Archive of Our Own

He’s not sure when it happened, not really sure when anything happened these days, but sometime between Hamburg and here, George has started to think of their shows as ocean storms.

Something to the noise of it all, the surgin’ crowds like the roll of the Irish Sea, the upswell of bodies breaking against the barriers like waves cracking on the coast, the screams whipping his ears like rain or endless, booming thunder, and it sets his heart thrumming. Leaves him unsteady, like the stage is a ship floor, lilting against a roughening current, and George is all sea legs, wobbly and unsure and half out of his head, and his fingers work catgut strings like they’re sliding over slippery rope, and his foot taps to music he can only hear in his head, memory turned map to guide him through, and he can’t see Ringo behind him, but he can see Paul and John ahead, curled around a mic, shoulders like sails, lips parted, hands working, close and far away and together, singing into each other’s mouths, and George opens his, alone and anchorless, and if a sound comes out of it - -

Well.

He doesn’t hear a thing.

*

Of course, it starts with a bird.

Or rather, it starts with two.

Not that George knows it at the time, no, at the time George is just trying to get the waiter’s attention from across the club, his hand up and waving something stupid like he’s playin’ teacher’s pet back at The Inny, which is not his thing, not his vibe, man, he was never one of those bookish-ten-year-plan-next-stop-Oxford-sods. He picked his lot, picked, as it turned out, a hell of a lot of noise, and all that noise usually got him drinks at clubs a bit faster than this.

Still, it seems like tonight’s not particularly usual, or maybe it is for a past version of him – one still sneaking into clubs with Paul and John, letting them order at the bar so no one realises he’s not old enough to be there. The thought sticks, and across the thump of the club and the twisting, shaking crowd, he sees the waiter stop at another table, leaning over the booth to an older, square looking tosser holdin’ a cigar almost as wide as George’s wrist, and a girl who sort of looks like Jane Asher, and it figures, George thinks, annoyance skipping like a stone in his belly. He drops his hand back to the tacky vinyl table with a thud, the gesture failing to get Paul’s attention (thinks he’d need tits for that tonight), but it does draw the eye of the girl across from him in their booth.

“Not having much luck with the service, huh?”

Her American accent has a bit of a tail to it that reminds him of the old Westerns his brothers used to sneak him into at the pictures, and there’s a funny bit of elastic to the thought – of being caught up in a place and imagining yourself back at home, swept up in a totally different fantasy. Like a dream in a dream, a Russian doll of memory, he thinks, although maybe that’s not so much his thought as it is the weed and the whiskey thinking for him, but whichever the case, it’s enough to make him reconsider the bird. Or not reconsider – to do that would mean he’d have to have considered her in the first place, which he hadn’t really done. The other girl had been prettier was all, shapelier and with more bounce and all that, and Paul had made clear his claim before George could get an elbow in.

And Christ, yeah, okay, that’d been annoying too. After all, he hadn’t actually planned on going on the pull tonight. Not that he was adverse, mind, but he’d seen the opening to talk to Paul without John for the first time in days, and he wanted to talk about the new album, wanted to talk about his songs, and that was often easier when their double act went solo.

(Though he should’ve figured Paul would’ve been singularly minded tonight, what with Cyn joining the tour for a few nights. Should’ve figured it especially when he saw John’s fingers dancing up the inside of Cyn’s thigh and Paul’s leg bouncing beneath the table like a dog dreaming of running, but George guesses he was stupid enough to think Paul could stop thinking with his prick for a night.)

Anyway, the point is George can’t seem to get another drink, and the bird beside him has a twang that reminds him of home and not-home all at once, and she’s blonde and fair, but otherwise doesn’t look a thing like Pattie. No, her hair’s too short and her eyes too beady for that, her thighs thick, but her waist small, and she’s not pretty exactly, but she’s got the sort of face his mam would say had character which he was raised to understand was basically as good.

“Not much, no,” George says, leaning in across the table so that she can hear him under the din of the band playing in the back of the club, his voice a little slurred, even to his own ears, and Christ, he didn’t think he’d had that much to drink. “You’d think we were in a pub back home.”

“Can’t get a drink there either?”

“Well,” George concedes, the memory of their last time home leaving a wry grin on his face. “Maybe back home three years ago.”

That makes the girl laugh, or rather, the woman laugh, because this close, he can see the lines by her eyes, that slightly thinner, mottled skin at her chest, and realises she’s older than him. Them. Not by too much, he supposes, younger than his sister at the very least, but enough that when she stands up, she catches the eye of the waiter and nods him their way with a sort of authority George is starting to wonder if he’ll ever grow into.

“Another scotch and coke?” she asks him, and George nods, impressed, as the bird turns to face the back of their booth where Paul and the prettier girl are practically on top of each other. She glances back at George: “Probably shouldn’t interrupt them, huh? You think I should just get the same as last round for everyone?”

George nods again, and watches as she turns to the newly appeared waiter, pulling a money clip from her blouse and promptly paying in a way George isn’t used to birds doing. The picture’s one that tugs at something in him, and he doesn’t bother to wonder about why when she finishes ordering and turns back towards him, because she must see it on his face. Must, because a smile unfurls on hers like a moth settling its wings, and when she sits, she doesn’t sit opposite him again, instead choosing to drop back into the booth beside him, crossing her legs and slipping her money clip back into her blouse.

George watches the motion of her fingers beneath her shirt, sees the lift of a bra strap, the nestle of the clip above the starting swell of her small breast. He wets his lower lip.

“You do that a lot?”

“What? Buy drinks?”

She says it with a look of surprise on her face, but it doesn’t seem genuine, at least not to George. She must know it’s strange – a girl like her buyin’ a drink for a boy like him, especially now, with all the racket everywhere they go.

Still, he can play along.

He shrugs.

“Order for strange men at clubs.”

“Are you a strange man?”

“Oh, I hope so,” George says mildly, and the woman laughs, the sound a crack shot through the chatter and the pop of the club, and before he can help it, a grin twitches at the corner of his own mouth. He’s changed his mind, he thinks, she is pretty. The thought makes him stretch an arm out across the back of the booth, not quite over her shoulders, but sort of above them in a way he can play off or she can play into, depending on the feelin’ between them, and she does the latter, nestling back into the booth. She opens her mouth to say something only to stop when a loud squeak of leather against vinyl sounds beside them.

They both look. Can’t help themselves really, and it must’ve been Paul’s belt against the vinyl chair, George thinks, but it’s hard to tell with him and the girl pressed together like they are – her leg practically over his, and her mouth open and her Jayne Mansfield tits pressed into the side of Paul’s arm. The latter makes George glance up at Paul’s face only to find a familiar heat and focus on it, and he snorts, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

Like he’d thought – singularly minded tonight, that one.

He turns back to the girl beside him, who’s still watching Paul and the other girl, a look on her face he can’t really read, and he slides down in his seat a little, arm lowering deliberately until he can feel the heat of her against it.

“She your friend?” he asks her, and the bird glances back up at him. Her eyes are brown he realises, almost as dark as his.

“Mm-hmm,” she hums, then, lilting and faux-naïve: “He yours?”

“Just met him actually.”

It’s enough to make her laugh again, her nose wrinkling, and George grins.

“I’m George, by the way.”

“Darn, I thought you were Ringo.”

He’s quick then, pulling his arm from her shoulders to show her both his hands – ring free and slim-fingered. She takes them in, her own hands coming up slow and small to hold each of them. 

“Should’ve been a giveaway,” she concedes, glancing up at him with a smile, before turning over his hands in hers and smoothing a thumb across his calloused fingertips. “These too.”

Somewhere behind them, the band starts up a fast one, a number that has George’s heart pulsing in his throat. A woman yells she loves this one, and the sound of heels clipping across to the dancefloor reminds him, again, weirdly, of home. No one back in Liverpool touched him this gently though, he thinks. No one anywhere touches him this gently anymore, except maybe Pattie, and he wonders when it became normal to him to be grabbed and pulled and shoved. Somewhere in him, in her, she must feel it, because she repeats the gesture, watching his face as she does, but this time, George pulls himself through it.

“War wounds, them, all my guitar-scars,” he says, rhyming the last words, and the bird looks at him for a moment too long, and he thinks he should say something else, to break up the tension, when the waiter suddenly arrives with their drinks. Two whiskey and cokes, a sparkling wine and then - - George blinks.

The last drink is something blush pink and fizzy, a glazed, gin-soaked cherry hooked over the rim of the glass like a tiny balloon, and George picks it up to have a sniff, pulling a face at the sickly-sweet smell, making the bird grin before it’s tugged out of his hands.

“Good thing it’s not for you then, innit?” Paul says, and George glances over at where Paul’s disentangled himself from his girl only to pass her the pink monstrosity. He waits for Paul to turn back to him before he gives him the flattest look he can manage.

“Come up for air then, have you?”

Paul’s girl giggles something breathless at that, and Paul rolls his eyes, gesturing for George to pass him one of the whiskey and cokes as he pats his jacket pockets down for a cigarette. When he doesn’t find one, he slides closer to George, tugging George’s jacket open to pull the cigarettes from the inside pocket without so much as asking.

“Oi,” George says, but he lets Paul manhandle him for ciggies all the same as he slides his drink over and then the sparkling wine to his bird, but she’s already grabbed it. Has rounded the table even to slip back in beside her friend, which makes George frown. Not as game as he’d thought, maybe, and he thinks of asking her for her name, but he’s quickly distracted by Paul patting down his other pockets for the matchbook, hands warm and familiar and a bit bloody entitled.

“Alright, alright,” George grunts, batting Paul’s annoying hands away and lifting his hips off the bench to thrust a hand into the pocket of his trousers. He pulls out the matchbook to find there’s only one match left in it, so he gestures to Paul for a ciggie and then makes a point of lighting his first. Across the table, he can see the girls whispering, and through the floor, he thinks he can feel the thrum of the band’s bass, and the latter at least brings him back to what he wanted for the night.

“I was thinkin’ the other day about - - about that twelve-string guitar I got,” George says, taking a quick drag of his cigarette, gaze flicking up to Paul’s pretty face, impatience written into the set of it. George resists the urge to huff, instead, adds: “Like, maybe playin’ it on the new album.”

It’s not really what he’d meant to ask, but his head feels slippery with the scotch or the gig or the weed, or maybe just the fact that it’s getting harder not easier to talk to Paul or John about this stuff. All the noise, he thinks, but then he thinks of them bowed together at the front of the stage, their shoulders overlapping until he couldn’t see where one began and one ended, tall at the front of the ship, and suddenly George feels like he’s still wobbling at the back of the deck.

“Yeah, maybe,” Paul says eventually, non-committal, before propping the cigarette between his lips and gesturing George in. That at least is easy, George thinks, leaning forwards to kiss the end of their cigarettes together, lighting Paul’s with the cherry of George’s, their knees bumping under the table like they always do, and the effect of it is oddly settling. Something about the smoke and the drinks and that smell that’s just Paul that just has the distinct feeling of home soaking into George’s senses, and Christ, he’s got it in his head tonight. Not homesick, because he never really is with the lads around, but it feels like Liverpool’s tugging at his trouser leg all the same.

He lets his eyes slip shut then, even though he knows he should be annoyed at Paul for ignoring him, but it’s hard to be when he can picture doing this with Paul back at home, before the noise, still in their school uniforms out behind The Trawler, old Arthur Milligan yellin’ that he was gonna tell their da’s on them.

Too quickly though, Paul pulls back.

George blinks his eyes back open, takes another drag while Paul next to him does the same, pink mouth closed around his ciggie, and he watches as Paul’s attention flicks back to his girl, and George lets his own gaze drift to the bird opposite him, her eyes half-lidded and a hungry look on her face that George is all too used to these days. She raises an eyebrow at him, and he raises one back, and he feels Paul shift beside him, but it’s not really to move away. No, instead, Paul slides closer, so his leg is flush against George’s, and George is about to ask him if he’s confusing his lefts and rights again (his bouncy bird is the other way) when Paul raps his knuckles against his knee and gives him his marching orders.

“Finish your drink and we’ll go, yeah? More drinks at the hotel, anyway,” before sliding back around to his girl, and figures, George thinks, ignoring the lingering warmth of Paul beside him as he reaches for his glass. Opposite him, his bird moves towards the edge of her bench, letting Paul and her friend re-entangle, and George takes a long drink and thinks fuck it.

“You wanna come back with us too?”

And the girl glances up at him, a twist to her mouth he can’t read before she shrugs:

“Us third wheels gotta stick together, huh?”

And yeah, George thinks, they do.

*

Since it was only the two of them comin’ out, Alf had driven the smaller car, something George regrets when he finds himself squashed against the window in the back, his girl – (“Faye,” she’d told him as she’d climbed into the passenger seat, a wry grin on her face) – up front, and Paul’s girl – who he now knows is called Bobbie – half in his lap as Paul turns her sideways on the seat to wriggle his way between her legs.

It’s a giggle then hitching, wet breaths to go with smacking, wet kissing, and George presses himself closer to the rapidly fogging-up window when Paul gets his way, Bobbie’s dress halfway up her hips to reveal a sliver of pink cotton beneath which makes George prick twitch, despite himself, and she curves forwards, her head falling onto George’s shoulder and her back arching, like she’s trying to create a slot for Paul to fill, and George uncharitably thinks she needn’t bother – she’s got one he’ll fill just fine.

There’s a noise from the front of the car then, and George glances up to catch Faye’s gaze in the rear-view mirror, and it was a mistake, that, because in the mirror, George can actually see it. Bobbie sprawled out, one of her legs up on the seat and the other on the floor, leaving plenty of room for Paul, who’s hands are stealing up Bobbie’s dress. It happens quick then – the feeling of Paul’s hands on her arse – the position meaning Paul’s knuckles are digging into the side of George’s skinny thigh, and he can feel it, the motion of his hands as he kneads her big arse. It licks hot in him, the contact, and he can see his face flush in the mirror, tries to inch his thigh away, but Paul’s hands just chase, and he’s half hard now, which is an absolute load of bollocks because it’s just the proximity and the heat and the smell and the sounds.

He clears his throat, opts for the other tactic of kicking his leg sideways instead, so that Paul can feel it and piss off, and it has the opposite effect apparently, that, because Paul’s yanking one of his hands out from under Bobbie’s skirt to clasp George’s leg, just above his knee, holding him firm, holding him still. It’s - - new - - which George doesn’t really know what to do with, but he knows what it does to him, saliva building behind George’s molars as he tears his gaze off the mirror and onto Paul, who’s using his grip on George’s leg now to prop himself up over Bobbie, red cheeked and dark eyed as he takes his other hand off her arse too to fondle her tit.

The act of it is enough to make Bobbie drop her head back with a moan, giving George a mouthful of her hair as he shifts sideways as best he can with Paul’s hand still holding his leg down, and George swallows thick as Paul lowers his head, his too soft mouth closing on her clavicle, sucking at the hollow of her throat.

George blinks rapidly, feels Paul’s hand tighten at his thigh, before he seems to realise what he’s holding onto, because he suddenly lets go, pulls Bobbie forwards to him a little, freeing George from being stuck between them and the surface they’re trying to fuck on, and his eyes find the rear-view mirror again, find Faye staring, hot and hungry at them through it, and his prick twitches again, and it’s sudden – the picture of it.

