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There is so much screaming outside.
The four Beatles all sit together on a too-small seat in a limo, waiting until they can make a mad dash towards the next hotel on their tour. George can feel John’s shoulder against his own, can feel Ringo’s knee bouncing on his other side. He shuts his eyes and focuses on the points of contact like they’re a lifeline. His bandmates chat around him, but they’re nearly drowned out by a faint buzz in his ears and the deafening cheers of their fans outside the vehicle.
“Christ, there’s a lot of them this time around, isn’t there?” Ringo asks.
“Better turnout than the Stones get, I bet,” Paul quips, and Ringo rolls his eyes.
“Don’t get too big a head on you, Paul; they’re second in the charts, y’know.”
“Second only to us,” Paul points out.
“Like the birds want Jagger, anyways,” John adds. “Bit of an odd-looking lad, isn’t he?”
Ringo rolls his eyes. “Are we going to sit in here and shit on the Stones or are we actually going to leave this bloody car?”
“Don’t wanna go out there,” George mumbles, eyes still closed. He can see the fans imprinted onto his eyelids anyways, clutching at their hair and shoving at the poor bobbies as they struggle to hold them all back. He can feel their hands, tugging at his suit, touching his hair—
His eyes shoot open and he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, in an attempt to steady his breathing.
“Aye, none of us do,” John says. “We’ll push Paul out first. He’s prettiest. While the birds are distracted, we run.”
“Yeah, see how your bloody band does without a bassist, Lennon. The Stones’ll have you beat, then.” Paul snaps back, trying to hide a smirk.
“I’ve already paid for four people to stay in the hotel,” Brian sighs from his seat in front of them. “There had better be four people staying in those rooms.”
“Oh, I’m sure we can find a fourth to fill in Paulie’s bed,” John replies, raising his eyebrows suggestively. “She might duck into one of ours, though.”
Brian shoots him a glare.
“Alright, alright, Eppy, take a breath, we won’t sacrifice your precious bassist. Come on, lads, shall we go?”
There’s a murmur of agreement from the other two. George stays silent. His fists clench and unclench, almost subconsciously, as he tries to keep breathing. In, two, three, four. Out, two three, four. In, two, three—
“Geo?” Ringo asks, nudging him. “You ready, or what?”
George nods. The motion makes his head spin, and for a moment he’s afraid he’s going to be sick, but it passes. He runs a hand through his hair, trying to steel himself for whatever is outside the car. Paul swings the door open and they all begin to crawl out of the vehicle.
George had thought that the screams couldn’t get much louder. He was very, very wrong.
They press in on him, worming their way into his brain and echoing throughout his body. He freezes, hands shaking, in front of the car. Somebody knocks into him from behind. “Geo? Come on, we’ve got to keep moving.”
George opens his mouth to reply, wills his feet to move, but they don’t, he can’t. Paul and John turn around and head back towards him—when had they gotten so far away?—with looks of concern on their faces.
“George?” Paul asks. “Hey, Georgie, come on into the hotel with us.”
“I—” he chokes out.
“George?”
No one around him seems to have noticed his odd behaviour except for the other Beatles. If they’re standing there much longer, though, one of the reporters is bound to notice, and another, and another, and another, until it spirals out across the media like anything else they say or do inevitably does.
Beatles’ Youngest Member Breaks Down!
No. He will not give them another reason to stare.
They’ve got enough of those already.
He reaches out a trembling hand and Paul grabs onto his sleeve, tugging him forward. After a few stumbling steps, he’s moving on his own, and the four of them sprint towards the hotel doors together.
Brian enters the lobby a few seconds later, having walked with a little more grace than the Beatles had. He heads to the counter as George is led towards the elevator. A rush of cold has filled his body, and he’s shaking harder now. When he glances down at his hands, he sees they’ve gone sheet-white.
John leans towards Paul, murmurs something in his ear, and Paul nods. John jogs off towards Brian, who’s still in the process of checking them in. He leans across the counter, toward the secretary, and begins to talk with her. There seems to be a few moments of debate before he exclaims, “Yes, yes, Eppy can have his fun with all the paperwork he bloody well wants, I just need the fucking keys!”
Startled, the secretary hands the keys to him. John winks at her before taking off towards the elevators.
“John, what in the—” Brian cuts himself off and straightens his suit, clearing his throat before turning back to face the secretary.
