So,” John shouts, then drops his voice instinctively, “where’s your fella tonight?”

“Which one?”

John actually grimaces, grinding the toothpick between his teeth until it splinters. “The bouncer. Leather jacket sniffin’ round the café."

“Oh, him? He’s gone.”

“What, just like that?”

"Just like that," Joe shrugs. "They come and go."

John nods, casual as a corpse. “Sorry to hear it.”

“You don’t look sorry,” Joe says, smirking.

What he wants to ask, honestly, is how many more there are, and who he’d have to pay to have them gone and buried. But he’s John Lennon, and monogamy isn’t exactly part of the program, so he swallows it and smiles instead.

"Is it hard, like, keeping boyfriends doing porn?"

“Not really.” Joe pops his gum, the sound crisp between them. "So… you saw them."

"Oh, I saw them."

"Before or after we met?"

"Last Saturday, and every bloody day since.” John says. “Think my poor prick's about to fall off."

Joe leans in, curious. “What did you think?”

“I think you’re a very talented bloke.”

That earns a laugh, breath warm against John’s cheek. “Shut up.”

“You’re the next Olivier, sweetheart,” John insists. “Truly.”

“Laugh all you want, but it's good money.”

“How good? How much do you make for one, like?”

“Hundred and fifty a pop for two days,” Joe says. “Hundred and ninety if we’re filming in my place.”

John whistles. “And how much for the aerobatics?”

“Eighteen hundred, not including room and board.”

John leans in further without thinking, and Joe does the same, foreheads nearly brushing.

“Look, if—” John stops, the words crowding his throat. “If you’re killing yourself with double shifts, and maniacs pawing at you all night…”

He gestures helplessly. “You don’t have to. There are easier ways to live.”

Joe studies him, long and searching, like he’s bracing for the rest.

“You could have someone keep you,” John adds anyway. “Do it properly. So you don’t run yourself ragged.”

Joe laughs once, sharp and humorless, and steps back. The air between them goes cold. “Jesus Christ,” he says. “I’m not a fucking rent boy.”

“That’s not what I meant—”

“It’s exactly what you meant,” Joe cuts in. “I’m a smart kid. I work my ass off. I could’ve gone to college, okay?”

“Alright—alright,” John says, voice cracking. “Just—hang on.”

“I thought we had a thing going,” Joe says, jaw set. “I wasn’t tryin’ to be—”

“I know, I know,” John cuts in, panicked enough to be honest. “Just—come back here, will ye?”

His fingers find the chain at Joe’s throat and draw him in, careful despite the desperation. “C’mon,” he murmurs.

Joe doesn’t pull away.

John gives a helpless little smile, and leans into Joe’s ear. “Can I fuck you for free, then?”

Joe laughs under his breath, the tension breaking clean. He leans in, brushes his mouth along John’s, then drags his tongue slowly along John’s lips, teasing and warm. When he smiles, it’s crooked and dangerous and unmistakably yes.

John manhandles them both through bodies and noise until they thin out into a corner of the club, which is all John needs. Joe’s back hits the wall with a proper thud—enough to make John wince, too.

“Sorry, love,” John growls, not sounding sorry at all.

He fists Joe's hair and yanks him into a bruising kiss, teeth clashing in the frenzy. It's messy, starved—nowhere near enough to quiet the fire screaming through John's veins.

Joe's breath hitches, a mix of shock and heat, and his hands clamp onto John's ass, hauling their hips flush.

"Nnghh," John cries, feeling their erections meet. Instinctively, John begins desperately rutting against Joe's body hard, again and again, up against the wall.

When John comes up for air it's with a raw, desperate groan. His eyes lock on Joe's, trying hard to focus on them as their joint movements against the wall makes his face swim with desire.

"You said something about fucking me?" Joe murmurs, one hand dipping to palm John's throbbing prick through his trousers, squeezing.

"Yes," John rasps. "Fuck, yes—yes."

But if he wants to bury himself inside him, he realizes, Joe needed to—

"Turn around," John demands, his grip tightening in Joe's hair again.

“Let’s get outta here before you knock the place down,” Joe says.

“Where?”

“My place isn’t far, couple of blocks," Joe's fingers squeeze harder, making John's hips buck involuntarily.

"Yeah," John nods, frantic. "Let's go."

They stumble up the narrow stairs in a creaky old building, Joe's boot catching on a loose step, nearly sending them both tumbling.

"Watch it, love," John laughs, but Joe just shoves him against the peeling wallpaper, planting a hasty kiss then turning to unlock the door.

The flat is a shoebox—stuffy and sagging, but Joe just kicks the door shut behind them. He doesn't waste a second. He pushes John back onto the couch, the springs groaning in protest, and drops to his knees between his spread legs.

“Fuck yeah,” Joe mutters, wrapping a hand around the base and swallowing the him whole, his mouth hot and wet, bobbing down hard.

"Ah, Christ," John cries, fingers tangling in Joe's hair. He feels Joe's satisfied humming, the vibration shooting straight up John's spine. “Holy fuck, love, oh, god—”

Joe puts two firm hands on John's thigh, those beautiful, strong ones John saw in the films, spreading John's thighs even further apart. He sucks like he's trying to vacuum the soul right out of him.

"Easy, love, slow down," John says, pulling him by the hair.

"Begging already? Thought you rockstars were tough."

"Have some mercy, sweetheart, I'm an old man," John says and lets his head hang against the sofa when Joe tuts, kissing his way up John's sternum.

"You're not old, you're just older.”

"Come here," John says, dragging Joe up for a kiss. "Give me a mo, yeah?"

Joe nods, spreading sweet little kisses up and down John's jaw.

"Let's take this off," John says, peeling Joe's vest off. It's the most beautiful body John's ever seen, and he's seen quite a few. "I've got all night, alright, love? Don't you?"

"Yeah," Joe breathes.

"Then let's take these off, too," John tugs on Joe's jeans, greedy now. "There y'go— Oh."

He’s distracted by a flicker of movement in the hallway—a little ball of fur rounding the corner, looking impossibly small in the tiny flat. A kitten, no more than a couple of months old.

“We have an audience,” John says.

Joe turns, chuckling as he steps out of his jeans. “That’s Noodles.”

It comes out as Noodools, stretched and soft.

“Who?” John laughs, dragging a possessive hand up Joe’s chest.

“Noodools,” Joe repeats, teasing now, and climbs straight back into John’s lap.

“You have a cat?” John murmurs, smiling to himself. He couldn’t possibly be more smitten with Joe any more than he already is.

“I also have a bed,” Joe says, voice dropping as he leans in close, breath warm at John’s ear. “Would you like to see it?”

John huffs a laugh and tilts his head, hunting Joe’s eyes. He’s just about to pull him in, seal the moment properly, when he catches a stray, but brilliant thought:

“Do you still have those uniforms?”

Joe, the snarling top on screen, proves the most demanding bottom John has ever had the pleasure to have pleasured. John strips him down to nothing but his fake army boots and his loaned dog tag, swinging from his neck along with his gold cross.

He's surrounded Joe's crosses; he drives deep inside him, eyes fixed on the tattoo tracing where his spine meets the curve of his arse. He pounds harder, chasing the edge, and through the haze wonders what sins Joe confesses to shocked priests in dim booths.

The thought grips John's gut, shoving him over. He grunts raw as he comes, spilling hot inside him.

Joe becomes John’s newest addiction, and his flat is the only place John can stand to be.

Without quite deciding to, John starts leaving pieces of himself there. A guitar, a book, his contact lenses. He builds his days around Joe with the same devotional logic he once applied to heroin, chasing the high and arranging everything else to make room for it.

Being near Joe feels like standing at the curb while a ticker-tape parade goes past. Slowly, he works out the kid works for half the city. Mornings at La Fortuna, afternoons ushering at the cinema on Broadway or washing cars on some cracked side street. In summer Joe’s a lifeguard at the Y on weekends — a sight, he tells himself, to behold — in winter they stick him behind a desk. Nights, he waits tables wherever’ll have him. Fridays, when he can scrape together the fee, he takes acting classes at the Learning Center.

He works out four times a week in the gym above La Fortuna. Lift weights and what not. John catches a hint of sleeping with someone, past or present, to have earned that perk. After the workout, if he’s not dead on his feet, Joe cleans the floors instead of Carmela, because he can and she shouldn’t have to. A gentleman.

One day, John finds an old Polaroid camera and takes it to Joe’s place. He loves taking pictures of him while listening to him talk — about anything, everything.

