Be Happy, Baby (Chapter 18)
Title: Be Happy, Baby (Chapter 18)
Author: samberrie (itsa me)
Pairing: John/Paul and George/Ringo
Rating: PG again.
Warnings: Naughty language, crude humor, sexual mentioning’s, UST-ish.
Time Frame: Second American Tour, 1965.
Summary: In this chapter, Paul’s pondering.
Disclaimer!: I own no Beatles. None of their songs and none of their pretty faces. None of this ever happened. ‘Tis fiction my dears.
A/N: Chapter 18! Hey, hi, how ya durrrn? Second HB concert, yeah buddy. I jacked some of the dialogue et mannerisms from the actual Hollywood Bowl concert because I care that much. Sorry, chapter’s a little boring but necessary for la progression.
Find all chapters there you silly cow.
If you can’t make your mind up,
We’ll never get started..
CHAPITRE DIX-HUIT
Concert at the Hollywood Bowl : 2
Every audience seemed to be the perfect cookie cut-out of the last.
They all looked the same… sounded the same... cried in the same key. Most of the time it felt like they were in the same city with a newly remodeled stage.
Hell, they even smelled the same. The air was always contaminated with the smell of thirteen-year old girls who stole some of their mother’s overly-flowered perfume by the bottle and bathed in it in hopes that the Beatles would somehow smell how ‘grown-up’ they were.
And Paul smelled ‘em alright, each and every one of ’em. You’d think he’d be immune to it by now, but every time he’d hit the stage- there it was. A burst of Chanel No.5 - yeah he knew perfumes, so what? - and other various fragrances never failed to light up his nostrils in a flowery flame.
He liked concerts and all, don’t get him wrong, he loved concerts. Overly-perfumed teenagers couldn’t put a stop to his adoration of being on stage. It was exhilarating to say the least no matter who you were, and you’d still get a wonderful rush as soon as you set foot in front of the audience. But lately something was… off.
Being the center of attention in front of thousands of fans was what he had worked his ass off to achieve after all, but now that he’d gotten a taste of it, being on stage had slowly started to lose its fresh and zesty appeal. It was a bit stale. He hated admitting it, but that extravagant waterfall of adrenaline he longed for was getting weaker, so weak that he wouldn’t even describe it as a waterfall. It was more of a mini-cliff at the end of a shallow river that transitioned into too-calm waters.
It was weird though, this new feeling of distaste. Paul couldn’t even recall exactly when it had started; it must have just sort of hobbled along behind him on its one leg until Paul finally came to a stop long enough for it to tackle him to the ground, holding him there for the full length of this stupid day so far. He wasn’t completely defenseless lying under that one-legged bitch called Hea-.. er, I mean, annoyance though. He really had tried to shake it off earlier by being positive and upbeat, but he’d eventually given up and put away his fake smiles to just stay neutral.
In Paul’s mind, it was always better to appear emotionless in public than to appear riddled with sadness or any other emotion for that matter. You could never let it seem like your emotions were controlling you like a helpless little puppet. You’re the puppet master, you’re in control. Always. No exceptions. Publicly losing it is only for the Club of Weak-People, which Paul was definitely not member of.
So he had followed this little tidbit of philosophy throughout most of his life, even before he officially became a Beatle. It just made life a lot easier to take in stride, and Paul was constantly in stride.
His questioning of his life’s ups and downs was put on hold as he played the ending chords for Dizzy Miss Lizzy with ease. Taking a step back, he gave on dramatic bow as the crowd cheered.
They were about half way through their planned set list so that meant… Paul straightened up and saw John waiting for him with the same irritated look that had occupied his face for a good part of the day. He looked down and pretended to be watching the wires so he wouldn’t trip over them as he started to walk across the stage, invisibly fretting.
Ticket to Ride would be the first song of the evening that he and John would need to share a mic on, not that Paul was worried about that or anything.. he just.. didn’t want to do it. But it was a good song, a damn good song, too good to fuck up.
As he walked the twenty feet over to John, a warm gust of flowery wind he hadn’t noticed before suddenly made him feel entirely too hot. Now that he thought about it, it had to be no earlier than 7 p.m. yet the sun was still beating down on their sweaty brows. Jesus, what was up with this California weather? There’s such a thing as too much sun, isn’t there? Whatever, Paul had bigger things to worry about than sweat.
