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Since Brian met Roger he only wished for one thing: to grow old with him. Too bad he can’t.
Brian met Roger when he was trying to start a band. Roger was only 20 and full of life, Brian seemed like 22, but nobody knew his real age. It was easy to look younger: he cut and straightened his hair, he wore clothes young people wear and when to University. He studied astrophysics before, but it is never too much to update with something they discovered with new technologies.
Through the years Brian learned how to use these new technologies, but his favorite was the electric guitar. He was always a passionate about music and it was like this that he met Tim and became friends with him, although he had promised he would never get attached to another human being, it is impossible not to live socially without interacting, and Tim was so eager to start a band that he just went with it… And he met Roger.
He never believed in love at first sight. He had two wives before: Chrissie, the woman he was with when he died, in 1715, and Anita, the woman who conquered his heart in the 1800s. He said to only one person how he died and what happened to him, and it was to his lovely Anita, he couldn’t grow old with her, so when she was 50 and he couldn’t pretend his age anymore, he ran away. Since there he never got involved like this to anyone. Until Roger.
For the second time in his life he just went with it, and when Roger asked his out, after Tim left the band and they found Freddie and John, instead of saying no, he confessed that he loves him since the day they met. It’s been five years of pinning. Now he has Roger.
It is all so different from the time he was with Anita, and even more when he was with Chrissie, he can feel that Roger is the love of his life. The way he looks at him, the way he treats him, the way they share everything, with no secrets… well, not everything and definitely not without secrets. But it is too much.
And as the years pass and the band - Queen - is becoming famous, Brian tries not to think about how much he’ll have to give up when the time comes and the other three will look different but he will not. People know him now, people around the world loves them, the press was never kind to them… what they will say if they find up his secret? His biggest fear is people thinking he is a vampire, he is not, he does no harm to people, he is a regular person who happen to die in war and wake up like never happened, he just happens to die and return to live in the same minute like never happened.
In his 37 birthday party he thought to end this. He recorded enough songs and now he knows Roger, Freddie and John will keep earning money with their work. They will be sad that he left, he even thought about faking his own death, but this way maybe Roger won’t keep going, and he needs him to, he needs Roger to live a happy life even without him. He has to.
He has a perfect plan. While the other will be at the pub he will excuse himself, go home, grab his things and leave. To where he doesn’t know yet, maybe Alaska, where there’s nobody and nobody will recognize him and he’ll spent the next 100 years hidden until he can return to London and nobody will ask questions.
But Roger was behind him. “Are you leaving?”
He doesn’t know what to say. Is he? He can lie, but what will this lie be?
“Why are you leaving?” The bag is in his hand, he can’t say he won’t leave, it is the middle of the night and neither is drunk enough not to remember what happened. He is still.
“Are you cheating on me?” The words said by a broken voice made him move, he can’t break Roger’s heart like this. “You’ve been so distant lately, what did I do wrong? Don’t you love me anymore?”
“I would never betray you, you are the love of my life…” He hesitates a little, Roger is crying and he doesn’t know what to do to stop it. So he goes with the truth. “And that’s why I have to leave. I will only bring you pain, and you’d have to lie for me… I don’t want to you, I want you to be happy.”
“And you think I would be happy without you? Tell me the truth, Brian, I’m not a fool, I can handle it.”
“No, you can.”
“Yes, I can!” He yells. So the truth it is.
“I was born in 1687, here in London. I got married when I was 15, with Chrissie, but we didn’t had any children. I volunteered to go the war and when I was 28, in 1715, someone stabbed me and I died. But some days later I woke up in a bed, in a house I didn’t know, no one was there, I was left alone. I ran away, couldn’t go back home, probably Chrissie thought that I die in the battle. I didn’t care, I was scared and clueless of what happened to me.”
He keeps the monologue, Roger staring at him with the big blue eyes Brian loves, trying to understand everything his lover is saying.
“I traveled around the world for years, but eventually, at the beginning of the 19th century I returned to London, and here I found Anita. She was a theatre actress, very talented and after some dates I fell in love with her. We got married and I told her the same thing I’m telling you, that I don’t age and I don’t die. But as she was getting old, I couldn’t stay with her anymore, so I left her too. I only heard about her when she… died… I went to Scotland, and stayed there until 1967, when I decided to come back again. I promised myself that I wouldn’t fall in love again, but then I met you, and I knew you are the love of my life. And things got out of my control, and we made the band, and… but now I don’t know if I can keep hiding it, you three are aging and I’m not, people will start asking questions I can’t answer… Because I don’t know what happened to me.”
They stayed in silence for a while, until Roger broke it.
“I’ll go with you.”
“What?”
“I believe in you, but I don’t believe that I will be better without you. And if it is true that I am the love of your life, then I will make sure you’ll have things to remember about me for the eternity. I will never leave you alone. Or I will help you find a way so you can cure and then grow old and die with me with 90 years old in our bed. We will always be together, Bri, you can’t change it. I’m sure you are the love of my life, I’ll not watch you leave and do nothing.”
Brian doesn’t know what will happen now, but he surely knows that he’ll have Roger with him all the way. The rest he figures out later. He has a plenty of time.