Chapter Text
The door to AIR Studios is heavier than he remembers it being.
Paul hasn’t slept. He isn’t sure if he’s even properly stopped moving since the phone call. The world had become a series of rooms—kitchen, sitting room, car, hallway—each one with the walls closing in, those same awful words bouncing around the corners until Paul practically ran out of his own home.
John’s been shot. He’s dead.
He pushes the studio door open.
George Martin is already inside. He stands at the console, hands resting lightly on the edge of it, like he’s been waiting without wanting to look like he has been.
Paul pauses just inside the doorway, not ready for the look that’s going to be on George’s face. George turns at the sound and, for a moment, neither of them speak.
Paul has known this man since he was barely out of school. George in his suit, precise and patient, explaining arrangements as though speaking to equals instead of boys who still laughed at everything. George at the piano, finding the key while they ambled about aimlessly, taking the piss. George in the control room when they were impossible and brilliant and unbearable.
Now George looks as though someone has taken a careful instrument and struck it hard.
“Paul,” George says, voice like broken glass smoothed over with concrete.
Paul nods. His throat is dry. “Morning.”
It feels strange not to say anything else, but Paul can’t articulate anything else. His throat feels chafed raw, scraped clean, like someone had shoved their arm down his throat and pulled out his innards. It aches all the way down to his chest, every breath dragging against it. He keeps expecting sound to come out, but there’s only this tight, abrasive sensation, as though grief has a physical texture and it’s lodged there.
He feels hollowed out. Something essential has been pulled from him too quickly, leaving a space that can’t hold air properly. His ribs are too wide. His skin doesn’t fit right. There’s a faint buzzing in his ears, like he’s standing too close to an amp.
He presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth, trying to anchor himself. Swallows. It hurts.
Paul steps fully into the room. The instruments are set up, but nothing is switched on. Through the glass he sees Denny moving slowly, not really doing anything. He picks up a guitar to wipe it clean. Paul turns away.
“I wasn’t certain you’d come,” George says.”
“I couldn’t sit at home,” Paul replies, voice thinner than he expects. “Feels worse there.”
George nods, like he understands. He’s here, rather than anywhere else, so Paul supposes he does.
Paul grabs his bass, moves it uselessly to the other side of the switchboard. He doesn’t plug it in, just leaves it leaning against the amp and looks at it as though it belongs to someone else.
For a few minutes, they both pretend they might work. George adjusts a knob that doesn’t need adjusting. Paul sits at the piano bench and presses one key softly. Paul nearly winces, like the sound is an intrusion. He lifts his finger away.
“I keep thinking,” Paul begins, then stops, staring at the keyboard. He isn’t sure how to finish the sentence without sounding childish.
George waits.
“I keep thinking someone’s going to ring back and say they got it wrong.” George’s jaw tightens, but Paul isn’t looking at him. He can’t. “And then I remember the news. And the telly. And… that’s it. It’s—it really—happened.”
“It’s happened,” George says quietly, almost like he’s apologizing to Paul for this reality.
Paul nods once. The ache in his chest worsens, the poison of his grief sludging through his veins with every pump of his heart. It spreads through him, all the way to the tips of his fingers, making them shake. Paul scratches at the middle of his palm, as if it can alleviate the throbbing beneath his skin. It only turns his skin pink.
I spoke to him,” Paul says. “Just—only a few weeks ago. We were… we were all right.”
“I know,” George says. Paul’s eyes flick up sharply. George chooses his words carefully. “There was less bitterness in the last year. Less posturing.”
Paul gives a small, strained smile. “He did like to posture.”
“You both did.”
Paul lets out a breath that might almost be a laugh. It fades quickly.
He stands and starts pacing. The studio is a crowded place for pacing, instruments and equipment everywhere, but he does it anyway. His hands are in his hair, then dragging down his face.
“We wasted so much time,” he says. “All that nonsense. The interviews, and the digs, and — as if any of it mattered.”
George watches him move back and forth. “It mattered at the time.”
“It didn’t,” Paul snaps, too fast. He stops pacing. “It didn't. We could’ve just picked up the phone. I could’ve—”
He cuts himself off, hand shaking as he wipes at his mouth. “I could’ve gone to see him more.”
“You did see him,” George says, pained.
“Not enough.”
There’s no winning that argument. George doesn’t try.
Paul turns away, staring at the far wall. His breathing changes now, quickening without him noticing.
“I keep seeing him,” he croaks. “Walking into a room. Saying something stupid. Taking the piss. I keep—I keep thinking he’s going to ring and complain about something.”
George stands carefully, taking a step closer. “It’ll take time, Paul.”
