Archive of Our Own

I

Here are the things I’m still discovering:

1. The sound of you whispering
2. The shadows your eyelashes make against your cheeks
3. Your passion
4. The way you love me
5. The way I love you
6. (I love you)
7. The feeling—

Roger frowns, flipping the notebook closed and examining the cover again. It doesn’t help in the least; there are no identifying marks or names. He checks the inside cover but is met with blank paper. The notebook is filled with page after page of the same neat handwriting, but whoever wrote the thing doesn’t seem to want it back.

He sifts through the pages again, letting them rustle against each other as they pass his thumb.

Nothing.

He settles on the stoop of their flat, holding the book on his lap as he lights a cigarette. He’d just been heading in the direction of the university, still unsure about his intention to actually go to class, but the odd notebook has drawn him up short. If he’s being honest with himself it’s a more-than-welcome distraction. It’s not like he wants to hear Professor Haldenburg drone on about red blood cells for the twelfth day in a row, especially after a long night at the club John had asked so politely if they could check out. God knows how John was even able to get up on time this morning, after returning to the flat at well past six. Roger is struggling to even find the will to walk to the tube station, and he’d come home alone last night.

Not that he wants to go to class even on his best days.

He’s pretty sure he’s going to fail Intro to Cardiology. Seeing as it’s the most dull and tedious elective he’s ever taken in his life, he’s not really that bitter about it. Besides, it’s not as if he doesn’t take notes. The issue is that the lectures are so boring and the work so easy that he stops paying attention, and then by the time he starts listening again he’s completely lost.

That, and he lost all of his notes three days prior. What few of them there were, anyway.

Which brings him back to the topic at hand.

Whoever dropped the notebook doesn’t appear to have been parted from it for long. It rained last night, but the cover is barely damaged from the moisture and the paper is dry. The edges of the pages are neat and straight, a far cry from Roger’s coffee-stained, dog-eared notes that send Brian and John into nervous fits every time they see them.

He takes his first drag of smoke as he flips the book back open.

II

It’s kind of funny. You’re the one I confide in when I’m upset. It figures that the thing that’s upsetting me is my feelings for about you, and that you’re the one person I can’t talk to about them.

Roger’s eyebrows inch toward his hairline. Well, then…

I hate that I’m doing this but I need to get it out somehow, alright? And I can’t tell you to your face, so I just have to put it all here. Whatever it is. Fuck. Do you understand that?

The truth is I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop reaching for you, even if it’s just in my head. The way I want you feels quiet and beyond words, but at the same time it’s so—

“Roger?” a voice calls. Freddie is coming toward him, his platforms clacking against the sidewalk and his brow knit in confusion. “You really have to get better about telling us where you are. I thought you were dead in a ditch last night.”

“And you didn’t think to ask?” Roger says, quirking an eyebrow. “I was here all night. Thought you saw me come in.”

Freddie just rolls his eyes. “What are you doing out here, then? Are you going to class?”

“Not anymore.”

“You’re skipping again?” Freddie asks him, pursing his lips. His eyes fall on the notebook still resting against Roger’s lap. “What have you got there?”

Roger closes it, holding the book aloft. “I found it. Somebody must’ve dropped it.”

Freddie pales rapidly, his eyes wide. He opens his mouth and then closes it again.

“Freddie?” Roger asks hesitantly. “You alright?”

“Yeah, fine,” Freddie says faintly. “I mean—”

“What, do you know whose it is?”

“No! Of course I don’t—”

“You do!”

“…I might.”

“Holy shit,” Roger breathes. “It’s yours, isn’t it?”

“Of course not!” Freddie splutters, eyes wide.

“I can’t believe this.”

“It’s not mine!”

“Fat fucking chance,” Roger crows. “This is—and you—oh my god. It’s about Brian, isn’t it?!”

Freddie had told Roger of his feelings about Brian only a fortnight ago. Told is a generous word, in all honesty. More accurately, the truth had been wrenched out of him like a bad tooth (and Roger would know) with a combination of pointed questions and a little too much vodka. Really, it was hardly Roger’s fault. Freddie’s never been particularly tight-lipped, nor has he turned down a good drink or twelve.

Drunk and disorderly circumstances notwithstanding, the night had resulted in Freddie waxing poetic for approximately forty-five minutes to an hour about everything from Brian’s musical abilities to his hands to the pointiness of his teeth when he smiled. Yeah. Exactly what Roger wanted to be doing on his Friday night.

“Look,” Freddie says, grimacing as he pinches the bridge of his nose. “It really doesn’t matter, alright? It’s not mine. If you’ll just hand it to me—”

“Why would I hand it to you if it’s not yours?” Roger asks pointedly.

Freddie stares at him for a long beat, his hand outstretched expectantly and his eyes flitting back and forth between Roger’s own. “You can’t tell him,” he says finally.

“I won’t.” Roger hands the notebook to him, and takes note of the relieved sigh that Freddie lets out when the smooth cover meets his palm. “Tell me how I can help, though.”

“Help?” Freddie asks, raising an eyebrow. “There’s nothing you can help with, darling.”

“Of course there is,” Roger argues. He follows Freddie up the steps, barreling on even as Freddie laughs incredulously. “Don’t give me that! You’ve been pining after him for months now and yet you don’t want any help?”

“Well, if I got help then I couldn’t pine anymore, now could I?”

“Bullshit. This isn’t healthy, Freddie.”

“Keeping a journal is perfectly healthy.”

“Fred,” Roger says seriously.

Freddie sighs, pausing in jimmying his key in the lock to look at Roger pleadingly. “Don’t call me that.”

“Alright, fine. Let me help you, though. Please.”

“Help with what?”

“With confessing!” Roger says. Freddie huffs as he finally gets the door open, pushing into the flat with Roger fast on his heels. A little too fast, maybe; he crashes into Freddie’s back as Freddie comes to an abrupt halt in the doorway of the kitchen. “With showing your true colors!”

“Rog, zip it,” Freddie hisses.

“Don’t brush this off. It’s important. Brian needs to know!”

“Know what?” Brian asks from around the corner.

Wincing, Roger leans around the doorway. Brian is sitting at the kitchen table, wearing nothing but his boxers and a millennial pink crop top sweatshirt with the constellation of cancer emblazoned across it in silver paint. He’s idly picking at a bowl of porridge, his breakfast propped up on a heavy looking textbook. That textbook is propped up on two more textbooks and a notepad. The whole situation is a disaster waiting to happen.

“Brian,” Freddie says. “Hello, dear.”

“Hello, Fred,” Brian says pleasantly. “Rog.”

“Bri,” Roger greets. “What the fuck are you wearing?”

Brian tucks his chin into his chest, pulling the sweatshirt out by the hems as if he too is unsure what he put on that morning. Feeling Crabby, the hem reads in cursive. “It was on sale at H&M,” he says idly. “What were you going to tell me?”

Freddie opens his mouth and then closes it again, his cheeks flushing a rather interesting color.

Roger, rushing to the rescue, blurts out the first thing that comes to mind. “Your shampoo!” he says quickly. “Freddie stole some the other day.”

Brian’s eyebrows rise impossibly further. “That’s all? I hardly mind. It’s not a big deal. I was wondering why your hair looks so nice today, Freddie.”

Freddie’s blush somehow deepens. “Thanks,” he squeaks.

“Not that it’s not usually nice,” Brian rushes to add, and good god, Roger lives with morons. “I mean—you look nice every day, that’s all I’m trying to say.”

“Thank you. You do too.”

“Oh,” Brian blinks.

Roger rolls his eyes and pushes past Freddie to slide through the doorway, dropping his bag on one of the dining chairs along the way. “Figures,” he scoffs. “There’s favoritism going on here, you know. I steal Freddie’s moisturizer once and all of a sudden I’m a ‘dirty crook’ and ‘going to get evicted—’”

“It’s eighteen pounds a jar, Roger,” Freddie gripes.

“All of his hair products are twice that.”

“Yes, but I have an open and caring heart,” Brian says flatly.

Roger raises his eyebrows. “So I should steal from you next time, then?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”

“I’m skipping.”

“Again?”

“I have more important matters to attend to.”

“Like what?”

“I need to talk to John,” Roger announces loftily.

Freddie shakes his head. “Me first.”

Roger grimaces at him. “Why you first?”

“It’s urgent, dear.”

“Too bad. We have lunch plans.”

“I’m sure he’ll want to—”

They’re interrupted by John quietly pushing open the front door.

“Deaky!” Freddie practically yells.

“Welcome home!”

“I have something to talk to you about, dear, if you’d—”

“No, you—”

John blinks at the two of them, his eyes wide. “What’s going on with them?” he asks to Brian, his voice low.

Brian shakes his head and turns back to his notes.

“John,” Freddie says, practically running past Roger to round the counter. “I need to talk to you.”

“About?”

Freddie practically slams into him, leaning forward to whisper into his ear. Roger can tell he’s filling him in on the situation just by the way John’s eyes widen even further, his gaze fixing on Roger as Freddie continues to talk.

Brian looks up, takes in the scene and then huffs and looks away again.

“Okay?” Freddie asks finally, leaning away.

“Yeah,” John nods. “Rog, I’m gonna take a rain check on lunch, alright?”

“What?” Roger whines, unable to keep the hurt from his tone. “Why?”

“It’s alright,” John tells him, but Roger knows right off the bat that it most certainly is not just by the way that John refuses to meet his eyes. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

“What? But—”

“See you,” Freddie says, all but dragging John out of the flat. “Bye, Brian.”

Brian just grunts at them.

Roger watches, aghast, as the door slams shut behind them. He lets out a huff. Unbelievable. The fact that they’d cut him out of this situation when he already knows the details of it—the fact that they’d ignore him like that—the utter nerve of it.

Some friends he has.

Brian looks up at him from within the cloud of curls that make up his fringe. “It’s rude to keep secrets, you know,” he says.

“Yeah,” Roger says shortly, “I think I do.”

❖

IV

I hate myself for this sometimes. I wish I could be a better friend to you. I wish I wasn’t constantly trying to hide this. Sometimes I wish that I didn’t feel any of it at all, but I can’t bring myself to. I hate that I feel this way, but I don’t hate the feeling itself. Every time you look at me I feel giddy. It feels good.

I wish that changed any of this; that it changed the hopelessness of it.

I’ll get better soon. Don’t worry. Through all of it I’ve loved you, but I won’t for much longer. I’ll try and I’ll get better. I’ll become better for you.

❖

He doesn’t see John until much, much later.

When the front door opens again he’s already dozing off, just about to shove his biology textbook under his bed and turn his light out. He pauses at the sound of his other two roommates returning, and a moment later John quietly opens their bedroom door and comes sneaking through, visibly at least slightly tipsy. He always tries to be sneaky late at night when drinks are involved. Roger would be lying if he said it wasn’t adorable.

“Oh,” John says, catching sight of him. “You’re still awake.”

“It’s not so late,” Roger argues. “I can’t believe you guys stayed out. Don’t you have class tomorrow?”

“It’ll be fine. We just went for a pint, anyway,” John says noncommittedly, crossing the room to place a notebook on his desk.

A very familiar notebook.

“Wait,” Roger says, frowning. “Is that Freddie’s journal?”

John freezes, his hands on the button of his jeans. “What?”

“The notebook on your desk. Did he lend it to you so you could help me?”

“Help you with what?” John asks, still frozen.

“With getting him and Brian together!” Roger says.

John blinks, frowns and proceeds to get back to the task at hand, standing on one foot to work his skinny jeans down his other leg. “We’re getting him and Brian together?”

“Yes! I promised him I’d help him. I’m glad that he brought you into it, too. We’re going to need all the help we can get with it.”

“Yeah,” John says, still frowning as he finally gets one leg off. His legs look somehow longer than usual in the dim light, and Roger fights the urge not to ogle. “Yeah, that’s what’s happening.”

“Great. I’m glad he lent that to you,” Roger says. “We can read through it for ideas.”

John loses his balance, nearly falling over.

“You alright?”

“Yeah,” he says quickly. “Yeah, listen. That might not be the best plan.”

“I’m sure he didn’t lend it to you just for you to hang on to it,” Roger argues.

John purses his lips. He manages to make it out of his jeans unscathed, folding them neatly with a thoughtful furrow in his brow. “I just don’t think it’s the best idea to read them,” he says finally. “They’re his personal thoughts, after all.”

“He gave them to you so that you could read them,” Roger argues. “Fine, though. If you don’t want to then I can do that bit myself. There are bound to be at least a few decent date ideas in there.”

John sighs. He crawls into bed, pulling his duvet up until only his eyes and the top of his head are visible.

“Is that alright?” Roger asks.

“Yeah,” John sighs again. He closes his eyes. “Fine. Let me have it tomorrow, at least.”

“Deal,” Roger says. He takes a long moment to study him, looking for any signs of discomfort. John’s face is relaxed though, and Roger would believe he’d fallen asleep if not for the way John’s breathing is just a bit too slow.

Roger leans over to turn off the lamp, plunging them into darkness.

❖

XIX

It doesn’t ache in the same way anymore. It isn’t all-consuming. I can look away from you now. I don’t need to be so close anymore.

It’s deeper, instead. I can breathe around it. When you smile at me it doesn’t make my heart pound anymore. Instead it feels like basking in the sun. You’re in my blood now, right down to every cell. Loving you is part of me. ‘Know thyself’—someone said it and I don’t know who, but I’ll learn you. Swear I will, or at least I’ll try. Who are you really? I’d like to know. I’d like to sink into you deeply, but I think I’ll never stop being surprised by what I find.

❖

John does end up hogging the notebook the next day, but the day after that it’s all Roger’s.

John rises with the sun that morning. Roger knows because his roommate is nowhere to be found, and Roger himself had managed to wake up fairly early. The sunlight is still pleasantly golden as it filters through the window, and he spends a long moment taking it in before he starts getting ready.

 The flat is as empty as his and John’s room. The parlor is abandoned, silent save for the sounds of traffic filtering in through the window. He frowns as he pours himself a cup of coffee from the pot, pausing as he reaches for the handle on the fridge.

There are two photos stuck to the door with magnets, taken by what must have been an instant camera. It doesn’t take much studying for Roger to know they were all shot by Brian. One is a slightly blurry closeup of the eyepiece of his telescope; the second is of Oscar crawling over an open notebook. Roger frowns at them for a moment longer before shaking his head and opening the fridge to retrieve the milk.

He makes quick work of his morning routine, shoving his feet into his boots minutes later and grabbing his bookbag from in his room. He nearly forgets the notebook, only managing to swipe it from John’s desk on the way out, and just like that he’s out the door.

The notebook accompanies him all through the day, and all the way to the stall that afternoon. In all honesty it’s much more entertaining than what he usually does—flip through the news on his phone, drag himself through a chapter of his textbook, pick at a paperback from the school library—and he leans back in his chair with relish as he holds it over his face. He can get away with reading it without his glasses, like this. It’s easy to fall into the little world of the words in front of him and the shadow the pages cast on his face.

He’s always had a love-hate relationship with poetry. It’s an odd place to sit, as a songwriter. As much as he savors the challenge of fitting syllables against the beat of a drum, iambic tetrameter has always felt a little trite to him when read without a melody.

This isn’t that. It isn’t beatnik either, or really poetry in any form; nonetheless there’s something honest about it. There’s something about it that’s served raw, some brutal truth. It’s enough that it makes him squirm, flipping through it. He shouldn’t. It’s nothing he hasn’t heard from Freddie directly.

It’s different like this, somehow. Maybe it’s the secrecy of it; Freddie never thought another soul would read these pages, after all, and now here Roger is flipping through and annotating them on neat neon green sticky notes. Maybe that’s what it is; maybe that’s what has Roger feeling like something about the intimacy has lodged its way under his skin and burrowed in to stay.

“Whatcha got there?” Dom calls from across the narrow corridor.

Roger turns, letting his arms fall so the pages rest against his chest. “What’s it to you?” he calls back.

She snaps her gum at him, tapping the toes of her shoes together where they rest on the desk in front of her. She has sunglasses on, even indoors, and Roger genuinely doesn’t know whether she’s trying to look cool or whether she’s just hungover. It could potentially be a combination of the two.

“Just curious. Just bored.”

“Don’t you have a job to be doing?” he says halfheartedly.

She lifts her sunglasses theatrically, looking right and then left in her blatantly empty stall. “I don’t see any customers. Do you?”

“Pretty sure Kenny’s paying you to actually look after his wares.”

“If I should be working so should you.”

“Hey,” he says, holding up a hand. “I happen to be the owner of this fine establishment. I make my own hours. I’m working on my own dime, here.”

“Smooth move, boss babe,” she says flatly, snapping her gum.

“You’ve been hanging around Crystal too much, talking like that.”

“Do you want to show me what you’re reading?”

He huffs, leaning back in his chair. “You wouldn’t understand it.”

“No?” She wiggles her eyebrows, standing up and crossing the distance between them before plucking the notebook from his grasp neatly.

Roger groans, making to grab it from her. She dodges, of course. Sometimes he forgets she grew up with a sister.

She clears her throat. “The taste of salt and brine sticks to the back of my tongue for ages. It always—”

“Nooooo,” Roger groans. “Not that one.”

“Not that what?” she replies, frowning and flipping the book closed to scan the cover. “Roger, what is this?”

“It’s…” he starts, and then huffs when the end of that perfectly believable excuse doesn’t come to him.

“Is this porn?”

“It’s not porn!”

“It kind of reads like porn.”

He turns to look at her quizzically. “So do you think it’s about blowjobs?”

She squints at him from behind her glasses, shaking her head slightly and then turning back to the book to skim the passage again. “It’s… I guess?”