In the shower one morning Joe confesses the stunt work isn’t really the dream, just a way in. How he always wanted to try for the Arts School in New York, but never quite worked up the nerve to audition. What he really wants is the theatre. Proper American stuff. A Streetcar Named Desire. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He knows they’ll cast him as the dumb jock first and doesn’t care. He just wants a foot in the door. Wants someone to say yes.

Another morning, when they have a lie in, John takes a Polaroid of Joe cuddling with Noodles. Joe tells him about his dad, who was a builder and fell off a ladder and hasn't moved without a wheelchair since.

Where Joe goes, John follows. Through the city, through errands, until eventually — mercifully — they end up back at Joe’s flat. It smells like pasta sauce and cat food and there’s barely room for both of them, which suits John fine.

He sits where Joe tells him. Eats what Joe puts in front of him. Lets Joe grab him by the shirt and pull him close when he wants him.

The problem is that every single dollar bill sticking out of Joe’s pockets is already on its way to becoming something else. Rent. Lessons. Train fare. Food. He doesn’t spend money so much as move it from one place to the next.

It leaves John dizzy, and grouchy, and more often than not, blue-balled.

It wouldn’t be hard to change things. Two minutes on the phone to whoever’s managing their accounts now (he’d have to ask Yoko). He could make Joe’s life easier in the blink of an eye.

But he remembers Joe’s face — the way it slammed shut when John even hinted at paying his way through life. He doesn’t want to see that again. So he takes a breath, swallows it, and gets on with it…

Until one night, while John’s half-watching the evening news and waiting for Joe to finish the baked ziti, the phone rings. Joe answers from the kitchen. When the receiver hits the cradle it’s hard enough to rattle the picture frames.

“What’s wrong?” John asks from the foyer, watching Joe stir.

Joe doesn’t answer straight away.

“He’s leavin’,” he says finally.

“Who’s leaving?”

“Marco, the director. The one who’s been getting me all those gigs. He’s moving out to L.A. Wants to do proper movies.”

“Oh,” John says. “That’s how it goes. People move.”

“Yeah,” Joe says flatly. “People move.”

“There’ll be others,” John offers. “Someone else’ll take you on. You’ve got a name for yourself now.”

“A name.” Joe huffs. “He’s the only one who ever actually looked at me. Nobody else’ll get me paid like that.”

The kitchen goes quiet except for the low simmer of sauce. Joe drops onto the edge of a chair.

“Fuck. Fuck!” Joe swears. “This sets me back months. Months! I was almost there.”

“These things take time,” John says, and immediately knows how stupid it sounds. He stands with his useless hands, unsure what to do. Say more and he oversteps, say nothing and he leaves Joe alone with it.

He stays where he is as the sauce starts to creep, bubbles nudging at the rim. Joe doesn’t move, doesn’t seem to notice. John crosses the kitchen, lowers the flame, slides the pot aside. A small, careful fix.

It’s the least he can do.

John wakes up alone in Joe’s bed one morning when the phone on the nightstand starts ringing and ringing and ringing, slicing straight through whatever pleasant fog he’d been drifting in.

John groans and rolls onto his stomach, buries his face in Joe’s pillow. It smells like sleep and last night.

The phone keeps ringing.

From the bathroom comes the sound of running water. Joe’s in the shower, then, washing the gloriously filthy remnants of last night's face-riding frenzy (it was fantastic and they’ll be doing that again).

He sighs, shoves the pillow aside, and reaches for it. Sitting up reminds him, sharply, that he is entirely naked in a cold room. He fumbles for the receiver anyway, cranky enough now not to care.

“Hullo?” John asks, voice rough.

“Joey?”

“No,” John says. “Who’s askin’?”

“His motha’. Who’s this?”

John glances at the bathroom, considering his options. "A friend."

“And why are you answering my son’s phone, young man?”

“Well, it was ringin’, y’see.”

"Where's Joey?"

“He’s… visitin’ with the Queen.”

"Oh, you're a funny guy—"

At that exact moment, the bathroom door opens. Joe steps out, hair dripping. He squints at John and whispers, Who is it?

John lifts the receiver slightly in reply. From it, Joe’s mother’s voice carries on, still giving John what-for.

Joe takes the phone and turns his back a little. John stays where he is, naked and unashamed, propped against the headboard with the sheet pooled uselessly at his waist, listening.

“Hey, Ma. I know,” Joe says wearily. “Tonight, yeah. No, I didn’t forget, she’s my baby sister, I know when her birthday is, alright? What? I was gonna—”

He stops, listens, rolls his eyes at the wall.

“No, I didn’t get a gift yet. What d’you want me to do, pull it outta my ass? What she want? Put her on. Hey, Gina. What d’you want for your birthday, huh?”

A higher voice crackles through the line, loud and thrilled.

“A record?” he repeats. “Which one?”

John hears it before Joe says it again.

“—Wings?”

Joe glances over his shoulder then, catches John’s face, and whatever he sees there makes his mouth twitch.

"How about John Lennon? No?” he says, almost bursting into laughter. “No, I won’t forget. I said I wouldn’t. Ma, I know about the gutters. I said I would.”

A pause.

“Yes, Ma, I have food. Because I cook. I've been cooking since I was twelve, alright? I know how to feed myself. Listen, I gotta go. I’ll see you tonight.”

Joe rings off and drops the receiver back into its cradle with a dull plastic clack. He moves straight into the business of the morning. Drawer open. Drawer shut. Jeans hauled up and buttoned. Deodorant. He pauses only long enough to run a palm through his hair, shakes his head once, sharp, like that’ll settle it into some kind of logic. Whatever shape it lands in is the shape it’s getting.

John stays sunk into the bed, watching through half-lidded eyes. There’s a stripe of pale winter light cutting across the room, landing square on Joe’s back, catching the damp in his hair, the broad, unselfconscious line of him.

“Am I in the doghouse, then?”

"What for?" Joe asks, reaching for a shirt.

“For your ma hearin’ me on the phone,” John says. “Sounded like she was ready to send a firing squad round.”

“Nah.”

“Nah,” John repeats, suspicious.

“You’re not the first guy to pick up the phone in the morning around here.”

“That’s nice to hear.”

“She knows,” Joe bends to lace his boots, fingers quick and practiced. “I mean — she knows what I am.”

"Does she?"

“C’mon. You think it’s a secret, doing what I do? People talk.”

“And she’s alright with it?”

“She’s not alright with it. She just pretends it’s not happening. Long as I come home for Friday dinner and don’t bring it up, we’re golden. What am I gonna do, pretend I’m something else? For who? For her? It’s my life.”

“For God,” John says, dryly.

“God can take it up with me if he’s got a problem.”

Bloody hell. When did they start making them like this?

“C’mere,” John pats the mattress. “You’ve got time.”

“I really don’t.”

“Two minutes,” John insists, reaching for him. “I’ll be quick. Efficient.”

“You are neither of those things.”

John lunges anyway, catching Joe round the waist and hauling him halfway back toward the bed. Joe yelps, stumbles — then recovers fast, grabs the towel off the chair, and snaps it down across John’s bare arse with a sharp crack.

“Oi!” John yelps. “Jesus Christ!”

“Up,” Joe says, towel cocked back like he might do it again. “You’re gonna make me late.”

“Do it again,” John leers, breathless now. “Dear God, do it again.”

Joe leans over him and kisses him quick and firm. “Carmela will kill me if I'm late again.”

“Two seconds,” John says, humming when Joe gives him another kiss anyway, then straightens and turns back to the mirror, tugging his collar straight like he hasn’t just undone John completely.

John reaches for a cigarette. Fumbles for the lighter. Click. Nothing. “You got a lighter?” he asks.

“Try the drawer,” Joe says, distracted, combing his hair with his fingers.

John opens it without looking, the one with the lube, and grabs blindly. His hand closes around something big and unmistakable; a dildo—massive, and cheerfully unapologetic. A thin silver medallion chain dangles from it, plain and almost delicate by comparison.

He lifts the dildo up, eyebrow cocked. “Friend of yours?”

“Sometimes they let me keep the props,” Joe says.

John turns the medallion in his hand, curious now. “And what’s this, then?”

“It's St. Michael” Joe says. “My ma gave it to me. Said it’d keep me outta trouble.”

“Did it?”

“Mostly.”

John looks from the medal to Joe. “Why aren’t you wearing it?”

“I’m not exactly walkin’ into battle behind the bar, am I?” Joe gives a half-smile. “Besides, Jesus takes St. Michael any day.”

John rolls the medal between his fingers, feeling the grooves worn smooth with age.

Joe hesitates. “You want it?”

“What?”

“I’m not using it, and you—” Joe stops. “You could use someone watching your back.”

