Chapter Text
“Shove over,” Paul says to Mike, whose casual presence on the settee is always at risk of being labeled a lip-curling nuisance. When Mike sees that it’s his brother laying down the law, rather than their austere father, he scoffs and holds his tea cup closer to his chest.
“Fuck off,” Mike states, immediately negating any authority by looking over his shoulder, in case Jim had heard. Paul raises both eyebrows at him, non-plussed in a uniquely aggressive manner, before gesturing to the person behind him.
Paul wasn’t quite sure how this meeting was going to go, and the lack of foresight unnerved him. Thankfully, Jim was still at work for an hour or so, but the mere face that John was even in his house threatened to uproot his confidence and send him racing for the door. Quelling his jittery fingers, he tries for a suave head nod directed at Mike, and winces at its jerkiness.
His brother looks at him with a confused grimace, before the expression practically melts off of his face. “‘Cor,” he dribbles, pulling his tea cup away from his face. “Is that a ted?”
John’s shoulders straighten, but Paul’s not keen for a fight. “This is John.” Mike’s expression is proof that he hasn’t missed Paul trying to deepen his voice. “Lennon.” He adds, as if that would mean anything.
Evidently, it does. Mike straightens again, scanning her face like he’s preparing a photograph. “You’ve mentioned,” he says, and Paul wants to strangle him. “From the band, yeah?”
A shadow lifts itself on John’s face. “Paul’s mentioned it, then.” She gives Paul a smirk, one reserved for the increasing number of moments she’s able to swipe his feet out from under him. “Haven’t bothered to hear us for yourself?”
John’s smiling, but Paul hasn’t once told Mike the way John’s smile feels more like a dog bearing its teeth. In the future, Paul will come to understand the real way John smiles, full and bright as the sun. For the time being, it’s meant to loosen the ground beneath the feet of anyone who sees it, and it’s effective.
Mike raises a shoulder, half-shrugging and half-hiding. “Haven’t had the chance,” he supplies, still looking uneasy. “Paul probably wouldn’t want me to anyway.”
“Aye, and he’s the boss around here,” John comments dryly. “See this is what I’ve been saying, Paul. We’ve got to get more gigs or no one’s going to hear about us in our own houses.”
Paul isn’t sure how this suddenly became his fault. But that’s just the nature of John, he reckons, pushing and pulling and weaving and twisting until the argument’s fallen into her hands. It would be frustrating if it wasn’t doubly impressive.
“You’re the only one that feels that way,” John says to him, years down the road. When everything between them is stable enough to playfully discuss the ways in which they irritate one another. “When you pull one over on me, it makes me want to rip my hair out.”
“I want to pull your hair, too,” he’ll answer, in a feat of wordplay that he stole from her long ago. “Drives me mad.” he’ll agree, cupping her face and leaning down to kiss below her ear. “But it’s taught me a thing or two.”
When Paul brings John to meet Mike, he is increasingly at a loss for control. Like everything related to John, it is one of the few instances where he chases after that feeling.
John challenges him from the beginning, to a noticeable amount. The only saving grace is that John does this to all of her friends, and ranks them on the amount of time it takes for each to ignore her gender and play along. Paul is embarrassingly slow to realize that she’s doing this, and even worse at figuring out how to overcome it.
“I told Mimi that I was going to be the next Elvis,” John recounts, giving him the daily story on why she was kicked out to the lawn. She gyrates her hips for good measure, and Paul flushes when he realizes how practised it is.
“What’s the matter, son?” John asks, wiggling closer. Paul tries not to squirm, or worse, move his hands to conceal anything potentially incriminating. “Don’t think I could make it?”
Paul will think about this moment when all the papers start declaring them bigger than Elvis, before they start becoming bigger than other things. “Doubtful, Johnny,” he scoffs, forcing himself not to flinch away as he meets her eye. “Besides, we’re not trying to be Elvis, are we?”
This is a lie. They were always trying to be Elvis, he was their Messiah after all. John could try to rewrite the story later, but he remembered. Whatever happened otherwise was just a happy accident.
“That’s right,” John claps him on the shoulder, and makes a point to walk in front of him.
The first plane Paul has ever been on is headed to America.
