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The thing, Ringo thought, was that there wasn’t really a reason he shouldn’t be out to the bars drinking until three.
No, he had every reason. The only two loves of his life were sleeping together, he was alone, he was sad. Fuck sad. The word wasn’t strong enough. No single word in the entire dictionary would be enough to explain away how he was feeling, not a single fucking one.
Maybe it was his fault for loving George the way he did. The way that was definitely more than just as a friend. Maybe it was his fault for making Mo feel so bad. He was… he was drunk right now. He could feel it. It was a dangerously beautiful tilty world he lived in, and soon he was going to have to leave.
Out on the streets, the cold air hit his skin and bit at his ears and nose. He shut his eyes tight against the wind and leaned against the brick wall. He then pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it quick, toking on it before tapping the ash off.
This feeling was hell. He was sure of it. He, Ringo bloody Starr, was in hell. And he knew hell was forever.
Ringo wished that his and George’s relationship had ended like Paul and John’s had: so bad that they barely talked. But it hadn’t. It hadn’t. They were friends, they were more, and god-fucking-dammit he was going to cry.
Luckily it seemed he was alone in the dark alley, the flickery light outside of the pub showing how drab and washed out the empty corner was. Big tears fell down his face, dripping down his chin and to the ground.
“Shit,” he cursed. “Shit, shit, shit.” He knew he had fucked up.
Nothing felt real anymore, nothing at all. He had cheated on Mo with George, Mo had cheated on him with George, George was cheating on both of them with each other and Pattie. It was monstrous. It was shit.
The cig in his hand dropped to the ground, and he crushed it into the chipping pavement with the heel of his shoe like it was something evil. He had to go home. (Not that he wanted to, he wanted to go fuck someone else just to get all this rage out of his system, but they don’t usually take it too well in places if you’re trying to solicit someone when drunk.)
It used to be easier. (The affair, not mindless sex.) It used to be easier before when the height of fucking Beatlemania hid his little secret in screens made only to see what they wanted to see… the good stuff. The happiness or whatever you would call that smile which he faked like second nature by ‘66.
But now it was more complicated. Mo was sleeping with George too and Ringo was hit with double-betrayal.
Maybe he should have expected it though, with how much of a fucking bastard he was acting like. His whole life was hellish at the moment, so it made sense that his love life was fucking him up the ass as well. (Pun very much so un-intended.)
There were all these expectations now. For Ringo to have as good of a solo career as the others, churn out hit albums and act differently. Well, he had really nailed that last part.
He honestly wasn’t sure why he had been considered the wholesome one out of the group. Maybe it was just a trick to get people to buy into having a favorite or something. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t really in the right state of mind to contemplate the objectives of the media in the 1960s at the moment. Maybe later, but not now.
Now, he leaned over a bike rack and dry heaved. It wasn’t like him anymore to get physically sick, but that didn’t mean the urge went away. To Ringo, at least at the moment, being drunk was like a little security blanket. He could do things under the guise of alcohol, not needing to explain all the shit he got into like it mattered. He was just drunk, so the excuse was left unsaid but accepted.
Sometimes, Ringo was mad that he woke up. Mad that the alcohol didn’t take him to the edge of death, nudge him over. He should probably have received therapy. That was kind of a joke.
It was like this, Ringo thought, as he walked down the street in what he was pretty sure was the direction of his house. (As if he could actually walk home from London.) You could love people, but that didn’t mean they would love you back. You could feel things, but that didn’t mean that people would understand those feelings or why you had them or anything like that.
Ringo accidentally knocked into someone that was walking next to him on the street, but he didn’t apologize, and he didn’t turn around. Again, drunkenness was the perfect excuse.
He had never asked for this. Never asked for the fame or the whiskey stain on his shirt. Never asked for the crippling communication issues or the band of paparazzi that he knew waited on the next corner. He took a different route.
The back alleys of London were like the back alleys anywhere, drenched in things so bad the only word to describe them was “grime”, smelling like sex and spilled spirits and cigarettes. He lit one, the flare of the lighter casting a grungy glow on the damp walls.