Something tight flickers low in John’s chest. He closes his fingers around the thing before he can think better of it. “Yeah,” he says. “Alright. I want it.”

Joe smiles, small and real.

“So—you goin’ to Brooklyn later?” John asks, trying to sound casual, leaning in to steal a smaller kiss. A bargain.

Joe nods.

“And you’re comin’ back tonight?”

Another nod.

“Can I come back tonight?”

Joe grins, already backing toward the door. “You’d better,” he says, swatting John once—affectionate but final. “If you want another spanking.”

He turns, halfway gone already.

“Up!” Joe calls, sharp and fond, and then he’s out the door. John slips on the necklace, still smiling. It moves when he does, the feel of it new and foreign.

On his birthday, John wakes late to the smell of sugar. He finds a cake waiting at the end of the bed, candles already lit, Yoko arranging the help around him to sing Happy Birthday. He smiles, because that’s what’s expected, and blows out the candles, because that’s also expected.

Yoko kisses him and beams, radiant with purpose, pleased in that way she gets when a thing has gone exactly to plan. He lets her love him the way she knows how. That’s always been the bargain.

“Happy birthday,” she giggles, just for him.

“Mm,” John hums.

“For your birthday,” she says, settling beside him. “I’ve given us a gift.”

“Us?”

“We’re going to New Mexico.”

“New Mexico, eh,” he says. “Desert’s nice.”

“Yes,” she nods eagerly. “Very open. Very clean. It will be good for us to be somewhere with space.”

“Sure.”

“It’s a week of ceremonies,” she continues, “restorative ceremonies for our manhood.”

“Our what?”

“Our manhood, and my womanhood. Together.” She takes his hand, presses his fingers together. “It’s a Navajo ritual, I read about it in National Geographic. It’s very powerful, very old.”

“I thought you hated leaving New York.”

She giggles and does that breathy little moan thing she does that used to drive him wild. “The Navajo healers believe that they absorb our strengths from the stars and their energies, and we don’t get enough of that in the city. There’s barely any energy in the city. You can hardly see the stars. It will reconnect you,” she goes on, nodding as if she can already see the results, “with your masculine self again.”

I don't know, Yoko, he doesn't say, nothing ties a man to his balls-deep masculinity like having a bloke like Joe bouncing up and down your prick like it's the bloody Olympics and he's going for gold.

What he does say is, “Darling, if I reconnect with it any harder I’ll pull a muscle.”

She laughs, delighted, and scoots closer.

“I already called them,” she says. “If we take well to it—if we really give ourselves into it—they could teach us.”

“Teach us what?”

“How to do it,” she says simply. “How to heal. We could become healers together. Studying together, John. We’ve never done that before.”

“Well, you know what they say, Yok. Those who can’t do, teach.”

“Yes, exactly,” she kisses his shoulder, satisfied.

“My masculinity’ll be just fine if you could just let me eat you every now and then, y’know,” John says. “Sometimes a bloke needs some pussy.”

Yoko just laughs, like he’s said something charmingly primitive, and slides down the bed to oblige him.

It’s decent. Pleasant. She’s sweet and warm and sticky, nothing to write a song about. He lies back afterward, and feels vaguely congratulatory toward himself for not starting a row. He thinks about Liverpool, about the old men he’d used to clock—men like Paul’s da—who treated sex like a calendar obligation, something pencilled in and dutifully endured, and wonders when he crossed the line into being one of them.

She leaves to make a call when they're done. John lies awake and knows that he can’t leave for New Mexico. If he goes, Joe will stay behind in New York, running himself ragged, and by the time John comes back there will be nothing left to come back to.

No. If he wants a future with Joe, he can’t wait for it to happen. He’ll have to build it himself and put it directly in Joe’s hands.

By evening, he’s out the door; Joe’s been gone all weekend, down in Bay Ridge with his family, something about a great-auntie's birthday. From behind Joe’s door, Noodles meows, sensing his presence. John knocks once, then doesn’t. He lights a cigarette, stubs it out, lights another, and parks himself on the door step because he doesn’t know where else to put himself.

When Joe finally comes up the stairs, face still half somewhere else, John feels relief, sharp enough to hurt. Joe smiles, a big, honest thing when he sees him.

The weekend apart hits them all at once and dissolves just as quickly. They laugh once, breathless and stupid, then stop because there’s no time for that. They’re kissing already, hard and urgent, until Joe pulls back, barely, to speak.

“Happy birthday,” Joe says, soft and wrecked.

“Thank you, angel,” John says, already stealing another kiss.

“You hungry?”

John shakes his head.

“Good. ’Cause I got nothin’ in.”

That gets a laugh out of him.

“No, I’m serious,” Joe says. “I didn’t get you anything. Not even cake.”

“I don’t care,” John says at once, meaning it more than he expects to. He pulls Joe into a hug so big it nearly tips them over.

“I’m starving,” Joe says, hands sliding up and down John’s chest, familiar now—until he stops. His fingers press against something solid inside John’s coat. “Hey. What’s that?”

“Ah,” he says. “Little surprise for you.”

“For me?” Joe laughs. “It’s your birthday.”

John reaches into his inner pocket and pulls out the manilla envelope. “Call it either a very early, or rather late, birthday present.”

Joe takes it like it might bite. Opens it slow. When he finally reads what’s typed there, his face changes completely.

“Holy shit,” Joe stops himself. "“West Coast Stunt & Aerial Training'?”

“They’ll hold it for you,” John says. “Didn’t know where you’d want to do it, so I left it open. They’ve got your details. You just ring ’em up, pick the dates.”

“This is for the basic and the advanced program,” Joe says, rereading the page again and again like he’s checking for a typo.

“Seemed daft to stop halfway.”

“No,” Joe says.

John blinks. “No?”

“No.” Joe shakes his head, already backing away a step. “I’m not taking this. You can’t do this.”

John’s shoulders go tight. “Do what?”

“Buy me.”

“Oh, don’t start that shite. It’s a gift.”

“I’m serious. You can’t just—just throw money at my life like it’s a fuckin’ problem to solve.”

“It is a problem,” John snaps. “You’re knackering yourself half to death juggling ten things and still don’t have the time to do the one thing you actually want to do.”

“That’s my business.”

“And I’m telling you it’s unnecessary.”

Joe laughs, short and humourless. “Easy for you to say.”

“Oi, I bled for every penny we made!”

“That’s how you’re supposed to do it, okay?" Joe fires back. "Wait tables, grind, pay your dues.”

John laughs once, sharp and joyless. “Oh, I paid my dues, love. Paid mine and everyone else’s, trust me. But I only got there because it was the only thing I did. Morning, night, rain pissin’ sideways, playing to three drunks and a dog— That’s how you get good!”

“And what—” Joe starts, hands spread. “I’m just supposed to—”

“And you can’t get good washing cars and doing bloody porn till you’re dead on your feet instead of actually bloody acting!”

“There’s nothing wrong with porn—”

“I know,” John cuts in. “But it’s chewing you up. It’s robbing you blind of the hours you need to be something else.”

“I have to do this myself,” Joe says, a hand pressed hard to his chest. “I have to. No one’s ever gonna take me seriously.”

He laughs once, sharp and humourless.

“I’m a Guido from Brooklyn who fucks on camera, and the minute I’m seen anywhere with you, I’ll just be John Lennon’s boy toy. No one will ever take me seriously.”

“No, love, they won’t, they never do at first,” John says. “They laughed at us for years. Years! But once you’re good, once you’re earning for them? No one cares what you are.”

“Get out,” Joe says, pointing at the door.

“No,” John says, sharp. “I’m not going. You’re being unreasonable.”

“Get. Out.”

“No, love,” John says, voice tight now. “This is real, and sooner or later we’ve got to land somewhere.”

“Fine,” Joe says and proceeds down to his bedroom, shutting the door in John’s face.

John stands there for half a second, stupidly upright, like he’s waiting for instructions. None come. He slides down the wall until he’s sitting on the floor with his back against the bedroom door, knees drawn up awkwardly.

Noodles pads over, tail high, surveys the situation, and climbs onto John’s thigh without asking. He waits. Ten minutes, then twenty, then tips his head back and knocks it against the door.

“Fuck,” he mutters.

A click.

The door opens a few inches. Joe sighs, then slides down the door until they’re sitting shoulder to shoulder.

“What did you mean,” Joe says, careful now, “when you said this is real?”

“It means you make me happy, and you’re the only one who does, these days.”

“Don’t fuck with me,” Joe whispers, his eyes searching John’s face.

John turns his head then, just enough.

