“Do you hear your phrasing? That’s exactly the one we want. Good boy, Paul,” George says, and oh, god—

In 1960 the Global population is 3 billion. In the universe, about a quarter of people are omegas. 750,000,000. From that, .005% of omegas are super omegas. Which is 37,500 people. 30% of those die before the age of 20. Either from infanticide or complications from presentation. Which leaves 26,250. 85% of those are either hiding it and passing, or castrated, or trafficked. That leaves 3,978 super omegas out globally--people you would recognize as a super omega if you passed them on the street.

In 1960, Liverpool broader metro has a population of 1,384,000. Which is 0.00046% of the global population. Which would be 2 super omegas out in Liverpool in 1960.

He’s crying. He sobs, and he bites down on a scream as everything inside him clenches and twists and bursts. His shirt is soaked through, his hair wet against his forehead, and his chest billows, the air hissing out like a popped balloon. 

“Paul, Paulie, Paulie, Paulie, Paul,” John says over him, kneeling over him, bracketed over his body like a blanket, haloed against the light. Wet drips down onto his face. Wet mixes it with the tears that slick down the sides of his cheeks. 

The light waivers—bursts and shivers and pulses as he opens his mouth, tries to breathe in, can’t. The crowds cracks open—the sound spills out, curls around the open rafters of the ceiling and falls down over them like a waterfall. 

“Paul, Paulie baby,” John cries, lips bloodless, the white of his eyes stretching broad and bone-colored and bloodshot. His fingertips press into Paul’s shoulder like bursting, his other hand, flat on Paul’s cheek, seers. 

The heat presses down. The heat bubbles up from inside him. He can’t see John—the sides of his face streak, drip like paint melting from a canvas and dropping into his bones. It fills him. It presses, it swells against the seams of him and melds, liquid inside him. He shivers, and deep inside something pulls—a tight twang like a plucked guitar string, a burst of vibrating pleasure that shoots up his spine and tingles at the base of his skull.

He tries to twist away. He tries, and his legs twitch uselessly beneath him, his hands flopping back down to the stage. The smell presses into him—the smell filling up every inch inside him. Every gap. He turns his head and gags. 

“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening to me,” he tries, though he does, and his voice cracks, and every sound distorts, dipped beneath the liquid that drips from his cheeks, and his heart pounds so hard it shakes him, makes his eyeballs dance in his skull. He wants to get away—needs to. To bury himself in some dark place he’ll never be seen again. 

Mary hadn’t collapsed, when she’d died. She hadn’t fallen somewhere, a heroic faint into the waiting arms of someone who loved her more than life itself. She’d come one day, been gone another. A single visit to a hospital bed. A sheet stained with blood. He’d thought it would happen in an instant—that he’d stand one day from the dinner table and then it would be over. The world winking out to that endless expanse he would never know, and it would be like the part of him that was him had never existed. Scared of blinking. Scared of closing his eyes. 

Over him, wet gleams on the rim of John’s nostril, solidifies and dangles, glittering on the end of his nose. 

“I know, I know baby,” John cries, and Paul realizes it’s not himself, the quivering of his own eyes that makes John shake, but John himself. His whole body—close and slow quakes like the shifting of a mountain, the arms which hold him up bowing back and forth as he struggles to hold himself upright. 

“John, out of the way!” Brian yells, skidding to his knees beside him. His shoulder presses against John’s, pushing, and then arms wrap around John’s middle—pulling, and he turns, hissing, spitting. A sound—flesh on flesh. Ringo hits the stage beside him, and the John is back, throwing himself over top of Paul. 

The weight hits him, rocking him into the slats, and his gut clenches, gagging, as the warmth of John presses into him, the wet against his throat as John latches there, chest shaking, shivering.