Mar 18, 2024
just some photos of the boi
seen from China
seen from Russia
seen from Russia
seen from China
seen from Türkiye
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Italy
seen from United States
just some photos of the boi
This is just for @jonesyjonesyjonesy 💖😘
it's fine i'm fine we're all fine
them crooked vultures, chicago (august 9th, 2009), at the metro after their first gig
I arrived at a rehearsal space in Chicago on Saturday, August 8, 2009 and the band were mid-song. I hadn't heard this song before. Nobody had! I also hadn't met John Paul Jones or Alain Johannes before. The whole thing was surreal. Josh and Dave introduced me to JPJ and Alain, and I got to work. After rehearsals I grabbed them for a few quick portraits in a weird little concrete and brick courtyard outside. The last pair of photos were taken the following night right after their very first show at Metro in Chicago. — Dustin Rabin, photographer
#squidgable
The First Breath You Take After You Give Up
a john paul jones x oc oneshot
summary: Actions always have consequences. She’s got away unscathed for too long. And now, she has to pay for it. Dearly.
part of the ’dead end friends’ universe
masterlist | ko-fi
notes: old!jonesy, nsfw, discussion of pregnancy and abortion, breeding, angst
a/n: I've had this written for awhile and I have been too scared to share it. So here we are. An installment in the DEF universe. Due to the content, I have changed it to third person, although she is still unnamed. I hope you enjoy.
"I’ll want you forever, even if I can only have you in LA.” “You know that will change.” "No, it won't."
Annual pap smears always have a hint of trauma, but when her gynecologist looks up from between her legs and casually asks if she’d be willing to give a urine sample, she knows something is wrong.
“Your cervix is a little soft and discolored. Perfectly normal. Have you been trying to get pregnant?”
Everything goes cloudy in an intense overwhelm. “No, I haven’t.”
The gynecologist observes her, eyes narrowing and quickly adds, “I just want to check. It’d still be early if you are. And the earlier you know, the better.”
She nods slowly. Normally, her doctor’s definitive and curt tone bothers her. But now, she craves it when she can barely make heads or tails of what’s happening. The gynecologist rattles through a list of symptoms if any of them sound familiar, but none of them do. She’s felt fine, save a loss of appetite, which she’s attributed to stress of the studio, to the music, to not hearing from him.
Then, she’s off to pee in a cup. It takes an inordinate amount of focus to make it happen, what with her thoughts tangled together. Each thought begins and is cut short by another swelling terror and this cycle continues right up until the doctor returns with results.
Positive. “Let’s do a blood test to confirm and we’ll know how far along you are, alright?”
She realizes what a mistake it was to take an appointment before she had to go into work when she has to returns to the studio and massage out a scheduling mishap. She can barely think straight. Even Rex notices: “God, you alright? You look like you’re going to break.”
She feels like she could break, like her hipbones could snap from their sockets.
In the late afternoon during a staff meeting, she gets the phone call. She excuses herself to the hall and presses up against the wall as the receptionist sunnily congratulates her on her pregnancy. The color drains from her face and her heart lodges itself in her throat.
“Hello?” the receptionist’s saccharine voice drips through the phone.
She cups her hand around her mouth and the receiver and whisper, “Is it – how early is it?”
“Seven weeks. Really early. You can start on those prenatals pronto, get that folic acid.”
She starts winding the clock back to the last time she saw him, which was five weeks ago. Two weeks before that was –
“How about we get you in this Friday for a sonogram? I have an appointment bright and early at nine and we can get some images of your –”
“That won’t be necessary,” she says quickly. Gut reaction. The only option, she thinks.
“Oh,” the receptionist replies as if she’s the one who has been hurt. “Okay then, well –“
She hangs up the phone before she can hear anymore.
Seven weeks ago: the lost weekend in Malibu with the torrential downpour and power outage that lasted through the night. She was forbidden to leave the bed for most of it. Consequences such as a pregnancy were the farthest thing from her mind; she was too preoccupied with more immediate crimes and punishments.
They both had acted the entire time under the assumption, the gross assumption, that he was barren in his age. She wonders if perhaps that willful ignorance was actually just part of the thrill for them both.
She doesn’t return to the meeting, opting instead to lock herself in the office to figure out her next moves. She was clear on the phone to both the receptionist and herself: the sonogram won’t be necessary because she’s not getting attached. An unplanned pregnancy is one thing. An unplanned pregnancy under these circumstances, another. It would be foolish to say the affair is purely physical, but it is certainly an intimacy limited to LA. With John no longer in LA and his return at this point unclear, there’s no reason to bother him with this development or her decision about it. She can’t even imagine how he would react, nor does she really want to know.
She makes an appointment for the end of the week to get the situation taken care of, to put it mildly. If she puts too many words to it, she starts getting a lump in your throat that she refuses to contend with right now. If it dons on her while brushing her teeth or while wiping down the counter of the studio kitchen, she renames it – a tape worm, a cyst, a sinking feeling in her stomach.
She’s never believed in the give and take of the universe, but she starts to when she receives an unprompted phone call from John the next morning. She doesn’t pick up and waits to listen to his message until her lunch break.
“Sorry to bother you while you’re at the studio. I’ll be back in town this weekend for some press obligations. Stop by when you can. I’d love to see you.”
She doesn’t call him back. The last time they spoke was five weeks ago when he left her in his bed in the early morning hours to go catch his flight. It was a short and simple conversation, but she hasn’t forgotten the rasp of his voice in her hair: “See you soon.”
“When?” she had asked.
“Soon.”
Until yesterday, that ‘soon’ had been her lifeblood. Now, it feels full of doom.
His keys with the blue tag he had tempted her with, drawn her in like a spider to a web, have had a ceremonious place on her bedside table ever since. But when she gets home that night, she shoves them into the drawer.
The days come and they go. She keeps the news to herself. The only person she could probably tell would be Rex but that would be a rife conversation and she doesn’t want to talk him down from a ledge when she hasn’t yet climbed down from hers.
Two calls from John go unanswered on Wednesday. He doesn’t leave messages.
An appointment on Thursday at the clinic, several hours of waiting, the problem done away with, relief mixed with a sudden immense guilt.
Another call Friday. This one she doesn’t even let ring, sending it straight to voicemail with the click of a button.
She spends Friday and Saturday in bed. The physical pain is bearable; it’s her mind that feels like hell. She numbs herself with reality TV in the background and crap food which she can barely touch without feeling nauseous.
Saturday night, John calls. She stares at the phone as it illuminates your darkened room like an angler fish in an oceanic trench. Lets it ring then returns to an email drafted on her laptop. Another call 5 minutes later. Ignored. And not a minute later, he calls again.
John is patient and, in most scenarios, a man of few words. He observes space in all things. A slurry of calls is not in his nature.
She sits up and takes a deep breath before answering the phone. “Hello?”
“Oh, you’re alive.” There’s an edge in his voice.
“I am,” she says quietly. Barely.
“I was starting to worry.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to – “
“Did you get my calls?” he asks, intent to get an answer. John won’t let her bullshit.
“Um, yeah. I did.”
“I guess things have been busy, then, hm?” He’s not just perturbed. He’s upset. She can’t blame him. To go from having her around his finger at every moment to not even getting a response would be unsettling.
She bites her lip and feels her cheeks blaze red. There are several ways to go about this, she’s just not sure where to start.
“Are you avoiding me?” John asks, a genuine wonder in his voice. “Did I do something?”
Perhaps it’s what he didn’t do. That she was left in the wake of the intense affair with the expectation to move on until it suited him to show up again. She resents that she had to be reminded of him with her entire body and that she was left to make the choice to rid herself of him in such a literal way.
“I’m sorry, I…I’ve had a very strange week,” she begins. She lets out a small, uncomfortable laugh. He remains silent. “Um, it’s funny actually I – well, I went to see my gynecologist, you know, just for my annual, um, and – I had no idea, actually, but – ” She just has to say it. “Long story short, I found out I was pregnant.”
A small pause.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Another pause.
“Mine?”
Her mouth breaks into a small smile and although she knows the definitive answer, she says, “Probably.”
“I see.”
“But I’m not – I got rid of it. Thursday,” she says and immediately regrets the way the words come out of her mouth. It feels so crude to say it that way, but she never let herself get beyond the idea that a bundle of nerves was manifesting in her uterus. It was always an it.
She can hear him breathing on the line, not knowing what to say next.
“So, I’m not pregnant anymore.”