Of it being Bobbie in the front seat, and Faye between them instead.

Faye, with the money clip in her bra and her softer touch, and George between her legs, Paul pressed to the window, forced, for once, to watch George perform instead.

*

“Shh, shh, shh,” Paul hushes, fumbling with the key for the hotel room as Bobbie giggles against his side, her mouth wide open and her lipstick smeared, and George doesn’t know why Paul’s bothering when the screams from the girls camped outside the hotel drown out any noise inside it. The thought leaves him wobbly, leaves him hot all over as he leans against the wall beside Faye – still a little sea sick, he thinks, because the storm chases their little ship off the stage – and that’s a good idea, because Faye smells sweet, and she smiles steady, and the promise of the night is thick enough to get him through.

Another jiggle of the key, and Paul’s got the door open and the four of them swan in, and the relief of it finds George quick. Ringo and John must both still be out from the sounds of it, off with Mo and Cyn, who’d flown in together to catch a few nights of the tour, and Brian has his own room with his assistant down the hall, leaving their suite blissfully free for the night. It’s one of the smaller ones of the tour – a two-bedroom with a living area and a shared bathroom – but none of them had minded that, not when Brian had requested double-panelled windows that did wonders for muffling the noise of the madding crowds.

(It still makes George feel loosely like he’s in a submarine though, the sound through the window not lost but muted somehow, and he’d sung the chorus of Whale of a Tale from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea at John when they’d arrived until the other man had donned a voice and started playing good Captain Nemo, much to the bemusement of the others).

Now though, Paul darts across to the bar cart, grabbing a bottle of champagne from the thing and backing a breathless Bobbie into their room, which - -

Right.

Him and Paul are sharing.

The thought makes him cough a little, fumbling with his cigarette, the leg Paul had grabbed in the car feeling strangely hot, and Faye steps in behind him, taking off her coat to place on the rack by the door.

He could just take her into John and Ringo’s room, but the odds of them coming back is high, and they’ll never shut up about it if he’s caught fucking some bird in one of their beds when their wives are around, so he swipes a hand back through his hair, and glances at Faye, aiming to offer some flimsy explanation, but before he can, she’s striding towards him, rising up onto her toes to kiss him.

Which - -

Fuck.

Yeah, alright.

George leans in, hands finding her hips, swerving around to her arse and squeezing, the hum of approval she makes dropping through him like a match, and it’s easier then to fold into her, to nip at her lower lip and slip his tongue inside. She tastes like dry, sparkling wine and cheap cigarettes, her perfume a sticky-sweet he can already feel on his skin, and she’s not like Pattie (Christ, he needs to stop thinking about Pattie), and she’s nothing like the girls back home either, something earthy and confident and grown up to her that makes him just really fuckin’ want her.

His hands move from her arse to the waist of her blouse, tugging it out from where it’s tucked into her skirt, and he’s barely got it out before she pulls back with a smack of her lips.

“Where we goin’, baby?” she asks, her twang stretching low into a southern drawl that makes George’s throat feel a little dry. He glances up towards the room Paul and Bobbie disappeared into.

“Me and Paul share,” he says, and her look gets a little hotter, and vaguely he thinks that probably sounds like something more than what he means, but it’s hard to care when she’s unbuttoning her shirt and revealing a baby blue lace bra, the money clip still tucked into one of the cups, and when she drops her shirt and moves towards the bedroom, it’s all he can do to fumble with his belt as he follows.

Their room already reeks of sweat and sex and the saccharine smell of champagne, even though Bobbie and Paul are seemingly still fixed on the latter, Bobbie down to her knickers and bra, and Paul only having lost his shoes and his jacket, and from the corner of his eye he can see Paul licking champagne out of Bobbie’s cleavage, and George blinks, looks quickly back at Faye on the other side of his bed as she unzips her skirt, slipping it off to reveal a silk petticoat.

It hugs her arse, her thighs, which are both so thick he can think of nothing but spreading them, and he kicks off his shoes then his trousers in one swift motion, watching as Faye turns at his bed (and Christ, were his and Paul’s beds always this close together? Not even enough room between them to walk down) propping a knee on the bed and nodding him over.

Fingers on the buttons of his shirt, he pulls that off too as he follows her – a sailor to her siren song in the minute of all of this – and as soon as his shirt’s off, she reaches for him. Hooks a finger in his underwear and pulls him in close, her soft mouth finding his again.

This time, it’s her tongue in his mouth, and George invites her in, lets her push him down on the bed, the mattress firm and cool beneath his back, his hands finding her hips as she moves to straddle him. It’s too easy then to move his hands down to the end of her silk petticoat, to work his fingers beneath it, sliding it up to reveal damp blue knickers.

Across the beds, there’s a throaty exhale, and George and Faye both look to where Paul’s now behind Bobbie on the bed, fingers having just freed the clasp of her bra, and there’s nothing like it, really – the moment a girl’s tits are uncovered – and George briefly finds himself entranced by the hang of them, by all that milky skin and the startling pink of her nipples. Match her drink, he thinks vaguely, before Paul’s long, firm fingers cover them.

Then – a hot, damp pressure at his hip as Faye grinds against it, against him, her thigh pushing up between his legs, and it’s only then that he realises how fucking hard he is, cock curved back against his stomach and balls sensitive, and he pants back up at her, rocking his hips up to rub against her cunt. It’s enough to make her moan, and it’s not that he sees it exactly, but he feels it, the sudden shift in focus as both Paul and Bobbie glance over.

“Oh, Faye,” Bobbie pants, and George looks over, startled, catches Paul’s surprised gaze as he moves to take off his own shirt.

“You like that?” Paul asks suddenly, voice a little high, a little strained. “Like watchin’ her?”

Then, just as quick:

“Why don’t put your hands down your knickers and show her how much you like it then, yeah? Show me how much you like it.”

And Christ, she does, is the thing, and George’s gaze flits between her lipstick-stained teeth and her heaving tits and her tiny, California-tanned hand slipping down into her rose pink knickers as she watches Faye ride his hip, and that at least is enough to make George glance up at Faye again, to grab the leg she has between his and yank it up and over, to position her cunt properly over his cock instead of his hip, their rapidly dampening underwear the only barrier between them.

Faye exhales, moving her hips in a slower motion, and George’s eyes briefly flutter shut, the only sounds in his ears Faye’s and Bobbie’s wet pants and the sound of Paul undressing, and he was so stupid earlier, because who cares about studio time or twelve string guitars or not feeling right on stage anymore when there’s this waiting for them. The friction, the heat, the contact, the smell of sex somehow pure and thick between them, and he hiccups when Faye suddenly leans in, that sticky-sweet scent of her perfume suddenly all he can smell.

“Am I borin’ you, baby?” she croons, and George blinks his eyes back open, because that’s not why his eyes were closed, but suddenly she sinks lower, gyrating on his throbbing cock, and he groans, head back in the pillows, and vaguely he thinks he hears Bobbie moan, sees Paul look over again, but it doesn’t matter because Faye’s hand is sliding into his underwear to fondle his cock. The tug of skin, the spark of nerves, his shaky hands rub at her thighs, and he means to thumb at her clit, slip a finger in her, but before he gets the chance, she’s pulling him out, shoving the crotch of her knickers sideways, and sinking down onto him.

The sound Faye makes is quiet – a long exhale more than anything – and it’s swallowed up with Bobbie’s high-pitched cry, and George twists his head only to see Paul’s head buried between Bobbie’s trembling thighs, and Christ, that’s not - - what - - fuck.

He blinks rapidly, staring back up at Faye, who’s looking down at him knowingly as she rolls her hips in a way that makes him gasp. She’s so fuckin’ tight, so hot, so good at this, and he just feels - - really young somehow. The thought makes him swallow, makes him catch the glimpse of her bra, the money clip, the flash of Bobbie’s tits from earlier (from now, one, again, covered by Paul’s hand as he fondles her), and he reaches up, slides his hands beneath the underwire to cover her small breasts, and Faye pants, reaching behind herself to unclip her bra, throwing it to the floor between their beds, and George releases her just so he can watch them bounce.

It's so good, it is, her tits smaller, her nipples darker, but over her shoulder he can see Paul rise up on the other bed, his mouth wet and his face flushed, and George just - - can’t help it, is the thing. His gaze flicks sideways to where Paul flips Bobbie over onto her hands and knees and sinks into her, his tone husky in the way it only gets when he’s either turned on or wrecked himself singing, as he says good girl, good girl, you love that, don’t you? You feel so good, and George shudders, his stomach twisting, all that pooling heat in him burning, and he looks up at Faye, who’s movements have slowed to a languid, rocking pace, her eyes dark as she watches him watch Paul and Bobbie.

“You’re really somethin’, you know that?” she says, and George blinks up at her, rocks his hips in time with hers, and it’s sudden then, the way she leans forwards. Her fingers find his cheekbone, smoothing over it, before her hand comes to cup his cheek, her thumb resting on his lower lip. “You’re cute in pictures in the magazines, but man, you’re just - - I didn’t know boys could look like you. Honest. Your eyelashes, your cheekbones, your mouth. You’re so pretty.”

Her thumb presses a little more into his lower lip, and George just keeps staring up at her, her face closed, almost smouldering, and his lips part a little more for her to slip her thumb into his mouth, and it’s instinct is all – smoking and that – but he sucks, and the groan he hears isn’t Faye’s or Bobbie’s, it’s Paul’s.

Something drips molten through him, and George looks over, and he’s seen that hot look on Paul’s face before – seen it aimed at birds, at John, even, once, at some anonymous, narrow shouldered prick in Hamburg, but never at him, and it’s a reflex that has him sucking harder on Faye’s thumb, tongue flicking over the base of it, and Paul’s gaze is fixed even as he fucks into Bobbie, hips not so much rolling anymore as they are thrusting, and Faye is heavy on top of him and Bobbie’s crying out beside him, and he’s so bloody hot already, but something in him surges hotter still when he sees Paul lean a long arm out between their beds, reaching, and he can practically feel Paul’s hand on him, only - - only he can’t, because it’s not him Paul’s reached for.

On top of him, Faye gasps, Paul’s hand now fondling her tit, and it’s not skipping stones of annoyance this time, more a dropped stone of it, because it’s so typical of Paul, and he goes to shove Paul’s hand off, only Paul must do something to Faye’s nipple, because she cries out, yanking her hand out of his mouth to fist the pillow beside his head as her cunt clenches around him, and George gasps, falling back, hand dropping to cling to Paul’s arm instead, just because it’s there, just because it’s constant.

Beside them, Bobbie is breathlessly yipping in time with Paul’s rapid thrusts, and George is barely rocking up into Faye anymore, isn’t sure he has the headspace as Faye clenches in unmeasured time around his cock, and it’s Faye in the end who entwines her fingers with Paul’s and drops his hand from her breast to George’s stomach, and it’s what he maybe wanted for half a second, but he’s not sure if he wants it now, because his skin feels like it’s on fire with it. With it, she draws a simmering line as she drags Paul’s hand up his chest, up his neck, over his chin, the weight leaving him blurry eyed, and then, like it’s nothing at all, she pushes two of Paul’s fingers into George’s wet, open mouth.

The pressure of her cunt around his cock tightens, the feeling leaving him out of his head, and it’s that, he thinks, that has him sucking Paul’s fingers into his mouth. That has him noticing they’re thicker than even Faye’s thumb, that they’re salty and taste a little like what he thinks is probably Bobbie’s cunt, but then his tongue lifts to feel the callouses of Paul’s fingertips, and all he can taste is home.

“That’s it, baby, that’s it, honey, good boy,” Faye hums above him, her hips moving faster. “Just let me, okay? I’ll take care of you, don’t you worry.”

And he can hear Paul panting, can feel his fingers moving in and out of his mouth, fucking gently, tentatively, and he can hear Bobbie’s keens from the bed, and he sucks a little harder on Paul’s fingers, and then he can hear Faye’s voice as she croons good boy, take it, take me, take him, and the elastic of his arousal pulls so tight it snaps. He comes so hard he thinks he sees stars, and Faye rides him through it, and Paul yanks his fingers out of his mouth, and George will forever deny the noise he makes at that as Paul pulls out of Bobbie just to flip her onto her back and sink straight back into her, fucking her hard and fast, his fingers wet from George’s mouth suddenly between her legs, and she’s crying out as she crests.

It's something, watching her tits bounce and her mouth make shapes he hasn’t ever seen as she cries, but it’s something else watching Paul, who’s somehow taller and longer legged and broader shouldered suddenly, not girly, like his face can sometimes look, but unmistakably male, his body moving with rhythm, with flow, almost musical in the way he fucks, and somehow utterly possessed and in control all at once, just like he is when he’s playing, and George jerks his head away, tries to focus back on Faye, who clocks it and slides off his wasting, aching prick, to crawl up the bed instead and straddle his face.

And it’s a relief almost, to have her cunt there, to lick his way up her slit and suck on her clit, to sink two fingers into her, to feel her thighs shake around his head as he hears Bobbie’s volume increase in the bed beside them, and this is good, this is normal, this’ll be what they remember in the morning, George thinks, only then it happens – a stream from a forgotten fountain, straight from Bobbie’s mouth.

“Oh! Oh! Fuck me, daddy,” she moans, and it’s so quick – the heat that shoots through George, the way Paul comes with a staggered groan, and then Faye does too, leaking all over George’s face, the taste of her welcome and familiar in George’s wanting mouth.

Time, then, seems to slow.

The stretch in the fabric of it easing, and it’s like being dropped back into his body. Suddenly he can smell the sweat, feel the damp on his face, taste himself, on Faye, in Faye, feel her thighs loosen and then one tense as it holds her weight as she swings off him, lying beside him in the bed, and George blinks, looks at her happy, sated, knowing face, and glances sideways at Paul and Bobbie, only Paul’s not looking at Bobbie, he’s looking straight back, gaze still darker than George is used to being directed at him, and if he didn’t know any better, he’d swear Paul’s eyes dropped to his wet mouth.

For a minute, all George can hear is everyone’s breathing. Faye’s and Bobbie’s and Paul’s, and then in that pregnant pause, Paul buries his hand between Bobbie’s legs again, determined apparently to pull her off one more time, and George feels something competitive in him spark, because he quickly sinks his own hand back between Faye’s legs, who huffs like she thinks this is funny or something, but rides his hand like she rode his cock, and Bobbie moans like she’s in a movie, and Faye just sort of breathes deeply through it, but she looks good, and George thinks she likes it. With his fingers inside her, she traces her own up his sides, over his ribcage, making him shiver, and then she thumbs his bottom lip again, tugging it down, as she quivers and comes apart on his hand.

*

A line of light slices the room in two, and it’s what George wakes to in the morning. This narrow road of sunshine made by mostly-drawn curtains, and he takes it in with bleary eyes before he’s quickly met by the muted sound of girls screaming outside and the closer smell of sex, which hangs heavy still in the room. George exhales, pushes himself off the mattress to sit up in bed and promptly finds that he’s alone.

