Shelter In Your Love (Beatles Fan Fiction)

100. Cockamamie Business

Bust my back on the Levy - broke my strings on the BBC
Found my chops on Eel Pie Island - paid my dues at the Marquee
Slagged off by the N.M.E. - lost my stash and my virginity
In this Cockamamie Business

30th April 1968

She was late, as she often was.

George would wonder why, wonder where she'd been, but he'd never ask. His pride wouldn't let him. She might chose to tell him - I missed the bus, Georgie, I couldn't get away from the theatre - if that was the truth - but if she didn't, then he'd have to settle for never knowing.

He's never completely sure where he is with Hannah at the best of times, but it's shifted again since India, since that night before India. She's proving a point, he thinks. This is what you'd be missing. It's what you are missing. She teases him, makes him want her, and then she will withdraw at the last minute. It's like being a teenager again.

She says she's forgotten about their fight, that she doesn't care about what happened or what was said, but she's... distant. Physically, at least. In herself, she's normal, or even better than before. They've started work on Hannah and Minnie's solo album, they have a project to share and it's more like old times than ever, but if George tries to do anything more than kiss her, she pulls away from him, saying she wants to "go slow". Her technique works, but it's unnecessary. He already wants her, and he already wants more of her than he can have.

Maybe it's precisely because he can't have her, that he wants her so badly. Isn't that why he's here again? Waiting for Hannah again in their borrowed secret flat, a few minutes walk from the studios on Abbey Road. It's why he agreed to this ridiculous arrangement in the first place and now George can't think of a way out that's not going to result in one, two or all three of them being hurt and unhappy.

George knows he's not being fair. Not to Pattie or Hannah, and if he thinks about it too deeply then it depresses him and makes him hate himself. He shouldn't have started this with Hannah. He knew it then and he knows it now. Any other girl and it wouldn't matter so much, but it was her. It was too much to resist - the girl he'd always wanted but could never have, and here she was, offering herself to him freely, with - apparently - no strings attached. He told himself it'd be a bit of fun, nothing heavy, just making up for missed opportunities. He was fucking kidding himself.

Unsurprisingly, it hadn't stayed just sex for long, and on the whole George was grateful for that. He didn't like cold, heartless sex particularly. No loving, no affection, just do it and leave. Sex like that didn't seem to bother John or Paul. George had even seen Ringo take a girl to bed and then she'd be gone before morning. And yeah, he'd done it himself in the past. He'd done it unthinkingly in the touring days - the novelty of wow, all these girls really want me - which had blended at some point into an expectation. Shagging a different girl every night became part of the routine. Fans would line up for them. Beautiful women threw themselves at him, and he rarely turned them down. He didn't think anything of it at the time.

But George is thinking about it a lot now.

He told himself that he could do that with Hannah. Why should she be any different from any other shag? But his feelings for Hannah were already too deeply rooted inside him and too raw. At first he didn't notice happening, but gradually he fell for her. Again. Like he always does.

He started to look forward to seeing her and not just for a roll between the sheets. He liked being with her. She gave him respite from the madness that was a Beatles existence. Living in the flat with her was like stepping into a parallel life; one that he could have spent with Hannah if things had been different. Maybe if they'd stayed in Liverpool, if he'd never become a Beatle and she'd never left for New York. They would have set up home together and got a little terrace house, like Harry and Irene did when they were first married. He might have been kept on at Blacklers, working nine to five every day and hurrying home every night to her. He can see it as clear as if it was a photograph in front of him. George arriving home, Hannah in a red and white tiled kitchen, wiping her hands on a tea towel as she comes over to kiss him, dinner in the oven, kids playing on the floor. They'd have two or three, at least. Maybe more.