Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Well, then Decca can get fucked up the arse with Paul’s bass,” John says, on hearing the news. 

Paul cannot hold in a full-body shiver at the mere prospect. His poor Höfner…

Brian’s expression takes on a pinched quality. 

“Decca,” Brian says very patiently, “is a major record label that doesn’t have any obligation to us.”

“And don’t y’think it’s a bit off to say that being fucked is, like, weaker? Or less than?” Richie points out, quite reasonably—placid as ever and just fiddling with his rings. 

John colours, then frowns. “No, I get pegged—Paul, you—”

“No,” says George, who has known Paul since they were little girls, and with whom Paul agrees regarding the airing out of his and John’s sex life. 

Paul is not the only one grateful for the intervention—Brian looks faintly dizzy. “Okay,” he intones. “If I might tempt you to consider the matter at hand.”

That riles John up again. Not being told what to think about—though that probably doesn’t help—but the reminder of their current record label situation. He slams a hand on Brian’s desk, the gravity of the gesture undercut slightly by the bowl of kosher jelly beans he knocks over. “It makes no fuckin’ sense that they refuse to sign us! We’re bloody good! And—” here he bristles self-importantly— “they shouldn’t think for a second that I haven’t noticed that they know that we’re all trans.”

“That isn’t it,” Paul sighs for the hundredth time. 

“You don’t know that!”

“Boys,” Brian says, which should be condescending from an older cis man but is actually pleasantly paternal. “Decca has plenty of trans artists; that’s not it. We just need to tighten up your audition set, I think.”

Groaning, John flops back into an armchair. His hair goes everywhere. He sweeps it out of his face; Paul tries not to stare at his hands. “If you talk to us about ‘Long Tall Sally’ one more time I’ll actually bite ye.”

“People on Insta seem to like the Hozier cover,” Ringo contributes, very much in a keeping-the-peace tone. He’s moved on from fiddling with his rings; now he’s pinching each bead of his Kandi like he’s counting the rosary. “We could do that instead of Arctic Monkeys.”

“I like the Arctic Monkeys one, though,” George says with a frown.

“We don’t want to overshadow your original songs too much,” Brian says. He produces a printed setlist from somewhere in his desk and starts scribbling on it with a biro, adding arrows and notes and all sorts of complicated-looking shorthand. “I think, unless you can really tighten it up before next week, we shouldn’t do the full version of ‘I Saw Her Standing There’. Better to do an abridged version and move it right on to ‘It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me’—the call-and-response always goes down well.”

“I barely get to play on that one,” George says. “It’s, like, one solo.”

Brian nods consolingly. “I know—we’ll put ‘Please Please Me’ right after. It’s important that we show them how stripped down you boys can play and still sound good.”

“Surely yer happy for the break,” John teases, leaning way over to bump shoulders with George. “You can dissociate your whole way through that one; no need to bother with us three.”

George rolls his eyes. “S’not about you lot, I just want to play guitar.”

Ringo affects a shocked, hurt look and puts one glittering hand on his sternum. “Georgie-boy…”

“I’m not making the break-up announcement,” Paul advises, settling in his chair and fishing for that high-and-mighty voice that tends to work on bandmates and bandmates’ parents and people trying to ban him from Twitter.

It takes ages, and several well-timed mentions of, in no particular order—their all being trans; Ringo being demisexual; John having a laundry list of DSM diagnoses; George’s horde of siblings (never mind that his parents are doing alright)—but they finally get signed.

To celebrate, John goes on Instagram Live and expertly dodges questions about his dick or lack thereof—the perils of being trans online—and gives non-answers to perfectly reasonable questions about their music.

“It’s a B7,” Paul says, helpfully, regarding what chord they played in the transition to the bridge in the Reel from yesterday. “But I think George is doing something else there; you’d have to ask him.”

Over the past ten minutes John has slowly been turning over on Paul’s bed. Presently he executes the final development of the rotation, and settles with his head perilously close to the edge of the bed and his phone hovering above him. Unaware of Paul’s immediately raised eyebrows, he starts yammering about Led Zeppelin.

“You’re gonna break a tooth like that,” Paul fusses, getting up from his desk chair and plucking the phone out of John’s hands. “Hello all—I’m confiscating Johnny’s phone until he can sit normally.”

Questions and greetings flow in. One person is just typing his name in all caps, over and over again. It’s a bit funny but it’s very earnest; it feels a bit like how his baby cousins flock to him at family dinners. “Hi, erm—” he peers at their username— “Roxie! I have been here the whole time, you know.”