Paul heard the crowd’s screaming surge when he finally came to stand near the microphone next to the rhythm guitarist. Why they were screaming - he had no idea even after all this time, but scream they did. He looked up to see John adjust his Dylan cap and quirk an eyebrow at the bassist, nodding towards the electrical stick. He’d come to recognize that nod as a general signal to introduce the next song and so he hopped to it, trying ignore the irrational swirling in his stomach.
He tilted the mic down and decided to make this as quick as possible. “Uh, thank you very much. Thank you,” The crowd squealed in unison when Paul gave a quick wave to the middle section, giving him that familiar feeling of self-satisfaction as they swooned.
“Our next song… that we’d like to do, it’s called,” Paul licked his dry lips and scanned the crowd which had gotten steadily louder with his few words. “We’d like to sing a song.. wow,” He chuckled at the growing frenzy in the crowd. “, it’s a song… oh wow.” All the girls in the crowd seemed to be frantically waving their arms like they were seizing with mouths wide opened and emitting their loudest sounds.
Paul gave a bewildered smile. He could still never feel it coming when the crowd was about to go into one of their random frenzies that seemed to happen without warning. “Can you hear me?” He yelled jokingly over their hysteria, although he was seriously unsure.
Their screaming doubled in decibels to answer his question, which he assumed meant yes. Paul laughed and looked back at John whose expression had softened slightly in amusement, though it still held that irritable look about it.
“Alright, the song, that we’re gonna sing which was on our record before, uh, this last one..” The crowd did that thing again where they screamed even louder as John took a step forward next so that he was next to Paul and assumed the right position to start playing. The bassist got a familiar feeling of exhilaration when John looked into his eyes with something other than contempt for the first time all day.
It was familiar to him, this intense eye contact thing that he and John always had going. It was like learning to ride a bicycle - difficult to master at first but once you had finally gotten the hang of it, it was pretty much impossible to forget how to do it. You’d get on that bike and, sure, you might fall a few times, but that ability to get back on and keep riding would be forever stored in your brain mechanical-doohickeys.
That’s sort of how his relationship with John had always been, even when they were in this awkward after-sex and after-queer-love-confession stage, which were both completely new stages all together, even when this baffling feeling of regret on Paul’s part, they still fell back into old habits and ended up conversing with their pupils.
Something inside of him did a little flip but he wasn’t sure if he liked it or not.
Paul stared at him for perhaps a little longer than intended while trying to decipher what John was saying, but finally turned back to the crowd with confliction pumping through his veins. “Well, this song is called Ticket to Ride!” The crowd screamed for no definite reason and Paul took a step to his right to give John some room.
George took his cue and played the opening chords in time with Ringo and prompted John to get ready. Paul was watching the older man’s profile as he started to sing with a newly formed feeling of something he couldn’t describe when he missed his own cue.
“…I think it’s todaaay, yeah.”
Paul saw John look at him out of the corner of his eye bemusedly but continue to sing without him. The bassist blinked and realized that he was supposed to be singing right now, but for no good reason, wasn’t. Paul smiled meekly, mostly for show and lack of any smooth maneuver to cover-up his mistake, and quickly leaned in in time for the next line.
“The girl that’s drivin’ me mad… is goin’ awaaaay.”
Paul shifted his eyes to John for a split second for a reason beyond him, thinking maybe their eye game was still in session, but disengaged when he saw that the rhythm guitarist’s eyes were on the crowd.
“She’s got a ticked to ri-ide. She’s got a ticket to ri-i-ide. She’s got a ticket to riiide, but she don’t care..”
The bassist kept his eyes on the audience for most of the song, multi-tasking between singing and diving back into his conflicting thoughts. He didn’t want to think about it, usually his mind was quick to lend him a hand in forgetting such things, not that he’d ever experienced anything like yesterday, but his brain just wasn’t cooperating anymore.
His mind begrudgingly returned to those deluded thoughts about that horny guardian angel by his side. He was starting to think that maybe the stupid thing wasn’t just a horny teenager; it was probably just one of the devil’s clever minions in disguise as an angel, its only mission being the simple task of fucking Paul’s life up. And that mission happened to include telling the bassist that it would be a good idea to hop into bed with John on a whim. Clever little devil it was, indeed.
