Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Hamburg, 1961 (for the second time)

Hamburg will be better this time. George is going to make sure it’s better. 

He’s older, for one, not just tip-toeing numbers but actually older. He’s seen a few birds back in Liddypool, nothing to challenge John (though maybe only a prossie could challenge John, if John’s word is anything to go by, and George isn’t entirely convinced it is) but enough. Enough for an eighteen year old lad at least. And he looks different too, taller and (a bit disappointedly) more skinny, but the baby fat has melted from his face and he feels older, in his drainies and leathers, and that’s the main thing. Paul can’t talk down to him as much, and George finds if he doesn’t look at Paul when he’s trying to do his talking down then there’s nothing for Paul to angle his nose at. 

Not that Paul can really talk down to anyone here, still apprehensive from the last. They were horrid to him, before Paul must’ve got so fed up something knocked loose in his usually steady head and he’d set that condom on fire with Pete then got them both chucked in the local gaol, though George only heard about that when they’d all returned, tipped off the ferry like stray cats, tails tucked under and the cloying air of Hamburg stuck to their leathers. 

But that’s by the by. It will be better this time. George is going to make sure it is. 

There’s a moment, a week after returning to Hamburg, when they have a rare night off. They run helter skelter down the streets, the sky glistening like spilt oil. They’re imps of a moonless land, goblins and sprites and ghosts, mischievous creatures spat from the earth’s gurgling core onto the street like phlegm.

John hollers up to the sky in one mocking echo, screams ‘till the voice crack. His voice tangles like sail ropes in the wind. Stu tackles John to the slimy pavement, all bashed knees and elbows. 

George is aflame, burning at both ends. He takes Paul’s clammy hands, soft despite his nightly attacks of the guitar, and spins him. Paul’s breathless and apprehensive, eyes leaking from John and Stu to the leggy creatures watching outside the brothels. 

‘Let go!’ George screams. He spins them a carousel, pulling Paul in and out with his hands until the streetlamps turn into liquid stars. ‘Mach schau! Mach schau!’ 

Paul laughs, stumbles bodily into George. Then John is running into them, a bowling ball hitting strike first time, and the three of them go tumbling into one body on the ground. Screaming and gasping. ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ Paul chants, crumpled half on George, half on John. 

One of John’s amber eyes is looking at George, sly and steady as a cat. George grins at him, watches as it’s returned. Hamburg’s going to be better this time. It’s going to be good.

-

Hamburg is going to be better this time, it is, but it’s a bit hard to keep track of it all. Days have begun to lose meaning like before. The drugs and booze dip in their tricky fingers and blend the watercolour of time, up, down, right around until yesterday feels like two days' time. Right now it’s this:

He and John are crowded in one of the sour smelling bathrooms after their set, the two of them shoved up ‘gainst the porcelain sinks, arms like sticky tape in their leathers. The mirror is cracked and it distorts their faces in wicked ways, making them bumpy and stretched. Makes George feel a bit sick to look at, trying to piece together his face, all sweaty and pale. Then again, he usually feels sick after they perform, jumping and screaming on stomachs padded with alcohol and pills and not much else.

John is dry swallowing a handful of pink somethings, even though their set has just finished so really he doesn’t need the booster. Not that George would say no, mind, but John doesn’t offer, unless you’re Paul, which is just typical because Paul is the only one who says no to prellies more often than yes. ‘Sides, George took a handful of somethings himself a while ago (Ten minutes? Ten hours?) and he can feel the fizz of it in his fingers, beginning to bleed through to his body. A numbness, a softness that Hamburg doesn’t usually allow. 

John ducks his head towards the faucet to gulp the dirty water, washing down the pills. George misses plain bread and butter more than he could ever imagine. 

‘Where’s Stu?’ John shouts as they amble back into the club. 

‘He’s with Astrid,’ George says. He juts up his chin to a corner booth. ‘The Exis are there.’

John squints appalling off into the corner, myopic eyes searching before giving a grunt and heading over.

George goes to follow when Paul’s bounding up to him, slinging an arm ‘round his back, shaking the pale contents of George’s stomach something nasty.

‘We doing anything tonight?’ he asks, face pressed fiercely close. He’s on something, not prellies, but something that makes his skin sheen sweaty and gives him full body shivers every now and again. Some mixed booze, maybe. 

George himself can feel the pills begin to melt his exhaustion away, a lolly on a summer pavement, ice dissolving into nothing. He feels it beneath his eyelids first, the dry corners of ‘em, how his periphery seems to have opened up to let in more light. 

‘Don’t know,’ George says. He shakes his head quick, trying to get everything in order. ‘John’s with Stu-’

‘Forget it,’ Paul snaps. He makes a clicking noise in the back of his mouth. ‘Think he’ll be with ‘im all night?’

‘Stop yer bitching,’ George tells him. ‘Treat our neighbours how yer want to be treated, if you remember.’

‘God doesn’t send his neighbours to Hamburg,’ Paul says. He presses his sweaty palms together suddenly, fluttering his eyelashes up at the stain-spotted ceiling. George cackles at Paul’s cherub face, charcoal hair damp and curling, his eyes crinkled in his deceptive smile.

‘Maybe we’re here to spread ‘is message,’ George says. Paul darts a hand out to tap some scarcely dressed woman on the shoulder, then grabs tight onto George and rushes them off before she can turn around.

‘Mach Schau,’ Paul says under his breath. ‘What’s the message, Georgie?’

‘Mach fucking Schau,’ George agrees. Paul grins an ugly grin. Around George, the slippery lights of Hamburg begin to pinwheel, dissolving into the crush of time.

-

George blinks, and now he’s in one of the seedier clubs. He’s shoved into a sweaty corner, Paul’s body lumped next to him. Paul’s got a bird against the wall, one hand moving underneath her skirt, the other dug into her glossy hair. Her low whines fuse with his heavy breathing, some melodic pathway that cuts through the tinny music of the club. 

George is next to a lass, her face like a still-wet painting; a blond fringe feathered around canny blue eyes, flushed, pink skin which gleams-glossy in the low hues. The spaces around her face are contracting and expanding like the walls of Hamburg are alive and breathing. She’s blinking at him slowly, surely. George can’t remember what they were talking about. 

‘That’s it, darlin’,’ Paul says next to him in a deep, adult voice that doesn’t sound like his Paul at all.

George moves forward and crashes his lips against the girl. She reacts immediately, opens her mouth and slides in her tongue like she’s trying to consume him, like the only way to breathe is through each other’s mouths. George folds into it, forgets the need to keep steady and lets himself go.

-

It’s later, some shredded hour, maybe morning, maybe not, hard to tell ‘cause they’re inside a club (always inside a fucking club) which is dark and gloomy. 

George sometimes feels like he’s on a merry-go-round, all the lights and sounds and people passing too fast, nothing that lasts long enough to hold onto, nothing that ever stays in focus. He’s waiting for the inevitable halt, when he’ll have to step off, but he worries he’ll be so dizzy he’ll just collapse. 

The Exis are here, with John in their group. George caught sight of Astrid and Stu swaying in the middle of the room under one of the buzzing lights, their own private moon. He watched the slink of the light ripple around their bodies, like butter soaking golden onto warm toast. How it licked up the dark frames of them, how the two of them managed to make a third shape that only existed between their love.

Then his eyes began to unfocus and slip. He dragged the heel of his hand ‘cross his mouth, the skin vaguely sticky there from what he guessed was lipstick. He can’t remember how long ago they were on stage, or how long it will be until they’re on stage again. 

He finds John and manages to wrangle a prellie off him, which is the least he can do because Paul dropped him as soon as he and John caught sight of each other, no backwards glance spared for him, and now George is left in the middle of the dizzy floor trying to think of something useful. 

‘George!’ Astrid calls over to him. Her voice is deep, ring clear like the bell at the Inny at three pm. 

George ambles over, smiling. Unlike Paul, he gets on fine with Astrid and Klaus. Astrid especially he likes, who’d packed him apples in a brown paper bag when he had to leave on the ferry last time and who had actually hugged him when they’d returned this time (‘That boat taking you away!’ She had said, hair windswept around her face. ‘Like some bad omen!’). She seems miles older than him, but it’s nice, and it brings some sluice of comfort to Hamburg, seeing the Exis faces in the crowd. At least George knows not all of the people watching are escaped convicts or something of the kind. Astrid has an actual flat, all to herself. 

‘Hullo,’ George says, slipping easily into the warm booth. 

Astrid looks much the same in her dark dress, her hair short and blonde like a dandelion. Her arms are a well-wound loop around Stu’s body. Stu’s head is nestled on her chest like a baby animal. It faintly amuses George. He imagines it would wildly amuse Paul.

‘Oh, I’m glad you’re back,’ Astrid says warmly. ‘It’s been so dull without our own live music.’ 

‘It’s good being back,’ George says, which is true enough. It’s nice, too, seeing Astrid and Klaus’ faces, smiling and bright in the crush of the crowd. How Klaus will rest his chin on his hand to watch them properly, how Astrid will ask him questions about his guitar parts afterwards. 

George flings himself forward across the table, swiping at one of the beers for himself. The thing about Hamburg is, you have to keep up. It doesn’t do anyone any good to be stone cold sober here. There’s no point trying to outrun the dirtiness of Hamburg. 

‘George, do you remember Jürgen?’ Astrid says, and when he looks up as a new person has joined them.

‘Aye, ‘course I remember,’ George says. He points to the camera Jürgen isn’t letting touch the sticky table. ‘You got your own since last time?’

Jürgen looks faintly surprised but smiles. ‘Yes, I did. Astrid helped me choose one.’

‘You should go with him, George,’ Astrid says. ‘He might become as good as I am.’

‘Never as good as you, Assa,’ George says, just to try and make her blush, though he suspects he’ll never succeed. She smiles knowingly at him, then shifts along so Jürgen can squeeze between her and George.

George is faintly relieved he won’t have a front row seat to Stu’s reunion with Astrid, which involves very few words but is often quite loud. Across the table, Paul and John have collapsed next to each other on one seat, the two of them turned so far towards each other their knees slot together. George feels faintly embarrassed watching them, though he isn’t sure why. He wonders sometimes if this is how they sit when they write.

‘I enjoyed your show.’ 

George turns back around, which make the lights sway ‘round his head. Jürgen is looking at him with a steady gaze, and it brings George back a bit. With Astrid and Klaus, even Stu, there’s a pale, elfin look about them that makes George think of charcoal drawings, their small features smudged and equivocal. There’s something more solid, more real , about Jürgen. George finds his eyes are drawn to the strong, lucid lines of his face like the centerpoint of a photograph, the only thing in focus in the whole hazy club. 

Handsome. The word bursts forth clearly. Classically handsome, the sort of strong cheekbones that catch scopes of light on the cinema screen from the films back home. Older, a face done being made.

His eyes though- something in them grips George, deep, depthless, the colour of seaweed and olive trees. The colour of the Mersey when the sunlight shatters on its surface and you can suddenly see a parallax of light in the water. It trips George for a second, to see eyes like that, so sincere and simple, in a place like this.

‘Thank you,’ George says. He really wishes John had offered him another prellie or two.

‘You really play,’ Jurgen says, ‘You seemed so focused on the music.’ His voice is like his face, older and resonant, a voice you want to trust. 

‘Sometimes you’ve got to-’ George glances at the muddled shape of PaulandJohn across the booth. ‘Block it out, y’know, all the other noise, to just focus on one.’

‘Yes,’ Jürgen nods. ‘I thought you were playing music. The others were… performing it.’ He smiles sheepishly. ‘Does that sound funny?’

‘No,’ George says quickly. ‘Only it’s because we got told to last time. Now they’re as loud as possible on stage.’ He doesn’t add how much this grates him, how much he’d prefer playing in a club of three people if those three people really listened. 

‘It seemed quite-’ Jürgen’s eyes trip across the crowded club. ‘Quite much. A lot of noise but not many words.’

George hums. ‘It can get like that. You block it out.’

‘That is a shame,’ Jürgen says. ‘I liked you on stage. You were playing properly, not screaming or messing it up. Like your own world.’

‘I try to,’ George says. His whole world narrows down to just his fingers on the fretboard when he’s one stage sometimes. It feels like he could do anything.

‘I like it,’ Jürgen repeats. ‘It’s more interesting to watch.’ Something about being noticed that way makes George pleased. He doesn’t mention Paul and John’s songwriting or Stu and Pete’s good looks, and George can’t remember the last time he preceded any of those things in a conversation. 

Behind Jürgen, Astrid and Stu are blending into one again. Opposite him, Paul and John are testing the lines between their bodies, narrowing them. The club continues to spin and swirl lights. George finds Jürgen’s face is the only really still thing around him.

-

The bottle of time slips again, spilling sticky, and then George is outside with Jürgen, more drunk than he realised because the street is doing pinwheels for him. It’s like that bastard ferry again, the floor all tilt and dip, and George has to steady himself with an arm ‘round Jürgen’s shoulders before he does something embarrassing, like be sick.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbles, focusing on breathing the briny air and not the warning of acid at the back of his throat.

‘It is alright,’ Jürgen says in a quiet, kind voice. ‘Would you like to sit down?’

George shakes his head and straightens up. ‘No. I’m good. Jus-’ God, he must look like a child, like some kid who can’t stomach his drink. ‘M dizzy.’

‘Alright,’ Jürgen says easily. He reaches around George’s waist, pulling him suddenly tight, and it does something, the decks of time stilling suddenly. ‘Can you walk?’

George takes a second to form the word; ‘Yeah.’

He moves steady now, his weight mostly given to Jürgen. He should be embarrassed, or apologetic, but it’s a pleasant, safe feeling and Jurgen smells nicer than anyone else in Hamburg, of washed laundry and clear tobacco smoke. George finds himself leaning further into his warmth. Some of the spinning stops.

They walk back in an easy quiet, ‘long the watchful houses and pubs, the windows yellow smears like sleepless eyes. George feels the frantic staccato of his heart settle, something he didn’t realise it wasn’t. 

‘I’m here,’ George says when they’re outside. He takes a second to detangle himself from Jürgen, letting his hand drag along his shoulders.

‘Sleep okay, George,’ Jürgen says. ‘It was nice talking to you.’

George smiles. Jürgen’s drunk too, he realises, not as much as him, but enough that his body is swaying slightly now he’s not holding up George. It sticks inside him, the fact he doesn’t know where Jürgen lives and what his walk back will be like, alone in the streets that Hamburg has to offer.

‘You can stay here,’ George says. ‘If yer’d prefer.’

Jürgen faces shudders into something a bit wary, and George curses himself. Like an over eager kid, Jürgen probably thinks, clinging to the first person to give him a shred of attention.

‘That’s very kind George,’ Jürgen says slowly. He looks uncertain, like there’s some joke being played he’s trying to work out.

‘Sorry, forget it,’ George mumbles. He wants to run in before the heat of embarrassment swallows him, but there’s still that itching, persistent; ‘You can get home, though?’

Jürgen smiles. It resettles something wild and puzzled inside him. ‘I will be okay.’

‘Okay,’ George whispers. He feels like there’s something that’s missing, but he’s too drunk and uncertain to mule it over. ‘Thanks for bringin’ me back. I’ll um, I’ll see ya around, yeah?’