“You make me so, so happy, and it costs you nothing,” he says quietly. “So I did something about it. Don’t make it ugly. Don’t turn it down just because it scares you.”

Joe exhales, long and shaky. “I want to do it,” he says. “It’s amazing. It’s— everything I’ve been working toward.”

“Good,” John says.

“I’ll pay you back,” Joe swallows. “I can do five bucks a week for now, until I can do more.”

“Love, I’ve made more than that standing here with my tongue down your throat. Hardly a sacrifice, is it.” Royalties and compound interest. Funny little miracles.

“I still want to,” Joe says, stubborn. “I need to.”

John studies him — the set of his jaw, the pride humming just under the skin — and nods.

“Alright,” he says. “You can pay me back when you get your first proper job. Fair’s fair.”

Joe doesn’t answer straight away. John can almost hear the gears grinding, recalibrating. Then Joe nods, slow and satisfied.

“And till then you can use that money for something useful," John says. "Something that gets you in a room.”

“Well… there was this accent coach thing I couldn’t afford.”

“There y’go,” John says, nudging his rib.

Joe laughs under his breath. “Fuck off.” He tucks the paper carefully back into the manilla envelope like it might tear if mishandled, then leans in, pressing their foreheads together.

Joe orders a pizza ("I'm buyin'!") and immediately loses thread of himself. He circles the flat while they wait, touching things as if checking they’re real. John watches from the sofa, quietly charmed and a little worried.

When the pizza comes it breaks the spell. They collapse into the sofa, box between them, telly flickering on mute. Joe rolls a joint and they pass it back and forth, wash it down with Coke between greasy bites.

Joe reads aloud from the brochure. His foot drifts in between John’s thighs, sock warm from the radiator. John’s hand closes around it without thinking, firm, claiming. Joe melts into the touch completely. The feeling hits sideways. He’s never had this ease. Paul never cuddled—never knew how to stay long enough in one place, to return the comfort.

Joe takes a sip and stops talking. The air changes. John feels it before he understands why, a familiar drop in his gut.

“Alright?” he asks, keeping his voice light.

“Yeah,” Joe hesitates, then corrects himself. “I mean—yeah. I’m fine.” He glances at the brochure. “It’s just… both programs together, that’s eight weeks.”

"Right."

“Do you ever—” Joe clears his throat. “Do you ever go out to L.A.?”

John's heart skips a beat. “I could.”

"Yeah?"

“I was thinking I’d go with you,” John laughs once, sharp with nerves. “Eight weeks in the sun with you sounds alright to me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We could make a trip of it. I’ve always wanted to see what’s actually between New York and the other side.”

Joe grins. "Me, too!"

“I’ve got a Ferrari, a convertible, just sitting there,” John says, a bit sheepish about it. “Seems a waste not to take it across the country at least once.”

“You’re somethin’ else,” Joe says, shaking his head.

“You should see her,” John says, meaning the Ferrari. “She’s a beaut.”

He doesn’t say what’s already lining up in his head—that it would only make sense to stay in L.A., that John could open doors, make things happen quickly. He’s done it before.

But maybe Joe’s right. One thing at a time.

They make love that night.

Real, proper love.

After, John lights a cigarette straight away, hands still a little unsteady. Joe curls into him, face buried in his chest, boneless with it.

“What are you gonna do all day?” Joe asks, voice muffled, almost sleepy.

“Hm?”

“When I’m busy. Eight weeks,” Joe says. “What’re you gonna do all day?”

“Wait for you to come back.”

Joe pulls back just enough to look at him. “C’mon.”

“What d’you reckon I do all day now?”

Joe studies him. “And you’re happy like that?”

“No,” John says.

It may be the most honest thing he’s said to anyone in years.

John reaches down, slides his hand through Joe’s hair, firm enough to anchor him.

“I’m not fucking other people,” Joe says after a minute. “Just so we’re clear. I mean—I haven’t been.”

“Me neither.”

Joe hums, thoughtful. “Except for your wife.”

“Especially not the wife.”

There’d been a moment—earlier, maybe—where John had thought about it. About tossing Joe into the mix of things, seeing if it’d wake something in Yoko. A night with a Joe would do her wonders. He says it now, half-joking, half-testing the shape of it.

“No,” Joe says, arms tightening around John. “No chicks.”

“Never?”

Joe lifts his head enough to look at him and shrugs.

“Good,” John says. The less competition, the better.

Joe’s still dead to the world when John slips out from under him, careful not to wake him. He scratches his tacky chest with a yawn and pads to the kitchen phone.

He knows exactly what he’s about to do, which is unusual for him; usually the plan arrives halfway through the doing of it. But this one comes on clean and he knows precisely where to start. He rings Nat Weiss, who sounds genuinely startled to hear his voice. John Lennon doesn’t call before noon unless he’s about to upend something large and structural. Nat gives him a name and a number without dawdling.

“A pit bull in a pinstripe,” Nat promises.

John expects nothing less.

By two o’clock, he’s stepping into a Lennox Hill solicitor’s office—opened specially for him on a Sunday the instant the man recognized his voice. The pit bull is, in fact, a beige soul in a beige suit. He peers over his reading glasses, weighing John the way a butcher inspects a cut of meat.

He offers John a whisky and a cigar. John declines, but his eyes drift to the side table where someone’s arranged a small, dutiful bowl of fruit. Apples, a banana gone faintly freckled, and one lone satsuma.

John picks it up, rolling it in his palm.

The solicitor clears his throat. “What can I do for you, Mr Lennon?”

“I need three things, in no particular order,” John says, dropping into the leather chair that hisses beneath him. He digs a thumb-nail into the skin of the fruit, releasing a sharp, clean scent. “You get them done, and you won’t have to lift a finger for the next couple of years.”

The solicitor nods once.

John slips him a list, scribbled haphazardly on the back of Joe’s utility bill. The man squints at it.

“I want a divorce, a quick one," John finally cracks the fruit open, separating the first juicy wedge. "Now, Yoko’s not going to go for it—not without putting me through hell—so you tell her we can do it the easy way or the hard way.”

“What’s the easy way?”

“She gets half of everything I’ve earned since moving here,” he says resolutely. He doesn't want to wipe away everything they've had. He loved her, and he loves her still. She'd saved him from the rest of the world, but most importantly from himself. Every cent he's earned since coming to the city is thanks to her. She deserves that much.

“And the hard way?” The solicitor asks.

“That’s where you earn your keep.” John smiles, thin as a wire. “She’s clever. Could sell snow to a bloody penguin.” He offers the solicitor a segment of the fruit. The man stares at it, baffled. John shrugs and eats it himself. "She’ll try that routine on you, make you think she’s the reasonable one and I'm just bein' hysterical. You fall for it, I swear, I’ll bury you so deep you’ll be doin’ noise complaints in Yonkers till kingdom come.”

The solicitor is unimpressed. “What’s number two?”

"A house, in L.A.," John wipes his fingers on his jeans. "Somewhere tasteful enough to impress the vultures. Where all the best casting directors live. I’ve got someone I need to show off, y'see. Want them all lickin’ the bloody floor for him.”

“Easy enough," the solicitor marks something down as if this is the most normal request he’s heard all week. "And the last one?”

“A summer house in Italy. No, a mansion. Sort of place Oscar Wilde would’ve shagged Bosie for lunch. Up on a hill, with orchards. Apricots, peaches—things that drip on your fingers, y’know?”

“Orchards,” the solicitor repeats, taking note in his pad.

“Miles of ’em. And a lake,” he adds, then dismisses the detail with another wave. “We can dig a lake later, but the orchards—gotta have the orchards.”

"We'll need to consider taxation," the other man says, staring at his note pad and thinking out loud. "The Italian government is—" he turns to look at John, who simply turns the soft segments of the satsuma in his palm, slow as a cat toying with something small.

Figure it out, sunshine.

“I know a man in Sorrento,” the solicitor says smoothly, course corrected. “He’d know just the right place.”

“Perfect,” John says. “Get it sorted before Labor Day and you can buy yourself somethin’ nice in the Hamptons. I’m very generous when I’m happy.”

“Consider it done.” The solicitor extends his hand.

John shakes it briskly. “Groovy,” he says, already halfway to the door—then stops dead, finger lifting as something else occurs to him.

“Oh—an’ get us a private jet.”

“Yes, Mr. Lennon.”

"With a bed."

"Obviously."

John fires him a cheeky wink. “Later.”

He’s got the whole bloody thing mapped out now, laid out across his mind like a treasure map, every stop circled in red.

