Real Love: Chapter Eight
Real Love
Title: Chapter Eight
Authors: lovely_rita_mm & jenny_wren28
Starring: The Beatles (specifically John Lennon) and Maggie Sue
Rating: R for language, sex, & implied drug use.
Disclaimer: We don’t own any of the Beatles, this obviously never happened, and much to the real Maggie’s disappointment, is a complete work of fiction.
Maggie and Mo made up and are friends... is it John's turn now?
Previous updates are located HERE.
Chapter 8
“How did it go?” Maggie asked John as he came in the front door. He’d left five hours ago and she’d been anxiously waiting for him to return.
“It went well, I think.” John kissed her on the forehead and then, humming a tune under his breath, headed off to the music room.
Maggie watched him go, gaping a bit. A historic meeting of John Lennon and Pete Best, and “it went well” was all he was going to say? That would never stand.
Maggie followed John to the music room and sat next to him on the piano bench. “Oh, come on! You have to give me more than that! What did you say? What did he say?”
“None of your business, nosy!” John said, knowing that his reticence to spill more information was driving his Beatle fan of a wife crazy.
“All right, that’s it, if you don’t tell me, I’m going to call the press right now and tell them that Pete is back in the band and leave you to sort it all out!”
“Fine, fine, sit down. We don’t want to poor Ringo thinking he’s been sacked for our old drummer.” John patted the seat next to him.
“He’s been waiting for it, you know,” Maggie said half-seriously as she sat down. “He really thinks you’ll do it someday.”
“Well, that’s nonsense, isn’t it?” said John, surprised. “I always thought it was those three.”
“I read once that each of you think it’s the other three and that you’re the one that is the outsider.”
“You and your Beatle books!”
“Well, if you all weren’t such chatterboxes there wouldn’t be any books or quotes, would there?”
“That is an excellent point. Now run along, I have songs to work on.” John moved as if to nudge her off the bench next to him, though Maggie knew he would never dump his pregnant wife on the floor.
“No way! You have to tell me what happened with Pete!”
“All right,” John sighed, giving in with good humor. “You told me he was booked to record today at EMI…”
Maggie nodded her head. She had. John had given her the okay to record Pete, and as typical with the Beatles, once John had approved the decision, the others went along without much of a fuss. Most of them hadn’t been close with Pete anyway. Though he was a former bandmate of all of them, John had been the one closest with him.
The band hadn’t explicitly expressed a wish to avoid encountering Pete, but the situation was fraught with the possibility for awkwardness. Peter Asher had carefully scheduled Pete’s band for days when the Beatles wouldn’t be in the studio, often over the weekend. The press had, of course, already caught wind of the fact that Pete Best had been spotted at EMI and whether they were hoping for some sort of showdown, Maggie wasn’t sure. It was more likely that the band would simply ignore him, and he them. Maggie hoped for better. Maggie was sure if John called a truce, the others would fall in line.
Maggie knew asking such a thing of a man like John was big, but she hoped he would step up. She let John know the time Pete would be at EMI and when he quietly left the house at the appointed time, she knew where John was headed. What would transpire she could only guess.
She didn’t really want to guess, though, she wanted to KNOW.
“I guess you took my hint then?” Maggie said, trying not to push John too much.
“Yes. Nosy.” John smiled at her at that. But then sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, ruffling it. “This whole thing has been weird, what with the press watching so closely to see if there’s either a big confrontation or reconciliation. It’s hard enough without that, isn’t it?”
“I know.”
“But you were right. How we…how I treated Pete wasn’t right. I was young and thought I was better than everyone else or else I had to fight for what I thought I wanted, and damn whoever got hurt along the way.” John’s voice grew quiet. “I did a lot of things I regret back then. Pete was only one of them. You’ve helped me to see that, because you know. You saw the results of the things I did. To Cynthia. To Julian. And to the band, when I left to stay with you in the future for what might have been for good. Sometimes I think the thing I really do best is hurt other people.”
“Oh John, that’s not you. Not anymore, anyway. You changed a lot of that. You were kinder to Cynthia, you’re a great father to Julian. And you knew you had to come back, so you did. And I’m proud of you for talking to Pete.” She paused hoping he would resume the story of what actually happened.
“I couldn’t decide whether it was better to get him alone, or in front of witnesses, in case he decided to punch me out. I snuck into the control booth, trying to be unobtrusive. It didn’t take too long for someone to let him know though and the jig was up.”
“It’s pretty hard for Beatles to be unobtrusive,” Maggie consoled him.
“I asked if everyone would clear out so Pete and I could talk. He came up and well, we talked. I apologized for being such a prick back in the day. I can’t apologize for Ringo, you know. But I handled it badly. He was gracious about it. Actually, he just wanted to know why he’d been sacked. That worse, you know. That he wasn’t angry about it. Just sad.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That it was a combination of things. Youthful arrogance.” John shrugged. “Probably all the various theories you read in your books are true to some degree. We needed a better drummer, we liked Ringo and he fit in with us better than Pete did. Even in Hamburg, Pete did his own thing a lot of the time, and the girls loved his broody charm better than we did.” John looked up. “He seemed to take it okay. We shook hands and all that. It was getting kind of awkward, when Pete asked if I wanted to get a pint. And God, yes, I did. Probably should have done first. Could have used the alcohol to loosen us both up.”
“Uh-huh,” said Maggie, unconvinced.
“Well, it worked,” John protested. We snuck out to the pub, got ourselves a private booth and started drinking. I told him that I’d talked to Astrid, and that got us going on about the old days. Two hours and four pints later, we headed back to the studio. I figured if I didn’t go with him, they’d be fuming that he was wasting precious recording time, but no one’s going to say that to John Lennon. I’m a Beatle, you know,” he added grandiosely.
“So I hear,” Maggie said solemnly.
“And so was Pete.”
“He was,” she agreed.
“Anyway, I’d had too many to drive home, so I stuck around while they did some recording. Added some backing vocals and said I’d come back around another time to do some guitar.”
“Really?”
“Yep. It was the most fun I’ve had in the studio in ages.”
“That’s great! Wait, what?”
“It was fantastic, Maggie. No one telling me how to play. No arguing. Who argues with a Beatle? Other Beatles, that’s who,” John said, answering his own question. “It was a revelation. And it’s gotten me thinking.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Maybe I should do a solo album.”
“John, maybe now is not…”
“No, no, of course, not now - but when we’re done with this album…”
“That’s really not a good idea…”
“A break could be what we all need.”
The thought of there never being an Abbey Road album was more than Maggie could take. “John Winston Lennon, you are NOT breaking up the Beatles to do a solo album! I forbid it!” she roared. And then, to her horror, she burst into tears.
~~~~~~~~~~~
A/N
And with that, we've reached the end of Part I of Real Love! We are going to have to take a short break to finish the next part now (we predict there will be 4 total) - we promise it won't be years this time though!
Thanks so much for reading and we'll see you soon!
Continue to Chapter Nine
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