“Yes or no?”

“Well, maybe. I don’t know. What exactly am I reading?”

He studies her for a beat, but she doesn’t look like she’s judging. If anything she looks equal parts concerned and tolerant, which…he’ll take that.

“You can’t tell anyone,” he tells her earnestly.

Her eyes widen. “I won’t,” she says hesitantly, then, “well. Ronnie.”

“You can’t tell anyone but Ronnie.”

“I won’t,” she says, more sure this time.

He purses his lips, nods once, and then opens his mouth. It all comes spilling out—the morning on the front porch, Freddie’s initial horror and then grudging support, John being roped into the shenanigans, their mutual quest to help their best friends and bandmates find love—and Dom watches him unblinkingly the entire time, shifting the book back and forth between her hands.

“So this,” she says finally, holding the book up in the air, “this is Freddie pouring his heart and soul out to Brian?”

Roger nods solemnly. “Yeah, Freddie confirmed it.”

“And he’s pouring it out through…” she frowns, flipping it open again. “Through metaphors about blowjobs? Involving sushi?”

“So you do think it’s about blowjobs.”

“Does Brian even like sushi? I thought he’s vegetarian.”

“He likes the vegetable rolls,” Roger says dismissively. “Also tempeh. He’s really into tempeh. He and Freddie go to Itsu once a week, that I know of. I’m pretty sure they go more often than that.”

“So that’s a memory? Are they all like that?”

“About sixty percent, I’d say. Some are dreams, and there are a few that are more abstract. I’m trying to get a general feel for them so that I can use them to tailor their perfect first date.”

“Perfect first date?”

“Mhm. There are a lot of good options in there.”

“Where?”

“I started a list on the paper tucked into the back.” He gestures at her to flip the page.

She flips it open dutifully, scanning the options. “This is…thorough.”

“Are you judging me?”

“I think I’m judging myself,” she murmurs, flipping the page over to read the back. “You’re putting more effort into their first date than you ever put into ours.”

“Hey!” he crows. “I’ll have you know I tried my best!”

“You bought me a milkshake and then upended a flask into it,” she replies, not looking up from the paper.

He sighs, leaning back. “That was the height of romance and ingenuity. I was nineteen, as you’ll recall.”

“Mh.”

“I was broke, as well.”

“Well, at least that’s changed. Sort of, anyway. I’m guessing in all your infinite twenty-two-year-old wisdom you’ve managed to dream up the perfect date for them?”

“Let’s hope,” he sighs. “I think I’m beginning to narrow it down, at least. Why? Do you want to help me choose?”

She laughs, settling on the battered old armchair that Roger and Freddie have been trying to get someone to buy for so long that it’s practically a piece of the stall by now. “I’d love to,” she says. “Tell me your top three.”

Roger leans back, staring at their pockmarked, smoke-stained little ceiling, and does.

By the time he gets home, late into the evening, his head is spinning with ideas. Everything has to be perfect: the romance of it, the adventure, the love. He wants it to be perfect for them.

❖

XXIX

I keep having this dream every few days. It always comes back, no matter what I do. Maybe if I told you it would stop. That’s what my mum used to have me do. If you talk about a dream aloud you’ll stop having it.

I wish I could tell you half the things I want to. I’d tell you everything if you let me and if I wasn’t afraid to, but I can’t. It wouldn’t be fair to you or to me to do anything other than hang onto what I know; what I think, what I see, what I desire. I can’t tell a soul, and so instead I’m stuck in silence and daydreams. 

Would you let me tell you my secrets? I’d love to tell you. I’d love for you to tell me yours. If we spoke very quietly I bet no one else would hear. It would just be you and I in our own world. My words would only belong to you.

I keep having this dream. We have a son. He has my eyes and when he smiles he looks just like you. He’s there, on the lawn right outside our kitchen window, and your mom is playing with him. They’re chasing each other across the grass and he’s laughing so hard that he can barely run. I can’t see you but I know you’re just behind me. I feel your hands on my waist. Your lips press against my neck and I feel you smile, and then the very next moment I wake up.

❖

Roger frowns at the page for a long beat. He didn’t think that Freddie particularly wanted kids. Brian either, for that matter. 

“Hey John?” he calls across the room.

A grunt sounds from inside the pile of blankets and comforters on top of John’s bed. 

“Has Freddie ever said anything to you about wanting kids?” 

John rolls over to squint at him blearily. “What?”

“There’s something here about him imagining that he and Brian had a kid. Do you think that would be something they could bond over?” 

John grimaces at the notebook. “You’re really reading that thing again?” 

“It’s full of good ideas,” Roger counters. “Some of these are really sweet.”

He doesn’t think he imagines John’s cheeks darken at that, though it could be a trick of the lamplight. “Freddie doesn’t want kids,” he huffs, burrowing further into his blankets until just his face is visible. “Sometimes dreams are just dreams.”

“I didn’t say it was a dream he’d had,” Roger says. “How’d you know?”

“I read it yesterday,” John says without missing a beat, his eyes drifting shut again. “You shouldn’t read into dreams like that. It certainly doesn’t make them come true.”

“That’s a little pessimistic, even for you,” Roger tells him.

“It’s the truth. Besides, I don’t know how any of this would even make a good date.”

“Babysitting together is great forced bonding,” Roger argues. “I made a lot of girls help me babysit my cousins when I was younger.”

“Why on earth would you do that?”

“To see if they’re good with kids. Duh. Why would I want to date someone who treats kids like shit?” 

“So you want kids someday?” John asks, cracking an eye open.

“Yeah, but that’s not the point. We need to figure out a date for them.”

“You want to do that now? Don’t you have better things to be doing?”

“Like what?”

“I dunno, sleeping?” John’s eyes drift halfway shut as if he’s trying to demonstrate. “Thought you have a quiz in the morning. You’ll need your rest.”

“I’ll fail it either way.”

John’s brow furrows. “That’s not true. You’re very smart.”

“Thanks, Deaky,” he says, saccharine.  

“I’m serious,” John insists. “You always underestimate yourself when it comes to academics and I don’t understand why.”

Roger scoffs to hide his blush at that, because that’s very nice and all but also not the point. “You’re deflecting. Stop it.”

“What? No I’m not.”

“Yes you are! Dates, John! We need to think of the perfect date!”

John looks at him, his eyes somehow sad and twice as tired as they were a moment before. He rolls over to face the wall. “Tomorrow,” he sighs. 

Roger huffs. “John.”

“Tomorrow, Roger. You need your rest. I do too, for that matter.”

He glances down at the notebook in his lap, frowning. Something about it isn’t making sense. Brian would probably get it if he read it himself. Freddie had said he was an expert at reading between the lines, after all. 

He looks at John before he turns off the light for the evening. His friend is already asleep, the rhythm of his breathing shallow and soothing. Somehow it settles something in his chest. 

❖

XI

Some things are only for you.

(I want to know what your skin tastes like. I want your fingers in my mouth.)

❖

He sees Brian the next morning, though of course he doesn’t ask him about the passage. Besides, Brian appears to be very busy with something else.

Roger comes to a stop behind him, studying the pictures Brian is sticking to the fridge with the little cat-themed magnets Freddie picked up at Primark on a whim one day. When Brian pauses to look at him questioningly Roger gestures toward the fridge.

“Mind if I grab the milk?”

“Oh,” Brian blurts, moving out of the way. “Sorry, sorry. Go ahead.”

“Cheers.” Roger grabs it, letting the door shut softly and studying the photos for a beat. Brian stands next to him, worrying his lip with his fingers.

He knows Brian fancies himself as a bit of a photographer, and he has the right to, quite honestly. He’s seen some of Brian’s stuff, and Brian certainly knows his way around a camera. He’s good.

These are decidedly unlike his usual work.

“What are they, then?” he asks, because there has to be a reason that a blurry photo of a cloud is currently stuck proudly to their fridge.

Brian tilts his head. “You’re going to laugh.”

“What?”

“It’s a project from my therapist.”

Roger squints at him. “Why on earth would I laugh about that?”

Brian shrugs softly, shifting his weight.

“Explain it to me?”

“I said I was feeling frustrated with all my old hobbies, when things aren’t perfect. Not guitar, obviously—”

“Because you’re always perfect on guitar, yeah,” Roger says genuinely.

Brian sends him a long-suffering look regardless. “Because—well, it’s easier to improve on guitar and if I don’t like something I can change it. If I don’t know how to do something that’s different. And photography was irritating me, so she said to take a photo every time something made me smile, and not to worry about making them good. Some sort of Pavlovian training or something,” he adds with an air of mockery in his voice.

Roger snorts. “And that’s why we have a picture of Freddie’s hand on our fridge?”

“How’d you know it was Freddie’s?”

“The paint,” Roger says, gesturing to the smear of purple on the fingertips of a hand wrapped around a floral-patterned teacup. “Besides, it’s Fred, isn’t it? I’d know his hand anywhere. The real question is, why does Freddie’s hand make you smile?”

Brian rolls his eyes, flushing. “It was the teacup, wanker.”

“Mmh,” Roger replies astutely, finally opening the milk and stirring a generous dollop into his tea.

“That’s the last of these, anyway,” Brian says, stepping back to survey his work for a moment. Roger watches as his eyes catch on the photo of the teacup, and then he turns toward the door. “I’ve got class in an hour. I’ll see you later.”

“Sure,” Roger says idly. “Take lots of photos.”

“In class? Unlikely,” Brian retorts, and then he’s gone.

Roger just snorts to himself. He takes his tea in hand, leaning back against the counter and studying the fridge as he sips. The photos are fuzzy from this far away anyway—he hasn’t put his contacts in yet, and at the rate his day is going he isn’t sure he plans to—but he can still vaguely make out familiar shapes and colors. He spots the curtains in Freddie and Brian’s room, sunlight filtering through in a golden smear.

Freddie features prominently in many of the photos, though not in any sort of concrete way. His things are in nearly all of them, if not the man himself: his paints, his clutter, the edges of his hair.

Roger sips his tea and studies it, his mind drifting to the notebook lying on his desk. Maybe this is Brian’s version of what Freddie himself has already done, in a way; maybe all of them are slowly and hesitantly reaching out, waiting for the other to reach back. Freddie would appreciate the imagery of it—the echoes of Michelangelo resonating through the whole thing, hands reaching across indeterminable distances.

Yes, this is Brian’s love letter, forged in his own personal renaissance; this is Brian’s, where Freddie’s are a little more literal—pun intended. Roger has his own, he’s sure. Roger writes love letters in time spent and energy devoted. He feels like half the time he’s glued to John’s side and the other half he’s running endlessly toward him.

Maybe John has his own, too. Everyone does. Roger doubts, privately and in his darker moments, that he’ll ever become familiar with John’s tells the way he’s familiar with his own—the way John is probably well-versed in Roger’s, by now.

He rolls his eyes, pushing off the counter and carrying his tea to his room. He’s much too young to be getting morose. Besides, he has a quiz to be focusing on.

❖

XXIV

You told me you love me. You tell me all the time. Tell me again. I won’t hold it against you. I’ve loved you since the beginning. Is that weird?

I know you mean it as friends. That’s okay. I don’t mind. I’ll never try to tell you that I feel differently. I love you too; you know that. I think you even know the extent of it, maybe. It makes me wonder why I bother writing it here at all, where you can’t see it. These things need to go somewhere though, and I’m sorry but they can’t go to you.

Sometimes it feels good to have one last secret left. It feels good to know that you don’t know this for sure and that I can lie to myself and say I haven’t taken that last step. I still have things left to tell you, and we aren’t really that close. Lies, I’m sure. Haven’t you ever told one?

❖

The dreaded quiz arrives on his desk in a rustle of paper.

He glares at the scantron hard enough to punch a hole clean through it. No such luck; maybe if that were actually possible he wouldn’t have to take the damned thing.

Their professor tells them to begin, and Roger is frankly shocked to find that he actually knows most of the answers. Most of them seem to be common sense. No doubt once he gets his score back he’ll find that he knows even less than he thought he did. That generally happens to him; every time he’s the first one done he ends up having missed more than half of the questions. He lingers, as if that will somehow double jinx it, and doesn’t stand up to turn his test in at the front of the hall until three people have gone before him.

Finally, with his test submitted to the cardboard box in the front of the room and nothing left to do but twiddle his thumbs, he reaches for the notebook. It’s generously scattered with sticky notes now, though Roger has noticed John hasn’t made a single note in the thing.

Well, they have their different study styles. John, for example, never seems to study at all. He does the readings and that’s it. Sometimes, if he has a big exam coming up, he reads them again. He never seems to take notes or make flashcards or anything, yet still manages to score perfectly on every exam he’s ever sat.

It infuriates and impresses Brian in equal measure, Roger knows.

He must have no need for notes, then. Besides, Roger thinks to himself as he places a bright green sticky note next to the sushi-or-maybe-blowjobs passage, if John wasn’t avoiding him they could very easily just go over all of this together.

He told John as much the night before, but for whatever reason John doesn’t seem to want to pick the book apart as much as he does. He seems downright hesitant to do it, his cheeks flaming pink every time he sees Roger looking at it, and it’s gotten to the point where Roger has started to worry.

“You know Freddie doesn’t mind us reading it, right?” he asked finally. “He told me as much. He wants our help. If he didn’t want us reading it he could easily have said.”

“Yeah, I know,” John muttered, and didn’t elaborate further.

Either way, Roger spends the rest of the afternoon looking forward to what John will say about his sushi blowjob analysis. He’s practically whistling a tune as he rushes to meet John at the park after class, the weight of the world finally gone from his shoulders, and by the time he’s sitting across from John and working his way through his dinner he feels lighter than air.

“It was just the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen,” John says, leaning on one elbow on the grass. His sleeves are rolled up to avoid bright green stains in the white cotton—just a fluffy crew neck jumper, and Roger has no idea how he makes it look so charming—and he’s sprawled sideways on the ground, picking at the food in front of him with one hand.

He has no right to make it look so graceful.

“I had half a mind to ask her where she learned,” he continues, looking up at Roger from under his eyelashes. His fingers are fiddling with an empty skewer stick, the charcoal of the burnt end leaving smudges against his skin. There’s a spot of satay sauce on his thumb and Roger has a sudden, intense urge to lean forward and suck it off.

“Mmh,” Roger says smartly.

“Sorry, I know I’m boring you with this,” John says. He looks down, twirling the stick between his fingers. “It’s just—”

“No,” Roger blurts out, his brain finally catching up to his ears. “No, not at all! It sounds ridiculous, quite honestly.”

“That’s what I thought! I didn’t want to, you know, make her feel unwelcome. But what kind of associate professor doesn’t even know how to solder something? You would think that would be a required skill. It was embarrassing to watch.”

“You should have gotten up and showed her.”

“Oh, no. It would’ve been rude.” He plucks up a new stick, neatly pulling a piece of chicken from it with his teeth, and somehow manages not to drop any dark red sauce on his white jumper.

Roger hates him a little.

“We should’ve gotten sushi,” Roger says, mostly to himself.

John swallows and raises his eyebrows. “You always want sushi. What, you don’t like it?”

“No, it’s not that.” Truthfully, he can think of nothing better than an uncharacteristically warm evening spent sprawling across the grass in Regent’s Park with John, picking at corn fritters and skewers of meat from a food truck and watching the trendy-looking, slightly greasy teenagers a few paces away completely fail at what looks like their first attempt at slacklining. “I just like sushi.”

“I know,” John says. His lips quirk up fondly, and then he chucks a piece of corn in Roger’s direction. “Tell me about your quiz.”

Roger groans. “There’s not much to tell.”

“No? So it went well, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Modest.”

“No, no. I don’t!” He yelps indignantly when John throws another piece of corn. “I won’t know until I get the results, will I? Seemed like I knew everything, but that doesn’t mean I did!”

“You’re too humble,” John chides. “You never believe that you’re smart.”

“Not smart like you.”

“I couldn’t tell you the first thing about biology, me.”

“I couldn’t tell you how to—to soldier.”

“Solder.”

“See?”

John laughs, eyes crinkling and tooth gap showing, and Roger feels his entire face go hot. “That’s not the point. I wouldn’t be surprised if you aced it.”

“I would,” Roger says. He flops backward against the grass and pauses for a moment to listen to the way the hollow ground muffles all the noise around him. The blades tickle the sides of his cheeks, soft and prickly at the same time and bothering his skin. That’s what he gets for shaving that morning, he supposes. “The only thing I really study these days is that book.”

John hums. “I’m surprised you’re comfortable reading it.”

Roger rolls his head to look at him, and then grimaces when a blade of grass goes straight into his ear. “Why?” he asks, propping himself on one elbow and mirroring John’s own position.

John shrugs softly. “I don’t know. It’s—it’s Freddie’s personal thoughts about Brian, isn’t it? Is it not awkward for you?”

“I don’t know,” Roger says softly. “It just doesn’t seem strange to me. No stranger than us reading over each other’s lyrics, really.”

“They’re not quite the same as Freddie’s lyrics,” John points out.

“No, I suppose not. They’re a little more truthful. Freddie is rarely that honest even in music.”

John is watching him carefully, his hands still for once. Everything about him is still—his eyes, his mouth, his fingers—as if he’s poised to move at a moment’s notice, and move fast.

“They would make me uncomfortable if they were written in any other way,” Roger continues slowly, parsing it out in his head because it still doesn’t make sense to him; not really. There’s something about them that’s almost too raw, but at the same time too chaste. “They’re gentle, I think. The way they’re written is gentle. If they were anything more or anything less it would be weird, but they’re not. They’re just…well, they’re kind of lovely, aren’t they? In a way.”