John'll take him on tour. A revenge tour, through every place that ever had the nerve to make John feel small.

As soon as Joe's done with his classes, he'll take him to Paris; he’ll drag Joe through every street he once walked with him and scrub the memory clean. Paris’ll be theirs after that—John and Joe, Joe and John.

Then Liddypool. Oh, Mimi will combust. She never fancied Paul’s stupid cow eyes, did she. Wait till she sees this Mediterranean stallion hanging off his arm. She’ll go straight for the smelling salts and send for an exorcist.

And Scotland—aye, can’t forget that. Got to parade Joe past Paul and Linda, so they can feast their eyes. Linda’s always had an eye for beautiful boys, hoarding them like a magpie nicking shiny things from the garden.

There y’go, then, Lin—have a gander at this one. Pretty, isn’t he? Look at that arse. But hands off, lass, can't have this one. Enjoy your creaky middle-aged scarecrow; me and my lad are off to Italy, cheers.

Everything’ll be simpler in Italy.

They don’t fuss or scold there. They let a man nap in the afternoon without accusing him of wasting civilization.

He’ll wake at noon, sheets twisted round his hips, the room still carrying scents of sex and sweat and the slow-blooming night he spent writing after making lazy love. His body will ache in that good, well-used way.

Art and arse, arse and art; the true meaning of life.

He’ll stumble out of the bedroom without a stitch on, toes hitting those cold tiles. He'll find Joe in the kitchen, flour on his hands, hips swaying slightly as he kneads.

Joe will glance up, grinning.

“You’re up early,” he'll say, though it’ll be nothing of the sort. Joe will hand him a tall glass of freshly squeezed juice—the fruit picked from their orchard not an hour ago, and John will drink it down, every swallow cold and sweet.

Then he'll step up behind him, burying his nose in the warm dip beneath his shoulder blades, still half-asleep and mightily greedy. The tiles might be cold, but Joe never will be. John’s hands will slide down his waist, fingertips pulling at the band of those tiny shorts Joe insists on wearing, urgently removing them.

He'll grab him, arrange Joe’s arse neatly by the edge of the counter. Joe will run his beautiful hands down John’s back—"Careful, the dough!"— bringing their foreheads together.

John'll fuck him, slow and sweetly and right there on the counter and think, Christ, if this is laziness, may I never work again. He'll take his time, draw it longer and longer and longer. Just like Joe's body, time'll open for them, soften for them, give them all the time in the world and a little more besides.

When they come, breaths hushed in each other's mouths, the house will swallow it whole. Only God and the wind in the trees will hear them. John can see it all so sharply in his mind that even the flies seem alive to him, circling over the scraps of peach Joe pressed just for him.

That kind of life, every day, for as long as he’s breathing—that’s what he wants. And if he had to have had his heart smashed to bits a thousand times to end up with this, well… he’s fine with that.

“Open,” says John.

Joe opens his mouth and takes the chocolate-covered strawberry, juice sliding down the corner of his lips.

“More?” John asks, already reaching for another berry.

Joe nods and accepts another one.

“Good?” John asks. “I can get the cook to make some more.”

“You didn’t have any.”

“They’re for you, angel.”

Joe pecks him with a kiss and drifts back to the book on his lap—John’s book. In His Own Write has him captive now, brows drawn in concentration. Every so often he chuckles or shapes a sentence silently, chasing the rhythm of John’s accent through the lines.

He’s brought Joe to the Dakota for the first time. Joe wanted to see it all—to peek at the life behind the legend, maybe hear John play a little. A bird-of-paradise fluttering about in John’s great white fortress.

They end up in John’s music room. John holds his hand at first, watches anxiously as Joe moves through his history—staying close, then drifting a step away whenever something catches his eye, fingertips gliding over book spines and framed awards.

Whoa, is that Elvis?

(Yes, it is.)

Were you really in Japan?

(Yes, I was.)

Who’s that?

(That’s Julia.)

And that’s all he says about that. No sense dragging Joe into the darker cupboards, the old ghosts. Joe is his happy place, and John means to keep it that way.

“This is fucking amazing,” Joe says when he sees John’s Ivor Novello, wonderstruck.

He doesn’t know how to answer that without sounding like a cunt. How do you tell a kid who still dreams of making it big that nothing inside these walls weighs what it used to? That the shine rubs off the moment you touch it, that the miracle’s already been spent?

He remembers meeting Elvis. Going in expecting the beautiful bloke he’d once fancied, and finding instead this bizarre, bloated Henry VIII thing, dulled and beaten into submission by pills and sycophants. He remembers thinking, How could they let it get so bad?

And then later—much later—lying in the new marriage bed at the Amsterdam Hilton, staring up at the ceiling while Yoko slept beside him, thinking: Oh. That’s how.

He wants to tell Joe: It’s just stuff, love. He wants to say that every life he’s lived so far has collapsed into the same thin dust, the same echoey nothing, anyway.

Instead he says nothing, because silence is kinder than confession, and Joe’s face is too open to deserve the truth.

Inevitably, John had cranked up Sinatra. They remain tangled all day, a single, happy knot: laughing, kissing, feeding each other fruit. The world outside the Dakota could’ve ended and John wouldn’t have noticed.

Somewhere in the midst of this debauchery, John managed to sack the maid. She’d been marching back and forth, shooting daggers at them and demanding to know when Mrs. Lennon would be home for dinner.

Good riddance to her.

“I like him,” Joe murmurs, squirming when John stops playing, leans in and licks the side of his neck.

“Who?”

“The wrestling dog,” Joe says, tapping the illustration in the book.

“A very distinguished gentleman.”

“Mmm.” Joe flips a page, jumps in delight when John nips a spot. “Written in conjugal with Paul,” he reads aloud, thoughtful.

“Don’t be jealous, darling.” John steals the book right out of his hands, drops it onto the rug without even glancing where it lands. That’s too much reading and far too much talking.

Joe starts, “Did you and—”

“We did,” John cuts in, mouth already trailing back up Joe’s throat, “and then we didn’t.”

He pats the top of the piano, a clear signal for Joe to wedge himself between John and the keys.

“C’mon,” he says softly. “C’mere, sweetheart.”

Joe does, like he’s been waiting hours for the command. John grabs his hips and draws him closer, burying his nose in Joe’s stomach. His hands fumble to release Joe's button-down from the waistband, patting its way down his happy trail.

"Hold tight," John murmurs with a smile in his voice, making short work of the belt and then the fly.

Joe throws his head back, burying a large hand in John's hair. He's so easy to handle; goes from zero to a hundred in no time. His entire body is humming as John licks his way a plume of dark hair that smells like soap and—

“John.”

John exhales, irritated, without looking back. “Bit busy.”

“We have company,” Yoko says. He turns then. She’s standing in the entryway.

“This isn’t a good time.”

“It’s Lew Grade’s lawyer,” Yoko says. "You said it couldn’t wait.”

“And now it can,” John replies, gesturing at Joe. “Funny how that works.”

Joe straightens, unruffled. He smooths his shirt and looks at Yoko with open curiosity, like she’s an unexpected commercial break.

“Hi,” he says easily. “I’m Joe.”

“Hello,” Yoko says, polite, unreadable.

“C'mon,” John reaches out and takes Joe’s hand. “Let’s go back to yours.”

Yoko doesn’t follow them. She stays where she is, hands loose at her sides, watching as if she’s already filing this away.

“Don’t wait up,” he says, then they’re gone.

When John comes home the next morning, the air in the house feels denser, thick with something decided without him.

“I’ve booked the flight to New Mexico,” Yoko says. “For both of us.”

John nods. He doesn’t ask when.

There was a time when Yoko could have suggested anything to steady him and John would have done it, no questions asked. He followed her the way a man follows a light he doesn’t understand but trusts completely. She once suggested trepanning. They’d sat with the idea longer than either of them liked to admit, until terror crept in and they chickened out together, suddenly very scared of the demons that might come out of their skulls.

That night, he falls asleep in the music room, alone. He keeps sleeping there. No one ever suggests he move back.

They’re boxed in by grocery shelves at the A&P, the aisle too narrow for comfort. John drifts closer without thinking about it, pretending to read labels, his shoulder hovering just shy of Joe’s.

“So, uh—my cousin Frankie’s getting married,” Joe says, stopping at the canned tomatoes. He hooks the basket into his arm; the wire bites through his sleeve. “He’s got this bike. Honda CB750. Real beauty. His fiancée wants it gone, says it’s dangerous. Frankie says I can have it if I want, give me a good deal. And I’ve got some savings free now, so I was thinking maybe—”

“Course you were,” John says lightly. “Sounds like a dream.”