“Right,” John replies quickly, noticing he’s been silent too long. “Are you feeling alright?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
“Good, that’s good.”
She doesn’t reply, doesn’t feel the need to. The energy it took to reveal the truth to him has left her spent.
“Well, thank you for keeping me from going the way of McCartney, then,” John says, a light playfulness infusing his voice.
“Oh my god,” she laughs, putting a hand over her face. “You’re welcome, I guess.”
“I’m sorry if I was harsh, I…well, I wasn’t sure if I had done something to make you not want to see me,” he says. Then, he adds softly, “I suppose I did, in a way.”
“No, no, you didn’t know.” She finds a loose thread on her comforter and starts to pull on it. “I should have picked up.”
John sighs, “I can understand why you wouldn’t want to.” A moment. “Could I come see you?”
She hesitates.
“It’s alright if not,” he starts to backtrack.
“No, no, I’d like that.”
The smile over the phone. The one she’s learned to hear. “I’ll head over now.”
After she hangs up, she leaps out of bed and rushes to the shower. She’s been laying around in her pajamas all day and hasn’t been picking up after herself since the beginning of the week. She spends the next forty minutes in a frenzy to make herself and the apartment look semi-decent.
When the doorbell rings, she freezes in her tracks and has the fleeting thought of just burying herself back in bed and pretending like he isn’t there. As she goes for the doorknob, she catches herself in the front hall mirror. She thinks she looks like an old sweater that’s gone too many times through the wash. The color is faded from her face, her hair is limp, and she practically hangs off her own skeleton. She swears under her breath and fluffs her hair manically before opening the door.
She’s never been able to plan for how it feels to see a lover after time apart. Like a candle that’s been almost entirely drained of its oxygen, she can never be sure if the wick will burst into flame again or if it has been snuffed entirely.
In the glow of the patio light, John stands there, holding a bottle of liquor in a brown paper bag. His eyes find her and an unassuming smile creep across his lips. “Hi.”
The candle sets alight.
“Hi.”
John clears his throat and gestures toward the bag. “Wasn’t sure if you could use a drink. In celebration or…sorrow or –“
“General apathy?”
“That’s a new one, but I like it.”
She grins, “Come on in.”
John gives her a nod and walks into the apartment. She can’t help but peruse him from head to toe. He looks clean-pressed: a navy button down, dark washed jeans, and a pair of oxfords that plod sharply against the wooden floor. “Sorry, it’s a bit messy,” she says, closing the door behind him.
“It looks fine. Lovely,” he says, turning back to her.
She’d like to tell him how nice he looks. She knows he’d get red in the face and change the subject. “I can pour us a drink, if you like,” she says. It feels like that first day all over again, nervousness twitching all the way to her fingertips. John hands over the bag and quickly tucks his hands into his pockets as she makes her way into the kitchen. The place he was holding the bag is ragged from his sweaty grip. “Sit anywhere,” she calls through the pass-through window and sets to pouring the drinks.
“Can’t believe this is the first time I’ve visited you at home,” John muses. She’s been grateful for that. There aren’t any corners where memories linger that she has to avoid. Just the keys now tucked away in her nightstand.
“Your place is much nicer,” she says, dropping two ice cubes into his glass as he likes. “And no prying eyes.”
“You have nosy neighbors who give two shits about an old Englishman?”
She turns back and finds he hasn’t sat; he’s still standing in the middle of the room and letting his eyes linger on the personal touches she has that lazily adorn her space. From the books sorted by color on the shelf, to the framed picture of her friends from high school with the cracked glass on the wall, to the small water stain on the coffee table, and on and on.
She goes back out into the living room and, with a gentle ounce of courage, says, “You look nice, John.”
John looks at her, taken off-guard by her words. His blue eyes glint. “It’s a funny story, actually,” he begins.
“Is it?” she smiles and hands over the glass to him. She’s glad he’s still predictable.
“Thank you.” He wraps his fingers gingerly around the lowball glass, his wedding ring clinking against it. She holds her breath. “We were just doing an interview for the album, like a sort of cinematic teaser. I don’t know, I don’t pretend to. So, I actually showed up in a different shirt, a dark red one, you know.”
She makes her way to sit on the couch and John follows you as he speaks, finding a comfortable seat at the opposite end, “They told me to bring options, so I wore red and I brought blue. And they have me change into the blue one immediately. Alright, whatever. I thought I looked rather nice in the red, but – “
“I’m sure you did,” you say, drawing your legs up under you.
John eyes brighten, “Well, that’s the thing, we start filming but then they cut me off, have me go back to red, then we do a whole take in red. They talk. Put me back in blue. And then after all is said and done, they tell me they’re going to be cutting it together in black and white.”
She laughs, “Oh no. You must have been livid.”
“I was. Of course, I was. All that time, wasted.” John hates wasting time. He wants to be in complete control of his time. It’s why the affair worked so well. She has no problem letting him have that control.
“I bet you really ripped them apart then.”
“Oh, you know me. A prima donna,” he smirks and his eyes land on the rim of his glass. “No, I was pleasant as ever.” There’s a weariness to him. It’s been a long day. He’s probably jet-lagged too. She wonders if he ever gets worn down by being pleasant.
She holds up her glass toward him in a silent toast. He nods and holds his glass up toward hers. “What was it you said? To apathy.”
“Something like that.”
Their eyes meet. The glasses clink. They both drink. The whisky feels like smoke in her throat, as if she’s taken a puff of a cigar.
“You know,” John leans back a bit and raises his eyebrows. “I really didn’t know I had it in me.”
She frowns, but his glance down at her middle is enough to clarify. She looks away with a small smile, “Well, you did.”
The conversation has been opened, there’s no going back now.
“It’s not…” she takes in a deep breath. “I was only 7 weeks along.”
John’s brown knits together. “7 weeks ago would have been…”
“Malibu.”
John hums knowingly and leans forward, his elbows on his knees, “Malibu…”
“Spent plenty of time on my back,” she says under her breath.
He nods, “I recall. Very well.” His eyes meet hers and she gets a taste of that memory of the two of them entwined together on the California king bed. “A lovely weekend, really.” What a tempered way to describe the height of depravity. He takes another drink, the whisky going down in a thick gulp. “We’ve never been very careful, have we?”
“Never,” she affirms. The two of them are smart people, but when it comes to one another, they share a single, horny brain cell.
“I must admit, I have not felt that level of uh…dread as I did on the phone in a long, long time,” John says. She can tell he’s a bit embarrassed to even say it. A man of his age and experience being reduced to the fear of a 15-year-old.
She stares into her glass.
“I just thought maybe you were seeing someone and were trying to get rid of me.”
“No, no…” she says.
“Which would have been fine, you know, that would have been – “ he stops short. It wouldn’t have been fine, not entirely. Perhaps preferable. But not fine.
“If it hadn’t been for, um…I would have picked up right when you called. On the first ring.” She cringes at how desperate she sounds.
John is quiet at first; his lips curl up into a smile he probably doesn’t think he should have. “Of course, I can’t imagine it was very easy.”
It hasn’t been. She has tried to act as if this whole incident is normal and handleable. But it’s not.
“I sort of…” he pauses, his jaw falling slightly. “I sort of wish you had told me.”
That’s a punch to the gut.
John notices her sharp intake of breath and how she turns her body away and continues, “I don’t say that to make you feel bad.”
Conversation with John has almost always been easy and clear. Rarely has it ever been complicated. That’s what makes this so hard. “Well, it does.”
John’s gone red and his jaw tightens. “I’m sorry, then,” he says.
“What good would that have done?” she asks, her eyes firmly on her knees. Her blue jeans that she grabbed from the hamper are nearly worn through at the knees.
“Well, I – I don’t know. None, perhaps,” John stutters.
An aching begins at the back of her skull. “What would you have even said?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would you have wanted me to keep it?”
“I never said that.”
That’s not a yes. But it’s also not a no. Suddenly, all the images she has been suppressing burst into her mind. She had avoided picturing herself swollen, in such obvious and open creation, avoided the idea of sleeplessly staring into a crib in the middle of the night with unfettered adoration, avoided the notion of having to logically and emotionally negotiate with John in that scenario. Now, she’s struck with the grief that she didn’t let her mind wander before she had made her decision. Even if the result would have been the same, at least possibility existed.
It no longer does.
“All I said is that I wish you would have let me know when you found out.”
She nods, “To be honest with you, I didn’t think you deserved to know.”
