can you make a Brian Epstein and George Martin fic? Anything fluffy 🥺, because I adore them.
After Hours
The building was dark by nine.
NEMS Enterprises in the evenings was emptied with an efficiency that the daytime version of it, all phones and movement and the continuous managed chaos of running the most famous band in the world, entirely failed to suggest.
The secretaries went first, then the junior staff, then the various people whose roles George Martin had never quite pinpointed but always present during business hours and absent after them. By half past eight the corridors were quiet.
Brian’s light was still on.
George noticed it from the corridor - the thin line of yellow under the door that meant Brian was still at his desk, which was not a surprise exactly, because Brian’s light was almost always still on when George passed through at this hour, but which tonight had a quality that made George slow his step.
He couldn’t have said what the quality was. Something about the stillness of it, perhaps - the numerous times he’s seen Brian working late, and then looking dreadful in the morning.
He knocked.
Nothing.
He knocked again, slightly harder, and said Brian’s name, and this time there was a sound - something shifting, and then Brian’s voice, which came out with a deep groan, thick with exhaustion.
“Come in.”
George opened the door.
The office looked lived in. Not untidy exactly - Brian never descended into untidy - but overwhelmed. Files covered half the desk. Two abandoned cups of tea sat among the papers like archaeological evidence of earlier intentions. The lamp in the corner cast everything in warm gold.
Brian sat behind the desk, still immaculate in his dark suit, tie perfectly arranged, hair precisely where it belonged.
George frowned.
“Good Lord, Brian.”
Brian looked up and attempted a smile. It didn’t quite make it.
“George. I didn’t know you were still here.”
“I might say the same to you.”
Brian straightened automatically, “I’ve simply been finishing a few things.”
George glanced at the papers.
“It’s nine o’clock.”
“Is it?”
He sounded vaguely surprised, which worried George more than anything else.
Without asking, he sat on the edge of the desk instead of taking the chair opposite. Stripped of the endless phone calls and the carefully managed smile and the armour he wore so well, Brian looked tired. Not merely sleepy. Bone-tired, settled behind the eyes and made a man look suddenly younger and older at once.
"How long has it been since you’ve slept properly?”
Something flickered across his face. Deflection, probably. Habit. But he was too exhausted to sustain it.
“I don’t know.”
The honesty of it was almost alarming.
“The last few months have been rather a lot.”
“I know.” George smiled faintly. “I’ve been here for them.”
That earned the shadow of a smile.
“There is a great deal to do.”
“There always is.”
Brian looked down.
George reached across and moved one of the cold teacups out of the way.
“The FabFour will survive the night, you know.”
A tired laugh escaped him. “I know.”
“Do you?”
Brian sighed.
George regarded him for a moment. Then, wordlessly, he gathered the nearest stack of papers into something resembling order.
“You needn’t- ”
“I know.” He kept straightening the files. “I’m doing it anyway.”
Outside, London glowed beyond the windows, indifferent and endless. Inside, the lamplight softened everything.
“George?”
“Hm?”
“Why are you still here?”
George paused. There were several answers.
Because I had work.
Because I happened to notice.
Because someone ought to make sure you get home.
Because I worry.
Because somewhere, over these years, your wellbeing became important to me in ways neither of us ever mention.
Instead, he only smiled.
“Because your light was on.”
Brian looked at him, something gentle passed through his expression.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By the time they reached the car, Brian was shivering.
Not noticeably, just enough that no one else might have remarked upon it. But George noticed.
“You’re freezing.”
“I’m perfectly all right.”
“You’re shivering.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
Brian sighed with irritation.
“It is possible, George, that the weather has chosen this evening to be unusually disagreeable.”
“It is possible,” George agreed. “Or it is possible that you’ve consumed nothing but tea and anxiety since breakfast.”
Brian made a faint sound that suggested this was a gross exaggeration.
George took off his coat.
Brian stared at him.
He slung it over Brian, buttoned it before Brian could protest, making the words die in his mouth as he watched his face get closer to him.
