Orange Collision

[macca44552]

Title: Orange Collision (chapter 3)

Pairings: J/P, G/R   Equal time for both pairings
Rating: NC-17

Warnings: sexual situations, drug and alcohol use, language, distressing situations

Summary: En route to Los Angeles, a storm diverts the Beatles to an uncharted island in the middle of the Pacific.  Finding themselves among the few survivors, romantic tension flares up as they try desperately to find a way home.  Meanwhile, some peculiar events occur that lead them all to fear for their sanity...

A/N: Anyway, I know that there are a lot of AUs in the community as of late, but I really wanted some practice writing situation-based conflict as opposed to character-based conflict (even though the main theme in this story is still going to involve character-based conflict). It’s a way of branching out, you see. =) Also, this story is very Lost-esque, but obviously it has a different plot. There are just some similar themes.

A/N 2: Here’s the next chapter. :) Thanks for reading. Maybe I’ll have a better A/N next time? :/

Disclaimer: I don’t own The Beatles, nor do I claim to. This is a fictional story and is not written to be libelous.

Chapter 1      Chapter 2


Chapter 3

John was never really the most patient person in the world, which was why he felt nothing but indifference when he unceremoniously strode into the room where Paul was currently trying to convince his prey to spread her legs for him. John needed a ciggie, after all, and he wasn’t going to let Paul’s overzealous sex life get in the way of his craving.

“John! What the fuck!?” Paul blurted angrily. He was naked, his redheaded partner was naked, and he was leaning over her a bit demandingly. John shrugged.

“Needed a ciggie. Where the fuck did you put them anyway?” John asked as he scoured the room slowly, trying to make Paul as annoyed as possible. Even though, normally, walking in on each other while having sex was no big deal, Paul had previously requested that no one interrupt him, and that was why he was currently staring daggers in John’s direction. But John didn’t mind. It just egged him on, actually. He liked annoying Paul.

“Why don’t you get one from George?” Paul gritted through his teeth. A small smirk manifested on John’s lips when he saw Paul’s girl moving quickly to cover herself up.

“Because I can’t find him,” John sighed with expert dramatics and slumped heavily on Paul’s dresser. “I can’t find that bastard anywhere.”

“Well what about Ringo?”

“I can’t, because Ringo doesn’t love me like how you love me,” John fluttered his eyelashes and Paul’s face met his hand in a frustrated groan. Success.

“Look, I don’t know where my ciggies are, so just find them and leave!”

“I can’t find them underneath the piles and piles of your waste!”

“What piles!?!”

The redhead sat up straighter, her hair was sticking out in all sorts of odd directions and in that very moment, that very instant, John decided that he hated her. Yes, she was his new enemy. “Um…I bought a pack of cigarettes for my mom. You can have them, if you want…”

It was said in this infuriating act of coyness, and John couldn’t help but sneer.

“Your mom. I wonder what it’s like to have one of those. Mine’s dead, you see,” John deadpanned, staring at the girl who seemed to wither right before his very eyes, like a flower that had been kept away from the sun. Or like any other person who had the misfortune of feeling the sting from John’s verbal slap.

Paul, however, couldn’t hide the amusement from his eyes, and he stared at John knowingly, a grin breaking out on his face.

“Right. I’ll just look around more, then. Continue what you were doing. Don’t mind me,” John said wistfully as he crouched down and began searching for the rogue pack of ciggies that might have been hiding underneath Paul’s dresser. As he was doing this, his ears were tuned in to the sounds from up above-to the sounds of Paul and the redhead kissing, shifting, and sighing. Mumbles echoed around the room, obnoxiously loud to John’s ears, as Paul repeatedly told the girl to relax. He told her not to mind the other man in the room, that he wouldn’t be there for long. He told her that it wouldn’t hurt too badly, just a little sting. He told her that she would love it once he’d gotten started, because he always made the girls love it, and he knew just how to please her. Because she was special.

And John snorted loudly. It didn’t have the desired effect, though, because they were already joined; they were already moving. He could hear the girl’s squeaks and moans and he could hear Paul’s husky breathing. The noises lifted and mixed together to create a sound that was truly and utterly… disgusting. Never in his life had John been so disgusted by sex. And he didn’t know why.

