[The Beatles] {Fic} George Is Never Going to the Loo Alone Again
Title: George Is Never Going to the Loo Alone Again
Series: Jeopardy-Friendly
Genre: The Beatles
Rating: R (for bad language, violence and sexual themes)
Summary: After Hamburg, he’s come to understand that fewer people around meant fewer people to save his arse if some nutter or a possessive club-manager decided to have it in for him.
Warnings: Brutal scenes, attempted rape, and non-explicit violence.
Disclaimer: This never happened. This is a piece of fiction based upon the public images of real people. In no way do I claim this to have ever happened.
A/N: This story is inspired by the scene in Help! where George gets his shirt sucked off by a hand dryer, and by a mean, nasty dark dream I had last night while dozing and waiting for my cat to knock at the front door to come in.
Jeopardy Friendly
2 - George is Never Going to the Loo Alone Again.
July, 1961
Bob Wooler was on fire. The club was insane. They were crazy - the crowd was crazy. It was all crazy, and they played like madmen from seven o'clock in the evening onwards. George thought he was going to pass out it was so intense.
Too many hours, songs and Preludin later and they were ready to call it a night. He’d sweated buckets beneath the leather, the claustrophobic enclosure of The Cavern, its spotlight, and its patrons cramming into every nook and cranny leeching every bit of liquid out of his body. Pete looked about dead on his feet - exactly how he felt - John was a little better off despite tearing his voice up again, and Paulie was still wired and would be for a while yet, he knew. It always took him longer to come down.
“Where we goin', fellas?” Johnny asked them customarily, trying to help Paul shrug off his guitar but having trouble untangling his gangly ever-moving arms from the strap. George had been waiting for John to ask that question for the last hour or so. He near shouted the response, not bothering to keep his tone down. Desire to be out of there and the need for some fresh air - perfume and sweat, God, it was in every mouthful - driving him to uncharacteristic joviality. His head was aching, vision a little blurred. He was pretty sure his fingers had never felt this numb outside of him sitting on his hands. Experimentally, he flexed them, hissing as phantom pain snapped down them and his knuckles clicked back into place. A pleasant tingle settled in. He shrugged his shoulders and swung his arms, and the tingle moved steadily up them, chasing away a bit of the ache.
Pete nudged his shoulder when he passed, accepting a couple of hugs and a thin-lipped kiss from the girls up the front who had stayed the whole time, jostling him into a particularly clingy girl that he had to disentangle himself from and apologise profusely to. His bladder was complaining, achingly full. Being shoved around didn’t help him any.
“Gotta take a leak,” he told Pete, waiting for the nod of acknowledgement before taking off for the shadowed tunnel that housed their dressing room and a toilet. Wouldn’t do to be left behind again. Knowing his luck he’d probably get mugged or rained on while walking home.
The tunnel was narrow as hell, and he wished for the fiftieth time that it had working lights instead of the flickering, unreliable things spaced too far apart. He hadn’t a clue how the masses navigated at all when the club was at its busiest. It was a bit dead now, though, only the desperate hangers-on still there. It always made him a little nervous. After Hamburg, he’d come to understand that fewer people around meant fewer people to save his arse if some nutter or a possessive club-manager decided to have it in for him.
The loo was empty, and he quickly did his business, zipping up and washing his hands. The fist that came out of nowhere and slammed into his face naturally surprised him. He bit back a shout, grunting as the force of the punch snapped his head back. And it was a hell of a lot of force. Skin mashed and he felt something in his face pop audibly. The sink against his back left a line of fire against his spine. Blinking blearily, he made out his attacker and launched his reply.
The guy was shorter than him, but not by much, enough that the next punch that landed had some significant upward force behind it and succeeded in snapping his head back again. His arms were tired from holding the same position for hours with little break in between, and he was dehydrated and dizzy. What punches he returned he felt were weak and ineffective, though beneath the encompassing numbness he could feel the grate of bone on bone and the stickiness of blood, so he must’ve done some damage. He didn’t know how long they exchanged fists and knees to bodies for, but eventually the inevitable happened, and he got into trouble, another piece of jeopardy knocking at his door.