John squeezes the end of his skewer until the charcoal crumbles to dust beneath his fingers. “Lovely,” he echoes.

“Oh, shut up,” Roger says, rolling his eyes. He picks up a corn fritter, tearing a chunk off just to hurl it in John’s direction. “You’re the one who asked.”

“I wasn’t expecting poetry—”

“I didn’t give you poetry! I was just being honest!”

“Being lovely.”

“You’re insufferable,” Roger huffs. “What about you, then? Why are you comfortable reading it?”

“Who said I’m comfortable reading it?”

“You did, when you read it.” He rips another chunk of corn off, John watching him warily the whole time, but Roger just plops it into his own mouth. “Spill.”

“I don’t know,” John retorts flatly. “He said we could read it, so we’re reading it. My professors give me readings that make me uncomfortable all the time, but I still read them.”

“They do?” Roger asks, his eyebrows raising in interest. “What do you engineers get up to with all those wires and bobs?”

John rolls his eyes. “Physical discomfort. Craning over a desk all day is giving me nothing but a sore neck. Not very rock and roll, is it?”

“Depends, I guess. You should see someone about it, though. You probably need glasses.”

“That’s a little rich coming from you.”

“Ha ha,” Roger says flatly. “Anyway, I’ve started to put together a list of date ideas.”

“Date ideas?”

“For Brian and Fred.”

John’s eyes climb toward his hairline. “Ah,” he says. “What’s the list, then?”

“Well, sushi seems to be prevalent, but I’m worried that would be redundant. I’ve got a few other options, if you want to go over them later. The notebook is in my bookbag right now.”

“You really think this is going to work?”

“What, you’re doubting me?” Roger asks dryly.

“This is different and you know it,” John replies, not falling into the joke, and he won’t meet Roger’s eyes again. “This isn’t just dating, this is setting up two friends who have been pining for years. They’ve been in love for so long it’s obvious to everybody but then, but they refuse to make the final move. You really think we can make them sort it out?”

Roger frowns at the sudden bitterness in his tone. “It’s not a hopeless case.”

“There’s not a lot of hope in it, to be honest.”

“All they need is a little push, you’ll see. That’s all anyone ever needs in these situations.”

John looks at him, deadpan, like that was the stupidest response he could possibly have given. “You’re sure,” he says flatly.

“I’m sure,” Roger echoes. “All we can do is our best, anyway.”

John doesn’t look convinced, his gaze not wavering from Roger’s own. Roger wants to kiss him, all at once; stupidly, impulsively, and wipe the unsatisfied little downturn at one corner of his mouth off his face entirely. He can’t, so he settles for a soft smile that John doesn’t even try to mirror.

“It’s going to be alright, Deaks,” he says. “But if you don’t believe me you can have my last fritter, and maybe that will somehow prove it to you.”

John pulls a face, but he reaches over and takes the fritter off Roger’s tray. “Why don’t you have a piece of bread and maybe you’ll calm down,” he quotes under his breath in a nasally, poorly-done American accent, and Roger snorts.

Yeah. It’s going to be fine.

❖

VI

You don’t know the power you have over me. You’re wearing me down and you don’t even know it. Every time I think I can look away you turn to me and smile so brilliantly that it stings. You’re driving me mad.

It’s almost worse that you were my best friend before all of this. I’ve gotten used to telling you everything. I’m so used to being honest with you that I barely leave anything unspoken, but I don’t know how to talk my way around this. I don’t know how to talk my way around anything with you anymore. I’m going insane. Every time you look at me—first thing in the morning, during practice, over dinner, sleep rumpled and warm right before you drift off—baby, have some mercy. Don’t you know what you’re doing to me?

❖

John makes himself scarce over the course of the following days. Where he goes, Roger isn’t sure. He doesn’t think John mentioned any big assignments coming up, and even if he had something going on in school John has never been one to buckle under stress. He’s an ever-efficient multitasker and always has been; Roger can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen the man pull an all-nighter, and most of those were due to either wanting to finish binge-watching something on Netflix or else wanting to keep Roger and Brian company while the two of them stayed up all night trying to finish projects for their own classes.

It’s silly, then, that John has suddenly found himself with a busy schedule. Roger can’t help but think he’s being avoided, especially after the events of the previous week. He’s gotten used to seeing John at least twice a day—they sleep in the same room, after all—and yet these days not even that is reliable. John so often comes in late now and is out the door before Roger even wakes up. He has no idea what to make of it.

“He’s just busy,” Freddie tells him as they work through doing a load of laundry together. “You’ll see. He’ll be back in a few days. Would you hand me that stain remover?”

Roger squints at the various bottles lining the shelf above the sink, recognizing the stain remover by color and shape alone. “Here.”

“Thanks,” Freddie says. He shakes the cloth out sharply, the fabric snapping against itself before settling wrinkle-free against the top of their washer/dryer. “I just think he probably needs a little space. You know how he gets.”

“How does he get?” Roger asks, nonplussed.

Freddie shrugs. “You know. Private. He never wants to talk about the things that are bothering him.”

“You think something’s bothering him?!”

“No, shut up. I just think he’s probably processing something. It’s almost May.”

Roger’s mouth twists. John always grows withdrawn and weary around the time of the anniversary of his father’s death. It’s a pattern they’re all well familiar with by now, and more than able to anticipate.

“It can’t be that, though,” Roger says. “It’s not quite time, and besides, that’s no reason for him to avoid me entirely.”

“Everyone needs some space eventually,” Freddie muses.

“Not him. Not from me.” That’s the truth. John has never avoided their shared room, not even on his worst days. He’ll shut himself off from the rest of the flat, but never from Roger. More than once Roger has found a surly, sleep-deprived and touch-starved John Deacon standing over his bed in the early hours of the morning, nudging him awake and quietly asking if he can share Roger’s body heat until daybreak.

John doesn’t avoid him when he’s bothered by something. He’s much more likely to do the complete opposite.

Freddie shrugs. “I don’t know what to tell you, darling. I wish I could. I haven’t heard much from him either.”

“Could you at least tell me if he’s upset with me?”

Freddie purses his lips. He looks vaguely irritated, and Roger wonders if he’s managed to piss him off; but just as quickly his face smooths over. “I doubt it’s that.”

“But you’re not sure.”

“Roger, I can’t tell you anything else,” Freddie says, and there’s a warning in his voice now.

Roger huffs. “Can’t or won’t?”

“Neither. Both. Whatever.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?!”

“It means drop it! Leave it alone!”

“How can I?” Roger snaps, throwing down the shirt he was previously working out to launder—Brian’s, he thinks, judging by the tasteful sequence on the sleeves—and turns to him. “If you know something you owe me an answer! For the good of the band if nothing else!”

Roger,” Freddie says plainly. “It’s not your business. If he wants you to know he’ll tell you about it. Drop it.”

Roger stares at him for a long moment, anger still bubbling in his chest, but when Freddie refuses to waver he grunts in anger and knocks the shirt to the floor as he turns. “I’m going out.”

“Seriously?” Freddie calls, exasperated. “You’re not going to help me?”

Roger doesn’t reply. He jams his feet into the first pair of shoes he finds—some chelseas he’s pretty sure are John’s—and stomps out the door.

❖

XXXIV

You lit up then got restless, here then there, clearing the table and refilling my glass, and then the high hit for real and you sat down finally.

Build a home with me, baby. Help me put the sheets on the bed. Throw me a bone, once and a while. I want to be the thing you come home to. I’ll keep the place warm.

Come back to me. Come fall into the divot my body carved into the couch. Lean into me and stay. Build a home with me, love. I want to keep you.

❖

He walks long enough that the sun is beginning to go down. It’s not terribly productive, but at least helps him calm down; his feet lead him on a wandering path, on the tube and then off again, onto a bus for a few streets and then back onto the pavement, through a few shops and then finally to the door of the Vintage Market.

He always manages to find himself here eventually.

He trots down the stairs and into the basement, passing fairy lights and grungy flyers taped to the walls along the way. The market welcomes him back with open arms, the narrow corridors through the stalls packed with people, but it’s easy enough for him to cut through stalls here and tiny doorways there until he finds the person he’s looking for.

Dom glances at him over the top of her phone. “Are you here to complain?”

He snorts. “Why would I be here to complain?”

“Everyone wants to complain these days. Take a seat.”

He does so, looking around. The stall she’s commandeered for the day is an odd one, tucked into the shadows far from the entrance. It seems to mostly be selling crystals, salt lamps and a rather random looking selection of crop tops, of all things.

“Whose stall is this?” he asks, eyeing an elephant foot stool in the corner with some trepidation.

“I don’t know,” she grunts. “He saw me managing Kenny’s the other day. Handed me a few tenners to watch the place.”

“Is that real?” He gestures at the stool.

She looks at it warily. “I’ve been trying to figure that out. It’s creepy whether it’s the product of poaching or not. It’s not even the creepiest thing in here, either.”

“What is?” he asks with morbid curiosity.

She wordlessly nods at a small statue of a monkey laying on its back, holding a crystal ball with its hands and feet. For some reason it’s wearing a diaper.

He grimaces. “Oh, ew.”

“It’s valued at twenty quid. You could take it home today.”

“What a steal,” he murmurs. “Will it tell me my future?”

“Oh, I could tell you your future. Today you’re going to piss off Dom, mope around in your own workplace…”

“I’m not working today.”

“Who’s watching your stall, then?”

He squints. “I’m not sure. Freddie got someone to do it.”

“Hmm.” She continues tapping away on her phone. Judging by the sounds it’s making, Roger’s 90% sure it’s Words With Friends. For reasons unknown, she and Brian have somehow become staunch rivals in the game. They’re two of the most competitive people Roger has ever met, and he’s always glad he’s managed not to get roped into it. “If you’re not here to work, then why are you here?” she asks. “No offense. I don’t mean I don’t love and enjoy your company.”

“Thank you,” he says, heartfelt.

“I just mean don’t you have better things to do on your day off than to come here and not work?”

“Maybe I just also enjoy your company and would like to spend all my free time with you,” he offers. “Have you considered that?”

She raises her eyebrows, looking up from her phone finally. “Roger,” she says. “What’s going on?”

Roger frowns. He eyes the monkey. The stupid thing stares right back at him, teeth bared, as if it truly does know all his secrets.

“I started an argument with Freddie,” he says. “That’s all. I feel stupid about it and I need to get out of the house for a little while.”

Her face softens. She sends him a close-lipped little smile, her eyes tired. “What was it?”

“Nothing that matters,” he grunts. “Not really. Nothing that’s his problem, anyway.”

The curtains in front of the stall’s entrance rustle, and Roger turns around just in time to see Crystal stick his head in through the small space. “Oh,” he says as he spots Roger, unimpressed. “You’re here.”

Roger shifts around until he can look at him head-on. “Yeah, I’m here. No need to get so excited about it.”

Crystal rolls his eyes. He ducks his head as he makes his way through the little door, narrowly avoiding hitting his skull against the frame. He makes to step toward the elephant stool, stares at it for a beat and then decides better of sitting on it and stops in his tracks entirely. “What are you doing here, then?”

“Just stopping in.”

“On your day off?”

“It’s in fact allowed,” he deadpans even as Dom snorts from behind her phone. “Why? What are you doing here?”

“Closing up,” Crystal replies. He steps closer to the table, dropping a ring of keys in front of Dom. “That’s from Kenny. He wants you to watch it tomorrow.”

“You’re not taking it for the rest of the afternoon?” she asks, looking up.

Crystal shrugs. “He has some batshit new plan to only open the stall for six hours a day. Thinks the exclusivity will somehow make his wears more desirable.”

“He still sells the same flea-bitten rags as the rest of us,” Roger points out.

“Well, he doesn’t seem to realize that the consumers have caught onto that,” Crystal replies flatly. “Besides, don’t tell me you’re tightening your hours, too. Who’s watching your stall right now?”

“Dunno. It’s Freddie’s turn today. I guess he got someone to watch it.”

“You don’t know who? He could’ve gotten Paul again.”

“No, I vetoed Paul after last time.”

Dom looks up from her phone. “What happened last time?”

“He stole like, four pairs of shoes?” Roger says. He tilts his chair back on two legs, squinting at the ceiling. “Played nothing but Skrillex all day and drove away paying customers. He also tried on one of the nicer jackets and somehow spilled soup on it. Oh, and he forgot to lock the door.”

Crystal comes into his field of vision, his face upside down. “That’s all?” he asks, deadpan.

“This isn’t your best angle, Crys,” Roger replies sweetly, then yelps when Crystal kicks the chair legs just enough to unbalance him. Roger sits up abruptly, clinging to the table to right himself.

“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here, Rog,” he points out.

Roger scoffs. “As if I need a reason to—”

“He fought with Freddie,” Dom says.

“Dom! Betrayal!”

“Fought with Freddie, huh?” Crystal asks, falling dramatically into a chair in the corner and sending a cloud of dust into the air. “Trouble with the old missus, isn’t it?”

“Fuck off,” Roger gripes. “He had it coming.”

“What’d he do?” Dom asks. “Would it have anything to do with the fact that your roommate has kidnapped my girlfriend?”

He looks at her so sharply he feels something in his neck crack. “What?” he says. “John?”

“Of course it’s John. He’s been hanging out with Ronnie every day for the last few weeks.”

“Why?” Roger asks. “Is everything okay? Is he alright?”

“I have no idea. It’s hardly my business. Ron seemed to think I wouldn’t want to get involved, and I trust her enough to know she’s probably right. It’s still making me want to stab him a little.”

“Well, don’t stab him,” Roger murmurs. “Why is he spending so much time with her? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. I have no clue at all.”

“It’s hardly a twist,” Crystal points out. “The two of them have a history. You know that as well as anyone.”

Roger does know that as well as anyone, and that’s half the problem. Ronnie had been John’s first girlfriend upon his arrival to London. The two had been practically attached at the hip, sharing everything together. The realization that they loved each other more as friends than as lovers had only strengthened that bond, and Roger knows from firsthand experience that to this day the majority of the times John is at odds with himself, he goes straight to Ronnie.

The majority, but not all. Roger had been taking up that duty more and more as time went on. The fact that John feels he can’t come to Roger now means either something serious is happening, or else it’s something that concerns Roger himself.

“What have they been doing?” Roger asks quietly.

She grimaces. “Getting ice cream? Going to farmers markets? Clubbing, sometimes? It’s completely random. They went to an animal shelter yesterday.”

John doesn’t want to adopt a pet; he likes them well enough, but Roger has never once heard him talk about getting one. “The fuck…” he says.

“Yeah. And I love that they’re friends,” she adds. “They have a wonderful connection and that’s great for them. I just hope that if he’s going through something he figures it out soon. I’d really like my girlfriend back.”

He groans. “I’d like my Deaky back,” he says, ignoring Crystal’s snort. “He hasn’t been talking to me. That’s what me and Fred argued about. I’m at my wit’s end.”

Dom’s frown deepens. “I can’t help you there. I have no idea what’s happening.”

“Great. That makes two of us.”

The three of them are silent for a long beat before Crystal puts his hands down on the arms of the chair with an air of finality. “Fuck this,” he says firmly. “Let’s go get udon.”

“Just like that?” Roger says, raising his eyebrows.

“Yep. Fuck it. It’s udon time.”

“What about the stall?”

“What stall?”

“The stall you’re sitting in, you prick.”

“Fuck the stall,” Dom says. “I don’t care. We’re closing.” A bookish-looking man wanders in just as she says it, and she shakes her head at him. “We’re shut. Sorry.”

He frowns and backs away.

“You could have used the business, you know,” Roger muses, watching her collect her things. “Maybe he would’ve been the one to buy the fortune-telling monkey.”

“I can tell that man his fortune. He doesn’t need the monkey for that. ‘Today you avoided buying a scary monkey thing in a fantastic stroke of luck’. There.”

Crystal shakes his head shortly. “You’re getting hangry, Dom. I can tell.”

“Bite me, Christopher,” she says, shaking her head slowly. She grabs her sunglasses from the table, putting them on before grimacing when she realizes they’re Roger’s prescription ones. She pushes them against his chest, leading the way out of the stall. “Udon. Let’s go.”

❖

XXVII

Your grocery budget always runs out around the 25^th of the month. Sushi is expensive, too; even the cheap kind is expensive. That’s no matter; I’ll buy. I’ll run my own money down early. I’ll do anything for you—anything to please you, and besides I like the taste. I like watching you enjoy things. You let out these soft little noises. Do you know? Happiness always makes you glow.

The taste of salt and brine sticks to the back of my tongue for ages, after. It always does. It lingers and leaves me lightheaded, every damn time. You always get kind of drowsy in your contentment. Maybe it’s a bit hedonistic, but you wear it well. You’re always chasing pleasure just for the sake of it—oh, but you make it look good. You make me do it again and again. I’d be offended if you asked anyone else.

I despise you. You’re awful and you’re going to get me banned from Itsu.

❖

They stay out late enough that the restaurant is practically to closing, only leaving when one of the staff starts pointedly sweeping the floor right next to their table. He thinks it’s late enough that he may have finally managed to wait John out, and when he gets home he’s rewarded with the sight of John’s favorite boots by the front door.

“Have a good night?” Freddie asks from the living room. He’s watching Antiques Roadshow, Brian asleep on the sofa beside him with his hand still resting in Freddie’s hair.

“Yeah,” Roger says. “Thanks. Sorry about earlier.”

Freddie just waves him off. “It’s no problem, love. I know you’re stressed.”

“S’no excuse,” Roger murmurs.

“Relax. I’m not bothered by it. We all have our bitchy moments.” He studies Roger up and down for a moment. “Would you like to sit for a bit?”