Figuring that he had stayed long enough, John’s hands closed around the packet of cigarettes that he had found five minutes ago. Over to the side of the bed, he saw the woman’s clothes-a skimpy little blue dress, a pair of lace knickers, and a plain bra. All he wanted to do was to reach over, steal her clothes, and then cut them up into little, tiny pieces. She was his enemy, after all. It had been decided. But John’s need for petty conflict was stifled by his urge to get the fuck out of that room as quickly as possible. And fuckin’ have a cigarette, at that.

He walked towards the door, fastened his hand around the cool metal, and stepped over the threshold. Before he closed the door behind him, he took one last look at the gyrating pair; he took one last look at the naked woman who was clinging to his best mate; he took one last look at the dark haired arsehole that was sliding in and out of her joyously.

And then Paul took one last look at him.

Their eyes connected. Paul’s were brimming with pleasure and John’s were brimming with slight confusion. Like a storm cloud, a look, an indefinable look passed over Paul’s eyes, and it kept John rooted to the spot for a few seconds. It kept John rooted to the spot until Paul shook his head and concentrated on the woman underneath him. Then the door closed.

John didn’t know it then, but that was the moment that everything had changed between them.

“Fuck,” John mumbled in annoyance as he tripped over a stick. He hated walking in the forest, on uneven ground, because that meant that he always had to watch his feet. And that meant that he couldn’t watch his back.

“How much longer?” John turned to Mal, sounding every bit like a spoiled child on a road trip. Mal just shrugged and looked ahead. With his brows knit, he had to clench his fists in order to keep from yelling at Mal. He wanted to scream at him-tell him to get over it-tell him that Neil was gone and there was nothing that any of them could do about it. But he didn’t because Mal was the only friend that he had out there with him, and he didn’t want to lose his only ally.

For a second, John almost considered himself to be foolish for demanding that George and Paul stay behind. But he knew why he did it. He wanted to protect them, yes, but he also wanted to be alone. He didn’t want George to bombard him with irritating questions, and he didn’t want to have to look over him. Time to think, that was what John needed. Quiet. And George could be quiet, but never when it was asked of him. He could only be quiet on his own, and John didn’t want to take the risk of ending up on the receiving side of Harrison’s chattiness.

He needed to think about everything. Not Neil, he needed to forget about Neil, because that was the only way to move on. But he did need to think about Paul. He needed to think about everything that had happened between them recently, and that task wouldn’t have been achievable if he had brought said Beatle out here with him.

“We should be there in about an hour,” Frisby answered, but John had forgotten his question at that point.

John walked over to the other side of the studio, grabbed a water bottle, and breathed deeply as the doors churned open to the outside. There, he sat on the railing and looked at the plush garden that surrounded him. A small squirrel suddenly ran across the grass and John had a morbid vision of throwing a rock at it. Playfully, of course. A light chuckle escaped from his mouth, and John was surprised to find how raw his voice sounded. He had just spent the last few hours recording his speech for the film Help!, which was obviously going to be synched to the footage later. It had been fun for the first few hours, especially when Ringo had overdubbed an extract from ‘I Sat Belonely’, but now it was just growing to be another annoyance to John. Something else that he had to do.

He took a sip of water and idly toyed around with the idea of persuading Eppy to hire a voice actor.

“Hey,” Paul greeted, sneaking up behind him.

“Hi.”

Paul walked around and sat on the railing next to him, his hair long and capturing the sunlight. “It’s getting pretty boring in there.”

“That’s an understatement. At least if something’s boring you can live through it. This…this might kill me.”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“Am I Paul, am I?” John asked, earning a Paul-laugh as his reward.

“Well, at least this is the last step. After this, the movie will be done with,” Paul said, branding John with his usual mark of optimism. John snorted and took another sip of water.

“Always with the words of encouragement,” John muttered, but his voice closed up in that moment, and he leaned forward quickly, sputtering and coughing up the water in the grass.