“Give me back my phoooone,” John whines. He’s still upside-down. 

“No,” Paul says, neatly folding himself into his chair again, and standing John’s phone against a Bluetooth speaker. He rests his elbows on the table and his chin on his hands. There’s questions about his dick, too; he ignores them. Someone asks about the selfie on his story last Wednesday. “Oh—thanks, it was from M&S, I think. And I’m pretty sure it was George’s idea—he found it on Maps.”

“Pauuuuuuuul.”

“No, I’m not allergic to anything. I really hate pickles, though.”

“My phooone.”

“Mmm—probably Aerosmith, right now. I’m on a bit of a retro kick.”

“Paulieeeee.”

“Yellow! Ringo likes orange, and George likes pink and green. John changes his mind constantly.”

John perks up. “Oh, is this favourite colours?”

“Yeah, I—”

John flips himself over and has two feet on the floor in record time, leaps to stand behind Paul. He’s not in frame so Paul nudges him; he realises, and ducks down to lean on the back of the chair, cheek almost brushing Paul’s hair. “Right now—red. I feel a blue period coming up on me, though.”

“As I said—mercurial.”

“Oh, there’s a shout—silver is quite nice.”

Paul nods his assent, privately surprised at how quickly John has gone back to being agreeable, and then John nicks his phone off the desk and runs out the room, down the stairs, and into the garden, talking at high speeds to the livestream the whole way.

Someone throws a lacy bra onto stage, for reasons best known to themself. It lands at Paul’s feet, but takes him so completely by surprise that all he can do is blink owlishly at it, leaving plenty of time for John to swoop in.

“’Ey! Whose is this?” he says, waving it about in the air. “This is proper nice, it is, but I’ll have ye know that I bind, so I haven’t got a use for it.” He peers at the bra, brings it close enough to his face that there’s going to be some unfortunate gifsets about John sniffing bras, and finds the label. He whistles lowly, and tries to pronounce the brand name, but it’s in French and he was never very good at that. Paul holds back a wince at the slightly choked sound of John speaking en français.“Alright, who wants this back?”

A cheer goes up, and John tosses it back into the crowd, where greedy hands snatch it up. Paul spares a thought for the now-braless person somewhere in their audience, but they couldn’t have expected anything different from throwing a bra at a bunch of trans guys. As John would say—lol. Lmao, even.

“OH, MY GENDER,” John shouts, and he scrambles back into the house.

The Uber driver looks blankly at Paul, who shrugs awkwardly. “He, erm—he has to take some medicine. He must’ve forgotten.”

“Okay,” the driver says, shrugging. Paul supposes he isn’t paid enough for this; he makes a note to ask Brian to tip well.

John returns a few minutes later looking slightly worse for wear—his shirt’s come untucked and his belt is all off-centre—but grinning madly. “Got that boy juice,” he says to Paul, which is harder to explain to the Uber driver, but at least Paul doesn’t have to deal with John whining about missing his T shot all day.

“Just get in the car.”

Chapter Text

They make it big. Like, scarily big. Their follower counts go through the roof, and even Paul’s one-off stupid Tweets are easily getting thousands of replies. He gets recognised in Lidl, and the selfie he obliges to take is all over Instagram by lunchtime.

“There’s fan accounts,” he says to George, over coffee (insofar as Starbucks can be called coffee). 

“I know,” George says, stirring his caramel mocha concoction with his straw, brow furrowed in concentration. The straw starts to bend; he sets his hands flat down on the table and looks directly at Paul, visibly brewing something conspiratorial. “I got a comment from a georgeharrisonsmonstercock last night.”

Paul can’t help it—he should be sympathetic and compassionate and understanding, and all that, but all he can do is snort loudly enough to make the already-disgruntled sixth formers in the corner look up from where they’re clustered around someone’s open Geography book. He buries his face in his hands, gathering his wits.

“Okay,” he says, with an amount of cool that frankly should win him a medal. “Neat.”

George looks pained. “Neat? That’s all you have to say about it?”

Paul shrugs. “Y’should just be glad for the free bottom surgery, I think. I mean—if they say you have—y’know.”

“You can say monster cock,” George points out very reasonably. “You’re an adult.”

Paul wilts in his seat, collapsing protectively around his drink. He rests his face on his forearm, away from George’s logic, and shakes his head. “I’m not saying a word about your cock, thanks.”

That gets a giggle out of both of them. The sixth formers look a little grossed out, and start making arrangements to leave.

