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“I din’t mean to,” John slurs drunkenly as Paul tilts his head back by the chin, mopping up blood with John’s own discarded shirt. “Shouldn’t‘ve said that. To me,” he adds pointedly, as if it means something specific, as if it makes the whole event more acceptable.
Of course, the man John walloped didn’t say anything to John — he said it to Paul. “Fucking faggot,” the stranger had thrown out lazily at Paul and John’s table in the dark pub. But his eyes had been on Paul, as if John wasn’t even there.
“Must have. Sure hit him like you meant to,” Paul says lightly, pinching the bridge of John’s nose, willing it to stop bleeding.
John makes a small whining sound, more blood sloughing out at the puff of air forced into his nasal cavity. Paul hisses and shifts the shirt to catch it.
He’s too fucking sober for this.
He nurses John silently for a few moments. It’s a position he’s been in before and almost certainly will be again.
“You gotta stop doing this, Johnny,” he says quietly, catching John’s eye.
John’s fingers tighten on the edge of the tub. “‘S not my fault there’s s’many dickheads everywhere we go.”
“I can fight my own battles, yeah?” Paul uses a clean edge of the shirt to wipe the last of the wet crimson mess from John’s upper lip. The active bleeding has stopped, but John will undoubtedly have a black eye tomorrow.
John doesn’t answer, closing his eyes. Paul’s impressed with how well he’s balancing on the rim of the bathtub considering how much he’s had to drink. He likes John like this, in spite of himself. John’s uninhibited, a little more honest when he’s blitzed. It’s just normally a bit more fun when Paul’s as blasted as John is.
“Paul.” John’s eyes are still closed, and his forehead is creased with something akin to worry.
“Mm?” Paul turns to rinse John’s bloodied shirt in the sink. There’s probably no saving it.
“I feel you, y’know.” John opens his eyes and looks at Paul in the mirror. “All the time.” He taps his bare chest with his fingers, teetering slightly with the loss of a secondary anchor on the tub rim.
Paul’s pulse begins to jackrabbit. This is the danger of drunken John, too. This nebulous, unspoken thing that exists between them threatens to take shape when John’s walls are down.
But he won’t recall this tomorrow, anyway. And Paul will be left to bear the burden of memory.
He forces himself to meet John’s glazed eyes in the mirror, still rinsing the ruined shirt. “I know, Johnny,” he says softly. “Me too.”
“Sometimes I-“ John stops, having to work harder to sift through the sludge of thoughts in his rattled brain. “I don’ really know where you end. And where I begin.” His eyebrows draw together. “You an’ me- ’s all the same.”
“You and me,” Paul echoes, casting his gaze down into the basin of the sink. They’ll have to throw the shirt out and hope Mimi doesn’t look too closely at the bin. “I know.”
They’re quiet for a moment. Paul turns off the tap.
“Paul?” He glances back up in the mirror, and John’s leaning forward, elbows on his knees, cradling his chin in his hands. “I’m sorry I’m such a stupid git.” He says it emphatically and with a confidence only a drunk boy can, but in a resigned way, too, as if it’s an unalterable law of the universe.
“Only sometimes,” Paul says, affection blooming in his chest. He turns to face John, leaning back against the sink. “Mostly when you beat the piss out of poor sods and I have to clean up after you.”
He means it as a joke, and John smiles, but Paul can see an edge of sadness. Drunk John is one thing, but drunk, sad John is entirely another, and it simply won’t do tonight. Paul touches the toe of his shoe to John’s, which neither of them had the wherewithal to remove at the door. “Should probably head to bed.”
John nods once, wobbling as he stands. His right hand moves to his swollen nose.
“Don’t touch it,” Paul chides. “You’ll make it bleed again.” He gives John’s back a prod. “C’mon.”
John, even drunk as a lord, is quiet and careful as he weaves down the corridor toward his bedroom. Waking Mimi is the only thing that could take this night from bad to worse.
Paul shuffles in and closes the door tightly behind them. They begin shucking off their clothes, stripping down to their y-fronts. John nearly topples over wriggling out his pants, making them both giggle and hush one another.
John flops into bed first, having had less to remove. He groans and puts a hand to his forehead.
“Spins, huh?” Paul turns out the light. “Don’t spew on me. Shove over.” He slots into the small space at the edge of the bed. They turn on their sides to face each other.
“Thanks,” John says quietly, his eyes shining in the dark, “for takin’ care of me.”
Paul is always caught off guard by this sincerity. John is almost never like this sober — not unless he’s really screwed something up.
“Course.”
“You’ll stay, won’t you?” John’s eyelashes flutter, the way a toddler fights sleep.
Paul knows he doesn’t mean just for the night. “I’m not going anywhere, Johnny.”
John hums, eyes closing, and Paul shifts onto his back. Sometimes he finds that it hurts to look at John for too long.
“‘Night, Paulie,” John mumbles, snaking an arm around Paul’s torso. And then, even quieter, what Paul thinks is, “Thank you,” but could also be, “Love you.”
They’ll wake up wrapped around each other in the morning just as they have many times before. They’ll regale their friends with tales of John’s fighting prowess, leaving out exactly why the fight happened in the first place. They’ll let this thing between them bloom and grow and they won’t talk about it, not directly. But when it’s just the two of them, Paul will wonder if there is really a difference between “thank you” and “love you.”