Jürgen nods once, grown-up and certain, and George nods back before scampering inside.

It’s drafty and cold but at least the films don’t play at this time. He strips when he’s in, uses their small bathroom that’s blessedly empty, then chucks his body onto the mattress, feeling like a scrubbing cloth used and wrung dry. His head is still doing loops on the street outside. 

He tucks himself into the wall, hugging his body around the sorry excuse for a pillow, and lets his mind splinter off into the ghosts of guitar chords and raspberry-pink prellies and handsome faces from a cinema screen.

-

The first time George had slept with a woman, it was a performance. The other lads had been joking and jibing him from the moment they pressed their scrappy boots down onto the grime-and-oil streets, windows neon red and blazing for anyone to see. Shoulder-slapping and crude signs, John’s loud voice reeling off all the different ways Georgie could take a bird. On her front, on her back, on her hands and knees, upside down, all around. It made George dizzy to think about. 

‘Don’t worry about him,’ Paul told him in confidence later in the scummy bathroom behind the cinema. Through the wall was the muffled sound of a film playing, thick, guttural words with no start or end that ballooned into one unending sound. The taps dripped down the sinks incline so you had to lean right up close, smell the mildew of old drains and strange water. Paul was next to him, leather jacket slung under one arm as water dripped from his hair.

‘Who’s worrying me?’ George said. Paul shook his head like a mutt, ridding water from his hair. Droplets splattered over the walls.

‘John,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘He likes to show off about his exploits but he’s just messing. Really.’

George turned the tap off. ‘Is it true he fucked a girl when he was thirteen in the graveyard?’

Paul’s grimace would have been imperceptible to anyone else. ‘My point is that you shouldn’t take anything from John's talk. He just likes to make fun but really, it’s very simple, going with a bird.’

‘I know,’ George said lightly. It was making the hair on his arms stand on end, the relentless talk of it. The way each word sounded like elastic pulled back then sprung, Fuck, shove, take. It required a level of hardness George wasn't sure he could pull off. The alternative would be to never do it, and well- he liked birds. He liked looking at the mags Paul would sneak into the Inny if his Da had really pissed him off, but more than that, he liked the way the girls next to him in class smelt, flora and spring-fresh. How their eyes always seemed more round and wide than a lad’s, china-doll eyes. He liked how girls were surprising and tough in a different way to his mates. He wanted to. He just wasn’t sure he had it in him.

‘It’s okay not to know,’ Paul said cannily, as if Paul would ever be okay with not knowing something. ‘Look, you can do a lot with a bird, it’s true-’

‘I know , Paul.’

‘-but the basic thing is to get her wet down there, with yer fingers or yer mouth if you want, then stick your prick in.’

George splashed some of the stale water onto Paul’s now carefully-dried hair. ‘I know , you tosser.’

Paul tried a dodge and bashed his elbow onto the basin. He grinned at George. ‘Alright, suit yerself, just wanted t’check. Seventeen is a bit late, Georgie.’

George huffed and stomped out of the bathroom, Paul’s cackle lost in the cinema’s private soundwaves.

They rangled a prossie for him in the first week, raven-dark hair coiled on top of her head and massive eyes lined in something dark and shimmery. Her breasts had been shoved up in some leathery corset thing, which had momentarily caused George to panic- nightmare to unclip and untuck- but she’d shoved him onto the beaten mattress and done it herself, reaching long, pale arms behind her in a quick, efficient moment. They fell out heavily, the nipples round and dark-brown. He hesitated a second, then grabbed them, squeezed the flesh, and she’d moaned and someone in the bunk opposite had snickered, and then George had turned her around and pulled the slip of fabric from her thighs and prayed he could pull it off before ducking his head down.

It was fast and wet, slippery in crevices of hot skin. He was hard and panting, and she was arching her pale neck on each gasp, and George-

Well, he’d fucked her. He wanted to be carried away, lost in the ebb-and-flow of skin and sweat, but something anchored him down. There were eyes in the room, he knew, squinting at his skinny body over hers. He could hear whistles and heckles and- he thought- a groan or two. Her breasts under him were heavy and full and suddenly very real. Not like the glossy magazines but something made of flesh. Things to be weaned off, things full of some inscrutable life, so frighteningly real that George had pressed his face into the crux of her neck, smelling hairspray and sweat, and focused solely on the feeling of his prick slipping in and out of her.

Afterwards he’d rolled off her, scared to hurt her even though she must have been seven years older than him at least and looked it, body shapely and supple where his seemed long and thin.

The applause started up, muffled from their bunk beds. George’s face burnt with each woof-whistle. The woman didn’t seem to mind, her breathing tapering down.

‘Thank you,’ George whispered to her before he could talk himself out of it.

‘It’s fine,’ she said back in a deep, clear voice. She sat up, breasts dipping down as she pulled her corset back up. George watched her long fingers dancing over the clips on the back, a bit like a guitar player, while below them, John asked if she’d like another round with a real man now?

A month later, George was busted for being seventeen, and shipped off on the ferry. None of his bandmates came to see him off, not even Paul. 

-

Hamburg is going to be good this time, but it isn’t half bloody hard to make it that way sometimes.

It’s a clear cut day, the rare sort that reminds George that Hamburg is still a place on the earth and not some moonless planet they’ve been sent to as an experiment, like those sci-fi books he sometimes read at school.

They’re scouting out the streets, all of ‘em a bit worse for wear, bleary-eyed and aching. George has an arm slung around Paul, who’s eyes keep fluttering open and shut in the pattern of lazy butterfly wings. Paul hardly takes prellies, so he’s more tired than the rest of them. George tries to remember what it feels like to be awake, not artificially but properly, from a night of full, deep sleep, and finds he can’t.

‘What’s th’ plan then?’ John asks. He’s coming down from something, or maybe about to be up on something. George squints to try and tell. He’s on Stu’s other side, lugging himself forward, pitched so it keeps looking like he might overbalance and sprawl onto the dirt-smeared pavements. His vowels run like watercolour.

‘Start off by the bottom club and work up, hm?’ Paul says. ‘How ‘bout it, Johnny?’

George tsks, heaving Paul closer to his side. Paul opens his eyes a bit more, smiles sleep-dopey at George in one flash of awareness, then continues to drag his feet.

Although Paul might be fine waltzing off to the Reeperbahn’s grimiest clubs with a drunk and/or high John Lennon (depending on the combination John has decided to take, and if he remembers the combination he’s decided to take), George is not actually about to let John drink his body weight in booze on an empty stomach, so he says;

‘We should get some grub first. Someplace with food.’

John makes a huffy noise at that which George ignores and Paul glances worriedly at.

‘Well, me and George can get food, and then meet you?’ he says. ‘Unless Stu, do you want to go with George? Then John and I will go out?’

Very subtle, George thinks.

‘We all need something to eat,’ George says patiently.

John makes another noise at this (George wonders if he’s maybe just trying not to throw up after all) and Paul tries to meet his eyes.

Stu cranes his head around John. His small eyes are the colour of a beetle’s back, and they meet his consideringly. He clicks his tongue at George’s slightly pleading expression.

‘We’ll all get food first,’ Stu says. ‘George is right, we ought t’eat.’

Paul’s sleepy face looks irritated, which is not an unusual expression when Stu talks. George feels relieved that at least he won’t have to deal with John throwing up for at least another three hours, maybe not at all if they can pace him. Pete, as usual, is nowhere to be seen. 

‘And then the Exis are going to be at one of the places I know, so we can go there after,’ Stu says.

‘Oh!’ Paul says. George lets his hand come up and pinch the skin of Paul’s neck gently. 

‘That alright with you?’ Stu says.

‘Yeah! That’s fine!’ Paul looks between Stu and John. ‘Um, are we all wanting to meet the Exis?’

Stu nods. George gives a shrug which means yes. 

‘John?’ Paul asks. 

John manages to form words for Paul- ‘Yeah, I wanna.’

‘Okay,’ Paul says. He has a slightly manic smile on his face. ‘Fine. Okay. It’s just we saw them the other day. That’s all.’

‘Does it matter?’ George says. 

‘I suppose not,’ Paul mumbles. Stu raises his eyebrows. John coughs roughly. 

George tightens his grip on Paul as they steer themselves into one of their haunts, a cheap cafe that serves gristly bacon and stale bread and biscuits.

He knows Paul’s still wary, burn scars from before taking a while to pale over. It’s a bit disquieting actually, to see Paul like that, sitting on his hands around the Exis and biting his silly bottom lip between his teeth instead of speaking. What Paul doesn’t understand is that it’s not like last time. It’s going to be good this time. Paul should stop worrying about the people who don’t like him and start paying attention to the people who do- George, for instance, who’s very much here right now.

George presses his mouth close to Paul’s ear, tugging them a little away from John and Stu as they find a table. ‘Come on,’ George says to him. ‘Maybe Stu will get so buzzed before the next set he ends up blowing up his amp, and then you’ll never have to hear him play bass on stage again. Isn’t that a nice thought?’

Paul pulls a face at him, like he always does when George dares to slightly suggest that maybe he and Stu aren’t bosom buddies, his dramatic eyebrows drawn down in a display of disapproval.

‘Or-’ George says, using the pointiest part of his elbow to shove them past a lingering crowd of people to an empty table, dragging Paul alongside him. ‘Maybe he’ll sell his bass guitar so he can buy a ring and propose to Astrid and become a housewife- because Assa wouldn’t do that- and then he’d be locked away in some German flat and you’ll never have to see him ever again.’

Paul does look happily intrigued with that mental image, which is enough for George. He places Paul firmly on his side, Stu and John wrapping around the other side of the table when they return with gritty coffee for them. 

George wonders how he managed to get in the middle of this, intertwined and knotted within the three of them, how tightly he’s wound up in it yet, he can’t help but think, still somehow in the periphery. 

There aren’t words for this, he thinks half desperately as Stu slides a mug across to Paul without meeting his eye and Paul’s foot nudges into George’s as he reaches over to kick John.

-

They’re on stage again, battering through the impossible hours with gusto. There’s blood congealed under George’s fingernails from how hard he’s pressing onto the fretboard to ignore the shakes of his hand. Paul’s slivered onto the top of the piano and is hanging down from it, plonking notes upside down, feet kicking up behind him. Pete bashes away on the drums. Stu muddles through the bass.

In the middle of the stage is John. He’s got the microphone in both hands, moving around the stage like he knows it has no choice but to keep up with him. He leads, and everything else follows. 

Sometimes John sings with such heartbreaking sincerity it shatters somewhere deep inside of you. His voice feels like a mottled bruise, tender to press against, like each word he rasps is something made just for you. When he sings like this, eyes squeezed shut, each word shredded from the rawest part of his throat, George understands why Paul was hypnotised at fifteen. He understands why they’re here, dumped in Hamburg, and he understands that they’ll get much further too. 

John wails the highest note, his face sheened in sweat, damping the collar of his shirt. George dances his fingers along the frets, matching the ebullience of John’s voice. Besides him, Paul hammers out on the piano in a drunken frenzy. 

When it’s like this- when it’s good- George doesn’t feel like he’s alone in a world of music. It’s like the three of them have carved out a space just for them, like suddenly there are no lines between them at all. He turns to Paul the same moment Paul turns to him, grinning with their teeth, whooping out as the crowd stomps and cheers. 

When they’re good, they’re fucking good.

In the small gasps between their performing, they find the Exis. Paul sticks close to him and John, unable to keep still, bouncing around and laughing. John is making a show of himself, standing on tables, leering down to speak to people in made up voices, specifically for Astrid and Klaus’ entertainment (though really, George thinks, mostly for Paul’s). The other band have taken to the stage, Rory’s lot, who George enjoys half watching as the others muck around besides him, sweaty and shot up on adrenaline. 

Jürgen pushes his way through with drinks, dodging the swing John takes with a half amused smile. George has taken a liking to Jürgen, who seems more shy and down to earth perhaps than Klaus is. George was redly embarrassed after Jürgen had to walk him home, but Jürg didn’t bring it up, not even to laugh, and George realised he didn’t want to tease him. In fact, Jürgen seems to like him too, sliding next to George whenever they sit at their regular table, asking for his opinion on things and stories from back home. 

‘Are yer still getting on well with yer camera?’ George asks later on, when the energy has ebbed low enough for them to start absently tapping their pockets for prellies. Jürgen had shown up with it, swaddled in his coat for protection.

‘I am trying,’ Jürgen smiled. ‘I am not a natural like Astrid. She is good at getting people to look candid, not aware. I have not got that skill.’

George privately doubts it, when Jürgen has always struck him as reserved and observant, sort of like him. 

‘I’d be happy to help,’ George says. ‘If yer want to take some in the day.’

‘You would?’ Jürgen says.

George shrugs, smiling wryly. ‘Better than practicing in this place, aye?’

Jürgen laughs but looks genuinely pleased by George’s offer- not disappointed at least- and it’s a nice expression on his serious face, a soft, open look that makes George flush warm with pride. Something Jürgen wants from him, not the others. 

‘Okay, yes,’ Jürgen says. ‘That would be good. When you’re not busy, though. They already work you too hard here. I am always saying so to Klaus and Astrid.’

‘Oh, it’s alright really,’ George says. ‘Better than last time, anyway.’

Jürgen makes a soft noise at the back of his throat. George resettles, focusing back on Rory’s group, who glisten across on the stage as though through a gentle television static. The music is good, the drumming especially, and it reminds George a bit of the ferry, the easy sway of being on water. He slips his eyes shut, leaning slightly into Jürgen, and lets Hamburg get away from him, just for a little while.

-

The next day he happens to mention Jürgen to Paul and John when they’re in their quarters before a show, or after a show- some murky place between their sets, anyway- says how he might take some photos with Jürgen, who seems nicer than he remembered, a bit shy maybe, and John cackles, cackles, and Paul sort of freezes and glances between them and George has the horrible feeling of saying something wrong before realising what it is he’s done.

‘What?’ he snaps at John’s laughter. 

‘Oh Georgie.’ John’s grin is a million years older than George. ‘Course he’s nice. He wants to spend time with you, don’t he?’

‘What does that mean?’ George says. Why wouldn’t someone want to spend time with him, just because he’s only eighteen, just because he doesn’t write the songs, but John just shakes his head.

‘He’s a queer, little Georgie,’ John says, voice loud. ‘He wants a chance to stick it in ya.’ Behind John, Paul’s grin is slightly fixed.

‘Oh,’ George says. John snorts, a bit mean, and Paul gives George a smile which could be apologetic, and then it’s dropped like a cigarette picked up at the wrong end.

George ducks his head to his case so no one can see the flush on his cheeks. There are certain things boys from Liverpool don’t think about, and queers are one of them. Don’t bother him, so why should he? ‘Cept that Royston Ellis and his poem which sounded like a split orange and had made the back of his neck feel warm, and Paul wouldn’t catch anyone’s eye afterward. But that was once, a blip, a nothing. Usually it’s never a thought. ‘Sides, Jürgen isn’t a queer, not really. He’s just Jürgen. Even if he does like blokes, that doesn’t mean he likes every bloke, surely. Homosexuals wouldn’t be able to go anywhere if that was the case.

