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Roger Taylor has just taken a very unpleasant phone call.
It isn’t the most unpleasant phone call he’s ever taken. In his thirty-eight years, Roger has had many an awful conversation over the phone. He has hung up in the middle of sentences before, and in turn been hung up on, mid rant or excuse or guilty admission. He has been subject to endlessly spanning silences and subjected others to less-than-dulcet tones of rage.
But there is something about the carefully clipped politeness, those ice-cold discussions. The hanging-up click loud in a way that full stops shouldn’t be. Roger finds that these calls in particular put him in a strange, shivering mood.
He sits back in the armchair with a grunt, itching for a cigarette. It’s past one o’clock in the morning and though Roger is no stranger to the hour, his stomach feels a bit funny when he thinks about it. He’s too jumpy to go to bed, fumbles instead for that cigarette.
Dom’s reservations were warranted, her hard voice drawing lines. Roger thinks his hand must be trembling as he lifts it to his lips because this woman is, by law, his wife. And yet here he sits, it’s 1:39am, he’s alone and something about his life is just—and insidiously—waning. He takes a drag, and misses John.
Things are falling apart in slow motion.
He had Dominique on the couch opposite. It was a funny thing, he remembers, like visiting somewhere you have not seen in a long time and finding not as much has changed as you thought would. Now Roger is a newly married man and yet there is nobody to sex on the couch, on the armchair, on any surface in the house.
For a moment, as he sits there and smokes, he pretends he doesn’t recall why John isn’t here. But he can’t help but remember the excuse dying on his lips as he stared into those dark eyes, at least I didn’t fuck her in our bed. He thinks maybe his big house is grandiose in the way a pastry might be. It flakes and it crumbles.
Maybe if Roger’s sins had been only that of a marriage of convenience, he might still have John’s long calloused fingers, his gentle eyes, those pale, warm shoulders. Maybe then he could have let past his lips, in all honesty, at least I didn’t fuck her.
John hasn’t yet removed all his things from their residence. That’s another reason Roger doesn’t really want to go to bed just yet.
(He thinks he felt one of John’s socks, squashed and pressed deep under the sheets, the night before.)
Roger almost drops his cigarette when he startles at the sound of a revving engine. It sounds ridiculously close. His country estate is not nearly close enough to a road for the sound of a vehicle to seem that near. Years of playing rock ‘n’ roll concerts have not been kind to his hearing, but as he leans forward in his seat and listens he swears he can still make out the low rumble. It’s when the honking reaches his ears he leaps up. He recognises it. That’s one of his cars.
As he jogs through the house, twisting around furniture, pausing only to extinguish his cigarette in a glass ashtray, his mind works at the sort of flurried speed one o’clock in the morning rarely sees nowadays. No matter how he turns the situation in his head, he cannot find any explanation for why he can hear one of his own vehicles being driven from inside the house. Why no measure of his security system has done anything in response.
When Roger opens the front door, the Aston Martin is parked on his front lawn. It’s bonnet glimmers, darkly emerald in the glow of the outdoor lights. He squints at the figure sitting in the driver’s seat, muttering ‘fuck’ and darting back inside to scramble for a pair of prescription sunglasses sitting on a table in the entranceway. When he returns, John has stepped out of the vehicle. He leans with a contrived nonchalance, one arm on the roof. The door on the driver’s side is still flung open.
Roger’s whole body grows cold.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he spits down at John, hands going to shakily shut the front door behind him.
John gently slaps the roof of the car, before moving to fold his arms and shooting back, “Oh, just thought I’d check up on you. See how you’re doing after… everything.”
“Well, I’m just goddamn peachy,” says Roger, making his way down a couple of stairs. So much of his willpower is focussed on not letting the lurching sensation his stomach is insisting on show in his body language. “So you can fucking leave now.”
But John only smiles, in that way he does that could be so easily mistaken for a grimace. “Not curious as to how I’m faring, Rog?”