Smoke was not like alcohol, which killed you quietly in a way you probably wouldn’t notice for a while. No, the smoke you could feel, trap it in your lungs, a dangerous burn to get hooked on: holding poison in your body just to breathe it out again.
Maybe that was what he was doing in real life too. Holding close all the toxicity his relationships held, daring himself to let go for a bit, just to see what would happen. What a sick metaphor. Cigarettes and strange, estranged lovers. Maybe that was why they had turned to each other too; wanted to see what it was like to betray themselves to the fullest extent.
Ringo waited until his cig burned down to the yellowy butt, tossing it on some week-old newspapers and watching the pile catch flame from the shameful spark. He didn’t care too much anymore if people took pictures of him, and part of him sort of wanted them to. He wanted to scream at the world, this is who I am now, fucking deal with it or move on!
He did, in the alley, top-of-his-lungs in his most recognizable voice. If anyone heard him they didn’t stick their head out of a window to, at the very least, tell him to shut the fuck up.
That was right, it was three in the morning. He was supposed to be home.
He thought vaguely of calling George tomorrow to see if he would come over, feign ignorance for just a while longer to revel in the sweet feeling of having his younger ex-bandmate on top of him.
Though truly, sex wasn’t all he cared about when it came to George. Or Mo. And even if his anger made them out to be concubines or whatever, he knew that wasn’t who they were to him at all. He loved them, and that was the problem.
“God, fucking stupid love,” Ringo spat quietly, voice raspy with a smoke-burnt throat. Love which clouded all his good judgment and tied him in roguish chains to people who laughed in the face of fidelity. Though, in all honesty, it wasn’t as if Ringo had been kind to fidelity recently either.
He contemplated that as he made his way back to the street. Fidelity. It was sort of overrated, at least when you were a rockstar. It wasn’t exactly a well-kept secret that all four of them had their share of affairs. Hell, that was the reason both Paul and Jane and John and Cynthia broke up. And they had loved each other. Love wasn’t the problem, and the problem was that everyone thought it was.
They thought it was as simple as loving someone and then not loving them anymore. Maybe if it was, things wouldn’t be as messed up as they were. Maybe if it was that easy, all the excuses and lame cheating-out would end.
But it wasn’t like that. Because what the hell were you supposed to do when you fell in love with two people? When your love was like carnival tickets: abundant and held by many.
Ringo wasn’t sure. His downfall would always be the unknowing.
Out on the main street, people shoved past him without a second glance. It was strange how well a disguise drunkenness provided. Because in the minds of anyone sober, all drunks were equal. Pathetic and sad and needing help but not receiving it.
Ringo knew this much.
He hailed a cab and stumbled in, spitting out his address and leaning his aching head against the cold glass.
The cabbie looked into the rearview, recognition spreading across his face.
“You’re a Beatle, ain’t ya?” he asked.
“So what if I am?” Ringo ground out, “Technically, the Beatles don’t exist anymore.”
The cabbie frowned at him but didn’t say anything.
Ringo sighed and spent the rest of the car ride in some space between brutal consciousness and a sleep like death.
When the driver pulled up to his house, Ringo shoved a mess of bills at him that probably covered the charge three times over, but he was too out of it to do any counting at the moment.
Maybe it would keep the cabbie quiet. Not that he would really care if anyone found out he was a mean drunk who was out on a Monday night instead of at home with his wife and children.
Well, that wasn’t completely true. A more sober Ringo would’ve argued with him now, but these days a sober Ringo was such a rare thing, hence, the not-caring.
He walked into his house carefully, pushing open the door softly and not turning on any of the lights. Up the stairs he crept carefully, not expecting to see Mo in their bed. She was there, though, and woke up when Ringo stumbled into the room.
“Ritchie?” she called quietly, and Ringo groaned in response. Mo shoved off the covers and stood up, moving around the bed to stand in front of him, but far away.
“Ritchie, are you… are you…” she was crying just a tiny bit then, small sobs choked in her throat. Ringo realized terribly that she was afraid of him. And he hated every bone in his body for that. He stepped forward and she flinched, so he moved back again.
