Chapter Text
The sky is a clean, pale blue today, cloudless. The bright summer sun beams down on the drive in front of EMI, but there’s an odd, bleary quality to the light, like something out of a dream. John draws in a long pull from his cig. He hasn’t slept in a year.
The most surprising thing about it all, he reflects, is how functional he still is. It’s his song they’ve just been working on all day — proof that he can still write — and it’s not even a bad one, either.
The only thing is that all his songs have a bit of a muddy, slurred quality to them, lately. No matter what he tries, he can’t get them to come out any other way.
Sometime during the Magical Mystery shoot, his sleep became a thin, weak little thing. He’d wake up from a full night’s sleep feeling like he’d taken a four-hour nap. All day he’d feel off, distracted, somehow absent from his surroundings. From then on, it was months of lying in his bed for hours at night, always convinced he was just on the verge of dropping off — but never actually managing it until four (and then five, and then six) in the morning. He turned to weed, wine, pills. Nine months ago his sleep disappeared from him completely.
He would’ve enjoyed it more, that last abortive spasm of unconsciousness, if he knew he’d go months without anything like it. Instead it was just: one day he was sleeping like shit, and then the next he wasn’t sleeping at all, and there was no sign in the wider universe that anything important was missing.
So now all his songs sound the same, and no one’s interested in hearing about how tired he is anymore, and the world hasn’t even ended. They still have this album to record. There’s still that old tightrope of knotted-together egos he has to balance on every day. Oh, what joy for every girl and boy.
John ashes his ciggie while he waits for the chauffeur to bring the car round, and the day washes vaguely around in his head. He thinks about Paul, and the meek, indrawn way he holds his body when he wants to look like he’s not a complete tyrant. He’d been playing a bassline that everyone agreed was too busy for the song John had, but he wouldn’t hear a word against it. Just thought it’d help make the track a bit more distinctive, you know. Keep it from blending into, um, the others. He wore a soft, placid expression in his eyes to make himself seem that much more harmless. Soft, placid, almost a bit sleepy, really. The fucking nerve of him, thinks John.
John's face is constantly puffy and red these days, his gaze manic and spacey. But, at least on the days when John happens to notice it, Paul wears ‘sleep-deprived’ well. It’s ridiculous. He’s all dark circles under big, sad eyes, gentle lavender crescent-moons that bring out the striking cool tones in his hazel irises. His wan complexion offsets his dark hair, which falls in thick curtains framing his face, artfully dishevelled. There’s a look about him that makes people want to ask, cooingly, if everything’s alright — to which he invariably replies in a gracious, self-denying sort of mewl. Oh, I’m getting along. Yes, it’s very hard, isn’t it? But I won’t complain, of course.
It’s not that no one ever asks after John. It’s just that it always strikes him as accusatory when they do.
The Rolls-Royce pulls into the drive, and he opens the door for Yoko, crushing his cigarette underfoot before climbing in after her. The chauffeur lets Paul cross in front of the car before they leave, and they exchange an awkward, cursory wave. If Paul’s on foot, he must be going straight home, about 10 minutes away.
He lists very lightly to the right as he walks, like he was drunk and pretending not to be. And it’s hard for John not to recognise the foggy, dazed look in Paul’s eye; he sees it in the mirror every day. But, still, there’s no pang of sympathy in his chest. Fucking Paul, he thinks instead. Probably had a rough sleep last night, exactly one, and he’s acting as bad as me.
He’s noticed, lately, that he can’t make himself feel moved by anything to do with Paul. And it’s not for a lack of difficult turns in Paul’s life, either: there was his breakup with Jane, his slow slide into carelessness. It used to be infuriating, how orderly he was. But now he’s become someone who confuses dates, who loses the phone numbers of birds he’s keen on. It’s not characteristic of him.
And yet the most John can bring himself to feel about it is a mild bafflement, of the kind he would feel at an unexpected turn in the weather. He can’t tell if it’s the lack of sleep, the way it’s made his mind sort of numb and impenetrable, or if he just doesn’t give a shit anymore.
When the car pulls up to the gates, it puts Paul into John’s window. John watches, vaguely, as he steps down in front of a parked car, jaywalking even though there’s a zebra crossing not ten steps away. The Rolls-Royce bounces gently on its suspension when the front wheels clear the kerb. And, in John’s window, Paul pulls out a cigarette, before walking into the road and nearly getting run over by a car speeding towards him from the right.
“Paul!” John calls, already opening his door and climbing out of the car. “What the fuck are you doing?”
It’s always strange, when something stressful happens, and the rush of adrenaline pushes that odd, artificial kind of alertness through his system. His heart pounds in his ears, and the day seems to have come into full, terrible brightness. It’s almost nauseating — and yet he can’t deny the impression of swimming up to the surface, breaking for air.
