Chapter Text
April 13, 1984.
Brian May lived an old man’s life at 37 years old.
It wasn’t a complain.
Or maybe it was.
Truth is, he didn’t know if things could get any better. His routine had become a part of himself, a sacred rite to be performed every day in the exact same order to allow himself to exist.
Wake up at 6:30 am. Shower, get dressed, breakfast plus coffee to go. Catch the bus to work. Work from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm with a lunch break at noon. Come back home and catch up on readings he couldn’t do during the workday from 5:00 to 6:00. 7:00 pm, watch the telly for an hour. 8:00pm, dinner. 8:30 – 9:00 read a book of his choice, which usually are work related. At nine, tea and then, bedtime.
There were good things. He liked his work. Or maybe that could definitely be better. But he moved up from lecturer to reader recently and was well on-track to a tenure position in a couple of years so at least he was going somewhere. And even if his life could be boring, his work was always interesting. The universe was a never ending mass of enigmas and mysteries and he wanted to solve as many as he possibly could and inspire others to discover as much as they could before he became dust.
He needed to. To keep his mind occupied. To lower the volume of the could-have-been’s that tugged at his heartstrings every time he got even one second to rest. That’s why he kept busy, and why he has been following a strict, no-time-wasted routine for the last ten years.
He didn’t even listen to music anymore.
The man in the telly, a background noise, was talking about President Reagan’s call for a ban on chemical weapons, like he had been doing all week long. Brian barely looked up from the paper he was reviewing. He was hoping there could be a mention about the recent space missions but, as always, was reminded the general public couldn’t care less.
People don’t usually like that which they can’t understand, his senior professor at the university tended to say.
People are stupid, Brian decided.
Just as he began feeling drowsy, he spared a look at the wall clock. It was 9:45 pm.
“When did it get so late?”, he mumbled to himself. The paper must have engrossed him so that he lost track of time. By 9 pm he was usually already tucked into bed, ready for an early rising and the work commute.
He took a deep breath and rubbed his face, feeling the coolness of his hands. A huff.
(It pissed him off to be reminded he still couldn’t remember where the fuck his favourite pair of gloves were. It’s April alright, but he could still feel the cold, damn it! He’s old.)
Every day that passed felt like a month instead and life was going by at lighting speed.
He wondered if he’d make it to 47.
“Don’t be ridiculous, you twat,” he chastised himself, standing up to clean and accommodate his desk to finally call it a day.
(There were some thoughts that haunted him, and there was nothing he could do but run from them.
Run, even if his legs were tired and his lungs were heavy. Run, because even if he thought he’s not afraid of death, he knew he wasn’t ready yet.
Alone, unknown, unaccomplished.
He was terrified of those words being his gravestone.)
He shut the TV off, taking a moment to decide whether tea should be drunk or just skipped in favour of rescuing a few more minutes of lost sleep. He decided against keeping the tea. Then, again, had to decide against skipping the tea because he was already becoming too anxious about breaking his routine.
At 10:10 pm, he was brushing his teeth. As he caught his reflection on the bathroom’s mirror, a sigh escaped his lips.
(You’re old, the voices in his head that never slept sang in the falsetto tone of a lost soul brother he didn’t like thinking about. You’re old and alone and unknown and unaccomplished…
And
it is
your own
fault.)
Brian threw his toothbrush at the mirror, glaring at the image of himself with hair short enough not to show any curl, wrinkly black bags under his eyes, and toothpaste foam drooling from his everlasting dry lips. He looked like a rabid, beaten beast.
He picked up the toothbrush, cleaned it, and resumed his previous action. Overall, he just felt tired. That, however, was just a state of being he never could escape from.
The bed awaited and, finally, at 10:30 pm the lights were out and his head met his pillow, and he closed his eyes. Sleep never came easy for him. But there was a routine for that too: he would recite what he read that day to himself, until he dozed off. Sometimes it took minutes and sometimes it took hours, but it was the only way he knew how to keep the obnoxious voices in his head quiet.
He never had nightmares, but sleepless nights were worse.
At least he couldn’t hurt himself if he was asleep.
Brian would never know if he had managed to fall asleep or not before the knock on his door at 11:47 pm. He didn’t move. Either it could be a prank or bad news, and he didn’t want to confirm or confront neither. But the second knock, and the third, and the fourth in successive order became too much to ignore. By this time, it had to be bad news.
He willed himself to get up, put on a coat over his sleeping clothes (it was April but it was still cold, for fuck’s sake!) and went to open the door.