He turns, suddenly indignant, wanting to demand where John got this information from, if it’s even true or just some crap John’s invented because he thinks Jürgen is less favourable, but when he turns John is focused on digging something from his pockets and Paul is gazing at him, a small crease between his brow, some uncertain expression on his face and it stops whatever George was going to say. One in five, that Ellis bloke had also said. There’s one queer for every five of them.

George turns around, hearing the muffled sounds from the cinema through their wall. Maybe that’s why Jürgen is a bit reticent around Astrid and Stu and Klaus, reduced to the periphery of some love triangle he can’t parse. That makes sense. Course he’d be a bit blue, watching Stu goggle at Astrid and know he can never do the same. 

‘We off then?’ John asks. He’s standing straight, all those razor-sharp lines made hard in leather. Paul’s silly bottom lip is red from where he’s been worrying it, but when he looks at John, his face is carefree as anything.

‘Sure, Johnny,’ he says, grabbing a carton of ciggies for the road. ‘Where we off to then?’

-

He and Paul are sitting on the edge of the stage, wood chipped to obliviation under their hands. Paul has one of the wires from the amp wrapped ‘round his fist like a snake. Around them, other bands are kicking around, wasting the daylight hours before they have to go on. John is half asleep at a table, next to Stu and Astrid. Jürgen’s here somewhere too, with his camera, but George is trying to not think about that. 

George is languid and swaying, so tired he can’t even comprehend standing up, let alone going onto stage to play. 

He clanks his head lazily against Paul, who gives a start.

‘I’m having wet dreams ‘bout cottage pie, y’know,’ George says.

‘Dirty boy,’ Paul mumbles, wiping his eyes. He smiles at George, a little dopey, a little tired. George sometimes thinks Paul looks like he’s made from the end of a painted lines, where the brush blots the oil into a sudden, smooth sweep; his eyes and eyebrows and lips are all plump curves, the deft swish of a brush on a prized canvas. It strikes him especially now, in the gloomy dim of the club, with sleep dancing around their minds.

‘Dead on my feet, me,’ Paul says, leaning closer to George.

‘Have a prellie, then. I need one.’

‘Rather not.’

‘Rather, Paul, that’s all?’

‘Rather a cunt or two, y’know, something warm.’

‘Aye, but does a cunt want you?’

‘Cunts always want me.’

‘S why we’re here, I suppose.’

Paul swings his leg in an arc to kick him. ‘Two at once would be nice,’ he muses. ‘Straight on from one to another.’

‘Yer all talk,’ George tells him. Paul flicks him a smile. 

‘What’re you talking about?’ Pete says, slouching over. George had half thought he’d got lost on a night out and drowned in the river. 

‘How nice it would be t’have two birds at once,’ Paul says, turning to talk to him. ‘You got a fag to spare?’

Pete reaches in his back pocket and fumbles a couple out at George’s raised chin. ‘I’ve had two at once before. Was good, especially when they start doing stuff with each other.’

‘Oh?’ Paul says, grinning as Pete offers him the lit ciggie. 

‘Come to one of the clubs with me. The prossies are up for it, if yer know the right thing to say,’ Pete says. George sticks his cigarette between his chapped lips and watches Paul and Pete, smiling conspiratorially at each other. ‘What do ya say?’ Pete asks them. ‘Can do tonight?’

Paul sucks thoughtfully at his cigarette. ‘Maybe tomorrow. Said I’d go someplace with John.’

This is news to George, but not particularly surprising news. John is still folded over the table, head nestled on the meat of his arm. Paul is looking over at him through the furls of cigarette smoke, his face suddenly very soft. It strikes George anew each time he catches sight of it, the strange thing Paul and John hold between each other. It brings out shades of Paul George didn’t think existed in him. 

‘Harrison?’ Pete says, snapping George out of his thoughts. ‘Suppose no?’

George tries not to bristle at that. His eyes snag to a dusky corner of the club, where Jürgen is leant against a table, speaking to someone.

‘No, not tonight,’ George says quietly. He sucks in the smoke of his cigarette and wonders suddenly if they’re still children. He wonders when that right to innocence slipped away and why none of them thought to mourn it.

- 

They’re wrecking through their performance, stinking of music, when George looks into the fissures of people and sees Jürgen with Astrid. They’re dancing, fluorescent with laughter. One of Jürgen’s hands is on the dip of Astrid’s waist, the other clasped in her hand as they spin each other, and George feels such a strong sense of longing it almost makes him skip a chord. Feels it in his chest, something scrapped raw and wanting, seeing their laughing faces in the meaningless shapes of people. 

Astrid spins Jürgen around, who smiles a bit self-deprecatingly, trying to hide his face in her shoulder and George thinks this is what they play music for. For beautiful people to discover beautiful things to, so when Astrid or Jürgen hear his guitar played in ten years time, they’ll be back to this, to the sticky dance floor under their feet, spinning around a person they love.

He’s a queer, John had said. George watches Jürgen’s soft face, smiling in the whiskey-gold lights, and feels something shudder and lock inside his own chest.

-

They finish somewhere amidst the heavy squeeze of music, not that George can hear anything. His blood is warm in his ears, a pressing feeling in his head, and when he looks at John bidding their goodbyes, his mouth moves without sound.

He’s shoved offstage, directed between the sweaty push of Paul and Stu’s bodies.

‘Paul,’ he mumbles into Paul’s back as they stumble into the crowd.

‘What? Are you gonna chuck?’

‘Dunno,’ George says. ‘Where’re you off to?’

‘Oh.’ Paul detangles George’s arm. ‘John and I are going to a strip place, ‘s all. We want to try something.’

‘Okay,’ George says. He won’t ask to come.

‘Legs that go on for miles, John says. Y’know how it is.’ Paul’s attention is like an hourglass, the grains slipping away from George and onto John. George could be a ghost.

‘I’ll catch you later,’ Paul says, and then he’s gone, sucked up by the shapes of people and George is left by one sweat-soaked wall, breathing through his mouth and wondering why he’s acting like a child that’s going to be sick.

He flings himself on the nearest table, pressing the balls of his feet to the ground, and tries to order some of the sludge in his head, but it’s impossible to find a beginning or end to his thoughts. The carousel is going too fast, and it’s too much, the whole ballast of it loose and spinning. He can’t keep up with this. Why did he ever think he could? Seconds slip into minutes and into longer minutes and people pass back and forth without a glance or word. George gets half way through a glass without tasting anything but the burn in the back of his throat. 

His heart is a wild, rabid thing in his chest, locked away behind his ribs, and he wants to rip the bloody thing out. Wants to rid his body of the pulse and feel of it, wants to exist as something empty and simple. He wants to hold onto someone, grip their forearms tight until the shake has gone from the world, but he can’t think of who.

Abruptly he pushes himself up and barges out, needing some clear air, needing to be away from the crush of people and suction of voices and music that don’t seem to ever make a proper sound.

He pushes his way out into the night, the air whipping freeze behind his ears, hands shaky and clumsy. He feels, stupidly, tears prick at his eyes. No good reason for ‘em, but he’s suddenly very tired and very lonely, and he misses his home, his bedroom and guitars and parents who sit opposite him at dinner and serve him warm food that doesn’t leave him starving after a half hour.

His head is pulsing, pounding, a beat stronger than anything Pete could bash out, and he wishes everything could stop moving and go quiet just for a moment. He thinks if it did, he’d be able to ground himself, let his thoughts fully form and figure out what he’s feeling, but everything keeps moving and moving and moving and George can’t figure out how to make it stop.

He ducks his head, sniffling like a child, and makes his way over to the alley when he hears a familiar noise. Paul, he thinks at first, but then John’s voice joins him. Except… except it doesn’t sound like John’s talking to Paul. It sounds like John’s got a bird ‘round the alleyway. 

George stills. He must have imagined Paul’s voice, he thinks. Must have something knocked loose, upset as he is. 

He’s about to turn back, suddenly uneasy, when he hears John again.

‘Oh Fuck, Paul, just like that.’

George keeps still. There’s something growing in his mind, a previous blur of colours he’s never looked at closely. Something dangerous and best left alone. But his feet are moving and then he’s at the maw of the alley, which is narrow and dim, but illuminated by the light spilling from one of the top windows. 

John’s there all right, unmistakable in his leathers, his back against the wall. In the swirl of light his hair looks coppery, rucked up at the back where it’s rested against the bricks, like a halo. And on his knees in front of John is Paul.

George knows what he’s seeing, but it takes a while for it to click into place, like the final visages of a photograph developing. 

Paul’s head is tipped back, John’s hand dug into the crown of his dark hair. John’s prick is in his mouth, moving in and out in a familiar motion. George can see how Paul’s lips look, stretched the way they are. Can see how Paul’s eyes are fixed on John, whose eyes are fixed on Paul.

‘Shit,’ George says, before he knows he’s going to say it. The word is punched out of him. He knows what he’s seeing, of course.

Paul must hear him because he’s scrambling up but George doesn’t think, just turns and starts walking off. His hands are trembling again, though it’s not from the cold now.

He can hear Paul running after him in the street, frantic, clambering steps. George doesn’t try to speed walk so Paul catches up with him, eyes desperate and wide.

‘Look, George it’s not- it wasn’t-’

George looks at Paul’s flustering. It crosses his mind that this makes Paul a- a something. A fucking hypocrite for calling Jürgen a queer while he’s doing that, for starts, but George doesn’t even feel a cruel slash of happiness, or disgust, or… or anything. Watching Paul’s panicked face, he doesn’t feel anything. Except that distant notion from before, growing, something ignored and now not, something he could have maybe known if he thought about it for long enough.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Paul finally manages. His lips are dark red and wet. Red and wet from sucking John’s cock.

‘Okay,’ George says. He tries to start walking again but Paul steps in front.

‘Honestly. It-’ He laughs a little. ‘It was just, y’know, a joke.’

‘Okay.’

‘Like what we do at Shotton’s sometimes.’

George frowns. Him touching his own prick in the dark is different to having another bloke’s in his mouth, thank you. The giddy rush, hearing the leery call of names, is different to what Paul and John were doing. Paul on his knees round the back of  a dirty alley, Paul, getting his knees coated in grime and dirt just so he could have his mouth round John.

George blushes, remembering the split-second of John’s hand dug into Paul’s hair, how Paul had been looking up while John looked down.

‘Whatever, Paul, I don’t care.’

This seems to panic Paul more. He’s glancing around the empty street, as though the German’s are going to jump out at him for it.

‘It- we’d never done anything like that before. It was just, we were only-’

But some of that dim feeling is brightening a bit now. Haven’t done anything like that before . It’s a lie. Of course it’s a lie. They’ve done it before. This whole time, Paul and John have been- 

Have been what? Sucking each other off? Slipping round alleyways at night? Or more, doing the dirty, sick things the queers hiss about on the street. Paul gets the worst of it, bets taken on using his mouth for ten minutes, and though they all holler and shout indignantly on Paul’s behalf, and although Paul shakes his head in disgust too, Paul was on his knees for John. Has been for a while, George realises now. 

Except Paul can’t be a queer. Not Jim Mac’s boy, not Paul who writes out their setlists fresh each week even if it’s not necessary and sews up their holey clothes and sends off money home from his monthly checks. Paul can’t be like those cock suckers who leech off the street lamps in the dirtiest corners of the Reeperbahn, faces twisted with makeup and bodies strange and sickly. Paul can’t be. Except, except-

‘George, please,’ Paul says, and George realises that Paul isn’t angry or nervous. He’s terrified , hands clasped together to hide tremor shakes, eyes wide and scared. 

He is, George thinks. Both him and John.

‘Okay, Paul,’ George says, and his voice comes out softer and steadier than he expected it to. ‘It’s alright. I won’t tell.’

Paul’s eyes are searching George’s face frantically. George stills completely, lets him look.

‘I’m not,’ Paul whispers. ‘I promise, I’m not.’

‘Paul,’ George says. ‘Listen. I don’t care. It’s alright.’

Paul is still breathing heavily. George realises he isn’t trembling anymore. He wishes he hadn’t seen anything, not because of what it was, but because of how scared it’s made Paul.

‘Okay,’ Paul says quietly. ‘You don’t think I am?’

‘Stop talking,’ George tells him. Paul drops his hands in front of him, palms open as though checking for rain.

‘Paul, listen to me,’ George says, stepping closer. ‘I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. It really has nothing to do with me. Forget I saw it. Okay?’

‘But you did see it,’ Paul whispers.

George feels a flash of irritation. ‘I don’t. Care . Suck all the cocks in Germany, it doesn’t mean anything to me.’

Paul swallows, looking at George with something vulnerable in his eyes, some question. George looks back. Then Paul glances behind George in a sudden, startled movement. 

John’s there, stepping wearily out from the ginnel. As ever, in the slashes of dim street lights, George can’t read his face. He trusts Paul can. George turns and starts to walk back, thinking of absolutely nothing.

‘What?’ John says. His voice is hard, loud. ‘Not going to say anything?’

‘Why would I?’ George says, turning to look at John. ‘I didn’t see anything.’

John snorts. ‘Right.’

‘I didn’t,’ George snaps. ‘Even if I did, I don’t give a shit about you two.’ He looks between John to Paul. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me.’

John stares at him, bottom lip drawn between his teeth. George wonders if this is what John Lennon looks like scared. 

‘I’ll catch you both later,’ George says, continuing to walk. He really doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. So what, if Paul’s a bit of a queer? So what if John is too? It makes sense, really, the way they are, how they…

George’s hands are shaking again. He thinks if he steps back inside a club he might actually drop down dead. He thinks returning to their empty quarters would be worse. He wonders if Jürgen is around, then feels such a mix of sickness and sudden, unexpected arousal, he stops dead in his tracks.

Around him, Hamburg is unexpectedly quiet. He walks in a daze until he’s in one of the streets near the river, the air sharp with sea salt and whiskey. If he looks close enough at the thickening sky, he can almost make out the faint glow of stars. 

He wonders if there’s something in the air here, some toxic seeping through their skin, or if this Thing has always been inside him and it’s just now been set off, climbing up inside his body like mildew and rot. 

He wonders if he’ll ever feel clean like he did before eighteen again.

Chapter Text

Paul manages to go eight days without speaking to George. George knows it’s eight days because he’s counting. 

It’s enough to turn his previous feelings into anger, because ‘course Paul would be caught with a cock down his throat and immediately act like George has done something wrong. Even though George doesn’t care what’s down Paul’s throat, even though he told Paul this. Because he doesn’t care. It doesn’t have anything to do with him, at all. ‘Cept now it does, because of how Paul’s acting.

John is almost worse, grabbing Paul whenever he sees that George is watching. A hand a bit too low on his back. His head a little too close to Paul's. Grinning, daring George to say anything. Which George won’t, of course, because it’s got nothing to do with him.

The Paul-less space gives him time to do some thinking, anyway, when George is alone in their quarters or after their performing. He thinks of the alleyway, but not Paul and his mouth; he thinks of Paul’s eyes, locked on John, and how actually, now George is thinking about it, that expression- it’s not that unusual. He thinks back to the parties he’s tagged along to, art student parties mostly, where the people drink things like wine from stem glasses and wear a lot of black. He thinks about Paul and John blocking everyone out for entire nights sometimes, stowed away in a corner just to talk to each other, even though that’s what they’d been doing all bloody day anyway.

