The flat is quiet, but not in a peaceful way. It’s the kind of silence that settles like dust, slow and heavy, clogging the lungs.
John sits on the floor with a cigarette burning between his fingers, half-finished whiskey glass abandoned beside him. The turntable hums softly after spinning through Band on the Run. He doesn't say it out loud, but he's played it three times.
The melody scratches at old wounds he keeps pretending don’t bleed anymore.
John lights another cigarette just to keep his hands busy. He thinks about dialing the number. He thinks about how it used to be. How they used to be.
Late-night songwriting, laughter that dissolved into something like love. Or maybe it was love. Neither of them ever said it. Not really.
But there were moments. God, there were moments.
Like that night in Hamburg when Paul had fallen asleep on John’s shoulder, lips parted slightly, and John didn’t move for hours. Or that afternoon in India when Paul had strummed his guitar under a tree and John watched him like he was trying to memorize his face, just in case he ever forgot it.
Even now, years later, he sees Paul’s eyes every time he closes his own.
They’d stopped calling. Pride, maybe. Pain. Or maybe it was just easier to become mythologies to each other—half-lies and rumors, distant headlines. A Beatle and an ex-Beatle, orbiting but never touching.
He thinks of all the things he never said.
“You made the silence bearable.”
“I loved you, maybe more than I should’ve.”
Instead, he'd written angry songs. Sent bitter letters. Let the press write the end of their story.
The phone stares at him like it knows.
His fingers hover over the rotary for too long. Then, with a deep breath and a muttered curse, he dials.
“Alright, Macca?” he says casually, like no time has passed, like the years didn’t bruise them.
Another pause. Long enough that John thinks maybe Paul will just hang up and be done with it.
But instead, Paul sighs, a breath wrapped in disbelief and something softer underneath.
“You’re callin’ me? That’s a surprise.”
John forces a chuckle. “Don’t get used to it.”
Paul lets out a small laugh too, low and unsure. “Christ. Thought you’d finally decided I wasn’t worth the dime.”
John lips twitched. “It was the whiskey talkin’.”
“Whiskey, was it? Thought you were off that stuff."
Silence again, but not a cold one this time. It’s the kind of silence that knows its way around both their hearts.
“How’s New York?” Paul asks eventually.
John exhales smoke toward the ceiling. “Loud. Honest. Fits me, you know?.”
“Figures,” Paul says, a smile in his voice. “You happy there?”
There’s a pause. A hesitation John doesn’t usually allow himself.
“…Yeah,” he says finally. “I’ve got Yoko. I’ve got Sean. It’s… real.”
Paul softens. “He’s got your eyes, you know. Saw a photo in the paper. Little heartbreaker already.”
John smiles. “Tiny genius. Thinks everything in the world belongs to him.”
“Apple doesn’t fall far, then.”
John snorts. “And your kids?”
“Mad,” Paul says warmly. “Heather’s too clever, Mary’s wants to start a band, can’t play yet, but she’s got spirit. And Stella keeps asking when she can drive.”
“Exactly. Ambitious. Like someone I know.”
They both laugh, and for a second, it’s just them again. Not John and Paul of the tabloids. Not Lennon and McCartney. Just two blokes who once made magic in the middle of nowhere.
“You still writing?” John asks.
“Good.” John hesitates. “I miss that, you know. You sittin’ next to me with your silly notebook.”
Paul’s quiet. Then, “I still have that notebook. From India.”
John closes his eyes. His throat thickens.
“I thought we’d write again,” Paul murmurs. “Even after everything. I always thought we’d find our way back, you know?.”
“Me too,” John says. Then, more softly, “We still could.”
“Why not?” John leans back against the wall. “We’ve survived worse. Could do a song, maybe.”
John grins. “Don’t get used to it.”
Paul laughs. And this time it’s full, and warm, and unguarded. “Alright. One song. You start it.”
“Lazy sod,” John mutters fondly.
They talk a little longer. About making bread. About records. About things neither of them say out loud but both feel pressing behind every word.
Finally, Paul says, “Alright then. I should go. Linda’s makin’ tea and if I don’t show up, she’ll assume I’ve died.”
John hums. “Wouldn’t want that.”
“…I’m glad you called,” Paul says quietly.
“Yeah.” John clears his throat. “Me too, Macca.”
There’s a silence. Gentle, not heavy.
“Let’s not wait another bloody year, yeah?” Paul adds, trying to sound light.
John smiles. “We won’t. I’ll ring again. Maybe next time, we’ll even write a bridge.”
Paul chuckles. “We never liked bridges.”
“True. We just skipped to the chorus.”
John’s eyes soften. “Goodnight, Paul.”
John stays sitting on the floor, the dial tone humming.
And for the first time in a long while, he feels lighter.
Miles away, Paul stands with the phone in hand, a small smile creeping across his face.
Like something old has finally come home, even if just for a little while.
The last time they spoke, it was warm.
They joked about getting the band back together, maybe one day. John even said, “We could call up George and Ringo, you know? Just for fun. No pressure.”
And Paul had smiled on the other end of the line, unseen but felt. “Yeah. Maybe after the holidays.”
And after that, there was no phone call.
And a world that suddenly felt too quiet.
At first, Paul didn’t cry.
The world moved around him like it was made of static. Fans mourning, headlines screaming, reporters swarming outside his house, looking for something raw to photograph. But Paul moved through it like a ghost with a polite smile stretched too tight.
“I’m shocked,” he told someone. “It’s a drag.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t care.
It was that he didn’t know how to care out loud yet. Not when the person he’d once been closest to in the entire world had been stolen from it in an instant. It didn’t seem real enough to grieve.
Not during the interviews. Not at home. Not when people offered condolences with those heavy, pitying eyes.
It didn’t come until weeks later, when the house was finally still.
He was in his little home studio, sorting through old tapes. Just something to do with his hands. And then, by accident or fate, the tape clicked and “Two of Us” filled the room.
That gentle acoustic strumming.
That young laughter between verses you could almost still hear.
Two of us riding nowhere...
He knew every chord. Every breath.
But then he reached the part where the harmony used to live. John’s voice sliding in beside his, not overtaking, just fitting. That sudden lift in the line. That familiar tone that always made the song feel like theirs.
Paul stopped playing. His fingers hovered above the strings, frozen mid-chord.
He put the guitar down like it weighed a thousand pounds, and everything—all the years of press bravado and buried love and unspoken grief—came down like rain in a storm.
Not neatly. Not musically. Not with poetic restraint.
He sobbed into his arms on the studio floor, like the boy who’d once been seventeen in a leather jacket, scribbling lyrics next to a loud-mouthed boy from Liverpool who made the world feel bigger just by being in it.
“I love you,” he whispered to no one, but his heart knew for who he meant it.
“I thought there was more time.”
But the truth echoed back:
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