“Something tells me we’re going to have some trouble returning to this hotel next tour,” Paul says with a roll of his eyes as John returns. The buzzing static in George’s ears is so loud that he can barely hear them speak.
“Eppy can deal with it all,” John says, flashing them a cheeky grin, and they all step inside of the elevator. George begins to thank every god he can think of that they got in when they did; his legs give out almost immediately after the doors close.
“Oh, Christ, okay. Down we go,” John murmurs, uncharacteristically soft, as he catches him under the arms and lowers him to the ground. George sits in a disoriented heap. The elevator doesn’t move. His breathing is too harsh and quick, and he’s positive the others can hear it now, can hear how he’s spiralling out of control. Not that it matters, much. He’s got a sneaking suspicion they may have figured out something was wrong already.
Something bumps into his shoulders and he looks up to see Ringo and Paul on either side of him. John is still kneeling in front of him, a hand resting on George’s knee. The contact is strangely comforting, but their stares are beginning to get a little overwhelming, so he buries his face in his arms and struggles to breathe.
In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four. In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four.
George can feel Ringo’s shoulder move in an almost exaggerated motion with his breaths, and he’s about to snap at him to be a little more subtle about it, but it’s helping. He copies the rhythm, slow and deep, until he’s doing it on his own. The dull roar of static slowly begins to fade away, leaving only the hum of the elevator and the muffled cheering from outside.
Paul shifts to press the button for their floor. They travel up slowly until the elevator dings, and the doors begin to open. John reaches behind him and clicks the doors closed again.
“You alright to get up now, George?” He asks.
George nods, moving to stand up. All three of his friends grab hold of his arms to help him up. As soon as he’s standing, he shakes them off. He can feel a burning heat creeping up the back of his neck, his cheeks. Right. Of course this is going to turn into a thing. They’re going to treat him like he’s even younger than they already think he is, and they’re going to expect him to have answers he doesn’t have, and it’s just going to altogether be far more embarrassing than it would have been if he was alone.
He thinks back to them getting him inside before the reporters could see, and visions of the headlines fill his mind. Okay, maybe he’s a little grateful they were there. It doesn’t mean he can’t still be mortified.
He considers taking off down the hall as they step out of the elevators, but before he can even start running they see Brian. His forehead is coated in a sheen of sweat and his hair is sticking up at odd angles, like he’s been running his hands through it.
“John!” He demands, slightly breathless. “You cannot pull those kinds of stunts with the secretaries anymore! What was that all about? Do you know what this could have done to your reputation if I hadn’t been there?”
“Glad you always help us smooth everything over, Eppy,” John replies flippantly as they walk to their rooms.
“That’s not—that’s not what I’m trying to get across. What took you all so long in the elevator, anyways? I made it up the stairs in less time than it took yo—”
“Nighty night, Brian. Sweet dreams!” John shouts, shoving everyone through the door and slamming it behind him. He grabs George by the shoulders and steers him towards the sofa, shoving him down. It’s a similar layout to their other hotel rooms—one large room, featuring a lounge and a small kitchen, and a bedroom on either side, as well as a toilet and a closet. The wallpaper is a sickening green, speckled with garish yellow and orange flowers. George wants to tear it off the walls.
He sits down with a huff, crossing his arms over his chest. All the tension that had bled out of him in the elevator is beginning to return, tightening the muscles in his shoulders and jaw.
John, Paul, and Ringo stare him down with varying looks of pity and questioning.
“Are you alright?” Ringo starts.
“Fine, Ringo.”
“Then what was that out there?” John asks.
“I don’t know, John.” This was all a bit ridiculous. He wasn’t some weak-willed bird, who needed to collapse on a chaise and lament about her problems all day. He was perfectly fine. He was a Northern man—even if he had a problem, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be brought up. It would be buried until the day he died, or at least until he was an old man and could bitch about anything and everything to his heart’s content.
“Georgie, mate, you freaked us out,” Paul said. “I mean...seriously, what happened?”
“Christ, nothing, Paul, I said I’m fine!” He stands up quickly, and the three of them flinch away slightly. He brushes past them, picks the closest bedroom, and slams the door behind him. He clicks on a light to illuminate the dim room.
They’re high enough up that there’s no way the fans could see them. Not clearly, anyways. If he listens closely, he’s sure he can still hear their desperate cheers, begging to see one of them, to touch one of them. It makes him feel sick, and he curls up in a tight ball on the bed farthest from the window, facing the wall.
