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1964 - NOVEMBER 2 - A HOTEL IN BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND.
The door shuts and latches. The sound echoes down the hall.
Brian speaks quietly. "Do you boys realize how lucky you are that it was me who came down that corridor?"
They look like nothing so much as two schoolboys dragged before the headmaster. They are sitting deliberately apart on the sofa, as if that could help matters at all. Paul's chewing his lower lip, looking steadfastly at the arm of the sofa; John's looking at nothing at all.
"It could have been anyone. It could've been Mal coming to check on you, it could've been George, it could've been Ringo, someone from the hotel, a maid — did you ever think of that? What if it had been? What if it had been a reporter who'd gotten past the security? Or a girl? What then? What would you have done? What would you have said?"
John turns to look at Brian desperately. "Christ, I don't — I don't know, we'd say it was all a joke, we were only having a laugh, that's all —"
"But you weren't," Brian says. "You weren't. Anybody could see you weren't." Nobody could see the two of them kiss for more than a second without knowing they had done it before, Brian thinks, and it's a rather head-spinning thought.
"We weren't thinking," replies Paul, still looking down.
Brian shakes his head, eyes shut. He's quiet for a long moment. "You can't afford not to think," he says finally. "You can't. Do you understand that? Do you know what you're getting yourselves into?" Because he knows. He knows very well there's nothing good that can come of it.
"We know," Paul says automatically. Saying what he thinks he ought to.
"See, Paul," says Brian, pacing, agitated, "I don't know that you do. Because I think if you understood what you could be doing to yourselves, to the band, to me, to everyone who's ever had anything to do with you, let alone to your families —"
"Fuck's sake, Eppy," says John, and he sounds scared. "We know, alright? Just — fuck off."
Brian shuts his eyes. He doesn't want to hurt them, truly doesn't. They're in for enough hurt as it is. "I'm sorry, John."
He sits down in one of the chairs across from them with a sigh. "How long has this been going on?" He's having previews of tonight's nightmares, imagining the damn idiots in compromising situations in every hotel hallway from Las Vegas to Leeds. It can't have been very long, can it? He would have known otherwise, from John, he thinks, with a certain pang, or even from Paul. (Paul! Who Brian had given up on suspecting after half an hour of speaking to him.) He'd never, until now, gotten the impression of something between them — oh, something, of course, anyone could see it, but something ill-defined; nothing that could be translated into a kiss against a hotel door.
John and Paul look at each other uncertainly with one of those looks that always gives Brian the bizarre impression that they're discussing something without bothering to say it out loud.
"I dunno, two months —"
"Not that, it was only —"
"Alright then, a month and a half, I hardly know what day it is, anyways."
Paul's eyes flicker back to Brian, clearly uncomfortable with putting words to it all. "In Florida," he adds, by way of clarification. "Key West."
"I do wish you'd told me," says Brian softly. "I'm not angry with you, you know. You should've told me."
"He nearly did for a second," John says, nudging Paul, who breathes a humorless laugh.
"Thought I was going crazy — I never expected, y'know — and it wasn't as if I could've told anyone else, so —"
"So why didn't you, for God's sake?" Brian interrupts, exasperated. Since Key West, and of all the ways to find out!
Paul looks at John. "Didn't know what to say."
"And no one else knows," says Brian, rather stupidly, because if anyone else had even gotten a hint, it would have all come crashing down by now.
"No," John says, wide-eyed. "Course not."
There's silence, save for a ticking clock on the wall. It's late and Brian is tired. He isn't quite sure what to say. That is, he has a thousand things to say at once and can't think where to start. Should he begin with a reminder of the litany of humiliations and devastations they are inviting upon themselves? With how could you put this burden on yourselves, or, selfishly, with how could you put this burden on me?
But it's late, and he is tired, so Brian says nothing.
"Right, shall we clean the chalkboards, then, or will we be writing lines, sir?" is John's bit of sarcasm to break the silence, with the usual lightly feigned innocence.
At this, Paul cracks a real smile; presses his lips together in a vain attempt to push it away. John relaxes imperceptibly, as if he'd been waiting for that. It suddenly and jarringly occurs to Brian that John's joke was not meant to sting him but simply to make Paul laugh. And it had worked, of course it had, despite it all. His heart swells and breaks all at once. What is he supposed to do with these two? He doesn't know. How could he? How could anyone?
It's just another situation to manage, he tells himself decisively, so he must manage. Somebody's got to, and nobody else can. He stands up. "We've got a train to catch first thing in the morning," he says. "I'll speak to you tomorrow. Sleep well."
He recieves a couple vague goodnights in response. The conspicuous gap between them has vanished; John's shoulder is pressed against Paul's. As if some kind of law of physics has slowly drawn them back to their proper place.
"Be smart, please," he says suddenly, stopping halfway through the door. "What you have — don't throw it away."
Brian hardly knows what he means by that. They have the world to throw away right now, of course. He thinks of the two of them, mirror images, left and right, sharing a microphone which is always useless against the blinding roar of the crowd. Their songs; the way they seem to extract them from each others' minds, like some alchemical process. But more than that — or maybe it's all the same, really — they had kissed like they were made to fit.
He shuts the door behind him and leaves.