“You okay?” Paul asked as he laid a soothing hand on John’s back. Rubbing away the tears in his eyes, John sat up and took a long breath.

“I’m fine. I told you, didn’t I?! This is going to kill me!”  John said through the heat in his cheeks and Paul laughed vibrantly, just the way that John liked him to laugh.

“Hey, mate,” John said once Paul had finished laughing and they had been sitting in silence for a few minutes, “Your hand?”

Paul blinked for a second before he shouted ‘oh’ and removed his hand as if it had been on fire. John smiled at the way that Paul’s eyes locked on the ground.

“I mean, I know that I’m irresistible, but…”

“I’m gonna get myself a water,” the words rushed out of Paul’s mouth as he jumped off the railing and practically ran back inside.

John hadn’t even had the time to ask him if he wanted some of his.

“That should do it,” Frisby said as he backed away from the newly lit fire.

The view was beautiful. They were up on that hill and he could see everything around him; he could see the trees and the fields and the start of the beach. If he had a more mature eye for this sort of thing, he’d capture this place forever in his memory, all of its flaws and mysteries, and he’d revisit it in a time when he needed to be calm. As it were, he wasn’t prone to that sort of thing, so he just sat back, sighed, and said ‘fuck’ when he realized that he really was on an island. There were no houses, there were no buildings, and there were no people. And his outlook became bleak.

“Let’s get going. We’ll probably have to camp in the forest tonight, it’s almost dark,” Frisby ordered. John raised his eyebrows.

“Wait?! We’re just going to leave the fire unwatched?” Tucker stole the words right from his mouth.

“It’ll be fine; it’ll go out in a few hours and the smoke should continue to travel in the air for longer than that. Hopefully rescue will see it,” Frisby said.

“No. I’m not going to leave this fire unattended,” John argued. Fuck no. He wasn’t going to walk away and risk the fire burning down the fucking forest.

“It’ll be fine! I’ve done this before!”

“Look, you said that we wouldn’t make it back to the beach before dark anyway, right? So why don’t we just sleep here tonight. We can watch the fire and leave in the morning when it’s burnt out,” John compromised. Not only did he want to preserve the forest (he was just that nice of a bloke) but he also wanted to take a rest (he had been walking for hours).

“I agree with the Beatle. We should stay here tonight,” Tucker spoke and John glared at him irritably.

“My name’s John you fuck face.”

“Alright, fine. We’ll stay here,” Frisby relented as he sat down on the cold, green surface. A gust of cold wind passed by, and John sat in front of the fire to warm his hands. He watched as the hot embers rustled and fell to the ground, probably harming an ant in the process. John was glad that he wasn’t an ant.

The hours flew by and eventually Frisby fell asleep, which wasn’t surprising considering his age. Mal was curled up on his side, either staring at the trees in the distance or staring at nothing at all. John almost had the urge to go over and talk to him, but he knew that he wouldn’t say anything back. Besides, he was way too warm in front of the dwindling fire.

Unfortunately, so was Tucker. They sat on opposite sides of the fire, but John had his head permanently turned so that he wouldn’t have to look at the annoying ponce’s face. It wasn’t so bad, though, because Tucker wasn’t speaking, and John found that people were tolerable as long as they had their mouths closed.

But that never lasted for long.

“Thinkin’ about your boyfriend?” Tucker questioned and John’s head quickly turned to send him a death glare.

“No. Thinkin’ about yours?!” John spat but Tucker only shrugged nonchalantly.

“Don’t have one.”

John wasn’t in the mood for this. He arranged himself so that he was laying on his back; staring at the stars that seemed so fucking bright to him. He listened to the gentle crackling of the fire, and he let the burning scent fill his lungs before he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, tried to dream away this place.

But a dream never came. Only a memory.

“John, what the fuck! Why would you do that!?” Paul demanded, water dripping from his hair, down his neck, down his naked chest, and finally dissipating once it had reached the harsh fabric of Paul’s pants.

“Easy there. Don’t you think you should dry off first?” John sneered.

Paul blinked at him comically, “You stole my bottle of shampoo!”