“No, no. It’s getting late.” Besides, he doesn’t want to intrude on the soft pile of FreddieandBrian on the sofa. As if to further drive home the point, Brian shifts in his sleep to press his nose into the crook of Freddie’s neck. “I have some reading to do, anyway.”

“Alright,” Freddie says neutrally. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

He can hear the shower running as he passes the bathroom door, and when he enters his and John’s room it’s to find his roommate predictably missing. Roger heaves a soft sigh, shucking his jumper off into a corner and tossing his jeans on top of them. He barely pauses to pull on his threadbare sleep pants before crawling under the sheets, letting out a breath as the comforting weight settles around his shoulders.

John’s bedside lamp is on, casting the room in a soft golden light. He doesn’t have any photos on his bedside table, but there are still odd bits of clutter: a chapstick, an odd, twisted piece of wiring, a few bits of loose change. A copy of Dune serves as a shelf more than anything; it’s worn and well-loved, but Roger doesn’t think he’s ever actually seen John reading it.

He’s still studying the holographic letters on the spine when the door opens and John enters. He hears him pause in the doorway before opening his wardrobe and ducking behind the door.

“Where have you been?” John calls absently.

Roger glances across the room, but all he can make out of his roommate is bare legs sticking out from under the wardrobe door. A towel falls to the floor, and Roger looks away.

“I could ask you the same thing,” he says to the ceiling.

John huffs. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, defensive.

“Nothing.” Roger swallows. “I was out with Dom and Crys.”

“Oh. How was it?”

“Good. We got Udon.”

“That little place by the Starbucks?”

“Mhm.”

“How was it?”

“Good. Lots of tempura vegetables. I think Brian would’ve liked it.”

“Maybe he’ll go with me,” John murmurs. “I’ve been meaning to try it.”

Roger knows. It was John who had told him about the place, after all. If not for the way John practically soliloquized about wanting to try the thick, chewy noodles and salty broth, Roger probably would never have even noticed the tiny little storefront.

“We can all go together sometime,” Roger offers. “I’d like to try it again.”

John hums. He closes the wardrobe door, scooping his towel from the floor and squeezing at the ends of his hair. Roger tries not to look; he really does, but of course it’s impossible, especially when dark locks fall from his shoulders to reveal the lines of his collarbones.

Collarbones which are littered with bruises.

They’re probably easy to hide during the day, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less vivid for it. They wander in a crooked line, vividly dark as if brand new, and as John wanders toward his bed Roger swears he catches sight of the imprint of teeth pressed next to his shoulder.

He looks away.

When did John have the time to hook up with someone? Is that what he’s been doing with Ronnie on their nights out? He’d be less hurt by it, if not for the fact that John never used to be bashful about the odd hookup or one night stand. All four of them had had their fair shares of walks of shame back to the flat in the early hours of the morning. John has never been evasive about things like this.

It’s not even that that hurts so acutely. It’s not that Roger wants all the gory details—he’d much rather avoid hearing about someone else getting to touch him, to be close to him, like that. No, it’s not that John isn’t telling him about it. It’s the fact that he is no longer even telling Roger where he’s going. Not only is Roger not worth an invite, it’s not even worth the trouble to let him know when or if John will be out.

And all the supposed outings with Ronnie? Late night ice cream runs used to be a Roger-and-John thing. Walking to the Tesco Express in the dark to pick out an ice cream from the tiny little freezer used to be one of their rituals. So did going dancing and suffering through the hangover together the next morning. So did trying new restaurants and sitting in the park and going shopping and a million other things that Roger never really even thinks about because they’re simply theirs, so much an ingrained part of both of their lives that they don’t need to be defined or pointed out; so ingrained that they don’t bear recognition until they’re missing, and Roger is left to fill in the gaps alone and wonder what went wrong.

What did go wrong?

He doesn’t have answers. He can chalk it up to stress, maybe. John is stressed; that much is true. He’s always got a lot on his plate.

That has never before resulted in Roger being pushed to the wayside, though.

John turns out the light, plunging the room into darkness. “Goodnight,” he murmurs, sheets rustling as he settles.

Roger sighs. He doesn’t have anything to say to smooth over the awkward edges of whatever the hell is happening. He rolls over, sighing at the feeling of clean sheets, and tucks his face into the space between the blankets and the pillow.

“Goodnight,” he replies quietly, but he doubts John hears it.

❖

VIII

I can’t say half of it to you, but I want to. Would you blush? Probably not. I blush just thinking about it or even writing it down. Some thoughts aren’t meant to be spoken.

Could I fuck you out of my system? Probably not, and I’d never have the courage to ask, anyway. I could never do that to our friendship, and I think it would hurt too much. To have you once and never again would be worse than never having you at all.

We’re beyond that, anyway. I don’t just want you like that. For fuck’s sake, I had a dream two nights ago that I was driving home, our kid in the backseat, and I was furious because you’d forgotten to pick him up from daycare. Even while I was driving I couldn’t stay mad, though, because I love you.

I love you.

See? I think about it now and then. How could I not? I think about having you like that, but it’s not something I need. If you loved me but never kissed me or touched me that would still be enough. I wouldn’t care. Do you know what I’m saying?

I wish it was as simple as raw lust, but it’s not. It’s so, so far beyond that.

❖

John is already gone when he wakes up the next morning. Roger huffs to himself as he rolls out of bed and gets dressed hurriedly. He knows John’s schedule by heart, and he knows that his Wednesday mornings are free. It’s the only day each week that John is able to sleep in, which can mean only one thing. Roger is being avoided.

That doesn’t matter. John’s stonewalling will not succeed in foiling his evil plan. He is going to set his two best friends up on a date if it kills him.

He grabs the notebook and makes his way to the kitchen. Freddie is already there, sitting cross-legged in a kitchen chair and shoveling muesli into his mouth.

“Morning,” Roger says, thumping the notebook down on the tabletop and leaning both palms on either side of it so that he can loom like a threatening…thing that looms.

Freddie chokes on his cereal. “Hi,” he gets out. “I used the last of the milk, but in my defense it was your turn to buy a new carton.”

“This isn’t about the milk.”

“What can I help you with, then?”

“I have three date options for you.”

“Date options?” Freddie asks, still coughing. He takes a long sip of tea and wipes tears from his eyes. “I wasn’t aware that I was going on any date.”

“You are. I’m going to arrange it for you, and then you’re going to go. It’ll be easy. You won’t have to do a thing.”

Freddie groans, taking another bite of cereal. “Let me plan it myself,” he says through his food.

“If you plan it it’s never going to get done!” Roger argues. “You dropping this book was a sign from the heavens! This is fate in the works, Freddie, and I’m its agent! This is my burden, but it’s one I’m willing to bear!”

“You and Deaky are banned from Lord of the Rings marathons,” Freddie says, pointing his spoon threateningly. “I don’t care how much you both like ogling Argon.”

“It’s Aragorn, and I think you know that. You only reference Return of the King about four times in this thing,” Roger grits out. “Which brings me to my next point: option one is a movie date.”

Freddie raises his eyebrows. “That’s a terrible idea. Who says I even want that?”

“You do,” Roger says, flipping the notebook open to where he’d stuck a pink sticky note the night before, “and, in fact, to quote entry twelve, I can’t decide if I like watching movies with you because of the way you look in the dark, or how when you whisper commentary into my ear you always come a bit too close.”

Freddie grimaces. “I don’t want to go on a movie date.”

“This book would beg to differ,” Roger says, and Freddie rolls his eyes. “Alright, fine. What about a road trip? Plenty of time to talk and listen to music, lots of time alone…”

“A road trip?” Freddie asks flatly.

“You have an entire six entries about the way Brian looks when he drives. And apparently that he’s obsessed with his car, but that you find it kind of endearing.”

“You really don’t need to tell me this,” Freddie says, looking a little green.

It’s Roger’s turn to roll his eyes. “You’re going to have to choose one of these, you know.”

“What’s my third option?”

“Option three comes directly from entry twenty-eight,” Roger proclaims, flipping to the correct page. At Freddie’s blank look he clarifies. “You surprise Brian by picking him up between classes and going to the beach together.”

“How on earth am I supposed to do that? I can’t drive!”

“Don’t ask me! This is your bloody fantasy, isn’t it?”

“He’ll never like that!”

“He’s insane not to like that,” Roger argues. “That’s practically the dream date.”

Freddie groans and lets his head fall against the table. It makes a rather painful thunking sound. “I hate you,” he says, his voice muffled by the wood. “I fucking hate this entire situation.”

“Well you know I’m right, don’t you?” Roger says. “You can hang out together while you travel, lay around in the sand and ignore all your responsibilities, it’s a beach so partial nudity is practically required, if you get too hot you could go and get ice cream or something, and do I need to point out all the potential occasions for rubbing suntan lotion into each other’s bare skin?” He throws his hands in the air. “This is the perfect date. You wrote down the perfect date.”

“I did not.”

“You did too, and I quote—"

“Would you stop quoting that bloody thing?” Freddie snaps.

“Why? This is our roadmap,” Roger says, tapping the cover pointedly. “This has all the answers.”

“You’re the fucking worst, you know that?” Freddie sits up only to bury his face in his hands. “Fine. I’ll take him to the beach. We are not skipping class, because if he skips class he’s going to have a bloody stroke. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve got to go find John.”

“He’s not here,” Roger says. He stands up straight and walks across the room to pour himself a cup of tea. “He left early.”

“Why?”

“Dunno. I think he’s avoiding me. What do you need him for?”

“I need to go kill him,” Freddie says serenely. He deposits his dirty bowl in the sink—really, Roger thinks all his roommates were probably raised by wolves—and leaves the room.

Roger frowns, pausing as he lets sugar fall in a steady stream from the shaker into his mug. “Whatever for?” he asks.

Freddie returns, shoes and jacket on, and ignores him completely as he walks out the front door.

“Freddie?” Roger calls. “Freddie! Don’t kill my roommate!”

Freddie does not end up killing John.

Roger only finds this out because he stumbles upon John out of sheer luck. He’d managed to breeze his way out the door after haphazardly getting ready in record time, his hair tamed for once and his shirt unbuttoned to a height he would classify as tastefully scandalous. He’s walking to class—or at least, to the tube station where he will then decide whether he wants to go to class at all or whether he’d rather go bug Dom at work—when he spots his roommate by chance, sitting in the window of a Starbucks.

Roger Taylor is not a coward. He faces his problems head on. Maybe last night wasn’t the right time to try to mend whatever gap is growing between them, but in the cold light of day he’s ready to tackle this problem the way he tackles everything: with blind optimism and a stubborn refusal to fail.

He stops dead in his tracks, turns and makes a beeline through the door. “John!” he says loudly.

Several heads snap up, including John’s. John’s expression can best be described as deer in the headlights. It’s kind of cute.

Roger pulls out the chair across from him, their knees bumping under the table. “Whatcha doing?”

“Reading,” John says, still watching Roger warily as if he’s about to go cross eyed and do a handstand.

“Reading what?”

“My intro to radio waves supplemental,” John says faintly. His eyes shift from Roger’s eyes, to his mouth, to his chest and then to the ceiling.

“Tell me more,” Roger says. He grabs John’s coffee cup and takes a long sip. Caramel. Yum.

“It’s about the science behind long-distance radio transmissions for deep-space travel,” John says, eyes fixed on Roger’s mouth again for some reason. Roger frowns and licks his lips. Maybe he has whipped cream on his face. “Whether radio is still a feasible method of—of, uh…”

When he doesn’t continue Roger raises his eyebrows. “Of…?”

John blinks hard, then frowns. “Sorry, don’t you have class right now?”

“I’m skipping it. You’re much more important,” Roger says. John swallows hard at that, his eyes widening, and really, what is going on with him today? “Are you alright?” he asks him, leaning closer and lowering his voice. “Are you feeling well?”

“Fine,” John croaks.

“You sure?” Roger leans forward to rest his wrist against John’s forehead, looking him over critically. “You don’t sound fine. You doing alright?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Roger ducks even closer. “Are you seeing someone?” he whispers lowly. “Someone who could’ve gotten you sick?”

“Why on earth—”

“Mononucleosis? Kissing disease?” He lets his hand fall, brushing his fingers against John’s neck.

John frowns. “What the fuck are you doing?” he asks, but ruins it a little by tilting his head to give Roger better access.

“Checking your lymph nodes,” Roger says as if this is completely normal, because this is definitely normal. Yep. That’s why the middle aged businessman the next table over is giving them worryingly heated looks right now. “Nothing? Good? Not seeing anyone?”

“No, I’m good. Not seeing anyone, free of kissing disease—I’m fine.” He clears his throat loudly, closing his book but keeping the end of one finger between the pages. “What’s going on?”

Roger purses his lips, letting his wrist fall. If John wants to ignore his own obvious discomfort, then so be it. “Right. So I got Freddie to agree to take Brian on a date.”

“Where are they going?”

“The beach. He was really resistant to it. I don’t know why. It’s going to be perfect. I mean, who doesn’t like a good trip to the coast, anyway?”

“Freddie, apparently,” John says.

“Oh, that reminds me. He’s looking for you.”

“What for?”

“He wants to kill you.”

John hums at that and takes a bored sip of coffee. “I take it he didn’t tell you what for?”

“No. Don’t worry about it. I’ll protect you.”

John avoids his gaze at that, opening his book again and looking down at it. “How about you protect me from my professors instead? They’re going to skin me if I don’t get this done.”

Roger snorts and stands up.

“Where are you going?” John asks, looking at him with wide eyes.

“To get a drink,” Roger says. “If I’m going to be protecting you from harm I might as well get comfortable.”

John smiles at that, the smile that makes his eyes crinkle and shows off the gap between his front teeth. Roger turns toward the counter before he can do something idiotic, like blush or propose marriage. Or scream.

Screaming is always a good option.

❖

XVI

So this is love. I can’t think about anything else. You consume all my thoughts. I can’t sleep. I don’t get hungry—not for food. I get bored easily. Nothing holds my attention, but when you enter a room everything else disappears. My mum told me that when I fell in love I’d know it, and I do. I do. 

❖

They manage to maintain a precarious balance over the next few days. John spends most of his time outside of the flat. Roger spends most of his time in it. When John comes home and refuses to meet his eyes, Roger politely ignores him. When he comes home in a good mood they pretend nothing is wrong.

When Roger feels like he’s ready to crawl out of his skin, he goes to bug Dom.

“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve fucked my girlfriend?” she asks him conversationally without looking up from her phone.

Roger grimaces because, ew. As much as he supports Dom and Ronnie’s happiness, he’d rather not think about that. “She’s like a sister to me,” he says. “I love her. Please do not—”

“Wager a guess,” Dom says amicably, tapping away on her phone. “Go ahead.”

“You’re starting to talk like Crystal, you know. You’re going to start getting kicked out of bars.”

“It’s been seven days, Roger. We haven’t had sex in seven days.”

He squints. “That’s not even that long.”

“Not that long?” she says, putting her phone down. “I’m sorry, and how long have you been fighting with your roommate?”

He shrugs. “Not that long?” he says sheepishly. “Definitely longer than seven days, though.”

“Seven days is plenty long.”

“Not really.”

“It is to me. Maybe not with you and your vow of chastity—”

“I did not take a vow of chastity!” he yelps, because he really didn’t. There’s a difference between taking a vow of chastity versus getting bored of hookups because he’s so in love with someone he can barely function as it is.

Seven days is not that long.

“Crystal agrees with me, you know.”

“What, now you’ve been talking about my sex life with Crystal?”

“No, I’ve been talking about my sex life with Crystal. And about the fact that he needs to actually start baby-sitting you better so that me and Ronnie can finally get some alone time.”

Roger splutters. “Hang on—baby-sitting? And how is any of this my fault?! If anything, you should be mad at John! So should Crystal, for that matter!”

They both turn to Crystal, who has been hiding his face in his hands for the last twenty minutes. “Please don’t include me in this,” he says, his voice muffled against his palms. “I don’t want to get involved.”

“Aw, Crys—”

“No. I’m serious. Don’t touch me.” He pulls his hands away just to swat at Roger. “First the whole Freddie-and-Brian thing, and now whatever this is—”

“How is it going with Freddie and Brian?” Dom asks, looking up.

Roger heaves a put-upon sigh. “We’ll have to see. I gave them a few options, so they should be going out soon. I hope so, anyway. The sooner they do, the sooner we can all return to our lives.”

“It’s made for good entertainment, to be fair,” Crystal mutters. “You actually think they’re going to sort it out?”

“We’ll just have to see, won’t we?” Roger muses. “Hope springs eternal.”

“Hm. I wouldn’t put money on it any more than I’d bet on you finally managing to bring a bird—”

“Shut up,” Roger says. “I’ve been busy!”

“Apparently!”

The week passes by in much the same fashion, Roger going to harass the two of them whenever he can while John makes himself scarce for most of each day. The days trudge onward, each as monotonous as the last, and then one morning he wakes up it’s May 26^th.

The flat is quiet for once. No dishes are being clattered around in the kitchen, nobody is banging away on the piano, and even the stereo is silent. John is still in bed, but even in the low light of morning Roger can tell that he’s not asleep. His back is to Roger, but he’s breathing just a little too heavily for Roger to be fooled.

Roger doesn’t disturb him. He sneaks out of the room to put the kettle on instead, letting John have this moment of quiet.

He hears John talking on the phone at around noon, and it’s not long before the man himself finally emerges. Roger never quite knows what to expect of him on days like this, but he looks well enough. He’s wearing soft joggers and a shirt that proudly advertises a brewery in Truro of all things, which Roger doesn’t recognize immediately but knows without a shadow of a doubt was originally his.