John’s narrows his eye, “Now, hold on – “
She doesn’t. “We haven’t spoken in over a month.”
“I know.”
“Then you can understand why I didn’t feel like calling you up to tell you, right?”
John sits up and takes a deep breath. “I didn’t mean to upset you by bringing it up.”
“Don’t do that,” she replies exasperatedly.
“Do what?”
“That. The unaware, nice thing. That if you’re just polite enough you can get away with saying just about anything. It’s gotten old.”
John stares at her, at a loss for words. The anger that is bubbling inside her is not all his fault, but he’s certainly not helping matters. She knocks back the rest of her whisky (after all, she can) and immediately goes back to the kitchen to retrieve the bottle. It’s a long silence as she walks back, unscrews the cap, and pours herself another drink with abandon.
He watches her closely. “I didn’t realize my kindness was so inflammatory to you.”
He’s trying to endear himself to her. She won’t have it. “This,” she gestures between the two of them. “It has a clear premise. Unspoken rules, right?”
“I suppose,” John replies, unsure where she’s going with this.
“Sex. When you’re in town. That’s it.”
John resists scoffing. “Is that how you’d describe it? Just ‘sex when I’m in town’? That feels a bit disingenuous don’t you think?”
“Fine,” she concedes. “Add whatever minutiae you want to it. But me calling you out of the blue to tell you that kind of thing seems expressly out of your nuanced premise. Doesn’t it?”
John shakes his head. “You’re looking at this all wrong.”
“Oh, forgive me,” she says snidely. “I, who bore the brunt of any sort of literal impact, am looking at this all wrong?”
“It’s not something we could have planned for. Not really,” he says, not totally sure if that’s the truth. “You could have called me.” John is trying with everything in him to stay calm. She can see the slight gaps in him where steam is starting to slip out. She wants him to feel something. She wants to see the frustration make him do something stupid.
“Please, John –”
He doesn’t back down, determined but not forceful. “You could have. You’re the one who made the decision to do it entirely on your own, you know.”
She laughs scornfully, “What would I have said? ‘Hi, it’s me, sorry to bother you at home with your wife. Just want to give you a little update that we’ve hit a snag and it seems all the fucking we were doing has led to an unwanted pregnancy. But don’t worry, I’m gonna terminate it, so enjoy your afternoon tea.’”
John shifts in his seat. “Would you sit back down?”
“Would that have been satisfactory?”
“Don’t be flippant about this.”
“I’ll be however I like.”
John’s turn to finish his whisky. He stands and continues, approaching her like a stalking predator, “Are you sure apathy was the right thing to toast to? Because to me it seems like you care an awful lot.”
“Of course, I care a lot. Of course! I was –” She doesn’t want to say the word, she really doesn’t. It feels wrong to say because even though it was seven weeks, she only knew she was for a matter of days before it was over. “You should thank me.”
He looks at her, nearly repulsed. He thought he knew how to handle her. “For what?”
“I spared you.”
“Spared me?”
She doesn’t reply, shifting from foot to foot as she attempts to avoid him closing in on her.
John lets out a dark laugh, “You don’t need to spare me, I’m a grown fucking man.”
“You said yourself, it scared the shit out of you.”
“Yes, of course. It scared the shit out of you too, obviously.”
She feels cornered, between the hallway and the rest of the room. “Don’t tell me about how I felt. Don’t.”
“I’m not telling you anything that isn’t obvious. Would be terrifying for anyone, so –“
“Look, can we drop it? Can we just have a drink and not talk about it, John, please?” she turns to begging, something she knows he loves, although not in matters such of these, and presses a hand to his lower ribs. Touching him melts away all her anger. “You’re here and I’m here and let’s forget about it,” she tries to take hold of the trembling tone in the room and shove into a corner so that she can enjoy him.
“Christ, you’re acting like a child.”
She can’t even believe his choice of words. John’s never been condescending; she can’t believe this is the moment he’s decided to start. “Fuck off.” It just comes out.
John is rendered silent.
She drops her hand from him. She’s bleary-eyed and she hopes he doesn’t notice. “Just…fuck you.” She pushes past him, back into the room, still not knowing where to go or what to do.
He sighs and closes his eyes, “I’m sorry. It was a poor choice of words.” In all senses, it was probably the worst thing he could have said.
“You should probably go,” she says. The muscles in her neck are so tense that every word feels like retching. “I thought it’d be – I thought it’d be good to see you, but…”
John is usually very observant of her boundaries and wishes, which is why she’s surprised when he says, “No.”
“John –“
“I’m not going to leave you right now.”
She tries to speak but all that comes out is a strained groan. She covers her eyes before the hot tears spill into her hands. “I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t supposed to happen,” she cries. Suddenly, she feels John’s arms wrap around her. The tension melts all at once. After all this time, his touch still manages to soften her from the inside. She leans into him, barely able to breathe as the sobs blubber forth onto the breast pocket of his shirt. All the thoughts disappear from her brain as she thinks about his hands. One pressed against her lower back, wide, as if to catch her from falling through his fingers. The other cupping her head tenderly to him. Perverse adoration floods through her; he holds her like a father would his child and even though she has just cursed him out for calling her one, she’s grateful to be held like this. She thinks she made the right choice when she still feels like such a baby herself.
“Let’s lie down.”
He guides her down the hall to her bedroom. It’s not a big place, not hard to find. There are no more words exchanged before she falls asleep with her head in his lap and his fingers tracing her hairline around her scalp.
She awakens hours later in the bruised early morning hours.
“John?”
“Hm?”
“You’re awake.”
“On and off. My sleep’s all a wreck this go around.”
She pulls at his shirt. “Lay down.”
“No, no, I’m alright,” John shrugs her off. He slides his hand down her side to her hip and back. “I’m alright.”
She can’t help but feel his resistance is because of his frustration, anger even at being left out until the bitter end. She grabs at the hem of his shirt and turns her face into his thighs, his jeans scraping up against her cheeks. She scrunches her eyes together and takes in a deep breath of day worn denim. “I should have told you.”
John pauses. “I understand why you didn’t.”
She smiles sadly and turns onto her back to look at him. “It’s just not…it wasn’t supposed to happen. I’m just your LA girl.”
“Now, don’t put it like that,” he grumbles.
She reaches for his hand and lets her fingers hang between his. “Right, right, I’m sorry, LA woman.”
“Thank you for that correction,” he replies sarcastically.
A moment hangs between them, deceptively soft and safe for talking about something so rife. She sighs and rests their clasped hands on her chest. “I don’t mind. I’ll want you forever, even if I can only have you in LA.”
John lets out a chuckle, “You know that will change.”
“No, it won’t.”
“Yes, it will. Because you’ll find someone else. Who isn’t so old.”
“And married, while we’re at it.”
“Aha, yes, not to be forgotten,” he says with a grimace before returning to his point with a worn-out shake of his head. “It’s inevitable. And that’s alright. That’s the way it should be.”
She sighs, tapping her fingers on the back of his hand, feeling the protruding veins. “You’re clearly not old enough to be shooting blanks.”
John laughs, “Apparently.”
“No man is safe, not even the old ones.”
“Well, what, you’re not on anything?”
“No.”
They’re both quiet. It’s funny to her, to both of them, that they’ve shared so many intimacies, of the body and of the brain, that this fact slipped through the cracks. He assumed. Probably always did, even back when being a philanderer was a part of his job description. John’s hand tightens around her waist. “You want me to go?”
“No,” she says. She traces a finger down his cheek. “Do you want to go?”
He only chuckles in return. His eyes flutter shut, the leftover smile still on his face. Her finger trails down to his neck to the top button of his shirt. Her wonderment that felt so innocent and remarkable twists inexorably. She pulls on the button. He says her name; she pulls again.
“I’m asleep.”
She pushes herself up to sitting. Her hand splays against his chest and she brings her face close to his. “Don’t you want to?”
John’s eyes don’t open, but the corners of his lips betray him, perking up.
Her lips touch his tentatively, like space between leaves, unable to tell if they’re entwined or if it’s the canopy above. “Is that a yes?”
“You know I hate when you play dumb.”
“You love when I play dumb,” she murmurs, a buzz against his lips. She closes that tiny amount of space fully in a kiss that was bound to happen from the moment he said he was coming to see her. Five weeks since she’s seen him. And she doesn’t want to waste the moment they meet again. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a kiss is worth about the same, but the sentences are bent and broken and you’re left to put the words back together to make something that can’t be recreated. When she breaks away from him, she adds, “You hate that you love when I play dumb.”
