Chapter Text
Early November, 1993. Blue skies and sunshine reigned supreme over the Old Royal Observatory in Greenwich, though the breeze blew crisp and fresh, the only way it could in mild autumn. Despite the more than remarkable guests spending the afternoon there, a Tuesday and sheer luck combined to make the destination less popular than usual.
To Roger, it was all incredibly stifling.
“You’re up and moving,” Brian mentioned with mild enthusiasm. “I’m surprised I didn’t bore you to pieces. Thought I might hear you snoring from the second row.”
“I stayed awake. Doesn’t mean I understood a goddamn thing,” Roger huffed, as good-naturedly as he could manage.There had been a small gathering of intellectuals in various fields of astronomy for a talk at the observatory that day. Brian had been invited to say a few words, for what reason, Roger figured was more star power than anything that actually had to do with astronomy. But it was Brian’s first foray into astrophysics since the seventies, and no one was prepared to stop the man from participating. Even if he was far more excited than any forty-six year old deserved to be.
Roger had been invited, along with some other friends and family, and even though this was as far from his scene as any event could be, he decided it wouldn’t be excruciating, and came along. Thought maybe it would distract him from something his drum kit just couldn’t really help.
“You’re a bit more than tired, aren’t you?” Brian asked, quiet while the space doctors and astronaut-wannabes chattered on behind him. There was far too much knowing in his voice.
Itching for a cigarette now more than ever, Roger nodded, and said simply, “It’s that time of the year.” The second, to be precise, of several dreadful Novembers that would encompass the rest of his life.
No one in the room understood more than Brian, but even now, it was different. Brian could be worse off than Roger sometimes, but he had his stars to distract him today, even if the rest of the month went by miserably. Roger had fallen face first into years-old grief weeks ago.
He was fine, most of the year. His tried and true dark night of the soul had come and gone when it actually happened, but still reared its ugly head, every now and again. Fall was particularly bad; two big, two months apart. September fifth still wasn’t far enough away and November twenty-fourth was approaching at alarming speed. After last year, Roger thought it would be better, but each time he remembered, it all felt as fresh as the news on that first day.
Even now, his grief felt more amplified, as if it could ever be possible. Pounding against his chest like intense bass in a strange, lonely club, rocking the floor beneath him. Perhaps it was because he had spoken to Jim Hutton not even a week ago. A living reminder, no doubt, but this time with a bombshell disguised as some kind of comfort.
“You know, Roger,” Jim had begun in that lilting way of his, “there was always something about you.”
They were at a party in the West End, and Roger hadn’t expected to see Jim. He had stopped for a quick chat, the least he could do. Now though, with god knows how many drinks over the past few hours, the drummer’s mind veered anxiously (and perhaps not very politely or forward-thinking) toward a come-on.
“The way you were with him,” Jim went on, when Roger didn’t reply right away. “So fun and effortless. Different from how I loved him.”
“Well we were mates,” Roger answered, puffing out a laugh incredulously. Thankful his thoughts had been playing tricks on him, though the statement was peculiar all the same. “Twenty years worth, I’d hope it was effortless.”
“Yes, I know.” Jim chuckled, and looked down into his half-empty drink. “But I think, if things had been different - I s’pose, if you had been different - you two could have been soulmates.”
Of all the conclusions to strike Roger dumb. It was something he had never thought about before. How could he have? That was a term you reserved for someone terribly special. Someone, he imagined, you intended to make love to. In 1977 he thought he’d found his soulmate in Dominique, but that had all gone tits up, and fancied he’d gotten it right this time with Debbie. Could it have been that he had been completely wrong in the first place?
The thought sat heavily with Roger, even now. Soulmates . If he had been different . He knew exactly what kind of different Jim had been referring to. With two women and three children of his very own, it was preposterous to think otherwise.
And yet, when Roger’s mind began to wander in those quiet moments, and he remembered days long gone...
“I have to step away,” Brian mentioned, already doing just that, wavering within earshot. “Five minutes, and then we can head to dinner, yeah?”
“Alright.” Roger nodded him away, off to fraternize with the astronomers, a towering fool with a mane of ridiculous curls alongside mostly clean-cut hairstyles.
