Chapter Text
John was drunk. That was the first thing that should be known. He was drunk and he wasn’t in his right mind. It wasn’t him it was the booze. That’s what he was going to tell Paul tomorrow, that’s what he’s going to tell HIMSELF tomorrow. Tell himself that he’s not a piece of shit, he’s not a monster. It was just the booze. But who is he kidding? You can make excuses to everyone around you but you can’t make excuses to your soul. The air in the studio was thick, metallic, heavy and oozing with the shame of alcohol and John’s rage. He’s not himself recently. After that reporter called him the “Fat Beatle” he couldn’t take it anymore, he needed to loose that weight, and so he did. Loosing weight meant a diet, but a diet was slow. John needed to drop it fast, and dropping it fast meant starving oneself and so John did. Hunger was this gnawing feeling, clawing at the sides of your stomach, weakness in your bones until you can’t stand up anymore. Your hair falls out in clumps while you lean on the shower wall because if you sit down you know you won’t be able to get back up, that’s who she was. Even if the price was great, the results oh the results! His soft chin was replaced by a sharper jaw line, jutting out collarbones and visible ribs. A perfect body, but hunger was a cruel mistress, your head clears, the emptiness of the stomach feels divine, but it brings exhaustion and rage.
Rage. Constant irritation at the slightest thing that stacks and stacks until you can hold it in any longer and snap. John drank booze to make him feel full, and the calories were less than eating a meal, so he kept drinking. Drank and drank and drank until all he saw double and his stomach felt stuffed. Maybe he should’ve account for how the drink pushed him further. How it brought him to this.
This. Standing in the recording studio, just him and Paul. Well it was him and Paul, now it was mostly him. Paul was curled up in the corner, blood covering his pale skin, tears in his eyes, shaking and covered in marks of John’s rage. What even happened? Oh right. Paul commented on how John was looking. A small couple words. “Your looking kind of bony, you right?”. Nothing significant really, but to the hunger and the booze it was the worst insult John had ever received. He kept standing there, breath in, breath out. Looming over Paul’s shaking body, bottle still in hand, teeth grinding against each other. Looking down at the chunk of scared boy that was the ever so famous Paul McCartney. He’s only ever seen Paul like this once before, a dark night when they were teens. Paul standing at his doorstep beat almost to a pulp by Jim. Barely breathing, the only thing that kept him walking was the adrenaline of almost dying. But this was different, right now this wasn’t Jim that was to blame. It was John himself. John had beat his best friend, his lover, his colleague half to death. He can still feel the warmth of Paul’s blood. Paul cried on the first couple hits, screamed out, made some sort of noise. But the harder John hit the less sound Paul made. Screams turned to sobs to muffled cries, the sounds that Paul choked out got quieter and quieter as his mouth filled with blood and mucus. Blood from his mouth pooling as John’s fist collided with Paul’s cheek once and once again. He could see the pity in Paul’s eyes in Paul’s eyes change to misery. The pity in the round green eyes is what made John feel such rage in the first place, Paul shouldn’t feel pity he should feel proud of John’s progress. But now he realises how much of a mistake he had made. Paul, poor, beautiful Paul.
“Paul….” John whispered out, the word came hard, in a subservient tone of realisation. Paul didn’t reply, he couldn’t. His mouth full of blood, snot and tears running down his face and John felt a mix of emotions. On one hand, disgust. A green feeling that was like a thick black goop inside his head. Choking the John Lennon that Paul had fallen inlove with. Paul’s crying face. Fucking faggot. Crying like a little girl, crying like a little girl that didn’t get a the right dolly for her birthday. But on the other hand, that was Paul. James Paul McCartney. The same boy John spelt summers with. The same boy John sat with under the covers, looking into each other’s eyes as they felt the first sparks of love they had ever experienced. The boy John would hitchhike with under the warm, English summer sun. Making their way down south, swimming in lakes. Having their first tastes of human passion in the scratchy bed that was the hayloft in the old barn in the middle of Strawberry field. Now that same boy, that beautiful pale, dark haired and green eyed creature was a bleeding mess under John. A shuddering, laboured breath comes out of Paul’s mouth, lips swollen as blood pours out of his mouth. Paul can’t breath properly. PAUL CAN’T BREATHE PROPERLY. John panics and tries to pull Paul up from the ground, but he can’t, his arms are too weak. Fuck. Fucking bollocks. With a piece of effort larger than the slices of Yorkshire pudding he used to have at Mimi’s. He finally tries to pull Paul of the ground. He’s half dead, he shattered Paul’s innocence. Broke the unconditional trust Paul had in him like one snaps an overly tight guitar string. Bam, and then its gone.