“I didn’t steal it. I declared myself its new owner.”

“John, you stole it from the side of the bath while I was in the shower!!”

“Only a desperate measure that I needed to take in order to be with my new child,” John said, holding the bottle to his chest like it was a fucking newborn.

“Give it back,” Paul demanded as he held out his hand. John grinned brightly and let the smells and humidity from Paul’s shower skip into his nose. He was hit with satisfaction when he couldn’t smell Paul’s annoying shampoo. Because that was why John stole it; it smelled annoying.

“Paul, no bloke should care this much about shampoo.”

“Look, you know as well as I do that we hardly ever get to take a shower while on tour. And when I do get to take one, I would like it to be good. Namely, with my shampoo.”

“Can’t you just wank instead?”

“John,” Paul stepped closer, speaking to him as if he were a mentally unstable beast. Well, maybe he was. “Just give me my shampoo.”

He didn’t back down. He watched Paul step closer and closer, his anger growing with each step that he took. Again, John didn’t back down. He actually found it funny when Paul was trying to be intimidating. So he just clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth noncommittally, and said a very short and clear “no”.

Then Paul was walking towards him quickly, purposefully. His features were set, his expression made-up. When Paul was so close to him that their chests touched, John snapped out of his daze and put up his hands, ready to push Paul away if he dared to make a reach for the foul shampoo.

Warm hands were touching his face, though, and John hadn’t expected this. His body tensed and his eyes widened in confusion when Paul was suddenly…on him. Everywhere. A rough connection of their lips sent John’s head spinning, and he gasped for breath feebly, barely taking in any air. Because Paul’s mouth was latched onto his, and Paul’s hands were keeping him in place, and Paul’s tongue was demanding entrance into John’s mouth, and John let it, only because he didn’t know what else to do. A gasp registered somewhere in John’s brain, and now Paul’s teeth were scraping against his own, and Paul’s fingernails were digging into his skin. It was a show of neediness that John had never experienced from Paul before. And he realized that he liked it. At right about the same time that John realized that he had been responding to the kiss with his own bought of neediness.

It felt like minutes but it had only lasted seconds. When Paul pulled away, John panicked for a second and thought that the world had caved in on itself-that their queerness had somehow brought on the start of the apocalypse, but then he realized that it was only dark because he still had his eyes shut. Opening them, his gaze immediately went to the purple shampoo bottle on the floor, and then it went up to meet Paul’s eyes. And they stared. John wanted to lash out-ask him why the fuck he had done that-but his voice had taken a vacation, apparently. So he stared until Paul muttered something and backed out of the room.

And he continued to stare after that.

Even though John had managed to fall asleep after reliving that memory a few more times, he still hadn’t dreamt that night.

The fire had died by the time that John woke up, and he barely had enough time to blink away the sleepiness from his eyes when Tosser was demanding that they all start heading towards the beach. After all, Tosser said as they sleepily trudged through the forest, we don’t want to miss the rescue planes. And we certainly don’t want people to worry.

“Are we gonna talk about it, then?” John asked. It was the first time that he and Paul had been alone together since the kiss because Paul had made it a point of attaching himself to George’s bony hip. John hadn’t known what to feel, and at first thought it was best to forget that the kiss even happened in the first place. Unlike Paul, though, he was fucking terrible at forgetting things, and he needed to talk about it sooner or later, lest he wind up in a mental hospital.

“Talk about what?” Paul predictably asked.

“Talk about the weather. What the fuck do you think I’m talking about Paul!?!”

The latter swallowed, “Oh. Listen, I’m sorry. It was a…lapse in reason. It was nothing.”

For reasons that he couldn’t explain, John was stung. So he stung back, “Good. It better not fucking happen again. I don’t want your disgusting mouth anywhere near me.”

A sharp exhale. Good. John had stung him properly. Paul stood up and walked to the door, more than ready to leave. But John wasn’t having any of that. John wasn’t done with him yet. “And since when did you turn into a queer anyway?”

Paul stayed still, “Go fuck yourself, John.”

