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Tim’s favorite part of living at Ferry Road is that he doesn’t, technically, live there at all. All his friends do, and Tim is free to come and go as he pleases, but apart from chipping in some money for dinner he doesn’t have any obligations or contracts that tie him down to this place. If he wants to spend the night he always has a place to sleep, but if he beds down somewhere else there’s no one anxiously waiting up to see if he comes home or not.
Of course, the downside to technically not living at Ferry Road is that he can’t exactly tell everyone else in the house to shut up when he’s trying to concentrate on his design work.
Brian and Roger are working on a new song - or rather, Brian is working on a new song and Roger keeps interjecting with suggestions, which only derails Brian’s playing and inevitably leads into good-natured bickering between the two of them. Pat and Denise are in the back bedroom but their laughter still drifts loudly through the house, cutting through Tim’s thoughts every time he feels a design idea come to him.
He could just go somewhere else, but Tim is stubborn and comfortable where he is and moving now feels like losing… though losing at what, he’s not really sure.
Tim glances down at his paper and realizes that he’s been idly scribbling in the corner of the page. He squints, and tilts his head a little, and maybe he’s going crazy but he thinks it kind of looks like Brian’s hair. He adds in a few quick lines for a nose, mouth, and chin and with two small dots for eyes the little doodle becomes recognizably Brian.
Tim snorts at the resemblance and sketches in a few more lines to give Brian a neck and shoulders as well. He’s going to need to grab a new piece of paper to work on the projects that he’s actually supposed to be completing… but maybe it’ll help if he warm up with a few more sketches first.
“No, Brian, that’s not- God, would you just listen to what I’m trying to explain here?” Roger says, loud and exasperated.
“I am listening, I just don’t like what you’re suggesting,” Brian tells him.
Tim rolls his eyes as that, predictably, sets off another round of arguing between the two of them, though it’s not heated so Tim doesn’t feel any need to get himself involved.
Instead he moves on to trying to sketch Roger, but he messes up the hair almost immediately. He’s tempted to scribble out his mistake, but at the last second he decides against it and instead sketches in a simple woman’s body to turn the drawing into Denise.
Maybe if he tries a larger sketch, so he can get the details of Roger’s face right… but he only manages a few lines in the lower right corner of the page before he hates where that is going too. He scowls in frustration and taps his pen against the table as he tries to figure out how to sketch Roger so it’s recognizable as him.
The problem is that Roger just isn’t built for caricatures. He’s not like Brian, where as long as you get the hair and the nose right you can pass almost any doodle off as a drawing of him. It really is the sum of Roger’s parts that make him unfairly beautiful; getting even a single detail wrong in a sketch is enough to throw off the delicate balance of everything that makes Roger, well, Roger.
He studies Roger’s profile as the drummer rather enthusiastically tries to get Brian to see whatever point he’s attempting to make, and after a few moments Tim starts sketching again. He goes for a side-view this time so he can capture the slight upward turn to Roger’s nose, the jut of his chin and his expressive brows. Tim wishes that he had his colored pencils work with so he could try to match the exact shade of pink of Roger’s lips, but he at least shades in Roger’s mouth with the pen to try to add some dimension to the sketch.
The eyes prove to be even more of a challenge. There’s a depth to them that’s just impossible to capture with only a pen and the final result looks like Roger is wearing heavy eyeliner, which isn’t a look that the drummer typically goes for. Tim frowns in disappointment but there’s no way to fix it so he just decides to carry on, adding in Roger’s thick lashes to at least bring some recognizable element back into the drawing.
Tim is just finishing sketching in the rough outline of Roger’s hair framing his face when he’s startled by someone saying, “You’ve gotten his chin wrong, you know.”
Tim jumps and turns to glare at Freddie, who somehow managed to sneak up behind Tim without him realizing. “Fucking hell, Fred, are you trying to give me a heart attack?” he snaps. “When did you even get here?”
“Oh, just a few minutes ago,” Freddie says. “But I got bored of waiting for someone to notice me, so I decided to come see what you were working on.” He leans over Tim’s shoulder and taps the sketch of Roger, adding, “This isn’t bad, but his chin isn’t that pronounced.”
“I know that, but I can’t exactly erase away pen,” Tim says.
Freddie winces sympathetically. As a graphics student himself, he’s all too familiar with the pain of immortalizing mistakes in pen.
