He's So Fine [Beatles / George Harrison FanFiction]

Prologue: August 1958

'Are you still a virgin, George?'

George coughed and spluttered and sat up to smack Della's thigh with the palm of his hand, making a satisfying loud crack. She laughed at him gleefully and scrambled away, out of his reach across the narrow mattress, bed sheets getting raked up by her feet, as he grabbed for her again.

She'd asked the question, out of the blue, just as the smoke from the stolen cigarette had hit his lungs, timed perfectly to elicit the reaction from him she'd gotten.

'You can't ask things like that,' he said, still wheezing, voice hoarse as he gave up trying to catch her.

'Why not?' Della held out her hand for the cigarette and George passed it to her.

'Because,' George huffed, as his surprise turned to embarrassment. 'You just don't.'

'So that's a yes, then,' she said, eyeing him sideways as she took a long drag on the cigarette.

'I didn't say that,' George replied, and lay back down on his bed, in the hope she wouldn't see the pinkish colour he could feel his cheeks turning.

'But you are.' She scooted down to lie next to him again, George pressed up against the wall by the window, Della in danger of falling off the edge of George's single bed. She passed the cigarette back to him.

They lay in a companionable silence for a moment in the half-light of the evening. The branches of the tree in the middle of the green outside cast eerie shadows over the ceiling. As the tree swayed in the wind, the shadows danced in an oddly hypnotic fashion.

'I'm not, as a matter of fact,' George said.

Della laughed. 'You're a shit liar, George Harrison.'

'Not that it's any business of yours, but no, I'm not a virgin,' George replied, calmly, although saying the word gave him a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach.

'Who have you done it with then?' Della challenged.

George wet his lips. That was a good question. 'Sylvia Rousden.'