#beatlemaniac

Three hours.

Three goddamn hours and he hadn't looked your way once.

At first it made sense(!), and you didn't mind it much. Paul had explained that he would have to make the usual rounds as you approached the grand entryway and he gave you a kiss to your forehead. "Y'know how it is with these types, love, they can't wait to get their five seconds. But..." He began, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear with a soft smile, "I'll come find you with the rest of the band in ten, and we'll spend the rest of the night together dancing and getting wasted. Yeah?"

You had smiled back at him and reached a hand up to rub his cheek. "We'll miss you, darling-- we're not Wings without Paul." You sighed dramatically and gave a quick peck to his lips. "But I suppose we can make do for a few minutes. God forbid the Denny's and I get the party started without you." With that he opened the door for you, the McCartney's entered the party, and you went your separate ways.

You found Denny Laine and Seiwell almost immediately, and a few minutes later Henry McCullough had drinks in all your hands. Ten minutes passed before you realized it, and you didn't even glance at a clock until it was half-past and Paul still hadn't come around. No worries: there were a lot of people to please and a lot of rooms to get lost in, so if he hadn't finished his impromptu interviews and found the four of you yet it wasn't that surprising. Besides, you and the boys were having fun sipping the free cocktails and dancing to the music playing below the consistent murmur of conversation in the meantime.

Around an hour in you had begun to get annoyed. Usually, Paul would have come to find you by now to at least apologize and grab a quick drink with you, but he was nowhere to be found. To soothe your rising anger, Denny Laine offered you a joint and the two of you went to the gazebo in the backyard to smoke it and try to talk about anything else except your spouse who had inexplicably left you in the dust for the entire night.

Fifteen minutes later, you were substantially intoxicated and insisted on returning to the house to dance despite Denny's lazy whines insisting you both sit with your high and just enjoy it. "I'll enjoy it more if I'm not wallowing, Dens." You grabbed his hand to pull him off of the gazebo bench with a effortful groan, earning a laugh from both of you once he was on his feet and you were heading back to the house with your arms linked together. When your lover was away, having friends like him meant the world.

The dance floor began with a few familiar faces popping in and out of your vision as you spun around, the alcohol-weed mix giving you a sweet, floating sensation that made the sweat on your brow and heat in your extremities a fleeting memory. Song after song flew by in a flash until you realized around the two and a half hour mark that you were one of the very few people left on the dance floor.

At that realization and another look at the clock reminding you that you had, once again, not felt Paul's hand slip around your waist once that night, the heat in your fingers pooled in a sickening flood to your stomach and your fluid movements slowed to a snail's pace. You were all alone. He had left you alone.

It was a switch flip in your heart from freedom in music to imprisonment in a crowd of people. In your rush to enjoy the high, you had lost your band and no longer had the energy to find them. In fact, your mind quickly spiraled into telling you the boys wouldn't want you to find them anyway: they would've come to you if the wanted to just like Paul, and not a single one of those fuckers had done so. Maybe it was the cross-fade-- and realistically it most certainly was-- but in your heart you felt you were isolated in a house filled top to bottom with shiny happy people unbothered by your loneliness.

That dangerous heat in your abdomen shot up to your face in a moment, daring tears to escape your eyes. Rather than crying, you escaped the emptied dance floor to the bar and grabbed another drink to finally retire to a comfortable corner in which you could sit. Solitude was dangerous, but with that glass pressed to your lips and the smoke playing in your temples, it never tasted better.

You sat there watching strangers file out of the building for half an hour before you felt a warm hand brush over your shoulder and begin to massage your neck tentatively, as though it had something to apologize for. "What're ya doin' sittin' 'ere, love?" Paul spoke softly from behind you, leaning in to kiss behind your ear. "Thought I'd come down 'ere to see my girl dancin'."

You scoffed and set the glass down, smelling the same warm smoke and booze rising off of Paul that surely radiated from you. "I thought I'd see my husband in ten minutes. It's been..." you glanced up at a nearby clock and sat up straight to shrug off Paul's gentle touch, "three hours. So I guess we're both surprised."

You felt the rock star's stare boring into the side of your face, dumbfounded and embarrassed, but he didn't speak a word in protest. "I think the party's over. We shouldn't overstay our welcome." You stated while simultaneously holding back your tears: you couldn't make a scene here, and you certainly couldn't bear to humiliate Paul in public despite how much he had hurt you.

The bassist saw the look in your eye and stood up, taking your hand in his and guiding you onto your feet so the two of you could return to your home.

*****

It was a silent ride, and even when the two of you entered the house around 3am neither of you spoke for a few moments. Instead you walked straight for the kitchen and poured yourself a glass of water, bending over the counter and staring into the small pool in hopes it would give you some answers on how to move forward.

Paul approached you from behind, slipped a hand around your waist, and pressed his chest against your back, his movements hesitant and prudent indicating he knew (in spite of his ego) how badly he had messed up. Because of his ego, he tried to skirt the real conversation. "Even at a private party, producers and paparazzi still manage to be endlessly fuckin' nosy."

