He Makes Me (Queen AU)

Chapter 48

Brian scratched at the bassist's hand, but the only traces he left were faint, red lines that faded as soon as they appeared. He pried his eyes open and glanced up at Roger, pleading, begging for intervention. To the curly-haired student's dismay, though, the blonde left him to suffer, shamefully averting his gaze to the upper corner of the dark stairwell and furrowing his bandmate's eyebrows in confusion.

The guitarist knew the last words they exchanged weren't the most pleasant, but they didn't justify the drummer's insulting and hurtful show of ignorance. Besides, the words Brian muttered weren't even his own; they were Roger's.

It's not cheating if we're not together.

The guitarist swallowed hard against Tim's constricting grasp, wishing he'd kept his mouth shut last night and let John take the fall for their failed attempt to escape. Instead, he'd let his emotions get the best of him. He had ever since Roger answered his and Tim's call for a drummer.

Brian considered himself to be a man of reason, as well as many of his acquaintances, but in no more than a year had Roger turned him reckless and encouraged him—more often indirectly than not—to throw caution to the wind.

Never before had he made so many excuses to spend more time with someone; nor had he teased someone for things they hadn't done and places they hadn't been, despite them being arguably more experienced than him. Yet with Roger, he constantly nagged him—all in good fun—and would badger him lightheartedly until he agreed to let him show him about.

Never before had he been so bold as to drop his hand over someone's groin, either. Yet, after resigning to his flat after band practice one night under the guise that it was late and dark out, and the six-pack in his fridge was about to go bad, the curly-haired student found himself brazenly groping the blonde.

Never before, and not even with Chrissie, had he pulled someone into his bedroom the way that he pulled Roger. Yet, Brian was so full of lust that night that all he could think about as they rose up from the secondhand couch and stumbled towards his messy bed in the next room over, locked at giggling lips, was that he hoped the blonde wouldn't think him naïve.

And never, ever before had he been so willing to lower his guard and give into someone so bad for him. Yet, there he was, ripping his shirt over his head, tearing his belt off, and pushing his trousers down to his ankles so he could throw himself at the drummer and selfishly indulge in the pleasure he spent countless nights trying to deny but no longer could.

With the air wearing thin and Tim's hold only growing stronger, Brian wondered that, if he had just taken a step back and thought about what he was doing all those times, and what the consequences of his actions would be, he could've seen where this road was headed.

He felt he should've known better and stopped this little game he started playing a long time ago; long before it could get to this point, because when he turned to the blonde for help, all the risks he took and all the times he listened to his heart instead of his head proved to be for nothing. Roger had left Brian to fend for himself, as if he could live just fine knowing he let Tim take away his lover's last breath.

But then, just as the milky white haze began to wash over the guitarist's eyes—his dilated pupils and shrunken hazel irises retreating behind his fluttering lids—the drummer stole one more curious glance down at the pair and, overwhelmed by a sudden surge of guilt, yelled, "Oh, for fuck's sake, Tim, let him go! Haven't you hurt him enough?"

The brunette's red-washed gaze—accompanied by knitted brows, a clenched jaw, and labored breaths—darted to the blonde's normal one. However, it wasn't Roger that entered his line of vision when he looked to the top of the staircase, but a stranger. Three of them, actually.

Tim's abrupt disorientation softened the rageful expression marking his face, and when his wary eyes trailed up his arm to his hand, he noticed for the first time the brownish, violet-blue bruises spreading out from under his fingertips and staining the curly-haired student's neck. He instantly released his victim, a perplexed glimmer swimming in his eyes as he tried to make sense of his settings, almost like he'd forgotten that his grandmother had trapped him and the other four down there, and that he'd attacked Brian—now gasping desperately for air—for criticizing the placement of his keys.

No one would ever know for sure, because before any one of the boys could speak up, Tim scratched his head and wandered off, disappearing around the corner and taking with him the tension that electrified the stairwell and glued the three boys scattered about the stairwell to the steps.

Free to move their feet, they gravitated towards Brian, who was doubled over with his hands on his knees and whose gasps had been replaced by a violent bout of coughs. Ambushed by the two worried teenagers—the distant blonde lingering behind them, still haunted by this morning's events—the guitarist threw a dismissive hand out, wanting space. John and Neil quickly took an empathetic step back, allowing Brian to collect himself.

After regaining his composure, the curly-haired student drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, closing his eyes and tipping his head back against the wall. He sighed in relief, but all was not well; his wounds had reopened—the stitches John had quickly finished before Nana ushered them out of the unconventional dining room torn apart.

"Damn it," the nineteen-year-old hissed, raising a careful hand and delicately grazing the snapped ends of the sutures poking out from the relaxed dress strap hanging from the guitarist's shoulder. The ghostly touch was enough to draw a sharp gasp out of Brian, though, ripping his eyes open and bringing his head forward. "I'll go see if I can find some more thread down here, and a clean needle."

"I-I'll come too," Neil stammered, following the only other teenager down the hall. His horrified gaze, however, didn't break away from the hurting curly-haired student until John tugged him around the corner.

The teenagers' departure left Brian and Roger by themselves, the first time they'd been alone since their traumatizing and bittersweet reunion. The drummer could barely bring himself to look at the guitarist, his arms wrapped insecurely around his torso and his evasive eyes locked on his feet. The older of the two, on the other hand, refused to look away, longing to attract the younger man's attention and get to the bottom of the coldness that transpired between them.

Clearing his sore and scratchy throat and attempting to shift into a more comfortable position that only resulted in more pain, Brian surrendered and asked with a defeated sigh, "Why did you do it?"

"Do what?" Roger replied tersely, the guitarist's words achieving their desired effect as the blonde lifted his head.

"Why did you make him stop?"

The drummer laughed, shaking his head in disbelief and glancing down the dark hall. "What kind of stupid question is that?"

"It just seemed that, for a second, you were going to let him kill me," he murmured, picking anxiously at his dirty nail., "And I thought maybe it had to do with what I said last night; what I made you do."

Roger scoffed, his gaze drifting back to his tortured bandmate's. "You've got to be joking. You honestly think I would do that just because of something you said?" The guitarist fell quiet, his silence confirming the drummer's doubts. The blonde dropped his arms to his side and, with a few steps forward, closed the gap separating them. "You honestly think I'd let you die, here?"

"Well, I don't know," Brian mumbled, the tables turning when he became the one who couldn't bear to look at the man standing across from him. "It's possible."

"You've gone mad," Roger replied before slinking off.

However, he didn't make it as far as any of the others—the curly-haired student crying out, "Then what is it?"

"What is what?" Roger snapped, pivoting sharply on his heel to face him.

With a painful grunt, the guitarist dared to take a step towards the drummer, though his step seemed more of a stagger, and his voice a whimper as he pleaded to know, "What aren't you telling me?"