Work Text:
One’s Due Paid to the Appointed Spirit
Better the ache from hours spent at the guitar than the cramp from holding pen to paper, Brian thought as he flexed his spasming fingers and stared bleakly at the fifth? sixth? rewrite of a treatise due in a matter of days. He wasn’t done, wasn’t ready. Wasn’t good enough.
Just as well that Roger had possession of their typewriter for his own writing. Brian could hear him through the thin, damp wall of the flat as he poked two-fingered at the keys. No matter to Roger how lackadaisically his schoolwork was composed so long as it managed to pass muster; his head and heart were entirely absorbed by music as much as Freddie’s were. Only Brian was distracted with the scholarly need to pursue a different starlight than the one that captivated his friends.
Letting out a breathy sigh, Brian picked up the pen once more. The lines across the page seemed to flicker before his tired eyes. Just another hour. Maybe two. Then some tea and whatever passed for food in their depleted larder.
The paper was growing damp under his sweaty palm by the time he heard a light footstep in the hall. Freddie, then. Three raps on his door made him lift his head—an effort, he found—and say, “Come on in.”
When he turned to greet his visitor, he was pleasantly surprised to see a gleam in Freddie’s eyes. Lately they had been dark with some inner turmoil or another. Roger could usually coax him out of those moods when Brian was too consumed with study, dragging him out after the stall closed and telling ribald jokes over cheap beer.
It was good to see Freddie smile, even if he still put his hand over his mouth in front of Brian.
“Are you terribly busy?” Freddie asked, peering over Brian’s shoulder at the reams of scribbled notes. “That looks…intimidating.”
“It really isn’t. I just can’t seem to get my thoughts organized, is all.” Brian stretched his arms above his head until his neck straightened. “What’s up?”
“Can you come with me?” The question sounded more like a plea. “I need you to see something.”
“Is it another costume idea?” Brian asked. Freddie was determined to dress him up instead of letting him perform in comfortable old jeans. Bits of tattered Victoriana from the stalls were often draped over him, Freddie tutting about sleeves that were never long enough while Roger snickered at the look of bewilderment on Brian’s face.
Oh, how Roger had laughed until that embroidered jacket turned up. Roger and Freddie very nearly came to blows over it until John, weary of the bickering, suggested they cut it in half. An agreement to share was immediately struck and John was called “Solomon Deacon” for weeks afterwards.
Freddie leaned against the door jamb and kept his eyes on his shoes as he spoke. “Not really. Well, not exactly.”
Wincing at the creak in his knees as he got out of the desk chair, Brian stood up. “Soho? Carnaby Street?”
“The Tate, actually.”
Brian blinked a few times as he thought. A walk would do him good. Seeing art was refreshing by itself, but with Freddie it was always an education as well as a chance to watch him in raptures over details as he explained them.
“Well,” Brian began as he pushed his work into a loose stack, “God knows you’ve listened to me bang on about astronomy often enough. I’m due a lecture on art.”
Freddie’s smile nearly lit up the tiny bedroom. “Really? You’re not too wrapped up in the stars?” He seemed amazed that Brian would “bother” with the expedition, and Brian felt a wave of cold guilt cold guilt over being so occupied with his own problems that he hadn’t spent enough time with his friend.
“Absolutely.” Brian grabbed a scarf and tied it around his neck. As he walked down the hall, he paused to thump on Roger’s door. “Going out with Freddie, be back later. And don’t use up all the ribbon.”
Roger must have been harder at work than Brian had imagined; rather than the expected whine about not being invited along, Roger merely retorted, “Like you’re going to be ready to type your precious paper any time soon.”
“Touché,” sighed Brian. He could almost feel his father’s disapproving glower for stepping away from an unfinished assignment. But this was Freddie, for once choosing HIM over Roger, and the inexplicable sensation of victory made him delighted to play truant.
“Besides,” Roger chimed in just as Brian was getting lost in thought, “I bought this ribbon in the first place, so you owe me one.”
“You charmed it off a girl in your anatomy class,” Freddie reminded him.
“Whatever. Oh, and pick up food on the way home, would you?”
Brian rolled his eyes. Of course, Roger couldn’t see him, but it felt wonderful anyway. “With what, exactly?”
A few seconds later, Roger opened the door. His hair was sticking out in a dozen directions from running his hands through it in concentration. He took some crumpled bills out of his jeans and passed them to Freddie. “Make sure Brian eats,” he mumbled. “Stupid bastard’s gonna work himself to death.”