John sighs, “I hate that I love when –“
It’s too late; her lips are on his again. They’re both languid in their motion, aching in a three am sort of way, and yet there is so much fire here from this reignited candle. John’s hands go to her waist, and hesitant to hold her the way he has before. Because she is fragile and vulnerable now in a way he had never considered. In fact, they both are, but he probably can’t put words to that.
Their lips break and a soft whimper falls from her lips. She straddles him and looks down into his now alert eyes. Her hips undulate deliberately against his. John gasps and then bites his lip. Between their shuttering eyes, they are shadows to one another, blue specters both terrifying and wondrous. She continues until he’s throbbing through his jeans, like in the good old days in the back of her high school boyfriend’s car.
“Are you sure?” John whispers suddenly.
She nods, her mouth hanging open.
“Are you –“
“Yes,” she answers firmly. “Yes, yes. We just…we have to be careful.”
John swallows.
“I have…” She leans over and opens the drawer of her bedside table, wading past the keys to a stack of condom. She pulls out the accordion of gold-foiled packets, longer than she expected. “They…shit maybe they’re expired,” she says breathlessly, squinting her eyes to see the faded black date stamp on the back.
John takes the other end of the accordion and looks too, even though it’s a lost cause. “Been that long, hm?”
“Since I’ve used a condom, yes.” She leans toward the window where a streetlight lets in a sliver of light. “But not long enough for these to be expired, so.” She splits one off down the perforation and hands it to him, dropping the stack back in the drawer.
They’re both quiet. John stares at the small gold packet. He seems almost intimidated by the thought. Or perhaps it’s just the meaning behind using one that puts him on edge. Pinched between his fingers, it looks like a newfound specimen, a distant, strange sort of thing. She touches his wrist. “You don’t have to – not right away.”
“Whatever you want me to do,” John says and then purses his lips.
“How the tables have turned…” she says with a cheeky shrug of her shoulders.
John smiles and lets out a sigh of arousal. “You know what I mean.”
She leans into him again, lets her words crawl down his face: “I want to feel you.”
No more words from him. No more objections. He wants to feel her too.
“Let me feel you.”
It’s wrong. It’s headstrong. She knows this. And perhaps that’s how his belt comes off and his pants are undone in record time. John’s cock stands ready for her and, once her pants are off, she positions herself over him as she has so many times before. Tonight, she invites him inside her despite everything. Her head falls back. His hands tighten on the roundness of her hips. Their breath syncs. But once he is inside her, neither of them starts the inevitable thrusting, the primal quick pulse accompanied by slow-wittedness.
To be full of him. Brings words to her mind she would never say out loud. There is a love here, but it is not the love of tearful confessions. It is not the love of impossible romance. It is not the love of the star-crossed. It is just the love of another person showing up as who they are, always and entirely. And there is something tragic about it too.
He says her name worriedly, a hand to her face. But she shakes her head. “I’m fine.” There are tears in her eyes.
“You’re crying.”
“I’m not – no it’s not like that, really,” she murmurs. “I’m fine.” She turns her face into his hand and kisses his palm. “You just feel…I feel so good.”
A tear runs down the back of his hand. John doesn’t mind when she cries. But it is so rarely out this deep, heartful place. Usually pleasure and pain cultivate salty tears. When it is her heart, he still thinks she is divine. He still wants her.
John is the one to initiate again, his hips unable to hold out any longer against the pleasure of being inside her. She follows suit. The rocking, the breathing, the gripping. He groans, eyes fluttering shut until their pinched together and he frustratedly sighs, “We have to be careful.”
“We have to be careful,” she repeats.
They continue at it together, but their blisses are separate. Her nerve-endings are on fire. His head is swimming. No flourishes, nothing special, but they’re both building quickly to an end.
“We have to be…careful,” John echoes again and reaches for the condom. It glints between his fingers. But before he can split the package open, she snatches it away and tosses it aside.
“Don’t.”
John’s eyes widen. “But –“
“I don’t care,” she whines. Her thighs tighten around him. And she’s shaking. Trembling.
“Darling,” John says breathlessly.
“I need to feel you, John, I need to feel all of you.”
He is used to her body and knows that she is close and if she is close then he is not far behind. He calls out her name with an erotic terror, knowing their impending doom.
She leans back and grabs onto his shins. “Come inside me.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice. John hooks his hands around his hips, tight. Tighter than tight. And as he drives harder, he pulls her into him as if they are the same body now. There is no space. There is no question.
This will end the same way it always has.
John’s chin juts forward, a ragged moan, eyes narrowed almost in pain. “I’m going to –“
She wilts toward him, head like that of a dying daisy. “Do it.”
John slides his hands up around her, pulling her into his embrace as hard as he can. He gives in, his stomach muscles flinching tightly. Warm, sticky seed up inside of her. And her already imminent orgasm bursts violently. A thrilled, grinning gasp of euphoria. She throbs around him, giving him another wave of intense pleasure. His broad hands spread against her lower back as he shudders.
They are still frenzied, hungry for each other. They kiss, deeply, breathlessly until they have no more. Not one more bit to give one another. John collapses back onto the pillows as if his bones no longer lock together in the right way. He is spent.
Together, they bathe in the warmth, the glow. She can’t point to an encounter between them that has ever been so unbridled in its simplicity. He gives her a lopsided smile and rubs his hands up and down her back. Soft, vulnerable, she presses a trail of kisses up his jaw, nuzzling into him as close as she can be.
“Some might call that entrapment, you know,” John says wryly in her ear, taking a handful of her thigh in his hand.
She draws back suddenly. “That’s not what I –“
“Joke, a joke,” John cuts her off. He runs a hand over the back of her head and through her hair delicately. “A bad joke.”
Her eyes land on the condom that sits on his stomach where she dropped it earlier, still wrapped. She lifts herself off him as he softens, watches how he drips out of her. “Oh my god,” she whispers. What’s wrong with me?
“Thank god you…” John says through labored breaths and reaches for the condom, flicking it up between two of his fingers. “Thank god you had this.”
She puts a hand to her face and starts to laugh. “I’m so…why am I like this?”
“I very much like that you’re ‘like this’ for the most part,” he replies quietly. John puts his hand to her inner thigh and gingerly drags his thumb against her swollen labia, letting his cum slip onto his nail. He does not want to feel the possession that he does over her body, but seeing how he could be a part of her like this puts a thick knot in his stomach. “Me and you. Is a complicated sort of thing.”
She nods, eyes downcast to where his shirt has risen up and revealed the small curve of his belly. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be complicated.”
“No, that’s not what I said,” John tuts. He wraps a hand around her chin and directs her gaze back to him with an encouraging smile. “You’re not complicated.”
“We’re complicated.”
John’s eyes roll to the side and his brows lift in confirmation. She laughs and links her hand around his wrist, twisting her head down to press a kiss to his palm.
And before the silence can settle, just before it becomes the new default, John speaks again.
“Did you want it?” His voice is just as small as a creak in the floorboard, stifled but ever-present. It is the thing he’s wanted to ask all night. It’s the reason he was upset she didn’t call to tell him. It’s the thing he would regret not asking. “Just tell me if you did.”
But she does not know the answer, not entirely. “I don’t know, John. I really don’t know.”
The wrinkle between his eyebrows deepens.
“Not like that. Not like this.”
John nods, does not push further, instead welcoming her into an embrace against his chest, her face in his neck. He will take the answer and allow it to wander around his mind as long as it needs before it settles. But for now, there is still the matter of him dripping out of her which they agree they’ll handle in the morning.
Their disentanglement takes a long time. Tender and full of care. Unsure which movement will make the either break. But as soft as can be. And not long after, they are deeply asleep, twined together.
In the morning, they rise heavily, like gravity has doubled. John insists on going with her to the drug store and she bristles at first. “You don’t trust me to follow through?”
He shakes his head. “Just trying to be a gentleman as best I can given the circumstances.”
She half-laughs. He’d be a bigger gentleman than many of the men she’s slept with, offering her a ride to the drugstore, probably offering to pay for the morning after pill. “What if someone sees?”
John smirks. “Just another day in LA, hm?”
An older man and a younger woman, yes that is just another day in LA. “But what if they recognize you?”
John blinks at her and shakes off her comment. “You’re paranoid.”
“You don’t know what it’s like when you’re getting one of these things,” she says. “The way people look at you.”
“Like you’re a sinner,” he says, swooning at the thought. “Well, if you are, I am and then some. Come on.”