His guitar had been his life for years, ever since he had picked one up, had strummed his first chord, twangy and off-key because his tiny fingers couldn’t quite reach the farthest strings. He couldn’t have done anything else with his life. But this? Was it all worth it? To be a doll for girls to fawn over?
Fame isn't as good as his teenage self had dreamed.
The door clicks open softly.
“If it’s Paul or John, I swear to God, I’ll kick your arses.”
“It’s Ritchie,” a quiet voice replies.
“Oh,” George says, in lieu of an intelligent answer. Ringo shuts the door behind him and settles on the bed next to George’s feet. The room is filled with nothing but the soft, comforting weight of not-quite-silence: the hum of a furnace, the ever-steady tick, tock of a clock, the gentle rush of their breaths. The moment hangs heavy in the air.
“It gets to me, too, you know,” Ringo says.
George shifts to face him a little better. “What?”
“The girls. All that screaming and...that’s what was bothering you, right?”
He sits all the way up and leans against the headboard. “Yeah,” he says, his voice barely a whisper.
“It bothers me, too. We’re not little objects, or a face on a poster for little girls to kiss goodnight. I mean, I guess we are. But we don’t deserve to be.” Ringo nods, as if assuring himself of his own words. “No matter how much we have, that doesn’t mean we deserve that.”
“Sometimes I wonder if I would trade playing guitar for all of this to go away,” he admits.
Ringo cocks his head at him, face full of curiosity but free of judgement. “Would you?”
George considers for a moment. Would he? Sure, touring is hell, and he hates the crowds and the people and the bloody Beatlemania, and all this time away from Pattie is killing the both of them. But music is his life. He can’t imagine not sitting in the studio and joking with his mates, playing cards with Ringo as Paul and John fight about lyrics and chords in the other room. He never would have even met Ringo, back when he had a beard and a grey streak and they were all too scared to introduce themselves to him. He has no idea who he would be if he had never learnt chords as a child, or practiced with Paul after school. If he had never played Raunchy on that bus when he was fourteen, to the older and ever-cooler Lennon. If he had never heard the words, “You’re in, son.”
“No,” he replies. “I don’t think I would.”
Ringo smiles at him, bright and happy and pure. “Good.” After a moment, he says, “Has that ever happened to you before? You know, what happened down there?”
He shakes his head.
“You gonna be okay for the performance tomorrow?”
“I think so. I don’t know what happened—why it was different than any other time. Just really got under my skin, like. But I think it’ll be okay.”
“You sure? Nothing wrong with admitting you need a little help, you know. Just ask John,” he adds as a half-hearted joke.
“I’ll...I’ll let you know if I do. But I think I’m fine.”
“How are you feeling now?” Ringo asks.
George laughs. “Honestly, Ritchie? Exhausted.” The stress of the day—the travel and the crowds and everything else—is starting to get to him. All he wants to do is sleep until they can go home.
Or, more accurately, until Brian comes knocking on their door in a panic tomorrow morning, already moaning that they’re behind schedule.
Ringo chuckles. “Alright. Budge up, then.”
“What?”
“You heard me! Move! I’m not sleeping with half my arse hanging off the bed!”
George snorts, already shifting over. “The hell are you sleeping in my bed for? I’m not a child, you know. There’s a perfectly good one six feet to your right.”
“That one’s shite,” Ringo says. “I like this one.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Oh, come on, it’ll be like the Bambi Kino all over again. Don’t you miss the good old days?”
George closes his eyes and settles into the pillow. It’s not as though this is the first time they’ve shared a bed, and the warmth of Ringo beside him is really rather comforting. He’s really only fighting back to tease him. “That place was awful, Ritch. You hardly ever even stayed with us there, anyways!”
“Ah, of course, I was off with the far more professional, successful band. Sure is too bad we’ll never beat Rory on the charts, isn’t it? What a lad.”
George reaches to turn off the light. “Goodnight, Ritchie.”
“When I was younger, so much younger than before,” Ringo begins to sing.
“Fuck off,” he laughs.
Right before George finally drifts off, Ringo’s breathing slow and even at his side and the faint sounds of John and Paul teasing each other spilling in from the crack under the door, he realises for the first time today that he can’t hear any screaming anymore.