The Beatles Oneshot Series: Camera
1 of 20: Camera
Pairing: John/Paul
Disclaimer: I do not own the The Beatles. Any events here are purely fictional.
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John sat on the couch, with his arms across his chest like a petulant child with a scowl to match, while thinking of the nastiest pranks he could pull on his drummer, Ringo.
Why?
Because Ringo’s stupid gift to Paul is the reason why he had to look behind his shoulder to see if anyone was going take a picture of him pis-
Hmm…this should be explained a bit more, shouldn’t it?
You see, it all started at Paul’s birthday party last week.
The party was a small affair with just them and Brian attending it. They still managed to have lots of fun even just by themselves through pillow fights, food fights and party games. Everyone, even sourpuss Brian, was all smiles and laughs for Paul’s special day.
He even managed to steal a peck or two from the birthday boy himself and got a cute blush from Paul instead of the usual ‘Oi! Not in front of the others!’ lecture. For a while, John couldn’t help but think no way could anything spoil the mood.
Then it was time for the gifts.
“Wow, Rings!” Paul gasped, lifting the lid to see the camera set looking at up at him. “You…you shouldn’t have!”
“It wasn’t a problem,” Ringo assured him, “I knew you’ve been interested in taking photography in a while and I had money laying around.” Ringo looked at George and grinned. “Better than socks, I suppose.”
“Hey!”
While George and Ringo bickered, Paul held up the camera and admired it. He looked a lot like a kid in the candy store. John though it was pretty cute.
Within an hour or so, Paul was running around taking pictures of everyone and everything he could point the camera at (except at the elusive Brian, who would actually duck behind people to avoid being seen but that’s another story) and SNAP!
He particularly liked taking John’s mug and, at first, John didn’t mind. He liked the attention Paul gave to him and strutted around for the camera like an ‘oversized peacock’ as George wisely observed.
But as the week passed, the whole ‘look here John and smile’ thing he had with Paul has been wearing John down as of late.
John didn’t want to be a pisser in Paul’s happy mood, and Paul has been happy as of late, but this was just getting ridiculous! He couldn’t take a step in their apartment without the damn contraption being shoved into his face and the annoying flash. And it was almost over anything he did.
He takes a nap?
SNAP!
Takes a piss?
SNAP?
Eats?
SNAP!
Sleeps?
SNAP!
Breaths?
SNAP SNAP SNAP!
Paul would have taken a picture of them having sex if John hadn’t put his foot down on that subject. And John was pretty sure Paul somehow managed to still do that.
Just thinking about those flashes was giving John a headache. Getting up from the couch, he went over to the kitchen to get some ice when he spotted something on the table. It looked like a…book?
John did a double take, his eyebrows raised in interest. Odd, Paul wouldn’t just leave things lying around their place since he was such a neat freak at times.
He went over to the table and saw the bold letters on the front of the wide but thin book, proclaiming:
PAUL’S STUFF
DO NOT TOUCH OR TAKE A PEEK.
THAT MEANS YOU GEORGE.
Aww, it looks like George would never get that label off him anytime soon. You try to peek into someone’s journal one time…
John was about to respect Paul’s wishes for privacy when he remembered what the man had been doing to him for a while. He considered this tit for tat, just for a little compensation for almost going blind for the past few days.
Paulie should consider him lucky that I just want to take a peek into this, John thought while sitting down back on the couch with the book in his hands, I could be demanding more time to shag.
Looking at the cover for a few seconds, John opened the book to see that it was a scrapbook.
Flipping through the pages, he laughed at the moments Paul put in here. The note George sent to him to explain the elaborate prank on Ringo, his first fan mail from some girl named Linda, a ticket to somewhere, his luck penny.
And then there are the photographs. Ringo, George, some areas he must have visited.
Hey! Paul did get Brian’s pictures after all.
John smiled at the moments Paul managed to capture and keep and turned the page to…
Oh.
Two pages full of nothing but photos of John, whether it came from the newspaper, the magazines or pictures he took himself. John smiling, John pouting, John with the others, John by himself, John playing the guitar. Small pictures, big pictures, it didn’t matter long as it had John as the subject.
And in the very middle, Paul wrote ‘My John’.
John felt his heartstrings being played with while looking the pictures of himself, realizing how much Paul thought of him. He continued on through the scrapbook, looking at it more carefully now.
Each page was filled with something that meant to Paul. His friends, family and life. He made sure to find a memory of it so he would never forget it.
But there was something missing in this scrapbook, John though but he couldn’t place his finger on it. What could it be?
Bing! Light bulb moment.
“Of course!”
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Paul came back a while later and John was reading a book, not the scrapbook, with the camera in his hands. It would have irritated John but no longer.
“Wait Paul!” John said when Paul was raising it to take a picture. “You shouldn’t do that!”
“What do you mean?” Paul asked, lowering the camera.
John sat up and tugged Paul back to the door, a mischievous smile on his face.
“I don’t like that smile on your face, Lennon,” Paul said with a smile on his own face as they practically ran down the hall.
“Don’t worry, you’re going to love my idea,” John said and spotted what he needed: Another person.
He shouted to the person, “hey! Hey! Can you take our picture? My friend here is making a scrapbook and-”
“You read it!”
“-and I want to make sure he gets more memories. With him in them.”
“John…”
“I love you too, Paul.”
The person agreed and within a few seconds, after striking a pose, John’s arm around Paul’s shoulder as they leaned to the camera, faces flushed and eyes bright, the person told them to smile and-
SNAP!
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And yeah! I’m finally getting around doing the Beatles oneshot series I promised you guys I’ll do. I am actually keeping my promises. Holy shit, I bet this is a sign of the Apocalypse.
As you can tell, I did very little research on the camera’s the best I did was just Google ‘camera in the 70’s’.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this one and the many others to follow! Thanks for taking your time to read this.