“They’re doing the whole thing. Engagement party, Thanksgiving dinner,” Joe says. “I can bring the bike back when I come home.”

“Right.”

“I’ll go up there Wednesday,” he says. “I’ll be back Sunday.”

John turns his head, sharp. “Sunday?”

“Yeah.”

“That long?”

“Frankie’s like one of my best friends,” Joe says. “And if I don’t take the bike, someone else will.”

I’ll bloody buy you ten bikes, John thinks. I’ll buy the bloody factory.

“It’s really not that long,” Joe goes on. “And when I’m back, we can leave for L.A.”

John glances up. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Joe nods. “You said you’d—”

“Yeah,” John says, quick. Too quick. “I know.”

“I mean it,” Joe says. “If we’re doing it.”

“We are.”

Joe studies him for a beat, like he’s checking the ground before stepping. But John’s already gone; Christmas by a pool, sun instead of sleet. Joe climbing out of it, lean and shining, red Speedos or something equally criminal.

Yeah.

That’ll do.

John grins, helpless and thrilled.

They pay and step out into the cold. Joe shifts the grocery bag in his hand, then rubs his thumb over John’s knuckles. John stills for half a beat, then takes Joe’s hand anyway, because not taking it would hurt Joe more than anything could ever hurt John.

Joe squeezes once, steady. They walk like that to the corner, daring the world to react. No one does. John matches his steps to Joe’s, his stride growing bolder with every step.

The morning Joe has to leave arrives eventually. John wakes to Joe shifting beside him, the mattress dipping. It’s the first real cold front of the year, pressing itself against the city, turning the windows white with breath and frost.

Under the covers of Joe’s bed, he fits himself along Joe’s back, chest to spine, and pulls the covers over their heads.

“Don’t go.”

Joe makes a small sound, not quite waking.

“It’s too bloody cold, angel. Stay.” John says, mouth pressed to Joe’s neck. “I’ll make you hot cocoa. With little marshmallows.”

He feels Joe’s chest shift beneath his cheek, a quiet huff of breath that might be a laugh.

“How many blokes can honestly say John Lennon made ’em cocoa in bed?” John whispers.

“You tell me.”

"Cheeky," John says and thinks: one. Only one. He remembers him giving him the exact same answer, somewhere up in Scotland.

Joe sighs and draws him in. Joe takes his hand and kisses his fingers. Once. Then again, careful and unhurried. John feels it like a spark catching, both of them slowly stirring. For one brief minute, John thinks he’s done it. That Joe’s staying.

Joe begins to grind against him, a lazy roll of his arse. John smiles into Joe's tousled hair, until the ache of want surges too strong. He shifts nearer, mouth grazing the smooth curve of Joe's shoulder in a kiss that tastes of salt and sleep.

“What d'you need, love?” John murmurs.

Joe turns onto his back, drawing John over him with a firm hand at his waist. “You.”

John hums, leaning down to claim Joe's mouth in a slow kiss. Joe doesn't fully rouse, eyes still heavy with slumber, but his body surrenders completely.

Penn Station is a bloody zoo four hours later. John gets shoved, then shoved again, and then someone wheels a suitcase straight over his foot and swears at him for it.

“This is obscene. People shouldn’t live like this.”

“Relax,” Joe says, squinting into his duffel as he digs out the ticket.

“Let me just get you a driver, love, this is ridiculous.”

“No way. My ma sees me get out of a limo in Philly, she’s gonna think I robbed a bank.”

“But you didn’t,” John says. “You tell her you’re with John Lennon from the bloody Bootles!”

Joe grins, hikes the duffel higher on his shoulder. The board flips overhead. A train is delayed. Another disappears entirely. John stiffens every time the letters change.

“This place is doing my head in. When’s boarding?” John asks.

“Soon.”

“Soon as in now?”

“Soon as in three minutes.”

John scowls. “Did you at least get a window seat?”

Joe laughs outright. “I’ll be lucky if I’m sitting at all.”

Another announcement crackles overhead, louder this time, and the crowd begins to tilt toward the platforms.

“That’s you,” John says, uselessly.

“Yeah.”

They stand there a second too long, the space between them narrowing without either of them moving. Someone barrels past with a dog, clipping Joe’s heel. Joe adjusts the strap of his duffel again, glances down the platform.

“So,” he says.

"So," John frowns.

Joe smiles at that, fond and a little sad. He steps closer, lowers his voice. “Hey.”

“What.”

Joe reaches up and cups John’s jaw, thumb brushing his cheek like it’s the most ordinary thing in the world. For a split second John thinks—oh, shit—and then Joe leans in and kisses him.

In the middle of Penn Station.

John feels it like a door opening.

He kisses Joe back, just as simply, just as briefly, and lets it be seen.

Joe searches his face, a flicker of question there. “Okay?”

“Better than,” John says, surprised to find it’s true.

Joe backs away a step, then another. “I’ll see you Sunday.”

“Go on, then.”

Joe hesitates, then turns and disappears into the crowd, swallowed up by coats and bags and motion.

John stays where he is, watching until he can’t see him anymore. People move around him, through him. The station roars on.

Thanksgiving brings a courier to the door, dispatched by the pit bull and carrying glossy brochures that make John’s pulse misbehave—L.A. estates and villas on Lake Como.

He barely has time to put them down before there’s another knock.

Paul and Linda show up at his door for Thanksgiving, arms full of wine and pie and a bag of pot. Uninvited, John might add—a habit they’ve never managed to kick. They barrel in even after he tells them that Yoko isn’t home and wander the sitting room, nosing at photos and books.

“When’re you gettin’ a new stereo?” Paul calls, already halfway across the room. “There’s this brilliant new—”

“Did you ever end up buying the penthouse?” Linda cuts in.

John watches them orbit the apartment like two nosy moons. He’d tell them he’s busy—Christ, he wants to—but he isn’t. With Joe gone, he’s mostly busy counting minutes, scratching them into the wall of his skull.

“Won’t be buying anything in this madhouse anymore,” John says, perched on a chair now that he's resigned to his fate.

“Oh yeah?” Linda says, sharp in a way Paul never is.

John takes a drag from her joint—it’s harsh, brittle, nothing like Joe’s careful little rolls—and nods as smoke spills from his nose. “Movin’ to L.A.”

Paul blinks, like he’s missed a beat. “You two are movin’ to L.A.? Why?”

“Not us two,” John says, after a beat too long. “I’m leaving Yoko.”

“What happened?” Linda asks.

“I’m in love,” John says, and the smile cracks across his face before he can stop it. It feels good. Reckless. Like lobbing a bottle through a window.

“With who?” Paul asks, neutral in a way that still manages to pinch John square in the chest.

“Joe.”

Blank stares.

“He’s twenty, gorgeous and wants to act. I’m takin’ him to L.A.—get eyes on him. In a year’s time everyone’ll know his name.”

Linda perches on the arm of the sofa, studying him with a mix of concern and curiosity. “How long has this been going on?”

“Long enough,” John says, curt.

"Is that why Yoko isn't here?"

“She doesn’t know yet,” he shrugs. “She’ll twig soon as the papers land, won’t she?”

“And he…” Paul folds his arms. “He feels the same?”

John swallows, juts his chin out in defiance. Don’t you dare ruin this for me. You’ve ruined enough.

"Well… That’s really something, John,” Linda says.

“Reckon that’s what did Brian in, y’know?” John says.

Paul’s head snaps up.

“Poor Bri,” John says. “Whole life in the bloody closet. Sneaking scraps off whoever’d have him. That lonely shite—That’s what killed him. I don't wanna live like that.”

Paul’s jaw tightens.

“He's out. Just—out.” John laughs. “It’s nothin’ to him.”

“So Joe’s got it all sorted, then?” Paul says, eyes fixed on the window.

“Well, he’s got me sorted,” John says, smug.

“Alright,” Linda says. “I’ll drink to that!” She pats Paul’s thigh and heads for the kitchen.

Paul’s lips pinch. He won’t look at John, but when he finally does, the glance is so tight it slices straight through John’s spine.

“What?” John snaps, lighting a cigarette instead of that terrible joint. “Thought you’d be happy for me, Paul. You will be happy for me this time.” There’s a blade in the words, a threat, and they both hear it.

“A twenty-year-old actor, John…”

“Oh, spare me,” he says. “Like you’re not shagging the occasional stagehand now and then.”

“I don’t.”

“Please.”

“I don’t. I— we don’t do that anymore.”

"Well, that's your too bad," John shrugs, though he's hardly buying it.