Roger inhales, drumming his fingers on his arm lightly. He’s ticked off now, can feel it simmering under his skin. “I can’t say I am particularly, no.”
John huffs out a breath of laughter. It forms a cloud in the bitter night air. He doesn’t respond to Roger’s words, instead resting a hand on the open door of the Aston Martin. “Nice car you have here, Roger. Vantage, isn’t it? Roomy. Space enough for Dominique plus a few kids.”
“Watch it, John,” Roger feels his chest grow tight with anger. He looks on as John laughs again, louder this time but no less lacking in amusement.
“Goddammit Taylor, you rich fucking whore.”
Roger sees red. It’s the sort of thing the press spits all the time but it’s overwhelming to hear it fall from the lips of someone like John. He thinks he growls but his head is pounding too loudly for him to comprehend it. “As if I haven’t seen you—your fucking bank balance, you fucking piece of shit!”
“The difference, Roger,” John snaps, “Is that nobody needs to see your bank balance to fucking tell what it looks like.”
Barely a second passes before Roger springs forward. He’s stumbling down the stairs, panting and snarling, blood thundering in his head, in his chest, in his arms. But he stops short when he reaches the bottom, when he looks up to see John holding a small object aloft.
It has a tiny light, glowing gently in the 2am gloom. Roger breathes heavily, eyes whirring from it to John’s face and back to it, only comprehending what it is after a good ten seconds have passed. It’s a lighter. John’s expression is unreadable as he looks at it—somewhere between smug and deeply, deeply angry. He has one hand on the open door of the Aston Martin, but it slides off as his eyes finally flicker over to Roger. He does not speak, but his gaze is like ice.
Roger doesn’t even register what is happening when John leans in the open door. He can only stand there, still catching his breath from rage, from hurtling down the stairs, from the Antarctic gale of John’s stare.
When he sees the flames erupt in the front window he screams.
Then he screams again, at John, lightning in his eyes and a storm in his throat. He doesn’t remember making his way over but suddenly he’s in front of John and there is such contempt in the other man’s eyes and he doesn’t care, he doesn’t fucking care anymore. “You—fucking—” Roger shrieks with rage when words strong enough escape him, grabbing the front of John’s shirt and roughly shaking.
John pushes back, shoving Roger right in the chest once, twice, until he stumbles, letting go of the garment. Only a second passes, only long enough for Roger to heave a great big breath, before he reels back and punches John, right in the face.
John teeters back, hands flying to his cheeks. The blow is not strong enough to send him to the ground, but Roger notices him swaying on his feet. It is no relief to his clenched fists, still coiled like springs. “I’m calling the fucking police!” he cries. He can feel the heat of the burning car behind him. He feels absolutely goddamn crazy. John is clutching one side of his face, but he laughs bitterly.
“Yes, and I’m sure they’ll be very interested in my criminal motives. Sorry officer, I wouldn’t have done it—but you see, my once was sordid lover, Mister Roger Taylor here, somewhat fucking ruined my life. The tabloids will have a field day—”
Roger hears himself wail at the top of his lungs, lurches forward to push John with both hands. John hits the ground hard, taken by surprise, and yelps a little in pain.
For a moment Roger just stands there, staring, eyes blown wide. He can see the flicker of the blaze behind him on the grass. Are those tear tracks down John’s cheeks? Roger turns around and is sick all over the lawn, throat burning with acid and his own tears pricking in his eyes.
When he looks up his beloved Vantage is filled with hot juddering flame. He can feel vomit clinging to his bottom lip. Sensing his stomach may lurch again if he looks on much longer, he turns around.
John has gotten up and is walking away. Roger waits, watches him go, expecting perhaps for him to turn around. For him to deliver one last biting quip.
He doesn’t. Roger gets only the crackle of the blaze he can hear somewhere behind him, and the endless, sickening murk of the night.
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