“Oh, fuck, this isn’t the house! Fuck, see, Deaky? I told you this couldn’t be it. We must be fucking concussed. Oh, oh, I’m so sorry for bothering you this late, sir! We’ve been in a little accident back there, you might have heard and – well – you can see we’re not looking our best. Oh, sir, we’re sorry, we’re out of your way now – Come on, Deaky, darling, this is so embarrassing!”
“Fred, this is the house,” a cautious, smaller voice, and a small, skinny boy came out from the shadows of the street before his companion could walk out, “See the number right here? This is the house. Excuse us, sir, where’s Brian and Roger? I don’t mean to be rude, but...”
Brian couldn’t move, much less speak.
Maybe he was wrong about nightmares, maybe he did have them. Maybe he just suppressed them.
He couldn’t think of anything more agonizing than seeing the ghosts of the two friends he lost ten years ago so maybe that was the reason he always forgot them.
Ghosts from the past didn’t bring him relief. They didn’t bring him peace.
They brought him pain.
They were torment.
April 13, 1974.
The American Tour was all they had been talking about since the start of the year, even with their second album dropping just a few weeks earlier; after all, the album had been complete since the middle of last year, only postponed by issues with the record label.
There were a few shows in-between, but the announcement of the on-coming tour was the first big step into truly making it big. It brought a sense of accomplishment all of them - but mostly Brian - were needing so badly.
So of course it was Brian fretting over every single detail. The song list, the tour map, the places they were going to play – granted, only as an opening number, but what band did not have humble beginnings? We have been humble enough, Roger would say, hungry for more. In the end, Brian thought, it didn’t matter as long as it was still happening right now.
The passports were a top priority and of courseBrian was one millimetre away from completely losing it when he found out, as Freddie said nonchalantly, that he thought it was possible he might have lost it – misplaced it, were the words Freddie used, but all Brian heard was ‘complete and utter irresponsibility’.
Brian, being Brian, masked the heart attack and hid his real thoughts on the matter, keeping calm, and kindly asked his front man to please locate the offending thing.
“We’re leaving in two days, Fred. It would be better if you figure out where it is sometime soon.”
Sometime soonmeaning right this instant, Freddie was clever enough to understand. Under normal circumstances, Freddie would have blown Brian off, labelling him as an anxious overthinker, but he had already seen the guitarist’s barely-hanging-there demeanour of the last few days. And Freddie would never admit it, but something about Brian’s scientific background and love for comic books gave him the vibe of mastermind-villain-to-be, and Freddie did not want to be the person a mad Brian would use to test his death ray on first.
“That is a great idea, darling. I’ll see to it right away.”
“Take John with you,” Brian suddenly added.
John, the youngest and newest addition, looked up from his site on the couch where he was comfortably reading one of Roger’s magazines. They were boring and obviously only purchased for the gratuitous female nudity, but the only other reading material in the house were Brian’s impossibly smart books, so he had no options really.
“Why?” Freddie asked, raising an eyebrow as he was reaching for his coat. Why, indeed, wanted to ask John as well, but was too shy still. At 22 years old, he was six years younger than Freddie, the oldest, and five years younger than Brian, the de-facto mother hen of the band. He had been with them for three years already, but still found it difficult to speak up to an overbearing Brian on the verge of committing murder.
“Because,” ‘because I want someone to look after you’Brian wanted to say, but couldn’t bring himself to admit. He didn’t want to offend Freddie, but he, like Roger, could be too wild for their own good sometimes, “it’ll be easier.”
Once again, Freddie read the message underneath, and once again, had to fight back an ill-mannered response. Fighting Brian wouldn’t do any good. Besides, it was only John, whose company he enjoyed and might just as well make the trip to his parent’s house more entertaining. He nodded and motioned for the younger boy to stand up and go.
John’s resigned sigh and “Alright then” as he followed Freddie to the door was the last time Brian heard from them.
For the next ten years, Brian would have to craft a routine to keep himself occupied just to silence the voices that accused him of sending them to their deaths.
April 14, 1984
John called out a gentle “sir?” for the fourth time, but the man at the door kept silent. The youngest exchanged a look of concern with Freddie and, at the same time, caution. He double-checked but he was completely sure they were in the same house they had left just hours ago.
The trip to Freddie’s parents had been uneventful. Mostly the singer humming and retelling anecdotes about the days as a roadie for Smile, and how badly he had wanted to be on the band since then. John already knew all of them, but chose to listen as Freddie seemed just too happy telling them. Freddie liked the spotlight, and John was more than okay with being his audience.