How they look at each other, on stage. Like they’re scared the other one will vanish if they don’t.

It was always known, had Paul been Paula, she’d have been married to John straight out of school, wedding band tight round her ring finger. If John had been a girl- well, that doesn’t even bear thinking about.

Point is, George thinks, actually, maybe, he sort of knew before that Paul and John were- well, not normal, y’know? Not your average mates. The problem is, George isn’t totally sure what that makes him.

Well, nothing, he supposes. Because really, it doesn’t have anything to do with him. At all. So he should stop thinking about it. And Paul should start talking to him again, too, because this is his fault anyway.

-

By the end of the eighth day, George corners Paul the only time they’re all on the same level, when levels have dissolved; onstage. Between songs, when Paul is moving from the piano to his guitar. George steps in front of him;

‘Why are you ignoring me?’

‘I’m not,’ Paul says. Smiles too, easy as anything.

‘Stop doing that,’ George says. ‘Just talk to me again.’

‘I am,’ Paul says with that same calm smile. ‘I need to get to my guitar.’

George stays still so Paul has to slide past him.

When they bound off stage afterwards, Paul doesn’t even spare him a half glance before tugging John off by his elbow, the two of them vanishing like smoke. Stu is with Astrid, Pete is God knows where. George wonders if he set a condom on fire they’d send him back early too.

-

It’s not even like… it’s not just catching Paul doing that which is the problem. Or not problem but a Thing now. It’s how George doesn’t feel disgusted or superior. It’s the fact he feels, slightly… jealous or something. Like he saw Paul doing that and recognised something in himself. 

He dreams in slivers of smoke and light through shadows, stuff without form or bodies, but sometimes things break through. And it’s usually birds, y’know, a girl underneath him, more sounds than a feeling, but recently it’s been harder to tell if it’s a girl or not, just that there’s a body and it’s near his, and this body is stronger and solid, a body done being made, and George dreams of dancing his fingers along the muscles of their back and tasting sweat and then, sometimes, he can make out a face, a handsome one, but he wakes before it sets into place, before it brands him anything, and-

Well, George thinks maybe he can understand where Paul and John are coming from. 

-

Another day passes, or maybe two; George has stopped counting. Hamburg remains timeless, a forever-twilight the five of them have been deposited in. Except there is an end, looming in sight. The ferry will come to pick them up, soon. George will have to pack his suitcase, instead of dumping things in a pile.

Time begins to have a shape. He tries to ignores it.

But it’s some days later, and time is being funny, and George misses Paul. 

He tries again, in a slippery hour between being awake and being asleep, when the drinks and prellies have pushed George closer towards pissed off, which in turn has pushed him towards determined. He corners Paul, tries to mimic some of John’s swagger and intimidation, though he’s sure he’s failing. 

‘Paul, ‘m serious,’ he says, right into the shell of Paul’s ear. He grips his arm, tight, and shoves him around. ‘Fuckin' talk to me.’

Paul won’t even look him in the eye. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

There’s a glazed smile, a shred of disinterest, and it crosses George’s mind that Paul is probably still sucking John’s cock in alleyways, and John’s probably sucking his back, that George seeing hasn’t stopped Paul from having John; it’s just scared him off talking to George. So now he’s two people down in this fucking hellhole, no more Paul and even less John than before, and Paul has the gall to not even meet his eye.

‘Stop being a fucking cunt,’ George says, shaking Paul a bit. He wants to snap a reaction from him, Angry Paul or Bossy Paul, something, anything, but Paul just flinches and George drops his hand- not good at the intimation like John- and Paul mumbles ‘I’m not ignoring you,’ before slipping away. 

George’s throat fucking kills and he feels sick, feels like his body’s turning inside out while he’s wide awake to feel it, and he isn’t even entirely sure what it is that caused it- isn’t sure it starts and ends with the few seconds he caught the other day. He thinks- he thinks-

Sometimes, he thinks he thinks too much. No, feels too much. Yes, that’s his problem. How you’re supposed to stop feeling everything, George doesn’t know. He's beginning to think he was made with so much feeling it won’t all fit it in, and one day soon he’ll start to leak disgustingly.

-

They’re on their way from one sordid place to another, the streetlamps bleeding sickly yellow light onto the street. Each pub they pass is like tuning into a radio station briefly, a sudden burst of uncomplicated sound which is then washed away by static. George thinks he could be sleepwalking, dragged 'long within their helix of bodies; PaulandJohn, StuandAstrid, Pete for once, loitering with who George thinks is a prossie. Everyone’s walking in pairs, apart from him.

Klaus up front with, of course, Jürgen, who George hasn’t spoken to properly since he caught Paul and John. He wishes these things were unconnected, but he has a nagging suspicion they’re not; that Paul’s cocksucking was not an isolated event, that George did not discover one secret that night in the alley but a myriad of ones, things slotting into place. 

George lets himself drift, eye’s unfocused, and tries to piece their strange, stranded party together. Paul who hates Stu, Stu who loves Astrid, Astrid who did love Klaus. One criss-crossing line. He huffs a laugh, not very amused by anything- but then, isn’t that the funniest part?

Jürgen’s figure in front breaks from the blend of him and Klaus, his lines solidifying. He steps back, neatly in time with George.

‘I have not seen you much lately,’ he says. There is no accusation or annoyance in his tone, though George had been readying for it.

‘Yeah, it’s, you know-’ George doesn’t really want to lie to Jürgen, especially when his lying would mainly be to protect Paul and John, who are right now being the world’s two most insufferable cunts. ‘Weird week. I haven’t been sleeping much.’

‘Ah, that is not good,’ Jürgen says. ‘You are already on stage for most of the night.’

George glances at him, half smiling. ‘We’re becoming nocturnal. We won't need sleep by the time we're back in Liverpool.’

Jürgen laughs, a warm, rumbling sound that does interesting things to the place beneath George’s breast bone.

‘You will be like film stars when you go back,’ Jürgen says. ‘Home from a great adventure.’

George pulls a face, looking around at the crepuscular streets. Jürgen catches sight of his incredulous expression and elbows him.

‘They do not have to know the truth,’ he says.

‘I suppose,’ George says. ‘I’m told we look like film stars. Have you seen Pete?’

‘You are selling yourself short,’ Jürgen tells him. George shrugs one shoulder, still smiling as he steps around a broken bottle head. At least Jürgen will talk to him, still. And really, Jürgen is probably the best person here to talk to. Worldly and sensitive, not just artist sensitive, but genuinely. Intelligent and thoughtful and somehow still with time to speak to George.

‘I have been meaning to ask,’ Jürgen says, turning to properly face George. ‘Would you still want to take some photos? Away from the club?’ 

He’s not even that loud, but the implications there make George flinch. He regrets it the second after, because they’re only his implications after all. Or, John’s, he supposes. But John’s mouth made them everyone’s, ink seeping through paper, and even though John himself is a… was doing… can’t really call George a queer, all things considered, the flinch still comes, second nature. 

‘Uh-’ he glances around and he catches sight of Paul, who pretends to have not been looking. John turns around at Paul’s flurrying, catches George’s eye. 

George bites the inside of his cheek at John’s gaze, his eyes narrowed in thought. Then it breaks. John smiles and gropes Paul’s arse, right there in front of everyone, still grinning at George. Paul swats at him, and then John’s attention is gone- flinging an arm around Paul to draw him closer, whispering something in his ear that makes Paul snort despite himself. 

No one else would think anything of it, and that irritates George too- the fact he is, the fact he always does end up wasting thought on people who never do back. Look where it’s bloody got him.

‘George?’

‘Yeah, sorry,’ George says, looking away from the figures that are beginning to lose their edges again, fuzzy with the noxious light and drink.

‘No, it is alright,’ Jürgen says. ‘I was going to say it is okay if you do not want to.’

‘I do!’ George says. ‘I wasn’t- I mean, yes I do. Sorry.’

‘Why are you saying sorry?’ Jürgen asks. ‘You are doing me a favour, George.’

George thinks he can feel eyes on him, Paul maybe, or John. He thinks he can always feel eyes on him here, the moist whites of them blinking from gutters, assessing him from the bottom of bunk beds, squinting him out of the periphery. He finds he doesn’t care if the others hear this. He’s sick. He’s sick of Paul ignoring his glances, like it’s George who did something wrong. He’s sick of having to sing the same one song, over and over again, and how John will step back from the mic and begin talking to Paul when George sings, and that Stu only plays the same three fucking chords through them, and the bashing of Pete behind him, like a headache pulsing beneath his eyelids. He’s sick of how dirty Hamburg is, how it’s the kind of grim that gets under your nails, deeper than your skin, and the cold tap water doesn’t seem to wash it away.

He’s so sick of it that he holds onto Jürgen’s arm, once, and says; ‘Yes, I will take the photos with you,’ loud enough that anyone could bloody hear him, if they would bother to. 

-

He ignored all their jeering when he left their quarters in the morning, John making a performance with his winking and grinning, Pete woof whistling. Paul was silent, but trying to catch his eyes for once, biting his fat bottom lip between his teeth as if trying to coax words from it. George had ignored them all, face set, and left the room without a word.

Jürgen had met him by the docks, almost offensively well groomed for Hamburg compared to George’s scruffy hair and old shirt and jeans.

‘Don’t know how I’ll be as a model,’ he said a bit sheepishly, but Jürgen had just shook his head and asked about their show the night before.

It’s cold by the time they’re done, the sky the colour of too milky tea, stingy with its warmth. Jürgen keeps cupping his hands to blow air into them, the tips of his fingers sore with cold from where he’s been holding the camera while George can shove his deep into his pockets.

‘Is it always cold ‘ere?’ George asks.

‘It feels like it,’ Jürgen says.

‘Not much different from Liverpool then,’ George says. It’s only just lunch, people emerging in search of food. George doesn’t want to leave yet, but he also doesn’t want to keep the two of them out in the frigid cold.

‘Look, um.’ George keeps his eyes resolutely fixed on the slow spool of light reflecting on the water. ‘What I said the other night, about coming back with me-’

‘Oh, that.’ Jürgen sounds embarrassed. ‘I misunderstood, I think. Forget it.’

‘Well, what if I wanted you to misunderstand it?’ George says. Jürgen is silent for a long second, so George goes on: ‘I mean, I would like to come back with you now. If that’s alright.’

Jürgen is looking at him carefully. ‘Have the others said something?’

George shrugs. ‘Wouldn’t matter if they did. I want to go back with you.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘But I want to,’ George says. ‘I do. I did the other night, probably.’

Jürgen looks at him, head tilted down. His face is hidden in the cloudy light, with a depth you could get lost in. Then he smiles, a bit shyly, and it cracks the shadows in two. ‘Okay, George. If you are sure.’ Which George is.

-

This is what happens: they go back to Jürgen’s flat. He makes them nearly-burnt toast served on the first clean plates George has seen in weeks. They eat on the carpet, their knees touching, and it feels almost like he’s seventeen again, almost, except there is no sense of urgency, no rush to get it over with.

The sun softens over the carpet, pale and weak. Slants of warmth dip over Jürgen’s face, across the strong line of his cheekbone and pale neck, and George wants to kiss him there, where the light falls, so he does. And Jürgen returns it.

Jürgen kisses him slowly, attentively, like he wants to remember every inch of George. His mouth tastes like honey and butter and his hands hold onto George’s waist, thumbs pressing where his hip bones jut, and for the first time his body doesn’t feel ugly or too skinny. Just bone, just something visceral and raw to be touched and held and moved. It’s different from a girl, but then, all girls are different from girls as well, so George isn't sure that’s a good judgment.

And it’s easy, really, to get lost in the rhythm of a body-on-a-body, when there’s no eyes watching, and George finds it isn’t getting lost as much as being pulled along, as much as letting go and allowing the tide of Jürgen’s body to direct him until they’re both weightless, both suspended in each other. 

Afterwards George is laying on the carpet, hair clinging with static, and Jürgen rolls over and slots a lit cigarette into his mouth and says in a quiet and serious voice: are you okay? and George laughs, a bright burst of sound, because he didn’t realise it could ever feel this okay.

And then he tries to kiss the cigarette smoke out of Jürgen’s mouth.

-

George walks back by himself, while the day begins to melt into night, dusky-purple and cold. He passes people and doesn’t try to look too closely at their faces. He thinks about hunger, about the different types, and how he might have discovered a new one, might have discovered a new use for his teeth and tongue.

-

It’s Stu who’s the first to speak to him afterwards. All of them have made their way to the club, full of the bands before it’s time to think about performing; when everything is lethargic and a bit soft, a bit quiet, before they go and smash it up with sound again.

George is sitting on one of the tables, curled by the wall. He’s gazing at the layers of stick from drinks on the table, not seeing it as much as feeling Jürgen’s hands cupping his face and his neck. He’s not taken a prellie for a while, and his sleep-haze allows him to submerge himself back in the flat, clinging like cigarette smoke to the walls, until Stu swings himself onto the seat in front of him, all together way too alert for Hamburg.

‘Haven’t seen you in a while,’ he says. His voice level enough it could mean nothing.

‘No?’ George says. He loops his fingers around his left wrist. 

‘Didn’t come out with us the other night.’

George scowls. ‘Don’t think I was invited.’

‘Why would you need to be invited?’ Stu asks, which is a good point. George, however, is not in the mood for good points, and knocks his head back against the walls.

‘Just meant I can’t go if I don’t know about it.’

Stu’s silent for a moment, then says; ‘Did John or Paul do something?’

George glances at Stu, but he seems genuinely curious. It’s not like they’ve been seeing loads of Stu either, keeping himself clean with Astrid. 

‘Just, the three of yous usually can’t be separated,’ Stu adds.

‘Three of us,’ George says. That flicker of anger, or jealousy, of whatever sparks again. ‘I’m not as bad as them two.’

‘Not as bad, no,’ Stu says. ‘But you’re nicer than them, aren’t you?’

He’s missing the point, maybe on purpose. George supposes Stu must have figured out some degree of it, being close to John. He can’t envision John being more discreet than Paul, anyway.

‘Paul’s in a mood, that’s all,’ George says, which isn’t really a lie. ‘And pretending he’s not.’

‘Do you know why?’

George shrugs. ‘Probably missing home or something. You’d have to ask him.’

Stu smiles a little. ‘Right, sure. Maybe I’ll do that.’

It crosses George’s mind, in one perfect, lucid stroke, the reason Paul hates Stu. The reason Paul hates Stu’s bass playing have always been clear, but the confused mix of detestment and humiliation he siphons off Stu are suddenly, stupidly clear.

‘Yeah, well,’ George says non-committally.

‘You’ll be going home soon,’ Stu says. ‘It will sort itself out.’

The idea of an End shudders through George. ‘Will it? Can’t imagine them shaking Hamburg off that easily.’ He can’t imagine shaking Hamburg off either, is what he doesn't add. 

‘They’ll adapt again,’ Stu says. ‘Get some gigs, you know. Only now they're a bit-' he makes a odd hand gesture. 'Sometimes they’re so hungry they become vicious.’