They scramble out an album, promote it on all the socials, hop on some audio bandwagons that net them a few viral TikToks, and generally try to keep up with what is promising to be a clusterfuck of popularity. Brian takes them aside in the studio one day and asks them to stop calling each other slurs in public.

“It’s reclaimed,” John says, expression going hard, jumping as ever at any chance to throw around the weight of all his labels. “Unless you don’t thi—”

“We’ll stop,” Paul interrupts him loudly. He smiles politely at Brian— “Thanks for letting us know.” —and grabs John’s hand and tugs him out into the hallway, says in low tones, “He is literally gay.”

John frowns, pulling his hand away and rubbing it where Paul gripped too hard. “Cis, though.”

“Ally, though,” Paul shoots back. He shakes his head. “Johnny, not everyone’s out to get us.”

Something mean lodges itself in John’s expression and stays there. “Some of ‘em are.”

Paul softens. He brings his hands up to cradle John’s face. “Brian isn’t. We trust him, love. Don’t you remember he found me that GP after my old one moved? And he told us about the community centre thing, and he’s never ever used the wrong name or pronouns for any of us, even when we were pre-T.”

That seems to get to him. John sags; Paul catches him easily, circles his arms about his boyfriend’s waist. “S’okay, Johnny.” He presses a kiss to John’s temple. “We’re okay.”

“I wish Robert Plant was trans,” John says wistfully, as they are all trying to fall asleep in a hotel room. Well, all minus Ringo—that boy’s out like a light at a moment’s notice, the fucker. He’s currently a Ringo-shaped silhouette on the bed not being occupied by the rest of them.

George lifts his head sleepily from Paul’s chest. “What?”

John turns to face them, features half-illuminated in the moonlight. “What? I think he’d’ve been good at it.”

Paul’s melatonin is kicking in, but he finds George’s knee and squeezes. “Don’t even worry about it.”

George grins and lays back down, settling his bony arse back in Paul’s lap in a proper sandwich. “’Kay.”

Chapter Text

“I logged onto Tumblr the other day,” George says carefully. The rest of them go still over their instruments, then peer carefully up at him. “Had a nosey on the Beatles tag, y’know, just for laughs.”

“What was, ah, what was on there?” Paul asks. Something in the way George broached the topic makes him suspect—well. He’s not sure, but there’s a certain sort of feeling.

“Well, you two are McLennon,” George says, like that makes everything make sense. He gestures between him and Ringo. “Starrison.”

John—a lapsed Sherlock fanboy, and all—cottons on quickly. “What are we? Harrennon?”

“Lennison,” George says—very promptly, for someone who has allegedly only logged onto Tumblr to have a look. “And, uh, you’re Pringo.”

“Pringo?” Paul echoes, doing a poor job of disguising his horror.

“Or McStarr,” George adds quickly.

“Pringo…” Paul says helplessly.

“Sounds nice,” John says. “Like Pringles. I like Pringles.”

“Pringles are good,” Ringo says, nodding. “And I like you, Paul, so I don’t mind if we’re Pringles.”

“Pringo,” George corrects.

Paul carefully hands John his bass, then slithers dramatically onto the floor.

“OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD,” George says, bouncing up and down, and acting very much like a professional musician with a job and a record label and an album out and everything.

“George,” Paul hisses, grabbing his hand. It’s not as though the event isn’t already loud, but if George carries on like that they’re going to start turning heads—and, mercifully, nobody at this BBC thing seems to care about the Beatles, so there aren’t actually that many heads turned.

“That’s Dan and Phil,” George hisses back. Paul supposes it can’t be helped—George was on Tumblr in the thick of it; he’s pretty sure his URL is still about pastel/punk edits or flower crowns or something—but they aren’t here as children of early YouTube and late YouNow, they’re here as the Beatles, and this sort of thing is exactly what Brian meant when he asked them to stop eating chicken on stage and also to ‘behave like adults’.

“OhmyGod, where?” John says, materialising at Paul’s shoulder. “Holy shit—holy shit!”

“Not two of you,” Paul sighs, even though he was just as invested in Dil Howlter and PINOF and the whole ‘ladydoor’ thing. 

John and George steer them surreptitiously over to Dan and Phil, who—as Paul vaguely knew from seeing frantic ‘I just met DNP!!!!’ posts over the years, but had never previously had the chance to confirm—are very tall and very nice.

Also—“Wait, can I say something?” Phil asks, glancing around them carefully. He leans in a bit, privately. “It’s really, really nice to see more queer people in entertainment—we know how tough it can be, especially at your sort of age. So, like, if you ever need anything, you can phone us, okay?”