John quietly accepts his invitation to join Roger in watching a program he’d been completely ignoring up until this very moment. Not only does he accept, he curls up under Roger’s arm and rests his shoulder blade against Roger’s chest, fingers wrapped loosely around Roger’s wrist to keep him close, somehow making it all seem utterly nonchalant. He settles down and stares at the telly and eventually kicks the blanket on the arm of the sofa up his legs when he gets cold.

“Talk to your family?”

“Mhm,” John replies.

Roger chews his lip for a beat. “You want tea?”

“No, it’s okay.” He flops over the rest of the way, his head pillowed on Roger’s thighs, and doesn’t move for several hours.

The 26^th of May passes without much fanfare. Roger never knows what to expect from John, these days—doesn’t know whether he’ll wake up to him happy and bright, angry, stressed or simply not there at all. He’s used to knowing straight down to his bones, the same way he can predict the moods of Brian and Freddie. He’ll take anything as long as John is here, content as he can be.

He just doesn’t know how to make it better when he’s not.

❖

VII

I have three best friends. I consider myself lucky. When I was a child I barely had one. 

When I sit down to write I write to you. It’s always you, every single time. It’s never them. Why? 

I’d tell you out of the blue, if I told you. Maybe we’d date for a few months first. We’d grow into each other a little and become happy in the home we created together. We’d breathe each other in every night and work hard for each other every day. I’d wait to tell you until everything is perfect. Maybe we go on a long drive somewhere or something, our fingers gripping each other right above the gear shift. I’d turn and say it, then. 

Hey, sunshine. I’m in love with you. 

You’re my best friend. I consider myself lucky. When I was a kid I was always lonely. If you ever find out, I’ll be right back where I started. 

❖

At least there’s one silver lining to the week. Despite all of everyone’s doubts and misgivings, Freddie and Brian do manage to go on a date just a few days later.

Roger is fairly confident Brian doesn’t know it’s a date. He doubts Freddie would’ve told him, and one look at the half-miserable expression on Freddie’s face as he stomps out of the flat into the rare, beautiful mid-morning London sunshine really tells Roger all he needs to know about the situation.

It’s no matter, though; not really. All that matters is that Freddie and Brian are taking the train to Brighton to laze about on the rocks and buy each other ice cream and rub suntan lotion on each other’s shoulders, and really, Roger is more than ready for the whole situation to develop.

It’s not like he won’t be keeping himself busy, though. John has decided to break their odd stalemate, and though he disappeared a few times over the course of the week to see Ronnie he’s at least stopped giving Roger the cold shoulder.

John is here, now. At least there’s that.

John knocks on the door to Roger’s room with a bag of Indian food and a laptop tucked under his arm, offering Roger a sheepish smile that turns warm the moment Roger welcomes him in. John plunks himself down on Roger’s bed, his legs parallel to Roger’s and his back resting against the unforgiving plaster of the wall until Roger offers him a pillow. John hands him a container of chicken tikka masala and a torn-off half of his own piece of garlic naan, his fingers shiny from the butter as he passes it over.

John watches Top Gear with him and laughs at his jokes, and eventually sets aside their food so that he can tuck himself sideways on Roger’s tiny bed, humming in the back of his throat when Roger threads his fingers through his hair. When Roger pauses he pushes backward into the touch, uncharacteristically needy.

Roger lets out a tiny huff of laughter before he can help himself. “Alright?” he asks softly, running his thumb gently over John’s forehead.

John just nods against his thigh, then grunts and pulls his knees closer to his chest. He’s silent for long enough that Roger thinks he won’t be getting any more of a response than that; so long that Roger nearly forgets about the question.

“I’m okay,” he murmurs finally, almost inaudible over the sounds of engines coming from his computer. “Just got a lot on my mind, you know. I’m sorry I’ve been so…weird, you know. Didn’t mean to cut you out.”

Roger frowns. He looks down at him, but John doesn’t elaborate. His hands are tucked up near his face, and when Roger rubs his thumb over his temple John’s fingers twitch.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Roger asks seriously.

John purses his lips. “It’s alright. It’s not really something anyone can help me with.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s alright,” he murmurs, twisting until he can smile up at him tiredly. “Really.”

His movement leaves Roger cupping his cheek instead of petting his hair. Somehow that’s okay. “I’m just worried about you,” Roger tells him. “I’m here if you need me. You don’t need to push me away.”

“I know,” John says. “You’re a good friend, Rog.”

“I do my best,” Roger replies, then hesitates. Something about the moment—the low lighting, John spread out beneath him, his face cradled in Roger’s palm—is vulnerable in a way that they usually aren’t. They’re no strangers to being in each other’s space, but this is different. “I love you,” he says anyway, because it’s true.

Something in John’s expression changes, and he looks suddenly sad. “I love you too,” he murmurs with a tiny smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

Roger frowns. “John,” he starts.

“It’s okay,” John says quickly, his voice pinched and wobbly. He rolls over, hiding his face. “I’m fine. Tired. I’ve been busy and tired and I’m—I miss my mum, you know, and I’m lonely. I’ll feel better in the morning.”

Roger sighs, pushing his fingers through John’s hair again. “Stay here with me tonight,” he says.

“I don’t want to bother you,” John protests halfheartedly.

“Come on. Just for tonight. We can pretend we’re sharing that shitty sofa in Bri and Fred’s old place, you remember that?”

John doesn’t even pretend to laugh at that, though Roger sees his mouth quirk up slightly. “Yeah, fine,” he says, his eyes fluttering shut.

And then he goes quiet.

It takes a long time for Roger to realize he’s dozed off. All at once the tinny engine noises resonating from the laptop are too loud in the space, and Roger grimaces as he turns the volume down. It’s not late; it’s barely ten, but he knows better than anyone that John needs all the rest he can get.

He closes the laptop as quietly as he can, leaning down to tuck it under his bed. He hesitates before reaching toward John, brushing his fringe back from his face. John doesn’t react in the slightest; his breathing doesn’t even change, his lips parted slightly in sleep and his face relaxed.

Roger would rather die than move him. He lays down next to him, shutting his eyes against the dim glow of Freddie’s fairy lights, and falls asleep to the rhythm of John’s breathing.

❖

XXVI

I want to bury myself in you. I want to pull you over me and breathe you in. I want to feel you in my sternum and taste you on the backs of my teeth. 

They taught me that wanting a man is a sin. In church, in school, they said that. They said it’s dirty to want another man in that way. 

You laid beside me on the lawn today and got grass stains on your trousers. Your hair was a mess. The mud soaked through my jeans. It was a shade too cold, but I wouldn’t have moved for anything. There we were, laying on the earth, dirt seeping into our clothes. I watched you and all I could think was how I wanted to be closer. I want to make you laugh and gasp and moan. Nothing pure or innocent about it; no bigger revelation than your smile. It feels good to crave this. It feels right.

I’m not very religious these days. It figures. The only thing I really want to get on my knees and worship is you.

❖

He wakes slowly.

The world is warm and humid. John is breathing against the top of his head, his arm slung around Roger’s torso. He smells warm and familiar, and all Roger really wants is to burrow in closer and fall back asleep.

He nestles closer to him, chasing his heat and the feeling of goodness drifting through him, slow and sweet. Being closer is better; rocking closer feels good, warm, safe. John sighs above him, shifting in his sleep, and Roger inhales sharply as his thigh presses harder—

His eyes snap open.

He’s fully and completely tangled up in John’s arms, and he’s definitely been lazily rubbing off against his leg in his sleep.

This is great. Awesome.

He grimaces into the darkness that is the crook of John’s neck. How did they even fall asleep like this? How did they stay asleep like this? John somehow got his arm under Roger’s neck, cradling his head and holding him close, and Roger doesn’t think he understands how their legs are even arranged based off just feel alone.

His frown deepens as he does his best to extract himself. John’s always been a heavy sleeper; once he falls asleep he’s asleep for good, laying stone-still throughout the entire night, and that’s Roger’s saving grace here; he’s loose-limbed enough that Roger can worm his way out from beneath John’s arm with little to no trouble. He can’t even hazard a guess as to how a man who has been known to sleep like a statue somehow turned into an incapacitated octopus over the course of the night, but that’s neither here nor there.

He manages to remove himself from John’s arms. He then promptly almost falls on his face when John’s legs trip him up.

Catching himself less-than-gracefully—and then adjusting himself in his joggers—he casts one last look at his roommate. He’s still sleeping soundly. That at least is a blessing; nothing would make this more embarrassing than John being awake to witness Roger nearly falling boner-first off the bed and onto the floor. Not that he hasn’t ever fallen off a bed boner-first before, but it’s usually in much more fun circumstances.

Thoughts like that really aren’t helping his current situation.

He groans under his breath, reaching for the towel draped over the back of his chair and making for the door. He might as well take a shower to sort himself out before his own sexual frustration ends up waking John from a dead sleep. He casts one last look at John, still sleeping soundly in the exact position that Roger left him in.

He doesn’t usually move in his sleep. Roger turns that thought over in his head as he grabs his towel from the back of his chair and makes his way to the door, more than ready for a shameful wank in the shower in a vain effort to get any thought of John Deacon out of his mind. John rarely moves when he sleeps, so how did Roger wake up with him wrapped around him like that? Maybe he was lonelier than he claimed. Roger should really ask him about—

“Rog!” Freddie yelps in the hallway.

Roger curses quietly. He can’t retreat to his room; he doesn’t particularly want to be holding a conversation right now if he can help it, either. He holds his towel none-too-subtly in front of his crotch. “Freddie!” he whispers, shutting the door silently in an effort to give John a few more minutes of sleep. “I was just about to shower.”

“I want to talk to you!” Freddie whispers back, grinning. “I owe you thanks!”

“Thanks?” Roger asks, edging his way closer to the bathroom. “I didn’t buy milk, if that’s what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t care about that. I’m talking about yesterday. It went wonderfully!”

“Yesterday…”

“The date!” Freddie says. “With Brian?”

“Oh,” Roger says, and then, “Oh! You and Brian—”

“It was perfect. You really are right. You’re a genius, you know.”

“Are you saying you and him are together?”

“Yes, and that’s not all,” Freddie says, wiggling his eyebrows. “Let’s just say I can now confirm that he’s perfectly proportionate in every way.”

Roger winces. “That’s great, Fred.”

“We fucked.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“It was amazing.”

“Okay,” Roger says softly, letting his towel fall at his side. It’s not like it matters. His boner has been sufficiently killed.

“His dick is like the size of my—”

“Okay!” Roger says, more loudly. “That’s really great, Freddie! That’s awesome! Please don’t tell me anything else about it, alright?”

Freddie, for his part, just beams. “Where’s John? I need to tell him everything.”

“I don’t think he wants to hear all that,” Roger says, pulling a face.

“No, I mean I need to thank him. These past few weeks have been so hard for him.”

“Yeah, he said he’s been lonely. Did he say anything to you?” he adds in an undertone. “I’m not really sure what’s going on with him.”

“He’s lonely?” Freddie asks, then shakes his head. “Poor thing. Maybe he’ll be happy to have a little good news. You’ll finally get to stop reading that stupid notebook, for one.”

“Yeah,” Roger says, because he honestly isn’t sure how that realization is sitting with him right now. “Listen, maybe talk to him later, okay? He could use the sleep. Now, if you don’t mind I’m going to go take a shower.”

“Yeah, about that,” Freddie says, chewing his lip. “Maybe give me twenty minutes or so? I think I should clean it before you go in.”

Roger stares at him.  Freddie blinks back.

“Oh, ew,” Roger says finally, because it’s all he can muster this early in the morning.

“I said I’d clean it!” Freddie yells, already heading in the direction of the bathroom. “Twenty minutes max! You’ll be able to eat off of it by the time I’m done!”

Roger fights back a gag—that’s not an image he needs right now, quite honestly—and pushes back through the door into his and John’s room.

John is hugging a pillow, his face pressed into Roger’s comfortably threadbare cotton pillowcase. He cracks an eye open when Roger enters the room.

Roger huffs. “I was going to try to let you get a little more sleep.”

“No use, with all that racket,” John replies. He shifts, yawning into the fabric, and Roger fights the urge to coo. “What’s going on with him?”

“He and Brian,” Roger tells him. “They apparently talked yesterday. Confessed their feelings, shagged each other’s brains out and they’re a real couple now, I guess.”

John’s face scrunches up. “That’s nice,” he says flatly.

Roger huffs out a laugh. “It doesn’t sound nice.”

“Just a little too much detail.” He hides his face in the pillow.

Roger sighs. He sits down on the edge of John’s bed and then flops backward. The sheets are cold and unwelcoming after a night without a body to warm them, but at least they smell like him. “Are you at least happy for them?” he asks the ceiling. “You don’t have to read that notebook anymore. There’s that.”

“Yeah, there’s that,” John replies. There’s a rustling of fabric, and when Roger pulls his head up it’s to see John sitting up, stretching his arms above his head. He looks even more exhausted than he did before he went to sleep.

Roger studies his profile for a long moment. There’s a crease on his face from Roger’s pillow, pink against his fair skin. He’s avoiding Roger’s eyes, his gaze fixed on the wall.

“Do you want to do something today?” Roger asks him quietly. “I know you have class this morning, but maybe after? I’ve got a day off from the stand, and you seemed kind of low last night. It might be nice to—I don’t know, to go out somewhere. Go shopping, maybe.”

John’s face softens, but he still doesn’t meet Roger’s eyes. “I told Ronnie I would come over after class.”

Roger tries not to feel too let down by that. Great; so they really are back where they started. “Maybe after that, then?” he offers. “When will you be home?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. She wanted to try out some new place that just opened. I could be out all night.”

“Well, if you want to spend some time I’m always here,” Roger says.

John looks at him finally. He studies him for a long beat, his face giving nothing away. He’s the complete opposite of the way he was the night before; now he’s withdrawn and untrusting where before he was open and wanting. Roger would give him the world; he’d give him anything he asked for if it would make him happy. He isn’t quite sure how to articulate that, though.

“Thanks,” John says after a long pause. “It means a lot.”

“Sure,” Roger says, at a loss.

“I’m going to get some tea,” John says, and then he’s gone.

Roger is left sitting on John’s cold sheets, staring at their bedroom door and wondering what the hell he did wrong.

Freddie emerges from the bathroom finally, loudly declaring that the shower has been returned to its previous sanctity. Roger practically runs to the bathroom, turning on the water as hot as it will go and allowing himself to get lost in the ritual of it.

He takes his time, using all the hot water mostly out of spite, but he regrets it as soon as he gets out. When he emerges forty five minutes later the flat is empty, everyone already having left.

Roger sighs to himself. He finishes pouring his coffee, reaching for the handle to the fridge before stopping dead as he sees a note on the door.

A note in very familiar handwriting.

Someone buy milk!!! Thanks—John

He stares at it, his heart in his throat. The curve of the capital T, the straight tail of the y, the way the letters all slant slightly to the left—he feels like he’s been hit with a tire iron.

It’s the exact same handwriting from the notebook.

He’d seen John’s handwriting before, hadn’t he? He wants to say he’s sure of it, but the more he thinks about it the less certain he is. John takes notes for class on his laptop and doesn’t leave song lyrics laying around like the rest of them.

Still, it’s his own fault for being fooled by them. He can hardly—

They lied to him.

Freddie and John both knew. They lied to him about it. Why on earth would they lie about it? Because John didn’t want his feelings for Brian known? Were they so determined to hide that fact that they’d completely leave Roger out of the loop? Why?

He’s digging his phone out of his pocket before he can stop himself. He unlocks it quickly, scrolling through his contacts and tapping John’s name without a second thought.

It rings twice. “Rog?” John answers, his voice barely above a whisper.

“It’s your notebook,” Roger says in lieu of a hello.

John is silent for a long moment. “Roger, I can explain.”

“Explain what? Why you thought it was necessary to lie to me?”

“I’m in class. Can we talk about this later?”

“I want to talk about this now, actually.” There’s a muffled scuffing noise on the other line like John is walking, maybe to leave the lecture hall; Roger ignores it. “I want to know why you thought it was necessary to lie to me about something like this.”

“What, it’s not obvious?”

“That you’re apparently in love with Brian?” Roger asks, eyebrows raising. “No, I wouldn’t say it’s obvious.”

“Roger, I swear to god…” There’s a thumping noise, and then all at once John is speaking full volume. “You really don’t get what’s happening here, do you?”

Roger laughs. “No, I absolutely do not. Please explain to me why it is that you’ve never said a word about this, let alone why you’ve been helping me set Brian up with Freddie. You could have told us, you know. I wouldn’t have helped if I thought it would hurt you.” That thought has him frowning to himself, though he barely pauses for breath. “What do you even see in him, anyway?”

“I don’t remember you asking Freddie that,” John says flatly.

“Don’t accuse me of having double standards about this.”

“Don’t you?”

“No,” he huffs. “I just think you could do better.”

“Better than Brian, who happens to be our best friend?” John snaps. “What, so I can do better but Freddie should just settle?”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

John breathes an angry laugh into the receiver. “Right now I don’t know what the fuck you mean, quite honestly.”

“Don’t try and turn this around on me,” Roger says impatiently. “You still haven’t explained a thing.”

“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” John snaps. “Roger, I don’t owe you anything. Do you understand that? You chose to get involved in this. You chose to poke around in it, and quite honestly Freddie isn’t innocent, either. What did you expect me to do?”

“To tell the truth, maybe,” Roger gripes.

“That’s rich.”

“Is it? For fuck’s sake, John, we sleep in the same room every night. We tell each other everything. We don’t have secrets. Is it really that outrageous that I’d expect that not to change when—”

“Change? Nothing’s changed.”