George thinks of Paul’s coil-winding job which lasted less than a week even though his Da smacked him for it, and John dragging poor Tommy Moore out of hospital with his front teeth bashed in. He thinks of Pete and his smashed washboard, which Paul relayed to him with a look of admiration in his eyes. Stu’s right- Paul and John are hungry, vicious and merciless. The thing is, George is hungry too. They think they’re the only two who are, but George is just as hungry. An ache deep inside, a cavern that threatens to show its deepness if you look over the edge. He thinks that’s what stops him going mad: not looking. He thinks if he peered over and saw how deep the longing was, he’d never look away again.

‘Maybe,’ George says quietly. ‘And you? Lookin’ forward to finally being back?’

Stu smiles a little strangely at him, a little sadly, and something else clicks into place.

‘Sure,’ he says, and then a voice is calling for them to start getting ready and Stu slips off like he wasn’t there at all.

-

The bottle of time slips, spills; days soaking into a strange stretch, something George wasn’t expecting. A break in routine. Things begin to sharpen, solidifying from the sludge of Hamburg. It’s like taking the first breath after swimming in a freezing lake.

For a week, George develops a routine. He divides his time between performing at the club and Jürgen’s place. 

He watches Jürgen develop his photographs and explain the process, even if George doesn’t understand it (even if Jürgen doesn’t really understand the esoteric mix of chemicals, something he admitted to George while struggling to translate the German words). Jürgen cuts apples into slices and makes George too sugary tea and asks him questions and then listens to George answer. And then they usually get off. Though the getting off doesn’t feel like the main event. Not that it feels like the secondary event either. It just… it fits. It’s like washing your hands after eating, or taking your coat off after coming back inside. Well, no, not exactly that, because having sex with Jürgen is far more satisfactory than washing hands and coats. It just doesn’t feel like a big performance George has to try at, or think about. 

He wonders if that’s what it was like for Paul and John. If it just happened, almost inevitable. After a writing session or something. He wonders if either of them put a name to it. 

Hamburg continues, different hues appearing in the moggy glow of streetlamps. Different sounds in the air. George spends less time thinking and instead moves with the ebb and flow Jürgen sets for him. Paul begins speaking to him again, words between sets, a shared glance on stage when Stu really mucked up a bass part. George almost smiled at the barely concealed rage between Paul’s brows before remembering that he hasn’t totally forgiven Paul, and also, Paul is still being a bit of a cunt. But he almost smiled. John has stopped trying to grope Paul whenever George is in their general vicinity too, which is reassuring, and has gone back to just being obnoxious in general, to everyone, instead of targeting George. 

So time pulls forward in its shifty, strange new way, and George watches from the periphery; John smashes glasses on the heads of strangers and cradles bruises on his ribs; Paul pretends not to care for and care about, although he’s the only one sober enough to leech the pain; Stu makes love to his girl, the only pure thing in the circuit of dirt and grim, in love so he doesn’t need their drugs. 

George remains somewhere within the tangle. He plays guitar and never messes up, even with blood congealed under his fingernails that have grown too long, even after an hour of sleep and two prellies. He sings his one song and sits in the crux of their booth seat in the corner. 

He smokes cigarettes with Jürgen at his flat with the window open and chases the carcinogen on his tongue. He begins to memorise the taste of another man’s body as he kisses his way across Jürgen’s skin while the day melts dusky blue, already a memory in the sky.

-

It’s been maybe two weeks since the alley when Paul catches George before the two of them split their own ways.

‘George.’

Paul is hanging ‘round the doorway of the bathroom, leathers half pulled onto his shoulder. His pale face is damp from his wash, hair slicked back. ‘Are you coming out tonight? Stu can’t.’

George takes it for what it is- a back to normal. ‘What about Pete?’

‘Fuck knows.’ Paul hesitates. ‘I’d uh. It would be good if you did. Dull if not.’

A Paul-apology. George’s anger has been balmed over and he sheds it like snake skin. ‘Yeah, alright.’

Paul smiles. ‘Ah, that’s good, y’know.’

George smiles despite himself. Paul’s ways are so familiar to him, from the first on the bus. 

‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist,’ he tells Paul, who flips him off and then bounds back into the bathroom.

‘Just wait up when we finish later!’ he shouts. 

‘Got it,’ George says, heading out to Jürgen’s, a letter for his parents in his hand to post on the way. He wonders, idly, if Paul has even spoken about anything in his life. 

-

The small fireplace is warm, glowing marmalade orange. It’s the kind of warmth you’d never find in their quarters, where he and John had nicked a rouge British flag from some building, the gauzy fabric a placebo of a blanket. ‘For our country!’ John had shouted, balancing George on his shoulders as George had ripped it down. Why they bothered, he doesn’t know. 

Jürgen’s flat, though cramped, is warm. The pub below is stuffy enough some of the heat must press against the floorboards, musky and sweat-sweet. George has his socks rolled off his skinny ankles and is pressed down on the floor, sketching.

‘Here,’ he says. He shuffles the notebook ‘cross to Jürg, grinning at him. ‘See, a real artist. Should I be like Stu and become one of those Beat types?’

Jürgen smiles at him, then inspects his doodles. Despite everything, George feels warm at how pleased Jürgen looks, how interested. He’s no John, or Stu, or even Paul, he doesn’t think, with his juvenile faces and strange cartoon-like faces. But Jürgen is smiling all the same.

‘These are very good,’ he says.

‘They’re fine,’ George says. ‘Not proper drawings.’

‘But why not?’

George shrugs. ‘They’re childish. Not life-like.’

‘Why should they be life-like?’ Jürgen says. He holds the sketchbook up and traces his finger across the penciled lines. ‘I like how different you do things, George. That’s what makes you interesting, how you don’t do things like the others.’

‘You’re just saying that.’

‘I’m not,’ Jürgen says. ‘Imagine if everyone did everything the same.’ He pulls a face that makes George laugh.

He pulls the notebook back and signs them, feeling a little silly. He writes the cuticles of Jürgen name, dotting the U, and passes it over. It feels dirtily thrilling, like he’s written down some sordid confession.

‘There. ‘S yours now.’

Jürgen smiles at him, taking the pages so his hands flitter over George’s. Smooth hands, not the rough-and-worked callouses he’s used to feeling when Paul leads him by the shoulder or John gets a bit rough after a drink. These are long, firm fingers, the skin smooth and unbroken. George wants to feel them on his skin again, tracing the bumping lines of his bones, his ribs and hips, the way Jürgen’s hands make his awkward shapes feel simple. And because he’s learnt the language of Jürgen’s body, has begun to memories the taste of salt under his arms and the feel of his exhales under his palm, George leans over and kisses him and hopes Jürgen gets the message. Which he does.

Afterwards, he lets George use his hot water for a shower, which is perhaps the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for him.

-

He walks back to the club, used to the darkness of the sky. The small slips of moments when he’s alone, between Jürgen’s flat and his bandmates’ stage. For the first time he notices how the river reflects the ugly windows of the brothels and pubs, how the bulging yellow and red sink together to make something new. Something beautiful and still and for only him to see. Above, a rare crescent of the moon shivers on the water like bird wings.

George feels slightly giddy, something warm swelling in him, filling those cold places. He thinks of Jürgen’s clever hands on him, how George is made up of more shapes and colours than he knew existed.

The music beckons him on to Paul, to John and then Stu and Pete, to something bigger than the lights of Hamburg and their cheap cigarettes. George goes smiling.

-

On stage they’re set alight with music, playing to their best again. So in synch George thinks the three of them share brain synapses. Changes his guitar tempo and hears Paul follow instantly, without needing to check.

John screams out, a release of something deep buried that shatters along the cracks in George’s body. He whoops out, catches John’s eye who grins at him, toothy and boyish.

The crowd is wild, thrashing and shouting, but it's nothing, it's a smear of wet paint outside his vision. He focuses on Paul, who tips his head back to laugh, spinning around. John gets an elbow on the piano, spurting out a clank of notes. George is bleeding colour. So what if he doesn’t know what it is he’s tangled in? Thank God he is; thank God he gets this, music and screaming and sounds that feel too big to be real. Thank God he found them, or they found him, on the top deck of the bus.

They stumble away in a mess off sweaty limbs, Paul yanking him close and John getting an arm ‘round his shoulders and then they’re racing off to a hole in the wall place, red light breaking through cloudy windows, the stretch of booze so strong you almost gag when you step in.

John works his way through drinks and drugs at his ever-alarming pace. Manages to rangle them several free shots, though George can’t begin to imagine how, knowing John’s shoddy German. It’s a knife-edge balance, being with John; sheer drops of danger and excitement, John marching through everything with an audacity that he wears so well, people don’t often question it. He knocks back a shot and feels it claw at his throat. Paul pulls a face; John laughs hard enough he sprays them with spit and alcohol. 

There are birds, a girl with dark hair he chats to for a moment, but it’s nothing really, easy to fade out in the swirls of light and music, and then Paul’s got a hand on his shoulder and is yelling something in his ear, something that sounds like John’s got in a fight, Imma help him out , and then he’s darting off like a cat.

Things still, a little. Now Paul said it, George can pick out the raised voices, familiar to their nights. Angry tones, words indecipherable but pointed and sharp. A sound of impact, another sound of glass breaking, then a bouncer yelling over the noises, and even though George doesn’t know the exact translation, it’s happened enough times now that he’s learnt the meaning.

He finds Paul and John by the wall outside. John is sagged against the bricks, a puppet with all its strings slashed. 

‘Got into a fight?’ George says.

Paul glances at him. ‘Bloody German threw a bottle at him.’

‘What?’ George bends down to a very drunk John. He sees, now, the small end of glass dug into his forearm. Blood like syrup trickles dark-red down his arm.

‘Yeah. All John was doing was waving this bottle around, not actually gonna hurt anyone, ‘cept it must have broke, and this big bastard, y’know, much bigger than John, he starts shouting and trying to stop John throwing and the idiot got some of the glass in him.’

John’s head lolls against the wall. ‘Paul,’ he mumbles.

‘Can you get it out?’ George asks. It’s not big, but it looks fiddly. And John is plastered.

‘Oh yeah,’ Paul says. He looks at George. ‘He’s gonna bitch though. If it bleeds a lot, can we use your shirt?’

‘Um-’

‘Okay,’ Paul says, turning back to John. His voice has taken on a conciliatory tone, soft-voweled and cooing. ‘It’s going to be like a small sting, okay?’

John makes a noise and then two of Paul’s pianist fingers are pressing the damp skin around the glass down.

‘Ah, Christ!’ John hisses as Paul shifts the shard of glass.

‘I know, baby,’ Paul says. He pinches it between his fingers, so steady George begins to see why his Dad had high hopes for his future in the coil winding business. 

‘Hurts,’ John mumbles, eyes squeezed shut. Paul begins to draw it out, shushing the pained sounds John makes.

‘That’s it, almost done,’ Paul says sweetly. His other hand is holding onto John’s arm steady as John grits his teeth. Paul murmurs sweet nothings and then yanks it free. 

‘Fuck,’ John bites. 

‘S gone now,’ Paul says. George can see, now Paul’s inspecting the glass, how his fingers are trembling, just a little.

‘We should get it cleaned,’ George says, eyeing the gnash on John’s clammy skin and thinking of the hundred and one diseases Hamburg is hoarding away.

‘Yeah,’ Paul says. He clasps John ‘neath his arms and hauls him up. ‘Come on, Johnny, let’s get you cleaned up.’

‘Paul,’ John mumbles into Paul’s shoulder.

‘You’re fine,’ Paul says. He leans behind John’s back to speak to George; ‘Astrid’s, do you think?’

George bites his lip on a thought. ‘Jürgen’s is closer.’

‘Okay,’ Paul says. He’s focused on John only, on the sly equilibrium of his heavy body between them. ‘Do you know the way there?’

-

Jürgen is tousled and dressed down in a black shirt when George knocks on the door.

‘It’s John,’ George says by explanation at Jürgen’s stunned face. ‘He drank a little much and got into a fight. Broke a bottle, Paul removed the glass but we wanted to disinfect the wound.’

Jürgen must be confused but he lets them in, nodding at George’s words.

‘I have a medical box?’ he says, then goes searching. Paul heaves John onto one of the chairs by Jürgen’s small table, still soothing him.

‘Thanks, Jürg,’ George says quietly as Jürgen comes back with a small box. John is slumped in the chair, eyelids fluttering. Almost peaceful.

‘He’s gonna chuck,’ Paul says.

‘He looks like he’s falling asleep,’ George says.

‘No, he is,’ Paul says. Jürgen passes Paul an empty bowl, quick as anything, and then John begins heaving, these awful, wet choking sounds as Paul gets the bowl under him. George winces at the familiar sound of John being sick, how he sounds like a man starved for air.

‘That’s it Johnny, get it all out,’ Paul says, soothing a hand along his back.

George steps out of their way and flings open the window, letting in the damp night air. He doesn’t want Jürgen’s place to reek of John’s sickness- maybe a bit selfishly, if he plans on coming here tomorrow- and the blue air pricks along the sweat of his neck, cools his skin. He’s still drunk himself, and the cold steadies him a little.

‘He has a little too much a lot, doesn’t he?’ Jürgen says, coming to stand by George.

‘Aye, he does,’ George says. John continues to retch, his face and arms a clammy grey. Paul is rubbing circles onto his back, nose wrinkled. 

‘I have the disinfectant,’ Jürgen says, holding a small, white bottle.

Paul looks up. ‘Ah, thanks Jürgen,’ he says. ‘I think I can do it alright. Do ya have a towel or anything you don’t mind gettin’ bloody?’

There’s an efficiency to him that makes George hurt somewhere. He sometimes wonders about those dark months after Julia died, where he barely saw John at all. He wonders what Paul did exactly, if Paul ever stopped doing it. What John would be like, if Paul hadn’t been there then.

‘That is alright,’ Jürgen says easily. ‘My things do not mean that much. I have a towel somewhere.’

He goes to step round George, and as he does, he puts his hand on the small of George’s back. It’s a soft touch, nothing firm, but nothing apathetic either, and George finds himself swaying back into the cup of Jürgen’s hand briefly. Jürgen’s fingers pull against his skin, moving the fabric of George’s shirt up so his fingers drag across the exposed skin there, a linger, and when George glances up, Paul is looking at him with his mouth open in an O of understanding.

George freezes. Paul does too, staring at George. Jürgen must notice because he stops suddenly, looking between the two of them. Only John remains blissfully unaware, throwing up into Jürgen’s poor bowl.

‘Er-’ Jürgen says, looking at George.

‘John needs a towel,’ George says, and that snaps the three of them out of their silence, that and the sound of John’s vomit hitting the ceramic.

‘Yes. Of course,’ Jürgen says. He hurries off, into his bathroom. 

George steps forward carefully, pulling at his lip. All Jürg had done was touch his back. Paul had been sucking John’s cock in an alleyway. Paul can’t know, just from that. Unless… can you recognise queer things, once you start doing them? Like some weird kind of telepathy?

Paul is inspecting John’s arm, brow furrowed in apparent concentration. John seems to have emptied his stomach now, and is dozing back in the chair. George gets an arm ‘round him and heaves him back into a sitting position.

‘I can empty that,’ George says, nodding his head at the bowl. It’s a peace offering if there ever was one- someone else's vomit is their own fucking problem, by the by, and even then, there have been times when bowls of sick have gone unattended in their quarters for days before the smell becomes so rancid they have to do something about it.