No one would cream their pants for Paul faster than those waifish, ruddy-cheeked roadies. Paul’d show them 'how dead easy the bass is, really, and you control the band like that, y'know' and they’d bat their lashes like Betty bloody Boop and drop to their knees faster than a Reeperbahn prossie. John'd taught Paul half of those tricks himself and learned the rest the hard way, on the receiving end of them.

“Just hope he doesn’t go and break your heart, that’s all,” Paul mutters.

“He won’t,” John says breezily. “Don’t you worry your pretty head.”

“So what, then — what’re you doin’? You just… come out? The papers—”

“I am out,” John cuts in. “People in the city’ve already seen us together and—”

“Jesus, John.”

Paul glances toward the kitchen, instinctive, making sure Linda’s not within earshot. He drops his voice.

“You said you loved her,” he says quickly. “A whole year of it, couldn’t shut up about it. Told me to get on with my life, that you and I were—”

“And look at you now,” John says, smiling thinly. “Got on with it beautifully, didn’t you? Wrapped yourself up nice and tight.”

“That’s not—”

“You ought to be thanking me,” John stops in, sharp now. “People change, Paul. I’m allowed to change me mind.”

“Fine. But don’t come cryin’ to me when—”

“Here we are!” Linda says, reappearing with three glasses and the open bottle balanced in one hand. “So? When do we get to meet this Joe?”

"He's in Philly, visiting with family."

“Mm.” Linda sips, watching him over the rim of her glass. “And when’s he back?”

"Sunday."

“We’re still here Sunday, aren’t we, Paul?” Linda says to Paul.

“Think we are,” Paul says. “Yeah.”

He can’t have them meet Joe on Sunday, absolutely not. You don’t just shove someone like Joe straight into Paul and Linda's arms. He wants Joe to himself when he comes back, and anyway, hasn't told Joe about his big plans for them yet. Joe needs easing into it.

“Hang on,” John says suddenly. He stands so fast the ashtray wobbles. “Got somethin’ better for ye.”

John pads off down the hall to his music room, barefoot, humming something that sounds like excitement wrapped in nerves. When he comes back, he’s holding a small reel like it’s the Holy Grail.

“Right,” he declares, flicking on the projector. “Ladies and Linda—”

Linda smirks into her glass.

“—I give you,” he says grandly, “the Hollywood talents of the Brooklyn Stallion!”

He presses play.

The room fills with soft moans and deep groans—one of Joe’s more shining performances, if you ask him.

"Which one's—?" Linda asks, eyes bright and curious (there’s four of them).

“This one,” John says, pointing.

When the camera pans in for a more anatomically detailed close-up, John turns to Paul and lifts a cocky eyebrow.

Paul gets up to leave.

Joe rings twice a day from Philadelphia, and every time, John begs him to come back.

The bike, Joe says, is beautiful. Gorgeous. You should see her. Says it handles smooth, says it wants to run. Says they should take it to L.A. with them, ride it out west.

“Come back,” is all John says in response.

On Sunday, Joe rings again. His voice is the same, but there’s weather in it now. It’s been raining all night, he says. Real rain, and the roads are slick as hell. Might stay put, get a good night’s sleep, ride down in the morning when things dry out a bit.

"Bugger that, I'm sending a driver to get you.”

“But the bike,” Joe says, like that’s the whole argument right there.

“I’ll send a chopper, then, for you and the bloody bike,” John says, because he can and because the thought of waiting makes his chest feel tight. With a chopper, Joe'll be home by dinner.

"You got way too much money if you’re spending it on choppers.”

"Yes, I do."

“Just one more night,” Joe says. “I’ll be there tomorrow morning, tops.”

John wants to say a hundred things. Instead, he says, “Alright. Tomorrow, then.”

They hang up. How strange it is that everything can balance on something as ordinary as one more night.

He tries Joe’s flat every half hour in the morning. Lets the phone ring until it goes dead, hangs up, rings again. By midday he breaks and goes over there, not forgetting to stuff the glossy new brochures the pit pull had sent him, with photos of Tuscan mansions.

Noodles starts crying the second he reaches the door — long, offended yowls that echo down the hallway. John crouches, says sorry to the cat through the wood, feels an unexpected swell of kinship.

Outside, he plants himself on the stoop again, same as last time, and waits.

Noon.

Twelve-ten. Twelve-thirty. One o’clock, then one-thirty. He’s sure he’s about to go mad, but a pot doesn’t boil for staring, does it, and besides, he’s been away from the phone too long. Joe could be ringing right now and he wouldn’t even know.

So he hoofs it back toward home, suddenly frantic to be within reach of the bloody thing. One block, then another, then ten.

He rushes straight past La Fortuna.

It’s only after he’s a few steps beyond it that something in his head tugs, like a wrong note. He slows, turns, looks again.

The café is closed.

No — not closed so much as closing. He squints through the glass, catches movement: chairs dragged back inside, metal legs scraping tile. For a second he thinks it’s one of the cooks — a new one, maybe — already packing it in early.

He looks again and his heart goes.

There’s a black ribbon hanging on the café door.

John knocks, sudden and stupid, like he’s forgotten what doors are for. He waits. Nothing happens. He knocks again, louder this time, the sound cracking too sharp in his ears. Still nothing.

He knocks a third time, palm flat now, and when the cook finally looks up and sees him, the man jumps and hurries over.

“Hey, man,” the cook says, a question in his voice.

“What’s all this? What happened? Is it Sal?”

“No, not Sal,” the cook shakes his head, drags a hand down his face. “You know Joe, don’t you? Kid behind the bar? Rode straight into a semi trailer last night. Carmela couldn't stop crying all morning. Sal figured it was better to close up for the day.”

“But—” John tries. His tongue feels thick. “Is he… is he okay?”

"Who?"

"Joe."

“Nah, man. He smashed into a fucking semi. Kid’s gone.”

“Oh,” It comes out small. His hands feel very far away. He notices, absurdly, a smear of tomato sauce on the cook’s apron.

“Yeah.” The cook shakes his head. “Anyway, come back tomorrow, man.”

John thanks him. He’s not sure which word he uses, but the cook nods back, his brows furrowed.

He floats up, barely. Enough to see himself now on the sidewalk, in the same spot Joe had stood, kissing his necklace, crossing himself. John thinks, I should do that, too. His hands curl, uncurl. They look wrong.

“Hey, man — you okay?”

For half a heartbeat John thinks it’s Joe. But Joe never calls him man.

Also, Joe is dead.

Joe smashed into a semi. That probably rules him out.

John turns around. It’s the cook, still standing in the doorway, watching him closely now.

“Hey,” the cook says again. “You hear me?”

He shakes his head.

“Let me get you some water, okay?” the cook says. He disappears back inside. John watches the door swing shut behind him. The bell gives a little, pointless jingle. Everything behaves exactly as it should, which feels wrong.

He tells himself that it can’t be true. That he's just having a very lucid nightmare, that’s all. He hasn’t woken up yet. Joe is too young to die. People Joe’s age don’t die like that — they dent the world, they don’t vanish from it. And besides, Joe had said he was waiting. Waiting for the roads to dry.

You rushed him. You nagged and begged, made a song and dance about it. But Joe wouldn’t—

His stomach flips, sudden and violent, like it’s been yanked downward. The street tilts.

John staggers sideways, barely registers the narrow mouth of the alley next to the café, getting there just in time. His hands find the brick, fingers scraping, and then he’s retching — hard, humiliating, his body emptying itself.

“Hey— hey, hey,” a hand appears in his field of vision, hovering, not quite touching. “Easy,” the cook says. “Take it easy.”

John straightens a little, wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve. His hands are trembling.

“I’m fine,” he hears himself say.

“No, you're not,” the cook says instead. “C’mon.”

He steers John out of the alley, one hand firm at his elbow, the other still hovering, ready. John squints, sways, catches himself just in time.

“Sit,” the cook says again, and John does — this time on the curb, hard.

The cook flags down a cab. When one stops he opens the door, half-guides, half-lifts John inside.

"It's John Lennon, man," the cook says. "Think he's sick."

“Where to?” the driver asks.

The cook looks at John.

John blinks. The address is there somewhere, buried under noise and water. It takes him a second too long.

“The Dakota,” he says finally.

The driver twists around in his seat. “You’re kiddin’ me, right? That’s one block.”

“Hey, buddy, the guy’s not walkin’ anywhere right now. Just take him home.”

The driver clicks his tongue. “I ain’t a charity.”

“Didn’t ask you to be.” The cook fishes into his pocket, pulls out a folded wad, and slides it through the window. “Just drive.”

