If I Fell│John Lennon/Beatles FanFiction

Chapter 43 - 7.Feb.1964

Chapter 43

February 7, 1964

I jerked awake, my body tense as my eyes snapped open, my hand flying to my head. Every muscle in me stiffened as the dream lingered. My father. The car. Blood. The sickening sounds.

It was impossible to breathe, to think. I looked around, not recognizing where in the hell I was. My fists clenched as my heart raced.

"Christ Liv, look at me, would you?" John's finger was under my chin, forcing my gaze upward.

His light brown eyes, framed by dark lashes, met mine. I pulled in a deep breath and remembered the scotch and cokes...the airplane. The images from my dream faded as I stared at John, breathing through the tightness in my chest. What absolute shite timing for the nightmare that had haunted me for over a year, the one I kept from John, to show up.

"Livvy, the hell was that? You all right?" he asked, his voice low, his face awfully close to mine.

I shook my head, and my eyes darted about the cabin of the airplane as I realized that people were moving all around us. The tension in my muscles released when I saw we were on the ground, the proper place for a human being to exist. My eyes met Paul's, and his curious gaze was hooked on John and me as he shrugged his coat over his shoulders.

"Yeah, yeah," I said, finally processing John's word, though my head was in a haze.

"I've been sayin' yer name, and it was like you couldn't hear me." John leaned in even closer, his eyebrows drawing together. "Ye'were mumblin' in yer sleep. Have a bad dream?"

"I'm all right." I pressed my hand to my temple and attempted to change the subject, needing to get the nightmare that had just shaken me out of my head. "Holy hell, John. How many bevvies did I have?"

He looked at me for a long while, his eyes unblinking, before shaking his head and exhaling. I pulled in a breath and stared into his probing eyes. I knew the look he was giving me. Fuck...he knew I was holding something back. And for the first time in a long time, he was really looking at me, studying me as if reading my mind.

"What's that noise?" I asked seconds later as I searched for my jacket, anything to distract myself from the look on John's face.

"The engines, innit?" George said, his head popping up. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes with one hand while pulling a comb through his hair with the other. "We survived, Liv."

"Against all bleedin' odds," I said as I shrugged my jacket on and tucked my hair behind my ears, trying to look a bit more put together. I hung my camera around my neck, needing to be ready at a moment's notice to take a picture of the boys. They so often tumbled into picture-perfect situations and usually called me to capture it. If I wasn't fast enough, the moment would be gone.

"Sounds louder than the engines, don't ye'think?" Paul asked as he adjusted the watch on his wrist.

I was somewhere in the shite position of still being bevied up and feeling the start of a gruesome hangover. I pushed the window's plastic shield up, and bright light shone through. Cringing, I grabbed my sunglasses from my purse and pushed them over my eyes, hoping they would also help to hide my hungover face.

"Holy fuckin' hell," I mumbled as I peered out the window, the words tumbling from my mouth with no filter. I reached behind me and grabbed John. "You've gotta look at this."

John pushed next to me, his cheek pressed against mine. The entire teenage population of New York was waiting for them...and I wasn't sure that was an exaggeration. As the airplane taxied closer, the hysteria came to life. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. If the mania in England was touching on loony, this was utterly incomprehensible. Any doubts about whether Beatlemania had reached the United States were settled by what we saw outside the window.