Orange Collision
Title: Orange Collision
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: 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). Also, this story is very Lost-esque, but obviously it has a different plot. There are just some similar themes.
A/N 2: It’s so late, I know. D’: But hopefully this update makes up for the delay.
Disclaimer: I don’t own The Beatles, nor do I claim to. This is a fictional story and is not written to be libelous.
Chapters 1-13
Chapter 14 (Day 22)
It was a little breezy, horribly sunny, and the cloudiness left something to be desired. The white blobs of fluff that mingled with the blue sky were dull, boring to look at as they all comprised the exact same shape. It reminded Paul of one time when he had been walking around Woolton and he saw a mass of teddy boys stumbling on the other side of the road. Cigarettes were hanging from their chapped lips and the toxicity of their breath polluted the air. They all looked the same, Paul had thought, because he had quickly scanned the crowd for John’s sharp tongue and powerful gait, but just like the clouds, they weren’t worth staring at.
Paul wasn’t staring anyway. He was glancing at the sky every so often, yes, but he was mostly using his energy to think about what had happened yesterday. Nicole had fucking ripped him to bits, almost literally. But it wasn’t his fault that he hadn’t wanted to run off with her, it was her fault for taking it so badly. She shouldn’t have gotten so upset in the first place. He couldn’t spend every fucking minute with her.
A memory flashed behind Paul’s eyes and he remembered a past conversation that he and Nicole had had in which, after a heated argument between John and Frisby, Nicole had proclaimed John to be the most ‘normal’ one on the island. Paul snorted. Now he understood-they were both mental.
“Something funny?” John demanded groggily. Paul turned around and saw John in a semi-upright position. His hair was tangled, a small stream of drool was hanging on his chin, and he was squinting more than he usually did. Paul thought he looked alright.
“You look a wreck,” he said, keeping it ambiguous as to whether or not it was a joke, depending on John’s mood. Depending on if John was going to fucking yell at him again.
He hadn’t expected John to ignore the comment entirely, “Where are the other two?”
Paul turned around to once again face the opening of their hut. The sheet was pulled back and through it he could easily see Ringo swimming in the ocean whilst George was attacking the sand with a stick.
“Use your eyes,” Paul responded nonchalantly as he took on a careless disposition and un-tucked the leg that he had been sitting on. Just in case he had to make a quick exit.
“Well maybe I could do that if my glasses hadn’t been fucking destroyed in the crash,” John said bitterly as he pulled himself into a proper upright position, “And what the fuck is up with you?”
What was up with him? What was up with him!??! How about the fact that, after getting into an enormous fight with Nicole so that he would be able to spend the night with John, the latter had fucking verbally attacked him for merely speaking to Nicole? Hell, he right accused Paul of fucking Nicole on the side!
Not that he wouldn’t, but still.
And after the row with John, the latter had basically ignored him and fucking ruined his night. He had had plans for John but, because he was such a fucking irrational git, Paul had had to go to sleep without getting off. And now he was frustrated and slightly irrational and fuck him.
“Nothing,” Paul responded calmly as he twisted a thread between his fingertips, a thread birthed from his pants.
John snorted, “Right. Whatever,” he said and after a few seconds he added a “go fuck yourself” for good measure.
Now was the time for his quick escape, “I think I’ll speak to Nicole.”
Paul could actually feel John’s temperature rise, “Oh yeah? Have you two settled on your vows yet?”
He was right at the exit, he was. He could crawl through the opening and leave John behind him. It would have been too easy. But he didn’t. He turned around and glared at John’s ugly complexion before he calmly muttered, “Come off it.”
“No I don’t think I will. Tell me, Paul, how wide have you stretched her cunt?” John glared back, his brown eyes slathered in intensity.
“Fuck off.”
“Well what do you fucking expect me to say?! You go over there to talk to her every fucking damn day!!! You might as well take your shite,” John emphasized this by grabbing Paul’s pillow and throwing it at him, “and go stay with her!!”
Paul grabbed his pillow and tossed it back where it belonged, “Stop acting like a bird, Lennon.”
“Stop fucking everything you see, McCartney,” John spat as he crawled closer to him, fists balled at his sides.
“I’m just going to talk to her,” Paul knitted his brows, “But I might as well start fucking her. At least I’d get off,” Paul cruelly mumbled at the end as the anger grew pregnant inside of his chest. John, having heard exactly what Paul had said, reacted immediately, taking a quick intake of air before practically exploding.
“Oh really!?! Oh fucking really!?? I seem to remember, when we were looking for that fucking cat, that you kept me at a fucking ten kilometer distance!!”