“They don’t know our numbers,” Dan says, taking out his phone to share exactly that. Paul grabs his, copies out the digits on screen, tries not to feel like he’s been transported back to 2017. “But, yeah, like. We’re always around London.”

“We live here,” Phil says, nodding sagely. “Also, probably text, not call.”

“Yeah, we don’t really do phone calls. Dunno why I said to phone us, actually.”

“Figure of speech,” John says from beside Paul, sounding dizzy.

They play at the Royal Variety Show and Paul has to elbow John into silence regarding the accuracy of Christopher Eccleston’s political stance regarding royalty. Another album, and they hardly get any sleep. Paul insists on a Meredith Wilson deep cut; John starts posting rehearsal clips on his story; things get released in America and Canada, and Brian starts his scheduling magic for the USA.

Chapter Text

“So you’re just about to go to America,” the interviewer—an Irish woman called Hallie—says, which Paul privately thinks is somewhat unnecessary because this interview is to promote their American tour, but—oh well!

“Yeah—” Paul starts.

“Yeah, to New York first,” John says, over the top of him. “Sorry.”

“S’fine,” Paul assures him. “Yeah, we’re starting in New York and sort of working our way all over.”

“And I understand that it’s the first time any of you will have been to the US?”

“First time out of Europe for all of us,” John confirms. He squirms a little, making a show out of his excitement, putting on one of his school picture day smiles. “We’re gonna see the big wide world!”

George and Ringo make noises of agreement. Hallie seems taken by their chemistry as a group and smiles, brushing a tuft of blue hair out of her face. “Are you going to play anything new? Or is that a secret?”

She’s just the right sort of person to do an interview—bright and bubbly but dipping into conspiratorial as she asks a question she already knows the answer to, willing to make a fool out of herself for the sake of more Beatles clips.

“Our manager said if I leak anything else he’ll give me the Tom Holland treatment and never let me do interviews alone ever again,” Paul says woefully. George giggles. It's true—and really only what Paul deserves after accidentally including most of the lyrics to a new song in the background of his story—but it still stings. And makes for good interview comedy, evidently.

“That’s fair enough,” Hallie laughs. “We wouldn’t want that—you know you’re the people’s princess!”

“Prince,” John corrects quietly—intended only for Paul, really, an automatic reminder that he sees Paul; a reminder that he knows who Paul is. 

Paul ghosts a hand across his knee, squeezes once. It’s a turn of phrase, and he doesn’t mind it terribly, but John’s attentiveness is appreciated, and he deserves to know that.

“I have been getting a lot of, erm, interesting comments,” Paul confesses, playing up the awkwardness. The doe-eyed, dainty, slightly prim-and-proper image is a fun one to toy with; people seem to love any suggestion that he’s a blushing bride—or groom, as it were. 

“Everybody loves our Paul,” John says, looping an arm around Paul’s shoulders and jostling him laddishly. He even goes in for a hair ruffle, but Paul tackles him away.

“And I—” he dodges a hand poised to tickle— “don’t mind the attention! I’ve always—” he shoves John away— “I’ve always liked being centre stage.”

“Attention whore,” John provides helpfully. 

Hallie laughs, seemingly despite herself. She’s got that giddy sort of energy that Paul is becoming familiar with—eyes alight even when she’s just watching and listening as they fool around—and her amusement bubbles out at intervals. “Your chemistry as a group is incredible. Is there a secret to it?”

George takes this as an invitation to lay himself down across Paul’s lap. “Thank you, ma’am,” he drawls, somewhere between Scotland and Texas, tipping an imaginary cowboy hat. Then his expression clears and he grins up at Paul. “Us two are childhood friends, so.”

“That we are,” Paul says, then drags Ringo in for a one-armed hug. “And this boy made the classic blunder of mentioning in our comments that he played drums.”

“And this boy started the band,” John says loudly. 

Ringo smiles brightly. “That he did!”

“But there’s no trick to it, really,” Paul says—George across his lap, Ringo tucked under his arm, John grinning like a dog on his other side. “We’re all just mates.”

“And we like making music together,” Ringo adds. 

“It’s great to see,” Hallie says. “Some people are saying you’re going to be the next One Direction.”

George chortles and sits upright; Paul raises his eyebrows. 

“I hope not,” Ringo says, a good-natured bit of snark.

“Trans!One Direction,” George says seriously, effortlessly implying the exclamation mark. They all laugh. George gets all pleased with himself about it. 

