As the sun colours flowers | Paul McCartney - Beatles Fanfiction

47. Not a long time to wait

"It is your duty in life to save your dream."

— Amadeo Modigliani

***

We hadn't even been gone for a week, but it felt as though we'd landed in a completely different city than the one we'd left. London was transformed. It was as if the world had been sleeping until then, and something had finally woken everyone up from their slumber.

And I wondered if it had to do with the one thing you could now hear everywhere you went. Almost overnight, every open window seemed to carry out the daring and vibrant melodies of Sgt. Pepper, and every young person walking down the street seemed to be dressed in a more colourful attire than just a month ago. But it wasn't much of a surprise. I'd seen the almost manic and ongoing work Paul and his bandmates had done in the previous months. I'd witnessed firsthand the increasingly ambitious ideas, the setups, and the artists that had been part of it all. And it had all been planned to the last detail by the sheer will of four men from Liverpool, as if something had briefly breathed into them all the world's creativity.

And while I was completely immersed in this world of anticipation and excitement for all the possibilities that seemed to lay ahead, one thought kept coming back to me. It had started when exiting the half-asleep airplane to the bustling energy of travellers, the hum of conversation and the sound of rolling luggage filling the air around us, and hadn't stopped coming back since then. Whether it was from Paul's gleaming eyes meeting mine through the light-coloured sunglasses that barely helped him keep his anonymity or the way we'd made love in the hallway as soon as he managed to get rid of the gate birds that seemed to have doubled in number in the last week. It was relentless and comforting.

I was home.

And it was true in every sense of the word. Two days after we got back, I'd officially moved in with Paul. Not that there was much to move at all—two packed suitcases, a few books that I hadn't brought to the gallery and a pile of records—but there had been something strange, although exciting, about giving back the key to the hotel room I'd lived in for the better part of the last year.

And now, as I lay on the couch, a half-empty cup of mint tea on my stomach and a cigarette between my lips as I held a book above me, I could've sworn I'd never lived anywhere else before.

"Move yer smelly feet, Ada," John grumbled, and he tugged my legs off the couch before taking the spot on the other side of it.

I knew that John had come over to work with Paul, but I hadn't heard them coming down from the music room, and his sudden appearance almost made my heart stop as I swiftly sat up, scrambling to catch the teacup that almost fell to the ground.

"What the-"

"Language, love." John snatched the cigarette that was settled between my fingers.

"Aren't you supposed to be working?" I eyed John as he opened the journal Paul had left lying on the floor that morning.

Despite the recent release of their latest LP, they were back in the studio, already trying to push the new boundaries they'd just set for the music world. So every day that week, John had come over to work with Paul. But they usually didn't take a break until mid-afternoon, and since I'd only just come back from an early lunch with Lydia, I wondered if they'd already hit a wall.

"We just released the greatest album of all time, didn't you hear?" John said in a way that I wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or not as he flipped a page and rested his ankle on his knee.

I cocked an eyebrow. "Does that mean you're done working, then?"

John waved a hand and hummed as if none of it mattered much to him. His hair was all tousled, and he had dark, large circles under his eyes. I took a moment to observe him as I reached for a cigarette from the box full of various little pills and joints Paul always kept full by the couch. He looked like someone who hadn't slept and maybe had too much to drink or smoke. But realistically, it was probably both, since I knew he'd arrived straight from a party Brian had hosted the previous night at his new country house.