Maybe John was right, he considers, sod Elvis. Immediately, he retracts that thought. But the vision of what JFK airport may look like, the Ed Sullivan show, the people, the culture, all of it, seems like only the beginning.
Ringo, the most openly nervous but still effortlessly cool, has started a round of rummy with George and Mal. In a few hours he’ll be holding his breath with the rest of them, but for now he’s trying to keep the peace. The group switches between fantasizing about their destination and pointedly ignoring the subject. John is seated at his left, tying herself into knots. This is one of many moments where they know trying to comfort each other will only lead to a scene, so they stick to allowing their own private anxieties.
But Paul’s excitement is starting to outweigh his nervousness, and he wants to desperately burst the silence with something as absurd. Something wild enough to shake her solemn mood into something more lively, for better or for worse.
He nudges his knee against hers. “What sort of questions do you think they’ll come up with?”
John sneers. “Hopefully nothing as pitiful as that.”
He supposes he could’ve tried harder.
“C’mon, Lenny,” he catches her eye and pouts. “You’ve got to be more prepared than that or Brian will have a conniption.”
That gets him a snort. “We’ve just done an interview, or haven’t we Mister Manager?” As if Paul hadn’t been there. That was a new element of this Beatle business they’ve had to adapt to, being together 24/7. Of course, much of Paul is secretly gleeful for John’s undivided attention, but it doesn’t do wonders for their conversation. Still, given how mad it’s all gotten in the last year he knows that John, and the lads for that matter, are equally glad for their closeness.
“Ah yes,” he muses, giving her a wink. “How I missed Paris.”
“Soft lad,” her grin loosens a bit, drifting off to the Left Bank. “Miss the girls, don’t you?”
Paul falters, as that remark hits a little too close to home. It’s likely what John had intended. Their last few weeks having been spent in Paris, he and the lads had observed a stark shift in their French audience. “Queers,” George had observed, though he phrased it a little nicer in the interview. “More young men than girls.”
John had openly disagreed. “Not all of them were bent, Georgie, don’t flatter yourself.” She and Paul were allowed to fool around every once in a while, in the case that the other was busy. What was the point of being a star if you couldn’t reap one of the most glaring rewards? As long as it never went too far, they could each tamp down the jealousy enough to let the other bask in their hard-earned fame.
Paul struggled in Paris, though, given how skewed their audience was. The irony of that fact remained lost on him for years to come. He still found a girl or two to keep him company while John was away, but he floundered upon seeing her in her absolute element.
“What do you think the Americans will be like?” He pivots, leaving behind the lewd connotations. John understands, and she shifts herself towards him so they can bow their heads together for a more serious conversation. Noting this as a good sign he continues, “I mean they can’t be too different from us, but-”
“It’s hard to know what to expect,” she finishes, suddenly looking small. He touches her hand and finds that it’s ice cold. He takes it in both, rubbing it for warmth.
“Yeah.” He takes her other hand. John lays the first on his thigh, and softens her expression.
“We’ll be ready for them.” She gives him a pat before turning to look out their window, and places both hands in her lap once more. Brian stumbles nervously to their aisle and catches the group’s attention.
“I believe that we’re close enough to debrief,” Brian announces, and Paul sees John stiffen again, undoing a lot of the hard work he’s just put in.
For all of John’s courageous bluster during the meeting, he knows that the plane landing rocks them all into reality. It doesn’t deter the interview in the slightest. The four of them are perfectly charming, fielding all of the ridiculous questions with a comedy routine worthy of Tony Hancock.
“Will the girls be heartbroken to know you’re together?” Paul looks to Brian for any indication of how they're supposed to answer. It’s unprofessional, he frets, they’re supposed to be quick.
“Who’s together?” John squints, as if trying to single out the reporter. John’s humiliation tactics are less effective against a presumably blurry mob, especially one hungry for secrets.
“We are,” comes George’s congested laugh as he grabs Ringo and pulls him into an embrace. It’s become a running joke as of late, as much of the inner circle is aware of John and Paul’s situation. Makes too much sense to pair the others together, even if George and Ringo are equally grumbly as they are agreeable.
“Quite heartbroken,” Paul throws in for good measure.
“Er, for John. Who do you take inspiration from the most?”