“How big do you want to go, though?” Hallie asks. “I mean, the world is your oyster at this point—America is so hyped for the tour; you really could be the next big thing. Is that something you’re interested in?”

They default to letting John answer; he’s always been the most intentional about the band. Toppermost of the poppermost, and all, never mind that the show hasn’t been on air for years. Buzzcocks, more like, but that’s harder to riff on. 

“It wasn’t ever something we thought was possible,” John admits. “I mean, we’re just four kids from Liverpool, and all—and I know everyone says that sort of thing, but it is really true.”

“The three of us grew up on council estates, y’know,” Paul says, gesturing to himself, George, and Ringo. “Music was never on the table as a career.”

“The guitar’s nice and all but you’ll never make any money off it,” John says, in a pretty damn good impression of his aunt Mimi. He cocks his head self-consciously. “That sort of thing.”

“Wow,” says Hallie, looking riveted though she has almost certainly heard the same story dozens of times from squillions of preternaturally successful bands. 'Oh, look at us, we had such a hard go of it, now buy tour tickets!' It's true, though.

“So, yeah,” John says—and looks at the camera directly, now— “America? Bring it on. We’re gonna go as far as we can with this thing.”

They make it really big. Bigger than any of them thought was possible—including Brian, who arranges security guards for the American leg of the tour and tells them in no uncertain terms that they mustn’t post anything without clearing it with him first, just in case someone sleuths out their location.

This makes John snort. “Nobody’s gonna figure out where we’re staying from a picture of our breakfast.”

Brian raises an eyebrow, but George speaks before he can— “I dunno, there’s some people on Twitter and stuff who are really good at that.”

“The GeoGuessr people,” Ringo says, nodding. Brian looks relieved to have backup.

“Fine.” John feigns a swoon. “O Brian, our cruel master.”

Brian sighs heavily, rolling his eyes, and shoos them out of the room—onwards and upwards, and all that, even if it's only to the sound check.

Chapter Text

America goes really well. They start to get better at playing over the constant sound of screaming; Paul takes probably far too much delight in seeing John shush everybody so they can sing. They play on SNL.

Vaguely, he misses John in leathers and hair gel—or even John before that, in black skinny jeans and straightened hair, before they both dispensed with the whole ‘girl’ thing—but this clean-cut, be-suited John is a special little thing, too. He’s starting to fill out properly, getting more angular—and rectangular, even, with the T starting to redistribute his weight about his chest and hips.

Suddenly they have more money than they know what to do with. Well, they know what to do with some of it—Brian starts arranging top surgeries, staggering them out in some clever way that won’t interfere with touring and suchlike. Paul, who’d long ago accepted that he would never be rid of his tits, starts to look at himself in the mirror and actually, properly picture them gone.

One of the prospective surgeons mentions offhandedly, when they get back to England, that having well-developed chest muscles can help get the best results. John starts lifting weights obsessively.

Ringo is the last to reach a million followers on Twitter, but somehow the first to reach two. “There’s a renaissance, I s’pose,” he says, gnawing on his knuckles and acting much less smug than John when he’d gotten half as many.

“A Ringossance,” George says. They all nod solemnly.

George goes gluten-free for a few weeks, which would be less annoying if they weren’t crisscrossing rural England and Wales for a good portion of the time, where most foods that aren’t already bread are battered and fried, but at least he’s not sworn off mutton and chips.

“It’s better for y’r gut microbiome,” he says around yet another vanilla milkshake, snagged from a Costa before they all piled back onto the coach. “You all should try it.”

“I’m alright,” Paul and Ringo chorus. John shoves an entire jam doughnut into his mouth and gets powdered sugar everywhere.

They make a film in a hectic handful of days. Ringo disappears into the healthcare system to get his teets yeeted; John and Paul look for two flats next to each other in London; George buys a mandolin online and won’t stop bringing it to their studio sessions. The T is suiting him well; he’s finally getting the shadow of a shitty little moustache that is already perfectly at home on his face.

Paul has another top surgery consult. Dates get hammered in. Ringo has some complications with his drains and whatnot, and can’t come with them to Australia. They file into his room one-by-one, past the in-home nurse, to kiss his forehead (and ask gruesome questions, on John’s part) before they really do have to go catch their plane.

The flight takes an age. George gets through an incredible amount of both Candy Crush and complementary Sprite. John takes a well-timed Benadryl and falls asleep against Paul’s shoulder. Paul, for his part, watches all the Shrek films and the first half of Cars before he drifts off.