The back of his head cracked against the concrete floor as he was thrown to the ground. The club must’ve been some old war bunker or something ‘cause everything was concrete. He folded up and didn’t think anymore about that when what must have been a boot landed a solid kick to his stomach. Curled into a ball hurt less, but he didn’t get to stay in that position too long, though, as the sour bastard beating him up made him roll onto his back. He shouted in alarm as whoever he was grabbed him by the neck, worried about strangulation, but instead felt his shirt being torn open. What the fuck was going on? More confusion as the guy smacked his hands away, slapped his face like he was a woman, then snogged him.
What. The. Fuck.
Illegal, was the first thought that made it through his surprise. It was a bloody stupid thought, really, as it didn’t help him get the nutter off him or his fag tongue out of his mouth. The Hell?
It was gone before he could bite down, leaving the burning taste of alcohol and some kind of meat behind. He tore his mouth away, but the hand tangled in his hair yanked him back again. No tongue this time. Thank God.
Then it occurred to him that thanking God for no tongue when he was still getting mouth-mauled by another guy was bloody stupid, and he swung his arm up and punched the guy around the side of his head. It only made him angrier and leave off the mouth, instead touching him elsewhere. It occurred to George again that he might be in some real trouble now, and unless the other guys were in a particular rush to get out of The Cavern, they probably weren’t going to come looking for him for a while. Well, shit.
Fighting was okay. At least it was productive, if a little useless. On your back had never really been much of a defensible position, and George’s long, skinny legs were useless at trying to get the other guy off him.
“Fucker!” he shouted, hoping someone would hear. “Get offa me!” he struck out, catching the other guy on the chin with his elbow. Another fist to his face for the effort, and now half of his head felt like it was on fire. The other half felt like it wasn’t even there anymore.
His hands slapped against the concrete as the other guy lifted off of him and grabbed his hips, rolling him effortlessly. Fuck being exhausted. George stubbornly refused to roll onto his stomach, bracing himself so that the most the sick bastard could move him over to was his side. Unfortunately, he didn’t realise that that would leave easy access for the guy’s hands to get at the front of his trousers.
He shouted, angry as hell at the first touch of those fingers against his cock, compulsively bucking away from them. Even through the leather, he could feel them, greedily grasping and making him sick. Fuck if he wanted this. Fuck if he could understand anybody wanting this. He threw his elbow back, grunting, trying to knock the bastard off him; shouting again when the hands managed to unfasten his trousers, but feeling a sadistic kind of glee rush through him when the other guy’s tugging couldn’t pull them down off his sweaty skin. George grinned, tasting blood, never more happy about the leather trousers than he was now. Bugger was, though, that they had to be worn naked, and now they were caught somewhere on his barely-there arse. If the bastard managed to get them off then he would have easy access.
Well, fuck.
Yeah. That’s what was going to happen. He was going to get fucked.
He shouted again. Anger, hate, fear, all rolled into one fierce yell and ineffectual struggle, and as it died away he finally heard it.
“George?”
Paul. Paul was coming. Thank fucking God. His heart was rabbiting in his chest, his shoulders bucking as he tried to throw the other guy off. He couldn’t lie there with the bastard panting in his ear doing nothing. Paul might think he wanted it and just leave him.
“George, we gotta go! The others are in the car already.”
He didn’t think the bastard on top of him had heard him yet. Either that or he didn’t care. He hadn’t moved off him, and his struggling was only helping him to tug the leather pants sticking like glue to his skin, down off his arse.
“George?” And then he was there. Thank god. “The Hell!?”
Paul was looking between them; through his blurred vision he could make out the shock that ran across his features. Followed by disgust and then the anger. His face was always so expressive, swimming through three expressions in a space of time barely long enough to draw breath.
“Get the fuck off him!” came the enraged shout George was waiting to hear. The guy on top of him didn’t even flinch, just pressed closer and yanked harder at his leather trousers to get them off, lurching George’s hips entirely off the ground. Then the weight was gone, borne away by an impressive flying tackle that George only saw half of. He scrambled away, clumsily making it up onto hands and knees, then shakily, using the cold wall to haul himself up onto his feet.
