Baby It’s You - Part 2.
Pairing: Roger Taylor x reader, Brian May x reader
Summary: The year is 1981 and Roger Taylor is pretty sure he has made it. With the Game Tour stretching out before him and the band more successful than ever, he doesn’t think that anything can mess up the perfect picture that is his life. That is, until he receives a letter from an astrophysics PhD student studying abroad, and finds himself sucked into her world of secrets and mistaken identities. Roger Taylor is about to find out that his life is a lot more complicated than he ever thought.
Wordcount: 2392 (getting longer!).
Warnings: I just love Roger Taylor a lot, okay?
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An hour after Brian had left, Roger was still finishing up. Bags all around him on the bottom step of the never-ending flight of stairs that lead down from their apartment, he was making sure he took as much time as he could. He was late already, so he might as well be later. It annoyed Brian and he knew it - all those threats and empty promises of kicking Roger out of the band if he wasn't get to the tour bus on time weren't entirely lost on him, just had the wrong effect.
With that last thought of Brian's agitated face in mind, and the wonderful mental image of him pacing to and fro in front of the bus the way he probably was right now, Roger dropped off the last of his bags by the door, and made his way over to the little metal letter-boxes with the apartment numbers on the front. He had never really done this kind of dull domestic thing before, truth be told, and it took him a moment to pick out their box from the rows and rows stacked on top of each other. Brian was much more domestic than he had ever been, and on a nicer day he might have admitted that he could not live without him. But this was not that kind of day, and Roger Taylor was not in that kind of mood.
There were the usual parcels and notices - a wedding invitation from one of Brian's friends, a just-saying-hi letter from Tim Staffell like there was every week (Roger never read them but he knew that Brian did), a couple of bills and an advertisement for a recording studio nearby. He kept that one, put it in his pocket to show the others if he ever decided to show up at the bus as he knew he had to soon. And then at the bottom another envelope, small and neat. He picked it up, looked a little closer at the name written on the front in neat cursive script. The right house number, absolutely not the right name. Some guy called Ben, probably someone who lived somewhere downstairs. Probably the new guy, but Roger had no idea which number he was. He cast a momentary glance at all the letter-boxes in front of him, wondered whether he had the time or the patience to go through each one and look for names. True to his character and to the extraordinary number he saw, he did not.
There was a moment or two when he had to stand and think things through. The letter had been sent to the wrong address. But what to do when you had nowhere to send it to? Leave it on the side and hope for the best? Probably not a good idea - he had had a suspicion people were stealing Queen's mail for a while now, best not to put the idea to the test when this wasn't even his letter. Find Ben? God knows how many Ben's there must be in this building, and Roger was finally coming around to the idea that sooner or later he really had to get to the bus or else they might send Brian back to drag him there by brute force. What a comically horrifying thought.
So it was without much internal conflict that Roger slipped the letter into the pocket of his coat, with the advert for the studio, and locked up the letter-box once again. He could always open it and find out who had written it, maybe write back to the address it was sent from, just to explain. He figured they ought to know, at least. And it didn't seem like there were a lot of better options opening themselves up before him. Yes, he would read it as soon as they set off, get something back quickly and have no more to do about it. Or at least, so he resolved as he found his bags again, the thought already fading into the chaos of his mind, the prospect of the tour bleeding through in its place until he had almost forgotten about the letter entirely, standing by the worn front door.
With a final sigh and a grunt as he hoisted his bags onto his back once more, Roger left the building through the front door and made his way finally to the tour bus. It had to leave soon, and he was very very late.
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It was only that night, with the sun long since set and the others recently gone to bed, that Roger remembered the letter. He cursed quietly in the silence of the bed at the back of the tour bus, muttering something about the scrabble they had been playing all afternoon while the bus drove on to god knows where, and tried once more to close his eyes and fall asleep. Once more he was unsuccessful. Eyes closed and breathing slowed, the thought of the address came flooding back into his mind, insidious and unshakeable as a curse. He really had to read it now, because he was getting the idea that he could not sleep if he didn't.
He sat up, pressing his shaking hands against his thighs to steady them as he shivered in the cool night air. For the life of him he could not remember when July had got so cold. Groping around in the moonlight for his coat, he took out the letter from the pocket, straightened it out. Such pretty handwriting for someone who didn't know how a fucking address worked.
