Growing Up Beside You [John Lennon/Beatles Fanfiction]

9. You care too much

As soon as Mr Taylor opened the doors to let John and Celia out of his office, John dropped to his knees and started to weep. Celia, who was standing over him, looked down at the boy who had now curled into a ball, clenching his hands in the air. What the hell was he playin' at? He'd been fine a minute ago but there he was rolling on the floor and wailing as if he were in excruciating pain.

Celia looked over to the waiting room chairs where they sat twenty minutes ago to find an audience of three jittery first-years, who were staring down at John like he was a madman. Of course. John was fooling around. He was pretending to be in agony just to panic the other students because those were the kind of wicked stunts he pulled. It seemed to work too because the lads' faces were now full of dread and one of them even started to whimper.

"Ow, it hurts! It bloody hurts!" John cried.
   
Celia sighed and stepped over John, who's howling noises sounded more like a whale than a boy who'd just had his hands spanked.

Celia walked out of the office not bothering to close the door behind her.

"Get up! Get up NOW, or so help me god, Lennon." Mr Taylor grabbed John's arm and pulled him up from the floor. He marched John directly to the door and John carried on with his little performance until Taylor threw him out into the corridor. He slammed the door in John's face and he giggled.

"Did you see that?" he grinned, rushing to catch up with Celia. "That little lad almost ran out of the room; he was shittin' himself! Works every time."

"Yeah, how nice of you to make those kids feel at ease. Nicely done, prick'ead."

Celia whipped around to face him. 

"Why must you act like that? We're in enough trouble as it is," she said, rubbing the palms of her hands which were raw and still throbbing.

"Ah, you're just mad because he didn't spank ya across the arse like yer wanted him to."

"Oh, grow up John," she huffed, continuing to walk down the empty corridor.

"It's your fault we were flogged anyway."

"Me?!" she asked, turning around again. "What exactly did I do?"

The left side of his thin lips tugged upwards into a smirk. "You laughed."

"Well you shouldn't have told Mr Taylor his nose hairs needed trimming, then."

"They did though!"

"That's not the point," she sighed. "It was inappropriate and so were those bloody drawings of yours."

John had been caught drawing obscene sketches of Mr Oliver which is why he stormed him over to Taylor's office. Celia had to hide her amusement when she glanced over at them on Taylor's desk because god, they were insulting but they were astonishingly funny.

"This is not art, it's pure rubbish," Mr Taylor said, scrunching the drawings up and throwing them in the bin. John told him he'd regret chucking them away when he was famous which only made Taylor angrier at John's desire to joke about everything. Though, Celia got the sense that John hadn't been joking when he'd said that.

"Don't tell me about 'inappropriate', love. You've got a weeks worth of detention for being just that. Sorry to inform ya but yer daft little speech didn't work. He wouldn't have fallen for your bullshit excuses even if you stuck 'em in front of his feet with his eyes shut."

Celia had gushed to Mr Taylor with some big speech about how big a shite Mr Oliver was. She said how she always tried to do her best (blah-blah) and how he never gave her or anyone the opportunity to speak their mind against his own (blah-fucking-blah). At first, John was amused by what she had to say but he soon became bored of her.