“I was trying to look for Tidbits, John!” Paul yelled back, “If we had gotten up to all that I would have missed her!!”
“She didn’t fucking show up!!!”
“Well I fucking know that now!!!!! Would you like me to reset time!!?!” Paul yelled, immediately clutching his forehead afterwards. He didn’t have the time or the patience for this. He needed to leave the hut, sort things out with Nicole, and then fucking walk around the entire island approximately fifty times before confronting John again. But even that, Paul figured, probably wouldn’t give John enough time to replenish his sanity.
John pulled in his lips and stared at him furiously before he reached behind him, pulled the sheet closed, and put both of his hands against the wall of the hut, entrapping Paul. His eyebrows rose beneath his fringe and his eyes grew larger, confused at the sudden shift in energy.
When he spoke again, John used a controlled voice, “Stop acting like a bitch. You’re the one who’s being a prick tease, not me.”
Paul was having trouble focusing, they were much too close and he was much too sexually aware, “You’re the one who’s acting like a bitch. Nicole and I are mates. Just mates,” Paul said and John looked at him skeptically. Not being able to stand it anymore, Paul quickly closed the fractional distance between them and brought their lips together. John moaned at the contact and Paul quickly shoved John’s hands away from the wall and roughly bit his lower lip with a growl. John growled too.
It was strange kissing John. Almost like being engulfed in warm water-soothing, relaxing, erotic, consuming. And Paul was feeling himself-feeling his heart rate and the sweat on his lips-and he knew that he was moving his feet into the water. He wanted to continue, wanted to submerge himself completely, to drown, but he realized that this wasn’t the time or the place.
So, before he allowed himself to fully press against John’s body, he moved away and stared at his red-faced mate with clear disappointment, “We can’t. Not now.”
John reached forward and balled his shirt in his hands, “Paul McCartney I swear to fucking god.” John leaned forward aggressively, pulled back the neck of Paul’s shirt and roughly bit the exposed shoulder. A needy gasp flinging from his lips, Paul’s head went blank and his vision blurred.
“We can’t. George and Ringo-”
“Can watch if they want,” John finished cheekily, licking the shoulder that he just attacked. With as much self control as he could possibly summon, Paul pushed John off of him and righted his shirt. His reputation defeated his lust.
“I’m serious. I don’t want them to find out!” Paul breathed. John scratched his chest, taking in lungfuls of air.
“What’s it matter? They’re fucking each other, anyways.”
Paul laughed at John’s joke before he shook his head, “I’m being serious John. I don’t…no one can find out about this!!”
John stared at him for a minute but he didn’t need a lot of convincing. With a dramatic sigh he rolled his eyes and collapsed on top of the blanket. Pouting, more or less. As Paul watched his entertaining display, he tried to will his erection to disappear so that he could go and see Nicole. Really, he would rather spend the day fooling around with John, but he needed to clear things up with her before he did so. Aside from the Beatles, Mal, and Brian, she was the only friend that he had on this island. The only one who saw him with fresh eyes, and he liked that.
“I’m gonna go speak to Nicole,” Paul said. John’s eyes immediately flashed with anger but Paul’s words cut across his tongue, “I’ll be back in a moment. Honest. And then we can look for Tidbits after,” he said, adding a cheesy wink at the end. John smiled.
“Good. I’ll be awaiting the pussy hunt, then,” he said slyly and they shared a mischievous grin before Paul left the hut and was assaulted with the sting of the sun on his skin. At least he was getting a tan.
“George?” Paul said, passing him on his way to see Nicole, “What are you doing?”
He was still beating the sand with his stick; that much was obvious. What wasn’t obvious was where exactly he had gotten the drugs that would compel him to partake in such an act. George seemed fairly oblivious though. He looked up at Paul and then he looked down at the stick, surprised that he had been wielding it at all.
“Oh. Er…I dunno. Just…yeah,” George averted his gaze. Paul followed his line of vision to a very wet Ringo in the very blue water. Paul remembered John’s joke and he chuckled.
“Just…yeah?”
George bristled and turned back to him, “Yeah. Well…I dunno. I lost my pick and I’m looking for it.”
“I don’t think assaulting the sand is gonna help your cause.”
“Well I don’t think you know the sand very well, then,” George deadpanned with a crooked smile. Laughing, Paul took his leave and headed towards Nicole’s hut, trying to think of everything that he was going to say to her. He wasn’t going to apologize, that was for sure. And he wasn’t going to bring up the fight-too much backlash. Maybe he would tell her a joke. Yeah, that should get her laughing. He knew a great one about a Scotsman…
“Hi,” he said in surprise. He had been so busy trying to remember the joke that he had nearly ran into the poor brown haired woman. Nicole gave him a shy smile and looked towards the ground.
