Chapter Text
Ringo wanted them to talk.
Ringo wanted them to talk.
He had met them before, hadn’t he? Paul wondered in a daze. He did know who he was talking to, right?
Of course he had, a mocking inner voice said that sounded uncannily like John, that was why he wanted them to talk.
Paul wanted to argue, wanted to ask Ringo where the hell talking would get them.
The answer to that, of course, would be that here and now was where not talking got them.
He wasn’t just being selfish, though. Even though, yes, part of him was unendingly selfish. Part of him was screaming at the idea, wanting to flee the room, the house, Esher, the country itself just to get away from it. If his insides had their way, his lungs would be halfway to Calais at this stage with his skeleton trailing behind it. Didn’t Ringo know he wasn’t built for talking in the way he wanted them to? It just wasn’t in his make-up. Whenever that ability had been handed out, he’d probably been out the back smoking or chatting someone up.
If you could do that sort of thing wherever these things get handed out.
But, no, it wasn’t just his selfishness. He was genuinely worried for George. Worried that this was going to be too much for him, that this would be the last thing, the thing that broke him for good.
(He had been lost in the dark on his own for two weeks and Paul couldn’t bear thinking about how it must have felt. He must have felt so alone. Must still feel so alone, with none of them able to understand it.)
And then where would they all be? The band couldn’t continue if they lost George to this nightmare. Paul didn’t know how he could continue if he lost George.
This bright, brilliant kid. His bright, brilliant friend.
He would never, could never be the same again.
(Did he mean George or himself? He wasn’t sure.)
No, he tried to tell himself. George was tough. Tougher than any of them ever gave him credit for.
Never mind that toughness hadn’t spared anyone he’d ever known any pain.
And never mind that he doubted that anyone could be tough enough to shake this off.
And George was soft, too. There was a reason why his family were so protective of him, after all, even now he was grown up. Paul knew it, too. Always had. He would never call him naive, no, or soft to his face. (God, no, he preferred not having his head beaten off him.) Open-hearted, maybe. And he wasn’t afraid to show it, even if Paul thought it would have been wiser if he didn’t.
But, and Paul hated to admit it, there was one more reason why he hated the idea. There was fear as well. Fear for what truths were there to be spoken aloud.
It’d be about him. He knew it.
How he was ruining it all. Too bossy. Too keen. Too much.
Too him.
He could be a prick. He knew it. Didn’t say it out loud, but he knew it. And he didn’t need the lads to say it to know when they were thinking it. He meant it when he’d said to John and Ringo back in the canteen that he could hear when he was annoying George. Or, at least, when he would usually be annoying him. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t just want people to give in on an argument. That didn’t feel right. He wanted to make them happy to go along with him, happy to say he was right about something, but it always ended up with people (well, George usually) just that bit more frustrated with him, not understanding why he wouldn’t let something go when he’d ‘won’.
He didn’t want to win. He wanted to be right. It was different.
It didn’t help that there were more and more arguments lately. And, yes, he was at the centre of most of them. Every idea he had for the band seemed to provoke the others. Touring, the documentary, even the songs he brought in. Every single little thing was a battle nowadays. A battle to get them to care, to get them to participate, to turn up on time, to get them to, oh alright, fine, do it his way.
He just wanted what was best for them all, for the band to keep going. But all they saw was a stubborn git, convinced of his own infallibility.
But with Ringo sitting there asking them to talk, asking them to follow him and trust him…
(He’d trust Ringo with everything: his life, his songs, his family - fuck, he was family.)
How could he refuse?
“Okay.” He bobbed his head and swallowed back his fear and worry and selfishness. He’d do it for Ringo. And George. And John. “The love without the hate. Yeah. If talkin’ gets us that, then we should. Should talk.”
Ringo gave him a small smile. “Good lad. An’ no-one’s gonna hate anyone, right?”
“I doubt anyone ever hated you, Rich,” George said quietly. “I don’t think anyone could.”