Paul nods, but his breaths are uneven. He rubs his hands together hard, as though he’s cold. “We were meant to be old. That was the joke. Us taking the mick out of each other when we’re seventy. That was—”
His voice falters. His chest rises too fast. Paul drags in a breath, but it doesn’t feel like enough. He tries again. It catches.
“Paul,” George says gently.
Paul shakes his head, as if annoyed with himself. “I’m fine. I just—”
His breathing speeds up sharply now, thin and panicked. He presses a hand to his chest.
“I can’t—” he says, eyes wide in a way George has never seen before.
“Slow down,” George says, moving directly in front of him. “Look at me.”
Paul tries, breaths coming in quick, shallow pulls. His hands ache terribly, now, running from his palms up into his wrists, into his forearms, like the muscles are being twisted from the inside. He flexes his fingers but they don’t want to open, stiff, buzzing at the edges.
“He’s gone,” Paul chokes out, the words lodging in his throat before forcing themselves out anyway. “He’s just—he’s not there. He’s not anywhere. George, he’s—”
His voice cleaves down the middle, the words breaking apart. The next breath turns into a sob, sudden and violent, something tearing open. His knees give slightly, and George reaches out without thinking. He grips Paul by the shoulders first, steadying him.
“It’s all right,” George says unsteadily, though he knows it isn’t. “It’s all right.”
Paul shakes his head hard, tears running freely now. “No, it isn’t. He—he’s my—” He sobs, unable to get air in. “George.”
And then he’s fully crying, years and years of shared history collapsing in on itself. He bends forward, and George pulls him in automatically. Paul clutches at the front of George’s jacket, releasing one hand only for it to come around to claw at George’s back. He grips around George’s shoulder, keeping him close with both hands, refusing to let him go.
He let John go. Stood far enough back that John had gone to New York and now look what happened. Look where that got them.
George’s arms wrap around him, tight and protective, one hand at the back of Paul’s head, the other across his shoulders. He draws him in as if he can shield him from the reality of it. Paul’s face presses into George’s shoulder, his body shaking.
“He’s gone,” Paul keeps saying, puffs of air hitching out of him like the repetition will make it comprehensible. “He’s gone. He’s gone.”
George closes his eyes.
“I know,” he says quietly. He keeps his hold firm. Paul’s fingers dig into the fabric at his back.
“He loved you,” George whispers, if only to keep his own voice from breaking.
Paul shakes against him, still sobbing. “I didn’t fix it. I didn’t—”
“There was nothing to fix,” George interrupts softly. “You were what you were to each other.”
Paul pulls back slightly, eyes red and raw. “We were kids.”
“Yes.”
“We didn’t know what we were doing.”
“No,” George agrees. “You didn’t.”
Paul’s breath stutters again, but it’s slowing now. The worst of it is passing, leaving him drained and shaking.
George keeps one arm around him, his hand steady at the back of Paul’s neck. His thumb swipes across the skin there, soothing. Paul leans into him again, quieter now, the frantic edge of him gone.
They stand like that for a long time. George lets a slow breath out, dropping his chin to the top of Paul’s head. He feels his own throat tighten, and he allows himself a few silent tears to fall into Paul’s hair, unnoticed.
John had been one of George’s too. The sharp, infuriating, brilliant boy who George watched grow up. George had guided him, argued with him. Had been exasperated by him. Had loved him. And now that boy is gone.
George feels it pressing at the back of his throat — the urge to fold in on himself, to grieve without restraint. But he doesn’t. He can’t, at least not now. Because Paul needs him. Because Paul lost his other half. That is obvious. That is raw and open and bleeding in his arms.
If George has lost one of his boys, he still has the other. And he will not let this one fall apart without something solid beneath him.
Eventually Paul’s breathing evens out. He pulls back slightly, embarrassed, wiping his face with the heel of his hand.
“Sorry,” he mutters.
George shakes his head. “Don’t.”
Paul gives a weak nod, eyes swollen. He looks younger, somehow. Just the boy who met another boy at a church fête and decided, without knowing it, that they would change each other’s lives.
“I don’t know who I am without him,” Paul says quietly. “Even when we weren’t — he was still here. I could — feel him, almost.”
George studies him for a moment.
“You are still you,” he says. “But you carry him with you. That part of him hasn’t gone.”
Paul swallows hard. Through the glass, the others are pretending not to watch. Paul looks at the piano again.
“We’re not going to record anything today.”
“No,” George agrees quietly.
Paul nods, sitting on the bench again anyway. He doesn’t play. George sits beside him.
They don’t speak anymore. There’s nothing left to say that will fix it. Nothing can.
But George remains.