Annoyance changing into affection, Brian tousled Roger’s hair even further, earning him an annoyed screech before Roger shut the door in his face.
“Later, Rog!” Brian nudged Freddie with his shoulder as they headed out the door into the cool breeze.
“Shall we walk, darling? I’m skint.”
“Sure, it’s not too far.” Brian tightened the scarf at his throat. “Is that jacket warm enough? Are you cold?” he asked, concerned that Freddie kept running his hands up and down his arms.
“Just excited. I really, really want you to see this.”
“Do I get a hint or anything?”
Freddie was nearly dancing down the street. He peeked up at Brian every few steps, his expressive face all but radiating a mixture of joy and edginess. “No. You’re going to look, then you’re going to tell me what you think without…overthinking.”
“Fair enough.” Brian spent their journey musing on what they might be doing at the Tate, while Freddie chatted about a couple of gigs he’d lined up.
Freddie went silent as they ascended the staircase leading to the gallery. He always approached art in reverence, a trait Brian didn’t quite understand yet found admirable. He followed his leader to the crowded gallery holding Pre-Raphaelite paintings, spending a moment in front of Wallis’ “Chatterton.” The waxen beauty of the dead poet held a strange fascination. Even when Freddie informed him that the artist had absconded with the sitter’s wife, the painting still pulled at his heart.
Freddie pulled at his sleeve.
Brian turned to see “The Fairy-Feller’s Master Stroke,” the magnum opus Dadd painted while imprisoned for patricide. Freddie had been tinkering with lyrics about all the tiny figures almost as long as Brian had known him.
“Not that,” Freddie said, tugging again. Brian followed his line of sight, eyes widening.
“Bacchanalian Scene,” read the information card, but Brian scarcely noticed it. His eyes, even his very breath, were drawn to the central figure. Tilted eyes, thin nose, closed lips arched in a knowing smile; it would take only a few strokes of makeup to transform Freddie into this incredible being.
“Him,” Freddie whispered, a tremor in the finger that pointed at the picture. “That’s who I want to be on stage. Only…”
Brian fixed his eyes on his friend. “Only?” he prompted, praying that his voice was soothing enough. It was so easy to upset Freddie with a stray word or unchecked tone of voice, after all.
“What will they think?” Freddie’s voice broke on the last word. He cleared his throat quietly. “Rog. And John.”
“I don’t understand,” Brian said, even though he did. They never talked about it, not he and Roger, and certainly not he and John. But the fey creature Freddie truly was, the sensitive, loving, and diffident soul, was someone each of them had taken to heart as surely as they revered Freddie’s extraordinary talent.
“It’s not exactly Plant or Daltrey, that look.” Freddie lifted his pleading eyes. “Will they laugh?”
“Let ‘em try,” Brian declared emphatically, prepared to do violence to his bandmates at the slightest giggle. “Oh, they’ll gape a few times, like they did when you painted our nails and put eyeliner on Deacy and told Roger to wear a dozen necklaces when he goes shirtless, but…” His mouth was dry, his brain spinning off in a thousand directions. His imagination painted a picture for him: Freddie bathed in a spotlight, painted face turned to the heavens, pouring out his heart in song.
“And the audience?”
That would be out of Brian’s control. The picture in his mind began to play like a movie with sounds they had produced in practice, in student halls, in pubs. Drums like an atomic clock paired with a powerful, elegant bass. Brian’s guitar, the only one of its kind in the world, wailing above the din. And at the apex was Freddie’s voice telling a story, opening a heart so full of love, coaxing—no, demanding—every single person in the crowd to love him.
“The audience will have no choice, will they?” Other patrons be damned, Brian wrapped an arm around Freddie and pulled him close. “You’re Freddie Mercury. They’ll follow you to the ends of the earth.”
He could feel the relieved sag of Freddie’s body against his, hear the puff of breath as his anxiety began to lessen. “And you?” Freddie asked against Brian’s shoulder.
How could it be otherwise?
He was willing to throw his thesis into the Thames, willing to leave his teaching job behind, willing to face his father, and come out alive. Not just alive, but thriving, growing, yearning for earthly stardom.
Freddie found himself in a painting. Brian found himself in Freddie.
“Ends of the earth together? We’ll be unstoppable,” he told his friend and muse.
And if his heart skipped a beat when Freddie smiled, who could blame him?
***