Faye and Bobbie are both gone, and he can hear the sound of the shower in the room next door which tells him Paul’s up, and he works his jaw, his tongue, the mothy taste of cigarettes and weed and whiskey and cunt mostly what greets him, but it catches him quick – the memory of Paul’s fingers – and George feels himself flush, his jaw click shut and, worst of all, his fucking prick twitch.

Which no, not a thing, not going to be a thing, George decides, letting his eyes slip shut again as he drops back into bed. It wasn’t anything, just an indulgence of a bird with a hand fetish or something, which George isn’t sure he knew was a thing, but live and let live, as his mam always says. Besides, Paul could never help himself when it came to girls, and that’s all it was – not about George, not for George, as usual, it was just - -

Something for Faye.

The thought feels like a good enough excuse, so George peels his eyes back open again to take in the disheveled sheets on Paul’s bed, the pillow on the floor along with Paul’s underwear, and then - - a flash of pink catches his eye. Hanging from the bed post are Bobbie’s knickers, the fabric bright and wrinkled, and George quickly skirts his gaze to his own bed, searching for Faye’s but, he realises with a frown, she must’ve taken them with her.

Probably for the best, he decides, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and grabbing his underwear off the floor to pull on before finding a t-shirt from his suitcase too and padding out into the hall.

“Oh, ho, sleeping beauty awakens,” John calls from the table, newspaper open in front of him and already dressed for the day in his black turtleneck and brown suede jacket, and George yawns pointedly, heading sideways towards the couches where Ringo’s playing cards on the coffee table, cigarette dangling from his mouth, and rings catching the light.

It’s all he can do to reach over, pluck the cigarette from Ringo’s mouth and take a long, warm drag. Ringo doesn’t so much as blink at the action, but he double takes when George sits down beside him.

“You should wash up, son,” he says, bemused. “You smell like yesterday’s news.”

George just shrugs, takes another drag, and watches Ringo slide a three of hearts onto a four of spades.

“Paul’s cleanin’ up,” he replies. “Where’s Mo and Cyn? Thought you’d be busy with them this morning.”

“Gone out sightseeing already, haven’t they?” John interjects from the table, flipping to the next page of the newspaper. “Can’t waste the day away waitin’ to say good morning to you two lazy sods. Not stuck beholden to your whims like me and Ritchie are.”

George rolls his eyes in John’s direction at that (like he’s ever felt beholden to anyone’s whims besides maybe Paul’s), passing his cigarette back to Ringo, and John grins, dart quick as he closes his newspaper and seems to properly take George in for the first time that morning.

“Good thing they’re not here too, look at the state of you,” John says, eyeing him up and down, and George resists the urge to run a hand over his hair. “Didn’t fancy washin’ your face before you showed it this morning?”

Behind him Ringo snorts on a laugh, and George raises a hand instead to scrub at his mouth, cheeks flushing when his fingers come away with the dried, flaking remnants of something that was once moist and a touch of waxy peach from Faye’s lipstick. 

“Need more than one bathroom for that,” George says, and John’s brow furrows, eyes still amused as he asks:

“Since when?”

Which isn’t wrong exactly. Paul wouldn’t care if George had slipped in while he was in the shower to piss and splash water on his face – not like he hasn’t done it hundreds of times before – but the thought of seeing Paul again like - - that  - - so soon after seeing him - - well.

Like that makes his stomach flip.

Lucky at least he’s saved from answering by the bathroom door opening and Paul stepping out, the smell of soap and a soft, oaky cologne following him, and George glances over just to catch a glimpse of his grey button-down and still-damp hair, before turning promptly back around to face Ringo’s card game, surreptitiously rubbing his face on the shoulder of his t-shirt in the process.

“Your girls made a racket sneaking out,” John says, and his tone’s shifted to something sharper than it was with George. Pointier, which figures. “You have Marilyn or Betty?”

“You know I don’t kiss and tell,” Paul replies smoothly, but there’s a lilt to his voice which means he probably will later. “Did hope mine might’ve stayed longer. Good way to start the day that, you know.”

“Mm, could’ve sent her sightseeing with Cyn and Mo. Let her play pretend a little longer.”

“Don’t think she was lookin’ for all that actually. A bit of a free one, she was. George’s even more so, eh, Georgie? Far cry from Pattie.”

The mention of Pattie makes George jerk his head up, and he turns back to look at Paul properly for the first time this morning, his stomach tight and suddenly very aware that he’s only in last night’s underwear and a t-shirt. Paul doesn’t look phased though – no, Paul just looks like Paul, put together and clean and cherub faced and sliding easily into the seat opposite John. George shakes his head.

“Reminded me of the Hamburg girls,” he says after a moment, the sound of Ringo shuffling cards behind him taking up space in his head, and that at least makes John grin again, his gaze shifting from Paul to George.

“Oh, yeah? She make it feel like your first time again?”

Which - - okay, he walked right into that one. Still, he scowls, sends John the forks while Ringo and Paul both laugh, and he means to say no, means to say they were cocksure or something, maybe bring up her buyin’ the round, but before he gets the chance, Paul interrupts.

“Looked like it from where I was sitting,” he says, and then he pulls a wide-eyed, open-mouthed expression and a full body shudder that makes Ringo snort and John bellow, and George huffs, willing the heat out of his cheeks as John asks:

“Wet fish, was he?”

“No, not like that,” Paul admonishes, like John’s the one being a prick. “You know our Georgie though, always liked it on his back. Wouldn’t know what to do on top of a girl, so best let them lead, in’that right?”

Paul looks over at him affectionately, and George gives him a dark look, which seems to spark something in Paul, because his lips part a little, and his face seems to come over with something George isn’t used to, and it brings the memory back, quick smart, the feel of Paul’s fingers pushing into his mouth. George flushes to the shells of his ears, drops his gaze, and he feels it more than anything, John double take at the shift in his reaction.

Right, can’t let John fix on that.

George clears his throat.

“At least I know how to do it slow. Shoulda seen Paul like a bloody rabid dog last night.”

It works like he knew it would, shifting John’s attention instantly back to Paul, his grin getting that edge to it it always gets when he hears stories of Paul with girls, and George resists the urge to roll his eyes. And people say John’s unpredictable, he thinks, daft sods. Still, if Paul notices, he pays it no mind.

“Still lasted longer than you, son. Besides, she liked it, didn’t she? What was it she said?”

And no no no, this is not what George wanted, because somehow waking up with the taste of cunt in his mouth had let him only think of Paul’s fingers, it had left him able to block that other horrible thing and his body’s reaction to said horrible thing from his mind, and his mouth is dry already and his stomach turning, and then Paul, he just - - he says it.

“Fuck me, daddy,” Paul croons, and John barks while Ringo chokes on his cigarette.

“What?” he says, voice a little hoarse, and Paul repeats himself before adding:

“It’s a thing, you know, that bird in Brighton said it to me a few weeks ago too.”

“Rubbish,” George says, and Paul glances over at him, amused.

“What’s rubbish? You were there last night, you heard her.”

Across the table, John starts laughing even harder, his eyes dancing as they take in the whole bloody scene, and his Adam’s apple sort of bobs in that way it does sometimes when he’s swallowing his thoughts, like he’s seeing something George would rather he didn’t see, but it passes, and John turns his attention back to Paul.

“Daddy Paul,” John hums, as if testing it out, and Paul’s gaze whips back to John, cheeks a little pink and his eyes a little blown, the air between them crackling in that annoying way it does, and George glances between them as Ringo pulls his playing cards together, finishing his game.

“Probably meant it like a sugar daddy,” Ringo says, shuffling the cards, and it works to diffuse some of the charge of the moment. “Next thing you know, she’ll be sending you a book of her monthly expenses and telling you how you can pay it.”

Paul pulls a face, but his expression is still wry, like he sort of likes the idea of it, which, George thinks with a snort, he would, and then Paul says:

“Like a rich old benefactor.”

“Isn’t that what Lady Jane and the Asher’s are to you?” John replies, and Paul gives him a look that makes John grin with his teeth.

“I saw a bird who looked a bit like Jane at the club last night,” George says mildly, because he had with that guy the waiter served instead of them, and Paul frowns at him, like he’s annoyed George is egging John on, but he figures it’s the least he can do given the way Paul brought up Pattie like he hadn’t just had his fingers in his mouth and his prick in another girl.

Somewhere behind them, there’s a knock at the door, and they all look over at Ringo, who says don’t all get up at once, dropping his cards to the table, and stands up to answer it. It’s only a second then before John looks back at George.

“Struck out with her, did you?” he asks, while the door cracks open and Brian’s voice starts to filter into the hotel suite. George shrugs, like he’d even talked to the bird at all.

“Not my type is all.”

It’s funny, the expression Paul gives him then, but what’s funnier, or perhaps just stranger is that he doesn’t really know how to read it. Unusual, that, George thinks, because if you’d asked him yesterday he’d have told you he knew every single one of Paul’s stupidest looks.

“Glad to see you’re all up,” Brian says, and George glances over to see their manager striding through the hallway, handsome and put together, his assistant at his heels scribbling into a notebook. “Now, we need to get a bit of a move on this morning, we’ve got - - ”

“The girls have started calling Paul daddy, Eppy, what do you think of that?” John asks, cutting Brian off in that way he does, and it’s instant, the way Brian stumbles, blinks, flushes pink down his neck and across the long point of his nose. George presses his legs together, swallows, briefly contemplating tossing himself out the window to be pulled apart by the sea of girls outside, when Brian clears his throat.

“Yes, well, Paul’s always been popular with the girls,” he says, then frowns over at George. “Haven’t you washed up yet?”

And at least the chorus of Paul, John and Ringo laughing is enough to move them all along.

*

The afternoon passes in a blur of camera flashes and have you thought about what you’ll do when the bubble bursts? from the small mouths of reporters barely worth the ink they print with, and George isn’t sure when this part started feeling like smooth sailing, but at some point it did, and it’s a relief in the minute of it. To let Brian pull the good ship Beatle across this choppy sea, and so they talk to news men and pose for photographers and George feels the hum of electricity from the press conference microphone broaden to white noise in his ears as Paul and John answer questions they’ve answered a hundred times before.

It lets him push last night from his head, lets the knot in his gut ease when Paul grins at him across the car, replacing the memory of Paul’s hand on his leg and his mouth on Bobbie’s chest, and it’s easiest backstage before the show, their fingers working in tandem as they tune their instruments, the storm outside waiting to meet their sails. Let’s him know that last night was a slip, a moment like they’d had before, where lines smudged and then got redrawn clean, and that’s a good thing, George is sure.

It is, he is, but then they’re on stage and he can’t hear a thing over the screaming girls, and he’s counting the beat with a nervous, bouncing foot, and they’re building to the chorus of A Hard Day’s Night, and then he’s at the mic with Paul and he just - - he feels it. Paul’s eyes on his mouth, and George looks to be sure and he feels a flint spark inside of him, watching Paul watch him, feels his prick twitch, feels his tongue dart out to wet his lips, inviting even when he’s not sure what he’s inviting, and it must show somehow on his face, because Paul’s gaze flicks up to meet his, curious more than anything, and George feels like the flint spark sear into open flame with the promise of it, feels rooted to the spot in a way he never does anymore on stage or maybe ever, but then the chorus breaks and John’s snarling his way through the verse and they’re away again.

Swallowed by the roaring crowd.

*

“That one’s going back to the car,” Neil calls, and then Mal’s there, hands working the clasps of John’s guitar case before he takes it out of the dressing room to add to the row of instruments they’re taking back to the hotel, separating them from the ones set to go to the airport tonight.

George leans forwards in his seat, enough he can see the mirror reflecting the security guards posted just outside their dressing room, and it gets him, that. Makes his chest a little tight in that way it gets sometimes these days, not trapped, exactly, but not exactly not trapped either, and he takes a breath, dropping back beside Mo as she and Ringo talk about what’s left to do before the baby arrives. 

Right strange that, he thinks, glancing down at Mo’s swollen belly. Had been strange when it had been John and Neil too, but that had been before all the racket. Briefly, the thought crosses his mind that it could be him and Pattie one day, or Paul and Jane, but that doesn’t come so easy. Hard to see Paul as anyone’s da’ when he’s buggering girls calling him that. The thought catches hot again, and George squirms down the couch, fiddling with the buttons on his shirt when he spots a gleam of blonde hair at the door.

“Any of you seen John?” Cyn asks, and George sits up straight again as Mo and Ringo say no, Ringo glancing pointedly over Mo’s head at George as he does it. Not that he needs to, it’s not like they don’t all bloody know what he’s up to.

Still.

“Paul’s not here either,” George says, lurching up off the seat. “They must’ve found somewhere to write. You should stay here, I’ll go find ‘em for you.”

Cyn says her thanks, filling his spot beside Mo, and George tumbles out into the hall, waving the security guard off who tries to accompany him and telling him he’ll just be a minute. Hopes he will, anyway, he can hear the tide of girls lapping at all the windows, careful not to wave at them as he passes in case it works them into an upswell. The corridors themselves are busy with roadies and police officers anyway, and George darts through them in search of the most hidden bathroom he can find.

He tries two before he hears John’s muffled groan as he slips in.

It’s instant then – the smell of sex over urinal cakes, the bang of the stall door, the panting breaths – and George means to clear his throat, to let them know he’s here, he does, but then, John says:

“Go on then, show me. Show me how you did it,” and Paul laughs, the sound rough, echoing off the bathroom tiles.

“Come off it,” he says, but there’s the sound of shuffling feet, and George’s gaze drops to the two pairs of Beatles boots, polished black against the chipped blue tiles, and he watches one pair step, determinedly, between the other.

“Just wanna see what you did, only way this works, you know.”

“Thought the only way this worked was if we didn’t know.”

“We tried that,” John says, voice husky and George’s pulse quickens. He shuffles a little further into the room. “I think I like it this way better.”

“You only like it this way right now because it’s - -  ”

BANG!

George stumbles, the bin beside the sink crashing to the floor, and Christ, he didn’t even see it, and he hears Paul and John stop dead and he can’t - - they can’t think he’s a stranger, because then - - but - -

Fuck.

“John, Cyn’s askin’ for you,” George calls, and he swears he hears John laugh as he steals back out into the corridor, blood rushing in his ears as he escapes.

*

(And okay, so maybe it doesn’t start with a couple of birds in a club in Chicago at all. Maybe it started on the road in Scotland or Wales, or earlier still, in Hamburg, somewhere on the road, seeing who could last the longest with their hands on their pricks in the dirty backroom of the Bambi Kino, the three of them less a circle jerk and more the three points of a triangle, with Stu at Astrid’s and Pete’s at whatever girl who’d have him’s, and it had always been them, or him, at least, watching them. John-and-Paul like a single name to be yelled by a crowd or bookers or even sometimes Brian, and George was always on the outside, but he wasn’t then.

In the triangle jerks.

Wasn’t then when he lost his virginity either, with them watching, gazes fixed and eyes bright, even in the dark, and wasn’t maybe, that one time either, when he’d watched Paul and John together in the bunk opposite, them knowing and him knowing they knew and them knowing he knew that they knew as they put on a show that left him rutting against the couch cushions to the picture of their hands and their long legs and their swollen cocks, wet mouths, broad shoulders, the dimple in John’s arse as his muscles clenched, and - - look.

George was never invited.