Not wanting to look lost, or linger where he didn’t actually give a shit, Roger pushed his sunglasses up his nose and stepped outside, where the meager chill did its best to refresh his tired face, and failed. He still felt old, distracted - and maybe like he had missed out on something crucially important as well.
Even with the Maritime Museum in proximity, Greenwich Park boasted a whole lot of useless. The Royal Observatory was apparently fit for lectures, but no actual observing these days. Roger had heard that the Prime Meridian line was not even accurate, but Greenwich still lauded it as prominently as any other monument. Roger walked the brass strip like a tightrope with his hands in the pockets of his expensive wool coat, traversing the border of two vast hemispheres unceremoniously.
If things had been different . So nondescript, and yet to Roger, it could only mean one thing.
He remembered the stage, where energy crackled against his fingertips, with every smash of cymbals while a siren song fit for thousands ripped across the microphone. Dark eyes shining under the unforgiving lights, aimed over his drums and gone in the next moment to please a devoted, hungry crowd. Sharing a song, a legacy, a moment in history with the best voice in the entire world.
He remembered before that came to be. Before all of this, before awards sat gathering dust on his shelves, and before anyone had been acquainted with the word posthumous . The stall at Kensington Market where they scrounged for every pound. And still, it was better than the school grind. In those quiet, vast moments between customers. The old, worn clothes kept their secrets. Meanwhile the two of them laughed, babbled, and sang, and everything in between.
If Roger could reach into that mulish blond twenty-year-old’s mind, he thought, maybe there was something he had overlooked. Something swimming behind his mind’s eye at the time, that had stayed buried and dormant for the next two decades. Something hiding under the friendly affection and casual intimacy. Something someone else was far more willing to venture out of his comfort zone for than he.
And then what? What if he had acted against expectations? The possibilities were endless, and confounding. Roger was almost too self-aware to bear imagining them, but he couldn’t help himself. It had been on his mind all week.
There would have been no diagnosis. No waning off into an early, aching end. He could have stopped the promiscuity before it had even begun, and then there would be no media scrutiny, hounding at the doors to their lives. Roger could have prevented the endless partners, and the more devastating drugs, and the pain. Everything could have been so much better, if he hadn’t had his head in his arse.
And he hadn’t even considered it. A kind man grieving the love of his life had planted the idea. Roger could have prevented that hurt too. Everything would have changed, yet he couldn’t help but think, they would all be the better for it.
It was all so ludicrous to think, but it didn’t stop Roger from spreading his feet on the cobblestones, one foot in either hemisphere, so to speak. They said you ought to make a wish at the Prime Meridian, and Roger was just beside himself enough to indulge the fairy tale. Eyes shut against the seeping light of the sun, he tossed a hapless wish into the ether.
That things had been different. For health, safety, and security - not necessarily his own. And of course, that he had been different himself.
Only the first week of November and Roger was already suffering dramatics. He opened his eyes to the pleasant landscape spread out before him, and watched as the lecturers and their listeners spilled out of the observatory. Brian approached hand-in-hand with Anita, looking eager to be away from the public space as long as his role had been fulfilled.
“You ready?” Brian asked, nodding off toward their limousine. “I asked some of the lot to join us, I hope you don’t mind.”
“Just as long as all this space theory doesn’t interfere with my being fed,” Roger answered, managing to pull together a smile now. Debbie would be meeting him at the restaurant anyway, so at the very least, he’d have someone to speak with on less astronomical subjects.
They indulged small talk for as long as it took to get out of Greenwich Park, but London traffic was as abysmal as ever at this hour. In the meantime, the Bangles serenaded them from the radio, singing of heartbeat and flames. Roger found himself stifling a yawn behind the sleeve of his coat more than once.
“Why don’t you close your eyes, Rog?” Brian offered, knocking against his knee on the other side of the limo. “After all that blathering, you’ve earned it.”
“If I close my eyes, I’ll definitely fall asleep.”
“That’s alright. Who’d you prefer wake you? Me or Deb?”
Roger laughed a little. “You can sing me awake. She’ll just smack me.”
