Work Text:
London, Autumn 1965
The dressing room door clicked shut, but the screaming didn’t end. It never did. It bled through the walls, through the floorboards. Thousands of voices calling for him. For all of them.
John collapsed onto the ratty couch, guitar case at his feet, head tipped back. He pulled his glasses off carelessly, and he pinched the bridge of them between two fingers. He looked absolutely drained in a way makeup couldn’t cover, much worse than the usual eyebags they all had after staying up late to write─or party, if they felt they deserved a break.
Paul hovered in the doorway for a second before letting it close, making John jump. He hadn't known Paul was still here, assuming he would follow George and Ringo, who had already slipped out to the car awaiting to take The Beatles back to the hotel.
“You alright?” Paul asked, soft and quiet as always.
John let out a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh. “Brilliant. Absolutely smashing. Love it when girls faint into the barrier and grab at my boots.”
“John...”
“I’m fine, Paul,” John said, firmer this time, but his voice cracked on the words. He pressed the heel of his hand to his eyes. “It’s just... it’s too much lately. The constant travel, the endless interviews, the piles of mail, the girls grabbing at us like we’re not real. Like we’re meant to mindlessly smile and sign their stuff and let them take pieces off us and say thank you. Like bloody robots, day in and day out. I just─ I─”
John’s ramble faltered and stuttered to a stop as his mind went blank. He finally looked up and god, his eyes were wet. He hated that. Hated that their fans could make him feel like this.
Paul’s eyes met his best friend’s, and his chest did that tight thing it always did when John looked like that. Like he was 17 again and just heard that his mother was gone.
Paul crossed the room and sat down next to him, not saying anything for a while, acting as the grounding presence John needed. He just bumped their shoulders together, a silent show of steady support.
“You don’t have to do it today, y’know, not anymore,” Paul said softly. “The pretense, the happy façade. Not with me. The show’s over, we can go back to the hotel and rest. Okay, love?”
John sniffed and scrubbed at his face vigorously, feeling vague embarrassment at the unshed tears in his eyes. “Sop.”
“Yeah,” Paul nudged him with a tiny smirk, “but I’m your sop.”
That got a shaky exhale out of John, a sound that was almost a laugh. Paul reached over and took John’s hand, thumb running over his knuckles. “The world can have John Lennon, but they can’t have my Johnny. Not all of him.”
John turned his head, resting it on Paul’s shoulder, breathing into the crook of the younger man’s neck. The screaming was still there, it was constant, but it seemed muffled now. Far away.
“I’m scared I’m gonna start hating it,” John admitted eventually. “The music. But I love it too much to hate it.”
“You won’t,” Paul murmured, leaning into him, “because we’ll make it ours again. Just like before.”
He started humming low, under his breath: something new and half-formed that he’d been messing with on piano that very morning. It was soft and a bit daft and exactly the kind of thing that made John’s shoulders drop.
John closed his eyes, “What’s that?”
“Dunno yet. Might be terrible.”
“You’ll play it for me anyway?”
“Always,” Paul smiled as he squeezed his hand. “C’mon, let’s get out of here. The car’s out back to take us to the hotel. I’ll make tea, and you can tell me why all the band’s lyrics are better if we write them together.”
John opened his eyes and managed a small, real smile. “They are better.”
“I know. Everything’s better with you.”
They shared a chaste kiss before they stood up together, moving as one body, as if they were merged together, purposefully made that way and unable to function when they were apart. When Paul opened the door, the noise rushed in again. But John reached out and laced their fingers, and Paul held on tight.
─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── 🪲 ──── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ───
The car ride was quiet, but not the bad kind of quiet. The kind where Paul had John’s hand in his on the seat between them, and neither of them felt like they had to fill the air.
Ringo and George were sat opposite the pair, but Ringo was already snoring loudly on the younger man’s shoulder and George only had to take one look at John to know he wasn’t in a talking mood. So all the group did was exchange smiles as John and Paul got in the car, and bid eachother goodnight as they parted, George having to practically drag Ringo to their own room as John and Paul went the other way.
When the pair unlocked the room and entered it felt too big and too silent, almost suffocating. It always felt that way to John after a show.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” Paul offered, shrugging off his coat and hanging it on the hooks attached to the back of the door. “Unless you want something stronger.”
“Tea’s fine,” John dismissed as he dropped onto the floor in front of the bulky box TV instead of laying on the unmade bed, though he didn’t turn the TV on. “Don’t make it rubbish.”
“I make perfect tea and you know it,” Paul huffed in mock offence, bumping his hip against his boyfriend’s as he walked past to the little kitchenette the room provided.
A few minutes later he came back with two mugs, and sat down next to John on the rug without question. They didn’t feel the need to talk, they just sipped their teas and watched eachother. The tightness in John’s chest was finally starting to loosen.
“You still gonna play me that terrible song?” he asked, nudging Paul’s knee.
Paul grinned. “Knew you wouldn’t let me forget.” He set his mug down on the floor and went to grab his backup guitar in the corner. It was a little out of tune, but he liked it that way.
He trotted back over to John and sat back down, crossing his legs before he started playing, careful not to knock over his tea. The song was messy and unsure at first. It was the thing from earlier, but it grew fuller as Paul continued to play. The sound was wistful, a bit hopeful. The kind of melody that sounded like coming home.
John didn’t say anything. He just listened, head tilted, watching Paul’s hands, the way his face did that thing when he was figuring out a song. Eyebrows furrowed, mouth a little open, the expression in his eyes adorably concentrated.
When Paul finished he looked over his shoulder. “Well? Tear it apart.”
John smiled slightly, crawling over as he sat on his knees behind Paul and rested his chin on the man’s shoulder, nuzzling his nose into his cheek and pecking it once or twice.
“It’s not terrible, for a developing song at least,” he said quietly. “It’s... nice. Too nice, maybe.”
“Too nice?”
“Yeah. You’re getting soft on me, McCartney.”
Paul laughed and reached back to pull John around to sit side by side with him. “Play it with me then,” Paul said. “Fix it.”
So John did. He added a chord here, changed a lyric there. It wasn't “Yesterday”, but it felt like the start of something like that. Something small and honest, made with pure emotion.
After the third time running it through, John’s voice grew quieter, his eyes drooping with fatigue.
“Hey,” Paul murmured, noticing. “Tired?”
“Little bit,” John leaned into him, heavily. “Don’t stop.”
Just like requested, Paul didn’t. He kept playing the same serene tune, and singing, just under his breath now as not to stir John, who was slowly drifting to sleep.
It wasn’t long before John’s head tipped onto Paul’s shoulder and his breathing evened out. Sound asleep right there on the floor, still in his button-down and slacks he’d worn during the concert and hadn’t bothered to change out of.
Paul stopped playing once he was sure John wouldn’t rouse, and just sat with him for a while. One arm slipped around John’s back, holding him close subconsciously, as if Paul couldn’t bear to keep away. The city outside was still lazily buzzing with noise, but the large glass windows that led to the balcony muffled the array of sounds, and their room was finally, blissfully quiet.
The world outside wanted John Lennon, but they couldn’t have him. Tonight he was just John─no fake smiles, no famous surname. He was Paul’s.
As Paul tipped his head back to lean against the bed’s headboard, he hummed the rest of the song to an empty room, so that when John woke up, it would still be there like an eternal love song, waiting for him.