“Take it easy,” he says to John, softer now. “Okay? You just… take it easy.”

John nods. He grips the edge of the seat as the door closes. The cab pulls away from the curb.

He has no idea how or when he gets home. He thinks there might have been two pairs of hands holding him upright in an elevator, but he's not sure, so he lets it pass.

There’s a gap in his head, like someone lifted him out of his own day and set him back down again in the music room without explanation; like those people who say they got abducted by aliens. At some point there is a voice, a man’s voice. John thinks it might be a doctor. The voice says he’s been given something to help with the pain.

John wonders what pain he means. There isn’t any. There’s nothing at all.

“John,” Yoko says softly. “Can you hear me?” She sounds worried, but very far away. “You'll feel better in a moment, okay?”

He drifts in and out after that. Each time he surfaces it’s with the same stupid, buoyant relief — a big, easy breath. There you are, he thinks. All right. Good. It was only a dream.

Then he looks down. His shirt sleeve is stiff where it’s dried, acid and bile and coalescing.

Oh. Oh, right.

This happened. This is still happening. Dreams don’t leave sick stains.

He closes his eyes and lets the darkness take him, back to where Joe is still alive somewhere, where tomorrow morning hasn’t been used up yet.

He doesn't leave the music room.

The room contains him, so he stays contained. A single sofa chair facing a window, a piano, an ashtray. That’s as much as his brain can handle. Anything beyond it is theoretical.

The light changes shape on the floor. That’s how he tells time. Morning is pale. Afternoon is louder. Night is when the window turns into a mirror and he has to look away.

There are Polaroids taped to the window, his and Joe's. He doesn’t remember taping them up, but they’re there, so he must have. Ten, fifteen of them, crooked. Joe in bed, laughing at something John can’t hear anymore. They feel instructional, the Polaroids, like exhibits.

Some moments he thinks: maybe he wasn’t real.

Maybe Joe was something his brain had made up. A boy-shaped dream, an unkind mind's attempt at kindness. He tells himself, you’ve taken a lot of acid, years of it, enough to fry whatever keeps brains in order. People invent whole worlds under less strain than that.

The thought settles comfortably in his chest and stays awhile. A wave of relief.

That must be it. None of it happened. Nothing to grieve, nothing to go quietly mad over at three in the afternoon. He reaches for another cigarette, already halfway convinced—

—and then he hears the faint clink of the medallion against his neck, shifting because he shifted.

He was real.

He was real.

He doubles over in his chair, raw animal sound breaking loose from his throat, grief finally finding a mouth.

When he opens his eyes again — during A Night, Some Night — Paul is there.

He’s standing in front of the window, one hand in his pocket, the other tracing one of the Polaroids with his finger, slow and curious. John can only see his back, narrow and achingly familiar.

John doesn’t mind him. If his lifelong experience has taught him anything, it’s that if you ignore Paul long enough, he eventually goes away.

He falls back asleep.

“John,” a voice calls him. “John, wake up.”

There’s a hand on his shoulder, shaking him.

“John,” Paul says again. “You can’t just… stay like this.”

He rolls onto his side, turning his back to Paul, pulling the room back into something he can manage.

“You’ve been in here days,” Paul says. “You gotta move, Johnny. Just a bit. Bathroom. Shower. Something.”

"Fuck off, Paul."

“Yoko’s got a doctor coming, alright?” Paul says carefully. “He says if you don’t wake up proper, they’re gonna have to get you to hospital, to get some liquids into—”

“Fuck off, Paul!”

Paul goes quiet. John can feel him recalibrating, the way he always does.

“John, baby, look at me.”

John doesn’t.

“If you don’t eat, if you don’t drink, they’re gonna take you in,” Paul says. “I don’t want that. You don’t want that.”

“I’m fine,” he says. It’s a lie so thin it barely exists.

“You’re not,” Paul says. “You’re not even here.”

John curls in on himself, smaller, tighter, guarding what little space he’s got left. “Just go away,” he mutters. “Please.”

“I’m worried about you,” Paul says. “When was the last time you ate something?”

The question snaps something tight and coiled inside John.

The last thing he remembers is breakfast in bed at Joe's place, him handing him a plate on the morning he—

John’s face betrays him before he can stop it. His mouth pulls wide in a silent, ugly shape, like his body’s trying to purge the memory.

“Oh,” Paul says quietly. “I didn’t—I shouldn’t’ve—” Paul shifts closer, careful now, like he’s approaching a wounded animal. Then, gently and fatally, he says, “John, I’m sorry this happened to you.”

“He’s not a bloody flat tire, Paul,” John says, lurching to his feet, the chair shrieking against the floor. “Get out!”

Paul hesitates.

“Get the fuck out!” John screams, and then he’s shoving Paul hard in the chest.

Paul stumbles back a step. “John—”

“He’s dead and you’re not and that’s the whole bloody joke, isn’t it?” John laughs once, ugly.

“That’s not fair,” Paul says, his voice thin.

“Fair?!” John snaps. “Tell me where I’m meant to go, then. Where do I go now, Paul?”

“You’ll get through this,” Paul says, reaching for him. “We always do.”

“But why? Why!?” John screams, batting the hand away. “Why do I have to? Why can’t I have one thing — just one—one—”

He can’t finish. He grabs the nearest thing — an ashtray — and hurls it across the room. It smashes against the wall, the noise enormous, violent.

“John!”

Another thing goes flying. A lamp. Then the amp, like if he empties the room fast enough, it won’t be able to hold him anymore.

There’s a thought, clean and calm as a knife, sitting dead center in his head: As soon as it’s empty, I’ll go too.

“Stop it! John — stop!” Paul lunges, catches his arm mid-swing. The momentum yanks them both sideways, nearly sends them tumbling

John wrenches free with a snarl. His eyes snap to the next target.

The brochures. He grabs them in fistfuls, glossy and thick, hurls them everywhere. Pages scatter like birds.

“Look at this,” he spits, tearing one open, shoving it into Paul’s face, then another. “Look at it. Italy, Paul. You didn’t want this, did you?”

Paul’s face trembles, fighting to hold itself together.

“No,” John says, cruel now, leaning into it, forcing it. “No, you didn’t — but he did. He—”

The sight of Paul’s face breaking splits something clean down John’s middle. Their eyes lock, and every ugly, furious scaffold he’s built caves in all at once.

John’s knees give out without warning. All the fury drains straight out of him, like a plug’s been pulled. He collapses, dead weight, and Paul goes down with him, catching him, both of them hitting the floor hard.

John folds in on himself, gasping, sobbing so violently it steals the air from his lungs.

“I know,” Paul wraps his arms around him instinctively, tight and clumsy. “I know. I’m so sorry, love.”

John claws at Paul’s shirt like it’s the only solid thing left in the world. Paul presses his face into John’s hair. They rock slightly, two grown men reduced to something smaller, wrecked by the same loss but carrying it in different places.

He cries until his throat burns raw, until his chest hurts, until the sound degrades into broken, hitching breaths.

Paul leaves in the morning with a stubborn set to his shoulders. He comes back about an hour later wearing the exact same face he’d had the first time John dared him to nick extra fish from the chippy. Same look, different decade. This time, though, he’s wrestling a howling, violently unhappy ball of fur out of his flying jacket, grumbling about a superintendent who wouldn’t let him into the house, no matter how politely he asked or how much he smiled.

“Didn’t care who I was,” Paul says, affronted.

He doesn’t say how he still managed to come away with Noodles anyway, but the sap streaks on his jeans and the leaves round his cuffs tell it well enough.

The cat is warm and heavy in his hands, the first real sensation he’s had in days. He laughs once, badly, through the tears, and then he’s crying properly again.

John ends where he began.

He keeps the Polaroids. He keeps Noodles, too, smug and unimpressed by the whole tragedy of it.

He never, ever, goes to Joe’s grave.

He never writes him into a song, never seals him inside a lyric where the world might touch him. Joe is the one story John cannot give away — the promise of it, the ordinary miracle, the life that almost happened.

Instead, he carries a small square of folded newsprint, a life reduced to twenty words. Bay Ridge Man, 20, Dead in Vehicular Accident. He keeps it in his purse until the paper softens.

He grieves Joe every day for the rest of his life. At night, when he lets himself fall asleep with a pair of hands holding him tight, in that thin, treacherous space between waking and sleep, he allows himself to believe they’re Joe’s hands.

But they aren’t.

And when he dies, the medallion is still there against his chest — the last thing he feels before breath leaves him entirely.

Some time in New York City, John fell in love.

Most of the time, he isn’t sure it really happened.

New York does that to people.