Brian chuckled in kind, the sad quality leaving his eyes for a moment. “Understood.”
With that, Roger allowed himself to tilt his head back against the rest, and get comfortable. It was so easy to get worn out these days, and sleep always came quickly when he wasn’t busy. Sometimes he felt like his old dad, unable to make it through the day without a snooze.
The murmur of Brian and Anita’s conversation disappeared under the haze of his nap, and for a while, Roger drifted out and away from the cozy limousine.
A moment later they came to a jerky brake, and his eyes flew open. Roger half-expected to peer out the window and gaze into the marching lines of traffic, hear some profanity swapped between drivers or - god forbid - an accident.
He was surprised to find himself having to push up to sit, lying sideways. Maybe the harsh stop had sent him sprawling onto the leather seat.
But Roger did not find leather under his splayed hands. Instead, there was linen, rippling between his fingers, wrinkled and white. The interior of the limo had evaporated altogether, and instead he found himself in a bedroom he had never seen before in his entire life. No; maybe familiar, lingering on the tip of his tongue. Either way, it didn’t change the fact that Roger was in a completely different place from where he had fallen asleep.
As he rose, the sheets fell away from his body, revealing that his coat and suit were gone as well. In their wake, a green cotton pajama set. Had he been brought into someone’s home because he hadn’t woken up? Had the observatory been a dream? Everything had been so vivid a second ago, an hour ago.
“Say my name, sun shines through the rain.”
A soft voice drifted into the room, stealing Roger’s attention for the first time. The dull roar of water against tile arrived with it.
“A whole life, so lonely, and then come and ease the pain.”
Roger’s body seemed to be working faster than his mind, sending him scrambling to his bare feet, wrenching the sheets away. The words were utterly gentle, gossamer, drifting in breathy cadences. The kind Roger could pick out among hundreds.
“Close your eyes, give me your hand, darling .”
He shuffled out of the bedroom, trailing against the walls as he followed the echo of bathroom reverberation. The pounding of his heart left Roger somehow grounded, physical, certain that this was real.
“Do you feel my heart beating, do you understand?”
The door stood open just a crack, allowing heavy steam to billow out into the narrow hallway. Roger pushed it open, heedless of privacy that might have gripped him under normal circumstances. A figure wavered behind a translucent, foggy curtain, swaying to an imagined rhythm.
“Do you feel the same? Am I only dreaming…”
The curtain couldn’t stop Roger either, and as every suspicion rose to a raucous head in his trembling limbs, he shoved the plastic aside. The once shrouded figure jumped, soap and sponge nearly toppling out of his hands.
“Don’t startle me like that! There are nicer ways to intrude on a man in the shower!”
Freddie stared at Roger accusingly, arms cinched up against his dripping body as if to shield an attack. Roger stared in kind, unable to move, or breathe, or speak. The showerhead pelted his face and shirt with a warm mist, leaving the cotton clinging to his skin damply. He thought he might get sent careening back in space, or collapse to the floor.
And could anyone blame him? None other than Freddie fucking Mercury stood centimeters away from him, in the grand old year of 1993. Taking a bloody shower with lavender soap, while Roger slept not a room away in his jammies. No, it couldn’t be 1993. At the very least, it was a weird, mean dream on behalf of the universe, and Brian would wake him up at any moment.
“Rog?” Freddie’s alarmingly real face fell from shock to concern right quick, his shoulders dropping the longer Roger kept still and silent. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
When Roger didn’t reply, Freddie, in all his naked glory, stepped over the lip of the tub, pulling the towel hanging up with him. Short, thick hair ran inky black with water, silver at the edges. As if it were of any important, Roger noticed it was in need of a trim. Freddie’s face was clean shaven, but not gaunt, like the last time Roger had seen him. In fact, none of him was gaunt. Tan flesh pulled across a full form, soft in all the areas appropriate for a middle-aged man (as if Roger could talk). For all intents and purposes, healthy, and well.
“If you don’t say something soon, then you’ll startle me all over again!”
“Freddie,” Roger choked, almost fearing his own voice would spell the end of it.