He laughs, too loud and brittle. “So that’s been one-sided this whole time?”

“What do you want?” John spits. “For me to braid your hair and get us friendship bracelets? Is that it?”

“I just want to know that you trust me!” he yells into the phone. “I want you to take this seriously!”

“You’re making that very hard to do,” John says snidely.

“Why are you being such a prick?”

“Why are you being so sensitive? You don’t get to be the one asking for apologies in this situation. Don’t you get that?”

“Oh, fuck you. I was trying to help. If you had been honest from the start—”

“Like I could get a word in edgewise.”

“Like you tried! Like you said a single fucking thing! Don’t act like I was steamrolling you when you went right along with it!”

John laughs. “What do you even want from me, Roger? Because I’m not going to apologize.”

“I want proof that you actually care about this! I want to know you trust me!”

“And why would I?” John snaps. “ Why would I care? You’re so bored between one night stands that you have to dig through all our love lives just to fill the gaps of your own loneliness—and it’s our personal business, Roger! Why would I trust you when you pry your way through your so-called friends’ secrets just to feel less pathetic about yourself?”

Roger falls abruptly silent, his breath frozen in his chest.

He can hear John breathing on the other line, sharp and ragged. He shuts his eyes and leans back against the counter, and he can almost pretend that John is with him in the room when he does it.

It’s not like it makes it any better. It’s not like it changes the fact that John just told him that their entire friendship is a lie; that the open trust between them that Roger cherishes so dearly is nothing more than a figment of his own imagination.

John takes a breath. It crackles through the line, reminding Roger that he’s there.

His heart is pounding all at once, the tips of his fingers developing a faint tremble. There it is; there’s the familiar rush of anger overcoming the shock. The burn of it is almost as grounding as the now-instinctual ritual of pushing it back. He takes a long moment to breathe—six seconds in, six seconds holding, six seconds out—but he has to gasp for air halfway through.

“Roger,” John tries, his voice pinched.

“Don’t,” he says again. “I—fuck. Don’t bother.”

“Rog—”

He hangs up before John can get another word in, and only just manages to place his phone down on the counter rather than hurling it full force at the wall. Instead he clenches his fists, tucking them against his ribcage before sinking down onto the floor, measuring his breathing carefully and fighting against the wave of blinding anger and panic with everything that he has.

The afternoon that follows isn’t one of his finest.

It takes a long time to even reach a semblance of calm, and once he finally does he realizes with a new bout of panic that John is probably on his way home. If he really walked out of his class immediately after the call then he’ll be just minutes away.

Roger can’t see him right now. He can’t look him in the eye. He just can’t.

He hits the street instead, walking in the opposite direction of John’s bus stop as quickly as his feet will carry him. He doesn’t know how far he walks or for how long, but by the time he comes back to himself he realizes he has no way of knowing. His phone is dead. Somehow, that’s fine.

He still has his wallet on him, at least. It’s the cash in his pocket that has him ducking into the nearest pub as the sun is setting. There’s a match playing inside, but it hasn’t managed to attract any crowds quite yet. He can only be grateful for that as he orders his first drink, and then a second, and then a third, and then the night is falling away beneath his feet.

A girl buys two shots of tequila and gives him one, and then buys four more, and then she’s asking him about his major and moving her stool closer to his own. She’s cute, and he watches her lips as she speaks so that he can understand her over the din. Her mouth is very pink and her bottom lip doesn’t pout like he’d almost been expecting it to when he turned to look at her. He shakes his head to clear his own confusion.

“Roger?” she asks him sweetly. “You alright?”

“Yeah, sorry,” he murmurs. “I must have spaced out for a moment.”

“I was telling you about my evening class. I hope I wasn’t boring you.”

“No, of course not.”

She hesitates, looking him over with a slight smirk. “I’m sure there are other things you would much rather be doing, anyway.”

John never looks at him like that. His eyes don’t go dark when he’s flirting. They go light instead, glittering like he finds some part of it inherently amusing. Roger has seen him do it enough times at bars to know.

He wonders if he ever does it to Brian. He’s never seen him try to sweet talk him, but surely it’s happened before. If it hasn’t then it will soon.

The girl takes his hand and tugs him toward the hallway leading to the back door. He follows, stumbling over his own feet as he does his best to rid himself of his own thoughts.

As soon as they’re out of sight of the rest of the bar she presses him against the slightly sticky wall, hooking her hands around his neck and playing with his hair as she kisses him hungrily. She smells sweet, like vanilla or sugar. Her waist is soft and delicate in his hands.

John’s doesn’t feel like that when Roger touches him there—the odd friendly touch or guiding hand. He’s all lithe muscle and hard angles, his skin always slightly chilled somehow as if he’s never quite warm enough. He’s—

No. Why is he thinking about John?

Her lips leave his own to trail down his jaw, her teeth scraping his skin.

He’s done this before. Of course he has. He’s had feelings for his best friend for ages—for literal years—and it’s never stopped him from hooking up with the odd girl or boy for a night or two. He’s never had trouble separating his company for the night from the person whose company he truly longs for. Why now?

She bites the juncture of his jaw hard before soothing it over with her tongue, and he gasps. She’s good at this. She’s very good; that’s not the problem. That’s not the difference.

Is it because she looks like him? She resembles him a bit, with her long brown hair and light eyes. That’s not it, though; it can’t be.

Maybe it’s the thought of John doing the same; John meeting his eyes distractedly across bars and pubs and taverns, one hand on a girl’s hip and the other curled around a glass of gin; John going home with girls while Brian was in the same room, just a few seats away, flirting with a girl of his own.

Maybe it’s something to do with that.

“Rog, are you okay?” the girl murmurs, pulling away to look at him.

John in his head; John taking strangers home; John pressing them down against mattresses and pulling them into cabs. John pushing them up against sticky walls in pubs and latching his mouth against their jaws. John wanting them—John wanting him. John in his bed.

John sitting down and writing a book full of love letters to someone else.  John not trusting him.

“Rog?”

He nods absently, then catches himself and shakes his head. “I…no, I’m sorry.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I’m sorry. You’re lovely,” he babbles. “I—not tonight, for me. I can’t—it’s not your fault.”

“It’s okay,” she says, her light eyes wide. She watches him, seemingly at a loss as he squeezes out from between her and the wall and makes his way toward the back door.

He stumbles against it, pushing through and taking a deep breath of the cool night air. It must have rained sometime during the afternoon. His foot lands in a shallow puddle, the water splashing beneath his feet and catching the yellow light of the streetlamps. It disrupts the reflections of the dumpsters and fences. He wonders if this will earn him seven years’ bad luck.

John is going to be furious with him when he finally catches up to him.

Roger should have told them where he was going, at least. Maybe he should have made sure his phone was charged, should have left a note, but—

But it serves him right in the end, doesn’t it? John had torn his heart out. John had been so angry, and for what? Because Roger had confronted him and he’d gotten defensive about it? It wasn’t fair. It didn’t matter what Roger had done. Whatever it was, it was no reason to imply that Roger was never his friend in the first place.

What had he done? He doesn’t really remember. It’s all starting to blur.

He trips over his own feet as he makes it down the alley but manages to catch himself, swerving off his path to purposefully walk through a puddle. The cold water soaks through his All Stars, and he grimaces at the way it makes his sock squelch.

If it’s all starting to fade away anyway then it can’t be relevant in the first place. He’d rather forget it. He’d rather go back to the way things were, with he and John spending all their free time together and staring into each other’s eyes during practice to keep on beat even if in his head he knows he’s doing it for another reason entirely. He wants to go back to waking up to the sight of him first thing in the morning and getting pho together on the weekends and being unaware of the notebook’s existence at all.

He can’t, though. He can’t go back. John was horrible to him.

There’s a doorway up ahead that’s singing a siren’s song in the darkness, the stoop the finish line of this maddening walk that his feet have been leading him on. He climbs the steps, the bell ringing when he mashes his fist against the button. The confetti goes off and he hears the Olympic fanfare blaring in his head. He laughs.

“Roger?”

And it’s not John at the door, but it’s the person he’d most wanted to see, anyway. “Dom,” he gasps, sucked into her gaze like she’s the great vacuum of space or something, and he’s laughing at that, too, and then he’s trying to breathe, and then all at once he’s sobbing.

“C'est quoi ce bordel?” she mutters into his hair, and that’s how he realizes that she’s got an arm around him, tugging him into the flat and locking the door behind him. “Roger…”

“Love you,” he slurs, and he honestly isn’t sure if it comes out in French like he wanted it to.

She rubs the pad of a thumb against the skin below his eyes. “What’s wrong?” she asks him. “Come here, you idiot. Come inside. Everyone has been looking for you. Do you know that?”

He hiccups, shaking his head. He can’t stop crying now that he’s started. He isn’t even sure why he’s crying in the first place, but the fact that his friends might’ve worried about him has a new wave of grief flooding his chest.

“You’re alright,” Dom says softly, rubbing a hand between his shoulder blades. She settles him against the couch, and then pulls him close again when the sobbing doesn’t let up. “Come on. It’s okay.”

“Babe?” Ronnie calls from the other room.

He hides his face against Dom’s shoulder. He’s probably ruining her shirt, but she just keeps petting the back of his neck.

“Here,” Dom calls, her voice soft. “It’s alright. Roger is here. You can tell them we found him.”

“Roger fucking Taylor,” Ronnie starts.

“Ron,” Dom says softly. Roger feels her shake her head, her hair brushing against his face. “Not now.”

He breathes against her shoulder. He’s so tired all of a sudden. His head is spinning from the alcohol, and his closed eyes aren’t making it any better. He opens them only to take in the colors of their parlor, fragmented by the shadowed latticework of Dom’s hair.

“Will you grab the spare pillow and blankets for me, love?” Dom asks quietly.

Her fingers don’t stray from his neck. It feels divine, the tension in his spine melting beneath her touch. She’s so good at that. She’s great; she’s the best person he’s ever met. She’s probably the best thing that’ll ever happen to him.

“That’s not true, but it’s very sweet all the same,” she tells him in French.

He grunts in reply.

Ronnie comes back, and then Dom holds a glass of water to his lips and makes him drink the whole thing. Someone takes off his wet shoes, and his jacket is gone but there’s a warm quilt in its place and a pillow under his head.

Ronnie leans over him and pushes his fringe out of his face. “We’ve got a lot to talk about in the morning,” she says earnestly, and she’s the sweetest person Roger has ever met but somehow she manages to make it sound threatening.

“Sleep this off,” Dom says to him. “You’ll feel better. Just wait and see.”

He’s not sure that’s true, but he feels his eyes drifting shut regardless. He thinks he manages to thank her.

The light goes out, and then the light in the kitchen, and then he can hear their voices in the distance until that fades out, too. And then the entire world is fading away as he drifts off to sleep.

His last conscious thought is that he misses John.

❖

XXXVI

Life with you is something I’ll never be able to hold onto. If I fail to remember that I’ll never forgive myself.

❖

The light from the windows is what wakes him. It’s dim through the curtains, but still bright enough to make his head pound.

Someone left a painkiller on the table beside a glass of water, and he practically groans with relief when he sees it. He gropes for it, managing to grab it between two fingers and almost swallowing it dry before he thinks better of it and sits up to down the water, too.

He spots Dom through the doorway to the kitchen as he does. She smiles at him from where she’s stirring eggs on the stove.

“Feeling alright?” she calls.

He winces. “Alright, yeah,” he says. He doesn’t feel as wretched as he thought he would, and he can only be grateful for that. “What time is it?”

“Nine thirty,” she says. “You didn’t sleep as long as I thought you would.”

“I’m just as surprised as you are,” he replies. “Thanks for looking out for me.”

She hums in acknowledgement, dishing eggs out onto plates and somehow managing to carry all three to the coffee table. She puts one in front of Roger pointedly, handing him his fork.

“Do you want to talk to me about it first, or do you want to wait for Ronnie?” she asks him softly.

He frowns. “What, am I in trouble?”

“You don’t remember her joy at seeing you last night?”

The memory comes back to him, and he groans. “She’s going to kill me, isn’t she?”

“I believe the term she used was ‘rip you a new asshole,’” Dom says dryly, and he snorts. “You can hardly blame her when John came to her crying yesterday afternoon.”

He sets his fork down. “John did that?”

“So did you,” Dom rolls her eyes. “There have been a lot of tears these past twelve hours.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t just kill me last night. What was up with John?”

“I don’t know. He was looking for you. He seemed desperate, and you know how she can be about him sometimes.”

He nods absently to himself. Ronnie and John have always been a little protective of each other, and their amicable breakup and subsequent friendship somehow only strengthened the sentiment. “I don’t blame her for that,” he says. “I just don’t know why he was so upset in the first place.”

“You having a breakdown on our front steps didn’t have anything to do with it?”

“It had something to do with it.”

A door closes deeper in the flat. Dom leans closer. “Tu n’as pas à me mentir,” she says softly.

“Je ne mens pas,” he insists. “Can we drop it?”

There’s movement down the hall, and then Ronnie is breezing into the parlor. She doesn’t acknowledge Roger, and Dom sits back warily in her seat as Ronnie picks up her plate.

“Thanks for cooking,” she says to Dom.

“Of course,” Dom replies quietly, her eyes still fixed on Roger.

Ronnie lets the silence stretch for an awkward minute, and finally Roger reaches for his coffee cup. It’s just as he’s about to take a sip that she speaks.

“So you made John cry.”

Roger chokes.

Dom sighs and sets down her fork. “Ronnie…”

“I thought you knew, seeing as you were the one who caused it,” Ronnie says to Roger flatly. “Am I to assume from your reaction that that’s news to you?”

“It’s more a reaction to the lack of tact,” Roger wheezes hoarsely. He coughs a few more times, fighting to clear his throat while she watches unflinchingly. “That, and the fact that I’m not sure what he has to cry about. He was the one who was being an arse in the first place.” 

“He was the one being an arse,” she repeats. “You called him while he was in class to confront him about the fact that you read and picked apart all his deepest secrets, but he was being an arse.”

Roger shrugs weakly. His anger from the day before is nowhere to be found, replaced with a hollow feeling of loss. “It doesn’t change what he did. He speaks without thinking sometimes. You know that as well as I do.”

She rolls her eyes. “And what could possibly—”

“Veronica,” Dom says, her voice quiet but as sharp as the crack of a whip.

Roger looks down at his coffee. The room is reflected in abstract on the smooth surface, shapes and colors blurred away into fragments of light and dark. He turns it in his hands, but the images stay the same. He wants to cry, suddenly. He thinks he might if his eyes weren’t still gritty from the night before.

“What did he say to you?” Dom asks him quietly.

He shifts in his seat, looking up at her finally. Dom is watching him expectantly, her eyes open and trusting; Ronnie is frowning slightly.

“I just wanted to know why he didn’t tell me it was his,” he says quietly. “That’s all. I don’t care if he’s—well, I might care. Can you blame me?”

“For what?” Ronnie asks, her frown deepening.

He huffs, straightening. “I’m not jealous,” he says.

“I never said you are,” she says.

“Good, because I’m not.”

“And who exactly are you not jealous of?” Dom asks slowly.

“Of Brian. I’d wish them the best, really. John just deserves to love someone who’ll love him back, and now that Brian is with Freddie—”

“Back up,” Ronnie says. “John and Brian…”

“John is in love with him,” Roger clarifies. “Those ‘deepest darkest secrets’ were love letters to him.”

Ronnie and Dom stare at him, mouths agape.

“That’s why I confronted him. That’s all I wanted to know,” Roger says, taking a sip of his coffee. “I just wanted to know why he didn’t tell me, but then he went and accused me of using him as entertainment because I’m—because I’m apparently sleeping around too much and not dating enough and am trying to use other people’s relationships to fill in the gaps in my own love life. That’s why I’m a little bit confused over why he’d come crying to you lot about it.”

Ronnie blinks a few times.

Dom sits up, runs a hand through her hair and mutters something in Portuguese.

“This is a fucking mess,” Ronnie says.

“Yeah,” Roger sighs.

“I can’t believe this.” She shakes her head. “Roger, whatever you think is going on here, you’ve got it wrong.”

He frowns. “Why? What did he tell you?”

Ronnie and Dom exchange a glance. “It’s not my place,” Ronnie says. “I know that he owes you an apology, though. You really need to talk to him.”

“I know,” he murmurs. “We need to clear the air. I’ll find him after my class.”

“You’re actually going to class?” Dom asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I might as well,” he replies. “He’ll know to find me there. What time is it?”

“A quarter to nine,” she says.

“Shit. I’ve still got to pick up my bag from the flat.”

“Finish your food and then you can go,” she says. “I think your professor will be impressed with your attendance even if you show up late.”

He snorts, picking up his fork and scooping a fluffy, sunshine-yellow mound of scrambled eggs into his mouth. They’re creamy and perfect and, really, he has the best friends.

They move to lighter subject matter as they finish their food. Roger stays to help with dishes, lingering in the safety of the flat and only leaving once the girls kick him out, having places of their own to be.

It’s only once Roger is standing on the stoop that he realizes now is the time for action—no matter how hungover he feels. Dom had plugged in his phone, and that at least affords him the mercy of calling a lyft rather than walking all the way back to his own place. He sits in the backseat, his forehead pressed against the dirty window, and wills his thoughts to gather themselves together. He’ll be facing John soon, after all.

But when he arrives home it’s to find that his flatmate is missing.

Brian’s clogs are by the door, and Freddie’s keys are on the hook. They must both be home then, though god only knows what they’re doing. The flat is suspiciously silent, and Roger doesn’t want to hazard a guess as to why.