Paul was laying into the guy by one of the cubicles, fists almost a blur, though that could have had more to do with George’s unfocused vision than any superhero speed Paul had. He wished he could help, but he barely had the strength enough to pull up and refasten his trousers. He slumped against the wall exhaustedly, clutching the torn edges of his shirt together. For a moment, everything seemed to fuzz out, leaving only the numbness of his limbs and the muffled sounds of fists on flesh and pained grunts and angry shouts. Paul was cursing up a storm. George had never heard him sound so aggressive, and he couldn’t help but feel a mixture of relief and pleased surprise at Paul’s reaction. Sometimes, being the baby might be a good thing; especially if he kept getting into these kinds of messes.
Suddenly, Paul was in front of him. George blinked, eyes slipping to the slumped form of the other guy in the loo. All he could see of him were two legs sticking out of a cubicle. His eyes slid back to Paul when he realised the muffled murmur he was hearing was Paul talking to him.
“You all right?”
The other guy must have gotten a hit in at some point; there was a smudge of blood in the corner of Paul’s mouth.
“George?”
“Yeah, what?”
Paul had ducked his head to meet his eyes and was watching him carefully. “I said, are you all right?”
George restrained a shudder at the thought of what would’ve happened if Paul had been any later in looking for him. A grimace crossed his lips, though, despite his control.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be fine.”
Paul glanced over his shoulder at the legs. “Sick fuck,” he said.
“Is he dead?”
“Nah. You think we'd be standing here if he was dead?”
"Nah, probably not."
Paul looked at him again. There was something in his eyes that George couldn’t decipher. Then again, he had a hard time reading most people. “We should go,” Paul said.
“Yeah.”
“Can you walk?” He half reached out to steady him as he pulled away from the wall, but George couldn’t restrain the reflexive jerk away from the touch to his shoulder.
“Sorry,” Paul said quickly. “Jus’ wanna help.”
George sighed, feeling as though he was expelling terror and anger both through one tiny, pitiful breath. He knew that. Knew he needed it, too. Could barely feel his face, and his legs were shaky. Shock or something, maybe.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” he acquiesced, shooting Paul a grateful look. “Thanks.”
This time he allowed the touch, restraining the urge to pull away, feeling Paul snake an arm around his shoulders and relieved, he gave him a significant portion of his weight to carry.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Paul muttered, helping him out the door and down the long narrow tunnel. Side by side their elbows almost brushed the wall. “Might have to take you to the hospital.”
George grunted, clutching the tears of his shirt closer together with the arm that wasn’t gripping Paul’s shoulder. “Why’s that?”
“You seen yourself?”
“Bit too busy to look in a mirror, Paul.”
It was Paul’s turn to grunt. “You’re a mess. Something’s bound to need stitches.”
“Great.”
“Mmhm.”
How they made it to the street George didn’t know. His vision kept skipping and he swore he must have blanked out somewhere on the stairs. The next thing he knew he was tripping off the gutter, partial awareness slamming back into him with a jolt of his head smacking against Paul’s chin. He heard the click of car doors opening; Pete swearing, questions.
“What the hell happened to him?”
His chest felt cold. He realised belatedly that his torn shirt had fallen open again. His arm hung limply at his side, requiring too much effort to lift.
Paul’s voice rumbled pleasantly like a purring bass in his ear. “Help me get him in, Johnny.”
Another set of hands, and George didn’t have the effort left to fight. Instead, he let himself fall, slumping down into John and Paul’s arms, letting them catch him and load him clumsily into the car.
“Better take us to the hospital, Neil,” he heard Pete say. “He’s bleedin’ all over the place.”
Warm bodies to either side of him, the throbbing in his head sharpened abruptly, and he slumped down against them as he fell unconscious.
When George woke up in hospital 12 hours later he had a splitting headache and a cotton dry mouth. His face, hands and ribs hurt. He'd never actually been involved in a serious fight before, and if this was how the aftermath felt he didn't want to be involved in another one again. How could John invite this kind of pain all the time?
He imagined that he could quickly grow tired of waking up in hospital. He looked over to his right, hoping to see a glass of water or something on the bedside cabinet he knew would be there. He smiled, wincing at the sharp bite of pain.
Paul was dozing in the chair beside the bed.
End part 2