Paul leaned back into the little bubble of heat that had built up near the microphone over that past few minutes to finish off the song.
“My baby don’t care..”
He felt an elbow jab his side that was obviously John’s. Looking over as quickly as his eyes would let him, he met the man’s suddenly slightly smiling face with a wavering stare.
“My baby don’t care..”
Not wasting any time to question John’s sudden mood change, Paul automatically smiled back. When in doubt smile and act cute - his motto for life.
“My baby don’t care..”
He had to look away after a few seconds of unsure smiles, not wanting his exasperation to show.
“My baby don’t care..”
Paul stepped back away from the mic as they played and sang the few ending notes to the song, wondering if John had just experience some sort of temporary memory-loss. He spared a quick glance at the man as he took a bow, whose face had taken on its uncaring mask of contempt again and what appeared to be silent cursing. Paul mused his mood swing as the older man stepped back up and introduced the next song to be Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby.
The audience returned to their frenzied state when George took a few steps forward and assumed his position in the front, his face passive and blank like always. Paul often pondered how George got any girls when he hardly even smiled at them. Not that he was exactly occupied with females at the moment, at least not from what Paul had heard.
The bassist tried not lose track of playing this time as he watched George have his little Carl Perkins moment, staying focused for the younger man’s benefit as he seemed to be his moral support made obvious by George’s constant glances back at him.
It was such a fulfilling feeling to watch George perform, he always felt like he was watching his own brother or even child spread their wings and try to fly. He might not let it show even now, but all be damned if he wasn’t proud of the guy.
After all Paul had been the one who had seen something special in George, ultimately leading to the younger man’s permanent place in the band, so he felt sort of responsible whenever George did something good or bad. It was sort of like a decade-old bond to the guitarist that would probably be there forever.
As he continued to watch the guitarist and flash an encouraging smile every now and then, his thoughts drifted back into those early-Beatle days before the mega fame when everything was so much simpler. The gigs were hearable, George and Ringo weren’t banging - though he’d kind of thought they already were back then, having already picked out the vibes a while ago - they actually had some time to stop and think for a few seconds instead of being whisked away to conferences and what not, and most importantly.. John wasn’t ‘in love’ with him.
Love between two men was unheard of back then, it still was, the general public mostly assuming that queers were just overly-horny dogs who wanted it right now and couldn’t be bothered to chase after some bird out of chronic laziness.
That, or they had something physically and/or mentally wrong with them and it needed to be ‘fixed’.
The second option of ‘queerness’ was usually the explanation he heard most often growing up.
George glanced back at him again as he went into his guitar riff, Paul giving him a smile and nod.
Isn’t that what he’d told himself as well? That a bloody angel was controlling him or something in order to make him think John was attractive. That something was wrong with wanting to touch John in a way men ought not to touch other men, or so he’d been taught. And even if it was so wrong to do things with another bloke, if asked Paul couldn’t honestly tell you that he hadn’t thoroughly enjoyed it.
Well shit, you might as well call him a bigot, for that’s exactly what he was being.
Gays weren’t mental or anything, for God’s sake Brian was pretty much a genius and he was so obviously gay. He was a nervous man sure, but that didn’t make him mentally out of order.
The truth was nothing’s wrong with him or anyone for that matter. Paul would most likely know if anything was wrong with him, he was sure of it. If something had changed inside of him after doing all those things with John, he would have been the first to know and put an end to it. But.. nothing had changed. He still felt like Paul McCartney and still looked like Paul McCartney. He was obviously still Paul McCartney without any mental disorders he was aware of, so what was with all these irrational fears and jeers?
And George and Ringo, who may or may not be.. that, weren’t psychopaths either. They weren’t prancing around in ballet shoes wielding machetes as they went on a killing spree while simultaneously singing show tunes. Now that would be a little disconcerting when it came to their mental health. But they weren’t doing that. Which was good.
The only difference in the two men was their more obvious affection for each other, which hardly seemed weird at all. Sure Paul had felt pretty awkward that first morning after watching those two go all googly-eyed around each other, but when he forgot about the fact that it was two men looking at each other like that and actually looked at them, he’d realized they were just his mates. George and Ringo were now just GeorgeandRingo.