They stood there for a moment beneath the amber glow of the streetlamp. George’s fingers, occupied with the second button, paused when he realised just how close they were.
Close enough to see the tiredness lingering in the corners of Brian’s eyes. Close enough to notice the faint scent of his cologne beneath the smell of the trees.
“There,” George said softly, his hand lingering a fraction longer than strictly necessary. “You’ll catch your death without a proper meal and coat.”
That finally earned him a proper smile, small, sleepy and terribly fond, though neither of them would have dreamt of calling it that.
“Come here,” George said quietly.
Brian looked up.
“Whatever for?”
George took a step closer.
There was confusion in Brian’s expression, and something else as well. A kind of uncertainty. As though he had forgotten how to be looked after and wasn’t entirely convinced he still knew how.
George smiled.
“Honestly, Brian.”
And before Brian could think too much about it, George put an arm around him.
Very slowly, with the hesitation of someone who had forgotten how such things were done, Brian leaned into him.
George felt the slight weight of him first - a shoulder yielding, the careful line of his posture softening - and then the crown of his head came to rest against George’s shoulder.
For a second, Brian remained stiff with habit, as though some deeply ingrained instinct still insisted that he ought to apologise for taking up space.
Then George felt it.
Not all at once, but gradually.
The tension left him.
His shoulders dropped. His breathing slowed. And with a quiet sigh, so soft it was almost lost beneath the sound of the empty street, Brian simply settled against him.
George rested his cheek lightly against his hair.
Poor dear, he thought with a rush of tenderness so sudden it almost caught him by surprise. You've worn yourself to threads.
He could feel the tiredness in him. It was there in the heaviness of his body, in the way he unconsciously leaned closer, in the faint tremor that passed through him before disappearing entirely beneath the steady warmth of another person simply holding him.
After a long while, Brian spoke.
His voice was so quiet George nearly missed it.
“I can’t remember the last time someone held me.”
George closed his eyes, and without a word, he drew him a little closer.
Brian made the smallest sound - a soft exhale that might almost have been contentment - and after a moment George felt fingers gather unconsciously in the fabric of his coat.
The gesture was so absent-minded, so utterly unguarded, that George’s heart ached.
And slowly, George became aware that the even rise and fall beneath his arm had changed.
Brian’s breathing had deepened.
His head had grown heavier against George’s shoulder.
George smiled to himself.
‘Good heavens’, he thought affectionately. ‘The man is falling asleep on me.’
“Brian,” he said softly, unwilling to disturb him and yet unable to suppress his amusement.
Brian gave a tiny sound, drowsy and muffled.
"I think if we stay here much longer, you're going to fall asleep standing up."
There was a pause.
Then, with visible reluctance, he lifted his head.
The imprint of George’s shoulder remained faintly pressed into his hair. His eyes were heavy, and he looked faintly embarrassed, though there was something wonderfully open about his expression now.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, lowering his eyes. “I seem to have become rather clingy.”
The words were accompanied by the ghost of a smile, but beneath it George caught the uncertainty, the old instinct to retreat before he became inconvenient.
Instead, George reached out and brushed an errant lock of hair from his forehead.
“My dear Brian,” he said softly, looking at him with such affection that Brian’s expression gentled at once, “after fourteen hours at a desk, I should think you’ve earned the right.”
Something changed in Brian's face then, with quiet, profound relief.
And when George opened the passenger door a moment later, Brian reached out without thinking and rested his hand lightly on George’s sleeve, his fingers lingering there with the absent-minded affection of someone not quite ready to lose the warmth he’d found.
George pretended not to notice.
But as he walked around to the driver’s side, a smile tugging helplessly at his mouth, he found himself absurdly touched.
Because Brian had touched his sleeve, even leaned against him.
And because that sleepy little gesture, so trusting and so entirely uncalculated, felt rather like being handed something infinitely precious and being trusted not to drop it.
I HOPE THIS IS WHAT YOU ASKED FORR I've never written this ship before so this was really fun to write <33 Link to the fic on AO3
