Faking It • Queen FanFiction

Cʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 53

The next morning, all became clear. The stomach pains. The achey joints. When Bernie awoke late the next morning to an empty bed, she could barely roll over let alone get up. Blindingly painful cramps pierced her body and she didn't even dare open her eyes to face the bright morning sun glistening through the window. Instead, she clamped her arms around herself, huddled into a ball under the duvet and groaned in pain. For how long she did this, she didn't know, but after a while Roger came in and was flabbergasted to see her as she was.

Every single day since they'd arrived at Ridge Farm, Bernie had been up, dressed and ready with bundles of energy sometimes hours before Roger arose. Therefore, he found it extraordinarily odd that not only was he up and about before her, but that when he came upstairs she was still huddled in the duvet making incoherent noises. "Birdie?" He nervously croaked worriedly into the room, clearing his throat as he stepped closer round to her side of the bed. "Birdie? Are you alright?"

The only viable response was a whimper laden with agony. This alarmed Roger even further and he knelt down to her eye level, pulling the duvet down to see her face, which was bunched up into a wrinkled mess. Lines creased her forehead, her nose was scrunched and tears leaked from her eyes. Roger's chest twinged with confusion, panic and something else as he realised that something was desperately wrong. "Birdie!" He shook her shoulder in hurried alarm, concerned for her health.

"Cramps...period...I'm fine..." she rasped and covered her head with the duvet out of shame. Ten hours ago she'd had her tongue in his mouth pressed against a wall and now look at where things were. How romantic.

"No, you're not fine, come 'ere," he stood up, clicking his knees unintentionally as he did so and clambered back into the bed beside Bernie. Facing the same way as her, he scooped her into his body and held her against him, wrapping the duvet securely around them both. Using his free hand, he pulled her hair away from her wet eyes and stroked her hair, kissing her head and shoulders. His other arm was holding onto her tightly, but not tight enough that it'd cause more pain.

It didn't take long for Roger to realise that him hugging her definitively wasn't easing the pain as she continued to whine and cry. So ever so carefully, he peeled his body out from under the duvet, covered her back up and disappeared downstairs. Ten minutes later he was back brandishing water, painkillers, breakfast, extra pillows from the airing cupboard and Brian.

"Oh dear," Brian sighed as he entered the room, peering down at the sorry sight of Bernie scrunched up in the twisted duvet.

"'Oh dear', is that all you can say?!" Roger scoffed at Brian, waving an urgent arm over the double bed.

"What do you expect me to say! You've taken me to a crumpled up lady!"

"Well you live with one, you should know what to do!" Roger was getting hysterical and his voice was getting louder as he spoke.

"There's nothing we can do apart from make her as comfortable as we can. The female body is a bitch, Chrissie barely gets cramps."

Together, Roger and Brian used the pillows to sit Bernie up in the newly flapped out duvet with a few sips of water down her and a round of toast. She necked the painkillers and laid there, dried tears giving her cheeks a red flush. "They're never usually this bad," she said in shame, pulling the duvet over her arms. "Only very, very rarely, thank fuck. And Brian, give Chrissie a big Fuck You from me. Not that I'd wish any pain upon her but how dare she not get cramps, honestly."

Nobody was sure whether or not to laugh, so they just chuckled respectfully. "Wait," Roger froze. "Won't you be...you know..." he reduced his voice to a whisper, "bleeding?"

"No. That'll probably start tomorrow." For the first time that day, Bernie smiled as Brian recounted the way in which her menstrual cycle worked and Roger looked utterly horrorstricken. 

"Ergh!" He cried in terror, gobsmacked that Brian knew about that stuff. Bernie's specifically.

"Twenty years of friendship, Roger," she reminded him and turned back onto her most comfortable side, where it only felt like one hundred people were stabbing at her uterus, as opposed to two hundred. As nice as the painkillers were, she knew they wouldn't even scratch the surface and there was no option but to let it pass.

The rest of the morning was spent with Roger, who topped up her supply of tablets and water and, on her request, just laid with her and held her in his arms. She used his warmth as a hot water bottle and basked in the feeling of being cared for. For thirteen years, Bernie's periods had been brutal, giving her deathly cramps whenever it felt like it, making her bleed so heavily her clothes got stained, being late, coming twice in the same month and doing whatever it could to make her life as difficult as possible. All through that, she was told "it's natural, don't worry, just deal with it" from family, friends and even doctors. So yes, she felt it was about merry time somebody acknowledged her monthly struggles and supported her though it for once, if only morally.

In the afternoon, she got all hot and clammy from being in bed for so long, so tailed behind Queen and sat in the recording studio whilst they worked. In this particular session, Brian spent a lot of time making his guitar screech as much as he possibly could, which annoyed the hell out of Roger and pleased Freddie immensely. "Louder!" Freddie cried through the intercom in glee, recording another overdub of the tape whilst Roy sat there pushing buttons and dials to give the guitar part of whatever song they were working on as much sound as possible.

It seemed that it went on and on until Freddie was content, which took almost three hours. In that time, the rest of the band milled around, drank tea, sat with Bernie on the sofa in the studio, helped experiment with sound and annoyed Freddie by flicking pieces of paper at him until he lost it. Eventually, he gave up and decided to record with Brian another day, switching to more exciting things. "Right, I want you all to sing this part-" he pointed to a line on a crumpled piece of paper with doodles on the top, "-but Roger, I want you to sing high, me to sing low and Brian...just sing." Roger and Brian nodded along, setting up the studio for vocal work.

Freddie turned to John in the meantime, who was sat next to Bernie, putting a plait in her hair. "Deaks, wanna sing too?"

Suddenly, John went extremely shy and said in a rather small voice: "I'd rather not if that's okay Fred...I'm not much of a singer."

"Of course, darling. But I'm going to need you to be on this side with Roy, helping with the controls."

"'Course, sorry Bernie," John stood up and sat in the spinny chair that Freddie previously occupied.

Whilst Queen were doing whatever it was they were doing, which turned out to be wailing "magnifico!" into a microphone at three dramatically different pitches, Bernie couldn't help drifting off, hugging a hot water bottle to her stomach and using their harmonious melodies to lull her to sleep unintentionally.

8/3/23 - 49 years since the release of Queen II, (inter)national women's day <3