‘Yeah, you might as well,’ Paul says without looking up. It crosses George’s mind that Paul might be angry with him, but before he can begin to think about untangling that fucking mess, Jürgen is back with a towel. 

George heaves up the bowl, holding his breath so the contents of his stomach don’t join John’s, and makes his way to the bathroom.

-

They amble back when the sun is beginning to lighten the sky, drizzle damp on their cheeks and arms. John is between them, docile now, head swaying into Paul’s as they walk back.

‘God, I feel like death,’ John mumbles. It’s the first thing he’s said in an hour, at least. ‘Those bloody Germans.’

‘Maybe it’s a sign to never drink again,’ George says. ‘Like a message from God.’

‘Ha, likely,’ John says. There’s the sound of him swallowing. ‘Christ, did I mess up Jürgen’s place?’

‘I’d say not,’ George says.

‘He helped us out, didn’t he?’ John says, the us doing rather a lot of heavy lifting. ‘He ain’t half bad.’

Paul glances over at George, his face unreadable.

‘I suppose,’ Paul says. George has no idea what he’s supposed to think of anything anymore. He’s starting to see the appeal of getting as hammered as John, if it means a few hours of blissful nothing.

‘Ah well,’ John says. He’s grinning at them, face still sickly clammy, his arm over-bandaged by Paul. ‘I’ll hav’ta thank him when I see him next. Do you think there’s time for another round before we’re on?’ 

-

Paul doesn’t start ignoring him again, exactly, but there’s clearly something on his mind which he refuses to come out and fucking say. Maybe George should start ignoring him, like Paul did. Except he can’t be arsed, and besides, he’s not even sure if Paul knows, or thinks he knows, or is just being weird. 

John recovers as much as possible, pretending his arm needs to be amputated and starting a rage against the German who happened to be in his vicinity when John was wankered and throwing around glass bottles. Stu shows reasonable skepticism at John’s version of events, which Paul scowls at and George privately confirms to Stu after a breakfast of stale bread and coffee.

‘Lucky Jürgen had the right stuff in,’ Stu says, and George feels a bolt of panic for no reason, other than Stu mentioning Jürgen’s name. 

‘Mm,’ George says. ‘Lucky Paul’s Mam used to be a midwife.’

Stu bites the inside of his cheek and glances at Paul, who’s trying his best not to fall asleep at their table while John tries to draw onto his already dirty bandages.

‘Is he-’ Stu stops. He glances at George, assessing. ‘Paul; is it like last time?’

‘I don’t think so,’ George says slowly. ‘I don’t think he wants to leave or anything. I think he’s just… taking a lot on. Or, he’s making himself take on more than he needs to.’

It’s cryptic but Stu nods. ‘Okay. He’s been having a go at me more than usual. I thought it might be because John can’t be arsed to stop him anymore, but I don’t know.’

‘I can ask him to stop,’ George says without much optimism.

‘I don’t care,’ Stu says. ‘He’s just… Paul. I suppose.’

‘Yeah,’ George says quietly. Paul’s fallen asleep, his head cushioned on John’s arm as John tries to draw on his face without waking him up, smiling softly. 

-

It’s just, George supposes Paul does have a lot to worry about. Jim Mac would have a heart attack if he could see his son, a harlot to be, fucking fast girls and his fast boy in dank alleyways between their sets. But then again, George supposes he has something to worry about now too. Because, actually, it’s not like George is much better. It’s not like George isn’t seeing naked men as much as naked women. As if the liquid spill of back muscles in a bloke doesn’t get him going as much as the artful collarbone of a lass, all shimmer of sweat.

He feels like something birthed anew when Jürgen’s heavy on top of him. Ideas about men and women and queers are fogged against his skull and it’s deceptively easy to just Do here, to press his cock into the soft jut of a man’s hip bone and get lost, thoughts of tree branches as bones and how the taste of cigarette smoke in another person’s mouth can be licked out like a secret. 

Too easy to not think in Hamburg, to just feel. An instinct, animal and pelt-warm. He knows it will crash and burn when they get back to Liverpool. The awful English sun, bright and garish against a suffocated mouth of grey. Being queer won’t be a hazy stream like cigarette smoke there. It will be the worst thing in the world.

He wants to pull Paul aside and ask him. ‘Okay, I know why you like touching John now. But how do you live with it?’

‘Because I’d die if not,’ he imagines Paul saying back, his big cow eyes blinking earnestly. ‘Because I can only live if he does.’

Paul wouldn’t say that. Even if- even if it’s true, partly. If Paul, Jim Mac’s first born, has been dealt the worst cards in life and fallen in love with a bloke. Not a cautious, careful bloke. A loud, violent, ready to shatter bloke. Fuck, but how does Paul do it?

They play again that night, and even though he tries, George can still see the hundreds of eyes bursting through, demanding a show without music, and no matter how hard he presses his fingers onto his fret board, he can’t vanish into the haze of him and Paul and John like he sometimes can. He tries to catch Paul’s eye but Paul’s looking at no one, eyes scattering over the crowd, never settling. 

They sound like shit. No one cares.

-

There’s no plans for after, no jumping from one dirty pub to another, and George can feel a headache coming on so he slips away unnoticed to their quarters. He’s sweaty and his head is pulsing and he misses the scolding hot of Jürgen’s shower. Maybe he should just shove his head under a pillow and try to sleep. Maybe he should go to Jürgen’s place, if the walk there wouldn't kill him off first.

There’s the uneven sound of footsteps outside and then the door is being pushed open by Paul. He catches sight of George by the bed and tilts his head like a kitten before kicking the door shut.

Sweat sheens his face, arms. His dark hair is greasy and beginning to curl. George sits carefully on the bed, watching. Paul doesn’t often go for the prellies- doesn’t like the lack of control, George thinks- but when he does, it lights him up. There’s a jittery, frantic energy to him, his eyes wide and bouncing.

‘Hello,’ George says slowly. Paul grins at him, cheeks still full of baby fat, though now it only makes him look handsome, not young. 

‘Georgie,’ Paul says. He flings himself onto the bed, limbs like springs, unwound and no elegant place to go. His thighs squash themselves on top of George’s knees.

‘Not ignoring me anymore, then?’ George says dryly. Paul only smiles, arching his neck to grin at their stain-spotted ceiling.

‘Hm. Don’t need to now, do I?’

‘If you think you’re talkin' about Jürgen, then you’re all out of it,’ George tells him. 

‘It’s different now,’ Paul half-whispers.

‘It’s not any different,’ George says. He tries to wriggle his legs out from under Paul but Paul pushes down. ‘I told you I didn’t care. You never listen.’

‘It is different,’ Paul insists, so bloody sincere. ‘It’s different because you’re sucking cock now too, Georgie.’

George blushes something terrible at that. 

‘I’m not, actually,’ George says. ‘And even if I was or wasn’t, it has nothin' to do with you and your own queer ways-’

‘You’ve not?’ Paul says. He puts his hands on George’s thighs and pulls himself closer, smelling of beer and sweat. His eyes, always so bloody big, blinking at George in slow sweeps of lashes. ‘But why not, George? It’s good fun, it’s nice. You’ll like it.’

‘Why’d you care?’ George snaps. Paul is all over him, sweaty arms and legs as though he’s going to attempt to crawl right into his skin to find an answer there.

‘John loves it when I do it,’ Paul says. ‘I love it when he does me, but actually doing it is just ‘s good, just as hot, y’know, as having it done.’

‘Okay,’ George says. ‘Well, I’m sure-’

‘Do you want to know how?’ Paul whispers, voice low and scratchy. 

‘I think I’d be able to figure it out,’ George says after a second. His own voice is dry now, which is annoying because he doesn’t get what Paul’s playing at, doesn’t want to play his stupid, pointless games anyway, but Paul’s got him cornered by the side of the bed, and George thinks even if he wasn’t, Paul’s china doll eyes would be enough to paralyse him.

‘It’s trickier than it looks,’ Paul says. ‘Have’t mind your teeth, y’know.’

George swallows and he sees Paul’s eyes break contact to watch the movement in his throat. The spaces around them are thrumming, the split-second before the head of a match is drawn down the side of the box, cherry-red and smelling of sulphur. Paul has the match, ready to light.

‘Paul,’ George says, but nothing follows.

Paul lifts his left hand, index and middle finger pointing up, then slowly pushes them into his own mouth, looking at George. He sucks them in, swallows around them, and then begins to move his fingers in, out, in, out, his cheeks hollowing to suckle. He hums a bit, spit pushing its way out of his mouth, and George draws in a shaky breath at the sight. Paul notices; tilts his head down more so he can look up darkly at George through his lashes as he continues to suck on his own fingers, picking up the speed until there’s spit dribbling down his index finger.

George should look away. He should. But his groin feels suspiciously warm and his head is fuzzy from the sight of Paul like this, debauching himself for George, on his own bloody hand. This is what John sees, George thinks suddenly as Paul lets out a little performative moan, pulling his fingers from his mouth and licking up them.

His mouth stays open, wet with spit. The points of his two fingers press down on his plush bottom lip. There’s a moment of silence, Paul watching George watching him. The match flickers.

Then Paul is moving, pushing his two damp fingers onto George’s lips, pressing the flesh there. His fingers are cool and sticky, and then George is opening his mouth and sucking Paul’s fingers in, Paul’s fingers, still wet with his own spit. 

Paul’s face flickers with pleased surprise, and then he begins moving them, setting a steady pace. 

George is at least half hard, his whole body warm and sweating. He can’t seem to look away from Paul’s eyes, even though he thinks he should. But instead he ducks his head and begins sucking in earnest, tasting Paul’s dried spit mix with his own.

In front of him, Paul groans, a deep, breathy sound that makes George run his tongue down the length of Paul’s fingers, watching the way Paul shivers. Paul was right- there is something about doing it, about the sly control you have. It’s Paul’s hand, but it’s George who’s sucking his fingers. Paul’s only looking at him, slightly dazed and aroused, mouth hanging open dumbly. They’re so close, legs almost tangled, foreheads almost touching.

There’s the heavy sound of someone on the stairs. Paul pulls his fingers away as George jumps back, hitting the wall. Paul glances at him, mouth still red and open, and-

Well, not everything has to happen by Paul’s rules all the time. 

George grabs Paul’s face with both hands and kisses him. Uses his thumb to pull Paul’s mouth open so he can slip his tongue in. His teeth knock Paul’s with the impact, pressing his tongue into Paul’s mouth, licking around his teeth, tasting beer. Paul makes a high pitched sound, and George draws back, biting at Paul’s bottom lip before letting go of Paul’s face and shoving him away on the bed.

The door rattles, then opens. Pete walks in and pauses upon seeing them.

‘Oh, there you are,’ he says. He blinks down at them, Paul sprawled breathless on the bed, George sitting up and flushed. He draws his knee up to hide his groin.

‘Hullo, Pete,’ he says cheerfully. 

‘Hello.’ Pete spares them one last glance before banging into the room, moving to his bed. ‘Sorry, can’t stay. I’m seeing Monica again.’

‘Oh yeah?’ George says. He can see Paul from his periphery, legs pressed tight together like a schoolgirl. ‘She your stripper of the week?’

‘You’d wish she was yours if you saw her, Harrison,’ Pete says, pulling out a mildly less dirty shirt than his current one from his bed covers. ‘Tits that go on for miles.’

‘I’ll pass on your sloppy seconds,’ George says. He waits for Paul to interject something, but Paul is silent for once. It’s enough to make George euphoric, the proof- I did that.

Pete whacks him with his shirt on the way out of the door and George laughs. The door slams shut again. Pete’s footsteps recede.

George pushes himself to his feet. Paul sits up dazed. His used hand comes to his mouth, brushing his bruised lips.

‘You kissed me,’ he says.

George shrugs. ‘You shoved your fingers in me mouth so I could give a blowie to another guy.’

Paul drops his hand suddenly. George waits for the final blow- It wasn’t like that. Don’t tell John. I didn’t mean to do it with you; I thought you were John - but Paul just laughs, once, a high, shocked sound that George hasn’t heard him make before. 

‘Oh, Georgie,’ Paul whispers. George is beginning to feel discomfort along with his previous triumph. Paul’s peering up at him, an almost hysterical light to his eyes. At this angle, George can make out the dark bruises under Paul’s eyes, molten purple and tender. Can see the thin, almost-invisible lines crowded by his eyes. How his pale skin has a slight grey tone. 

‘S fine, Paul,’ George says. ‘It’s late. Go to bed, yeah?’

‘Everyone else is out,’ Paul says softly.

‘You’re not everyone else, though,’ George says. He begins to pull up the duvet on Paul’s bed until Paul shuffles across. He looks half protesting but mostly tired, and when George pushes his shoulders down onto the mattress, he flops back heavily. 

‘John doesn’t kiss me,’ he whispers as George tugs the duvet up over Paul’s wasted body. 

‘Mm,’ George hums. Paul’s eyes are squeezed shut.

‘He’s not queer,’ he says. ‘I can’t let him think it might be.’

‘Okay, Paul,’ George says. He pauses, then presses his own dry lips to Paul’s forehead gently. 

‘You should,’ he whispers to him. ‘John could probably do with it.’

He waits for Paul to say something, but Paul’s already asleep.

-

Paul doesn’t have the chance to ignore George the next day, because George leaves their quarters before anyone wakes.

He dresses silently, almost somberly. His bandmates lay out on their bunk beds around him, the youngest they’ll ever look. John on the bottom, half undressed, his body curled around the thin bedding in his sleep. A knot of purple bruises on his shoulder George can’t remember where came from, how long they’ve been there. If John himself would ever remember. Stu must have come back from Astrid’s, dozing on the top bunk, turned towards the wall so George can’t make out his face. And Paul, still as George left him, a small furrow between his brows even in sleep.

George aches for all of them. He hates them too. 

Outside it’s early morning pale, barley day, and for once the streets are empty and still. George walks alone, following the route he’s taken so many times the past week. He wonders if that should be worrying, if the speed of which he seems to be sinking into this routine- play music, sleep, talk with Jürgen, have sex with Jürgen, repeat- is a bad omen, or some dark, sticky place he’s calf-deep in already and won’t be able to pull away from when needed. He wonders if people can tell, looking at him. If it matters. He thinks he can. He feels rotten; hollowed out and filled with dirt and spoil, cigarette smoke fogging him up and chipping away at his skin. He feels like anything good finds holes inside of him and goes to die there. He wonders, really, really, if this is all worth it. It’s driving them to the very edge of something, and he doesn’t know if they’ll be able to stop themselves before the drop.

‘You are thinking very hard.’ Jürgen is sitting in front of him with two mugs of something warm on the table.

George blinks. ‘Am I?’

‘You’re quiet.’

‘I am usually, though.’

Jürgen cocks his head. ‘Not so much. Compared to your John and Paul, maybe.’

‘Hmm.’ George tips his cup towards him, watching the liquid reflect the soft morning light in circles. ‘Jürgen, do you honestly think the band will go somewhere?’

‘Go somewhere?’

‘Be successful, y’know.’

‘I think you are very good. So do the people at the club.’

‘But we can’t just be good. A lot of bands are good.’