He drives. The rental has black leather seats that already are burning from LA heat. She feels almost sick to her stomach even though he’s a competent driver and doesn’t jerk the car around.
At the drugstore, he insists on going in with her. She doesn’t fight him on it. She’s too tired. This week has been too much and she feels relatively guilty for trying to avoid him. That feeling won’t last forever. When she looks back on this moment, she’ll regret not asking him to stay in the car.
The Plan B is kept behind the counter. God forbid someone steal it because they can’t afford an unwanted pregnancy. Which means she has to go up and ask the pharmacist for it. The pharmacist is a portly fellow with the weak beginnings of a mustache. He seems so young. But rather jolly compared to most other pharmacists she’s interacted with. When she asks for the Plan B, John lingering nearby pretending to be interested in the literature on the back of a box of Band-Aids, the pharmacist doesn’t even bat an eye. He smiles. Not pityingly or condescendingly. “Sure thing,” he chirps and makes the least big deal of it possible. “Bottle of water too?”
For this, she is grateful.
Until it’s time to pay for it and John is suddenly at her elbow, wallet already in his hand.
“Please, don’t,” she says softly.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he replies in his tip-of-the-teeth tone that she’s learned to crave. Pavlovian the way his voice makes her salivate. He hands over his credit card without another word about it.
And that’s when the pharmacist becomes her nemesis. After running the card, he points at John. “I know you.”
Her stomach drops.
“I can’t imagine why,” John says, smiling pleasantly. Lying.
“Yeah, yeah…the accent…you’re in that band.”
She reaches for John’s arm, about to drag him away without even taking the bag with the Plan B off the counter.
“Pink Floyd!” the pharmacist snaps and smiles smugly. Triumphant.
Any amount of terror in John’s expression is replaced with a disdainful relief. “Floyd. Yes. You’ve got me pegged.”
And her nausea transforms into a stifled laughter. She grabs the bag and yanks on his arm. “Come on, Mr. Floyd.”
They hold their reaction back until they’re safely through the automatic doors and back in the sun. Their laughter bursts. A woman walking past them must think they’re lunatics. But they can’t help it. This laughter is everything they needed. Even if it’s not actually that funny.
“You should have seen your face,” she cackles, wiping tears from her eyes.
“Well, of all the people to get conflated with –”
“Who do you think he thought you were?” she asks. She hooks her hand around his bicep as he leads her too the car. So close to him she can smell his day-old shirt. His sweat.
Pavlovian.
“Oh, come on. Obviously Wright.”
“You don’t think you share some similarities with Roger Waters?”
“Take that back right now.”
In better times, this would be an invitation into bed. The rib that pushes him to the edge. Now, it’s just the way they are with each other.
They drive back to the apartment, laughing and chatting like old times (if she can even call them old times when they only met in January). He parks outside her apartment complex and eyes her in the way only he can. Trying to catch every beat.
“Thank you,” she says quietly, making no motion to the door.
“Of course,” John says and then repeats it under his breath.
She looks askance up to her window. The curtains are still drawn from the day before. “Well, you want me to do it in front of you so you don’t have to worry?”
John’s expression changes. He looks hurt.
“I was kidding. Mostly. I think sometimes people actually do that. Anyway,” she mutters. She doesn’t want to think about the time she and her ex-boyfriend sat on her bed while she took the pill and he watched her swallow as closely as one would observe a deer while hunting. “We should…”
John looks away, to the windshield.
“Disentangle,” she says. It’s the only word that makes sense. This isn’t a breakup. And she doesn’t want him to leave her. But they’ve gotten inexorably close for two people who just can’t.
“I understand,” he replies.
“Because I –” her voice cracks. “I don’t know, John. This has started to hurt.”
Not hurt in the fun way. In the way they’ve known. How does he patch her up this way? When he can’t physically have her or hold her?
“Because whenever you leave me I know…” She doesn’t want to cry. She’s not going to. She clutches the bag from the pharmacy in her lap. “You go home to your life and your work. To your family.” The word family sticks in her throat. It’s strange how it makes her feel. The thought of his wife and his children and grandchildren (dear god) doesn’t make her jealous. She’s envious of him. That he gets to return to that warmth and love, regardless of what is or isn’t broken. What does she have? An apartment and a recording studio and a half-finished album. Maybe it’s time to get a cat. “I know what this is. I’m not trying to kid myself or expecting…” Has she wished for him to be all hers? Yes. In a distant impossible way where no one gets hurt. Distant. Impossible.
John knows he shouldn’t, but touches her anyway, running the tips of his fingers through her hair, guiding her face toward him. “Look at me. Listen to me.”
She will hold the dam. She will not cry.
“If you want that…” He could back track now. He could rescind the idea entirely and it never has to be said. “I’m not going to make you take the pill.”
An entire life that isn’t hers flashes before her eyes. The one she wouldn’t let herself linger on before the abortion. The swollen one. The up all night one. The always worrying one. The insurmountable lifechanging joy one.
“On the probably very slim chance it would take again –“
“John, I couldn’t.”
“I mean, I couldn’t participate, you understand.”
She smiles sadly. “Of course.”
“But I wouldn’t let you suffer. I could support you.”
“John.”
At the sound of his name, he seals his mouth closed. What was an inkling of an idea came out of his mouth like a fully-fledged plan. Embarrassing.
And she knows that though this idea is mostly one of friendship and kindness, it can never be wholly without want. Why else would John offer himself to her like this if not to bring her enough peace to continue on as they have?
“Thank you, but no.”
John takes a sharp inhale and nods. He’s not going to admit to himself he’s the smallest bit heartbroken.
She cracks open the impossible packaging, the gruff plastic nearly slicing her finger open, and pulls out the first of the pills. She sticks it on her tongue and swallows down the water. No changing her mind now. “Done.”
“Yes,” John says quietly. He nurses his rejection quietly. “Disentangling. What does that mean to you?”
“Just…less,” she sighs. “Less purposeful. Less at your disposal. Less of you and me.”
John crosses his arms and blinks, against staring out the windshield. “Alright.”
She touches his shoulder gingerly and he the tension in his body melts. In just a moment, they’re wrapped in each other’s arms tenderly, faces buried. With each passing second, their embrace grows tighter and tighter until there is nowhere more for it to go.
She pulls away first and touches his cheek. The line of his dimple. His lower lip bows downward in such a slight way that it’s obvious he’s holding in everything until she leaves. “I can’t wait for the record.”
He chuckles, trying to push down the despondency. “I can’t wait for yours.”
“Mm. Don’t hold your breath.”
“Do me a favor and whenever you do that, remember me scolding you,” John says with genuineness.
“I will. I will. And I’ll miss you. So much.”
Deep breath. John kisses her cheek. “I’ll see you. Some time.”
It is not a final goodbye. That will not come for a long time. But it is the first. And as soon as she realizes this, she regrets every choice she’s made this morning. She could have kept him. A piece of him. Maybe. “Goodbye, John.”
Bleary-eyed, she gets out of the car and heads for her apartment without looking back. When she gets back inside her apartment she checks the window that looks onto the street. John’s car idles. A moment. Two. And then, he drives off.
Gone. Completely. Except…
The goddamn keys in her dresser drawer. With tears now blooming down her cheeks, she snatches them from the drawer, drops them in the garbage, and takes the bag out to the trash downstairs.
A person should not have to endure so many goodbyes in so few days. But when they do, there are two options to continue.
Stay the same. Or move the fuck on. And the moment she wonders what would be the use of moving on when she is so broken inside, she hears his voice in the back of her head. Scolding her for her self-deprecation.
She laughs to herself. Every piece of John is not gone.
Never will be.
tag list: @jimmys-zeppelin, @kari-12-10, @grxtsch, @edal-weis, @ritacaroline, @kyunisixx, @salixfragilis, @rebel-without-a-zeppelin, @jimmypages, @dollyvandal, @cassiana-on-dark-side, @thepinklovewitch, @babyl222, @faisonsunreve, @sastrugie, @seventieswhore, @raptorcat1960, @t4ngerinedr3am, @mayspringcome, @barrettavenue, @foreverandadaydarling, @glimmerofsanity, @matty-heally, @lzep, @jimmysdragonsuit13 (let me know if you’d like to be added 💋)
john 😘
I Wanna Be Around (You!)
a john paul jones x fem!oc fic (in progress)
summary: Good roommates, friends, companions. Everything about Isabel and John is incomprehensible. Gloriously backwards. And it’s all been leading up to this.