He marches to his and John’s room as quickly as his feet will take him, only confirming what he already knew: John isn’t here. Nothing appears to be out of place. His bookbag is under his desk, his textbooks all neatly stacked under the mug that holds his pens. Roger knows he has class in an hour. He must be running an errand.

Maybe he’s just doing his best to avoid Roger, as per usual.

With little else to do and the wind properly knocked out of his sails, he goes through the motions of putting on new clothes and making himself presentable. He grabs his own bag and trudges back the way he came, stopping in the kitchen only briefly to fill a travel cup with lukewarm black coffee from the pot that’s been abandoned on the countertop. The least he can do is go to class, he figures. At least John will know to find him there.

As loath as he is to actually attend class.

It would almost be embarrassing to see how pleased Professor Haldenburg is that he’s actually showed up, if Roger had the energy to pay attention to little details like that. He can’t stop thinking about where John might be and where he may be able to corner him. He fidgets in his seat the entire time while his professor drones on and on about blood and iron and anemia presenting itself in the shade of the gums. No matter what he does he can’t sit still. He flicks his pen over and over as if it’s one of his drumsticks.

He can’t get John out of his head.

Maybe he’ll find him in the engineering building after this, if he’s quick enough. No—not there, not if John is avoiding him. Where, then? The shop where Ronnie works? The coffee house at the end of their street?

It can’t be true that John is trying to find him. How else would they keep missing each other?

He’s not used to this. He’s not used to being at odds with John. They rarely fight if ever, and each occasion stands out in Roger’s head distinctively because the truth is fights with John are absolutely brutal. They always turn him rabid and raw, only to spit him out and leave him horribly hollow. By the time it’s all over and John is watching him with sad green eyes he doesn’t even have it in him to do anything but apologize.

Maybe that’s how this will go down. He sits back in his seat, twirling his pen once more. Yes—his resolve is already crumbling. He doesn’t want a fight. He doesn’t want to talk about it at all. He—

All at once, his pulse is racing in his ears.

He lunges for his bag, rifling through it quickly and ignoring the curious looks of his classmates. He knows it’s here somewhere. He didn’t take it out yesterday.

His fingers brush the smooth cover of the notebook.

He tugs it out, opening it on his lap and thumbing through. He remembers the entry only because it had struck him as odd, and yet like a moron he hadn’t thought twice about how it didn’t make any sense.

He turns page after page until finally he finds it.

XXIV

What the fuck do you even want from me? You’re going to make a functioning alcoholic out of me, you know that? At least something about this will function.

I hate arguing with you. I can’t describe how much I hate it. The thing I hate even more is when we don’t come to any real answer. I hate the way you storm off to deal with your anger in private. I hate that I can make it that bad.

Most of all, I hate the fact that none of it matters. I hate that when you come back you’re so composed that I can’t even apologize because you’ll just brush it off. Instead I go complaining to my sister about it twice a week—and she’s getting really tired of hearing about it. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so fucking pathetic.

I hate you for bringing people home. I hate it every single time it happens. I hate meeting them and smiling at them and shaking their hands. It makes my skin crawl.

And she’s so lovely. That’s the thing. She’s beautiful. She’s smart and funny and she’s perfect for you, and I hate her so, so much. I don’t want to see her in our flat. I don’t want to see her in the studio. I don’t want to see her touching you and smiling at you and receiving your love and passion when all I get is rough edges and blank stares—because that’s what this is. We fight, I try to apologize and you’ve already moved on.

So, fine. Let’s not make it a big deal. Let’s brush it off again. I don’t want to make it a big deal. Something isn’t right with me. Something is wrong; the way I feel is wrong. It’s too much.

 Let’s not make it a big deal.

I love you. I feel love for you. Recently it’s been different, and I’m not sure if it’s temporary or not.

I need space. That’s it. That’s what I’m going to tell you. I need space. It’s just a crush.

It’s a mess, and it’s on the brink of exploding in all of our faces. Try and make a love song out of this one.

He leans back in his seat, his heart pounding.

It had been in the early days of his relationship with Dom. He remembers it. He knows the exact argument that John is referencing, because it had gutted him that his best friend showed so little interest or care toward the girl he was head over heels for. He didn’t understand it at the time—didn’t understand why John was so bitter about her presence, why he’d spent the evening venting to Freddie and drinking straight from a bottle of gin, why he’d lashed out and dragged Roger into a fight just for something to do—just to say the most terrible things.

But that can’t be it, can it? It can’t be that simple.

XXV

I hate fighting with you, though. That part isn’t a lie. I hate it. I’m so sorry. Come back. Come back to me, baby. I’ll make it up to you. Please come back.

He shakes his head. All at once he can’t stop flipping through the pages desperately, his eyes catching on fragments of sentences that he’d thought he knew by heart.

You laid beside me on the lawn today and got grass stains on your trousers—John had laughed at him for fretting over the stains right until he’d realized the mud had soaked through his own jeans, too. It had been a little too cold out, but they still sat outside. He remembers it. He thought John had written it about some outing with Brian that Roger hadn’t been there for, but it’s too much of a coincidence. That was him. He was there.

You’re the one I confide in when I’m upset. He swallows hard and turns the page. I’ve gotten used to telling you everything. I’m so used to being honest with you that I barely leave anything unspoken, but I don’t know how to talk my way around this. Better, then, to pull back; safer.

He flips through page after page, the details standing out in a new light. Lord of the Rings marathons, Roger’s infatuation with his car, the way they fall asleep in the same room every night—how could he have missed that?—and countless other details about their shared life flick past his eyes. Suggestive phrases that Roger had originally winced at and flipped past when he’d thought they were written about Freddie suddenly take on a new meaning; they suddenly make sense.

I want to tangle our fingers and press our palms together. I want to feel all your rough spots against my soft ones.

Every time you look at me I feel giddy. It feels good.

The only thing I really want to get on my knees and worship is you.

You’re the rhythm in my life—you’re the heartbeat, the pulse.

My mum told me that when I fell in love I’d know it, and I do. I do. 

He stares at the words, his thumb tracing the edge of the page.

Hey, sunshine. I’m in love with you. 

He takes it in—takes in the curve of his writing, the dots of the I’s, the fact that John had sat in front of this very page at some point and written these words with Roger in mind—and then all at once he can’t be here anymore. He closes the notebook, holding it to his chest as he stands quickly from his seat. The chair shifts loudly beneath him. A pencil goes clattering to the floor.

“Mister Taylor,” his professor says loudly.

“Sorry,” Roger blusters. He pushes his way quickly toward the exit. “Sorry, it’s an emergency.”

“I hope you’re not—”

“Very important, I swear. Sorry.” He rushes through the door before his professor can say anything else, exploding into the empty hallway and walking to the front of the building as fast as he can.

It’s a short walk to the engineering building. Roger had met John in front of it enough times in the past that the brief walk across the street is practically second nature. He takes it at a run today, his bag banging against his back as he hauls the door open and rushes inside, making a beeline toward the lab where John spends his Wednesday afternoons.

Blessedly there’s no lecture happening. Students are scattered around the room at various work tables, the air thick with dust and the musky, burning-pine smell of solder smoke. Roger wrinkles his nose as he waves pointedly at the girl sitting at the nearest table.

“Hey,” he hisses.

She frowns, looking up and catching his eyes. “What?”

“I’m looking for John Deacon,” he whispers. “Have you seen him?”

She gives her professor a cursory glance before turning back to Roger and shaking her head. “John’s not here today.”

“What?” Roger asks, frowning. John never misses class, especially not lab time. “Where is he?”

“He said he was sick.”

He’d have to be on his deathbed not to go. Roger has seen as much; he’d been the one to lock John in their room to ride out a case of the flu on more than one occasion.

“Is that all?” the girl asks, her eyebrows raised.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Yeah, thanks.” He pulls out his phone, turning and jogging a few paces down the hall.

Freddie picks up after three rings. “What?”

“Where’s John? Is he okay?”

“Why?” Freddie says worriedly. “What happened?”

“He’s not in class.”

He’s met with a long silence, and then a crackle of static as Freddie sighs.

“What?” Roger snaps. “Is this not news to you?”

“Roger, I don’t know. I haven’t seen him. Brian and I just left the flat about half an hour ago. We’re going to Itsu if you—”

“Where is he, then? He’s not with Veronica, is he? Or did he—”

“Roger, stop,” Freddie snaps. “He probably needs some space, alright? After yesterday you can hardly blame him if he needs a little time to lick his wounds.”

Roger’s head spins. He leans heavily against the wall behind him, swallowing hard.

So John feels horrible.

John feels horrible after the way Roger acted—after the way Roger overreacted to something that didn’t even concern him. He feels horrible enough to miss classes, to skip time in the labs when Roger knows how much he loves his work, to avoid Freddie even though Roger knows Freddie is usually the one John confides in—

“That’s not what I meant,” Freddie says, his voice soft and rushed. “It’s not your fault.”

“It is,” Roger replies, his voice rough. He swipes a hand over his face. “This is all because of what I said to him yesterday. Of course it’s my fault.”

Freddie sighs again, long and slow. “It’s not entirely your fault. You know that.”

“He loves me,” Roger rasps. His voice breaks as he does, and tears prickle at the backs of his eyes. “That’s the truth, isn’t it? It was all for me.”

“That’s something you need to ask him, not me.”

Roger nods, even though he knows Freddie can’t see it.

“He’s not innocent in this either, though,” Freddie says quietly. “He should’ve told you from the start. He should’ve gotten it all out on the table.”

“I can’t blame him for that; not when I should’ve done the same.”

Freddie sucks in a sharp breath. “You mean you…”

“Of course I do,” Roger murmurs, his voice barely above a whisper. “I have to talk to him. Don’t you get that?”

“Yeah,” Freddie says. He sounds oddly choked up, and Roger takes a deep breath to mask his own emotion. “Alright. I’m not sure where he is, but I’ll see if I can reach him.”

Roger lets out a breath. “Thank you,” he says.

Freddie murmurs a goodbye and hangs up, and all at once Roger is alone with his thoughts. With nothing left to do he catches the bus home, keeping an eye peeled for John the whole way. Maybe he’ll spot him, though if he’s avoiding Roger he’ll have no such luck.

He doesn’t. He makes the entire journey without seeing anyone he recognizes at all, knowing full well that an empty flat awaits him.

He groans in the back of his throat as he climbs the steps to their building, rifling blindly through his key ring until the familiar square edges catch on his callused fingertips. He jams it into the lock, or rather he tries to. The door flies open beneath his touch, the key slipping out of the lock, and when he looks up he’s met with warm green-grey.

“Oh,” John gasps.

Roger’s mouth falls open, his hand hovering uselessly in the air. John, his John who is in love with him, who he feels like he’s been chasing all day and searching for his whole life—

“Get inside,” John says, steering Roger forward by his elbow. “I’ve been looking for you all day, you know.”

“Looking for me? I was in class.”

John huffs a laugh. “That’s why I didn’t find you, then. Roger, I’m so sorry about yesterday. I need to apologize. I—”

“Did you mean it?” Roger asks him breathlessly.

John’s brow furrows, his lovely eyes narrowing adorably. “What? No, of course not. That’s what I’m trying to say. I—”

“No,” Roger breathes, and it’s only because of how closely he’s watching that he notices the way John’s eyes flicker down to his lips. “I mean the notebook. Did you mean all the things you wrote?”

John’s mouth presses into a line. “I meant them, but—it’s not Brian, Roger. It’s not the way you think.”

“It’s about me,” he murmurs.

John freezes, his eyes locked on Roger’s own.

“That’s what it is, right?” Roger asks quietly. “Is it—you wrote those things about me? All of them?” He licks his lips. “That you love me? That you want to fall asleep next to me—that you want kids with me?”

“I wrote down fantasies,” John says. “Dreams. That’s all.”

“That doesn’t change that you want them. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”

John watches him, completely frozen.

“Because I want it, too,” Roger plows on, and John looks at him with wide eyes. “Whether it’s true or not, you need to know that I’ve wanted you since—fuck, John. Since the very beginning. I thought you were beautiful ever since your audition, I’ve been in love with you since our first show, and whether it’s true or not I need you to know that I—”

“You mean that?”

“Of course I do. Of course.”

“All of that stuff yesterday,” John says hurriedly, “questioning my motives, questioning whether Brian was good for me—you—”

“I was jealous,” Roger says, and he can’t quite hold back a laugh. “You and Brian—I mean, god, John. I wanted you so bad, and to think that you felt all of that for him—”

“He’s your best friend.”

“And if I had been right I would have come to terms with that,” Roger says. “I would have been happy for you eventually; I’d cheer you on and cry at your wedding and everything. I was wrong, though, and I’ve never been happier to be wrong about something in my life.” He laughs, a tiny burble of happiness, and something in John’s face softens. “John, I love you, and if you’d returned even a quarter of my feelings you would’ve made me the happiest man in the world, but you—you wrote an entire book of the way you feel about me. Even if that’s all I ever get from you, if you decide you don’t want to act on any of that—”

John cuts him off my ducking forward and kissing him soundly on the mouth.

Roger doesn’t even hesitate before tangling his fingers in John’s hair and dragging him closer, moaning high in his throat as John presses his body against Roger’s own. His head is spinning all at once, his knees weakening, and he never in a million years thought when he’d woken up that morning that in a few short hours he’d be in this position, but here he is: the warmth of John’s chest against his own, his big hands low on Roger’s hips as he kisses him for all he’s worth, the scant inch he has on Roger suddenly making itself known as he presses closer.

His breath catches in his chest as his back hits the door—and that’s something he’s very interested in, being caught between John’s heat and the cool wood. He lets his head fall backward and John doesn’t miss a beat before relocating his mouth, his teeth grazing the line of Roger’s jaw, still holding him in his arms as if he’s something fragile and utterly delicate.

He isn’t sure exactly what sound it is that escapes him, but he knows it’s nothing short of pathetic. John huffs a laugh into the crook of his neck, the puff of air followed by the sharp sting of his teeth.

“Yeah?” he whispers against Roger’s skin, grinding into him once, and Roger can only dig his fingertips into his shoulders and press into him in response.

“It wasn’t even meant for you to see,” John breathes, following every few words with a hot, distracted kiss. “Not really my best. I wanted—fuck, I had to take half of them out before you even read it or you would’ve known.”

“You should’ve told me, you stupid git,” Roger manages to pant out, all one drawn out sound. “Should’ve—ah—should’ve let me just read through them.”

“I don’t think you want to read through those ones.”

Roger tugs at his hair, tugging him up until he can look him in the eye. “I think I definitely want to read those ones.”

“Bedroom. Now.”

He takes a step back, the sudden lack of his warmth leaving Roger feeling strangely bereft, and Roger doesn’t hesitate for a second before taking off down the hall, hearing more than seeing John following close behind him. He reaches back, feels John’s fingers tangling with his own, and he can’t resist turning and dragging him through their bedroom door backwards.

“Wait, so the kind of dirty ones in there—”

“I thought I took them all out,” John grunts. He steps closer until Roger is between him and the bed, and that sounds like a great idea, wow. “They were too—too much, I don’t know, I—”

“Is this too much?”

John huffs a breathless laugh. “Absolutely not. This isn’t nearly enough, actually.”

“Kind of let down that I didn’t get to read all your darkest fantasies.”

John laughs again, his cheeks dark, and for the first time Roger sees something vaguely uncomfortable flit across his face. He leans back for a beat, studying him. His hair is disheveled, his lips kissed pink, and his eyes aren’t quite meeting Roger’s own. 

“Is that it?” Roger asks quietly, reaching up to cup his cheek and trace over his blush with one thumb. John’s eyes flutter closed. “You never wanted me to read them, did you? It’s okay if you didn’t.”

“I don’t mind it,” John says immediately. “It’s not that. I just never thought you would. If I knew you would someday, I’d have written…not that. It’s too much. Isn’t it?”

“Not to me,” Roger says quietly. “Of course not.”

John looks at him, his gaze heavy and considering. “I’m glad then, I guess,” he says. “I just—I mean, it’s just silly. They aren’t exactly literature. Some of them are horrible—awful, just rude, honestly. I wanted you to know and I didn’t know how to tell you, and now here we are, and I can’t regret that. I don’t. I was just never meant for you to read, you know, and it’s a little embarrassing.”

“Sorry,” Roger murmurs. “It must be a lot, to have it all laid out and picked apart.”

John shrugs, his hands drifting lower to cup Roger’s hips. “Like I said, I don’t mind,” he says lowly. “If you want to make it up to me, though, maybe you should tell me something.”

Roger grins. He tries to hide it against John’s jaw, but judging by the way he laughs he’s pretty sure John has seen it. “What, you want to hear all my secrets?” he asks against his skin.

“Yeah,” John giggles. He lets Roger spin them until the backs of his knees are pressed against the mattress, his hands clenched in Roger’s shirt to keep himself from tipping backward. “Only the really embarrassing ones, though.”

“That’s awful,” Roger teases. “Wouldn’t you rather do something else? I could tell you the most revolting shit possible right now.”

“It can’t be worse than the sushi letter.”

“It’s about blowjobs, isn’t it?”

John rolls his eyes. “Of course it’s about blowjobs, you prick. Tell me something embarrassing.”

Roger laughs. He busies himself with John’s shirt, fumbling with the tiny pearl buttons. He could say something mild, he supposes; he could make something up, even.

He spent the last month picking apart every one of John’s secrets, though—his deepest fears, his worst anxieties, his wildest fantasies—and he knows it wouldn’t be fair.

