so tell me (why my gods look like you)
Poly!King Day 1: Maybe God is a Woman
This goes to the lovely @stayinqpower! I hope you like it love!
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In hindsight, they should have realised the Brianna was different.
Back when they were kids, and they still called her by her birth name, every single quirk and oddity should have tipped them off. But instead, they just passed it off as Brianna being her odd self. The way that her hair would get caught in the light giving her a bizarre halo, or how animals tended to crowd around her like moths to the light. They should have noticed when Brianna seemed to know things that no five-year-old should or seemed to have answers to questions that not even their parents had.
But little Brian, as they had called her back then, was nothing but their strange friend. An intelligent and cheery kid who would always walk around with a smile adorning his face and leaves sticking out of his hair. It should have been easy to fall in love with him back then, but Regina later realises that maybe she hadn't wanted them to fall in love until she managed to get to her pure form.
Other lesser beings would have had trouble with the transition. But Brianna, their beautiful girlfriend with endless wisdom and power just willed it so once she realised that the form of a boy, of a male, didn't quite fit her. She didn't like that form, didn't like the fact that she had to keep her hair short, and that she would never be able to bear a child if she wanted to do so. So one day she was a boy named Brian, with angular features and form-fitting pants, and the next she was Brianna, their Brianna.
That should have been the first clue that she was not quite human. But at the time it just seemed so simple to Johanna. She had been seven, and the world is so much simpler when you are seven, and according to Brianna she just realised that she didn't want to be a boy anymore, not even if that's how her Mum had sent her to earth. Back then they had all agreed that boys were yucky and that was that.
Nobody dared to question that even if it was possible to change herself like that on earth, it shouldn't have been that simple. It wasn't like she could have been able to do it overnight, not in the sixties, not as a child. But nobody else seemed to find that weird, in fact, they seemed to be the only ones who remembered that Brianna had looked like a boy. To everyone else, it was just as if she had always been Brianna Hope May, not Brian Harold May.
Through the years, and as the four of them fell in love with each other, Brianna just grew weirder. She refused to let them meet her parents or let them go to her house. She would refer to God as her or as them, much to Regina and Johanna's parents' annoyance, and would often talk about things she shouldn't talk about as if they were unconsequential. Hence why, as soon as Freddie came out as a dyke to her parents, they prohibited ever talking to Brianna again, at least until she came to her senses.
Regardless, the younger woman always seemed to find a way to speak to Freddie, even if it meant sneaking into her dreams. Dreams in which the singer kicked, screamed and made havoc of whatever she could find and Brianna would just sit there in complete calm. "You told me God wouldn't hate me!"
Brianna tilted her head to the side, "They won't. Why would They hate you for loving someone?"
"Because I love girls, not boys. I don't understand why you can't see the problem, Bri! I'm in love with three girls, and that's not what God wants!"
At that Brianna scowls, and she has never seen her friend look as mad as she looks in that moment, "Oh please, girls are made to be loved, or else They wouldn't have created them."
And that is that. She never speaks about that again, not even when Freddie's parents let her out of the house, with no qualms about letting her see Brianna again.
In the same peculiar manner as everything with Brianna happens, they only meet her dad the day he dies. Brianna looks— well, her face is devoid of any emotion, and while all the people around her cry and mourn, she just sits on the chair, hands folded neatly into her lap and eyes staring ahead. After the ceremony ends, their guitarist is still left to sit staring forward, and nobody dares to move her, nobody has the heart.
Regina kneeled in front of her, lacing their fingers together and pressing a kiss to her head, "We'll be there for you."
"I know that," Brianna licks her lips, "Just as I know he is with my mother now. I just wish he would have held on for a little bit longer. I didn't want him to leave me alone just yet."
Her three lover's hearts had broken then; their guitarist sounded so small, so lost. They wanted to tell her that everything was going to be alright, that she wouldn't have to worry about being alone because she had them; but none of them even knew how to say this without hurting her more than she already was. So they simply held her to their chests as she stared at the casket almost as if she were lifeless.
What none of them notice, and none of them ever would, was Brianna's mother. In all her glory, with her silk robes, unruly hair, kind eyes, and the warmest smile possible. She grabbed her lover's hand and helped him stand up, then took him to Heaven with her. Brianna watched, eyes meeting with her mother for a fleeting second, before the woman smiled, "This is your Heaven now, I'll make sure of that."
Brianna bounces back from her grief after a few weeks, melancholy still follows her around, but she doesn't seem like a living dead any longer. However, she does pray more often now, mainly because when she does, she gets to hear her parents. She had always loved them fervently, in every single reincarnation and through the aeons. Being left alone on earth at nineteen doesn't change that.
What does change is the fact that for the first time in the thousands of years she has been alive, Brianna falls in love. It's slow but steady, and after three years of being alone on earth, she is madly in love with the three other women. Sure, she had liked people before, she had fancied Kings and been the mistress of many Queens and had slept around enough to ensure that there was enough lineage from the gods to last a forever. But she had never fallen in love.
Not like she loved the way that Freddie would wake her up peppering her face with kisses. Or how Johanna would kiss her nose and scold her for walking around the flat in skimpy pyjamas. Or how Regina would snuggle up to her side and ask for stories of the old gods, listening intently and then falling asleep on her chest. She had never fallen in love like this, and she was scared.
Her mother only snorted when she confessed her deepest fears. The dread that came with thinking that after this life she would never see her loves again. The anxiety-inducing thought that she might have to live without their kisses, without their laughs, the hugs, the jokes, the sex, the— everything.
"Sometimes you are ridiculous," her mother scolds her, "It makes me remember why I haven't given you the keys to Heaven yet. You won't lose them, child. After all, Gods can only fall in love once."
That night when she gets in bed, all of her lovers curl around her, claiming that Brianna works as a personal heater in times of great cold. The older girl just smiles, and nuzzles into Johanna's hair, taking in her sweet apple and cinnamon smell, "I just talked to my mother."
It had taken a long time for them to understand and come to terms with Brianna's parentage. They had had to meet God herself to fully believe their lover, and even sometimes they forgot that when they prayed, she was always there to answer. Only to them, of course, she was after all a capricious woman.
Freddie pressed her lips to Brianna's neck, "Yeah, what'd she say?"
"Gods only fall in love once, which means that you will have my heart forever, and I'll be able to have yours if we wish to stay together until the ends of time." She whispers it into the silence of the bedroom like she might be scared that they will not accept her offer if she says it any louder.
"And after that?" Freddie runs a finger down Brianna's cheek, "What happens after the end of time?"
Brianna smiles, "We restart, just that you'll be mine from the beginning."
Regina, from where she is laying on top of Brianna's chest, nuzzles into her collarbone, "I can do that. I can be with the three of you until the ends of time."
Brianna releases a breath she didn't know she was holding and that night makes sure that they are snuggled together as tightly as she can manage.
Until the end of time doesn't seem enough.