“I’m not doing you a favor. It’s what you do. When you love someone.”
pt. i - preshow
pt. ii - curtain pt. iii - afterparty pt. iv (coming...soon? ish?)
masterlist | ko-fi
notes: fluff, slight nsfw, themes of jealousy
a/n: Oop! Had this in the vault, thought I'd share it so that it didn't get lost! I have a few things I've never shared and I thought while I was on hiatus, I may as well share them. Hope you love it like I love Is and Joh.
part iii - afterparty
“You say the word, I’ll have you. Here. Now.”
John shuts the door behind Isabel and feels the blood rush to his face. With Isabel, timing is everything. Has been, from the very beginning. Some of it is serendipitous and some of it is calculated. They both know how it feels for things to be timed right. It’s in the gut. A feeling that isn’t there and then suddenly is, trembles violently inside until inevitable action.
He tries to keep an even tempo as he rounds the car and slides in on the other side. As soon as the door shuts, it is stunning how quiet it is compared to the past hours of blare. He looks over at her. She’s got her legs crossed toward him and her head cocked so a few stray hairs drip from the clip in her hair. An invitation, a temptation, to slip them back behind her ear and kiss her.
"How do you feel?” Isabel asks with a glimmering smile.
Horny, would be the first word that comes to mind. “Good,” he answers.
“Just good?”
“Is good not good enough?” he says, relaxing back into his seat as the car pulls away onto the road.
She shrugs. “Oh, I don’t know. Thought you’d have a bit more to say after performing for thousands of people, but…”
John’s lips curl into a tight smile as if he’s eating a candy that’s too sweet. He reaches his hand across to her and at first, she reaches for it with her own, but he avoids it, sneaks it between her knees and pulls on the inside of her lower thigh, just low enough to still be considered innocent.
“John!” she laughs, letting his hand guide her so she ends up with her hip right against his.
“Let me tell you, when I’m playing,” he says in her ear, voice low and rolling. “I’m not thinking about the ‘thousands of people’. I’m trying to get it right.”
Isabel’s thighs zip together. He may be talking about playing music, but it’s dancing upon some of her most sensitive nerves. She rests a hand up against his chest and kisses his shoulder; his heart is still thudding with adrenaline. She can smell the sweat that’s collected in the fibers of his shirt. It’s a sweet smell. She tries subtly to collect a bit more; the scent tickles the pit of her throat.
“I’ll tell you about it then,” Isabel says into his shoulder. “You sounded amazing and I couldn’t take my eyes off of you.”
John flushes. “Not the most objective analysis.”
“Who said I would be objective?” she says coyly. “Why should I be?” Her nose brushes his cheek.
It is this feeling of her right there that presses a tight breath from him, just loud enough for Isabel to understand. She shifts her hand up to his cheek and turns his face toward her, dimple under her fingers, and is thrown off-course. She expected to find his eyes full of trepidation. Instead, they are fogged up with heat and intensity.
“We don’t have to go,” he says quietly.
Her eyes are stuck on his swollen lower lip. “What?”
The words sneak between his teeth. “To the party. If you don’t want to.”
Isabel blinks and considers. They could go home. By the look in his eye, she can picture the moment, lingering over flutes of champagne and ruffled chocolate wrappers. She can already hear the sweet nothings.
She has planned, for some time, to make her move on him. To consummate. After all, Isabel has never been with someone so long and not been physically intimate with them, seen them naked, felt the heat of the most delicate and humble parts of their body on her.
They are too old to be afraid of it, aren’t they? She isn’t too sure about that. She’s approaching 40, he’ll be 62 next month. She has felt him in various ways, like the curves of his belly and chest up against hers. They have never acknowledged how else she has felt him, even after that time in the studio. When they have been close, so close that his swell hungers against her thigh or at her back in the night. Isabel hungers for him too, has hungered. She is sure he has felt the pulsing aura of her heat. She wonders sometimes if he can smell her (the answer is yes, he can).
Tease it out. That’s what she thinks. Tease it out as long as she can so that she has him on his knees. Begging. If they go home now it will be soft and sleepy. Lovely, but…
"People want to celebrate you John,” Isabel says matter-of-factly. “You ought to at least make an appearance.”
John admires her luminescent green eyes through the dark. “I suppose. If only to show you off.”
Isabel scoffs, “Please.”
“I’m serious,” he says with a sneaking smile. “No one will even realize I’m there next to you.”
The sweet nothings are already in full force. She demurs away with her gaze, but subtly twists her hips toward him.
John picks up on this. “You’re hard to look away from,” he adds. “Hard to…” He slides his finger along the buttons of her open wool coat. His eyes flick up to hers again. “Hard to resist, I think.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“You make it look so easy…Resisting.”
Fuck. The way John’s blood is coursing, he thinks he could last probably all night if she wanted. “Much more difficult than I make it look. Trust me.”
Isabel smiles. “Is it now?”
She’s so endearing with her feigned coyness. “Yes,” John replies, leaning toward her the slightest bit.
“Are you…” Her eyes briefly jump askance to the suit clad driver with whom she has exchanged only a few polite words. Then, back to him, right into his eyes, locked. “Are you resisting right now?”
John swallows. Her lips, right there, in the passing blues of the city light, look almost purple. Bruised and in need of gentleness.
“Because you really, really…” She’s so close, breath landing against his chin. “Shouldn’t.”
John wastes no more time and kisses her right there where he has kissed her so many times, although this time, tonight it is so different and full. Full like the way her hand is when it slides back down his chest to his belly and creeps over his crotch, grasping at the taut denim.
John draws back with a stuttering breath. “Is…”
Isabel’s words might as well be his own as her hand caresses him. “Do you know how you make me feel?”
He isn’t sure how to answer, so sensitive and hard in her hand. “Frustrated. Probably.”
“In a sense,” Isabel giggles.
His heart is beating faster by the second. He’s forgetting himself. “Isabel.”
She hushes him with another kiss. Miss Isabel Finnerty, auction house appraiser, does not care whether the driver hears or sees, does not care that her makeup could suffer in the process, does not care that her heart could explode it’s rumbling so fast. Her thumb tickles the metal button, slides it out like she’s done plenty of times before in her nearly 40 years. No need to unzip, she can slide her hand right inside and get a handful of him.
John’s hips buck up toward her hand despite himself and his teeth gnash on her lower lip. He feels good in her hand, thick and swollen. And he sounds good too, a long breath trembling out of him. Isabel thumbs the head of his cock through his briefs and feels a wet patch of precum on the fabric already. She smiles away from the kiss so she can get a glimpse of him. Eyelids heavy and lusty, lips parted with hungry breath.
“I’ll have you,” she drawls. “You say the word, I’ll have you. Here. Now.”
Here. Now. John wants to say yes. Yes, yes, yes. However she wants. He’s thinking with his dick and that’s not a good way to be (the predicaments, oh, the predicaments one can get into). But he can’t help it. He clasps his hand over hers, the one in his trousers. He presses her palm tighter to him and takes in a deep breath, languishing. “God, fuck…”
“That’s two words, John.”
She’s clever. And rather brutal, given how he’s put her manhood into her hands. Beautiful hands, glossy fingernails, red knuckles.
“All you need to say is –“
Yes, the three-letter word he’s been thinking. But he is just too late, a moment too late, because now the car is ebbing to a stop in front of a swank restaurant with a bustle of activity in front. And with this arrival, Isabel withdraws.
John reaches for her wrist and he wants to beg her to change her mind. They can go right home, they can finish what they’ve started.
Isabel smiles smugly at him. “You ready, dear?”
Ready? She’s got to be kidding with that one.
The car door opens and John jumps in surprise, pulling the corner of his coat across his lap as he comes face to face with the driver.
“Awfully quick, wasn’t it?” she remarks dryly.
He looks out at the bustling sea of people and he knows, just knows the moment his foot hits the pavement, they’ll turn and see and look and Isabel will drift into the background. He’ll lose her in the throng. And she’ll be alright, no doubt. But now all he wants is her hand. John helps her out of the car, trying to ignore the people calling his name, the inevitable sweep of excitement. He touches her waist to steady her even though it’s unnecessary.
The event coordinator scoops them up, weaves them through the crowd until they’re inside. He’s a stern sort of fellow; he’d be nonplussed by the queen.
Isabel can feel how the energy in the room has shifted and been sloughed off in their direction. John might as well be 50 feet tall, the way she’s fallen into shadow.