Not to that, not to them, but lines have sometimes blurred so all he means is Paul last night is not completely out of the blue and all that, but the lines should’ve been redrawn and he’s starting to think they haven’t been, and George - -

George can’t get the weight of Paul’s fingers off his tongue.)

*

They’ll be driving to Bloomington early in the morning – a four-hour drive from Chicago – and the girls won’t be goin’ with them. Cyn and Mo will both be flying first class back to New York then home to Liverpool later that day – Cyn eager to get back to Julian already, and Mo needing to set up for the baby (due in little over a month, George knows, something Brian promises Ringo will be home for) – and it means the minute they get back to the hotel, the group seems to splinter. Ringo and Mo leaving for something private Brian’s managed to arrange, and John and Cyn - -

Well.

A high-pitched moan sounds through the wall, and George glances across the hotel suite’s spacious lounge room to where Paul and Brian both flush. They’re different though, George thinks, tugging at the peg on his guitar and trying to ignore the girls chanting outside – Brian’s like a rosy pink, while Paul’s is flushed something darker, and George knows Paul well enough to know it’s a bare and naked jealousy.

Paul clears his throat, tugging George’s attention back to him, and George vaguely remembers they were supposed to be practicing a new song Paul had been working on, but that it’d been lost at some point with Brian taking calls with EMI and Mal flagging a breach in security somewhere downstairs (apparently handled though the lump had yet to leave George’s throat), and well - -

“Johhhnnn,” Cyn cries, breathless, and the headboard bangs against the wall a little faster. Opposite them, Brian turns a page in his day planner.

“Play me those chords again,” Paul says, and George can barely remember which ones they were, but strums something out, and Paul huffs.

“No, listen, come on, like - - ” and Paul starts to play the air, making guitar noises with his mouth, long fingers working in a way that George can’t quite look directly at, and he’s about to suggest they go out (at the thought, the girls outside seem to scream a little louder) when Paul reaches for George’s guitar.

It’s not something he especially wants to give him, but when Paul raises an eyebrow, expectant, hand out and cheeks still flushed in an irritation he knows isn’t because of him, but will become his problem in the next two minutes, George rolls his eyes and passes the thing over.

Playing a little with the pegs like George doesn’t keep it perfectly tuned, George can only watch as Paul fiddles with his instrument, movin’ it to his liking, and then playing a scrap of melody that rings too good and too pure in George’s ears, and he wets his lips, lets his eyes slip shut, tries to focus on the chords when John’s voice cuts through:

“You like that? Why don’t you put your hand between your legs and show me how much?”

George’s eyes snap open, up to Paul whose hands have stilled on the guitar, and it’s almost what Paul had said last night to Bobbie, that, and suddenly George feels - - tight. He swallows, toes curling in his boots, and Paul quickly starts playing again, and the pictures flick quick, of John and Cyn, then John and Cyn with Paul, then John and Cyn with George, then just of John and Paul, together in that bathroom stall, then John and Paul, that night in Hamburg, breathless and long-limbed, skin pale in the half-light from the hallway, the way Paul had said don’t wake up the others, the way John had looked straight at George, glasses off so they could both pretend he couldn’t see him staring as he said I won’t.

George swallows thick, gaze darting back to Paul, then away, and he thinks he should say something, but he doesn’t know how, doesn’t know what because this is - - not new. Just, feels different, somehow. He wets his lips, and looks up at Paul again, who’s focused on playing the song now, and George bumps their knees together, and then he feels it, Paul look up at him, and George looks up at him too, and their eyes meet, and it’s - - right, okay. Maybe that’s new.

“So,” Brian says, breaking the tension. “Is there anything you’d like to do in Portland before we go to San Diego? We’re still a few shows from it, but I’ve scheduled those five days off before Balboa Stadium, so you should look at those guidebooks again and see if there’s anything you’d like to do.”

“Oh, probably just rest up, really,” Paul says, but his gaze hasn’t left George’s, and for a minute, just a minute, George can’t hear the girls outside scream.

*

It starts like it does sometimes – lights off and late, Paul stretching out in the bed beside him as his hand starts to move beneath the sheets, breaths going deep and wet, and for a minute, George just lets himself watch. Lets himself take in the dark line of Paul’s nose in the half light of their hotel suite, the movement of his long arm as he takes himself in hand, and George can close his eyes and see Paul last night, in brighter colour, miles of pale skin and dark hair and red, throbbing cock which George doesn’t think is bigger than his, but knows is thicker, and the thought has saliva building at the back of his teeth and his prick half hard for reasons he doesn’t want to think about even before he spits in his palm and slides his hand beneath his own sheets, feeling his way to himself.

That first touch is always a good one, and he feels his breath hitch as he starts to jerk off, feels Paul glance over, and he tries not to feel self-conscious with it, even though he always does. Did even before last night, because Paul and John had always been more experienced and prone to teasing, and were so tangled up with sex in his head and his prick because they’d been there the first time he’d had it, and he doesn’t like to think about what that means because he’s starting to wonder if maybe it did some damage given - -

Well.

“Put your fingers in your mouth,” Paul says, voice low and hoarse, and George swallows wetly, cock pulsing in his hand.

“What?”

“Put your fingers in your mouth,” he repeats, and George means to say no, means to say put your fingers in your mouth, just to shit him off or just to see if he’ll do it, but when he opens his mouth to say it, what comes out is:

“Alright,” then, a few rapid blinks, then: “How many?”

“Two,” Paul says, and the hand not on George’s cock comes trembling to his belly above the sheets, and he’s not sure why he does it, but he can’t help it. Can’t stop himself from dragging them up his chest like Faye had dragged Paul’s hand the night before, up over his quivering neck to feed two of his own fingers in his mouth. Immediately, Paul groans, the sound long and low, and George sucks, lets his eyes slip shut, feels the weight of them – about the same length, but skinnier and lighter than Paul’s – on his tongue, and listens to the rough sound of Paul’s hand on his own cock.

“Christ, good, okay. You really like that?”

George doesn’t reply, but his hand has sped up on his cock, and Paul’s has slowed down, and they’re out of sync now, but George can’t bring himself to match him, his hips lifting off the bed as he fucks his fingers into his mouth. The bed suddenly feels too hot, the oscillating fan overhead doing little to move the air around the room, and George is here, sucking on his own fingers, and all he can taste is Paul.

“Anyone - - ” Paul stutters over an inhale, hand still working his cock. “Anyone done that to you before? Stuck their fingers in your mouth?”

George shakes his head, and Paul laughs, breathless and thick.

“Georgie, you’re gonna ruin me,” he says. “Look at you, second time and you’re already gaggin’ for it.”

George blinks, eyes a little wet, sucking them deeper, and it’s nothing like a cigarette, but it gives him something like the relief of it, grounds him in a way it shouldn’t, and he opens his eyes, watches Paul watch him, his attention hooked, and that’s enough to pull him closer to the edge, and he rolls onto his side to face Paul, still sucking on his fingers, still wanking, and Paul’s face is flushed and sweat damp, but he curls onto his side too, watching as George yanks his fingers out of his mouth, breathless, as he comes.

He's still pulling himself through it when Paul says:

“Good when you listen to me, see, it’s - - ” he exhales, and George blinks wetly up at him, too wrecked to be annoyed at Paul being bossy. “Christ, your mouth. Not gonna be able to watch you smoke a ciggie again. You like it, don’t ye? Havin’ something to suck on?”

George doesn’t say anything, but his face must say something, because Paul swears and he comes, body shuddering, eyes fluttering shut, impossibly long lashes matted, and mouth open, and George waits for the reset, he does, but when Paul opens his eyes again, he just grins, and before he can think, George does too.

*

Or maybe he needs to stop setting his expectations in the after of it all, because really, the lines were always going to be redrawn.

After all, in the morning, they leave Cyn and Mo in Chicago and the rest of them are bundled up in a van to Minnesota and John and Paul are John-and-Paul again, two halves of something with no room for him, and George watches them slip away to the back row. Watches them doze and bicker and laugh from beside a snoring Ringo as the road stretches out behind them, and he thinks Chicago will be a memory tomorrow. A speed bump on the road, or - - no. A lump in custard. Something to be smoothed out and forgotten, and it’s good, George thinks, gaze flicking back to John and Paul, warm and easy and themselves in the back of the van, arms pressed together and John’s pinky outstretched, delicately tracing the seam in the thigh of Paul’s jeans.

It's how it’s supposed to be, he thinks then, then again when they’re on stage later, watching John and Paul from the back, the click-spark of whatever it is they are relighting faster than it could ever go out, and he’s lucky, he reminds himself. To always be close enough to feel the warmth of it, but far enough back to not catch fire. It means something, that, and it’s enough, he thinks, glancing back at Ringo, hair flopping as he beats his way through a song.

After all, not many people are.

*

The phone bleats.

A dull, tinny ring that has George sliding down the wall to sit on the floor of the (new, smaller) hotel lounge room, staring up at a watermark on the ceiling. He’s decided he doesn’t like Minnesota, which has nothing to do with the fact that he hasn’t even seen Paul or John since the show ended, but with the fact that it’s an odd, flat little place with nothing to do.

That’s probably unkind though, he thinks, after all, one of the people at the press conference told him it’s because they’ve had floods and tornadoes already this year, so it wants for boring half the time, and George tries to imagine that while he waits for an answer. Knows floods from home, and hurricanes from Florida last year, but Derek told him they were different from tornadoes.

He's not sure how.

“Beatles!! Come to the window!”

The voice is loud outside, even over the screams, and George ignores it, raising his free hand to his mouth to chew on a nail, heart thudding strangely loud in his chest. The line takes, and George lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“Hello?” Pattie says, her voice a little muffled over the line and George lies down on the carpet, lets his eyes flutter shut until he can pretend they’re in London together, the sounds of the screaming girls outside very far away.

“’ello,” he says, and Pattie gasps, and he grins before he can help it because he can almost see her then – her pretty face surprised, her hair in rollers, her body soft and long in - - well. Not her nightie, but one of the nighties he’d seen in one of the magazines Neil had bought.

“George! What are you doing up? It must be so late over there.”

Which isn’t untrue. He opens his eyes, searching out the clock, and it’s just past 1.30.

“Not so bad. What time’s it in London?”

“6.30 in the morning.”

Christ, he can’t remember the last time he saw 6.30 in the morning, at least not off one of their movies. It messes up the picture – London at that hour not something he can pull up easy, and he frowns, brushing a hand back through his hair.

“That’s up earlier than I am late, you know.”

She hums a noise of agreement over the line, and briefly he feels a stinger of suspicion. That she might be up only because she hadn’t gone to bed yet, and in his head the picture shifts – out of rollers, out of a nightie, her make up smudged like Bobbie’s was, her minidress askew, but before the picture can stick, she’s talking again:

“I’ve got to be in at the studio in an hour. I’m shooting a new commercial for that shampoo again with your friend, Mr. Lester.”

“With old Dickie?” George says with a grin, and Pattie laughs, says yes, with old Dickie, and George hums, feels easy, and young, and silly, as he asks: “That shampoo any good?”

“I haven’t used it,” she admits, and then it’s George who’s laughing. “I feel like a lot of that stuff’s the same though, you know. I think sometimes it’s just one big factory for all the goos and potions, but then there are a hundred factories for all the different labels they print to go on the bottles.”

Her voice is so nice, so thoughtful, and he thinks he can hear it now – her smile through the phone, and he wonders if she can hear his too. Wonders if they could both close their eyes and be together again, her fingers gentle on the inside of his wrist, his on her belly – it’s where he thinks her skin is smoothest – and the thought clenches somewhere strange inside him because he’s not there, he’s here and he’s nowhere and he’s on his own, with hundreds of girls calling his name on the street below like they know him.

“Are you okay?” Pattie asks suddenly, and George blinks, swallows, glances back up at the watermarked ceiling.

“Do I not sound it?”

“No, you just sound like you,” she says. “You don’t normally call me like this, is all.”

“Early?”

“While you’re on tour,” she corrects, and there’s something both frank and gentle to her tone that makes George flush, and he drops his gaze. Plucks a little at the loose threads of the carpet, and says:

“Do you not want me to?”

“I do! Truly, it’s lovely. Already I think in fact it’ll be the most lovely part of my day, I just…” she exhales, the action of it crackling through the phone line, and George wets his lips, curls his toes. “Something’s not wrong, is it? Do you want to talk?”

And Christ, no, George thinks, and he shakes his head only to remember she can’t see him, so he says:

“No, no, nothing like that. Just wanted to hear your voice, is all.”

There’s a pause then, and it hangs between them, a great, bollocking weight, and George lets his eyes slip shut again, rubs a little at his face, tries to tune out the screams below, and he thinks Pattie doesn’t believe him, but he also thinks he hears it – the moment she decides to let it go.

“Well, then, did I write in my last letter that Paula’s gotten a role in her school play?”

And it’s easy then, to listen to Pattie’s voice again. Bright and sweet, and he thinks he loves her, he does, her kindness, her openness, and the way she makes him feel grown up and young and lovely all at once, and he thinks he could marry her, and he also thinks he could slip out of this world entirely and disappear in the very same moment, and outside someone calls again:

“Beatles!! Come outside!”

*

The jet engines roar as the plane leaves Minnesota, and George leans back in his seat, watching Ringo throw a card into one pile and draw a new one from the other. He hums, voice low, as he takes it in, and opposite him, Neil just laughs.

“You’re full of it, you know that?”

“You wish I was,” Ringo hums, gesturing for Mal to go from beside him, and George is so invested in trying to work out his own bloody hand (he’s never been much good at cards, and Ringo’s always tellin’ him he doesn’t have a poker face) that he doesn’t even realise John’s there until Ringo says:

“Where’s Paul?”

Across the tiny, portable table, Mal places a card to the stack and soon draws another, and George’s gaze flicks between him and John, who’s now leaning over Ringo’s shoulder, glancing at his hand before he looks across the lot of them, gaze feeling like it lingers a second long on George, but that’s probably in his head, isn’t it?

“Talking to Brian about the next show,” John says. “He wasn’t happy with the mics in Bloomington.”

Which - - wasn’t he?

George blinks, brow furrowing. Normally if he isn’t, none of them ever hear the end of it, least of all George, who seems to have the apparent privilege of hearin’ Paul’s dissatisfaction with set-ups about as much as Brian, but then again, a little voice in the back of his head reminds him Paul was probably distracted last night. His gaze flicks back to John, remembering the way he’d kissed Cyn goodbye, how quickly he’d found his spot yesterday morning back beside Paul in the van, and especially how quick they’d disappeared together after the show.

“What was wrong with them?” Ringo asks, looking up at him properly now, and John raises his eyebrows, face carefully neutral, and George knows that face, feels something in the belly of him tighten in response.

“Reckons they were set too low.”

“It’s your turn, George,” Mal prods, and George starts, glancing over at Mal’s kind face and then back down at his cards, and he can barely remember what game they’re playing. Still, he tosses a card into the discard pile, draws another, swallows, nods towards Neil.

“Oh, really?” Ringo asks, and John hums.

“Yeah – missing about a finger,” John says, and George’s gaze snaps back to him, watching as he holds up one, then another. “Or maybe two.”

