Save Me

Chapter XII

"You think you know everything, don't you?" Roger spat, his knuckles whitening as he kept his gaze right on the ground in front of them. "You think you're the only one to be afraid of being yourself? To say a single thing about it? Please. You know shit. Your parents don't know, barely any of your friends know-we had to pull it out of you to even know-and still, still, you think you've had the worst of it."

He looked up at the wall in front of him. "You're selfish and want everyone to pity you, to try and help you through your troubles. How about you try having a family who actively hated you? Despises the very thought of having someone who dares to go against their ideas of what makes a person normal? You had it oh so easy and still do. You-you..." He gave a guttural growl as his nails dug deeper into his sleeves. "You act stupid once and everything's ruined. You act stupid once and you lose a family's trust. You act stupid once and you can't look at cigarettes the same way. To think he just blabbed about it! Spread around the school like wildfire that Roger Taylor was a faggot and loved getting it on with any guy in the vicinity." He paused, his gaze dropping for a split second. "I liked him...and I didn't think, did I? Did I stop to think? No, not at all." He turned to him, anger and resentment still burning behind his eyes, though John somehow knew it wasn't directed at him. "Then you have to face your parents about it and God knows they weren't happy. You've any idea what it's like to see your father so angry and ashamed in what he's got for a son? Or to have a mother look the exact same way although she claimed she would love you no matter what? To have their trust betrayed in an instant once you've a belt to the stomach or a cigarette burn to your arm? To be starved out because they don't want you at the table anymore or to drag you to church and have them torment you in ways that would be illegal if done to a dog or cat, but not for an actual human being? To then run away and not be stopped because they couldn't care less about you?" He paused, tears starting to well up in his eyes as another tremor ran through his body. "You've no bloody idea what it's like to have no one care about you and don't think you ever will. It wasn't until Brian came along that someone cared about me again and you still think that you've had the worse of it. You've had your family, you've had friends, you've had us and yet you still think otherwise." Once again he paused, the hurt in his face becoming even more apparent. "Do we really mean nothing to you? Are we just a background in your world that you couldn't dare to trust us with anything or even think that we don't care?" 

After he stopped, John could only stare. He didn't know what to say and in that moment, he didn't really want to because what was there to say? That he'd been scared? You couldn't say that to someone who just spilled their whole life out to you in a matter of minutes. Yet that look of hopelessness on Roger's face, that lost shadow over his eyes, managed to drag something out of him before his mind could even comprehend what he was actually saying.

"I was scared. I'd known you guys for so long and it's hard to change things. If I'd done it from the start, it might've been easier. But you guys made it look so easy and I couldn't do it...I wanted to but I couldn't. It's scary thinking of how much things could change by me coming out and I didn't want that. I liked how things were and I wanted them to stay that way, even if that meant that I'd have to stay in the closet and..." He cut himself off before mentioning Freddie again. "But then you guys force me out, drag me right out of my safe spot, took away the one thing I'd control over for years because you thought it was going to help me. Now look, we're all worse off 'cause you had to go meddle in my life."

"I was trying to help!" Roger spat. "Once I noticed something, I wanted to do something about it, even if that meant dragging you out. I didn't want someone else doing it sooner and you getting hurt like I did."