In the Year of the Cat (Queen or Freddie Mercury Fanfic)

1. It's Late, It's Late, It's Late... But Not Too Late-?

Up and down, up and down, my eyes moved, shifting from my phone to the wall clock.  A check of the news, then a look at the time.  I drummed my fingers against the desk, half-listening to my teacher rattle off a few rules about the Spanish conditional subjunctive or some such stuff.  Then back to news, then time.  News, time.  Tick, tock.  Tick, tock.

Geez.  How long before this class ended and we could get to the good stuff?

No sooner had I thought it than the minute hand struck the 12:50 mark.  Next stop, psychology.

It was a muggy Monday afternoon at the university.  Late November, yet it felt nothing like autumn.  But that's what you get in a place like Texas.  Nothing to expect but the unexpected. 

Luckily, today was one of my short days.  One more class - and my favorite one to boot - and I would be on the road again heading home.

"You say you love me," I sang under my breath, "and I hardly know your name..."  I walked briskly out into the clammy air, careful not to let my flats tread into the ever-present muddy patches between me and the University Union halfway across the campus.

I reached the Union with five minutes to spare, but as I entered I still forced myself not to look at the vending machines with all their glorious crap on display.  I hadn't eaten anything since seven, and I'm always hungry anyway; even suspicious-looking cinnamon rolls in greasy clear packages look appetizing with those sorts of stats. 

My will won against my stomach for once, and I made straight for the Mycento Hall.  One push of the double doors, a few hasty steps upward, and soon I was perched in my usual spot, my lone seat apart from the other two hundred students (give or take another hundred depending on whether or not an exam is scheduled), ready for lecture. 

I took no notes.  I didn't usually anyway.  But this time, I found myself zoning in and out for most of the class.  I had been doing that more and more lately, the nearer Christmas Break drew.  I loved psychology, don't get me wrong.  Nothing excited me more than learning about the inner workings of the mind, unearthing the deepest, most hidden crevices of the human soul.  

Correction.  No thing may have excited me like that.  But I did not say no one. 

We all have our own guilty pleasures.  He was mine. 

And who was HE, you ask?  My boyfriend, perhaps?  Puh-leeze.  I had never had one.  I'd had plenty of imaginary friends, few real ones.  Same went for significant others.  That's what you get for being a lightning rod. 

But I liked it like that.  People are messy.  I didn't mind being around them, but I didn't necessarily want to get involved with them and live in their lives.  It's like a zoo.  Study the animals, care for the animals, love the animals from a distance.  I didn't want to get down in the hippopotamus pen and drink from their water hole just to able to say I was sharing in their experiences.

Hey, I like that.  I think I'll use that. 

But who was HE?

HE was a dead guy.  A very complicated dead guy.  And I had talked about him, laughed about him, thought about him, dreamed about him enough to the point I shouldn't have had to say his name, although it's an exceptional name.  An exceptional name for an exceptional man. 

Such thoughts concerning this very fellow drifted in and out of my head, at a time when I should have been copying down the slideshow notes.

And then I realized I was in some serious trouble.

While I daydreamed, my professor reminded us all of a big piece of our grade: research credits.  This is where we pysch students must participate in research studies in order to have experience on both sides of the two-way mirror.