“Hi.”
Paul licked his lips and went right to it, “Say, have you heard the one about the Scotsman and the train ticket?”
Nicole seemed confused, “Er…”
“Right well…it goes like this. So, there’s this Scotsman, yeah? But he’s not really a Scotsman…more like an Englishman with a Scottish accent…but he doesn’t come from Scotland, you see. Well, I reckon his family does come from Glasgow…but he doesn’t know much of his family. Was raised in an orphanage. But when he grew up he saw them on the weekends,” Paul started, though he soon realized that he had spent such a long time on the exposition that he had forgotten what the actual joke was supposed to be. Shite. “Right. Okay, so one day this Scotsman bought a ticket for the train. Though he was stupid, really, because he forgot to bring an umbrella and it was raining. So he was standing outside of the train station and there was muck on his shoes-from the rain, you know-and while he was there he saw a bald man. They gave each other the eye, sized each other up and all that, and before they knew it they were havin’ drinks. I believe they took the train to get the drinks though, I don’t exactly remember,” Paul scratched the side of his nose and watched hopelessly as Nicole became more and more lost. He had to end this quickly, “So the bald man turned to him and said ‘did you come on the train just to have drinks with me?’ And the other man said, get ready luv this is the funny part, the other man said ‘No, I actually came on the train to see my family!’ Haha,” Paul chuckled and Nicole looked at him like he had just gone insane.
“Paul…are you alright…?”
“Oh!” Paul shouted after chewing on his thumb for a second, “That’s right! The family was Irish, not Scottish.”
Nicole’s eyes bored into his with evident confusion before she tipped her head forward and let out a string of laughter. Paul didn’t think that she was laughing at his joke. Oh well-he laughed too.
“I don’t know what you just said! But you are so funny!” she gasped, holding her sides. Paul nodded and laughed along with her, eventually having to clutch his lungs desperately as he strived for breath. Once they were done, they sat down in front of her hut calmly. This was why he liked her.
“Sorry about yesterday,” she admitted fearfully, looking up at him through her eyelashes, a technique that Paul was all too familiar with. He put a finger to his lips.
“Shhh,” he said, “Let’s not talk about that.”
She giggled, “What do you want to talk about?”
He thought about it for a second, “World War II.”
She rolled her eyes at his joke before she stood up and stretched, “Whatever you say. But first I have to get some water. Want some?” she asked as she headed towards the shady place where they kept their food. Paul shook his head and his eyes followed her arse as she walked away.
The sun was beating down on him. It was so hot and unbearable that Paul actually decided that he would rather turn into sand and succumb to George’s stick than sit outside for another second. Wiping away the sweat on his forehead, he turned around and looked at Nicole’s hut. She wouldn’t mind if he just laid down in there for a bit, would she? She was going to be back soon anyway, it didn’t matter.
With that in mind, Paul crawled into Nicole’s hut and immediately noted that, unlike in their hut, Nicole didn’t have a blanket that covered the sand. On the plus side, though, the sand beneath his feet was cool and he immediately collapsed on top of it, feeling the grainy bits sink into his skin and crawl into his hair. On the other side of the hut laid a notebook that was half-hazardly concealed by a thin sheet. There were lazy doodles on the front of it and it reminded him of a notebook that he used to carry around in school with him. Whenever he finished a lesson early, he would pull out his notebook and work on some poetry-random lines that crossed his head, mostly. John used to wield a similar notebook and Paul had to wonder-was Nicole a writer?
The temptation was too much to resist. And, really, he hadn’t been on his right head for the entirety of the day anyway, and he didn’t see the harm in taking a peek at her work.
Nimbly, he reached out and snatched up the notebook, allowing it to fall open to a page covered, from top to bottom, with words.
He sat up. It only took him a few seconds to pick out the words ‘Paul’ and ‘beach’. Was this some sort of diary? He had to make sure. Once he ascertained that it was a diary, he would put it away and never mention it again. But he had to make sure. Yes.
Paul McCartney is strange, always lurking around to see what I am doing. I see why-he doesn’t seem to get along with his fellow band mates very well. They think he’s annoying and I think they’re right. He’s very shallow and he tries a little too hard to sound modest. But deep down I can tell that he’s very fragile. He has a strong need for acceptance. Pathetically so.
Paul blinked twice.
George Harrison, the quiet one, is more or less silent because he has nothing interesting to say. Words seem to leave his mouth in a lazy tumble, as if no one deserves the privilege of having a proper conversation with him. He tries to deny it, as I’ve seen on numerous occasions, but he’s probably the most self-important member of the group.
