John's POV
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Purring fills my ears as Iris lays on my chest in bed, the moonlight peering in with the magnificent stars. Her fur is really soft as I pet her with my left hand, my right hand laying at my side. She nudges her face further towards my hand, licking my bland finger. I smile, the warmth protecting me from the outside frigidness.
It's one of those nights where I can't sleep again, eyes refusing to shut how most eyes do at night. I've tried everything, too. I even called Paul earlier in the night when I knew he would still be awake. George recommends meditation, but honestly, that crap doesn't even work.
I wonder what Linda's doing right now?
I pick up my alarm clock and see it's about four in the morning. I roll my eyes and set it back down, continuing my feline petting. She stretches a bit and then walks off of me, plopping down on my mattress and resting her pretty little head between her paws. Ok little miss. At least I can move without feeling guilty. I slowly but surely make it out of bed and reach for my notebook and pen, sifting through the pages of entries, book ideas and poetry I wrote back in secondary school. I smile when I get to the one about Stuart. I had written it after that one day in our history class where we were allowed to debate and I had kind of seen him looking at me in my peripheral vision. Then next to it was an entry a few days later. Something about Paul teasing me for dozing off in class or something a bit similar.
I hear a barely audible knock at the door and throw my notebook down. I can see Stuart through a crack, swinging it open wide to let him in. "Ye working on anything?" He asks me while yawning excessively and rubbing his eyes. "I reckon you couldn't sleep either?" I question him and he just nods, sitting down by our cat.
"I was just sifting through old stuff. Most of it's pretty rubbish, but you can take a look if you want." I leaned back on my bed, leaning into his shoulder. His breathing lungs served as a cup of tea to my psyche as he would trace the words with his pale finger. I close my eyes and shut all of my running thoughts off, just taking in his breath flowing in and out. He feels like home, to me. No matter if it's Liverpool, London, or even Germany. My hand reaches up to his hair and morphs into a makeshift comb, gliding through his freshly washed hair that hits his eyes when it's not styled.
"Have you ever thought about growing this mop longer so then it doesn't hit yer shiny eyes?" I blurt out. My cheeks start to burn and I put my hands down when I realized what had come out of my mouth.
"For as much as you love my eyes and I love yours, John, we both know I couldn't pull it off, even if I wanted to. You can though. I think it looks cute when you tie it back into a little ponytail and then it frolics about like a child skipping down to the sweet shop with the allowance they've been saving up all week to get one little bag of chocolates." He sasses, licking his finger to flip the page. He cleared his throat and flipped the page to an entry that was clearly scribbled in an angry matter. "Could you read that to me? It's too messy." He chuckled while handing it to me and I reached for my glasses. I whispered an 'ok' and adjusted the book so it wouldn't fall out of my hands. He rested his head on top of mine tiredly, waiting for a start.
"June 17th, 1968: I hate Paul. Ye wanna know what the bastard did? He tricked me into hanging out with Sutcliffe because he told me that we were gonna go out for his birthday tomorrow, since his family was gonna be visiting and it wasn't worth sneaking in just to mess about because his family still doesn't like me all that much. So we walked down to the local fish and chip shop, which I thought was weird because George would have joined us, but anyway, we sat down and then George came in with Sutcliffe and then Paul and George said that they forgot they had schoolwork they had to finish and ran off before I could object! We just ended up muttering obscenities to one another while sharing a milkshake (since Paul was the one with money to pay for food!) and it was a drag. I'm gonna get those fuckers one day. They might not know it yet, but I'll get them for this. Stuart's wrong, I know he is. Monkees are better than the Stones my arse."