Paul took a step back as the song came to a nice finish and took his bow once again. He looked back at the drummer on his mind who was adjusting his microphone as he came back up from his own bow.
How did he look? Normal and Ringoey, like always. He didn’t look queer, as if you could really look queer, just the same old same old as he prepared to sing.
He then looked at George who was standing on his toes suddenly by the elevated drums, cupping his hands around his mouth as he shouted something indecipherable at the drummer. Paul watched the quick exchange curiously, although unable to hear them over John’s introduction and the crowd. Ringo laughed at whatever it was and nodded as a grinning George returned back to his place, heightening Paul’s nosiness
“… our drummer, Ringo!” His curiosity was put on hold as John shouted into the microphone his overzealous introduction.
Ringo soon jumped into a drowned-out-by-drums rendition of I Wanna Be Your Man, keeping the bassist fascinated by his and George’s subtle eye contact. Well to be honest, it really wasn’t subtle. Like, at all.
Paul diverted his eyes momentarily to see if John was seeing all this as well, maybe he was over-exaggerating it or something, but found the rhythm guitarist’s eyes already on him. John looked away as soon as their gaze met and continued playing like he hadn’t just been looking.
The bassist stopped himself before he made a face, and looked back at the other two. George wasn’t looking at Ringo anymore now focusing on his guitar, but the connection between the two was almost tangible as it hung through the air like some sort of spider’s web.
Paul couldn’t help but marvel sadly at the contrast of each ‘pair’s’ relationship in their foursome It was a little ridiculous what a few words could do to a person, and Paul was kind of disgusted with himself for his underreaction to John’s. It must have been some sort of defense mechanism, his brain automatically shutting down from the shock and nervousness when it happened.
He thought back to the actually pretty well-timed confession with a mixture of schmoop and regret. Schmoop at John’s words, regret at his own.
With a newly formed feeling of determination, he decided something. Right there in the middle of a concert, he decided to mend him and John’s relationship and add a few new stitches as well
If George and Ringo could do the whole thing with ease and still be perfectly happy, then so could he and John. Paul just needed to take this sad situation and make it better.
**
A/N2: Cheesy last line is cheesy. I did it for the lulz though guyz. Forgive me.
Click it. Next. Entry. Now.
Author: samberrie (itsa me)
Pairing: John/Paul and George/Ringo
Rating: PG again.
Warnings: Naughty language, crude humor, sexual mentioning’s, UST-ish.
Time Frame: Second American Tour, 1965.
Summary: In this chapter, Paul’s pondering.
Disclaimer!: I own no Beatles. None of their songs and none of their pretty faces. None of this ever happened. ‘Tis fiction my dears.
A/N: Chapter 18! Hey, hi, how ya durrrn? Second HB concert, yeah buddy. I jacked some of the dialogue et mannerisms from the actual Hollywood Bowl concert because I care that much. Sorry, chapter’s a little boring but necessary for la progression.
Find all chapters there you silly cow.
If you can’t make your mind up,
We’ll never get started..
CHAPITRE DIX-HUIT
Concert at the Hollywood Bowl : 2
Every audience seemed to be the perfect cookie cut-out of the last.
They all looked the same… sounded the same... cried in the same key. Most of the time it felt like they were in the same city with a newly remodeled stage.
Hell, they even smelled the same. The air was always contaminated with the smell of thirteen-year old girls who stole some of their mother’s overly-flowered perfume by the bottle and bathed in it in hopes that the Beatles would somehow smell how ‘grown-up’ they were.
And Paul smelled ‘em alright, each and every one of ’em. You’d think he’d be immune to it by now, but every time he’d hit the stage- there it was. A burst of Chanel No.5 - yeah he knew perfumes, so what? - and other various fragrances never failed to light up his nostrils in a flowery flame.
He liked concerts and all, don’t get him wrong, he loved concerts. Overly-perfumed teenagers couldn’t put a stop to his adoration of being on stage. It was exhilarating to say the least no matter who you were, and you’d still get a wonderful rush as soon as you set foot in front of the audience. But lately something was… off.
Being the center of attention in front of thousands of fans was what he had worked his ass off to achieve after all, but now that he’d gotten a taste of it, being on stage had slowly started to lose its fresh and zesty appeal. It was a bit stale. He hated admitting it, but that extravagant waterfall of adrenaline he longed for was getting weaker, so weak that he wouldn’t even describe it as a waterfall. It was more of a mini-cliff at the end of a shallow river that transitioned into too-calm waters.