“Well, you know it’s quite good, considering.” Freddie pats Tim on the shoulder. “I did recognize it as Roger right away.”
“That’s something, at least,” Tim mutters.
“It’s more than just something. It means you’ve accomplished exactly what you wanted to do with your drawing,” Freddie says.
Freddie’s tone is completely sincere, and when Tim looks back down at his sketch it’s with a less critical eye than he’d been looking at it before. He’s always harsh about his own work, maybe unfairly so, but he knows that Freddie isn’t the sort to offer up hollow praise. If he says that Tim’s drawing is recognizable as Roger, then Tim must have done something right with it.
“And of course,” Freddie says, and Tim glances back up at him just in time to see the wicked glint in Freddie’s eyes before he continues, “you’ve also made it very easy to recognize which of your bandmates is your favorite.”
“Oh fuck off!” Tim says, scowling at Freddie. “Roger is not my favorite!”
“Well you wouldn’t know that from your drawings,” Freddie teases. “Brian looks like a cartoon out of a children’s book, and Roger looks like the Mona Lisa.”
Tim can feel his face going hot with embarrassment and he hisses, “Shut up! You’re one to talk anyway, since the first thing you pointed out about it was what I’d gotten wrong!”
Freddie just laughs at Tim’s obvious discomfort. “Well obviously Roger’s my favorite! I’ve gone into business with him, haven’t I?”
“If you can call that stall of yours a “business”, then I suppose.”
“What else would you call it, then?” Freddie asks.
“A mistake?”
Freddie squawks in indignation and Tim, laughing, turns back to his drawings as inspiration suddenly strikes him. The scribbles from his second failed attempt at drawing Roger are calling to him and with a few quick strokes he turns the lines into a rough bird with a human head on it.
“Hey Freddie, recognize this one?” Tim asks as he taps the new drawing.
Freddie looks down at the page and immediately frowns when he sees the new sketch. “If you think that looks like me-”
With a wide grin, Tim writes f bulsara next to the bird-monster.
“Oh, you-!”
Freddie tries to grab Tim’s pen away from him and Tim cackles as he holds it out of his reach.
“What do you think that sketch says about how I feel about you?” Tim asks.
“That you have absolutely no taste or talent!” Freddie snaps.
He kneels on the edge of Tim’s seat, straining to take the pen away from him before he can make any more horrible caricatures - and then the whole chair unbalances and Freddie’s eyes widen in alarm as both of them topple over and hit the floor with a loud and painful thud.
“I don’t know what the hell you two are doing, but can you keep it down?” Roger shouts. “Brian and I are trying to work on a song over here!”
The absurdity of the situation suddenly catches up with Tim. One moment he was quietly grumbling about everyone in the house disturbing him, and now he’s on the floor with Freddie and Roger is yelling at them for making too much noise.
He snorts, and then starts uncontrollably laughing. Freddie stares at him for a moment before dissolving into a fit of giggles as well, and he duck his head into the crook of TIm’s neck to try to stifle the noise.
“Hey! Shut up!” Roger yells.
“You shut up, Rog!” Denise yells back at him from the rear of the house.
Tim is laughing so hard that he can’t catch his breath. Freddie is hardly better off, but he somehow manages to roll off of Tim and then use the chair to push himself back to his feet.
“Come on, Tim. I don’t think we’re Roger’s favorites at the moment,” Freddie says. He offers Tim a hand and helps pull him to his feet as well.
“No, I don’t think we are,” Tim agrees. He swallows another laugh and adds, “And after I put so much effort into that drawing too.”
Freddie nods in mock solemnity and says, almost with a straight face, “You probably would have been better off making him the bird instead.”
They both lose it again, falling over each other as Freddie’s joke sets off another fit of giggles from the two of them.
“I don’t know what’s up with you two today, but please just get out,” Brian says with a tired sigh. “Preferably before Roger starts yelling again.”
“We’re leaving, we’re leaving,” Freddie promises. He grabs the piece of paper with all the sketches and loops an arm around Tim’s waist to keep him upright. “Come on, Tim dear. Let’s go find some place where we’re actually wanted.”
“Good luck finding that,” Roger mutters.
He’s joking, and they both know it, but Tim still gives Freddie a forlorn look and says, “I definitely should have made him the bird.”
And with that the two of them, laughing and dodging a pillow thrown by Roger, make a quick retreat from the room.