Australia in June is surprisingly clement. Paul starts watching Derry Girls in between concerts and practices. Their follower counts slowly tick up. They get MBEs; Christopher Eccleston gets a DM on Instagram from a one-day-old account; John gets a slap on the wrist and a talking-to.

From there it’s not even a press circus, it’s a zoo.

Chapter Text

“Are the Beatles… all trans?” Paul reads, pulling away the little sticky strip covering the question. They’re sitting on weird wooden stools for no particular reason—maybe so they can all fit in frame?—and are taking turns reading the boards, with the natural exception of John, who still refuses to wear his specs; he more than makes up for it with how many answers he provides.

“Yes! Yes, we are,” John says. “All four of us are transmasc.”

“Yes indeedy,” George confirms. “And, as far as we know, the first all-trans boy band.”

“Alltransboyband,” says Paul, and he doesn’t even need to append ‘try saying that five times fast’, because they all try, fail, and dissolve into giggles. 

They gather themselves. Paul goes for the next question. “Are the Beatles… from Liverpool?” Noises of assent rise up around him. 

“Proud Speke boys, me and Paul,” George says. “Them two are from the Dingle and Woolton, respectively.”

“All of us Mersey-born,” Ringo adds. “Liverpool through and through.”

One more question on this board. Paul peels away the sticker, gets stuck halfway, steadies the board as he angles himself to get it properly. Oh, this’ll be good. “Are the Beatles… a polycule?”

They fall about. 

“No,” John says, wheezing, tearful, once they have recovered enough to speak. 

Ringo clutches his chest, shakes his head. “No, no. Not yet.” A sneaky wink to the camera, and if that isn’t enough to keep the fanvidders occupied Paul doesn’t know what is.

Paul's spice tolerance is, they discover, absolutely laughable. This would have been a great thing to figure out before crying his eyes out on a chicken wing during Hot Ones, but, well—it is what it is. Or that's what John keeps saying, but Paul reaches out blindly and thwacks him on the shoulder. Bit hard to call him a wanker when his mouth is on fire. No matter that John hasn't even taken a bite yet.

Speak of the devil: John takes an overconfident chomp, looks smug for half a second, aaaaand—there he goes. Sean Evans is the only one with enough good grace to look mildly concerned as his face goes red in huge, uneven splotches; George (very poorly) hides a snicker in his hand.

“Holy fucking shiiiii-iii-hiiii-iit,” John chokes out. “Paulie, Paulie—Paul, help, help, George, help.”

“Serves you right,” George says. He's been holding his own remarkably well. Must be all the bloody curry he eats. “Ribbing our Paul like that for his tolerance.”

“I'm so-orry,” John says tearfully, coughing around what Paul knows firsthand is an absolute bastard of a sting. His tongue must be burning by now. He's sweating, fascinatingly.

Ringo pats him on the back carefully. “‘S okay, John-love.” He can't eat chilli, of course, what with his allergies and the colitis, but he's good for moral support.

“Paul I thought I could eat chilli, Paul, Paul, Paul,” says John, clinging to Paul's sleeve as they peel out of the shoot. His cheeks are still streaky with chilli tears. “Pauuuullll.”

“You're not getting any sympathy from me, Johnny-boy,” Paul says, tightening an arm around him nonetheless. “You berk.”

“Is it too late to ask th—AUGH—to ask them to cut that bit out?”

“What, cut out all of your time on screen?”

“I wasn't crying the whole time.”

“Ehhhh…”

“I don't want to be in the Hall of Shame, though,” John whines, later.

Paul looks up from the copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man he's been very close to throwing across the room for the better part of the previous hour. “You're still on about this?”

John sniffs, pouts, scratches the back of his neck. “I don't want to be in the Hall of Shame,” he says, notably less petulant. “I mean, it's embarrassing.”

Paul considers him. He’s been annoyingly ruffled about the filming all day, but Paul figured it was just chilli-pain talking. They're a shared pint of Häagen-Dazs deep, though, and he's still worrying—this is a man worried about his public image.

Paul closes his book on its library receipt and looks at John, who’s scrunched up on the far end of the sofa with a sketchbook on his knee that Paul’s almost certain he hasn’t drawn a thing in since he sat down. The biro between his middle and pointer fingers is a blur of hyperactive motion.

“Plenty of people don’t finish the wings,” Paul says. “You’re allowed to not have a spice tolerance.”

“Says you,” John snorts.

“Yeah, and? I know I can’t handle it for shit, now, and that’s just a part of me. ’S not like it’s my fault.”

