Faking It • Queen FanFiction

Cʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 63

"You're not a dumb arse, Brian...okay, maybe you are a bit, but you're also an extremely good friend. You had faith in us, and we broke that. We're sorry. Well, I am, Roger can speak for himself." Bernie stood still, scuffing the toe of her shoe in the dirt and stones. A heat came to her cheeks as she embarrassedly owned up to her mistakes, knowing there was no reversing the trust Brian had in her and Roger. She'd ruined everything.

Brian said nothing. He just looked at her expectantly. "I really am sorry. But I really like him, Bri." Silence. Even the grass had stopped rustling, listening in on their conversation, or rather, lack of it.

"Have you...you know... done anything?"

"What? No! No. I'm not that easy, Brian."

"I know. I was just making sure Roger wasn't pushing you to do anything. He gets a bit...excited."

The distance between the pair seemed unnecessarily large, but they made no effort to move closer to form an acceptably distanced conversation. "No, I keep him in check. Anyway, it's weird talking about my sex life with your best friend to you. I'm just so sorry you had to find out that way, really, we were planning on telling you."

"Then why didn't you? I'm not angry, just hurt that you'd keep this from me. I can support you."

"I don't know. It'd be like if you dated my sister. You wouldn't want to break the news to me until you were 100% certain that things would work out, at least for a little while, right? As to not mess anybody around?" Bernie's eyes expanded with desperate hope that she was getting through to Brian exactly how she felt. She couldn't speak for Roger, as she had no doubt that he was proud of every kiss that happened behind Brian's back.

Brian nodded sadly. "Yes, I suppose you're right. Hell, you hit the nail right on the head, Bernie. And I hate that you're right. I hate that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for me to resent your relationship with Roger. I should be happy for you both, but right now I'm more worried that I'm going to be left behind." In all her years of knowing Brian, Bernie had seen him worried, but she'd never seen him anxious and she felt that in that moment, he looked as close to it as she'd ever witness him be. Floods of sympathy piled into her heart and she found herself hugging him. Not him hugging her, she was hugging him, despite their drastic height difference making that relatively difficult to achieve.

"Bri, I'd never leave you to play hookie with some bloke, even Roger, because no matter how much I like him, I love you more." She tightened her grip on him to show she cared and so did Brian. In one swift manoeuvre, she was lifted off the ground, shrieking, and twirled around once before being planted safely back down.

"Thank you, Bernie. You have no idea how reassuring that was to hear. Now, if Roger ever lays so much as a finger on you, I'll have his head on a fucking stick. We've got a lot of his input into the new album recorded now, so it shouldn't matter too much if I were to murder him." Naturally, the pair gradually started to make their way back in the direction of the farm, their shoes crunching in the dust and the grass rustling comfortably once again.

Bernie lightly backhanded his arm. "Brian! You shouldn't say things like that, you'll talk it up. And anyway, you know Roger and you know me, if he dared push me I'd be behind bars for first degree murder."

Drifting one too many steps sideways away from Bernie for comedic effect, Brian lost his footing and tumbled through the reeds, falling far from elegantly with a deafening splash as his body fell flat into the calm river. Tangles of limbs flew everywhere, the tiny fish dispersed manically in the cold water and Bernie was doubled over, trying to catch a breath amongst her sobs of laughter. Genuine tears flew from her eyes and down her cheeks at the sight of only Brian's legs in the air with loud profanities coming from behind them in the water.

"Are...you...o-kay?!" She managed to get out in between shrieks of laughter. Just as she was regaining self control and was going to offer assistance, Brian's head remerged from the water and he spat river water out of his mouth, sending it flying all over Bernie, had she not dodged it just in time. Only a few droplets caught her grey polo shirt. Brian, however, was soaked through. His purple striped shirt had darkened considerably and his clothes hung limply with the weight of the water.

From her position on the bank and Brian standing a few inches below her in the water, they were both eye-to-eye for one of the first times since they'd known each other. This gave Bernie an excellent view of what was left of his sodden curls. Except they weren't curls anymore, just masses of straight brunette hair that lankly fell well beyond his shoulders, where his voluminous curls usually sat. Of course she'd seen him with wet hair before, but in this pretext she just couldn't help herself and crumpled back into a heap of laughter; barely able to support her own weight. "Holy shit!" She squealed, not daring to look at him again lest she genuinely
faint from not getting enough oxygen due to her hysterics.

"That was your fault!" He huffed, clambering out of the freezing water. He stood on the bank, shivering next to Bernie as she took deep, calming breaths with her eyes closed in an attempt to regain control of herself, despite the situation she was presented with.

Back at the farm, Roger was smoking cigarette after cigarette, ignoring Kingsley's rule of not smoking in the booth for the millionth time since they'd arrived at Rockfield. "Rog, calm down," Freddie patted the drummer's shoulder, moving past him to stand at the microphone erected on a stand in the middle of the room.

"They've been gone forever. What if he's killed her?"

"Oh please, I think the only person he'll be killing is you." John added, sitting on his amp and tuning his bass, not even peering up at Roger's disconcerted face.

"Better me than her." He muttered, taking a particularly long drag of his cig and exiting the booth, leaving Freddie and John to do whatever it was they were planning.

"Right, okay Fred, on the third beat, that's when you start the verse, sort of give it a bit of an accentuation at the 'awh' before going in with the final chorus, okay?" John instructed, gaining Roger's attention. For almost a week, the bassist had been so much louder than usual in the studio, bossing everybody about and snapping at them when they couldn't follow his instruction. He'd even almost started raising his voice at Freddie, who apparently wasn't singing high enough to John's liking. On the whole, though, he wore a proud expression whenever he was pointing out how he wanted things to be done and when the vocals for the final chorus were recorded with the tempo support of John's bass, the song would be completely finished.

It was a very inclusive song: everybody getting to chip in with backing vocals and having their instrument heard. It was only a couple of days ago that John had revealed the song's title of "You're My Best Friend". Nobody even pretended to act surprised at the revelation as after many many overdubs of the chorus, everybody had latched on.

"We're ba-ack!" Bernie barricaded through the studio door sometime later with a semi-sodden Brian shortly behind her. "Who missed us? Or just me? Gather round lads, I've got a fucking funny story to tell you...."

7/4/23 - pretend it's Wednesday. I've been super busy and completely forgot!