More than just a friend || Roger Taylor

50- the beginning of his end

9th March 1981

Tw- abuse... big warning !! please be careful and please please please reach out if you need to talk !!

Thankfully, after what I would seem to remember as two eventful weeks, I was sat on the sofa curled up besides Toulouse as I waited to hear the drummer's knock against the door.

The only thing that had of course bothered me since Roger had left was the aftermath of the interview. The press. And their glorified, treasured opinion that the public seemed to crave. It was tough, some of the things they said was hard to read, but it seemed the dim light I'd shed on my dad had made its way onto the front pages as well.

I'd spent at least one fraction of every day on the phone to Roger, listening to his every show had been and how well the band were doing, yet also how endless tours weren't so good at holding them so tight together. 

Queen were a good band, and there wasn't any doubt  in the fact they would stick together for years longer, but it seemed they were all leading separate lives. Freddie was all for the party, the high life and the glamour and the money he had, Brian and John had kids and wives, and well Roger wasn't sure. He had lived the party scene far before Freddie, and it was a well known fact that drinking could get boring. But if I knew one thing, it's that the band had so much cash they didn't know what to do with it anymore.

Regardless, I was beyond desperate to be in Roger's arms again. Now that I'd finally gotten over, well at least the hardest and most painful part of it, I simply just had to wait for him to be home. 

There was only a mere few minutes before I could expect his arms to be back around me again, only some brief moments spent in the glare of the tv screen besides the car before he sat down besides me.

But then, slightly unexpectedly, the door knocked loudly, no gentleness behind it that could possibly be owned by Roger, a slight startle within myself awakening. I leaped up from the sofa, cautiously walking towards the wooden panel with the intention to open it as curiosity burned within me.

I opened the door slowly, my stomach fluttering at the glimmering hope it was Roger behind it, but as soon as my eyes met the figure owning the knock they dropped. It wasn't just me eyes that dropped either. Everything did.

My heart did. Lowering to the pit of my stomach to join the lifeless corpses of what I wanted to be butterflies. My mind dropped the memories, the reminders, the haunting replaying images that corrupted me day after day. The words dropped from my mouth, slipping down my throat and past a forming lump as my eyes dropped two perfectly cold and rounded tears.

Because there he was. There was the man that stole everything from me. Every last part of my childhood, my adolescence, my adulthood- my life. He'd trapped me in the daunting hold of his viscous, cruel, cold hands since I'd let out my very first cry. Since he welcomed me into the world he would flood it with a darkness so overpowering I still couldn't fight it in my brightest times.

His frame was decaying, a wooden cane in his grasp that held the withering appeal that welcomed his daunting grin. His hair was a part of the past, much like the softness of his skin as it presented itself full of wrinkles and marks of age, his hollow cheeks struggling to hold his sickening smile as a chuckle sliced through the curdled air between us.

"No." I mumbled, his hot, sticky, suffocating breath slipping past my cheek as he stepped closer. "No... I came here so you never would. I didn't even think you knew my address."

My heart was pounding rapidly as my stomach warned me of its sudden need to be sick, my mind releasing it's memories as it feel blank with the shocking fear of his presence.