Paul blinked three times. What?
Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey) is a fighter. From the first day when he washed up on the beach, bleeding to death, to today when he heroically helped everyone put out the fire. It seems that his need to help people stems from some mental issue-maybe something happened to him that he feels as though he has to cover it up? Maybe he has an awful secret and the only thing he can do to feel good about himself is to help others? I’ll ask Paul about that later. He tells me everything.
Paul was shaking.
John is the most normal Beatle. He is in touch with his emotions and he isn’t afraid to say what everyone else is thinking. No less than a week after the plane crashed and John was running out of the forest, blood on his hands, and accusing his manager (Brian Epstein) of crashing the airplane. To this day John is still not on good terms with his manager. Could this mean the end of The Beatles? Has the bubble finally burst?
Paul felt the blood in his veins thicken, his mind and body turning red.
There’s something strange going on with John and Paul. Ever since they showed up with a guitar (could a new hit single be in the works? I’ll tell you more about that later!), they’ve been unusually close. I got the impression that they hated each other, that fame had forced them into a songwriting partnership, but now I’m starting to think the opposite. They force themselves into a partnership because they like it-maybe too much. I’ve noticed something similar between George and Ringo. When the time is right, I’ll have to talk to Tucker about my findings. Maybe I’ll get him to help me. Paul is always good for unknowingly giving up information to me, but I don’t think I’ll be able to be so sneaky with this subject.
“What are you doing?!” Nicole asked from the entrance of the hut, clutching the water bottle in her shaking hands. His face couldn’t even form a proper expression-couldn’t fathom what one even looked like. His eyes glittered from the words on the notebook to the pack of matches that were shoved innocuously in the corner. Nicole didn’t smoke.
“You weren’t…you what…why did you come in here?” she stuttered. Her face was whiter than milk and that was all that he needed to confirm his suspicions. His stomach floated into his throat.
“You’re a reporter,” he spoke quietly, stating a fact. How couldn’t he see it before? How couldn’t he tell from the way that she was always asking questions, always snooping about, always demanding to spend time with him? How couldn’t he see that she really wasn’t his mate? She was just one of them. He had been fooled again.
“Paul…” she spoke softly, putting her water on the ground.
“You’re a fucking reporter. All this time…you were just writing a story,” he said as he brought his hand through his hair and pulled.
“Please…please listen to me!” she said as she moved further into the hut and started crawling towards him.
“I don’t want to,” he muttered thickly as he pulled himself away from her and out of the suffocating lies. He stepped into the sun again.
“Paul!” she ran after him and grabbed his arm.
“Get away from me,” he growled, jerking out of her grasp.
“You don’t understand! I had to!! I had to!!”
“Oh, you had to!??” he yelled as he turned, her betrayal eating his veins, “You had to go against my fucking trust-you had to pretend that you were my fucking mate so that you could turn around and write nasty things about my friends?! About me!?!”
“Paul, you don’t get it!!” she whined, “I had to!!”
“Oh don’t pretend as if you’re sorry!!! If I read that little notebook of yours correctly, you don’t even like me!!!!”
He didn’t notice that he had drawn a crowd. George and Ringo were standing behind him and John was peeking his head out the hut curiously. From far off, Jessica was watching with vague interest and Tucker looked excited enough to make popcorn.
Nicole’s eyes darted to all of the onlookers, “Paul…please!!”
“Please what?! Please stop yelling at you!? I have every fucking right to yell at you-you’ve been writing lies about me and my mates!! And what were your plans, exactly? Were you going to hand those papers off to the nearest newspaper once we were rescued!??!”
“Paul, I had to!!!!” she yelled back, fists at her sides, “It was the only way!! I can’t get a job as a reporter-everyone turns me down because I’m a woman!! I needed to write something that was really good!!!”
“Is that why you started the fire, then?” Paul asked as he crossed his arms. Jessica and Tucker were moving closer and Frisby was now watching from a distance, “To get a story? To get hired!!?”
She twitched, swung her head around, and made a frustrated noise but didn’t deny Paul’s accusation, “You have no idea what it’s like!!! You were born with an advantage!! I wasn’t!!”
“I don’t fucking care about your job!!” he yelled, fury twisting his features, “I care about the fact I trusted you and you were using me the entire time!!! You’re one of them!! Sod you, Nicole. Fuck you,” Paul growled the last bit before he turned around and stalked into the forest.
He had been thinking about drowning in water earlier, now he was thinking about drowning in nothingness.
To be continued…
Notes: Sorry for the delay! School is school is school is school.