The trip back home wasn’t as smooth.
John couldn’t remember what had happened. His right ear still buzzed from the sudden thunderclap of the explosion. They had been standing next to the road to catch the bus back to Kensington, just a mile behind Heathrow. Three other people were standing next to them, but none were left standing after the powerful blast blew everyone off their feet.
He remembered landing on the road, the scratching sound of the cars trying to either turn around or stop before running over them and the smell of fire that burnt his nostrils. And then the world stood quiet, unmoving, a blurry chaos of smoke and blinding light. He couldn’t hear but his own thumping heart against his ribcage, and his mind screaming inside his head one simple word: run.
Except he couldn’t. His brain was screaming and his heart was racing but his body wouldn’t oblige. He looked around and then to the asphalt where he was lying, to his hands embed with dirt and pebbles and blood. He pressed them against the pavement. It didn’t hurt, because he couldn’t feel.
Someone put their hands on his shoulders, but John couldn’t even make out their face. A gauzy silhouette moving what should be its lips – John thought he was trying to talk to him but he couldn’t understand the words. The unknown figure was now trying to force him to his feet. John wanted to refuse, scared, but his paralyzed body couldn’t resist the force of whoever was now dragging him across the road into a patch of woods.
John was unconsciously conscious of the moment his body was laid back against a tree’s trunk. The air still smelt of burnt metal and inferno. He coughed. The explosion, the fire, the blast, then Freddie hauling him and trying to shake him awake until he could move again. That’s the first memory he had. Freddie’s terrified wide eyes, road rash face and ruffled hair as he was trying to bring him back to reality.
“John? John? Deaky? Boy, can you listen to me? Darling?”
Freddie’s hands cupped John’s face. Freddie saw the trail of blood coming from John’s right ear, and his worry made him forget not to bit his lower lip. He stroke gently the younger’s cheek, hoping to elicit any response from him.
Another minute passed before John could focus his eyes, and the blurry figure became the frontman, and although he couldn’t think of anything to say, his hands grasped Freddie’s over his face.
It sounded lame, but that was the first time he could remember being hugged by anyone other than his family.
Then they had walked, as far from the explosion as they could, through patches of woods and houses they couldn’t recognize. At some point, Freddie suggested they go back to his parent’s, and John agreed. Problem was, none could figure out which way it was. John couldn’t hear from one ear and Freddie was having trouble reining in a panic attack.
As disoriented as they were, they knew they had to go forward. Hours passed. Before they knew, it became night. John said maybe they should stop, and wait. Freddie refused. He needed to keep going to keep himself together.
(A lyric inside Freddie’s head, with his heart beating to it’s rhyme,
“Keep the boy alive, oh it will take all you’ve got and some but, honey, you will survive.”)
After what seemed like hours – or years – they managed to stumble unto a Thames curve, which meant they were at the very least half of their way to Kensington. They couldn’t find any road so they settled to follow the river’s basin until something familiar came into view.
They walked for another three kilometres, between houses and buildings John didn’t remember – but then again, maybe he never paid attention – until Freddie finally found their street name. The street wasn’t quite as they remembered, either, but since everything had been a blur for the past hours, a house painted in a different colour wasn’t top of their problems.
However, a man they didn’t know opening the door to their flat was, indeed, a problem.
“Excuse me, sir, where is Brian and Roger?” John asked, again.
“Calm down, Deaky. Look at us,” Freddie said, soft but loud, “We look worse for wear, dear. We’re scaring this gentleman.”
“He’s scaring me!” came John’s outburst. He was barely holding on, and needed some respite desperately, to come home and find a way to make the world stop buzzing, for God’s sake. He didn’t have time to deal with anybody’s else’s tragedies right now.
“Freddie? Is that really you?”
Freddie, who was trying to contain John with his hands on his shoulders, looked over his to the man at the door.
“Freddie Mercury in the flesh, sir. I’m sorry for my friend’s manners, we had a nasty day.”
Just before John could interject that they didn’t have anything to be sorry for since that man was the one breaking into their house, the man at the door spoke.
“I’m Brian.”
“Excuse me?”
“What did he say?” John, who could barely hear, only saw confusion on Freddie’s eyes as the blood drained from his face.
“I’m Brian,” the man at the door repeated, clearer and louder, a hand passing through his imaginary long curls, “And you’re dead.”