‘I do not think I understand why you are worried,’ Jurgen says, looking at George. 

George shrugs. He’s not sure how to articulate himself here; how to explain away the worries beginning to build and cling in his mind, except he keeps thinking of Paul’s tired, bruised eyes and how happy he’d been to return to Hamburg, ‘cept he thinks maybe returning a third would kill them. It feels like a scatter of puzzle pieces on the floor, and George is the one who needs to slot them into place before something bad happens, before some form of time runs out.

‘If you had to pick,’ George says carefully. ‘Who would you say are the best in the band?’

Jürgen smiles. ‘I see. I think you already know.’

George shrugs. 

‘You, John and Paul.’

‘You don’t think Stu?’

‘You don’t.’

‘I suppose not.’

Jürgen levels with his gaze above the steaming mugs. It’s a shrewd look, one George likes on him. It feels like the beam of a lighthouse in the middle of a freezing storm.

‘I think you have a pretty good idea yourself,’ Jürgen says. ‘So tell me: what about the others?’

‘The others?’ George says.

‘Yes, the others in your band. If they are not you and your John and Paul, what are they? What are their roles, here?’

George smiles a little. ‘Right, okay. It’s like… Pete doesn’t really care. I mean, not about the music. Stu’s the same but he does care about us, John specially. Think he likes the idea of being good at many things but… art’s more him, isn’t it?’

‘I'd say so, yes’

George drags his nails across the wood grain on the table. The thing is, he has a pretty good idea of how it will play out. Paul won’t last with Stu, but the band won’t last without Paul. So Stu will go, somehow. And Pete won’t remain, not when push comes to shove, and John is all too happy to shove. George isn’t sure how this will happen, but he’s certain it will happen. Eventually. When the time is right.

He can see it, if he thinks. A slotting into place. A closing of the ranks. Something slipping together perfectly. He doesn’t know if the others can see it too. But what Stu said to him the other day, you’ll be going home soon, and the strange light in Paul’s eyes… yes, he can guess how it will play out. 

‘Are you thinking the band will go somewhere?’ Jürgen prompts.

‘Sometimes I think John will go mad and kill himself if it doesn’t happen,’ George says slowly. ‘And I don’t think John will kill himself.’

‘You don’t?’

George considers it for a moment. ‘Even if he tries, Paul won’t let him. So either way, we’re going somewhere.’

Jürgen looks steadily at George for a moment. ‘You know, George, I think you underestimate your role a lot. I think if you weren’t here, the others wouldn’t be either.’

George laughs. ‘Right.’

‘No, I am serious,’ Jürgen says. ‘You didn’t last long before.’

‘That was different,’ George says. ‘I was sent home.’

‘But the others weren’t. They could have stayed. Am I right?’

‘I mean, they could have.’

‘But they didn’t.’

‘I don’t know how much of that was to do with me.’

‘May I say what I think of your band?' Jürgen says. George nods: of course, forever.

'I think you are unusual to the other bands, which is how you will go far, as you say. You are still a band when you are not playing. Some bands are only bands on stage, but to me, how you speak of them, it sounds like you are always a band. And from what I’ve seen and from what you’ve said to me, you do a lot of the work away from the stage. Does that make sense?’

‘I think so,’ George says quietly. 

‘You said about not writing songs before,’ Jürgen says. ‘But I think you do more than that. What you do is more important than that.’

‘I don’t know,’ George sighs. The spoil and rot and confusion from the past however long begin to soften along his cracks, a long-held rupture. ‘Sometimes it feels… Like, I care too much. And they don’t care at all. And I will always be the person who cares for people who never… y’know. But I don’t want to beg. It’s just… how it feels. Like maybe I'll always be that person.’

‘You mean with your bandmates?’ Jürgen says. 'Paul, John?' George shrugs.

‘I do not know them that well, but I think they care about you,’ Jürgen says. ‘Even if they can’t show it as well as you.’

‘It just, sometimes it feels like they don’t know me at all.’ George says.

Jürgen nods, a wise, assured motion that reminds George of their age difference. ‘Sometimes we become so close to people, we can’t see them at all,’ Jürgen says. ‘That is a very strong form of love.’

His voice is as warm as the tea in front of them. George nods, and chooses to believe him.

-

George watches from the corner of his eye as Paul bangs out a piano tune, his face sweat-slicked in the light. His fingers chase themselves across the keys with a frantic intensity. His playing is almost indecently perfect while his body sweats and tremors, like his hands are a piece of clockwork he wound and let loose while his body swelts. 

George is playing on autopilot, one eye cast ‘cross to Paul, who must be on something again. George can’t make out what Paul is saying- the crowd are swallowing them up, backing them onto the stage- but he sees how Paul will fling his head back to direct something at Stu, over and over, the vicious twist of his mouth. How Stu, usually beyond caring, has begun to tense his jaw.

They continue playing. John, attentive to the crowd’s unsettlement, is trying to one-up them with volume, throwing his voice as far as it will go, screaming back at the hecklers. Between him, Paul and Stu are like a rope being pulled at both ends. The knot of them drawn tight. George feels it in their music playing before it happens; how everything pauses for a moment of stillness before the snap.

Paul turns and yells over his flawless piano playing, taught by his own Da’s hands; ‘At least there’s one woman who goes for the faggots pretending they’re not, aye? Maybe Astrid’ll go out and get hers elsewhere, seeing as you’re not a man enough.’ And Stu is on him, dropping his bass and launching himself at Paul, slamming him onto the piano so the music lets out a clanging mess. 

Then he punches him.

The rest of them continue to play for a few seconds before it sets in what’s happening, and by then both Stu and Paul have rolled off the piano seat and onto the sticky floor.

‘Fucking christ,’ John says somewhere to George’s right.

Stu’s on top of Paul, thigh’s bracketing his hips, but Paul gets a vicious grip in Stu’s hair and begins to slap him, again and again. George sees a spray of blood glisten ‘cross the stage, though he can’t tell where it came from.

‘Uh-’ He’s stunned with the shock of it, manages to shout to John, ‘Do we- should we try-’

Paul rolls them over in one sudden movement, but Stu twists out of his grasp; he grips Paul’s shoulders and slams him back against the floor, so Paul howls in anger.

‘Yeah uh,’ John drops his guitar like it’s nothing. ‘Fuck, grab Paul, I’ll get Stu. Fucking crazy bastards.’

Pete finally seems to realise something is going on and stops his drumming as George dives clumsily into the sprawl of bodies. He hears Paul screaming cunt, you fucking cunt, you fucking bastard over and over while Stu, his face set dangerously in a way George hasn’t seen before, is focused on hitting as much of Paul’s chest as possible. 

‘You’re mad,’ he spits, then hisses as Paul backhands him across his cheek.

‘Paul, fucking stop-’ George gets an arm around Paul’s withering body as John tries to haul Stu away.

‘He’s a fucking cunt!’ Paul says, kicking his legs out and connecting with Stu hard ‘round his waist. Stu falters, then in one perfect movement, stocks Paul in his nose.

‘Okay!’ John shouts, ‘That’s enough!’ He heaves Stu back hard enough they both go sprawling onto the floor. 

The sudden loss is enough that George falls back, both arms wrapped around Paul’s shaking body. He withers, kicks out again, then suddenly goes limp.

For a moment, the four of them lay on the floor, tangled like weeds, heaving breath. George feels the metallic taste of blood on his tongue. 

‘Fucking lunatics,’ John tells them. He picks himself up, turns to the audience: ‘Everyone take five and drink as much as you can. We’ll be right back.’

-

They go backstage, George with one arm still around Paul like he’s an animal who might pounce. Stu seems composed at least, breathing heavily, a nasty scrape under his eye and a slight gait to his walk, hands feathering over the place Paul kicked him. Anger rolls off him.

‘What the fucking shit was that?’ John asks when they’re in the room. Pete slouches into a corner.

‘He’s crazy,’ Stu says darkly.

‘He started it!’ Paul cries.

‘You cunt, you were talking shite to me all set! Think I was going to take it?’

‘Grow a fucking pair, it was only talk,’ Paul snarls.

‘You think you’re so much better than me,’ Stu says, voice low, ‘because you play an instrument or two, but at least I know what I’m doing here.’

‘I know what-’

‘You act so put together Paul, but I see right past you. You’re a fucking bastard. Play bass if you’re so much fucking better.’ And then Stu leaves, without looking back.

George finally releases his grip on Paul. He sags forwards; George gets a good look at him. His eyes are wide, frantic, a bruise forming on his cheekbone, his nose bleeding, blood that gathers above his top lip. His Paul, not at all like his Paul. It's dizzying.

‘So what?’ John snaps. ‘That was your big plan on getting us places?’

Paul still manages to pout in his state. ‘Like you don’t get into fights.’

‘Not with my own bandmates I don’t.’

‘Are you hurt?’ George asks.

‘He’s been a cunt for ages!’ Paul shouts. ‘Always actin’ like he’s better than us.’

‘You’re full of shite,’ John says. ‘He’s a mate.’

‘He’s not mine.’

John barks a laugh. ‘Oh, he never was going to be, was he?’

Paul glowers at John, who stares back, hard.

‘They might want us back…’ Pete says after several seconds of this.

‘Aye, I’ll go talk to them. See if we can play with no bass now, seein’ as you’ve bloody well got rid of Stu for the night.’

John leaves, Pete trailing out after. Paul stays, breathing heavily, glaring at the slammed door.

‘John won’t care by tomorrow,’ George says, because he won’t.

‘I don’t give a shit if he cares or not,’ Paul says. He looks at George, still shivering with anger. ‘Why does John care about Stu so much? He’s always off with Astrid now. Stupid cunt.’

‘John has friends, y’know. Stu happens to be one of ‘em.’

‘Yeah but it’s different.’

‘Paul. John doesn’t care as much as you think.’

‘He drives me crazy, on stage every night, he doesn’t even try-’

‘So what, you going to beat up Pete behind his drum kit next?’

Paul has the nerve to huff like George is the one being unreasonable. ‘You should be on my side. Thought you wanted us to be good musicians?’

‘Oh bleeding Christ,’ George feels his own anger now, confused and with no good place to go. ‘There is no sides, that’s the point! Only you see that, you’re always inventin’ competitions in your head then losing them to people who don’t even play-’

‘That’s such shite!’

‘This whole bloody trip is that, it’s all been in our heads, we’re going crazy with it-’

‘We? Who’s we?’

George glares. ‘The other night in our room? That normal?’

Paul glares back, for once doesn't flinch away from what George is saying. ‘You may think,’ he says, ‘your life is so different because you’re here sucking a bloke’s cock, or whatever with a bloke, you might think this makes you so different and that you’re going through somethin’ big no one can understand, but you’re not different and you’re not going through anything someone hasn’t gone through before. And if you think that’s my doing-’

‘It has nothing to do with-’

‘My doing, because I did it first, or because you saw me do it first, that’s your own bloody problem. You try doing it at seventeen at home with your Da downstairs and see if that’s any less scary than here, ‘least everything else here is just as fucked so you feel less fucked. ‘Least you don’t have’ta listen to people calling you queer your whole life just because of yer face, least you had someone to show you.’

‘That’s not why,’ George says quietly.

‘Then why?’

George feels the anger pool back inside him. ‘Do you always think about me second?’

‘No.’

‘Because I don’t.’

‘I don’t see-’

‘No, well you wouldn’t. Just forget it then. Whatever you want to think, or whatever you don’t want to think, then do. You just, you don’t realise you have exactly what you want by acting like- it’s not going to go. You selfish cunt, you can’t even see it, Paul.’

Paul stares at him, angry and indignant, and George doesn’t look away, not even when Paul wipes a steady hand across his still-bleeding nose, smearing the blood there.

‘Fine,’ Paul says. He leaves the room, a bit shaky, coming down from whatever drug he took to get up, and George closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to watch the door shut again. He tries to understand what the hell they just spoke about but his head is pounding and his eyes are ringing and he hasn’t got a clue.

-

George doesn’t see his bandmates the next day, isn’t sure if they were meant to get breakfast together or not. He’s still reeling, still half in the stuffy warmth of Jürgen’s flat and half backstage with a bloody and beaten Paul. He’s wrecked with exhaustion, with the feeling of a million conversations he’s started and then hasn’t finished, ghost words cloying around him, suffocating.

George doesn’t usually dream of people, y’know, usually dreams without bodies, ‘cept for the occasional bird and that one time. But this night he dreams of Paul, of Paul’s eyes stuck onto his, unable to look away, blinking and staring, two merging into one, and then it’s Paul’s lips, talking and shouting and consuming and then it’s teeth and teeth and biting and bleeding and nothing being said at all. Just Paul. Smothering and sucking and sinking sinking sinking

He doesn’t know what any of it means. He can’t remember if it’s always felt like this; if his heart has always gone like a jackrabbit’s, if people’s faces are always spilling into something big and indecipherable. Have their suitcases always been spilling over like pale organs? Has Paul always had purple crescents under his eyes when he looks at George?

The end of their stay looms bigger now, something to be thought about. George doesn’t know if they’ll survive the journey back without one of them going crazy and pushing another over board. Or jumping over themselves. He isn’t sure Liverpool will be able to hold them right. 

-

Before their performance the next night, George kicks the door of their room open to find John. He’s laying on the bed like a cat, his legs kicked up ‘gainst the wall. His eyes are alert, settle on George soon as he steps in.

‘Know where Paul is?’

George walks over to his own bed. ‘You two should have collars for each other,’ he says drily.

‘Oh, what’s this?’ John’s voice is a mock. ‘Is little Georgie jealous?’

George is not jealous, but he is out of patience and unable to care. ‘Fuck off with your own queer shite. I don’t give two fucks about Paul, as I’ve told him, and you, repeatedly.’

John sits up on the bed in a swift, sudden movement. ‘The ladies are fighting,’ he says with a mean smile.

George glances at him. ‘You’d know, wouldn’t you?’

John’s smile drops like it was burnt off. He’s suddenly standing, pacing the room. He’s angry, properly angry, George realises; he was just a dart board for John’s distractions.

‘Piss off then,’ John says. ‘If yer so sick of me.’

‘Didn’t say that.’

‘Well you’re clearly sick of something. Acting all queer recently, aren’t we?’

‘Are we?’ George says mildly.

John glowers. ‘I meant you, not that it will matter soon. We can play the rest of these bloody shows and you can act all strange and bitch off with Paul or whomever. And then we can go back to fucking England and you can keep being a poncy cunt there while the band fucks off. Yeah?’

George gives John all his attention now, fearing that some furniture will be sacrificed to John’s anger if he doesn’t, and their quarters and concerningly barren of anything but beds.

‘What’s gotten you in such a good mood?’

John glares. His cheeks are flushed red, like he’s been running. John gets like that, all of his feelings rising through, hard to hold down. George thinks he might be close to tears, though God knows why. John can still be hard for George to get a hold off, especially in moments like this. Sometimes he wants to dig fingernails into John, peel away each beaten layer until he reaches the middle, unashamed and squirming, where the pain from his voice resides and where the place of love and hate join like two rivers to spill over, forever blocked from gushing.

‘Stu’s staying in fucking Germany, isn’t he?’ John spills. ‘So that’s that fucked. Could barely find a drummer and even he’s shite, so what are we going to do without a bass player?’