John stops flicking his pen. Paul almost thinks he’s managed the situation, but then John sticks the end of it in his mouth. Paul sighs and reaches forward. “Johnny, you’re gonna fuck up your teeth.”

“Irontcare,” John says around the pen. 

“I do,” Paul says. He leans over and plucks the pen out of John’s hand. John makes a whiny noise of discontent, but doesn’t tackle him for it back. Go figure!

“Nobody’s gonna think less of you for it, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Paul advises, sitting back on his haunches. He sets the biro on the coffee table with a tiny cactus that is most certainly dying.

John’s pout—and Paul can hardly believe it’s possible, but there it goes—deepens. “George will.”

Ahhhh. Inter-Beatle jealousy, then. That’s an easy fix. “George,” Paul proclaims, “is a masochistic little freak, and his spice tolerance is an outlier and should not be counted.”

John looks up, starry-eyed. Paul gets a little thrill at how simple it is to perk him up. “Spiders Georg,” John says tremulously. 

“Spiders Georg, baby. Or—curries George. Y’know.”

“My cousin Throckmorton,” John says sagely, already having gotten into it. 

“Your cousin what?!” Paul hams, grinning, and there he is, his lovely smiley boy. “Come here, love,” he says, and John is immediately all over him. Paul kisses the top of his head. “I daresay the hordes will like your little chilli moment, darling—you begging for me with tears running down your cheeks?”

John’s eyebrows make a noble ascent up his forehead. They’re very close to disappearing in his fringe. “Ah,” he says, pink. “Ah, yes, I can see that. Being the case.”

Paul snorts, then nestles John more securely against his chest. “It’s all gonna be fine.”

John makes a grouchy noise and sits up. “Fiiiine.”

Paul staves off a smile. “Yeah?”

“If you say so.”

“Yeah, well, I do,” Paul says, feeling very accomplished indeed. Lennon Panic has been reduced to Lennon Snark, and that’s pretty much a given when Lennon Awake. He stretches, yawns, checks the time. “I need some food.”

John jumps up with a grin. “Extra spicy wings coming up.”

“Hmmm,” Paul says, standing, losing sorely to that smile. “No, I think I need some nice mild tofu.”

“You are no fun,” John declares.

Chapter Text

“People will ship you,” Brian warns. 

John has an arm about Paul’s shoulder for no reason in particular. When he shrugs, it goes through Paul, too. “Don’t matter to me. Besides—” he squeezes Paul’s bicep— “they already do.”

“The polycule stuff is my fault,” Ringo says easily, not apologetic in the least. To the contrary, he’s smiling. “That went down very well on Tumblr.”

Brian gets that pained look again. “On your own head be it,” he says, of Ringo’s microblogging habits. “I can’t protect you on there.”

Ringo grins. “Wouldn’t want ye to. Y’know you’re in there too?”

Brian’s expression graduates from pained to agonised. “Brilliant,” he says thinly. Paul makes a mental note not to go on Tumblr anymore. 

“At panels and such, though, people are going to ask questions like that. It will feel weird, but you mustn’t alienate them—part of your appeal is the mystery.”

“So we shouldn’t Destiel them,” George summarises. 

“Precisely! You want to give them just enough of a non-answer to maintain that air of mystery, of attainability.”

John looks a bit put out. “‘Attainability’? What, so Paul and I have to act like we’re not together?”

It takes Brian a tense second to nod, his smile plastered on. “If you don’t mind, yes.”

“I mind,” John grumbles, tightening his arm around Paul. 

Brian gives Paul an imploring look, and he nods shortly, silently saying: I’ll talk to him. 

Paul presses a quick kiss to John’s temple. “We’ll see.”

“I shouldn’t have to hide it!” John repeats, hands in the air, boots still on, loud in the sanctuary of Paul’s childhood bedroom. Mike wanted them here for the weekend; Jim could hardly refuse his youngest, though Paul and Jim are still tense at best. 

“Take off your bloody shoes,” Paul says. “You’re on my bed.”

John fixes Paul with a hard stare. Paul stares right back. John crumples. 

“Fine.” He sits up properly and unlaces his Docs. It’s impossible to get this one to adhere to any sort of standards of hygiene—or to stop griping about Brian’s managerial hand. “It’s so, so fuckin’, like, fifties. Having to pretend we’re just friends.”

Paul—sitting on his bed, leaning against the wall—sighs. “I know, love.” 

John finishes with his shoes and crawls onto the bed; Paul spreads his legs automatically to let John climb on top of him. “Hey,” he murmurs. “It’ll be okay.”