It was weird though, this new feeling of distaste. Paul couldn’t even recall exactly when it had started; it must have just sort of hobbled along behind him on its one leg until Paul finally came to a stop long enough for it to tackle him to the ground, holding him there for the full length of this stupid day so far. He wasn’t completely defenseless lying under that one-legged bitch called Hea-.. er, I mean, annoyance though. He really had tried to shake it off earlier by being positive and upbeat, but he’d eventually given up and put away his fake smiles to just stay neutral.
In Paul’s mind, it was always better to appear emotionless in public than to appear riddled with sadness or any other emotion for that matter. You could never let it seem like your emotions were controlling you like a helpless little puppet. You’re the puppet master, you’re in control. Always. No exceptions. Publicly losing it is only for the Club of Weak-People, which Paul was definitely not member of.
So he had followed this little tidbit of philosophy throughout most of his life, even before he officially became a Beatle. It just made life a lot easier to take in stride, and Paul was constantly in stride.
His questioning of his life’s ups and downs was put on hold as he played the ending chords for Dizzy Miss Lizzy with ease. Taking a step back, he gave on dramatic bow as the crowd cheered.
They were about half way through their planned set list so that meant… Paul straightened up and saw John waiting for him with the same irritated look that had occupied his face for a good part of the day. He looked down and pretended to be watching the wires so he wouldn’t trip over them as he started to walk across the stage, invisibly fretting.
Ticket to Ride would be the first song of the evening that he and John would need to share a mic on, not that Paul was worried about that or anything.. he just.. didn’t want to do it. But it was a good song, a damn good song, too good to fuck up.
As he walked the twenty feet over to John, a warm gust of flowery wind he hadn’t noticed before suddenly made him feel entirely too hot. Now that he thought about it, it had to be no earlier than 7 p.m. yet the sun was still beating down on their sweaty brows. Jesus, what was up with this California weather? There’s such a thing as too much sun, isn’t there? Whatever, Paul had bigger things to worry about than sweat.
Paul heard the crowd’s screaming surge when he finally came to stand near the microphone next to the rhythm guitarist. Why they were screaming - he had no idea even after all this time, but scream they did. He looked up to see John adjust his Dylan cap and quirk an eyebrow at the bassist, nodding towards the electrical stick. He’d come to recognize that nod as a general signal to introduce the next song and so he hopped to it, trying ignore the irrational swirling in his stomach.
He tilted the mic down and decided to make this as quick as possible. “Uh, thank you very much. Thank you,” The crowd squealed in unison when Paul gave a quick wave to the middle section, giving him that familiar feeling of self-satisfaction as they swooned.
“Our next song… that we’d like to do, it’s called,” Paul licked his dry lips and scanned the crowd which had gotten steadily louder with his few words. “We’d like to sing a song.. wow,” He chuckled at the growing frenzy in the crowd. “, it’s a song… oh wow.” All the girls in the crowd seemed to be frantically waving their arms like they were seizing with mouths wide opened and emitting their loudest sounds.
Paul gave a bewildered smile. He could still never feel it coming when the crowd was about to go into one of their random frenzies that seemed to happen without warning. “Can you hear me?” He yelled jokingly over their hysteria, although he was seriously unsure.
Their screaming doubled in decibels to answer his question, which he assumed meant yes. Paul laughed and looked back at John whose expression had softened slightly in amusement, though it still held that irritable look about it.
“Alright, the song, that we’re gonna sing which was on our record before, uh, this last one..” The crowd did that thing again where they screamed even louder as John took a step forward next so that he was next to Paul and assumed the right position to start playing. The bassist got a familiar feeling of exhilaration when John looked into his eyes with something other than contempt for the first time all day.
It was familiar to him, this intense eye contact thing that he and John always had going. It was like learning to ride a bicycle - difficult to master at first but once you had finally gotten the hang of it, it was pretty much impossible to forget how to do it. You’d get on that bike and, sure, you might fall a few times, but that ability to get back on and keep riding would be forever stored in your brain mechanical-doohickeys.
