Chapter Text
The concerts had been insane, as all others had been in this godforsaken tour so far. Twenty-five were arrested, Brian said, for crossing the police line and climbing on their car as they left, almost getting themselves run over and quite frankly it would not have been as shocking as it should be if they had. And now, though it had been hours since the concert, those screams that had covered up their (surely horrible, though who could say, you could barely hear it) playing at Dodger Stadium followed them outside their room.
George had tried to fix one particularly bothersome window that didn’t close fully by stuffing the gap with a rolled up pullover, but it didn’t really make a difference. Much more successfully, the four of them poured drink after drink for each other until they couldn’t hear anything but each other’s laughter and half-remembered stories. Now they sat, content and sleepy, an abandoned deck of cards sitting on the coffee table, two Beatles sprawled on the floor and two Beatles wrapped around each other on the couch. The two Beatles on the floor- George and Ringo- were passing that week’s photos back and forth, mostly unremarkable shots of the back of each other’s heads and plane seats and hands, photos of the press for a sense of symmetry, it’s only fair, and photos of whatever little views they were allowed to sightsee before being corralled back into their tour van.
The conversation was quieting down now, whatever Joan and Pauline were going on about over at the couch- lyrics or restaurants or songs about restaurants- had now faded into soft snores, and George and Rich were quickly getting through their pile. They had a good angle to look at the girls, Joan much more asleep than Pauline and her frizzy and loose hair draping over her face and Pauline’s chest and tangling between her still fidgeting fingers, a good enough angle at least for George to be able to snap one final photo of them tangled up in each other’s warmth.
Ringo was losing energy too, made clear by his yawning and his head leaning more and more heavily into George’s shoulder. His normally tired looking eyes were even more so, the dark circles under his eyes even darker than usual, and his melancholic expression had turned outright miserable. It was clear, though, to anyone that knew him, that his melancholy was only on his face. It was even easier to see when he was slowly, sleepily separating himself from George and, while still keeping himself steady with a hand on George’s knee, giving him one last smile for the night.
“Hard day’s night and all that. Bed’s callin’.” He said, and stepped over George to plant a kiss on both the girls’ foreheads. “G’night, you two.”
Joan buried her head further into the crook of Pauline’s neck and mumbled out a groan and a goodnight.
“Night, Rich.” Pauline reached out to grab either side of Ringo’s head, and gave him a louder kiss than he’d given her, which of course prompted Ringo to give her a louder one, until they were taking turns holding onto each other’s hair and not quite kissing each other goodnight as much as pushing and wrestling and disturbing Joan’s sleep. “Alright, man!” Pauline said, putting on what she must have thought was an American accent.
“Alright then!” Richie straightened up, or tried to, and saluted.
“Alright.” Pauline laughed. “G’night.”
“Night.”
“I should go too. I’m fuckin’ exhausted.” Joan said from Pauline’s neck.
“Yeah, love, I can tell.” Pauline stroked Joan’s hair and pushed her fringe out of the way. “Want me to walk you?”
“Eh. I can make it.” Joan got up, to her credit, without any assistance, and made her way to Ringo’s side to put all her weight against his shoulder, making them both stumble. Arm in arm, they grinned and waved back to the room. “Bye all!”
“Bye, Joanie, bye, Rich.” Pauline said.
“Bye.” George said.
“Bye.” Joan’s gaze lingered on Pauline, then she closed the door behind her.
George got up to pour himself the last drops of rum and sipped his half glass happily. Some nice French group he didn’t recognize was playing on the radio, and he focused on memorizing the melody so he could ask around about who it was tomorrow. He hummed and moved his shoulders along to the music, then his arms, then slowed down along with the strings and piano. He sipped his drink and noted that he should try that last chord- wrapped up the song nicely. Angelic, almost. Not quite rock’n’roll.
“D’ye think you’ll go to bed soon too?” George turned to Pauline who was still sprawled on the couch, one hand tracing the fabric where Joanie had sat with her and one hand replacing the pressure Joan had had against her shoulder. She blinked once, twice, and breathed heavily, and George considered lifting her up and carrying her to her room himself.
“I’m pregnant.” She said.