“Oh, baby,” Ringo whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.” He was crying too; big, ugly tears. He wasn’t sure of the last time he had cried in front of his wife. Mo seemed to realize that Ringo wasn’t in an angry mood, and came to stand in front of him, putting her hands on his chest.
They didn’t move much, just stayed solid on his body like anchors, weighing him down to real life. His drunkenness usually blinded him of sense, but in this quiet moment, practically everything between him and Mo felt… clear. The clarity was almost as disarming as the drink.
She leaned in slowly, cautious in every movement. He met her in the middle, a little more sure. The kiss was soft and slow and sweet and it tasted like everything Ringo loved about Mo. Which was funny, because he probably tasted like liquor. But enough of that. He maneuvered her slowly to their bed, being extra careful not to push too hard, to break this fragile dance they were in.
He shed his jacket and threw it down on the floor, pried his shoes off his feet too. Mo lifted his shirt over his head and helped him with her long nightgown.
When she was naked, Ringo laid her on the bed carefully. He leaned down to her chest, carefully tracing his tongue down, down… She gasped above him, and there came a sense of pride inside of him. He pushed the next thought of jealousy out of his head, pretending for the time being that he was the only one who got to see her like this. To love her the way he was loving her.
Before she reached her peak, Ringo’s mouth traveled up Mo’s body. There was something in knowing that he wasn’t the only one who touched Mo this way that made him want to completely own her. But he knew he couldn’t.
She clutched at his neck, bringing him up to her face, letting their lips meet in a desperate kiss. Ringo’s belt and trousers were discarded, and Mo relieved him of his tight pants.
They were both fully nude now, only skin and small breaths between them, barely a true spoken word clouding the lustful haze. Mo pulled a condom out from under the pillow and Ringo pretended not to notice that the first one she had grabbed was an empty wrapper.
The betrayal burned, but he didn’t care. This time, this slow, soft time, already felt like a hushed goodbye, and that remedied the hurt somewhat. To know that it could be over, that it should be.
Every inch, every gasp or groan or “God, yes,” felt like it was the last. Ringo could almost taste it on Mo’s tongue. The end of it all. Maybe it was the whiskey or maybe it was the truth, but it felt invariably over.
So he held Mo tightly, having her one last time.
They came to their highs together, breathlessly shifting under the comforter afterward. Ringo fell asleep quickly, head still swimming in the alcohol, but unquestionably fulfilled in another way. Mo rested her head against his shoulder, and the couple fell asleep peacefully together for the last time.
☞︎☞︎☞︎
In the morning, Ringo woke with a bad taste in his mouth, an ache in his head, and an empty bed.
A hastily scrawled note on the bedside table explained that Mo had taken the children out for the day and there was a plate of food on the table in the kitchen if he thought he could stomach it. A glance at the clock across the room informed him that it was nearly noon, and he groaned.
He stepped carefully out of bed, shuffling around the main floor, in the bathroom, and down the stairs.
The plate of food was in the kitchen, though it was nearly stone cold to the touch, so he put it in the microwave. That meant that Mo might be here soon, but it really didn’t matter. He picked up the phone and dialed the number without any hesitation.
“Hello?” the voice said when the call came through.
“Come over,” Ringo demanded.
“Now?” George asked.
“Now.”
“Ringo, I-”
“Please?”
“...”
“I know,” he said.
George fell silent again.
“I know,” he said eventually, “Ringo, I’m sorry, it wasn’t- it didn’t-”
“Just come over,” Ringo said and hung up the phone.
The microwave beeped at him, and he pulled his food angrily out of it.
☞︎☞︎☞︎
When George showed up outside, Ringo opened the door quickly and yanked him in.
He wasted no time in sealing his lips over George’s, kissing him sloppily, and running his hands through the guitarist’s hair.
George pulled away from Ringo, confusion riddling his pretty face. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Don’t you want to talk about-”
“No,” Ringo said, kissing him again. “Just—need—you,” he harshed out between more forceful kisses. “Please?” he begged.
“Oh, fuck,” George said and kissed Ringo back.
It was all fast and rushed and hard.
George took hold of Ringo’s hips and Ringo wrapped his arms properly around the back of George’s neck, each kiss and press against each other heightening their arousal. Ringo’s head still pounded with his hangover, but he ignored it in favor of George, who was currently taking his shirt off and kissing down his chest.