That’s sort of how his relationship with John had always been, even when they were in this awkward after-sex and after-queer-love-confession stage, which were both completely new stages all together, even when this baffling feeling of regret on Paul’s part, they still fell back into old habits and ended up conversing with their pupils.
Something inside of him did a little flip but he wasn’t sure if he liked it or not.
Paul stared at him for perhaps a little longer than intended while trying to decipher what John was saying, but finally turned back to the crowd with confliction pumping through his veins. “Well, this song is called Ticket to Ride!” The crowd screamed for no definite reason and Paul took a step to his right to give John some room.
George took his cue and played the opening chords in time with Ringo and prompted John to get ready. Paul was watching the older man’s profile as he started to sing with a newly formed feeling of something he couldn’t describe when he missed his own cue.
“…I think it’s todaaay, yeah.”
Paul saw John look at him out of the corner of his eye bemusedly but continue to sing without him. The bassist blinked and realized that he was supposed to be singing right now, but for no good reason, wasn’t. Paul smiled meekly, mostly for show and lack of any smooth maneuver to cover-up his mistake, and quickly leaned in in time for the next line.
“The girl that’s drivin’ me mad… is goin’ awaaaay.”
Paul shifted his eyes to John for a split second for a reason beyond him, thinking maybe their eye game was still in session, but disengaged when he saw that the rhythm guitarist’s eyes were on the crowd.
“She’s got a ticked to ri-ide. She’s got a ticket to ri-i-ide. She’s got a ticket to riiide, but she don’t care..”
The bassist kept his eyes on the audience for most of the song, multi-tasking between singing and diving back into his conflicting thoughts. He didn’t want to think about it, usually his mind was quick to lend him a hand in forgetting such things, not that he’d ever experienced anything like yesterday, but his brain just wasn’t cooperating anymore.
His mind begrudgingly returned to those deluded thoughts about that horny guardian angel by his side. He was starting to think that maybe the stupid thing wasn’t just a horny teenager; it was probably just one of the devil’s clever minions in disguise as an angel, its only mission being the simple task of fucking Paul’s life up. And that mission happened to include telling the bassist that it would be a good idea to hop into bed with John on a whim. Clever little devil it was, indeed.
Paul leaned back into the little bubble of heat that had built up near the microphone over that past few minutes to finish off the song.
“My baby don’t care..”
He felt an elbow jab his side that was obviously John’s. Looking over as quickly as his eyes would let him, he met the man’s suddenly slightly smiling face with a wavering stare.
“My baby don’t care..”
Not wasting any time to question John’s sudden mood change, Paul automatically smiled back. When in doubt smile and act cute - his motto for life.
“My baby don’t care..”
He had to look away after a few seconds of unsure smiles, not wanting his exasperation to show.
“My baby don’t care..”
Paul stepped back away from the mic as they played and sang the few ending notes to the song, wondering if John had just experience some sort of temporary memory-loss. He spared a quick glance at the man as he took a bow, whose face had taken on its uncaring mask of contempt again and what appeared to be silent cursing. Paul mused his mood swing as the older man stepped back up and introduced the next song to be Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby.
The audience returned to their frenzied state when George took a few steps forward and assumed his position in the front, his face passive and blank like always. Paul often pondered how George got any girls when he hardly even smiled at them. Not that he was exactly occupied with females at the moment, at least not from what Paul had heard.
The bassist tried not lose track of playing this time as he watched George have his little Carl Perkins moment, staying focused for the younger man’s benefit as he seemed to be his moral support made obvious by George’s constant glances back at him.
It was such a fulfilling feeling to watch George perform, he always felt like he was watching his own brother or even child spread their wings and try to fly. He might not let it show even now, but all be damned if he wasn’t proud of the guy.
After all Paul had been the one who had seen something special in George, ultimately leading to the younger man’s permanent place in the band, so he felt sort of responsible whenever George did something good or bad. It was sort of like a decade-old bond to the guitarist that would probably be there forever.
As he continued to watch the guitarist and flash an encouraging smile every now and then, his thoughts drifted back into those early-Beatle days before the mega fame when everything was so much simpler. The gigs were hearable, George and Ringo weren’t banging - though he’d kind of thought they already were back then, having already picked out the vibes a while ago - they actually had some time to stop and think for a few seconds instead of being whisked away to conferences and what not, and most importantly.. John wasn’t ‘in love’ with him.