“Oh, shit.” George dropped his just empty glass in a hurry, letting it clink and roll against the expensive wood of the hotel tables, circling before not quite dropping on its side, and crossed the room to take the empty spot next to Pauline. “James?”
Pauline sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Um, I don’t think so, no. We haven’t… he’s been busy with his movies, and all.”
“Ok. Then…”
“The only other, um- the only others have been on tour.” Pauline folded over and pressed her chest against her knees, busying herself with the patterns in the carpet and the loose skin around her nails.
“Do you know any of them? Could you ask?”
“I mean, Christ, I didn’t really write down their addresses." She said, then sighed and turned to look at his shoes. “It’s not like you keep in contact with any of your birds.”
George frowned, but shook his head in agreement. Pauline stopped her skin picking and hissed, suddenly, and took her now bleeding thumb to her mouth. George wrapped his arm around her and held onto her shoulder. “What’d Joan say?”
“Um…” Pauline leaned away from the touch just slightly. “Haven’t told her.”
“Oh, alright.” George pulled her closer, and thought back to the last time he’d been the first person to know of something new in Paulie’s life. It had been long enough to be unable to recall, and he felt a weird sense of pride coming up into his chest before remembering to be worried again. “Think she’ll freak?”
Pauline looked up at him with wide eyes, as if she hadn’t thought of it, before looking back at her thumb to check the state of it, then bringing it back up to her mouth. “Da’ll kill me.”, she said instead. “James won’t marry me, either, God knows.”
“I’ll do it.” George said.
“Do what?”
“Marry you.” Rum flushed George’s cheeks.
Pauline stared back at him, head tilted and a look in her eye, curious as to what George was playing at but not quite sober enough to try to figure it out herself. She started again, trying to get back at what she was saying before, about- Joan, or James, or-
“Oh.”, she said, instead. “What?”
George shrugged, but his hand trembled on Paulie’s back. “Better than grabbing some bloke off the street, no?”
“Yeah, but…”
“Unless you- I mean, if you’re thinking of…if you don’t want it, the baby, then yeah, no use.”
Pauline gaped at him. “No! Fuck. No, George.”
George shrugged again. He worried, though, if she was offended at the very thought of it, about how the conversation with Joan would go. Joan had said before that one of them being a mother was enough, and that the two of them couldn’t handle one more baby over the one at home and the two at the studio. He had no doubt her solutions to the problem would be much more direct.
“What about your girl?” Pauline asked.
‘Your girl’ was an interesting way of saying ‘Pattie’, who Pauline had met many times and most definitely knew the name of. George had been seeing her for a bit, now, they’d met years ago at the set of their first movie, but hadn’t spent much proper time with her until now.
When they met George felt as if the sky had parted and shown him who he was truly meant to be with- and Pattie seemed to feel the same- but after waving her over to spend her break with the band, something must’ve made her withdraw. She quieted down and didn’t seem to want to hang around them on set much anymore, and dismissed George quickly with one word answers when he tried to approach. Even now, though she was much friendlier, it was clear she shied away from anything too serious, preferring to focus on her work and her boyfriend Charles. But they’d been having fun, and Pattie was lovely, ring or no ring in the future. Pauline didn’t seem to like her much.
“She’s set to marry anyways.” he lied. “Her boyfriend’s proposing soon.”
“I thought you two… oh, yeah. That man of hers.” Pauline giggled. “Thanks, love. I’ll keep you in mind”
“I mean it.”
“I know, yeah.”, she laughed. “Just, um… nothing. It’s funny, that’s all.”
“Yeah, alright.”
Pauline didn’t say anything else, but she leaned back against George’s shoulder and stifled more laughter. It would be hurtful, really, with any other bird, to propose and get laughed at. But it was funny, so George giggled along with her and rested his chin on the top of her head and didn’t let himself think of what he’d offered, or of Pattie or any other pretty birds around them. It wasn’t easy, with Pauline, anyways. God knows when the last time the two of them were like this- whispering, sharing their secrets with each other- it didn’t last long, as it never did, and Pauline went back to holding her gaze down and her hands against her lap.
“‘Less you’d rather have Ringo.”
“Oh, alright, George.”