“Elvis,” John barks out, circling her hips. Paul sees one of the reporters in front regard her with a sneer. John opens her mouth but they are saved by another lobbed statement.
“A psychiatrist recently said you’re nothing but a bunch of British Elvis Presleys.”
John gets the gleam in her eye, the one she always gets before she says something she isn’t supposed to. But Ringo cuts in, righting her course. “It’s not true, it’s not true,” he dances, and everyone thankfully moves on.
“So this is America,” John will gripe afterwards. Paul’s stunned she’s turned off from it so quickly.
“Not a fan,” George pokes, lighting up a cigarette and filling the taxi cab with smoke.
“Give ‘er here,” John steals the cigarette, and lets all of her tension out in an impressively long drag. “S’pose there’s more to see yet.”
Paul isn’t sure why she sounds so defeated. If he had said the same sentence, it would’ve been overflowing with optimism, proof of his shared desire to conquer this new world. He’s not used to that aspiration lacking in John.
“We’ve had shit questions in England, too,” he pushes. “It’s just the nerves.”
“And jetlag,” Ringo interjects. “Wake up at the arse-crack of dawn these days.”
“The life of a star,” John’s humor returns a bit. “Sounds like whinging to me.”
“Stars can complain all they want,” George reminds them, reuniting with his cigarette. “But they don’t have to listen to it.”
“Hear, hear,” John smiles, but it’s not a true one. Paul will keep an eye on it. “Take a fucking nap if you’re all worked up about it.”
Ringo is too good a sport to tell her she started it. Instead they watch chaos erupt around them as they take off from the airport, and further into the great unknown.
Paul is thankful that he lost his mum before he had reliable access to alcohol. He won’t be able to escape its allure later in life, but when he’s sixteen and watching John succumb to it, he’s begrudgingly grateful.
John, for all that she likes to be in charge, doesn’t see an issue with losing herself to intoxication. In many ways, it feels like she’s always trying to escape her circumstances, even if they're directly the result of her own actions. Julia’s death, of course, is not one of those instances, but there’s a reason that only Paul will come out drinking with her these days.
“Stu should be here,” she spits, and the remark only has a few moments to bubble under Paul’s skin before she admits, “Forgot my bloody keys.”
“Stay at mine,” he urges, before he really knows what he’s asking.
“And break my neck on your fucking drainpipe?” John looks at him as though he’s lost his mind. She’s two sips away from losing her dinner. “Forget it. Come back to mine.”
‘Come back to mine’ will be a common phrase between them until 1971. Paul’s not entirely sure John knows when it originated.
On the way out, Paul stops her from fighting a man who’s “looking at her funny,” grants the man a warning look when he actually starts to leer a bit, and pushes them both out of the pub before that man has time to realize he could probably take Paul without breaking a sweat.
He lets her lean on him all the way to Mendips, and endures the waspish glare of a post-curfew Mimi. With only a few minutes to spare before Mimi chases him out with a broom, he tucks John into bed with one shoe still on and teeth frightfully unbrushed. With his remaining time, Paul sighs and sits down on the end of her bed.
If they were a normal lad and lass from Liverpool, Paul would’ve come on to her. They’d both been drinking after all, nothing too unordinary there. Paul might’ve started back at the bar, working her into his arms before readily volunteering to take her home. It’s remarkable to him the ways that he and John aren’t like that at all, even when they eventually get together. There’s something so dangerously different from any dynamic he’s had before, starling in its equality. It gnaws on him, taking years to settle into something less confusing and frustrating.
Before he gets up from the end of the bed, John whispers through hair that’s landed in her mouth, “Sorry, Paul.”
“Sorry?” he whispers, trying not to shatter her rest with his disbelief. “What for?”
She doesn’t answer him for a moment, and he holds his breath as he wonders if she fell asleep. “For having ta deal with me,” she finally mumbles, refusing to open her eyes. “Thanks, lad.”
It will also take Paul time to realize to what extent John considers herself a burden. The thought doesn’t even occur to him as a teenager. Instead, he stands up and pats her shoulder. “‘Course, Johnny.”
Even saying that feels abnormally soft for the two of them, and he shakes the notion of normal Liverpool lads and lasses from his head before letting himself out.