You spun around to face Paul with a fire in your eyes, making his grip loosen but his arm still hang loose around your waist. You were so angry with him. You wanted to pound on his chest and scream and yell and push him away, but at the moment you could barely hold back the hot tears streaking your red cheeks. "And yet you'd rather spend the whole goddamn night running-- running back and forth between them rather than just seeing your fucking wife." You choked out, your hands being thrown up left and right at the thought of how incredible it all was. Paul reached a hand up to wipe your tears away but you immediately shut it down. "No!" You spoke, not quite yelling but still stern. "Ten minutes, McCartney, that's what you told me and I believed you. At half an hour I would've been happy. At an hour, or two, or two and a half, I would've been happy to see you. But it took everyone else leaving for you to want me."

You pointed to your chest and took a deep, shuddering breath. "Tonight, I was your last choice. All I wanted was one dance, and you couldn't even give me that!"

Paul hadn't stepped away from you the entire time you spoke despite your attempts to dismiss him. Instead, his gaze darted between each of your eyes and his fingers rubbed light circles into your skin that you barely even noticed in the heat of your anger until the moment he spoke.

"I can now." It wasn't spoken immediately, and it wasn't more than a gentle murmur off his lips, but it was more of a real promise than you had been given all night.

Now that you were really looking at him, you could see the sorrow in your lover's eyes. He was never good at apologies and, in fact, rarely doled them out to anyone, but those three words he had just spoken showed the most remorse you had ever seen from Paul in all your years together.

You sighed and allowed his hand to rise to your cheek, wiping away the tear-stains with the pad of his thumb before kissing the spot gently. You rolled your eyes dismissively, but the small smile playing on your lips gave you away immediately. "One second, love." He murmured and stepped away to pick out one of your favorite albums on the slower side to put on the turntable.

He returned with a sheepish expression and approached you again, his hands even more hesitant now that he had to face you after such a tumultuous night. But after all of it, he was beyond thankful to be able to put his arms around your waist and lay his head on top of yours. You sighed and turned your chin in so the two of you were bent into one another, your arms resting upward on his shoulders and extending behind his back. No matter what transpired between the two of you it always felt so natural to be back in his arms and swaying in your kitchen again.

The bassist hummed along to the music in a natural harmony while simultaneously rubbing small circles into your hips with his calloused thumbs. You mirrored his movements by bending your arms at the elbows and curling your fingers into his messy mullet, hiding a subtle smile in his chest that he felt but didn't dare point out and risk scaring you away.

"Y'know," He murmured as the first song faded and the second began, "I never stop thinking about you. Whether we're together or apart." His words were plain and sweet, but sent the heat of anger that had sunk to your stomach in a floating wave out through your extremities. It frustrated you how easily his voice relaxed you when you wanted so badly to hold onto your wrath, but his warm embrace and unusually apologetic demeanor was like a spell cast over your heart, mind, and body. You nodded and rested your head against his chest, listening to his heavy heartbeat and breathing in his familiar scent which bled through the weed and tequila undeniably playing in the air.

As the song continued his right hand moved sweetly up your side in a slow, calculated motion. Specifically, the back of his hand ghosted over your waist, rising over your ribcage, and over your underarm to guide you to spin to face your back towards him. You obeyed the silent command with a giggle and raised your arm over your head to slowly lower it again over the back of his head and bring the two of you into a reversed embrace where his face rested comfortably in the nape of your neck.

With the new position found and his hand falling back down your body again to now hold your abdomen in close to his groin, you slowly lowered your hand from his hair to his cheek where you felt the familiar stubble of his face. "Hello, my love." You whispered and turned to face him. Paul smiled in response and, after glancing from your shining eyes to your parted lips, pressed his mouth to yours for a gentle kiss that you couldn't help but reciprocate.

Your free left hand reached behind Paul to pull his body closer, index and middle fingers just barely snaking under his shirt and the waistband of his slacks to feel the bare skin of his torso against your fingertips. He shivered at the cool sensation of your touch-- a direct contradiction to the warmth radiating from his body. You felt a smirk against your lips and, seconds later, Paul did the same to you by slipping a hand between the buttons of your shirt. You jolted and yelped in response, playfully tapping the hand at his cheek and glaring at him. "I didn't do it to be funny." You spoke between clenched teeth and a smile.

"No," He responded and kissed the tip of your nose, pressing his fingers further, "but it got the response I wanted."

You rolled your eyes and spun back around in your husband's arms to face him but neither of you stopped swaying. Instead, both of your arms wrapped around one another in your original formation: his resting on your waist, and yours on his shoulders. You danced like this for a while, comfortable in one another's embrace, before his right hand reached up between yours and cupped your cheek in his palm. You could see words forming in his throat-- ones that were largely unnatural for someone with his power and poetic tongue-- until he finally found the courage to choke them out. "I'm sorry, love, I should've done this with you a whole lot sooner."