Freddie’s face softened again, his teeth peeking from between his lips. “Did you have a nightmare?” he asked, lifting his hand to Roger’s cheek. A spark radiated from the warm, damp palm and right into Roger’s face, his skull, his bones. He could almost feel every ridge, every fingerprint.
That was all he needed to do him in.
“Yes,” he breathed, letting every single memory of the last two years drift away from him, if just for this moment. “A very bad one.”
“Oh, poor thing,” Freddie tutted sympathetically, taking Roger’s face in both his hands now. “Will talking about it make you feel better?”
Roger shook his head, with limited movement. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Please don’t fret, dear. You’re alright now.” A brief nod, and Freddie tilted forward. Even as the distance between them disappeared, and his intentions became clear, the last thing Roger expected was the press of velvet lips against his own. As if it were the simplest thing in the world. Chaste, comforting, and tangible.
“You’re with me now, everything’s fine.” Freddie pulled away and touched their foreheads together, gazing with more affection than Roger had ever felt from the man in front of him.
Roger remembered the Prime Meridian, and his wish. As if that were the only explanation for what was happening right now, however illogical.
Reason or not, it was the last he dared to think of anything that had happened up until this point, in this very moment.
“Yes, you’re right.” Knowing he had waited long enough, Roger felt no hesitation as his arms came around Freddie’s, and he leaned forward for another kiss. As easily as he’d kiss anyone important enough to him.
Freddie met him sweetly, thumbs brushing in soothing circles across Roger’s cheekbones as their mouths slipped together. Roger felt as if his chest might burst, and after a moment of near-lightheadedness, he realized he needed air, and broke away.
He kissed Freddie Mercury. Not as a joke, or for fun. It was real and tender and Roger became inexplicable enamored, his hands trailing up the body of a man , against the sopping hair of a man , watching that man hold all his attention in the world.
“I love you, Fred,” Roger whispered, since he’d never thought to before.
Freddie chuckled. “Well I’d hope so, darling, or we’d have utterly wasted the last twenty years of our lives.”
They met again, lips gliding a little more fervently this time. Roger was trying his damnedest not to smile, or do anything to mar their kiss. It couldn’t quite stop him from nudging Freddie back toward the foggy shower, though.
“Roger, you’ll get your pajamas wet,” Freddie stated, teeth bumping against Roger’s mouth.
“As if I fucking care.” Roger hiked his leg over the tub, and the warm spray hit his hair, seeping into his clothes. Freddie giggled uproariously, and Roger was close to matching as they clutched at each other, humming into wet, honeyed kisses as the water grew tepid.
Roger thanked god for the spray. It brought Freddie back to him, and hid the tears that rolled down his face.
***
“My god , darling, I haven’t felt so young in years. If I were a doctor I’d prescribe bathroom ravishments daily to blokes over forty.”
Roger smiled - though he wasn’t sure if he’d ever stopped, really. His pajamas had been wrung out and tossed in the laundry, and now he sat naked as the day he was born in the bed where he woke up, watching Freddie dance around from closet to bureau, his arse on full display. Catching each other indecent had never been a big deal in their glory days, but Roger didn’t think they’d have ever found themselves comfortable lounging bare in each others’ company.
“I must not ravish you enough, then,” he replied, feeling absurd and pleased with himself at the same time. After all, he had just gotten here, for all intents and purposes, and didn’t know any better.
“No no no no no,” Freddie clucked, falling from high to low in a single octave to express his disagreement. How Roger had missed that voice ringing in his ears, straight from the source. The vinyls didn’t hold a candle. “We’ve just fallen into routine, I’m afraid. It happens to men our age. We become so terribly normal that you don’t even know what you’re missing!” He hopped into a pair of briefs and a vest and began an arduous search for a proper top.
“Then I suppose,” Roger went on, shuffling to his knees on the slippery sheets, “we have to break our routine.” Whatever that was! He felt positively electric. Same as Fred said, hadn’t felt so young in years. And he was prepared to channel every single year he had spent not loving Freddie Mercury into this second chance.
“Roger Taylor, what has gotten into you?” Freddie whipped over his shoulder and stalked back to the bed, over the small distance. Gel held his hair in perfect place. It was fuller than the last time Roger had seen. “I know you’re an animal in your own right but you’re being absolutely outrageous. Should I be concerned about this nightmare of yours?”