There’s a thrum to it – his pulse – and suddenly he can hear it in his ears, over the jet engine, over the muted sounds of the sky outside, over everything, and worst of all is what it triggers in him. Not some dreaded, endless panic, but a heat that drops from his throat to his prick. He sees Neil play another meld, laying three cards out on the table, before his gaze trips back over to John who’s staring straight back at him. John hums again, a sharkish smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and then George thinks he was wrong to not feel panic, because he knows how John gets with girls around Paul, and Christ, how much worse is it going to be when it’s him. Suddenly though, he’s yanked from his thoughts by Neil standing up.

“Think I won that round, lads,” he says, before focusing on John. “Where’re Paul and Brian though? You know mic problems are me and Mal.”

Still above Ringo, John flummoxes a look of regret – pretend, if ever George has seen it – before tilting his head towards the middle of the plane.

“Just up there, go on then.”

It’s all it takes for Neil and Mal both to lumber off, and Georges scoops up the cards to reshuffle as Ringo lights a cigarette and John promptly swans around the table and slides into Neil’s seat beside George.

“What are we playin’ then?”

“Rummy,” Ringo says, passing his fresh lit ciggie to John when he gestures for it, and lighting another for himself and George.

“Wish we were,” John says, and Ringo laughs.

“You want a drink?”

“I’ll fall asleep. Best leave it til after the first show, at least.”

“We’ll be on holiday after the second,” Ringo muses, and he and John both laugh, the delight at five days off (and probably five days off without wives) heard in the sound of it, and George keeps shuffling the cards, hands slowing, pulse still loud, because what John said, because - -

“You alright?” Ringo asks suddenly, and George blinks up at him, Ringo’s brow furrowed with concern, and George nods.

“Might be hungry,” John replies on his behalf. “Not sure he’s eaten properly in a couple of days.”

With the words, John presses his leg against his beneath the table, and something in George flutters. Something earnest and real and it’s enough to make him feel a little ill, and he should look at him, means to, only can’t quite do it as he deals the three of them in.  

*

So it’s two shows in Portland, one at three and one at eight, and the first goes swimmingly, George is sure of it, even if he can’t hear it. The crowd pulls like a riptide and crashes against the barriers like a wave, and George hasn’t gained his sea legs, but only because he doesn’t feel like he’s in his body anymore. Like he’s somewhere well above the sea of this, not even a ship on the tide, but a gull overhead, dipping in sometimes for a fish.

But that’s not a bad thing, he tells himself, to feel outside of himself, nothing wrong with that. Not if he’s still able to sidle up to the mic with Paul and with John, not if he’s still plucking the right chords and dancing his way through solos, and so he doesn’t worry about the second show until he fumbles Ticket to Ride and then realises he’s flown too high. That his body feels unanchored and far away and the clouds are covering the stage and the roar of the crowd is muted like he’s in that hotel in Chicago with its double glassed windows, but he’s not there, and he’s not out of his body, and there’s a pressure closing around his throat and it keeps him unsteady, and he muddles his way through the rest of the show, and it’s Paul who finds him after, who says let’s go out, and he looks unsteady on his own feet too and George just thinks - -

Honestly, he doesn’t really think at all.

*

There’s a thump to the bass in the club that echoes in George’s head as he stumbles back towards the bar. Out the corner of his eye, he can see Ringo jiving with a girl and Mal kissing another, can see Alf smoking out front through the window, and it helps his feet catch the floor, helps him breathe, helps push him forwards, and fuck, yeah, okay, he’s maybe a bit bevvied, he thinks, as he staggers and crushes his chest against the edge of the bar. Nothin’ wrong with that though, you know, he thinks, humming, gesturing at the waiter who ignores him (again), and George pouts, flopping sideways over the bar, and yeah, okay, maybe quite bevvied as opposed to a bit.

“’ello,” a voice echoes behind him, and George spins around to find John looking at him, cheeks flushed and eyes small, and Christ, he must barely be able to see without his glasses like this. George waves a hand in front of his face to check, and John bats him away. “Alright, yes, we’re both here.”

“Just,” George slurs. “In pieces,” he says, and John snorts.

“Which pieces are you in?”

“Lots.”

It’s enough to make John tilt his head, his gaze travelling down George’s slim (not skinny, thank you) body, a look on his face he guesses is just about as bevvied as his own.

“Legs and prick and singing mouth and guitar-playing fingers,” John tells him, and George wrinkles his nose.

“Didn’t play well tonight.”

“Have to prepare for a bad review, will we?”

George huffs, and John grins at him, eyeing off the waiter, and he gets his attention, holding up two fingers as the waiter grabs the whiskey from the shelf.

“Think people would have to hear us to write one.”

“Maybe they were very close to the stage,” John says, and George frowns at him, bottom lip slipping out again.

“It doesn’t matter anyway, really, I know,” he says glumly, and John just tuts, pulling out his wallet and grabbing a couple of green notes, ready to pay the waiter.

“Good thing you can’t kick yourself out of the band then, eh?”

“You could kick me out though.”

“You’d have to play terribly for that.”

“I did play terribly though, that’s what I’m sayin’.”

“When?”

“Today.”

“Couldn’t hear it,” John says with a shrug, and George huffs again, annoyance plucking at him.

“Paul did.”

“Paul’s not going to kick you out.”

“He could.”

“Not when you’re out here sucking on his fingers.”

Vaguely, George suddenly remembers his brief stint as an electrician at Blacklers. Remembers apprenticing for a stern-faced tosser with a moustache who showed him how to get into the wiring to fix circuit problems, only George – never a particularly good student – hadn’t paid attention and ended up fusing some together, plunging the department store into darkness. He thinks the equivalent is happening in his head right now, as in front of him, John visibly, immediately regrets speaking at all.

“He wouldn’t anyway,” John adds quickly, which doesn’t do much for George, what with the blackout in his head and all. “No one else can fuckin’ understand what he and me are prattlin’ on about half the time, you know, and you can, so that proves it.”

A flicker of annoyance lights like a torch, and George offers a deadpan look back at John.

“Proves what? That I can put up with you and him?”

“Feels like the main prerequisite for the band, really.”

More light then, and he thinks it’s a good thing, enough to let him bury the fact that John knows about all the finger sucking business, that he’s suddenly, surely, pissed off, because it’s not fair, that. A band might’ve been John’s, but it was him and Paul first. Him and Paul who knew each other and played together and kicked over stones around Liverpool looking for the chords and the songs underneath, and doesn’t that count for something? Wouldn’t that make it his and Paul’s band first, since no one else from John’s old band is even in it anymore except Paul, but it never matters anyway. He’s still the one worried about being kicked out, still the one worried about John and Paul not needing him as much as they need each other, and they’ll watch him alone and he’ll watch them together, and he’s just horribly, hopelessly fuckin’ lonely on this tour, and so who cares about who was first and somehow that whole thought slides all the way back around because it is John-and-Paul, and John apparently knows about the all the finger sucking business, and John’s jealousy is well bloody documented, and George blinks. Sucks in a dry breath, and he stares at the damp top of the bar as the tender slides them their drinks and then he looks at John, and he says:

“So what? You don’t care? About - -”

He cuts himself off, can’t quite say it, and John stares at him in that thousand-yard way that he does sometimes, and George swallows as John takes a drink.

“I wouldn’t say that,” he says, and George feels a lick of panic in himself, and he looks down at his feet, and not at John, and now he does feel fourteen again, just hoping John lets him play with him and Paul – despite the fact that he’d played with Paul a hundred times before already – and that pisses him off, and so he decides he will look back at John, and John’s lips sort of twitch, like George is being funny, which he’s not, thank you, and he grabs his drink, tilts it up at John, says alright then, and buggers off.  

*

The night seems to have its own pulse in flashes of colour and bodies and sounds, and George thinks it could replace his own heartbeat if he left it long enough. Likes it, loves it – the way it thrums in his head and his chest, leaves his body open, wills his life away because what else is it bloody good for, and he’s back at the bar reaching for another drink when he feels a hand at his wrist and a voice saying: “He’s had enough, thanks.”

Which - - George blinks, and is met with doe eyes and long lashes, and annoyance skips again in the hollow pit of his gut.

“I haven’t, actually, thank you,” he says, tugging his wrist from Paul’s grip and the motion of even that has him lolling on his feet. The whiskey’s betrayed him is the thing, and the nausea hits him sudden as a wave, and it must show, because Paul huffs out a breath, grabbing him bodily to lurch him off towards the bathroom.

It’s a lone room in this club – no stalls on offer apparently, and just the one loo – and George is resolutely determined not to give Paul the satisfaction of vomiting until he sees the toilet and finds himself stumbling out of Paul’s grip towards it. He throws up, the hot, acidic taste of bile burning his throat, and he feels more than sees Paul lower himself to the floor at the other side of the bathroom, settling in, apparently, just to watch, and Christ, it’s mortifying. Some concoction of half-digested tea and scotch and toast splattering yellow against the toilet bowl. Not that Paul hasn’t seen worse, not even that George hasn’t seen Paul do worse himself in return, but still George thinks, his head seemingly running back into his skull - - he feels…

Not sober, but certainly, suddenly, less drunk.

He flicks a tongue up around his teeth, scooping out the remnants of toast-soaked vomit, and spits it into the toilet, before turning back to Paul.

“You got any gum?” he asks, and Paul reaches into the pocket of his jacket and pulls out a stick, offering it to George, who flushes the toilet and crawls (safer than trying to walk, he suspects) over the sticky bathroom floor enough to grab it. He swivels then, to push his back into the wall beside Paul, shoving the gum into his mouth.

“You messed up on Ticket to Ride tonight, you know,” Paul says, and George grimaces, nods, looks away. “One of your best goes on your song though, I reckon.”

George is only performing the one song this tour – Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby – and it’s not like Paul’s complimenting his song, because it’s not one George wrote, but it still leaves him flushed, belly squirming which could be the vomiting and all that, but still. When he glances sideways to Paul, there’s a look on his face he’s not used to, and George remembers he used to know all of Paul’s looks, and he wonders if John knows this one, and the thought stings, so he shrugs, awkward, even as his toes curl in his boots.

“Looked good too,” Paul says deeply, carefully. “Up there.”

Which - - well. Probably better than he looks now, George thinks, chewing on the gum, and he blinks up at him, nervous suddenly in a way he never is around Paul, and he doesn’t know if he likes the feeling of it, but he definitely likes the feeling of Paul shuffling slightly closer to him, their thighs pressing together and Paul always seems much taller when they’re sitting down like this. Something to his long legs and the fact that he’s got such an arse on him to lift him up more, and George, for the first time, presses his leg back and Paul’s breathing seems to shift and - -

Thud.

A body drops hard into the bathroom door, as if trying to shoulder in, and George startles so much he almost chokes on his gum, and Paul’s quick to get to his feet, staggering to the door (and Christ, is he drunk too?) and he opens it to reveal a wobbly John in the doorway.

“Was wonderin’ where you’d gotten to,” John hums, backing Paul into the room and stealing a kiss as he kicks the door closed behind him, and Paul catches him keenly even as he hisses a John against the other man’s mouth.

“Careful,” Paul bites, and John leans back and looks around the bathroom only to pause on George, sprawled out opposite the toilet, chewing gum, legs a little splayed now without Paul’s to press up against, keep him steady, and oh, he thinks, John’s splitting in two in front of him. Maybe he is still bevvied.

“Oh, what’s all this then?”  

“Georgie just had a bit much is all,” Paul replies, and John looks at him, tone careful when he says:

“Yeah? A bit too much of what?”

“Don’t, come on.”

“Don’t what?”

“You know what you’re doin’, it was nothing like that.”

And John doesn’t look happy now, his eyes small which could be because he’s drunk or not wearing his glasses or pissed off or all three, but it makes George hear in his head John say I wouldn’t say that again, and the thought makes him feel that squirmy, nervous feelin’ again, and he’d like to not feel that, because if he keeps feelin’ that he thinks he might be sick again, and so George just comes out and says it.

“You upset his fingers were in me mouth? You don’t - - ” he hiccups, shoulders sliding against the tiles. “You don’t have to be.”

There’s two of both of them now, double vision and that, and George tries to focus on chewing on the gum as both of them stare at him, their gazes fixed and their bodies long and he thinks all four of them look good, and then he wonders if that’s what they’d want the band to be. Fab Four. Two Paul’s, Two John’s, no George’s and no Ringo’s, then he wonders if the two Paul’s would get with the two John’s or if the Paul’s and John’s would want to sleep with each other, and the thought makes him wrinkle his nose, a bubble of laughter escaping his throat, because they would, wouldn’t they? Fuck themselves.

Christ, he’s blotto.

“Why would that upset me?” John asks quietly, and it brings him back to himself enough to shrug, fingers twitching at his legs, and he wonders if he has a cigarette. Fumbles for his jacket pockets, but his pockets aren’t where he remembers them being. “George? Why would that upset me?”

“I don’t know,” George says, and Paul wobbles a little on his feet, George sees it. Sees him have to grip the sink as he runs a hand back through his hair.

“It wouldn’t,” Paul says. “It wouldn’t upset him, George, I wouldn’t’ve told him if I thought it would’ve, you know.”

George glances up and his eyes feel a little wet, his lashes matted, and the room still smells like vomit, and John’s swaying a little, but there’s only one of him now, and they’re all as pissed as each other at least.

“Did you like it?” John asks suddenly. “Suckin’ him off?”

“I didn’t suck him off,” George corrects. “I just - - it was just his fingers.”

“Do you want to suck him off? Sounds like you do. The way you sucked on your own fingers when he told you to. Want him to play daddy? Shove his prick in your pretty little mouth and make you take it?”

Outside the bathroom, he can hear the thump of the bass through the club, can hear a woman crying, another drop a glass, can hear someone say it’s cool, man, it’s groovy, can hear Alf ask Mal when he thinks they’ll want to go home, can hear a whole thundering evening of sound and there’s nothing in his head except the memory of the weight of Paul’s fingers in his mouth, and the question of how different his cock would feel, then, somehow worse, what John’s might taste like, but - - no. Not a good train of thought, he thinks, bad George, bad thoughts, so he mumbles out something close to fuck off, as Paul snaps:

“John,” and John quickly course corrects.

“Sorry, forget it,” John says, then: “Can you - - can Paul show me? What that bird did with you and him?”

George stares up at him, remembers Faye’s fingers tracing a line up his cheekbone, the smooth path they made there, and he feels so hot, half-hard at the prospect, and he’s sure they’ve both got to see it already, can feel their attention, warm and long and he wets his lips, nods, as Paul steps forwards. He closes the distance in a few shaky steps, crouching down between George’s still-splayed legs, and he really is the prettiest of them, George thinks, face belongs in a painting, with those eyes and that mouth, and he’s stops chewing and maybe breathing too when Paul trails calloused fingers along his cheekbone, moving his long, gentle hand to cup his cheek, tentative at first, until his thumb comes to rest on George’s lower lip, dragging it down, and he swears he hears John say Christ above them before Paul pushes his thumb between George’s lips.