“Wait,” Ringo called, as George knelt down on the floor in front of him. “Upstairs.”
“We’re going to fuck in your bed for once?” George asked. “Dirty boy,” he said cheekily.
Ringo would have laughed, but he had a one-track mind at the moment, and all it played was a memorized finger-map across George’s back. He dragged him up the stairs, taking two at a time and trying not to falter too much against George’s lips, which were mouthing along his neck.
He forced open the door to his room, dragged the covers off the bed, and turned around to face George, who advanced quickly toward him.
Ringo was self-conscious suddenly, of everything. Had he not been enough for George? Had he not been enough for either of the people whom he loved so dearly? But something in the way George tilted his chin up carefully… stared deep into his eyes and kissed him a little less desperately, like they had all the time in the world… it said otherwise.
It held some old, forgotten meaning, perhaps it had been how he had kissed him the first time all those years ago, and Ringo melted into his thin arms.
From then on things felt less urgent… but still like they were burning on high heat. The passion overtook them in a way it had never before, George stripping Ringo and his clothes off like they were nothing, kissing down his chest again, and reaching the place where Ringo needed him most.
Tongue met hard flesh and Ringo gasped audibly. He felt overcome with pleasure, it had been a while since he’d seen George. Or at least, since he had seen George like this.
He let George continue on for a few minutes before carefully threading his fingers through the guitarist’s hair and lifting him off of his cock, disrupting his own pleasure but… George’s eyes. Dark as they were in their lust, there was something else shining there. Something so closely resembling pure fucking love. And Ringo was in his own personal hell all over again.
Because this was different than with her… it wasn’t some soft romantic ending. In every worst possible way, it felt like the reality of this relationship was just starting.
And he liked it.
But he hated it too. He hated himself for wanting this, that even though George had betrayed him, he still wanted… all of it. It was so much, too much.
George straddled his waist and Ringo let him. They kissed like drowning men, and Ringo couldn’t help but let all that fire and hate and anger grip him. He grabbed George by his arms and turned them, so he was the one on top, bearing down on the younger man. Like this is supposed to be something whispered to him.
George shifted a little and guided Ringo’s hand down between his legs, gasping when their fingers met and pushed together. It was all on fast forward from then on in his mind. He scrounged around the bedside drawer for another condom (the last one from the pillows had been used up last night) and a bottle of lube that hadn’t seen either of their fingers in a while. George flipped them over again, and there was nothing Ringo could or wanted to do about it.
Again, this sex felt like more than just that. This felt like a treacherously good beginning, something practically illegal, but almost lawful in the way it was so… practiced and passionate and… right? Ringo came to this realization as George sank down hard, looking so beautiful and absolutely wrecked. The orgasm rushed through him in a wave of pleasure. Giddy, just like their first time.
George followed quickly after, and Ringo shifted halfway off the bed to pick the blanket off the floor. He pulled it over them and willed George to say, to answer his questions. Ringo wanted to understand.
“Fuck,” George sighed, letting Ringo trap him in the bed.
“Why did you do it?” Ringo asked, turning toward George.
George didn’t look at him.
“I- I don’t really know. It wasn’t… I didn’t want to hurt you, but it just happened, and then it didn’t stop happening, and God, Rich, you know I’m sorry don’t you?”
“Of course I know that,” Ringo said. Because he did. He was sorry he had cheated on Mo in the same way. The same way he knew George was sorry he had cheated on Pattie with him. A vicious-cycle type deal.
They were silent again until George finally, finally turned toward Ringo.
“Pattie knows,” he said, “about Mo, not you.”
“She told me,” Ringo replied.
“I know.”
“So what happens now?” he asked because that was the question he’d been wondering since the night before. When the lives of these four people tangled together in the way they had… What was anyone supposed to do about it?
“I have no idea,” George chuckled darkly. “Pattie says she wants a divorce… says she’s been seeing fucking Eric or whatever so there’s that.”
This was news to Ringo, but it wasn’t exactly surprising. In fact, it was actually kind of funny. In a dark, ironic, I’ll-laugh-because-the-situation-actually-got-worse kind of way. But it was humor nonetheless. He laughed and gasped and choked on air, and stopped when George looked at him strangely.