‘Staying in Germany with Astrid?’

‘Yeah who fucking else? No a poofter is he.’

George nods. He’s not surprised. He sees the shift shimmer in his periphery, some movement clearing itself.

‘Alright then,’ George says. ‘But Stu wasn’t really a great bass player anyway-’

‘Oh not you too,’ John says. ‘Sound like bloody Paul, going on and on, just because he’s perfect on a bass guitar.’

‘Well, exactly.’

‘What?’

‘John. No band needs three guitar players.’

John stops his melodrama and looks at George. George waits, until the movement shapes for John too, until John understands what George’s suggesting.

‘He’d never agree,’ John says quietly after a moment.

George shrugs. ‘No, not agree. He’d do it, though.’

John’s previous anger is replaced with a dead-set focus. A riptide beginning to move the waters, pulling you into its strong current. ‘He can already play,’ he murmurs. ‘Wouldn’t need to pause much for ‘im to learn.’

‘Think Paul’d learn it all on the ferry back, just to prove a point,’ George says.

John nods. Then something flickers across his face. ‘Paul’s good on guitar. Better than… better than me.’

‘Not better than me though,’ George says. ‘I think he’s been wanting to, for a while.’

‘Play bass?’

‘Yeah. And… take over. Close the ranks.’

John runs a hand through his hair, huffing a breath. ‘I don’t get him and his fucking enmity for Stu. Poor bastard can’t even breathe in his direction.’

‘Less to do with Stu and more to do with you, I’d say,’ George says lightly.

‘What’s that now?’

‘Sometimes,’ George says. ‘You’re so inside your own head you don’t see anyone else. Even if they want you to.’

‘Shut up.’

‘It’s true. You get so inside you go backwards. Paul only hates Stu because he worries you prefer him. He’s jealous.’

John makes a face; ‘He just bashed his face in on stage.’

‘And you cut up whose dress the other night?’

John is silent. George smiles, a little thin, and turns back to his suitcase. 

‘I didn’t know he could fight like that,’ John says, moving next to George.

‘He’s helped you enough times,’ George says, and it half surprises him, how hard his voice is.

Something flickers in John’s face, a hole threatening to cave in. ‘Aye, he has.’

George bites his lip on more words. The amount of unrealised power Paul and John hold over each other is enough to stop him breathless, sometimes. They’re the only people who can make the other feel the full range of any one emotion, could drive them to madness. Worst is how careless they are with this power, how ruthless and brutal they are. How each resents everyone else a little, for not being the other person. 

How George, if given that sort of power over a person, would hold it very carefully. 

‘Well,’ George says, slamming the lid on the mess of his suitcase and hoping it will sort itself out without his attention. ‘How’d you want to suggest it to Paul without suggesting it?’

John grins at him, ‘Why don’t you, seeing as you seem to know everything today?’

George barks a laugh and slides past him. ‘Don’t think so.’

‘What if I order it?’ John says. ‘For the band's greater good.’

George turns to flash him his best smile. ‘Then good luck seeing if you’ll find a better guitarist than me, Johnny,’ and leaves before he can hear John’s response.

-

It’s so very late it’s early. Jürgen has work in a few hours, and George is due back to the sweaty arena of the club’s stage soon for one of their final performances, and the time between them now is something that doesn’t exist, or doesn’t to anyone else, and it’s a nice thought, a safe thought. George could say anything. Be anyone. Become more than the imagined parts he’s been collecting this whole time.

‘Are you looking forward to going back?’ Jürgen asks him, like he’s reading George’s mind. The two of them are half undressed, eating oranges on the floor. 

‘Dunno,’ George says, licking his thumbnail around the juice there. ‘Can’t tell what’s been Hamburg and what’s been just us.’

‘Ah, you will grow out of it,’ Jürgen says grinning. 

‘I’ll miss you, though,’ George says slyly.

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Mm. You’re good for the food and hot water.’

Jürgen lobs an orange at George, who dodges it.

‘The sex is nice too,’ George continues.

‘I think part of that is to do with yourself,’ Jürgen says.

George shrugs. He peels oranges and gets pulp between his nails, splits the sectors and keeps it in his cheek until the juice clings to his tongue, just to taste something sweet for longer. Then he says: ‘Will you come and see us off?’ 

It is the possibility he won’t, the memory of Before, which stops him from saying Me.

‘Of course,’ Jürgen says. ‘All of us are planning on coming. Perhaps we will chase the ferry from the docks.’

George smiles. There’s more he wants to say, to ask Jürgen, but he can’t form the words for it. He doesn’t know if he’ll see him alone again before then, if this is the last time he’ll sleep with Jürgen, or a man ever, or if somehow this is a rupture in him that cannot be contained, an opening, a breathing in. 

For the sake of it, he believes it’s their final night. 

Later, George lies next to Jürgen on the carpet, not his bed, so some of the sun can cradle their naked bodies. Their limbs tangle in some dance, like ribbons, like overgrown weeds. The hollow spaces inside his body don’t feel like a crevice to fall from, but a well to be filled, to be loved. He wonders if this isn’t what a musician is, an artist, a photographer.

Jürgen touches him carefully, intently, tenderly, all the ways George wants to be touched. To be licked and bitten and worshipped. George returns several favours, crawls between the bend of Jürgen’s knees and puts into practice what he learnt on fingers. Then Jürgen pulls him up and turns him around, shows him all the things inside that haven’t seen the light. George feels like his body is made up of different colours, a runaway of water; blue limbs melded to purple, yellow mixed to gold. Something to be coaxed and spurred into a painting with careful fingertips, something to be shaped at the hands of another.

It’s almost dark by the time they’re done. George’s head is cradled on Jürgen’s chest, his fingers sweeping back his hair. George begins to kiss his collarbone, lingering on the salty taste of his skin, whispering goodbyes in his own private way.

Jürgen cups the back of George’s head so they’re looking at each other. 

‘You can say whatever you want to me,’ Jürgen says, and because he means it, George finds he doesn’t have anything else to say.

-

There was one time. Paul and he’d gone to a show by the airport, to watch a stuntman they’d seen ‘round a bit. His big thing was jumping from a plane and flying down with a parachute. The birdman or some shite. ‘Cept when he and Paul watched, his parachute never opened. They’d watched as the figure of this man fell, fell, fell, then hit the ground.

They didn’t hear the impact- too far away- but when it happened, when he hit the ground, Paul had made a grab for George, and George had grabbed him back. For a moment.

‘Christ,’ Paul said.

George could feel his heart, felt a sweep of sickness. Next to him, Paul’s face was grey and clammy.

‘I don’t think he survived that,’ Paul said after a second.

George swallowed and shook his head, watching people running to the man like ants. 

‘No,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t.’

-

The day they leave on the ferry is stupidly warming up to be a sunny one, great clouds like the turn of a paintbrush cracked through by sun.

‘It’s going to be like Spain,’ Astrid says happily from the docks. She has a casual arm around Stu, who’s looking a bit sheepish but also quite happy. John keeps glaring at him and shaking his head, which makes George think Stu isn’t totally forgiven. Paul and Stu are ignoring each other completely, which makes George think their riff will never ben forgiven.

‘Next time you come, it will be so sunny it’s like a different country,’ Astrid continues. She unwinds from Stu to hug John. ‘It can be nice here.’

‘Believe it when I feel it,’ John says. 

Astrid hugs George next, who presses back, smelling shampoo and oil paint in her hair.

‘Write, yeah?’ George says.

‘I will make sure,’ Astrid says. She glances around for Paul, who hugs her, a little hesitant.

‘And don’t stop playing!’ she says. ‘You keep getting better and better. Soon I will not have to wait for you to come to Germany to hear your music.’

John makes a pfft motion at that, which gets them laughing a little. George slips to the side, to Jürgen who’s watching quietly, smiling.

‘Goodbye, Jürg,’ George says. He hugs him, quick, not from embarrassment but so their last memories are alone, skin-on-skin in Jürgen’s apartment, tasting of oranges and held by the sun.

‘Goodbye, George,’ Jürgen says. ‘Thank you for the photographs.’

George shrugs, a little shy. ‘It’s alright.’

‘They turned out very good,’ Astrid tells them. ‘I saw them. You should model George. Drop them and go to Hollywood.’

‘I think about it everyday,’ George says solemnly, so her and Jürgen laugh. 

‘Get home safe,’ Jürgen says quietly.

‘I’ll try,’ George says. He thinks there must be more, but he can’t find the words.

Stu reaches out and grasps his arm suddenly. ‘Good luck,’ he says.

‘Thanks. You too.’

Stu smiles, letting himself be wound back to Astrid’s side.

Everyone shoves themselves onto the ferry with no sentimentality, whooping and pushing- why shouldn’t they? It’s Hamburg, rotten and dirty and ready to spit them out like phlegm. But George lingers on the docks for a moment, almost. Looks at the figures waving there and waves back, then turns.

He gets onto the ferry and shuffles next to his bandmates who he’s learnt to detest and love in equal measure. There are parts of them that are so deep there’s no perceptible end. George thinks they harbour things which would take out a city. He sometimes thinks they don’t think about him at all. The ferry begins to slice through the water, on its way back to England.

George presses his knees to his chin and watches the water slugging up and down the side of the boat. It’s enough to get lost in, that rhythm and the things swirling in his head, when there’s the sound of steps near him.

George turns. Paul sits down next to him on the seat, smiling wide. He begins to kick his feet, in, out, in, out.

‘Hi.’

George feels a spike of amusement despite himself.

‘You okay?’ Paul asks. 

‘Yeah,’ George grunts.

Paul tilts his head. ‘Y’know, you can talk to me. If you’re not.’

It crosses George’s mind that Paul might be here to talk about feelings or something equally strange.

‘Okay,’ George says.

Paul frowns slightly. ‘Like if you’re upset.’

‘Sure.’

A twist to his mouth. ‘Or if you're worried you might miss someone.’

George smiles before he can help it. ‘Right.’

Paul nods and is quiet for a second. Then two. Almost three-

‘Did you, um-’ he stumbles. ‘I mean, if you don’t mind me asking, Just ‘cos you know about me. And I figured you and Jürgen must have…’

George looks at him. ‘Yeah, we did.’

‘Oh! That’s…’ Paul nods. ‘Just him?’

‘I actually worked a bit at a men only brothel,’ George says. ‘That's why I was out so much. The clientele there pay more for men, y’know.’

Paul stares before he realises George is sniggering, then elbows him.

‘Piss off,’ Paul says good naturedly. ‘Like they’d pay for you.’

‘I’ve been told I’m very pleasing actually,’ George says, and Paul laughs, a bit shocked, a bit delighted. George thinks back to the top deck of the bus he saw Paul on, an age and a half ago. Pulling faces at the window and giggling at his reflection like a lunatic. How George had sat next to him despite that, because of that.

‘Maybe you should have been charging a high rate then,’ Paul says. He knocks their knees together.

‘Ah well, if the band doesn’t work out,’ George says.

‘Yeah,’ Paul says. ‘I might take up the bass, y’know.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Hm. Seeing as Stu’s not playing for us anymore.’

‘You must be deverstated.’

‘Oh, I liked him enough,’ Paul dismisses with a certainty that makes George think Paul probably believes it himself, or will by the time they’ve returned to Liverpool.

‘Least we won’t have to find someone,’ George says. ‘Well. A drummer, maybe.’

Paul grumbles.

‘Ah, don’t worry Paul, I’ll take care of that one,’ George says happily. ‘It won’t involve a stage fight-’

‘Okay, right-’

‘But I’ll find someone. Maybe I’ll play guitar and drums.’

‘And the same time,’ Paul says solemnly.

George knocks their knees again. ‘So, John isn’t too upset.’

Paul shrugs. ‘Y’know. He was, sure, but. Stu wasn’t great.’

‘You were forgiven?’ George says, a bit coy. Cos you know about me and all that.

‘Oh! Yeah, well,’ Paul smiles down at his lap. ‘Yeah, John isn’t angry at me.’

‘Sure?’

‘Certain,’ Paul says. His fingers come out and flutter at the side of his neck, red and blotchy ‘neath his collar. George doesn’t look hard.

‘No boxing career for you,’ George says.

‘Bass career, haven’t you heard?’

‘Heard they’re all flops,’ George tells him.

Paul gasps dramatically and gets a hand in his hair, trying to scruff it. George ducks out his way.

‘Christ, how come your hair’s so clean,’ Paul says. ‘Can’t seem to get the grease out of mine from those bloody taps.'

‘Well I showered at Jürgen’s yesterday,' George says.

Paul’s face is full of injustice. ‘You were having hot showers this whole time?’

‘Not the whole time.’

‘Why didn’t you say anything? Could have brought us along!’

‘You weren’t having sex with Jürgen.’

‘That’s irrelevant.’

George shrugs. Paul slumps back in his seat. ‘He must have really fancied you to let you use his hot water.’

George feels a flush of warmth at that. 

The ferry continues to move, the sun still fighting through swathes of grey. Rippling over the water, whispering of the depths of the sea. Paul sighs peacefully next to him.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ George asks suddenly. 

Paul looks at him and nods.

‘Why won’t you write with me?’

Paul freezes, wary. ‘Pardon?’

‘I mean, why don’t you write songs with me? Why do you not want to?’

Paul’s mouth opens slightly, caught off gaurd. Then his brows draw together. 

‘It’s not… it’s not that I don’t want to write with you, George. It’s that I only want to write with John. Do you get it?’

‘I get it,’ George says quietly.

‘It’s-’ Paul hesitates. ‘It’s not about you at all. It’s about John.’

George cocks his head. ‘It’s about John and you .’

Paul nods after a second. ‘Sometimes I don’t even think of it as songwriting, y’know. Just another thing me and him do. I never… I never thought of doing it with anyone else. I swear. I don't think I'd be able to.’

‘I would be like the third person in a marriage,' George says.

Paul's face twists a little at that, but he doesn't say anything. That’s the closest George knows he’ll get to a confirmation of… of whatever it is. Something without a word, something without an end.

‘Okay,’ George says. ‘I get it. I do.’

‘I didn’t mean for it to feel like I wasn’t,’ Paul says. ‘I didn’t realise it would.’

George hums. 

‘I do think about you first,’ Paul says quietly. ‘I know you think I don’t, but I do. You’re the first person I think about when I think of guitar players, and y’know, the first person I think about when I think of home. And when I heard we were going to Hamburg again, you were the first person I thought about. And um, lots of times between then.’

George smiles at him. 

‘I’m sorry,’ Paul says.

‘It’s okay,’ George tells him.

Paul nods. ‘Okay. Just. Yeah.’

George loops his arm under Paul’s and tugs him closer, close enough he can rest his head on Paul’s shoulder. 

‘What are you doing?’ Paul asks, quick.

‘Shut up,’ George tells him, letting his eyes close. Paul still smells of home, despite it all, of clear-cut grass and washed jumpers and something warm and familiar. 

The lines of Paul’s shoulders are tense, before he sighs and lets his body melt down. His chin finds rest in George’s hair.

George hums, listening to the steady in and out of Paul’s breathing. The ferry moves in a slow ebb. For the first time in months, George thinks he’ll be able to sleep peacefully.