Paul’s stumbled back in front of the parked car, eyes wide and blinking, as if processing his surroundings for the first time. “Fuck,” he says, “I nearly got hit by a car.”
John wants to roll his eyes. “Yeah, I fucking know you did, saw the whole thing from my window. What were you thinking?”
Paul shakes his head. “I was just crossing the road,” he says, gesturing weakly toward the street. “Going home.”
John sighs, frustrated. He looks around himself, as if searching for some tool to help him deal with this infuriating person. “Well, get in the bloody car, then. If you’re gonna be walking into traffic. Christ. We’ll drive you.”
“What, drive me? It’s only four, five blocks.”
“And I’ve just seen you step out in front of a moving car. You’re barely standing on your own two feet, Paul, you’re not making it home like this.”
Paul laughs, lightly, like he’s not sure whether John’s joking. “I’ve made it home plenty of times before, y’know.”
“Look,” John says, running a hand through his hair. “I can’t– I’ll be thinking about it all day if we don’t give you a lift. God, you try to give someone a hand,” he mutters, and climbs back in beside a slightly stunned-looking Yoko. “Get in,” he says, before closing the door.
Paul, to his credit, does. He’s polite when he greets Yoko, that deliberate, hypocritical politeness of his. Did you see that, too? Oh, how embarrassing. Silly me! It makes John fucking wild with rage — or it would, if he could manage to feel anything properly beneath the brain fog.
John leans his forehead against the window, and ignores them. He doesn’t know why Paul can’t just treat Yoko like a normal person, instead of a ticking time bomb.
He closes his eyes as the car starts, not with any hope of sleeping, but only to give his dry eyes a bit of relief. He worries for a half-moment that Paul is going to start making bloody small talk. But it’s only a brief worry, because Paul and John both pass out before the car even pulls into traffic.
*
Suddenly, they’re at Cavendish. Paul is stammering awkwardly, halfway out of the car, God, don’t even know when I dozed off, and, thanks a lot for the ride, but all John can think is that he was fucking asleep. A nice, deep sleep, as well, three minutes of black unconsciousness, and some obscure instinct is telling him to jump out of the car that instant, keep his momentum going. He can’t explain it, doesn’t even think to say anything until Yoko clasps his hand with a confused look. “Be home later,” he tells her, unsure if she can parse anything from his slurred speech, “just gonna…” but he trails off before he can finish the thought.
There is no thought to finish, anyway. John is incapable of thought. The only thing he’s physically able to do is stumble up Paul’s front steps, follow him into his house, all the way up to his room. He pauses to strip down to his briefs when he notices Paul doing the same, but he doesn’t ask to borrow any sleep clothes, just crawls confidently into the soft sheets. If it strikes Paul as strange in any way, he doesn’t say anything about it, but only climbs in on the other side, turning onto his front, curling around a pillow.
They sleep the whole weekend, two days straight.
*
In all that time, John is conscious of absolutely nothing, with these few exceptions:
Blue evening light, Paul’s bedside phone ringing. Shifting of the bed. Sound of a plug being yanked from the wall, then silence.
A knocking sound, voice of Paul’s housekeeper. Bright white morning in the windows. Miss Ono asking after Mr Lennon, quite insistent. “I’m fine, tell her I’m fine. I‘ll call her later.”
Loud, urgent siren from the street, growing louder and then receding into the distance. A body stirs against his back. Nose in his neck when he burrows further into the warmth behind him.
*
He wakes up properly to a pale morning and a soft white sky out the window. He and Paul lay curled toward each other like two mirrored question marks, John’s ankle tucked between Paul’s calves. He pulls it delicately out. Paul wakes a few moments after John.
There’s no lingering drowsiness, no heavy tidal pull back toward sleep. Just full, lush wakefulness. The only thing John feels is well-rested. He rolls onto his front, stretches like a cat. Beatific.
He catches Paul’s eye after a moment, half his face still buried in the pillow. And they can’t help but laugh — partly in disbelief, mostly giddy with joy. Paul clamps his mouth shut, the laughter still fighting its way through, and delivers a playful kick to John’s shin. It reminds him a bit of the first couple times they heard their own music on a recording, the maniacal giggles that ensued. No one else will ever have a chance again.
It’s a few minutes before they manage to pull themselves together, and then they clamber eagerly down Paul’s stairs, intent upon eating everything in his kitchen. They raid his refrigerator, his cupboards, making a spread on the worktop out of everything they find that doesn’t need to be cooked. John even eats a bit of cold leftover pasta, lowering it into his mouth with his hands. They’re like teenagers: ravenous, giggling.