George’s eyelids flutter shut, the taste of Paul familiar already somehow, and it makes him feel - - here. Present and in his body and not up in the clouds or lost at sea, and he sucks gently, hand coming up to fist in Paul’s shirt, tug him a little closer, and he hears the shuffling, so he knows it’s coming even before Paul entwines his fingers with John’s, tapping their knuckles against George’s sternum. His breath hitches, eyes fluttering open and John’s crouching there now too, the hand not entwined with Paul’s on Paul’s thigh, and George watches, breathless, as Paul drags John’s hand up his chest, his neck, and feeds two of John’s fingers into George’s waiting, hungry mouth.

And it’s almost too much, it is, because Paul’s one thing, but John’s another, no matter the John-and-Paul of it all, and George feels too many memories flicking through his head, too many feelings of adolescent hero worship he desperately tries to shove down and stamp out, and it won’t do, won’t happen, and he blinks wetly up at John, too nervous suddenly to touch him even though he’s touched him a million times before, and John’s just - - gentle. His fingers moving slow and he tastes like cigarettes and scotch and gum, because that’s still stuck to one of George’s teeth, and John exhales, the sound rough, and it echoes in George’s ears until John says:

“Aren’t you a good boy?” and then - -

Fuck.

George keens, something in him feeling like it’s been knocked loose, and the sound is mortifyingly raw, but it moves. Moves them, moves the room, and he feels Paul yank John’s hand out of his mouth and suddenly he’s properly between his legs, thrusting his tongue into his mouth, and George just cries. Clutches, finding he suddenly, desperately, earnestly wants this, and he arches up into Paul’s warm, solid body as he hears John curse, feels John stroke his hair away from his face, then hears John unzip his trousers and shove a hand into them, and it’s like nothing he could’ve imagined, being the one kissed instead of the one watching, his body lit up like it’s something close to holy, and Paul rolls against him, hands finding his hips, pulling him up, and George’s hands are around Paul’s shoulders, pulling him enough to cover him, to shield him, until there’s no world outside this moment, no storms, no sea, no Beatlemania just them, fumbling and drunk and themselves in the dark, and - -

An aggressive knock sounds at the door, and John’s biting out a fuckin’ hell as he shoves his prick away, and stumbles up, Paul pulling enough away from George to watch him go, then he looks back at George, a bit dazed, his mouth red and his cheeks flushed, and George wants to kiss him again, might’ve tried to if Paul hadn’t tugged back, and George doesn’t quite want to let him go, but he does. Knows he has to, now, the moment’s broken, as John pries open the door and says:

“Alright, yeah, our mate’s three sheets to the wind in here, you know, we’re just pullin’ him together, alright? Lads, tidy up and get out for Mr - - what did you say you name was again?”

And John fields the stranger with just the right amount of disdain that has George laughing, and then Paul laughing too, and they’re both a bit breathless as John casts them a long suffering look and darts outside with a yes, I’ll sign an autograph, do you have a pen and they watch him go, giving them a minute.

A minute they take.

“Bit much, that,” Paul says, and it’s mildly accusatory enough that George blinks, then scowls at him.

“You kissed me,” he bites, and then he sees Paul’s hiding a grin.

“Maybe I just wanted my gum back,” he replies, and George tongues around his mouth to realise the gum is gone, and Paul grins down at him, smacks a kiss to the sliver of skin between his eyebrows and climbs off him only to slip out the back door after John, and right, George thinks.

That’s a fucking mess.

*

Only it gets worse, it does, because they get back to the hotel and George is sharing with Ringo, who’s already passed out and snoring loud enough to shake the walls but not loud enough to drown out the sounds of Paul and John in the room next door. The whine of mattress springs, the low tones, the thump-thump-thump of the bloody headboard against the bloody wall, and George scowls, hot all over, and wriggles low in bed and slides a hand beneath his pyjama pants to his already aching cock, because this is just so fucking stupid, and not fair, and they always do shit like this, and he just wants - -

Christ.

He doesn’t know what he wants, but when he hears John groan and Paul laugh, breathless, through the wall, something in him aches.

*

The thing with a hangover is it rushes to greet you. To shake your head and rattle you around until your insides are all a mess, leave your eyeballs feeling inside out and your stomach split in half to sit in your feet and your throat, leave you just in some absolute pieces. At least, that’s how George feels in the morning, first day of his holiday and stumblin’ out of bed, a bitter taste in his mouth as he finds Ringo lazing over the couch, a wet washcloth over his eyes and Neil lookin’ half-dead on the floor of the lounge.

“You up with all that bloody racket last night too?” George asks, nodding in the direction of John and Paul’s room, and Ringo lifts the edge of the washcloth from his eyes.

“It’s something you can learn, you know,” Ringo tells him. “Not hearing things. I’ve gotten quite good over the years.”

Neil makes a vague noise of agreement from the floor, and George scowls at both of them, tumbling off into the kitchenette to throw up in the sink. Easy for them to say, he thinks as he spits out some vomit. They didn’t have John’s fingers and Paul’s tongue in their mouths last night, stupid, lucky, unlucky pricks. George turns to glance at the closed bedroom door, feels a swirling jealousy low in him again, and turns on the tap to wash his vomit down it. There’s nothing in it really, just bright yellow bile, so he probably does actually need to eat something. He stumbles out in search of a room service menu.

“You lot want breakfast?”

“Sausages, please,” Ringo says, and Neil says: “Anything but those grit things,” and so George dials through to order plates of bacon and eggs, before sliding down the wall to plonk himself down on the floor. The regret’s fairly immediate, what with this being the position of all of that nonsense last night, but he decides to lie down which cures that particular point of comparison.

It’s all it takes apparently for John and Paul’s bedroom door to crack open and for Paul to spring out, bright and chipper, which he always somehow manages, even with a bloody hangover, and John’s soon on his heels, lookin’ worse for wear overall, as his gaze travels across the room. He latches onto George, something that makes his heart beat a little faster, and then lumbers over to bump a fist against George’s raised, bent knee.

“Good night?” he asks, innocent as a lamb, and George rolls his eyes.

“Not as good as yours, from the sounds of it,” he replies, and John’s grin just grows from above him, his hand reaching to clasp George’s bent knee.

“Keep your ear to the wall, did you?”

“Didn’t need to,” he snaps, every bit of annoyance from last night bubbling over, and John blinks, eyebrows raised.

“Alright, aren’t you in a mood,” John hums, and obviously, George thinks. Across the hotel suite, Paul’s sitting at the table now, reading a newspaper, and apparently Brian’s arrived now too, which George didn’t even hear, but they’re chattering away so John lurches off to sit with them instead, and George scowls, rolls over on the floor until his back is to them and all he can see is ugly, floral wallpaper instead of their stupid faces, and he can hear Brian talking a few things through, particularly about the flight to San Diego this afternoon, about how there’ll be a press conference but no shows, so it’ll be quick, and there’s the shuffle of paper and something must be handed out, because John adopts a voice and says:

“Thank you, daddy,” in a way that makes Brian stutter and George’s breath hitch, and he glances back over before he can help himself and he feels it, the way John’s gaze hooks on him, bright and pleased and just a little mean.

Somewhere behind him, Ringo simply exhales.

*

The floor beneath his feet judders as the airplane wheels hit the runway, the skid and the shake of it enough to have George clutching hard at the arms of the seat, and beside him, Ringo lets out a wobbly little laugh, his grip white knuckled around his scotch, ice rattling against the glass, and at least it’s not just him, he thinks. The flight between Portland and San Diego isn’t a long one, but it’d been turbulent, the weather outside a crackling storm, and it’s gone to his head. To have spent so many weeks imaginin’ one on stage and suddenly finding himself in a real one.

The motion of it smooths as the plane starts to taxi, the rain running in ribbons down the small ovular window, and George takes a breath, glancing out at thousands of bobbing umbrellas in the dark. Rain or shine they’ll turn up in, he thinks, and vaguely he wonders what else they’d show up through – floods and fires and famines. Open-mouthed and wet-knickered and wailing before them. The picture makes him feel briefly nauseous, and it must show on his face, because Ringo’s brow furrows as he drains the last of his scotch.

“You alright, son?”

George nods, rubbing his hands down along his thighs as the pretty air hostess tells them they can unbuckle their seatbelts, and Brian promptly stands up. Starts talking about a press conference before the hotel, as they all get up and make for the exit, a public to answer to before the holiday can begin, and George hears John say something, and then Paul riff off it, but he can’t make out what they actually say. Can’t hear much of anything except the screaming as the air hostess disarms the door.

It hits like a tidal wave, that, and George feels himself pulled out of himself in the rip of it, disoriented and a little wonky as he darts down the steps, the rain ripping through his coat, the girls yelling, the lights on the airport bright as dripping stars, and he waves at nothing and no one and everyone and everything, and he hears Paul’s voice behind him, then Ringo sayin’ he said he was alright, and then it’s John, gripping his elbow:

“You alright? You’re whiter than a nun’s tit,” he says, and there’s somethin’ to it, is all, the envelope of his voice, and George slides into it, sagging back against him before he can help it, and it’s embarrassing, he thinks distantly, should be at least, but he feels - - outside himself again, and Christ, this has never happened off stage before, and he doesn’t think he likes it and John’s frowning suddenly, shoving him up only to yank him forwards, like he can pull him through the rain and the fans and the noise so fast maybe his body will stop doin’ whatever it is his body is doing, and he thinks that’s nice, he thinks that’s John, he thinks - - oh. He thinks he might faint.

George stumbles at the entrance of the airport, and John grabs at his waist, fingers dipping firm in the curve of it, and it’s enough to make George suck on a breath, to make a brief show of trying to disentangle from John, more to have an argument for the others later than anything else, when it inevitably becomes somethin’ to tease about instead of worry about, only they’re pulled sideways into a room and Brian’s there.

Brian, with his fixed gaze and attentive hands, gesturing him out of John’s grip and into his. He gets George’s breathless body to the bench seat, hand smoothing down his back as he pushes his head between his knees and tells him to breathe, and George can still hear the screaming over the rain outside, can smell unfamiliar air, that strange, sterile smell that sticks to you after being in an airplane, but the floor in here is a scuffed linoleum that reminds him of the back rooms he and Arthur used to get drunk in at Blacklers, and his Beatle boots are polished and steady on it, and Brian’s got his own boots on. Neat, and fashionable, and when they touch against his own, George suddenly feels himself do what Brian’s been telling him to do and breathes.

It’s only then that the room starts to come back to him – the weight and gentle passage of Brian’s hand rubbing his back, the tongue of San Diego humidity, the buzz from the hallway as people look and pretend they’re not looking and George can already feel the flush of embarrassment as Brian seems to understand and steps back and across the room to close the door.

It muffles the sound at least, and George blinks, eyes strangely wet as he sits up in his seat, and it’s just the two of them in here now. The room’s a small one – maybe a staff room or something – with just a small table covered in aviation magazines, a bench with a shallow sink and a refrigerator with a signed photo of Ann-Margaret on it (she must’ve flown in here at some point). Brian takes him in, smiles gently, and strides over to the sink, finding a cup in the cabinet below and filling it.

“You seem to have calmed down some,” Brian says, and George swallows, throat dry as Brian walks back over and hands him the cup. “A drink will hopefully help the rest of the way. I sent the boys off to the press with Derek, but Neil’s looking to see if he can find us a pot of tea.”

George nods, head still heavy and light all at once as he takes a sip of the water, the liquid working to loosen his throat, and Brian moves to sit beside him on the bench. He doesn’t ask about it, which George is grateful for – not sure what he’d have to say about it anyway – and for a moment, it feels almost like he’s home again. Like he could close his eyes and be back in Liverpool, the bench hard beneath him like the one on his da’s bus, and there’s something about Brian that reminds him of him sometimes. It’s not a perfect picture – his da’s harder than Brian, arrow-straight and scouse and he feels bigger somehow, even though he’s pretty sure Brian’s taller. Still, there’s something to them. They’re both good at being quiet, their hands steady on George’s back, both good for a word or a cup of tea or a promise.

The thought tangles too quick with what John said this morning, with this whole stupid thing that started with Bobbie and Faye and Paul in that stupid bloody room in Chicago, and George shakes his head to try and knock the thought out. Glances over at Brian, who’s watching him closely, and George thinks - - well.

He meant it, is all. That Brian was always good for a word.

Honest with him, and all that.

“Earlier, back in Portland I mean, John called you - - ” but apparently George isn’t, because he flummoxes the word, can’t quite bring himself to say it, and Brian’s cheeks pink, but he looks otherwise unsurprised somehow.

“Daddy, I believe, was the exact word,” he says dryly, and George exhales a laugh.

“Why?”

“Why’d he call me it?” Brian asks, and when George nods, Brian just shrugs. “To tease, I think.”

And that much isn’t a surprise exactly, but George still fiddles a little with the handle on the cup. Hooks a finger around it and slides it down, the porcelain clammy to the touch. It’s the place to leave it really, that, to be done with the whole thing, but the whole thing just - - it doesn’t feel done, so before he can think better of it, he says:

“That girl really did say it to Paul.”

It’s enough to make the tips of Brian’s ears pink, to have him sitting a little taller, straighter. Brian crosses his legs, clasps his hands together and drops them to cup his knee.

“I’m sure she did.”

“It’s a bit strange, don’t you think? Wanting to call someone that?”

Brian hums, the sound long and reedy, and George glances over, sees him come over all thoughtful and a little embarrassed, like he’s thinking of something in particular, which makes something in George’s belly lurch, and for the first time he wonders if it was the first time John had called Brian that, and that just - - sticks. George blinks, averts his gaze, brings the cup up to his mouth for another drink mostly to stop himself from thinking it.

“Well, at least in my experience, it’s not intended to be literal,” Brian says slowly. “It doesn’t mean you have a - - complex. It’s more about…finding being taken care of attractive, I suppose. Some people find a sort of sensuality in giving themselves over to someone else who they know can handle it. Or handle them, as it were. Like letting someone look after you so you don’t have to think or worry and all of that.”

It makes George feel - - squirmy, more than anything, his belly twisting and a heat pooling low in him, and he looks at Brian and wonders about him and John again, and then he tries to imagine it with him, and it’s too-close, the memory of Brian’s hand warm and firm on his back, on his head, pushing it down between his legs. His cheeks flush, and he has another sip of water, and then the door cracks open and the boys all tumble through.

“Stupid gits,” John grunts, and Ringo makes a noise of agreement. “If they ask about me hair one more time, I’ll knock their heads together.”

“You better, Georgie?” Paul asks, voice cutting through, and George glances up to where Paul’s face is marked up with worry, and he nods, which Paul doesn’t actually seem to pay attention to, so fixed instead on himself fixing it. “Neil’s had no luck with that tea here, but he’s checking ahead at the hotel now, and the beds’ll be made, so if you need a lie down - - ”

“We should get there then,” Brian says, gently cutting Paul’s spiel off, and George is so bloody grateful, he just - - looks at him again. Takes in the long line of him and the soft curl of his hair and the sharp point of his nose, and he wets his lips, and he doesn’t know how it happens, but John catches his eye, and John is just - - frowning suddenly. His gaze shifts between the two of them, and he looks sort of annoyed, which doesn’t make any sense, and so George juts out his chin defiantly, mostly to wave away the picture of almost bloody passing out on John on the tarmac, and a million thoughts seem to cross John’s face, but all he says is:

“Better check ahead for smelling salts and a fainting couch too.”