He sets Paul up on Ringo’s guitar stool. Paul can’t hold his back straight. That same pale face with features a bit like a bird’s was now swollen, bleeding. He looked like one of those old wives from Domestic Violence ads that have been circulating the telly recently. Paul looks like a bird that was beat by a right shite of a husband. If Paul was a bird John maybe would’ve felt some sympathy. But Paul wasn’t a bird. He was supposed to be a bloke, and blokes don’t get beat half to death, they fight back. Paul didn’t, Paul took it. Paul sat there and let John beat him until Paul couldn’t sit up. Paul let John smash the life out of him, like Paul took it up the arse when Jim bent him over the kitchen counter, Paul took it like he took Jim’s fist after the old fart had been nursing the Whiskey all night. John remembered the red hot feeling of ickiness that he felt when the words oozed out of Paul’s mouth. Oozed out like a thick mucus of bitter honey, telling John about how his father started sodomising him up the anus after his mother passed. How his father would stick it in and in a perverse sense of the way Paul enjoyed it. He wanted the attention from Jim. He wanted Jim to love him and pay attention to him and if that’s how Jim showed it Paulie would take it and relish in it. John thought he was right pathetic about it. Paul really was a girl at heart, a weak, pussy of a girl, and John Lennon wouldn’t mix with the rights of girls. John Lennon had a reputation to uphold, a reputation that molded right after his mam died and his pa left and he was stuck with the likes of Mimi. But all his disgust wouldn’t matter right now, he can talk all about how he felt to Eppy later. He can talk about it when Paul isn’t an inch away from death.
“John,” the whisper barely falls from Paul’s swollen broken lips, falling out with a trickle of thick blood. “Why? Why did you do this to me?” Paul’s eyes fill with tears, tears run down his face and John’s hands once again close into fists at his sides. “Because I love you alright? I’m bettering myself alright? Your butting in where your fag snout doesn’t belong.” John grinds his teeth as he spits out the quip.
Bettering himself? Sure, fucking sure. He’s starving herself like a girl trying to fit into her mother’s old dress. But maybe he is bettering himself in some ways, a lot of his rage is out! Paul whimpers, Paul also betters himself. He betters himself in a different way. John had seen the silvery lines of past pain that spanned Paul’s wrists like a softly whispered cry of pain that wrapped Paul’s limbs in a thin veil. Had asked Paul why he’d done it, and gotten the answer. Paul had cut Jim out of his life, but you can’t cut out memories. Running away is easy, it’s the leaving that’s hard, and inside Paul’s head he was still right there, laying there on the floor, a mess of blood and his father’s semen. Paul couldn’t leave that. He needed to see his blood. He needed to see the beautiful, metallic vermillion that came as the walls of his flesh parted in a bitter, sour embrace. The needed to see it slowly run down his arm, someone had once loved him when he was bleeding so someone will love him when he was bleeding again.
John felt a sort of bitter protectiveness over Paul, co-dependency from growing up with Paul. Holding hands so tight they couldn’t let go. He felt protective over Paul right now, as Paul finally starts to breathe properly. Because that was his Paulie. Paul reaches his arms out, asking to be embraced. Embraced by the man who had almost killed him. But Paul knows. He looks into John’s eyes and John isn’t a monster. He’s also scared. He also needs this embrace. They still are teenagers holding hands too tight. Holding hands so tight they cut of each other’s circulation. Paul cries into John’s shoulder, and John feels the pounds of weight lift of his chest. Everything would be alright. Paul forgave him. They would still be John and Paul, they would still be writing songs tommorow. Looking into each other’s eyes on a stage. Paul would keep bleeding and John would keep drinking, but their fingers would stay intertwined. They always would, because they loved each other. They always would.