Chapter Text
By the time Brian died, Paul liked to think he was pretty unshakable.
If asked to describe how Paul had acquired any of his admirable qualities, he would say that he had worked hard to achieve them. Music, though encouraged by his family, had been a hard won battle, mainly fought in his dim little Allerton bedroom mere weeks after his mom had passed. His patience and dedication to most things, he would add, came from a strong family background. His marriage, as of 1967, was as healthy as their unprecedented circumstances would allow. Hard work was a running theme throughout his life, and something he had forged at an early age.
When he was seven, Mike found him killing several frogs behind their house.
Paul shushed him before he could scream, watching as his face reddened and his eyes welled up with tears. Paul blinked his eyes quickly, trying to rid himself of his own, and hurried to explain.
"I had to," he whispered, though he wasn't sure why he needed to be quiet. "I've got to be tough, Mike. A man's gotta be tough."
And it was true, he believed, even to this day. The war had ended but supplies were still being rationed. Butter and sugar were hard to come by. Any tears in their clothing earned them a swift scolding from both parents, but Paul felt an immense guilt anytime his mum had to patch up their coats after a long day of work. Everyone lived in fear of another bombing, no matter how well the peace talks had gone. If England were to be subject to another war, neither civilian nor soldier would be able to survive it. Paul wanted to be as ready as he possibly could be.
"Should we bury them?" Mike had asked.
"No." Paul eyed the barbed-wire fence post. "We've got to see this through."
To Mike's horror, he stuck every single one of them on top of the fence, before ushering his brother inside and insisting he hushed up about the whole affair. But they had both cried over the frogs. As much as he wanted to be strong, he had detested doing it, and was subject to gruesome nightmares in the following weeks. The frog had been bad enough, but he couldn't bear the thought of watching death cross over a human body in such a way. It haunted him as a boy, the way he thought war likely haunted the men he had seen return from it.
Looking back, Paul should have realized he was not as unshakable as he liked to think. Death had always stolen the air out of his lungs, and left him reeling for years to come. He had only gotten better at hiding it.
With his mother, it had made sense, he told himself. Who wouldn't be unbearably altered by the passing of one's parent? Mary's death had felt like the fallout of another great war. Aside from the immense emotional turmoil they had all been thrown into, his dad had initially threatened to send Paul and Mike away to live with family as far away as Ireland. While they had managed to stay by his side, their reward for doing so was watching helplessly as he fell further and further into the bottle. Paul had to prepare himself for a new mindset. Rather than face becoming a soldier and being shipped off in order to protect his loved ones from afar, he was shoved into a new role, one he had never imagined for himself: maintaining the home front.
Jim would become furious if he didn't come home in time to prepare dinner. It became routine, after Paul had unfortunately avoided his duties one too many times that week, for Jim to come to their lunchtime Cavern show and throw a package of sausage or pork chops at him while he was playing.
"Christ, were we that bad?" John asked mirthfully. He shouldn't be surprised. John always approached embarrassing situations with the least amount of tact possible. He felt his face grow warm as she geared up for an entire comedy routine.
"Fuck off," he grumbled, knowing it would only make it worse.
"Run along, Paulie," she would bare her teeth at him, feigning a smile. "Chop chop!"
On top of his own grades, he was expected to help Mike along if he was struggling. This was a short-lived duty, as his own grades began to slip around the time that he became John's best mate. Funny how that worked.
Money was tight as well. Soon, whether or not something was rationed didn't seem to matter for the remaining McCartneys, as they were likely not to spend money on anything that wasn't necessary. Paul, in the initial shock of his mother's death, mere minutes after being delivered the news, shamefully asked, "What will we do without her money?"
It was the rawest expression of grief and surprise, blurting out of him before he could stop himself. But the guilt that racked him afterwards had belittled what might have been a valid concern. Paul, who from that point on would face a lifetime of guilt for posing it, vowed that he would never mention money to his father ever again.
Looking back, death had always brought out the worst in Paul.
He had been the last to find out about Brian's overdose, having been sent ahead of the rest of the band on a returning trip to London. He couldn't even remember why it had been him to go first. He had been just as into meditation as any of them, barring George, so it mustn't have been because he hadn't been enjoying the induction ceremonies held in Bangor. John had stayed behind with the rest of their entourage. He didn't think they'd been fighting or anything. 1967 had been a peaceful year for them, up until the news about Brian. The touring had ended, and they had figured out a new, if not shaky, balance of family life and personal interests.
John had been dropped home that evening, hours after he had arrived for reasons he evidently couldn't recall. She was the first to get out of the car, though Ringo stepped out after her.
Ringo grabbed Paul's shoulder, a typically chummy gesture suddenly turned serious. “She’s in shock, John,” he said, evidenced by the fact that John didn’t appear to be listening. “I mean, all of us are.” Ringo took a second to swallow, and Paul abruptly realized how dry his own mouth was, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “The press wouldn’t leave us alone, see, and John went out to answer their questions but she was just-“ Ringo continued to wrestle with the words despite the impossibility of it all in that moment. “Blank, I s’pose.”
She still seemed blank, in Paul’s opinion. The second he had received the call, his phone nearly crashing off the hook as he walked through the door, he had expected her to come home wailing and asking for a fight. Somehow, seeing John so lost was more daunting to Paul than if she had gotten angry.
“I’ve got her now,” Paul shrugged the hand off of his shoulder, and reached for John’s. She turned around to face him, but didn’t say a word. “Thank you. Be sure to get home safe.”
Ringo nodded, leaving him be. Paul nodded back, and turned to guide John into the house gently.
“It’s different this time,” John says, before Paul’s even managed to shut their front door. “Doesn’t it feel different?”
Reluctantly, Paul nods.
“I thought-“ John shakes her head, as if she’s about to cry, but she’s so far gone that the tears don’t even spring up. “I don’t know what I thought.”
They had thought that they were lucky, Paul translated. They thought they had maybe broken the curse, for just a little bit. That things could be easy for just a moment.
Paul hadn’t forgotten Tara. Fuck, the song he and John had written about it had only been released a month ago. But that had been one of the few things he thought to be beautiful, coming from death.
But they had picked themselves from that one, and Stuart, and Julia, and Mary. No one knew how to pick themselves up after Brian.
That didn’t mean that Paul couldn’t try.
“We’ll meet with everyone tomorrow,” he says, wrapping her up in a hug. “Figure out how to move forward from this.”
She doesn’t clutch him as tightly as he expects, but she doesn’t release him for another long minute.
“In the morning,” he reminds her. “In the morning we’ll move forward.”
“Alright,” she says, but it takes one look into her eyes for him to know that she doesn’t believe him.
“Let’s go to bed, Johnny,” he pulls at her hand, and they loosely come back to their embrace, halfway.
“Alright.” And the next morning, he makes good on his promise.