John feels the pulse of the room, as he feels it in all places. Where there is life, there is a current. It is rare when the current is all directed toward him.
“Don’t forget about me in there,” she says softly in his ear and lets go of his hand.
John gives her one final look; Isabel smiles up at him with half-drunk eyes. There’s something precocious behind her lips. It gives his frustrated, limping dick a bit of excitement. He doesn’t have time to respond before someone’s calling him (several someones) and only manages to give her an apologetic smile.
It’s always a little terrifying to be left alone at events and none of them have ever been this size. However, Isabel barely feels the nerves. She watches him diffuse into the crowd, absorbed with smiles, handshakes, words of adoration. She’s thrilled, not for all the eyes, but for the glow of it all. The glow of him.
Isabel is handed a glass of champagne which she sips as she scans the room. There seem to be many more unfamiliar faces than familiar. John’s entrance has drawn the attention of every single person in the room, including women by the bar who are whispering excitedly. Perhaps they are younger than her. She can’t tell from here. She’s had trouble doing that ever since she turned 25 and realized that 19-year-old boys were looking at her as an exotic older woman.
They aren’t drinking champagne like her. They sip watered vodka cranberries through cocktail straws. Watching.
Isabel has never been threatened by the watchers. It’s charming honestly. She didn’t notice her first few stints accompanying John on his trips. She had been so utterly enthralled with him, so committed to her role as his support that tunnel vision had set in. It was some green room somewhere, an artist’s access sort of place, when she pointed out the watchers out to him. John hadn’t even blushed, just waved his hand. “Happens all the time.”
She felt a little proud to be on the arm of someone who is constantly looked at. When she felt eyes, she’d pull his arm tighter, look at him a little more starry-eyed, maybe even whisper in his ear.
However, it’s hard to discern fans from threats. John would say the same. Lying in bed with him one night in California, massaging his temples after a particularly arduous day, he had said, “You never know who would eat you up if they could.”
She watches one of the watchers, a woman with coils of dark brown hair, hand her drink over to her friend and say something that is met with a loud laugh and a pat on the back. Go get ‘em.
Isabel has drained her champagne just while watching. She picks up another one.
The brunette vixen has penetrated the crowd, she’s made her way to John and somehow has roped him into a conversation, which is stunning considering how swamped he is. Isabel bites her lip. Isabel has a jealous streak, this is certain. Her ex-husband didn’t do her any favors in that regard. There is always someone prettier and younger than her. John has been patient with that. When she’s not speaking, he listens. He is good at reminding her at the exact right moment that he’s chosen her, again and again. It is not necessarily in words, but in the actions. His hand twisting through her ponytail like it’s a bolt of water caressing his skin or making a wry, private remark about something that is entirely too scathing to be consumed by anyone else but makes her laugh and smack the back of her hand against his stomach. In private, it is how he kisses her right ring finger that curves slightly to the left because she slammed it in a car door as a child and makes her strangely self-conscious. Or how she catches him staring at her while she types emails on her phone.
She thinks if they were sleeping together in the pejorative sense, she wouldn’t be as concerned.
As good as John is at reminding her of his commitment, she’s been an idiot before. A full throated, hot-headed idiot. Only recently, even.
The preparation for the reunion went beyond rehearsals and press. John wanted to be in “tiptop shape” and that came in the form of Ruby. For a name that was based on such a beautiful gem, it makes Isabel cringe.
Ruby. Tall, slinky, platinum pony tailed. Pilates instructor, personal trainer, dog lover. Carb-cutting, wheat-grass shot drinking. Has-permission-to-grab-anyone’s-ass-in-the-name-of-fitness Ruby.
Let it be known that Isabel thought it was a great idea. She liked Ruby upon meeting her, even if she did remind her of so many things she wasn’t. Ruby would pop by twice a week with her big (stupid) silver exercise ball and she and John would post up in the den. Isabel would find an excuse to leave around that time, whether it was for errands or an appointment. If the weather was nice, she would go read in the park.
She probably never would have had a problem with Ruby if not for the day that she had been candying lemon rinds in the kitchen and had to stay for the duration of their session together.
Isabel had greeted her at the door and stepped into the kitchen while chatting with her. “I don’t mean to step away, but you’ve got to keep your eye on hot sugar.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Ruby had said. “I’m not in the kitchen if I don’t have to be.”
“Oh, I’m in here often. It’s very relaxing,” Isabel replied, dripping sugar into a cup of cold water to see how firm it was.
“John says you’re a wonderful baker,” the trainer said with a passive aggressive cheeriness in her voice. “You must make it very hard for him to stay on his regiment.”
Isabel swallowed. “Yes, well, the way to a man’s heart is his stomach, so they say.”
Ruby shrugged. “Perhaps.”
Isabel took a bowl of lemon rinds and dropped them handful by handful into the sugar. “These will be cooled by the time you’re finished. I’ll set some aside for you.”
“Oh, that’s very generous, but I don’t eat sugar,” Ruby said sheepishly. “I just know once I start, I can’t stop.”
“…right.”
She folded her hands in front of her stomach (her flat as a board stomach) and threw her ponytail to the side. “It’s sort of sad, honestly.”
Isabel smiled although she felt a flush rising in her cheeks. She felt every extra bit of fat on her body in that moment and wished she could disappear into a whole. Luckily, John came up from the studio just at that moment. The way Ruby’s eyes lit up when she saw him made Isabel pause. Do trainers like their clients this much?
It had been nothing at first, until she heard the giggle. A personal trainer wasn’t supposed to giggle. And if that weren’t enough, John laughed only minutes later. A hearty, vulnerable laugh. She could imagine his head leant back just enough to expose his jugular. A rare sort of laugh.
Isabel went toward the den. A voice within her told her to turn back around. This wasn’t her ex-husband and it wasn’t her past. She had to trust, she had to trust, she had to –
Unfortunately, that voice entreating her to trust wasn’t loud enough. Isabel found herself peeping around the doorframe into the den. Ruby and John were chatting easily while she was stretching out his hamstring with him on his back in his stupid looking yoga pants that Isabel had promised were superbly adorable but she loves him and she lied to him and, yes, they were stupid. She rushed back to the kitchen and shut herself inside. Even Candide, scratching at the door, wouldn’t be let in.
Isabel didn’t even realize Ruby had gone until John waltzed in for a glass of water. She had to admit, he always seemed taller after he was finished with Ruby.
“Ooo…what are these?” John eyed the lemon rinds that were drying out on a rack, now covered in sugar crystals.
“They’re for drinks,” Isabel said coolly whilst filling the dishwasher. “Like Cosmos or lemon drop martinis or…”
John paid no mind to that and started nibbling on the still sticky rinds.
“What are you doing?” she asked and waved his hands away. “They’re not meant to eat like that.”
“Why not? They’re fantastic,” he said, reaching for another one.
“John, stop it!” she snapped all too meanly to be talking about lemon rinds.
John withdrew and watched her as she hurriedly dumped the lemon rinds into a storage container. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was so serious.”
She huffed. “It’s not. I just don’t want to make it hard for you to please Ruby.”
He frowned in bewilderment, but given her sensitive state, it felt like he was looking at her as if she was crazy. “I’m sorry?”
“So you can stay on your regiment,” Isabel clucked. “That’s what she called it.”
And so, the bickering started. Isabel had forced him into it, he had taken the bait, and here they were. Fighting over a jealousy she had created.
“I can hear you giggling. What the hell are you even giggling about? You’re stretching. That’s not funny.”
“You heard me giggling…well…you’ve found me out, Isabel. Really, truly, the evidence is damning,” John said with cynical frustration. “We’re just getting on. What would you have me do instead?”
“I’d have you find someone else to train you,” she said firmly. She didn’t care how ridiculous the request was. If he loved her, he would do it. “That’s what I’d have you do.”
John barely even flinched. “I’m not going to do that.”
Isabel flinched, scathed. She drew her eyes down. “Why not?”
“Because that’s ridiculous.”
Her eyeballs pricked with ire. “It’s not ridiculous!”
“Yes, it is,” John said in a cool voice. “Ruby’s no threat to you, Isabel.”
She had heard this before. She had been suspicious of men before and been talked out of it. This time, she wouldn’t let herself become the fool. “Well, she will be,” Isabel replied. “If she isn’t already.”
“My god…”
“Don’t say that like I’m crazy, don’t –“
“That’s not – you’re working yourself up about nothing!”
