Faking It • Queen FanFiction

Cʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 72

The next day, Bernie woke up to an empty house and the sound of the phone trilling on its hook. Roger had left early to do some further last-minute recording and Bernie contemplated whether or not to answer the call at all, mainly because she didn't want to have to arise from the warm sheets. In the end, after the phone had rang twice more, meaning she could no longer be ignorant to it, she peeled the sheets back and stepped through to the living room, the cold house air bringing goosebumps to her pale bare legs.

"Hello?" She answered groggily, but trying to cover it up.

"Hi Berns, it's me."

"Oh hi Bri. Is everything okay, you've called like three times now." She suddenly became worriedly curious that perhaps something was wrong.

"Oh, so you did hear me. You just chose to ignore me. In that case, I'll let you go." He tried to sound offended and haughty, but Bernie could hear the tone in his voice that pleaded her to persist.

"Oh, please do tell me, my curiosity is just too unbearable." With little effort, she put on the most flat, dull voice she could.

"You're incredibly cheeky sometimes. Anyway. Be ready in fifteen minutes, we're going out."

"Out! Out where? Fifteen minutes, that's barely enough time to take a piss." The emotion came back, two or three octaves higher than her usual voice. How on earth was she supposed to get presentably ready in only a quarter of an hour? Brian had a nasty habit of always being early, too...

"Charming. Just be ready, I want to be there as soon as they open."

"As soon as who opens?-" The line went dead. "Prick." She slammed the phone down on the hook and stood watching it for a moment, hands on hips; shaking her head. Then she remembered that she had the world's smallest amount of time to get ready to presumably face the general public, so frantically darted around the house. Speed-dressing was much easier in her little flat, as there was less ground to cover. In the nick of time, she'd managed to pull together an outfit and scrape her red hair back into a high ponytail with some stylish clips, deciding it was too greasy to allow it to be exposed to the public eye.

"Why do you fuck with me like this?" Bernie demanded instead of saying hello as she clambered into Brian's car, shutting the passenger door with some force.

"No, no, that's Roger's job." Brian tutted in return, flicking off his indicator and pulling out to rejoin the traffic. Roger was misfortunate enough to live just off of a main road, meaning he often faced a lot of congestion. And alas, the horn was invented.

"Hey! And besides, we haven't actually, you know, got to that yet."

Brian exploded into a coughing fit as he choked on absolutely nothing. His eyes lost contact with the road at just the wrong moment and he had to swerve aggressively, jostling both of them around just to keep the little red car in lane. "You, what?!"

"You heard." Bernie repeated abruptly. In all truthfulness, she was actually quite embarrassed by the fact that her and Roger hadn't yet slept together. She didn't intend to tell anybody, she just blurted it out accidentally.

"My God. How's he holding up?" Brian chuckled.

"Not so good." A brief smile flashed across her face as she thought about how more or less every time they kissed, she could feel the desperation through his lips and body language. "He's getting pretty restless."

"And how are you coping?" His voice turned unexpectedly serious and Bernie was slightly taken aback, the grin wiped off of her face completely.

"What do you mean?"