Lucky Boys (13/?)
Title: Lucky Boys
Author: skelly_lector
Pairing: George/Ringo and John/Paul
Time Frame: 1964, American Tour
Rating: Still PG-13.
Warnings: Potty mouths, moderate boy-lovin, and awkward situations.
Summary: What do you get when you combine four hungover lads, one airplane, and one very big misunderstanding?
A/N: Dangg, it has been a long time. I hope everyone hasn't forgotten about this story! I was away for the past month, but now I have returned with more Beatle-adventures! This is a fun chapter about rain.
Disclaimer: I totally know this is true because I was totally there to watch it nearly three decades before I was conceived. Totally.
First chapter is here! Second is here! Third is here! 4-12 can be found back at my journal.
Ringo had always regarded the sun as a friend. In Liverpool, it was always so lovely when the clouds parted and the day was bright and clear as a diamond. And in Miami he’d had his first experience with the tropical sun, which had coated everything with light as warm and sweet as honey. It had been lovely.
But this sun was different. It didn’t shine in that cheerful, familiar way. No, this sun beat down onto the earth, slamming down heat and light as thick and heavy as a bludgeon. Ringo could feel the weight of it pressing down on him, slowing his steps and filling his head with hot fuzz.
As the four of the walked, they shed clothing like peeling onions. First jackets were shucked off, then shirtsleeves were rolled up, and then ties were loosened before being discarded entirely. Shirts soon followed, leaving the four in pants, boots, and tee shirts. As Ringo removed each piece of clothing and added it to the growing bundle he carried, he experienced a brief moment of bliss as air swirled around his newly exposed arms, wrists, and neck, drying the sweat and cooling the boiling skin. But the euphoria could not last, and he soon found himself sweating once more and hating the next layer of clothing that clung and suffocated like plastic wrap.
It hadn’t even been that long, he reflected morosely as he trudged along beside George. Maybe eighty minutes, if he was lucky. And they most definitely weren’t making five miles an hour; their pace had slowed from a brisk stride to a dull plodding that was reminiscent of cows (or, perhaps, the living dead). They’d never get to Moscow at this rate. Anyway, Ringo was nearly sure that they’d all be dead of heatstroke long before they arrived. Even their thin shirts and pants were proving far too heavy for this weather.
Naturally, Paul was the first to shed his tee shirt. He’d always been…well, he wasn’t quite an exhibitionist, Ringo wouldn’t go that far, but he was…comfortable with himself. Yes. That was right. He’d always been perfectly happy to parade about shirtless in dressing rooms and backstage lounges, despite the very real threat of a fangirl infiltration. They all knew that having a shirtless Paul in the vicinity would only increase the likelihood of screaming, fainting, and quite possibly rape. It had just never seemed like a good idea to Ringo, but Paul did it anyway.
And he did it now, casually lifting the hem of the shirt over his head and baring his pale, boyish chest. Maintaining his steady pace forwards, he wiggled his arms and head free, balled up the thin cotton garment, and added it to the bundle of clothing he carried slung over one shoulder. The whole action had been smooth, almost absent-minded, but Ringo saw Paul’s eyes flicker covertly to John, who was steadfastly observing the field going past on the side of the road. Ringo could practically hear Paul’s little huff of disappointment as he turned away from John and stuck his hands into his pockets.
As Paul pouted down at his moving feet, he missed the quick glance that John shot his way, as well as the longer, studious stare that followed it. The guitarist was, in fact, so busy watching the bassist out of the corner of his eye that he failed to notice a pothole in the road, which, naturally, he tripped over. It was not a perfect comedic moment; he didn’t actually fall over, merely stumbled and flailed briefly to regain his balance. Of course, the moment Paul looked up curiously, John resumed his study of the flora of the Russian countryside.
“What’s so funny, then?” George asked quietly, and Ringo realized that he was smiling.
“Oh, nothing,” he smirked, readjusting his bundle of clothes.
A few minutes later, he decided he couldn’t stand it anymore. An exhibitionist Paul might be, but he had sense. Ringo’s tee shirt was absolutely strangling him, the supposedly light and airy cotton heavy and stifling. It had to go.
Of course, he was incapable of the sort of sooth, easy maneuver that Paul had executed. He got the hem of the shirt up alright, but then somehow managed to tangle himself up in the sleeves, winding the collar tightly around his neck and rendering himself a struggling, thrashing, blinded idiot. To make matters even better, he managed to trip over his own feet, staggering sideways across the road and into what appeared to be a ditch. He deduced this by stepping straight into it, turning his ankle, losing his footing, and toppling over sideways. After rolling down a very short but very steep incline, he came to a sudden halt in something that was all at once prickly, squishy, and worryingly damp.
Even through the mass of cotton bunched around his head, he could hear the uproarious and entirely unsympathetic laughter of his bandmates. Growling in frustration, he writhed, wriggled, and wormed his arms free of the dastardly attack tee shirt, but was foiled yet again when the stupid thing caught and clung to his face and refused to work free.
“Ringo…” He heard the patter of light footsteps down the side of the ditch and a faint rustling noise as whoever it was approached him. He did not, however, stop flailing, and one of his arms slammed into what felt suspiciously like a pair of bony knees.
“Ritchie.” The amused drawl sounded right beside his ear this time, and Ringo elected to cease his frantic movement in the hopes that whoever this was would help him.
“Hold still a minute,” the voice ordered, and suddenly there were hands carefully tugging and untangling the fabric, and then he could breathe properly again, and then the miraculous hands lifted the tee shirt clear off his head and he looked up to smile gratefully at a grinning George.