But then George was laughing too and they were giggling in the bed and George was kissing him again and Ringo could think of nothing else.
“We got kind of dirty,” George whispered against his lips, “Maybe we should clean up together.”
Ringo grinned evilly up at him, rolling on top of George and pulling him out of the bed into the bathroom. He hated each step they took toward each other, hated being persuaded by sex. But he was a rockstar after all. This was what rockstars did, wasn’t it? He was only doing what everyone had always expected of him.
He ran the water in the shower hot, and the rushing sound blocked out all the noise from their ears.
Like car door slams and front door-opening noises.
When Ringo heard Mo walk into the bathroom, he stood up from where he had been kneeling in front of George and shut the tap off.
“Ringo?” Mo called.
“Uh, hi,” Ringo said, stepping out of the tub awkwardly, reaching for a towel, and wrapping it around his waist. Behind the curtain, George crouched down, though Mo probably wouldn’t have been able to see him either way.
“Are you, um, ok?” Mo asked, “You look rather… flushed.”
“I- Yes, I’m fine,” Ringo assured.
“I saw… outside,” Mo said, fixing Ringo with a questioning stare. “Was that George’s car?”
The car.
“Uh, yes! Yes. He’s over… to work on a song?”
“A song?”
Ringo nodded.
“You’re… writing again?”
“Sure.”
“Ritchie, I don’t believe you.”
“What else would he be here for?”
Mo looked at him. She started stepping toward him and Ringo’s entire body exploded in nerves. She walked past him and pulled back the shower curtain.
George smiled sheepishly up at her.
Ringo felt hot. White-hot, sun burning hot, pavement in the summertime and no shoes heat. Mo was silent. George was silent. What were they supposed to do? Ringo didn’t know.
“He knows,” George said, before anything rational or sensible formed out of any one of their mouths.
“I suppose I know now too…” Mo said, trailing off, just staring at George’s naked body in the shower, there for an unquestionable reason. Ringo’s head felt as if it was drowned in liquor again. His thoughts raced like mad, nothing made much sense besides keywords of danger, wrong, wrong, bad.
It then seemed that what Mo knew truly dawned on her and she gasped.
“You’re… you’re…” she said, looking between the two men. Ringo knew what she was going to say before she said it. “You’re disgusting.”
Somehow, even though he might have fallen out of love with Mo a long time ago, he still loved her, and to hear those words from someone he loved… like a sting across his face, his arms, his whole body, hurt like nothing hurt. Worse than finding out he felt that way about George in the first place, worse than finding out everyone he loved was betraying him, apparently.
And that’s how she left. Face flushed red and tears burning in her eyes, shame and rage and everything clear from her face, her body, everything.
George and Ringo were left in the bathroom. Half-naked, still naked, blushing pink and hot all over again. Ringo sank to the floor. George stepped out of the bathtub and put a different towel around his waist. Neither of them said anything. What were you supposed to say? What were you supposed to do? What was this now that it wasn’t a secret? Or was the fact that it was a secret the whole thrill of it in the first place?
“I-”
“Don’t.”
George looked hurt, but Ringo wasn’t looking at him. His eyes were trained on the stupid blue tile in this stupid big bathroom where the stupidest mistake in his whole life had just exploded.
“Ringo-”
“Just leave, George. Just go.”
“But I-”
“Go.”
Ringo heard George sigh, then push out the door of the bathroom, probably angrily getting dressed and fucking off to the stupid car and maybe even going to console Mo. (But Mo had said- she wouldn’t comfort him, anyway.)
What more could Ringo do? Here he was: thirty-three, affair cracked open over his already fading marriage, three children, still fucking hungover, towel slipping around his waist on the bathroom floor of his own home.
So he answered his own question, picked himself off the floor, put his clothes back on in a daze, then went downstairs. Mo had taken the children out again, probably to her mother’s or to another friend. The liquor cabinet was right there.
Ringo opened it. When this would begin to dissatisfy him (and it would), he’d go out to another bar, he’d come home again. And that was all he could do.