“No thanks, you might watch,” John spat and Paul whipped around and started moving towards him angrily-angrily like on the night that his shampoo had been stolen. John backed up, a look of disgust on his face, “What? Are you going to kiss me again?!” he mocked, ignoring the odd feeling inside of him that doesn’t mind if Paul kisses him again.

But John’s words brought Paul to a halt. His skin was read and his eyes were bulging out, a dark, nearly scary look was inside of them. He could see the veins popping out of Paul’s neck and he could almost hear the angry hiss of the blood pumping within them. And when Paul spoke next, it changed everything between them. When Paul spoke next, their dynamic had flipped and wobbled, trying to find a new axis. And Paul’s voice, John would never forget how it had sounded: like Paul had previously swallowed a bag of nails. It was raw, it was gritty, and it was the first time that John wasn’t internally chuckling at Paul’s attempt to be intimidating. Because he was intimidating.

“You know what, John?!” Paul pointed a rigid finger in his direction, spit flying from his mouth, “If I want to fucking touch you, then I will. If I want to fucking kiss you, then I will. And there’s not a fucking goddamn thing that you can do about it. Understand!?”

Then he left. And John never forgot the look in his eyes. The very same look. The very same raw, emotion-filled, possessive look.

He had been walking for hours. After awhile, John’s legs went numb and the only thing that he could feel was the angry growling of his stomach. He sighed and drank some water to calm his body down. He drank a lot of water, actually.

“I need to piss,” he announced frankly and Tosser stopped walking.

“You can’t hold it in?”

“I would never do that. I love my bladder,” John deadpanned and Frisby actually cracked a smile.

“Just hurry up.”

As John was walking through the woods, trying to find the perfect tree to adopt his piss, his mind kept thinking about a moment on the island. A moment that had taken place the very first day that they had crashed here. It was when he had been desperately searching for Paul. It was when he had found him. Paul had raced over to him, John’s name spilling from his lips like some sort of prayer, and he had hooked his arm behind John’s head and brought their mouths together. Their second kiss. It had been short-so short that John wouldn’t have even known that it had happened if it wasn’t for the fact that his lips had still burned afterwards. He didn’t like it that Paul could make him feel this way. He didn’t like it that Paul could make a queer out of him. And he certainly didn’t like the fact that Paul was aware that he could make a queer out of him.

John knew that this couldn’t progress…ever. They weren’t queer. Well…maybe Paul was, but he wasn’t. And John certainly wasn’t going to go to that place with Paul. Especially not if Paul was going to hold the reigns.

Besides, John rather enjoyed the fact that Paul was pining for him. And he wasn’t going to give in-especially if that meant that Paul’s neediness would be extinguished.

Zipping himself back up, he moved away from the tree and gave off a startled yelp when his back hit something that most certainly wasn’t there before. He whipped around, ready to punch out a bear or something, and was surprised to find that Tucker was standing behind him. Like a fucking creep.

“What the fuck!!?” John blurted.

Tucker raised his hand and waved, “Hi.”

“What the fuck are you doing!?”

“Well can you believe it? What are the odds that we would both decide to piss at the same tree?”

John wanted to kill him. He wanted to grab his neck and repeatedly pound his head into the fucking tree, “You sure you don’t need a nappy for that?” John sneered and Tucker chuckled as a response. When John started moving away from him, blindly trying to get back to Tosser and Mal, he realized that Tucker was following him.

“Get the fuck away from me, you queer,” John bit angrily. Tucker sighed.

“You pegged me.”

“What!?” John asked, turning around. Tucker smiled.

“I am gay,” he said in that stupid American accent. John just stared at him, disgusted and amazed all at the same time. And Tucker stared back blankly, until his eyes wandered to a place over John’s shoulder and his features fell. “FUCK!” he shouted.

John turned around in a panic, looking for any signs of danger. He saw nothing except for trees. At least, he saw nothing until he looked at the ground. He swallowed a lump that had formed in his throat. A man was laying there. A bloody and nearly dead man who was blinking at him with pleading eyes.

And that was when John knew. That was when John knew that the world really did fucking hate him.

To be continued…