And George just gives him the forks.

*

Only there’s no just’s about it, because suddenly John seems annoyed at him, and that doesn’t make a lick of sense. He’s distant in the car and then outright bloody mean at the hotel, and even Paul seems surprised by it because they’re supposed to be good now, supposed to be restin’ and enjoying a few days off, and it’s not until that night when they’re all just starting to think about going out that Paul grabs George’s elbow and tugs him aside.

“What’d you say to him?”

“Nothin’,” George insists, and Paul gives him a look like he doesn’t believe him, which is just bloody typical. “He’s the one acting all peculiar.”

“Peculiar?” Paul asks, voice high and baffled. “How?”

Which - -

Christ.

George gives him a look as if to say were you asleep this last week? And Paul pinks a little at his cheeks, but adamantly shakes his head.

“That’s not - - ”

“Not peculiar?” George asks flatly, and Paul rolls his eyes.

“Well, I mean, it’s new, or not new, but new with - - but it’s not - - ” and Paul just obviously doesn’t want to talk about it, which is absolutely fine with George, because he definitely doesn’t want to talk about it, especially in a hotel room with Derek and Mal a paper-thin wall away, and George vaguely hopes Ringo’s taught them his trick for not hearing, even as Paul adds: “Look, just go and say you’re sorry for whatever it is you did, and we’ll be done with it.”

It lurches somewhere in him.

Done with it? Done how? With what? With - - whatever it is they’re doing? Because he doesn’t know if he wants to be done with that, but Paul’s already off with his bass, flopping down beside Ringo and talking about beats and rhythm, and George looks over at John who has his sunglasses on and is obviously pretending to be asleep in the bucket seat by the window, and he scowls, climbing over a chair to sit with Derek and Mal instead, and he hears Paul across the room:

“George,” he says, exasperated, but George ignores him.

“Deal me in?” he asks Derek and Mal, and they do.

*

His shirt is damp with sweat as he moves along the dance floor, the music thumping up through the wood, shaking up his legs, rattling in his chest, and the bird he’s with grins, face flushed and eyes a little wild, and he knows it’s because she’s thinking she’s about to go with a Beatle. Maybe she will, he thinks, gaze dipping down to where her dress strains over her tits, and he wobbles a little, his last scotch sloshing a little in his head.

Might not be the drinks though. Might be the flashing lights or the thrum of the band or the tangle of this last week getting kicked around like sheets at the edge of a well-used bed, and he shakes his head at her, stumbling sideways back for the booth when he spots Paul, looking dazed and sweaty himself chatting to Mal through the crowd.

“You want a drink?” George calls, and Paul looks back at him, shakes his head.

“John’s asked Alf to bring the car round.”

“You leavin’?” he asks, surprised, though maybe he shouldn’t be. First day of holiday and all that. The thought sticks somewhere in him though, one he’s used to at least – that feeling of John and Paul leaving him behind, leaving him out.

Paul makes a noise of affirmation, and before George can so much as think another word, Paul says:

“You want to head back to the hotel too?”

And George blinks, glances back at the girl across the club, dancing with Ringo now, and then back at Paul, who’s gaze is hot and focused in that singularly minded sort of way he has, and George’s mouth suddenly feels dry.

“Alright,” he says, and opposite him, Paul just grins.

*

Thing is, they sort of separate back at the hotel. Paul wanting to duck over to the bar down by the lobby to have drinks sent up, which leaves John gesturing for George to follow him up to their suite, and it’s strange. The quiet that follows. No banter or arguments or talk of anything at all, just John leading and George following, a shifting, stranger feeling between them that makes George think John’s not done being annoyed with him, but he’s still baffled as to the why of it. A tension there between them that feels like a knot in a neck, begging to be massaged out, but George has never been particularly good at that, so when they get back to their suite, George just comes out and asks it.

“I done something to annoy you or what?”

John doesn’t seem particularly surprised by the question, just walks through the entryway to the lounge room, and he really does look good tonight. Hair artfully mussed and black button-down loose at the neck. The whole thing reminds him a bit of John’s art school days, the style he’d adopted from Stu, and that’s a thought, a memory, that sits funny too, so George clears his throat, opts to take his boots off by the door to have something to do more than anything.

“Not that I can recall,” John says slowly. “Why? You think you’ve annoyed me?”

With the question, he flops down onto the low leather couch in the hotel lounge room, his legs spread and his hands behind his head, his face carefully blank, and George feels something in him twist up. John’s in a mood, he is, George thinks, and it’s not one George likes. He’s never liked it when John closes himself up while clearly trying to prise everyone else open, and suddenly he thinks it was a mistake to come back here with them tonight.

He clears his throat.

“Don’t put it back on me,” he says. “You’re the one acting peculiar.”

“Am I?”

John’s all innocent with that, and George huffs, pulling off his jacket and hanging it on the hook, and he doesn’t want to sit down yet. Sitting down would mean nailing himself to a base and inviting open warfare. If he stays up, refuses to participate, he might get out alive.

“Ever since the airport,” George says, and John’s quick to say:

“When you fainted, you mean.”

“I didn’t faint.”

“As good as,” John says, and George huffs, tries to ignore the prickle of embarrassment that spiders its way up his spine, and he stands in the doorway instead, in his socks and his suit, arms folded over his chest and lets John stare at him from the couch. The air prickles warm, and vaguely, George thinks there are screaming girls outside, but he can’t hear them. Not as long as John keeps looking at him like that.

The moment pulses a minute longer, and then John says:

“What were you and Eppy doing?”

Which - -

What?

George blinks, genuinely bloody startled, and he gestures wide, glancing pointedly around the room, and John seems to clock it, fix on it, which doesn’t give him much peace of mind.

“What’re you on about?”

And John suddenly leans forward in his seat, elbows digging into his thighs as he holds his hands together, staring straight up at George like he can see right through him.

“Come on, son, known you since you were pure as snow, you think I don’t know when you’re thinkin’ about spreading your legs for someone?”

The blood roars in George’s ears, loud as a wave, loud as the fans, and it hadn’t - - he hadn’t - - or he had, but it was at most a fleeting thought, so the fact that John’s sitting here, that he knows - - George scowls, heart thick and pulpy in his throat.

“Apparently you don’t know much of anything,” George bites, because he doesn’t, because it’s never been about Brian. “And even if I was, it wouldn’t be any of your bloody business.”

“My band, my business,” John says, and George laughs in disbelief, annoyed, and says:

“Oh, you signin’ off on shags now, are you?”

Right as John says:

“He won’t give you what you want anyway,” and George’s breath stutters.

“He won’t,” John continues, determined now. “He’d fuck you, and you’d like it, but he wouldn’t do it right. It’s not Brian’s thing. You want a tongue up your arse, and a bit of praise, fine, he’ll do. Keep you up in the clouds, keep you working through all this noise, but if you want to be held down and fucked back into yourself like the dirty boy you are, he’s not going to be the one to do it.”

It’s the thump of his unsteady heart, loud in his ears, a rush of blood, picture on picture on picture that George has never wanted to entertain – John’s mouth and Paul’s cock and their legs shoulders hands – like a shelf breaking in a cupboard and everything spilling out, and he remembers Hamburg, and he remembers all of them redrawing that line, but they’re not redrawing anything now, haven’t this week, and George just feels - - a right fucking mess.

He swallows, shakes his head.

“You don’t know anything about what I want,” he says, and John just laughs, the sound jarring in the quiet of the lounge room, but then he nods. Leans back into the couch.

“Alright, Georgie.”

The moment seems to pulse between them, alive with an energy George can’t – won’t – name, and his mind races trying to find a way to - - something - - change the topic, whatever, when John leans back into the couch, the movement making a scratchy sound against the leather, a look passing clean over his face when he suddenly says:

“Hey, Georgie?”

“Mm?”

“C’mere.”

His voice has a tone to it that George has only heard John use with girls and Cyn and Paul before, something loaded and coy and full in a way he’s not sure how to navigate, and it sets his teeth on edge, and he knows he should ignore it, he does, but after a moment, he inches forwards anyway. Can’t help himself, he gets closer, so close their knees are practically touching, and John suddenly reaches forwards, grabbing George by the backs of his thighs and pulling him to straddle him.

George fumbles to get a grip on the back of the couch, and John’s fingers spread enough they almost circle his skinny legs, and pull him in a little closer. George feels his pulse in his throat, thrumming like a hive of insects, staring down at John, who’s look is unreadable. He’s not used to this position, or he’s used to the position, but not being the one doing the straddling, practically in John’s fuckin’ lap, and the thought makes him squirm a bit, and John sucks in a breath.

“There you go,” John says, smoothing his hands up to George’s arse, pushing him further up his lap until they’re practically flush. “Christ, you’re nothing to hold onto, are you?”

Which - - fuck. George flushes, embarrassed, despite himself, but it’s easy to funnel into annoyance when John seems to make a point of trying to circle his hips with his hands, and he’d kiss him to get him to shut up if John wasn’t looking down between them now, dipping a finger below the waist of his pants to run along his hipbone like Paul had done his cheekbone last night. He rocks his hips instead, and it feels weird – to not feel the soft mound of a girl and instead the hardening line of John’s cock up against his own.

“What’s goin’ on here then?”

Paul’s voice cuts through the moment like a knife, and George’s head whips around, heart hammering in his throat, as John just peers over his shoulder with a grin.

“Georgie’s tryna give me a lap dance like one of the Hamburg girls. Not very good at it though, as you can see.”

George gives John a filthy look, but he just smiles back up at him, so George looks again at Paul, who’s shrugging out of his jacket at the door, a cigarette between his lips and two bottles of something beneath his arm. He doesn’t look surprised either, is the thing, rather just looks like he’s sort of collecting himself, and George isn’t sure how to feel about that, especially as John, grabs his hips again.

“Well,” Paul says after a minute. “He’s the wrong way ‘round for starters.”

“Good point,” John agrees, which is it? George usually likes a lap dance from the front at least as much from the back (although, he thinks, he doesn’t have tits), when John glances up at him through his lashes.

“Go on then,” he says, before lowering his voice and closing the distance between them. “Turn around for daddy.”

It’s instant, the way colour explodes across George’s cheeks, and John grins, seemingly delighted at the confirmation of something he already knew, shoving at his hips and George must be drunk or something, because he does it, only half catching another glimpse of Paul as he strides over and past him to flop down onto the couch beside John. The couch dips, and George struggles for purchase on - - well, anything as John turns him around and pulls him back into his lap, and with his legs slung over John’s, George can’t quite reach the floor. It leaves him steady and unsteady all at once, and he tries to scoot forwards, plant the soles of his feet on the floor, but John wraps an arm around his waist to tug him back again, pulling him into him until George’s arse is snug back against John’s half-hard cock, and he blinks, swallows, tries to catch his breath.

“This something we’re doing then?” Paul asks, and it doesn’t sound like it’s meant for George, so he doesn’t reply, even when John does.

“Don’t know yet,” John says. “Just seeing what’s there, you know. Rather enjoyed the other night me’self, and just wondered what it’d be to not be interrupted.”

Which - - George huffs out a breath, a heat operatin’ low in him in a way that feels - - unfair, more than anything, and he squirms back, relishes, at least, in the way John’s breath hitches.

“I’m here, you know,” he bites, and John bucks up against him in retaliation, leaving George gasping.

“I do know, actually, yes,” John says mildly, and behind him, Paul laughs.

“You’re a bit hard to miss right now,” Paul says, and he taps George on the shoulder with the side of his hand, and George turns to see Paul offering him a cigarette, an olive branch, maybe, or just - - them, because the thing is it all already feels horribly, terribly normal, and he’s not sure what to make of that. That he can be here, half-hard, in John’s lap, and Paul and John can just talk around him like they always do. He frowns, takes a drag on the cigarette, grinds down a little, just for the attention, just for John’s sharp intake of breath, and he knew it was inviting John to respond, he just didn’t know John would by grabbing his cock through his pants.

George yelps, the sound higher than he’d like, the feel of John’s hand on him just a fuckin’ lot really, and Paul laughs again, pushing off the couch to walk around to George’s front. It’s enough of a path is the thing, a deliberate movement that has George’s eyelids fluttering before they look up at him, and he does is the thing. Is left to look at Paul’s endless legs and his half hard cock and his broad chest and shoulders then his face, where he’s staring down at him, that same hot focus that he’s only used to Paul showing to John and girls, and his mouth feels suddenly dry as Paul gestures to the cigarette.

“You done with that then?”

Which - - honestly. George scowls, trying to ignore John’s hand fondling his cock, John’s own prick pressing against his arse,, takes another long drag just to annoy Paul, but Paul doesn’t look annoyed. Instead, he just watches George’s mouth, his eyes ducking to John’s hands, and George swallows a moan when John does something with his thumb, heat shooting through him before he passes the cigarette back to Paul.

Paul takes it.

“You do look good doing it, you know,” Paul says, dropping the cigarette back to his mouth as he watches him, and George feels - - messy - - his body moving in time with John’s thighs, his cock, his hand, and his eyes flutter shut as Paul asks: “You ever sucked a cock, Georgie?”

And it’s something old in him, something that’s seventeen and spitting mad at the suggestion, that stares flushes and furious up at Paul and says:

“Have you?”

Stupid, fuckin’ hell, he knows he has, and Paul grins, coy, while behind George, John laughs, the sound reverberating through his chest. It seems to echo around the room, all of it, and George is left flush cheeked as Paul drops a hand to his belt buckle.

“He’s really good at it,” John says behind him, breath hot against the shell of George’s ear, and George sucks in a breath. “But you know Paulie’s good at everything, don’t you? Drives you almost as mad as it drives me. Got the mouth for it, but reckon you do too, don’t we?”

Paul hums at that, the noise clear, loud, and that hits him too. Realisin’ what they’re sayin’, what they mean - - that they’ve talked about this, and the thought of that flicks around his head like a startled insect, and George sucks in a breath, grinds down, gyrates up into John’s hand, and it’s just - - it’s a bloody lot, really, and he feels it somewhere deep in him when Paul drops his belt.

“You want to give it a go?” John asks, right in his ear, as Paul unzips his fly. “Suck it and see?”

George’s mouth feels wet, saliva at his molars, canines, just building, and it’s not something he’s used to, never felt this hungry between any girls’ legs before, not even Pattie’s, but here he feel just - - feels it, prick throbbing, an energy pulsing low in his hips, and he wants it, as he watches Paul’s hands push his pants down, wants it as he slips his cock out, wants it as it bobs in the space between them, John leaning in, whispering:

“He’s big, don’t you think?”

And George swallows, nervous, suddenly, which is stupid, because he’s seen Paul’s cock before, felt it even, against his back when they shared a bed or between his legs the other night or years ago, in his hand in Hamburg, but it’s different to see it here, now, the smell of sex oozing in the air, and John working behind him, hand at his fly, unzipping, slipping his hand into his trousers, his underwear, and George’s mouth falls open when John’s hand finds his cock, and Paul must think it’s for him, because suddenly he’s pushing his own cock into George’s mouth.