Isabel should have quit, but now she felt she were a petulant child and he was playing the disgruntled father. “It’s not nothing,” she murmured, clenching and unclenching her fists, desperately holding onto the torrent of excruciation in her chest.
John thought he was saying the right thing as he cautiously approached her. “It is. There’s nothing to be worried about or jealous of or –“
“I have every right to be jealous,” she rebutted angrily, tears forming in her eyes. “I have…every reason…” It wasn’t about Ruby and John. It really wasn’t.
John was surprised to hear that. He took it personally. He hadn’t thought he had done anything to make his companion wary of him. In fact, he thought he’d done so many of the right things, like there were second chances he was getting at trust and fidelity he had bungled the first time. “I have to go shower.”
Isabel heard the wound gaping in his voice. There wasn’t time to apologize before he had swiftly made his exist. Candide followed at his feet.
Should’ve gotten a dog if I wanted loyalty. Isabel was left alone to clean up her mess of hardened sugar and lemons before retreating to her room.
The afternoon turned into evening. It got deeper and danker. Isabel had laid in bed all evening, stomach twisting with hunger, but not willing to sate it. Punishment, she decided. Until there was a knock at her door.
“Is?”
She sat up.
“Would you come downstairs and eat something?”
She didn’t know he had noticed her absence or perhaps the lack of her bustle in the house. “I’m not hungry.”
There was a moment of hesitation. “Would you come downstairs anyway?”
It was not hard to give into his melancholy. Isabel met him down in the den where he flipped on the radio which he kept around for moments where his mind was too full. A Southern drawl, a plangent guitar. From the look in John’s eye, the invitation was implicit. Wordless. They met one another with tentative hands and began an angelic sway.
Back and forth. John’s hand on her waist, her head dipping toward his shoulder.
She was so afraid…
Isabel smiled. “What song is this?”
“I don’t know.”
…to give her heart away.
“Who is it by?”
“I don’t know.”
“When was it –“
John chuckled, “I don’t know.”
Isabel drew herself closer. “You always know.”
“No…no I don’t,” John replied, hand spread wide on the small of her back.
Isabel turned her face into his neck and took in his scent. Cedar, lemongrass. The way he always smells. Consistent. Stalwart.
John tucked his mouth up to her ear. “I’m not him.”
And Isabel burst into tears. John comforted her; he’s good with tears.
There are two things she does not know about this incident. The first: John did know the song and who it was by. The title, no, but he knew it and he knew it was…okay, he couldn’t think of the artist off the top of his head either. But he did know it. The second: John suffered from throes of jealousy even more intensely than she did. He was just quiet about it. John wouldn’t say he’s jealous though. He’d say he’s possessive. That’s worse. At least Isabel didn’t sit on her jealousy like an egg waiting to hatch. John harbors his possessiveness. Is afraid to abandon it. He thought he’d gotten over it when he was young. The musicians hopped from girl to girl and the girls hopped from musician to musician. Mo could inherently not be possessed and eluded the verb entirely. If he had even tried, she would have rolled her eyes.
It was when the girls started dating, then started getting married, that the feeling grew. They were his weren’t they? By definition. John would never say it, would never even vaguely act on it. If you were to ask any of the family, he was as soft as a soul could be.
But inside, there are razors of overprotection. They slash at him even more now that he’s with Isabel. Most men give him pause, no matter how platonically they approach her.
Tonight, he is at ease. He’s part of the main attraction. Any man encroaching on his territory would be mental to try. It’s not hard to hold onto the facts he knows: Isabel is his by her own accord, she’ll be his even more so before the night is over.
The night goes on. Isabel circulates, so does John. They meet every now and then with eager words of escape until they are inevitably interrupted by more of his adoring public and she retreats. John’s so inundated with praise he sort of wishes someone would smack him upside the head and take him out of the haze.
John checks his watch. It’s been much longer than he intended, about an hour and change. He refuses the champagne offered to him by a white gloved caterer. He’s barely had half of one glass because he’s so nervous. He wants to be good for her, wants her to want him again. He can’t exacerbate age with whisky dick. He excuses himself from the conversation in order to find the bathroom. This is deliberate; he’ll scan the crowd to find her, relieve himself, and then snatch her up so they can make their escape.
Last he saw her, she was blushingly talking with McCartney which was rather adorable, considering how many times he’s heard her humming “No More Lonely Nights”. That was over by the bar. She’s not there now, not near the bathroom as he approaches. Where’s she gone?
John holds onto the facts again. There would be no reason she’d make a disappearing act out of this evening. It’s not in her nature. He’ll try again on his way out the bathroom, a new vantage point.
Apparently, this momentary pause in searching was all he needed. Upon exiting the bathroom, it’s as if the tides of the party had shifted entirely, giving new corridors of guests. When he spots her on the periphery, her hand grazing the back of her neck to relieve some tension, his stomach drops. She’s engaged in tight conversation with…oh, he’s forgotten his name. Fuckhead that always keeps half his hair in a knot on the back of his head.
This fuckhead makes his jaw twitch. He’d first seen him hovering around her when Isabel visited him at rehearsal a week or so ago. This – Roger, was it? No, it wasn’t, but for the sake of his brain he calls him Roger. Roger’s part of the film crew. He was hovering around working on camera placement, which, to John’s eyes, looked like a whole lot of nothing so he paid no mind to it.
Isabel was arriving during the break in the afternoon and he flurried quickly to find her as to allay any sort of premature meeting with his bandmates. When he found her, she was stuck chatting in the corridor with fuckhead Roger. He was chatting her up in a frothy sort of way: trying to slink his body toward her, tilting his head in just the right way to look like he was listening, but too distracted by her tits to really make sense of it.
Clearly, Isabel was trying to find an out, which is how her eyes found John’s and she beamed, giving him a wave.
When Roger looked over his shoulder at who she was smiling at, he went pale as a sheet.
“There you are,” John said, attempting to obscure any discomfort with jolliness. “Was looking for you.” He smiled, flashing a warning look to Roger.
Roger felt the heat from John’s gaze and took a step back reflexively. “Right, well I won’t keep you from your break, Mr. Jones.” He would not go without holding his ground, though. He smiled at Isabel. “Lovely meeting you.”
“Yes, you as well,” Isabel nodded.
In a hurry, John shuffled her out through the stage door. “You’ve got a fan,” John had murmured dryly.
“What?” Isabel blinked in confusion. She was so naïve. Oblivious to the impact she could have on people around her.
He jerked his head back toward the door and raised his eyebrows.
Isabel shook her head. “Oh, no. I told him I was here to see you.”
“No one cares about that,” John mumbled.
She frowned. “Well, I do.”
That was sweet of her. He’ll give her that. But he couldn’t shake the feeling. It kept him up late that night and, as he does when he can’t sleep, he went to restring a mandolin. John was so distracted that he overtuned one of the new strings to the point it snapped and left a whip mark on the back of his hand. This just added insult to injury. Injury to injury. An embarrassment.
Between the fury of rehearsals and the mounting pressure, John forgot about this small interaction. Seeing the fucker makes his brain light up with rage. Not rage, no. Something else. Fuck the timing being right. It’s time to go. John approaches Isabel and Roger (whose name is actually Ian, but we’re in too deep) with such purpose that she feels him coming from across the room. The look in his eye is not rage, but it’s something she’s never seen before. It’s demanding, possessive. His body is rigid and his mouth drawn in a taut line. He’s coming to take what’s his and Isabel will gladly give it.
When he reaches them, he is incredibly pleasant. Him and Roger exchange pleasantries and small bits about the show, witty comments, did-you-notice-whens, all of it rather stale considering where the evening has been and where it is headed.
John wraps his hand firmly around her waist so that she is tucked right up against his hip. Isabel looks askance at him, but he is engaged in conversation. He’s not normally this forward around other people. Her stomach flips and her face grows hot. She subtly draws her weight back on her heels so he can feel her close to him. She listens to what he says her head pointed down toward his chest.
The conversation is curbed quickly. Roger gets the message; he can feel the heat between them and it’d be painfully awkward if he stayed a moment longer. Once he’s scampered off, neither John or Isabel move. Between them, the moment hangs pendulously. One of them just has to take it.
“I’d like to take you home now,” John says in a low voice.
Isabel’s breath falters. There is not a question here. She tries to maintain a quotidian expression, as if they are discussing nothing in particular. “Alright.”
His hand tightens on her waist and he pushes his lips against the spot above her ear, kisses her, but does not draw away. “And you can have all of me.”
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