“The only thing I hate about living with you,” he says, finally getting the damned shirt unbuttoned and reveling in John’s little gasp, “is that I have extremely limited time to get off, and you’re constantly wandering around looking sexy. It’s genuinely torture. You have no right to look the way you do right before bed. You wanted something embarrassing? You do the most basic shit and I’m just awestruck by it.”

He feels John laugh against his ear.

“I have to use the fucking shower to get off, and it’s not a good shower, John, it’s a fucking awful shower is what it is, and the hot water only lasts about five minutes at most. Ever had a wank in a cold shower?” He gives John a hard push, watching his eyes widen slightly as he falls backward onto his own bed and catches himself on his elbows.

“I’ve never finished a wank in a cold shower, I’ll put it that way,” John says, all splayed out with his lips bruised pink and his cock straining at the front of his trousers, his dry tone betrayed by the brightness in his eyes. He’s really way too coherent right now. It won’t do.

Roger climbs on top of him, kissing him soundly. He really forgot how nice kissing him is. How did they go so long without kissing? John’s hands drift to his arse, dragging Roger against him until they’re rolling together in a lazy grind, and all at once he can’t get close enough. He breaks the kiss to tug off his own shirt, throwing it in the direction of his own bed, and John’s hands are suddenly everywhere—tracing his rib cage, tugging at his shoulders, working insistently at the button of his jeans.

“Get these off,” John says against his mouth, blindly fumbling and then laughing against Roger’s lips when Roger smacks his hands out of the way and undoes them himself. He doesn’t bother dragging them off, going for John’s fly instead before realizing the whole thing is a little counter-productive with him still straddling John’s thighs.

John seems to realize the exact same thing at the same time, because he manages to roll them over without either one of them tumbling to the floor. It’s perfect for all of five seconds—his weight trapping Roger against the mattress, his chest warm and heavy against Roger’s own—and then he’s rolling off entirely and leaving Roger to pout up at him.

John laughs at the look on his face. “What else?” he says, going to work on his jeans.

Right. The whole bearing-his-soul thing.

“Have to be quick in the shower,” Roger says, his mouth dry. He distracts himself by awkwardly raising his hips and pushing his trousers off, but the legs get stuck around his calves. “Think about you.”

“Doing what?” John asks him. He reaches forward, helping Roger detangle himself from the knot that is the legs of his trousers, and then tugs his pants off for him too for good measure.

“Think about you,” Roger murmurs, watching John settle between his legs and look up at him questioningly and yes, he is more than okay with that, “Yeah, baby. Yeah, think about you—oh.”

John’s mouth is hot and slick and perfect and gone way too soon. “Think about what, Roger?”

“About you, about fucking you. About you fucking me,” he says quickly, because John’s mouth is back and his grey eyes are sharp and observant and if he pulls away again Roger might cry. “In this bed, right here, just like this. Think about you above me, mouth open, hair all in your face, flushed down to your chest. You’re so fucking pretty.”

John pulls off with a popping sound that would be hysterical in any other context, but here it just leaves Roger feeling like he was punched in the gut. “That’s what does it for you?” he asks, part bewildered and part skeptical. He studies Roger for a moment and must pick up on whatever gob smacked look is on his face, because he moves further up the bed until he can bracket Roger in, hovering over him. “Like this? Really?”

Roger nods quickly. John’s hair is tickling his collar bone and his entire body is radiating heat. “Yeah, like this,” he breathes.

“Want me to fuck you like this?”

“Please.”

Something in John’s expression goes soft. He leans over to the bedside table, rifling through the drawer for a moment before leaning back over with a bottle of lube. Roger hooks his knee over John’s hip, wanting to be closer, and John runs a palm over his thigh even as he warms a glob of lube in the fingers of his other hand for a beat before smearing it against his hole.

“What else?” he murmurs finally.

Roger doesn’t want to think anymore. He doesn’t think he really can, not with the way John is ducking to press a kiss to his knee and pressing his fingertip teasingly inside and watching him so, so closely.

“I think about you touching yourself. You thinking about me,” Roger gets out finally, his voice sounding breathy even to his own ears. “That always gets me off the fastest.”

John lets out a shaky breath. He kisses Roger’s knee again; Roger feels it, even if he can’t watch him do it. He’s pumping a finger in him, teasing and nowhere near enough, and when Roger tilts his hips up into the sensation John rewards him by adding another.

The stretch is better. It feels perfect, and all at once he can’t shut up. “I think about you lying in bed and getting yourself off while I’m out of the room. Bet you’d look so pretty. I think about—oh,” and he has to break off and hook his arm around John’s neck, because John’s fingers are scissoring and Roger is so, so ready to be fucked into John’s shitty Ikea mattress, but John is slipping his ring finger in and judging by the bulge at the front of his pants Roger is really going to need it.

John lets himself be dragged down, panting against Roger’s ear like he’s the one being fingered to within an inch of his life. “What else?” he gasps into Roger’s hair.

Roger groans, breathless. “I think about—about you dragging it out, when we’re all gone—when I’m in class, when nobody’s around to hear you. I think about you moaning my name, all needy, think about you coming all over yourself—”

“Jesus, Roger,” John hisses, and then all at once he’s pulling away and licking into Roger’s mouth like he owns him.

Roger whines into it, letting him until John seems to forget to continue moving his fingers. It makes him whine for a completely different reason, but he only manages to break the kiss when he fists his hand in John’s hair and drags him bodily away.

“Fuck me,” he demands, almost convincing himself that it doesn’t sound thin and needy to his own ears, but John just nods.

“Yeah. Yeah,” John pants, reaching for the bedside table and coming back with a condom. He fumbles with the wrapper, his fingers shaky, and Roger doesn’t say a word about it. He can’t, not when he feels just as untethered. He shoves at John’s pants instead, only bothering to push them down to mid thigh because John’s cock is pretty and red and right there, and he has much better things to be doing than fumbling with uncooperative fabric.

“Rog,” John gasps, slack-jawed, thrusting up into his grip and then resuming his battle with the condom rapper with renewed vigor. He pushes Roger’s hand out of the way and impatiently kicks off his pants while still struggling to roll the condom on. He drags Roger’s leg over his hip, and then he’s smearing lube onto his cock and rubbing the head sloppily against Roger’s rim, looking up at him in question. Roger nods, and John holds his gaze as he presses inside.

It’s a lot. Roger hasn’t done this in a while, and John isn’t exactly small. He’s attentive to it, though, breathing Roger’s air and moving oh-so-slowly and pausing every time Roger’s breath hitches.

He bumps their foreheads together softly when he finally bottoms out, presses their lips together and swallows Roger’s overwhelmed gasp. Roger can only hold onto him, and he can barely do that. He feels boneless, every bit of him stripped down and filled back up with goodness; sparkling pleasure just on this side of too much.

Finally, when he can almost say he’s used to it, he tilts his hips up. John rewards him with a tiny thrust and a kiss on the jaw.

“What else?” he whispers sweetly, building a gentle rhythm.

“God, John.”

“Tell me.”

He sighs, rubbing at the fine hair at the bass of John’s skull. “I think about you in my bed,” he whispers. “All the time. I think about holding you—about—of you close to me. Always want you close.”

John pulls away to watch him, pressing Roger’s thigh backward into the mattress just enough to change the angle. It’s still lazy, still slow and gentle, but all at once it feels like his pleasure is being dragged out of his very bones.

“Think about this,” Roger slurs. “Just like this.”

“Yeah, baby? You like this?”

“Yeah,” he gets out, digging his heel into the back of John’s thigh. “Gimme more, come on.”

John hitches his leg higher, leaning over him again and practically folding him in half. He starts moving for real, all smooth hips and lithe muscle, one hand tangled in Roger’s own and pressed into the mattress. He kisses him, though Roger thinks kissing is a generous term for what they’re doing.

“Just like this,” Roger moans out mindlessly, his fingers tightening in John’s hair. It’s good, it’s perfect, sparks zipping up his spine and making his brain feel like it’s melting. John gasps sharply against his jaw, nipping at his skin, and that just makes Roger urge him forward harder. “Think about—about this, just us doing this. Think about it all the time. I want it all the time.”

“Want me fucking you all the time?” John pants into his neck.

Roger shakes his head mindlessly against the pillow, pulling John into him deeper with his legs and squeezing his hand where it’s still clenched in Roger’s own. “No, I want you,” he gets out, his eyes stinging for reasons he’s not even equipped to identify.

John gets it. He always does. “You have me,” he breathes against Roger’s mouth, and it would sound like a line if it wasn’t so goddamn sincere—if he wasn’t fucking into him like he wanted to give him everything and then some, like the urge to crawl inside of him and stay isn’t as one-sided as Roger thought.

It doesn’t last much longer after that. John starts letting out huffed out groans against Roger’s hair, gradually losing his steady rhythm until the two of them give into the urge to rut against each other mindlessly, chasing each other’s pleasure. It feels like a competition as much as it does an act of love; Roger finds himself laughing breathlessly, head tipped back, John’s teeth searching out the tendon in his neck and digging in; the next moment he forgets what was funny in the first place, and then the world is flipping upside down and he forgets everything entirely.

His pleasure spikes, blood fizzing as everything dissolves away, just moments before John gasps like he’s been shot and pushes into him hard. Roger can feel him trembling, his entire body shaking like a leaf, and he strokes a hand through his hair.

They move together mindlessly, tiny movements that send sparks of overstimulation zipping up Roger’s spine and make his toes curl against John’s thighs. It’s only once he gasps sharply into John’s mouth that John lets up, pulling out slowly and flopping down next to him.

Roger doesn’t see him pull the condom off, but he definitely hears it hit the floor with a truly disgusting splat.

He bursts out giggling, throwing his arm over his eyes and reveling in the way his muscles feel completely overused. John snorts next to him.

His laughter lets up finally, mostly when his chest starts to ache, and he lets his arm fall away. He turns to look at John, who’s watching him right back. He looks wrecked, his face flushed and his hair sticking to his forehead, a smile tugging at his lips.

“What else?” he murmurs.

Roger feels his own lips quirk up, giddy with it. “I love you,” he says. “That’s what else.”

John lets out a little burble of laughter, dragging himself up the mattress until he can tug Roger into a sweet kiss. “I love you too,” he murmurs against his mouth.

It takes Brian and Freddie an embarrassingly long time to notice.

Roger spends four nights sleeping in John’s bed. They barely fit, and as much as Roger adores being pressed so tightly into John’s space that all of his senses are clouded with the rhythm of his breathing and the smell of his shampoo, he’s getting a little tired of waking up with one leg hanging off the mattress.

“It reminds me of horror movies,” Roger tells him one morning, wrinkling his nose as he pulls his foot back under the covers.

John hisses when Roger presses his cold toes against his leg, but he doesn’t move away. “You think a monster is going to grab your ankle and drag you off?”

“Yeah. Or a demon. Did you ever see paranormal activity?”

“No.”

“Me neither. Maybe we should watch it.”

“I doubt that’ll help you sleep any better,” John murmurs, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head.

Roger shrugs, shuffling closer. “You’ll protect me though, right?”

“Mh. If a demon drags you away you won’t steal the covers anymore…”

Roger sits up, taking the covers with him in a billowing rustle of cheap, threadbare cotton. “Rude,” he says, clutching them to his bare chest.

John huffs out a laugh, not even bothering to move. His hair is spread out over the pillow, soft and sleep-rumpled, and there’s a crease mark on his chest from where he’d been sprawling against the sheets.

Roger loves him.

They shell out for a bigger bed a week later. Dom’s sister has one she’s trying to sell, and she helps Roger wrestle it into the apartment herself. He even convinces her to help him take away the two single beds when he promises her pizza.

He comes across Brian while he’s dragging John’s mattress through the flat. One corner rests across his shoulder and the side of the thing is held up rather precariously by his back. “Morning,” he grunts as he passes him near the kitchen.

Brian blinks at the scene. “Redecorating?” he says.

“Trading our two small beds for one big one,” Roger replies, still wrestling the mattress toward the door.

“Oh.” Brian turns, picking through the cupboard only to pull out Freddie’s muesli. He pours a handful into his palm, studies it and then eats it dry. Roger grimaces; he can hear the crunch from across the room. “Practice at three?” he says through his food.

“Yeah, sure,” Roger replies. “If you don’t break a tooth, that is.”

Brian just grunts and turns away.

If Brian is embarrassingly oblivious, Freddie is no better.

“Deaky, darling,” Freddie coos as he hip-checks Roger aside to share the bathroom mirror with him. “I didn’t know you’d been out. Seeing anyone special?”

John hadn’t been. Roger is more than proud of that fact when he glances at his boyfriend in the mirror, admiring the dark bloom of a bruise peeking out from his collar. That had been Roger’s handiwork this morning, courtesy of Freddie and Brian breezing out for groceries in the early hours and giving Roger just enough time to drag John into the shower for a haphazard, slightly claustrophobic blowjob. He’s pleased to note that not only did the setting do nothing in the way of hindering his skills, he also only got water in his eye twice. The cum in his eye was a slightly bigger issue.

John had been very good about apologizing for that, though.

John is watching his reflection in the mirror, his eyes dark and lips parted as if his mind is in the exact same place as Roger’s. Roger smirks at him before turning back to his own reflection, brushing on mascara with a debonair flick.

“Someone real special, yeah,” John replies sweetly, kicking at the back of Roger’s heel.

Roger sticks his tongue out at him in the mirror. “Sweet talker. You sound head over heels,” he teases, and delights in the way John’s cheeks go pink.

Freddie just rolls his eyes. “How many times have I told you, Rog? Use the black mascara. It’s much more dramatic.”

“It makes me look like a whore.”

“You are a whore,” Freddie replies, and just like that the topic is forgotten.

Roger wants to tell them. He really does. He’s been meaning to, it’s just never come up. Of course it’s inevitable, then, that they find out on their own just when he’s gathered the courage.

He’s got a song kicking around in the back of his head. He isn’t sure when he’ll have a chance to sit down with it, but he wants to. He can feel it growing and developing every time John looks at him—every time John touches him, rubs his shoulders and helps bandage his hands, every time he kisses him—

John gets a grip under his thighs and hauls him up onto the dressing room counter, not even bothering to stop kissing him as he unceremoniously unbuttons his trousers and drags his cock out with a spit-slick palm.

“Fucking—John, god—”

“You were so good tonight,” John pants against his throat, biting at the skin there as if it’d hurt him not to. “Did so good, baby, you sounded incredible. You drive me insane. You know that? You drive me fucking crazy.”

Roger hisses when his teeth dig into the skin above his pulse point, then breathes out a laugh. “Speak for yourself,” he groans. “I’m the one who has to watch your arse bobbing around for the whole show.”

He manages to worm a hand between them, attacking John’s trousers with a vengeance, and of course that’s the moment the door opens.

“We were—oh,” Brian says, stopping dead in his tracks and staring at them like a deer in the headlights.

Roger yelps, pushing at John’s shoulders before belatedly realizing John’s body is the only thing stopping Brian from getting a good long look at his dick—not that Brian hasn’t seen his dick before, but he’s pretty fucking sure he’s never seen him mid-hand job with John’s fingers still frozen mid-stroke—which, why is John still holding his dick.

To be fair, John looks about five seconds away from either a stroke, an aneurism, or potentially just going out back and digging a grave to bury himself in, depending on how the night pans out.

Roger, who had very different plans on how his night would pan out, thank you very much, clears his throat loudly. “Hi Brian,” he says sweetly. “Do you want to maybe get the fuck out?”

“Will you move, you overgrown poodle?” Freddie yelps from the hallway. Brian jolts as Freddie pushes him aside, emerging from the white curtain that makes up Brian’s stage wear.

He stumbles into the room, takes one look at the scene before him, and screams. 

A week later Roger is sitting on the sofa, nervously putting that song to paper for the first time, not sure what’s honest and what’s not enough and what’s a little too soul baring to be on a rock and roll album. It shouldn’t matter. He wants to be honest, anyway. It’s John.

He’s just about to scribble out an entire line when something on the table catches his eye.

It’s a small pile of photos tucked under a coaster. They’re a familiar style, even if the images themselves are not. There’s a photo of Freddie laughing in the sun; a blurry snap of the stray cat that lives in the alley; a close up of a dandelion sprouting from a crack in the pavement.

Those aren’t what catch his attention.

The last photo in the stack is perfectly framed, the sofa positioned below the windows in unerring symmetry and the edges meticulously aligned within the frame. Their parlor is tidy for once, the coffee table displaying a perfectly symmetrically placed stack of books. Roger and John are the only things not exactly mirrored: John is sitting on one end of the couch, Roger’s head pillowed on his lap. He has one hand in Roger’s hair and the other grasping at one of Roger’s own hands, both of which are raised in the air as if he was gesturing to make a point.

Brian must have been standing in the kitchen doorway to get a shot like that. Roger doesn’t remember him taking this—but then he can hardly blame himself for that. He knows full well that he’s easily distracted when John is in the room. His focus always has a habit of zeroing in on his boyfriend, everything else fading away.

There’s a soft expression written across John’s face, frozen and documented to paper. The afternoon sun is hitting the back of his head just right, the curls toward the edges of his silhouette lit in a reddish-gold. He’s charming and ethereal in equal measure—somehow completely unreachable and utterly down to earth at the same time—but the softness of his face is focused directly on Roger and Roger alone.

Roger wasn’t paying attention enough to notice that the photo was even being taken; but then, neither was John.

He sets the other photos down on the table but keeps his grip on this one. He taps it against his notepad once; twice; and then, still studying it, he sets it down on the table where he can easily see it.

Finally, the photo still lingering in the corners of his vision, he turns back to his work with a smile tugging at his lips.