Feeling a smirk twitch onto his face, Roger curled his hands around the straps of Freddie’s wife beater, yanking himself forward on the bed. Freddie stood his ground, looking awfully smug despite his efforts to keep some semblance of sternness.
“No, you shouldn’t,” Roger said, tilting his chin invitingly. “In fact, I plan to banish it from my mind completely, and I was hoping you’d help.” Before Freddie could argue or ask any further questions about the horrible memory, Roger pulled one final time and sent the man toppling over him with a yelp. Sure enough, Fred was out of his underwear in no time.
If what happened in the shower was ravishment (which was a good deal of snogging and groping until the water turned icy enough to force them out in search of warmth) then Roger didn’t know what to call this that followed. Any apprehension about uncharted territory so to speak, vanished as Freddie laid himself out all of his own accord, and guided Roger for no other reason than because it pleased him, and he wanted to. He couldn’t have possibly known he was giving direction, but Roger accepted it gratefully, and tried not to be too obvious about channeling his few experiments with anal from when he was rather promiscuous himself.
When they were in the throes of it, Freddie turned out to be anything but a pillow princess. Rather he was a queen to be ironic and coy about it. Even during his miserable considerations, sex was not something Roger had ever considered with Freddie. He was glad, because nothing compared to this. Freddie was hot, and reactive, and palpable, and in no time Roger reached a climax unlike any other.
“Will you tell me about everything that’s happened?” Roger murmured, face pressed against Freddie’s nape, senses heady with aftershave. His hand trailed over a furred stomach, delving teasingly close to an apex between strong thighs, before his hand was slapped away.
“What do you mean, everything ?” Freddie countered. “So much has happened in the history of the world. You have to be specific.”
“I want to hear it in your own words, how all this came to be. You and me, in this bed, this room, this flat. Just for fun.” That bit was fairly true, but it didn’t stop Roger from vying not to be too painfully obvious. The last thing he needed was for this to all come crashing down because he was oblivious to what in his life had changed.
Freddie shifted around in Roger’s arms until they were face to face, propping his chin on his wrist against the pillows. Roger tucked his hands close to his chest when the distance was a touch too far to justify his slothing limbs, but watching Freddie look upon him with fond amusement was better enough. If it didn’t show in his own eyes, Roger could feel the same sensation swelling his entire body, more than he ever thought possible.
To think he could be forty-four years old and so suddenly in love with a man he’d known for half that time.
“What’s gotten into you?” Freddie accused lightly. “I’ve got half a mind to think you’re avoiding work today.”
“Tell it as if you were writing a chapter in your autobiography,” Roger insisted, grinning. He was sure that was just the sort of thing the masses would gobble up, in due time.
“You’d take up far more than a single chapter, darling,” Freddie murmured, voice falling to a purr before he righted himself again, and cleared his throat with some animation. “Right! The beginning. As a child, I had humble beginnings in Zanzibar-”
“ Fred -”
“We worked together.” Freddie swatted at Roger’s shoulder. “In a dreadful, sweltering stall full of second-hand clothes. You were a pretty young thing, a feisty drummer with wild gold locks and a hatred for university. And I, a suffering artist with taste ahead of my time, if you’re anything to go by.”
Roger felt his smile grow to aching, as Freddie punctuated each grand phrase with a sweep of his arms or toss of his head. For all his griping, he certainly loved being the center of attention, even if it was just one person’s.
“We got on well enough - more than well enough - and came to share a flat. We were mates, but I’ll maintain there was something else from the moment I laid eyes on you.”
“Really?” Roger whispered - worrying a moment he might reveal himself, if Freddie had already told him this before.
“You can’t go around with long blond hair and baby blue eyes and expect no one to notice, love.” Fred winked, and went on. “You have to be careful, of course, and I wasn’t about to out myself to a man who smacked things with wooden sticks as a hobby and an awful temper to boot. Imagine my surprise when you came to me.”
Roger tried not to let his eyes grow too wide. “And what did I say?”
