He Makes Me (Queen AU)

Chapter 42

"Nana?" Roger blurted out, his voice hitching with surprise.

Tim hummed affirmingly. "Now guess who she passed them down to."

"You?" the blonde grimaced—the brunette painting a disturbing picture the blonde wished he could unsee.

"Me," the bassist echoed, picking out and holding up a pair of denim overalls ripped at the knees and hips with a pale, yellow flower stitched into the large breast pocket.

"Why?"

Tim shrugged. "She thought I was going to be a girl. They all did." He let the worn denim slip through his fingers back into the trunk and rested his forearms on its edge, clasping his hands together and brushing his thumbs in a circular pattern, one over the other.

An awkward tension that formed around them, with Roger waiting for Tim to continue, but the brunette kept quiet. The blonde looked back at the door, a longing in his eyes that stood in stark contrast to his now folded, sedentary legs, compelled by sympathy—though undeserved—to stay by the bassist's side as he relived his painful childhood through the clothes the regretful drummer unsurfaced.

"Nana and Dad were absolutely pissed; Mum refused to believe it," the bassist revealed after a long moment of silence. "She wasn't right in the head, my mum. On the outside, she seemed fine, but on the inside..." His voice trailed off—the rest of the sentence lost in the pause that interrupted his speech. "She never called me by my name. I doubt she even knew what it was. It was always 'dear' and 'darling' and 'hon.'" He sucked his teeth. "It didn't really matter to me, though. She was the only one who didn't hate me."

Tim remembered how, when his mother was still around, she would adorn him in dresses, brush his long hair back, and share her makeup with him, drilling it into him—in her own, gentle way—that dressing up was the key to unlocking the beauty in the world; to giving back what we'd taken from it. He didn't know what she meant back then, too young to understand her prophetic belief and beaten when he relayed the message to his father.

His dad's violent reaction tainted the experience for the young brunette, who felt helplessly caught in the middle—his mother wanting one thing while his father wanted another. What once was a pleasant bonding moment between mother and son quickly turned sour, the latter dreading her calls for him, torn between being a "good boy" or a "good girl," never both.

The end of his internal conflict came about at the age of four, when his mother abruptly deserted him. She left no note, no goodbye kiss on the forehead, and no warning save the familiar, explosive argument between her and her husband the night before. Her sudden departure turned the boy's world upside down, leaving him to his father whose abuse worsened with his wife gone. The only escape Tim found was in his mother's abandoned makeup, experimenting on himself in private and branching out to others he met through school—the only time he ventured outside the dilapidated building owned by his grandmother and inhabited by his family, its charm fading quickly in his mom's absence.

Nevertheless, it was through this experimental phase that he finally came to understand what his mother was talking about, discovering her secret for himself.

"I'm not sick like she was, Roger," Tim muttered, snapping out of the pensive daze he'd fallen into and shifting his glistening gaze over to Roger's perturbed one. "I just want to do what she couldn't."

"What couldn't she do?" the blonde asked, his brows furrowed in bewilderment.

"Men are ugly creatures who make the world an ugly place," he replied, returning his attention to the opened chest. "All my mom wanted to do was make it beautiful again. She had a plan that she never got to see through because of my dad. He stopped her before she could even start, and I think Nana's trying to stop me too now that she knows what I'm trying to do. She's not going to, though. I won't let her."

Roger stared at Tim, the look in his distant eyes frightening. With a few blinks, though, the terrifying expression vanished, and the brunette—seemingly normal again—leaned forward and closed the lid of the chest, snatching the discarded padlock from the ground and hooking it back in place.

"You really shouldn't go into things you're not supposed to, Rog," the bassist murmured, patting the top of the trunk and using it to pick himself up off the ground. "Things are put away for a reason, and if there's a lock—" He spotted the bobby pin the blonde had used to get into the chest, right on the ground beside his thigh, and bent down. He grabbed the hair clasp, looked right into the drummer's wide eyes as he held it up, and muttered, "—it means someone doesn't want you going in there, so for your sake and mine, don't ever go in it again." He pocketed the bobby pin and straightened his posture. "Got it?"

Roger nodded his head in understanding, avoiding the brunette's condemning gaze.

"Good." Tim turned on his heel and headed for the door, stopping in the doorway and shooting one more glance back at Roger. "Now put the chest back where you found it and go to bed. It's late. You shouldn't still be down here. Nana will kill you if she sees you."

"Wait!" the blonde called out when the brunette tried to leave, scrambling to his feet and brushing the dirt off the back of his skirt. "I-I don't know where to go," he admitted sheepishly, a blush rising in his pale cheeks.

The corner of Tim's lip pricked upward into a smirk, but he was quick to suppress it. "Third floor," he answered, pointing at the ceiling. "Room at the end of the hall."

Roger nodded appreciatively, hugging himself for comfort. "Thanks."

The bassist lingered for a moment—a deep, internal sadness showing through his face—before he slipped into the shadows that consumed the hall outside the room, his footsteps growing faint with the greater distance between them. The drummer looked down at the trunk with a knot forming in his stomach, his bandmate's words playing over in his ear.

I'm not sick like she was...I just want to do what she couldn't...I think Nana's trying to stop me...She's not going to, though...I won't let her...