“I love you, though,” John says, sounding for all the world as though he’s about to cry. Paul’s chest seizes. He cradles John properly—John, his love, his best friend, his boy. 

“I know,” he says again. Strokes the short soft hair at John’s nape, then scratches lightly with the pads of his fingers. That’s John’s off switch, always has been, and—predictably—he melts into Paul. 

“Mmmnghfh,” John says into Paul’s chest. Frowns—Paul can feel the shape of it through his shirt—and pulls his head back. “Can we just not?”

“Not hide it, you mean?”

“Mhm.”

Paul pets his hair absentmindedly. “I don’t know. This is all really—it’s a lot.”

It’s John’s turn to say, “I know.” He sounds miserable. “Maybe we shouldn’t do the band thing.”

He’s always been prone to this sort of thing—to big changes of his mind, to impulsivity and regret—but it still makes Paul’s stomach drop. “Baby, you don’t mean that,” he says, but he’s not so sure himself. 

Mercifully, John shakes his head, then burrows back into Paul’s chest. “I don’t. But it’s scary.”

Relief, and then exhaustion. It is scary. It’s fucking terrifying, actually. They can’t go out without being recognised. Everything they say is scrutinised. Paul’s fantasised about fame, before, but a fantasy is something he can turn off. This isn’t. This is real. 

It appears John feels the same: “Can we just stay here forever.”

“We’d have to get up at some point,” Paul says, trying to be the voice of reason but failing to disguise how much the prospect appeals to him. “But I suppose most things could be outsourced. Food delivery and all.”

John hums. “Mike would do our washing,” he decides. “And Mimi could install a dumbwaiter at the window and send up food.”

“And we could stay here,” Paul says. 

“And we could stay here,” John echoes, and Paul knows he doesn’t really mean Paul’s room—he means being here, alone. Just the two of them, with nothing on their shoulders. 

He kisses the top of John’s head. “We’ll work it out. I love you.”

They find two flats—an upstairs-downstairs sort of sitch—and move in quick-like, John and Paul taking the smaller, one-bedroom unit downstairs and George and Ringo sprawling out upstairs. 

“No fair that you get the penthouse,” John whines, despite having led the charge in choosing these flats specifically. George shoves him and he barks out a laugh and they start to wrestle. 

It should be overwhelming, living in each others’ pockets, but they spent all of America doing that, and this time they don’t even have to go do shows. Paul can just pop around to the upstairs kitchen at any hour, make enough pancakes for everyone, and start reading whatever book George has left on the dinner table. Ringo can invite his mother round and put on a spread and look all pretty bustling around the kitchen in a thick denim apron. John and Paul, blissfully, can enjoy the perks of being home alone almost all the time.

That last bit is quite good, actually.

“We need to do this,” John says, approaching the sofa brandishing his phone, out of which comes a steady stream of looped shortform audio. 

“Bwah?” Paul replies articulately. “What’s this?”

John scrolls up and then back down to let what is evidently a Reel play from the start. 

Two people—partners, maybe, or good friends?—list embarrassing things they’ve done, grinning furiously and appending each confession with, “We listen and we don’t judge!” 

It loops again and John swipes up to his home screen, then looks expectantly at Paul. 

“What exactly are you planning to confess, then?”

John shrugs. “We can make something up. ‘Sometimes I think about the Queen while I’m pissing’, y’know, something stupid.”

“No respect for the dead,” Paul scolds, shaking his head, but he’s considering it. “I’m not sure what I’d say.”

“Ask George for some ideas,” John says, which—he could. In fact, he almost should, because George will definitely have suggestions. It will simply be impossible to say which suggestions (if indeed it isn’t all of them) he has lifted directly from the fabled McLennon tag. 

“I will not be doing that, thanks. Now come down here, give us a kiss.”

John perks up immediately, diving for Paul’s lap. “Aye aye!”

“Please stop taking 0.5s,” Brian says, ostensibly at the end of his tether, but Paul also thought that several tethers ago. “Or at least stop posting them.”

“But Ringo looks so silly,” George whines. 

Ringo nudges him, grinning. “I always look silly.” 

“At least don’t take them of me,” Brian begs. Ah, there’s the rub. 

“But y—”

Brian fixes John with a stare. “If you say a word about my nose. Anyway, I have a reputation to uphold.” He gestures vaguely. “You boys can lark around as you like; I’m the responsible manager. People like the ‘rowdy boys, clean manager’ image.”

John purses his lips, considers for a minute, then negotiates: “How about we get to post one 0.5 of you when we get four mil on the band Instagram?”

“…Fine.”