On the surface, that sounded like George just being lovely, the way he could be sometimes. But there was something underneath that Paul didn’t like and by the troubled look Ringo shot him, he didn’t either. It wasn’t that he didn’t mean it. The words were entirely sincere. But there was something there that unsettled.
Well. Maybe start there, then.
“How’re you feelin’, Georgie?” He tried to keep the question from sounding like a demand or a plea for reassurance that he was fine. That the answer had anything at all to do with him who was asking.
George just shrugged.
“I know it’s a lot, lad,” he kept going, for want of any better idea. “But we’re worried, y’know. Richie’s right, we need to talk about stuff like this. An’ it’s alright if you’re not alright. Don’t think any of us could ask you to be.”
George sat silent for a few moments. Paul could see him trying to gather himself, trying to stitch himself back together as best he could in order to answer him. George always felt so deeply about things, it was probably the most difficult question you could ask him to give an honest answer to.
“I- I don’t know if I should be in the band anymore,” George said finally, head still leaned into Ringo’s shoulder. “I don’t know if I can be. After all this, I mean.”
Paul did his best not to let his reaction show on his face, but it was pointless. As well as he knew George, George knew him just as much, if not better and by the guilty look on his face, George could tell exactly how Paul was feeling and was blaming himself for it.
“I’m sorry, alright?” he broke out with miserably. “I jus’- What if it happened again? Or I had another fuckin’ freakout, an’- an’ people saw? Or-”
“Fuck ‘em.” The reply was out of his mouth before he even thought about it. “None of their business.”
“But-”
“No,” John interrupted, stern-faced. “Macca’s right. It’s our business. Our band. An’ our guitarist. If we want you in the band - an’ we do - then that’s the end of it.”
“You know that’s not right,” George argued. “An’ you know exactly what’d happen. The press would eat us alive. Destroy the band. Destroy you. I can’t sit back an’ let my shit bring everything down around your ears.”
“But you don’t know it’ll happen again,” Ringo countered. “Come on, lad. Leavin’ cos of that is no good at all.”
George looked around at them all, a mix of disbelief and despair on his face.
“But it might be what has to happen. What if- What if I’m supposed to leave an’ that’s what fixes things? You said it yourself, the older me was the one who left. Maybe that’s the thing that did it. You don’t break up. It’s just me gone.”
“No, it can’t be.” Paul refused to believe it. “It’d be one thing if you wanted to, but you don’t.” There had been days that he would have believed George wanted to leave, but not today. Not like this.
“You don’t know what I want.” George had gone mulish now. Always the least fun part of an argument with him, but Paul had to admit it was almost comforting to see he was still that same George on some level.
“Neither do you,” Ringo pointed out. “None of this is sayin’ what you want, lad. Just things like “I should” or “I’m supposed to”. Paul said it. It’s alright if you’re not alright an' you want to go, but d’you actually want to leave?”
George wrung his hands together. “I- I dunno. I mean, does it even matter what I want? I’m only a fuckin’ liability to you lot now. More than ever.”
And suddenly all the different pieces of the puzzle that he’d gathered since walking into Kinfauns, or even since walking into Twickenham, clicked together in Paul’s head.
“Who the fuck,” he asked as calmly as he could manage, “ever told you that you were a liability to us?” Because I’ll kill ‘em, he promised silently. I’ll fucking kill ‘em.
How dare they. How fucking dare they.
George refused to look at him. “No-one. Jus’ leave it. It’s nothin’. Don’t-”
“Tell me,” he demanded. “An’ don’t say it’s nothin’. It’s not.”
George curled up into himself again. “Jus’- I’m not stupid, alright? I know I’m not good enough. I’m not what you want, anyway. Every time I can’t do what you want in a song, that’s me not bein’ good enough. That’s me holding you all back. An’ now, you can’t even trust me to not have some weird fuckin’ flashback in the middle of a conversation? That’s a liability if ever I heard one.”
If George had gotten up and kicked him in the stomach, it probably would have hurt Paul less.