“God,” Paul says, folding up a square of sliced cheese and biting gleefully into it. “Haven’t slept like that in ages.”
“I know,” says John. His months of sleeplessness feel too far away, now, to cast much of a shadow. He’s too busy crunching on dry water biscuits.
“‘I’ve been afraid to drive,” Paul says. “Thought I’d space out, veer into traffic.”
“You did do that, as well,” says John, “Yesterday, I mean. Though I suppose you were on foot.”
“Friday,” Paul corrects, and he steals a biscuit from the package in John’s hands. “Two days ago, that was.” He smiles, smug and ridiculous. “We slept for two days.”
It takes them an hour to eat as much as they’re capable of, and then the whole day stretches out in front of them, limitless. There’s nothing they don’t have the energy to do, nothing they’re too weary to be interested in.
Paul takes the dogs out to play in the garden, feeling he owes them a bit of fun after two days of no-nonsense walks with the housekeeper. John calls Yoko, and then he, Paul and the dogs all step out for a curry, bringing it back to eat on the kitchen table at Cavendish.
Paul looks around as they’re finishing, as if searching for inspiration. “What should we do now?” he asks.
It hits John again that there are few things they can’t do, now they’re well-rested.
He thinks hard. What’s the one thing he wants to do more than anything in the world?
It’s 5:52 PM when they finish cleaning up, but they climb back upstairs to Paul’s bedroom anyway. They curl under the covers, feet nudging together, and despite how much they’ve slept already, it’s a matter of seconds before they’re growing sleepy again.
John closes his eyes, mind turning soft and unfocused. For no particular reason, his phone call with Yoko drifts across the surface of his thoughts. I waited for you, that night, she’d said. John rolls over onto his other side. You didn’t tell me what you were doing. You just left me in the car, you sent me off like I was a piece of furniture.
He thought she’d find it funny, him dozing off and then escaping in a state of half-unconsciousness. He tried to explain that he was too exhausted, after these long months of wakefulness, to think of anything but sleep. He didn’t understand when Yoko still wanted an apology.
It occurs to him now, though, that what he did, if not exactly wrong, was at least a bit rude. It would’ve pissed him off, he knows, if it’d been the other way round.
His stomach squeezes with guilt. He wasn’t that courteous on the phone, either.
He worries, for a minute, that it’s going to start bothering him. On another day, the guilt might, potentially, have made him restless, anxious to do something.
But he’s too comfortable, too warm, too relaxed. Somehow it’s very clear to him that there’s nothing for him to do in this moment, from this bed. He’s already drifting away, the unease receding like a boat on the ocean. He’ll handle it when he wakes. He sleeps the sleep of the just, straight through into the next morning.
*
He and Paul wake up and go to the studio and act like they haven’t just spent three days in the same bed together. It’s easy, John finds, to move it to the back of his mind. He’s focused on other things: getting the sound he wants in his song, negotiations with the group.
He watches what Paul’s doing on his bass, and it doesn’t make him remember the weekend at all. His day-to-day doesn’t feel like the same reality as that in which Paul pulled him closer in his sleep, breathing gently into his neck.
Despite the disconnect, though, at the end of the session John invites himself over to Cavendish again. He knows what he’s hoping for, but he refuses to think it consciously, because he can’t really be so irrational as to hope for that, can he? It seems utterly deranged until he begins getting tired the second he crawls into bed. He manages a full, glorious night’s sleep.
And so he sleeps over at Paul’s the next day, too. And the day after, and the day after that.
It’s not that weird. They used to do it all the time: sleeping side by side in their aeroplane seats, sleeping in a single anonymous hotel room bed. No matter how things are between them, John is still used to Paul’s way of tossing and turning all through the night. It doesn’t take that much adjustment.
And if he finds himself anticipating their nights together, there’s no hidden meaning to it. It’s just so strange, such a novelty, to sleep the way they sleep. At night, they fall unconscious almost as one, and, in the mornings, they wake within moments of each other — always with the feeling that they’ve just done something. As if they closed their eyes, and, through their own unspeakable power, caused eight and a half hours to disappear into thin air. More than anything else, this wordless arrangement of theirs is an odd compulsion to see how far they can push it. Testing the walls of the bubble, until it bursts.
On tour, they were always in a rush. Sleep was a task they had to complete, with the primary goal of waking up performance-ready the next day. For the most part, they’d be out the door at the crack of dawn, before they even knew what was happening.
Now, on the mornings when John wakes first, the few seconds before Paul’s eyes open feel impossibly full, stretching long. He figures he’s allowed to linger in them.
He’s used to Paul shifting in the night, he’s used to the hopeless tangle he always makes out of the bedsheets. And sometimes he’s even used to the gentle parting of his sweet, plush lips.