My Love, My Drug, My Release

Christmas, 1968

Sorry it's been so long since I've updated. If you're reading my other Beatles fanfiction, you know that I didn't intend for my posting schedule to get like this and I'm going to be more regular with chapter updates. 

Also, I love this picture of Paul (Linda took it) and it's sort of how I imagined him in this chapter, but I'm also like, what is that plant? Why are you behind it, Paul? Anyway, hope you enjoy!!!

Paul seemed more excited for a homecooked meal than anyone else I'd ever known. Linda was a good cook to be sure, but the way he acted made me think he'd been eating TV dinners and pub food for months, maybe years. Hadn't his other girlfriends cooked for him? Couldn't he cook for himself?

My brother's particular brand of pessimism was starting to infect me. He was doing it on purpose, I think. Despite refusing to refer to Linda as his mom, he was incredibly possessive of her, and having to share her with someone else, especially an attractive man, was wearing on him. He had purple bags under his eyes, had lost weight, spent most of his free time at Uncarbonated with Vivienne, his "girlfriend". But when he was home, he was making sure I hated this arrangement as much as he did, so he didn't lose the other person in his family to Paul's charms.

"Never thought I'd miss Christmas in that fucking New York apartment," Jack said to me, holding his hand out the kitchen window so Linda wouldn't smell the cigarette smoke, reminding me of what Brandon did at his flat. 

"It's not so bad."

He stubbed the cigarette out on the side of the house huffily. "He's an overgrown child, and she acts like a ditz to impress him. Am I wrong?"

"No, you're not wrong, I just worry you're making this worse for yourself than it needs to be."

"You just don't understand the kind of shit we're in, you've barely been around." He still didn't know about Brandon, and I wasn't sure he would care. He wanted me to be on his side for vain, superficial reasons, not because he wanted the best for me, so where I was every other afternoon rarely gave him pause. "Do you really want to have to call him Daddy one day?"

My pulse dropped from my chest to my stomach and then even lower, and I wanted to be alone, feeling bizarrely shameful. "I thought you said they would never get married."

"I thought so, but I also thought there was zero chance we'd spend Christmas as a family!" he spat. "But clearly I was wrong. And he doesn't just seem infatuated with her anymore, he seems... used to her. Like he wouldn't let her go because then who would cook and clean for him in between blowjobs."

His aggressive language said more about how he saw Linda (and women in general, I think) than it did about Paul, but he was too blind to see it.

"Come on in kids," Linda called from the dining room.

My brother rolled his eyes, grabbing my wrist and dragging me along. "Do I smell like cigs?" he asked.

"No." I hated when he called them 'cigs'; he thought it made his sound so casually cool.

"Good, that would be a nightmare."

We took our seats before I could tell him that no one gave a shit if he smoked, and if he was that fucking paranoid, maybe he should go outside like everyone else. Jack was an asshole, Linda was brain-dead in love, Brandon was gone, and Paul was little more than a stranger. There was no one I could talk to.

"Would you say grace?" my stepmom asked, her hands already folded. She had the most expressive eyes, so it was clear, even as she talked to me about thanking God for our food, she was thinking about Paul, and how happy he made her.