“There we go,” John says again, breath in his ear, tilting sideways around so he can watch Paul’s cock slide deeper, and it tastes awful, like sweat and salt and skin, and there’s pubic hair catching in his teeth, and Paul’s so bloody hot, and his tongue works against the base before he can stop it, and Paul groans, and George feels it, looks up at him through his lashes, and he can see Paul’s got the cigarette back between his lips, one hand buried in John’s hair, and he leans forwards to drop the other to the back of the couch behind George’s head, like he’s avoiding touching him while pushing himself deeper. It hits regardless, is the thing, and George has nowhere to go with John behind him, and he squirms in John’s lap, struggling to take all of Paul, but relishing in the way John grunts, thrusts up against his arse, hand starting to work on firmer strokes, and it’s too much already.

He swallows around Paul’s cock, trying to catch his breath, but it just invites Paul to thrust forwards, making him choke, and he pulls his head back but then it’s John’s hand on his face, stroking down his cheekbone, gentle, but still firm, keeping him in place while Paul fucks him, and he feels that too – Paul in one stroke thrusting deliberately into George’s cheek, as if he wants John to feel it, through him, and Christ, George’s eyes slip shut, and he thinks fuck this but his body thinks fuck, this, and he comes in John’s hand, spilling hot over his fist, and it’s John who pulls it out, making a point to smear it wet over George’s face, laughing at his grimace as Paul fucks his mouth, and George punches John’s thigh, but John just jumps, pressing his hard cock further between George’s arse cheeks, which is - - something - - and that’s all it takes apparently for Paul, without warning, to come in George’s mouth.

It’s hot, his come, and salty, and George splutters, breath hitching when Paul finally takes his hand off the back of the couch to splay in George’s hair instead, and it shouldn’t matter, but it does, and it makes George lean into it all. Makes him feel it better – John at his back, Paul in front of him, and he clutches Paul’s waist a little tighter, holds him firmer, wants Paul to properly finish in him, but Paul won’t, pulling out with a wet sorry, the last of him finishing on George’s chin, and Paul’s breathing is the only sound in the room as George tries to pull himself together.

“Christ, come on,” John says suddenly, and oh, he’s still fuckin’ hard, George realises, right as he’s hoisted sideways off his lap onto the couch, and George thinks he should do something, but he doesn’t get the chance. As soon as he’s off, Paul is down, on his knees between John’s legs and taking his cock in his mouth, and George blinks rapidly, the picture taking a minute to get through all the channels because the thing is he knew, but he didn’t know. Didn’t know that Paul’s mouth widens, but his cheeks don’t hollow, didn’t know either that John’s attention had a new level to it, that his tongue could tangle, that his body could lean to take in every way George had learnt it couldn’t.

He swallows, watching, fucking useless suddenly, on the couch as Paul sucks John off, but the second George tries to wipe his face off, John grabs his wrist to stop him.

“No, not yet.”

And George just stares at him, watching his eyes blown wide as they shift from Paul between his legs to George beside him, as they take in George’s aching mouth and come and spit damp face, and George shivers, his gaze dipping back down to Paul who’s definitely got like - - fucking - - technique - - which is also something George isn’t sure he ever wanted to know, and it’s like John sees it because he says:

“He’s very good at it. Better than you, from the looks of it at least.”

And George flushes bright, glancing down at Paul, who’s moved his hands up to clasp at John’s hips, keep him neatly in place, and then his own hand, balled up beneath the wrist John’s holding down.

“It was my first - - I mean. I hadn’t done it before,” George says, swallowing, and John sucks in a breath, hips thrusting a little harder into Paul’s mouth.

“Wasn’t a criticism,” John insists, but it sounded like one, and George leans back into the couch, sullen as John groans at something Paul does with his tongue. “It’s just like - - he blows, you get fucked, you know? Just open your mouth and take it.

The blood rushes in George’s ears as John continues:

“Paul likes that. Likes being in control, you know that.”

“I hadn’t done it before,” George repeats, and a part of him almost says I’ll get better, but the thing is, he knows from John’s face he doesn’t want him to. Knows that he wants him here, under them forever, and George hates the fact that he can feel it, the part of him that wants that to. That likes being the one they get to teach and tease and dote on, that there’s no one else really that gets that, but oh, Christ, he hopes that’s a very, very small part of him.

“You like somebody else calling the shot, there’s nothing – ah – wrong with that. You - - ” John grins, reaching up to thumb the come at the corner of his mouth between his lips, shoving his thumb in in the process, and George doesn’t suck on it, he doesn’t, but he says:  “Wear it well.”

Which is fuckin’ rude more than anything, and George bats his hand away from his mouth, and John lets him. It sparks something in him. Something mad and hot and young and old all at once, because he shakes his head, says:

“I don’t - - I mean - - I could call the shots. I have ideas, you know.”

And he means it because he does, but John blinks at him, curiosity and amusement plain as anything on his face, even with his cheeks flushed and mouth open with whatever it is Paul’s doing with his tongue, and the thought makes George break eye contact. Makes him glance down again at where Paul’s head is bobbing in John’s lap, where his hands are tight at John’s hips, holding him in place, and the picture sparks in him hot. He wets his lips, then feels them feel strange – bruised maybe – and he blinks, becomes too aware again of the taste of Paul’s come, and he’d wipe at his face, only John’s still holding his wrist down. Only one, mind, but it’s instruction enough not to raise the other.

“Fuckin’ hell, Paul,” John grunts, breaths coming shorter as he gets closer, one of Paul’s hands moving to fondle John’s balls, and then everything happens so quickly. John comes and Paul takes it, Paul, who’s about the fussiest person George knows, but Paul doesn’t stay down for long, suddenly surging up onto his feet and clambering over the couch and George barely has time to process the movement before Paul’s grabbing his chin and his lips are on his and then - - a shock of thick, salty come – John’s come – is spat into his mouth. George gags, and John groans, laughing as he says:

“Christ, filthy, you are.”

And Paul just grins as John lets go of George’s wrist and Paul somehow manages to squeeze between them on the couch, turning sideways to kiss John properly. The room really stinks now – sweaty and fucked out and George is aware he’s probably the worst of them, of it, swiping a hand across his face and catching the new dribble of come at his chin which is just bloody typical of Paul to do when he was the one who sucked John off, yet here George is with the fuckin’ mess of it. He lifts his shirt enough to wipe his face, the wet sounds of Paul and John kissing beside him only serving to annoy him more, and so in the end he gets up on wobbly legs, everything that had just felt so good, suddenly feeling a bit much, and he’s barely a few steps from the couch when John stops sucking on Paul’s tongue long enough to call out.

“Oi, aren’t you gonna say thank you to daddy?”

He accompanies it with a smack to Paul’s arse, and George can feel it, the heat in his face, chest, gut, and he flips him off, while Paul laughs, breathless, shoving at John a bit, and George rolls his eyes, starts towards the bathroom only to hear John’s voice again.

“Alright, well, better wash up before dinner then, son, and we can talk about all your ideas.”

He calls it down the hall after him, and Paul’s laughing harder even as he says stop it, quit pickin’ on him and George tries to figure out if this is better or worse than them applauding and running commentary his first time in Hamburg.

Worse, he suspects, even if he does end up wanking in the shower and pretending his hand is John’s.

*

Thing is, he can’t stop thinking about it. John acting like he just knows what George wants, which he can’t, because George doesn’t really know what he wants, and he knows he’s only going to be worse about all of it now that he’s had him in his - - his bloody lap, and George scowls, burying himself in the duvet, eyes open and skin prickly and that sated feeling didn’t stick around at all, and he hears the door creak open and Paul slip in, freshly showered and smellin’ like soap and shampoo, and looking handsome and stupid and just like - - him - - as he pads to the end of George’s bed and tries to suss him out.

“You asleep?” Paul whispers, and George doesn’t answer, relieved when it results in Paul going to his own bed and climbing in, only he feels it. When Paul looks over at him, and he must see enough of him to realise he’s awake, because he huffs. “You just not talking to me now, then?”

George resolutely ignores him, and Paul flops onto his back, makes an annoyed noise, and then suddenly gets out of bed and rounds the room to George’s. He tugs on the duvet, and George clutches it harder, until Paul yanks it hard enough to push it away, and then he lies down, curling up behind George’s back like he belongs there, and something in George’s belly tightens.

“What are you doing?”

“What’s it look like?”

George blinks, the night air humming, and he shakes his head into the pillow, refusing to answer, because this is just so bloody typical of Paul to play up with John then into George when the circumstances changed or whatever, and George is not going to allow it, quite frankly, he’s not, but…

“Know you like a cuddle after sex,” Paul says with a yawn. “But you left too quick.”

“Left because John was being a git, sayin’ all that.”

“John just likes to talk sometimes, you know that.”

His breath is warm on the shell of George’s ear, and he wets his lips, and yeah, George does know that, but Paul knows that too.

“You let him,” George says tentatively, and Paul just huffs.  

“Was a bit preoccupied, wasn’t I?”

And George flushes, remembering Paul sucking John’s cock, which is a terrible idea, because then he’s half hard again, and also it’s a load of bollocks, because John had said some of that stuff when Paul was obviously not preoccupied, and he thinks this is a chance to prove them both wrong. To show he can take the lead actually, and he turns around in bed and kisses him quickly before shoving Paul onto his back. Paul makes a noise of surprise, but kisses him back the next time, mouth chasing George’s, and this is better, George thinks, to have Paul underneath him for a change.

They kiss in flurries of attention and with wet, open mouths, and there’s no battle or argument, but there’s something that still feels like bickering anyway, with the way George tries to push Paul’s hands over his head and the way Paul too-easily wriggles his wrists out of George’s grasp and holds onto his briefly instead before squeezing them tight and dragging them down in a way that makes George groan into Paul’s mouth. George lets him though, and he kisses down Paul’s neck, tugs his t-shirt down enough to suck onto his clavicle like he did Bobbie’s in the car, and there’s something good in that – feeling the way it makes Paul buck up against him.

He tugs his wrists free of Paul’s grip, nosing down his body to his crotch where he’s already half-hard in his pyjama pants, and George feels saliva pool behind his molars again, and Christ, this can’t be a thing he loves, not sure how he can have wanted nothing but cigarettes in his mouth before last week, and now be makin’ a habit of - - well. Things that pointedly aren’t cigarettes, but he feels almost urgent with it, desperate, the way he needs to tug down Paul’s pyjama pants and he hears Paul above him say:

“What are you - - George - - you don’t have to - - ”

As George takes him in his mouth.

And right, too far, George thinks, choking suddenly, throat clenching, and above him Paul moans, the noise loud in the quiet of the room, burying his hands in George’s hair and holding him there, and George’s eyelids flutter shut as he tries to relax his throat and adjust to the weight of a lot of Paul in his mouth, which - - fuckin’ hell, he suddenly feels very, very sober.

He swallows, and Paul’s grip tightens in his hair, and this is a cock in his mouth, and he’s with a bloke, and he’s with Paul, he’s with Paul for the second time tonight already, and George’s hands come up to grip Paul’s thighs – nice distraction, that, girls have legs too, but Paul’s legs are covered in soft hair and they’re thicker than any girls’ George has been with, and also he thinks he might be bloody insane pretending he’s touching a girl when Paul’s cock is in his mouth.

So he tries to focus on that instead – on the taste and the weight on his tongue, of Paul’s hoarse breaths above him, and it’s still strange, only when he blinks his eyes open, Paul is staring down at him through long lashes, his attention, for once, entirely and properly fixed on him.

George sucks in a shaky breath, feels his hips cant down, thrusting against the mattress, and he starts to suck, his cheeks hollowing and tongue dragging, and he tries to remember what he’s had girls do to him before, what Pattie’s done, and Paul’s eyes start to glaze, his breaths deepen, as he gets harder in George’s mouth.

He tastes cleaner than he did earlier – benefits of the shower – the velvety texture of his prick like nothing George has ever tasted, and he presses his tongue up against the base of it, feels a reverence to the act, and his eyelashes flutter shut as Paul drags one of the hands in his hair around to thumb first at his cheekbone, then at the corner of his mouth, tugging there.

“Really were made for this,” Paul mutters above him, and George feels it echo hot in him. “Your cheekbones - - all angles, you are. That bird was right, you are pretty like this.”

The mention of Faye makes George pant, lose focus on suction and before he can get too in his head about messing up the rhythm, Paul moves his hand back into his hair and takes over the pace, keeping George’s head steady as he fucks into his mouth. It’s hotter than it should be, and George rubs himself against the mattress between Paul’s legs, hands fisting Paul’s hips to try and maintain some semblance of control, but it’s useless now really – Paul’s back in charge, guiding and sure, and George hates that he thinks he might love it, hates that this is just another thing Paul’s so fucking good at, and that he knows how to use George in a way that makes him feel fucking good too, and Paul is grunting, starting to move faster, whatever song’s in his head right now reaching a crescendo and George can taste the first salty beads of pre-come against the roof of his mouth, but Paul doesn’t come in him this time.

No, this time, Paul pushes George off and reaches for a tissue from the box on the bedside table, taking his cock in hand and wanking right up and close to George’s face, and George’s mouth feels wet and bruised and his jaw aches, but he can’t stop staring at the motion of Paul’s hand against his cock, and he’s never thought cocks could be pretty before, but Christ, he thinks Paul’s is, which is not something he can ever, ever tell him lest his bloody ego gets so big it books its own tour, and George can only watch as Paul comes into the tissue with a whine.

Time seems to slow again, and George is only half aware of his own straining erection, the way his hips are moving against the mattress, humping some of the bundled up duvet. Only vaguely, because he can’t stop thinking about putting Paul’s spent cock back in his mouth, or of going next door and maybe seeing if he can suck John off for the first time instead, or - - Christ, fingers, a cigarette, the sharp point of Paul’s hip, and the latter’s right there, so he does that, working his mouth to suck a hickey there, but Paul exhales above him and is suddenly hooking his hands in George’s armpits and tugging him up the bed instead.

He doesn’t wriggle his own way down the bed, no, instead, Paul just shoves George’s pyjama pants and his underwear down his thighs and takes him in hand, a practiced, patient exercise that George still remembers from Hamburg, until George is panting desperately in his shoulder, and Paul does something with his wrist that is definitely new, and definitely makes George feel like he could cry.

“It’s not a competition, you know,” Paul says suddenly, tone knowing and a little haughty, and George knows he’s only saying it because if it was a competition, Paul would be winning, as bloody always. George bucks his hips, as if to say that, and Paul presses a hand to the back of George’s neck to keep his head pressed into his shoulder. “You don’t have to prove something, if that’s what this was all about just now. Not to me and not to John either. You know we’ll look after you, Georgie.”

And he hates it, the way he whines, the way he sucks on Paul’s shoulder just because he can, and it’s only another tug, maybe two, before he’s spilling into Paul’s fist, and then he really does feel spent, thrusting loose and wobbly through the aftershocks of his orgasm, and Paul’s grip is firm on the back of his neck. Outside, the girls scream, and for the first time tonight he can actually hear them, but Paul’s hand keeps him steady, keeps him here, in his skin, even as he lifts his soiled hand to wipe George’s come off onto his t-shirt.

“Look after each other, don’t we?” Paul says, voice softer than it was a minute ago, and yeah, George thinks, they do.