“Well done, mate,” George congratulated him as he got sheepishly to his feet. They were, in fact, standing in a ditch that sat several feet below the level of the road. It was populated with short, stiff reeds of some sort and held about an inch of muddy, swampy water. Ringo could feel drops of it trickling down his back and dampening the seat of his pants. Bloody brilliant.
“That was, indeed, a demonstration of supreme grace and coordination,” John commented from the road, where he and Paul were standing with supremely obnoxious smirks on their faces. “But it meant George got to take your shirt off, so I suppose everything worked out alright in the end, hmm?”
He turned away, most pleased with himself, while Ringo began a prolonged and intense study of the puddle of brownish water he was standing in. He could feel the heat in his face and was fairly certain that his cheeks were berry-red. So, he observed, were the tips of George’s ears as the younger lad scowled and tossed the offending article of clothing at Ringo. Sighing, Ringo folded it into his bundle as George turned away without a word and stomped up the side of the ditch. Ringo scrambled after him, and after a moment they resumed their journey once more.
“Shouldn’t it be cooling down a bit now?” George groaned, wiping the sweat from his brow and squinting up at the sun, which was now well past its zenith. “You’d think it wouldn’t be so hot with the sun lower in the sky…”
“Dunno, but things’ll get a lot cooler once those reach us.” John pointed to a dark cluster of clouds sitting ominously on the horizon.
“That’ll be one hell of a storm,” Paul predicted, frowning up at the threatening skies.
“Good,” George muttered. “So long as it stops this bloody heat, it’s fine with me.”
Ringo couldn’t help but agree. If anything, the piercing light had only seemed to intensify after noon, and they were all four shirtless, sweaty, and dehydrated despite stopping to drink from every stream they saw. Their clothes bundles had unraveled as they’d wrapped shirts and jackets round their heads in an attempt to shield themselves from the ruthless sun. To make matters worse, Ringo was now aware of how horribly his shoes rubbed and chafed at his suffocating feet. True, he wore these trademark Beatle boots nearly every day, but walking shoes they were not. At their next stop, he resolved to take the blasted things off.
“We’d better find some shelter before it reaches us,” Paul was saying anxiously, eyes still fixed on the encroaching tempest.
“And some food,” George suggested. “I’m bloody starving.”
“What, the Russian takeaway wasn’t sufficient for our ravenous little Georgie?” John snorted.
“That was ages ago,” George defended himself. “And, besides, I’ve been walking all day, haven’t I?”
“Christ, son, where do you put it all?” Paul asked wonderingly. “You eat enough for the rest of us combined, and you’re still a bloody toothpick. How d’you do it?”
“Dunno,” George mumbled, his scowl returning.
At this point, Ringo lost interest. They’d had this discussion many times before, and it inevitably culminated in George getting extremely cranky and self-conscious and telling John and Paul to piss off before he knocked their fat heads together. Though, considering the kind of stress he’d been under recently, not to mention all the crap John and Paul had been giving him, there was no telling what George would do now. Ringo decided he would rather not know and plopped himself down in the middle of the road to remove his shoes.
The rain began suddenly, starting with a big, fat drop that barreled down out of the sky and landed squarely in Ringo’s eye. Biting off a curse, he stumbled and swiped at his eye with the hand not keeping his ridiculous, sun-shielding shirt-turban in place.
“What’s-oh!” Paul broke off in surprise, his eyes crossing as he examined the droplet of water that had just landed on the end of his nose. “It’s raining.”
Nature’s reaction was quite uncanny; it was like Paul was a magician who had just uttered a command. The second the words were past his lips, the skies opened up.
“Fuck!” John spluttered, spitting out a geyser of the water that had filled his mouth as he’d stared perplexedly up at the clouds. Because this was not normal rain. Not like anything they’d ever seen, anyway. It wasn’t English rain, which fell slowly and steadily for days and tapered off into a dreary mist at both ends. No, this was more like a monsoon, an ocean of water that poured forth from the heavens in curtain after solid curtain. This rain hurt.
“Let’s get out of this, lads!” Paul cried, attempting to shelter himself with his jacket. It was entirely futile; the fabric soaked through in a matter of moments, and Paul was soon holding nothing but a sodden, dripping black mass.
“Where the hell d’you propose we go?” John yelled. And that wasn’t just John being John; this rain was loud, striking the dry earth like a drum and creating a roar that drowned out all other sound. Ringo looked on in amazement as it pounded down onto the unsuspecting countryside, bruising leaves, bending branches, and whipping the dust into bubbling mud beneath his very feet.
“Look!” George shouted, knocking his sopping bangs out of his eyes and pointing down the road excitedly. Through the walls of rain and mist, Ringo could just make out big, dark, square shapes. Buildings.
“Let’s go, then!” John was the first to barrel off down the road, followed by Paul, who was still crouching uselessly beneath his jacket umbrella. George took a step, paused, and looked back at Ringo, who was motionless with awe at the power of nature.
“Come on!” Ringo found himself being grabbed by the hand and dragged off after the others, his bare feet slapping loudly through the mud and kicking up great splashes in the puddles. There was something exhilarating about it, this mad dash through the rain, and he threw his head back with abandon and laughed as the water cascaded down his face.
“Will you hurry up?” George demanded, giving Ringo’s arm a sharp tug. Quickly, Ringo lengthened his stride and caught up with the taller boy, rivulets of water coursing down around the edges of the grin that he still wore. Glancing sideways at him as they ran, George started to smile too, his expression slightly quizzical as rain dripped off his eyebrows. And this, Ringo thought happily, was life. This was how it ought to be: mad and slapdash and sudden and real, packed with reality from the mud squishing up between his toes to the cold rain pummeling his skin to the hot glow of George’s hand wrapped around his. He ran and felt the reality and threw his head back and laughed again. And this time George did, too.
Ringo is a derp. That is all.