“Your mouth was far too busy to say much of anything,” Freddie offered in a hush tone, as if to truly enchant Roger with the tale for the very first time. “One kiss was confession enough, and that night, I received so many that I felt like a priest.”
Freddie reached for the pack of smokes, ashtray, and lighter on the nightstand beside him, giving Roger plenty of time to register and recuperate, flushed against all odds.
“Of course you did force out a messy, adorable sweet nothing the next morning,” Freddie said, smiling with the return of a memory that Roger simply did not possess. “Though it wasn’t really nothing , given that it brought us here today. And who can blame one of our kind for stammering about? It’s not exactly the brave new world they’ve been heralding, is it?”
“And that was twenty years ago,” Roger punctuated, trying not to let his voice turn too questioning as he tried to remember how long he had been living in that crummy flat with Freddie.
“Twenty-three already, can you believe it?” Freddie lit his cigarette and took a drag, offering the end to Roger as he chuckled. “Soon we’ll be celebrating our silver anniversary as if it’s any better than the last.”
It only took Roger a moment to align the years in his head, but it was rather easy when everything settled into a clean decade. 1970. The same year everything else had come to fruition. Safe to say, it was definitely appropriate.
Even better, it meant he hadn’t missed a single thing.
“Oh shit, look at the time.” Freddie picked up and promptly dropped the bedside clock back on the table, and spun himself away from the warm contact they had created to stand. “Look what you’ve done, Roger.”
“Me?” he demanded.
“I’m thoroughly debauched and we were supposed to be gone at quarter past. You did this on purpose, didn’t you? Just so you could stay in bed.”
Roger opened his mouth to respond, but Freddie was in too much of a put-upon tizzy, snatching up his towel as he moaned and groaned. “And now I have to shower all over again. You’ll just have to go after me. I better not hear you complain about cold water, you did this to yourself.”
With a final sniff, even as his lips curled at the corners, Freddie sauntered out of the room, leaving Roger alone in bed with a lit cigarette between his fingers. He’d hardly taken a single puff, and with the cherry ashing off in smoking chunks, he figured he was better off stamping it out in the ashtray.
The sound of the shower reached Roger’s ears eventually, and he found some flannel bottoms and a T-shirt to wear while he waited for Freddie to finish bathing. For all he knew, they were Fred’s clothes, but Roger didn’t mind either way. He could have lazed away in bed until it was his turn in the bathroom, but his curiosity had hardly been satisfied. It wasn’t like he could very well ask Freddie to recount every missed moment for him. Roger had seen It’s a Wonderful Life , and he knew better than to come off sounding like a madman.
As long as this was, apparently, his own flat, he figured there was no harm in exploring. As he wandered out into the hall again, Roger was struck with familiarity. The place reminded him of 12 Stafford Terrace, in a way; though with only one floor, it wasn’t exactly the same. That first hallway, consisting of their bedroom, the bathroom, and a third door that turned out to be a spare bedroom, branched off into a wider space where a foyer gave way to a modestly sized parlor.
A large housecat with tawny fur greeted Roger as he turned into the living area, springing up on the arm of the couch with enough agility to have him jump.
“Hello,” he murmured after a moment, almost disbelieving as he reached out to scratched the animal behind the ears. She slinked right out from under his hand, traversing the sofa, an ottoman, and bench seat to perch upon an upright piano of old, lacquered wood.
No drums though, Roger noticed, not that he thought they could fit anywhere here. Maybe there was another room somewhere. Still, it seemed rather odd that they would take up residence in a flat so small. Maybe it was all to keep a low profile.
Across the top of the piano were a handful of framed pictures, some Roger had seen before and others he hadn’t. There were friends and family, but most were him, or Freddie, or both, in far more intimate poses than they had ever managed. Or, more likely, ever allowed a photographer to catch them in, from the timeline he was used to.
He pushed open the piano, the cat peering curiously from the doily she’d chosen as adequate seating. The ivory keys were slightly uneven, yellowed from time and use. An F toward the right had chipped.
Roger splayed his hand across the middle, and played a simple C major chord. A sour tone sprang from the piano, causing the cat to pounce away, and for Roger to frown - more confused than anything.
It seemed the piano was ever so slightly out of tune.