Love between two men was unheard of back then, it still was, the general public mostly assuming that queers were just overly-horny dogs who wanted it right now and couldn’t be bothered to chase after some bird out of chronic laziness.
That, or they had something physically and/or mentally wrong with them and it needed to be ‘fixed’.
The second option of ‘queerness’ was usually the explanation he heard most often growing up.
George glanced back at him again as he went into his guitar riff, Paul giving him a smile and nod.
Isn’t that what he’d told himself as well? That a bloody angel was controlling him or something in order to make him think John was attractive. That something was wrong with wanting to touch John in a way men ought not to touch other men, or so he’d been taught. And even if it was so wrong to do things with another bloke, if asked Paul couldn’t honestly tell you that he hadn’t thoroughly enjoyed it.
Well shit, you might as well call him a bigot, for that’s exactly what he was being.
Gays weren’t mental or anything, for God’s sake Brian was pretty much a genius and he was so obviously gay. He was a nervous man sure, but that didn’t make him mentally out of order.
The truth was nothing’s wrong with him or anyone for that matter. Paul would most likely know if anything was wrong with him, he was sure of it. If something had changed inside of him after doing all those things with John, he would have been the first to know and put an end to it. But.. nothing had changed. He still felt like Paul McCartney and still looked like Paul McCartney. He was obviously still Paul McCartney without any mental disorders he was aware of, so what was with all these irrational fears and jeers?
And George and Ringo, who may or may not be.. that, weren’t psychopaths either. They weren’t prancing around in ballet shoes wielding machetes as they went on a killing spree while simultaneously singing show tunes. Now that would be a little disconcerting when it came to their mental health. But they weren’t doing that. Which was good.
The only difference in the two men was their more obvious affection for each other, which hardly seemed weird at all. Sure Paul had felt pretty awkward that first morning after watching those two go all googly-eyed around each other, but when he forgot about the fact that it was two men looking at each other like that and actually looked at them, he’d realized they were just his mates. George and Ringo were now just GeorgeandRingo.
Paul took a step back as the song came to a nice finish and took his bow once again. He looked back at the drummer on his mind who was adjusting his microphone as he came back up from his own bow.
How did he look? Normal and Ringoey, like always. He didn’t look queer, as if you could really look queer, just the same old same old as he prepared to sing.
He then looked at George who was standing on his toes suddenly by the elevated drums, cupping his hands around his mouth as he shouted something indecipherable at the drummer. Paul watched the quick exchange curiously, although unable to hear them over John’s introduction and the crowd. Ringo laughed at whatever it was and nodded as a grinning George returned back to his place, heightening Paul’s nosiness
“… our drummer, Ringo!” His curiosity was put on hold as John shouted into the microphone his overzealous introduction.
Ringo soon jumped into a drowned-out-by-drums rendition of I Wanna Be Your Man, keeping the bassist fascinated by his and George’s subtle eye contact. Well to be honest, it really wasn’t subtle. Like, at all.
Paul diverted his eyes momentarily to see if John was seeing all this as well, maybe he was over-exaggerating it or something, but found the rhythm guitarist’s eyes already on him. John looked away as soon as their gaze met and continued playing like he hadn’t just been looking.
The bassist stopped himself before he made a face, and looked back at the other two. George wasn’t looking at Ringo anymore now focusing on his guitar, but the connection between the two was almost tangible as it hung through the air like some sort of spider’s web.
Paul couldn’t help but marvel sadly at the contrast of each ‘pair’s’ relationship in their foursome It was a little ridiculous what a few words could do to a person, and Paul was kind of disgusted with himself for his underreaction to John’s. It must have been some sort of defense mechanism, his brain automatically shutting down from the shock and nervousness when it happened.
He thought back to the actually pretty well-timed confession with a mixture of schmoop and regret. Schmoop at John’s words, regret at his own.
With a newly formed feeling of determination, he decided something. Right there in the middle of a concert, he decided to mend him and John’s relationship and add a few new stitches as well
If George and Ringo could do the whole thing with ease and still be perfectly happy, then so could he and John. Paul just needed to take this sad situation and make it better.
**
A/N2: Cheesy last line is cheesy. I did it for the lulz though guyz. Forgive me.
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