Dear Ben...
The silence in the tour bus lasted an eternity while he read, his lips moving gently as he murmured the words back to himself. From time to time he looked up from the page, lips quirking up into a soft half-smile as the words pulled him into their funny little world that he knew nothing about. And yet he had never felt as though he knew someone so well. It was almost too intimate, for a moment he had to stop and wonder if he was really doing the right thing. This was a moment when the curtain was ripped aside momentarily, and through the gap he caught a glimpse of someone else living a life that was so different to his own. He felt as though he were walking into a cinema halfway through a film, picking up a character from all the scraps of words they let him see. He could not look away if he tried.
When at last the words ran out at the bottom of the page, he blinked slowly, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness that seemed to have wrapped itself around him while he was unaware. How to tell this girl, (Y/N), that he wanted to, needed to, know more. There was something so addictive about this boring little life she lead, where the pigeons outside her window got more action than her. Roger could never understand what that was like.
Making sure not to wake the others as they sprawled out on the beds along the bus, Roger found the little scrabble table, the pencils and paper they used to score. He took a clean sheet and tried to write.
Dear (Y/N) (Y/L/N),
I must preface this letter with the sincere apology that I am not, in fact, Ben. Not through some lack of effort of yours, I am sure, this letter was addressed to entirely the wrong person, and has reached myself instead of whoever it was intended to go to. Which is fine - I certainly enjoyed reading your letter, and in fact I should hate to leave this here. You seem to lead such a more exciting life than I do!
I wish I could understand your PhD woes, really, but it is my primary flaw that I was never the most academic of all my friends. If I could do what you are doing, I would, but the problem is I just can't. I fear I would die of boredom and stress from the very get-go, and that would be a rather unfortunate situation for everyone involved, I fear. Still, I have no doubt that, whatever it is you are studying, you are coping brilliantly (albeit complainingly!). It seems I must rely upon you to live out vicariously my dreams of doing anything vaguely intellectual successfully; I hope you do not mind!
You've made me quite frantic just reading about your late night habits, my love! He's probably right, you know - you really ought to get some sleep. One of my mates keeps going on about something like that ("self care" apparently, which sounds a lot like bullshit but it seems I'll be preaching it now like the utter hypocrite that I am) to me, which of course I have never listened to because I have a horrible habit of never actually listening to my mates, but I think you need some of that. Not that you're going to listen to me. Not that you should listen to me. My advice is terrible. Just ignore me, I'm having an internal crisis here.
New York is indeed very... different to what we are used to. I used to hate it there because all I could associate it with was travelling and being away from home, but now I suppose I don't mind as much. I'm more used to travelling now. Not that that's an especially bad thing. New York does have nicer diners, and the accent makes me laugh more than I really ought to. I lose my shit every time someone orders a coffee like that. Good on your pigeons though - maybe not so good on you but good on them all the same. At least they're having a nice time. Well, at least the male pigeon is. And they say romance is dead.
How must you live without a radio? I think I would keel over and die immediately without my music. I wouldn't tell it to my friends (they'd call me a right wuss and I fear I haven't the stability of ego to withstand such a low blow) but I sometimes think my soul is made of music. That band thing sounds interesting! Maybe you should go along just in case - see if you like them. I hear they're fantastic.
Roger didn't comment on the last half of that paragraph. Something in it made him feel like he was standing in someone else's place, reading something he was never meant to see. Something he would never share, because no one had ever said those kind of things to him before. He wondered if that was love, and hoped it wasn't. He'd like to think that he had been loved before, and he knew that he had never been loved quite like this.
You know I have to ask - who on earth are Lennon and McCartney? Please god don't tell me you have half of the Beatles living in your apartment or else I really must find out who you might possibly be. Princess Bride with the Beatles... what a thought. I've never seen it - I think I should have but I haven't. Nothing personal, not really, I've just never been the sort for sappy romance films. All that nonsense about "true love" and "happily ever after", I'd feel like a 9-year-old girl with a crush. It's all just a scam, really. No way that kind of thing isn't all made up. No way at all.
A wedding? Wow, sounds nice. Sorry, I'm just not used to that kind of thing. What do you even say to it? Congratulations on not having broken up by now? Good luck doing the same things you were doing before you got married but with extra legal bindings? I can't wait until you have kids and our friendship becomes second to them? Not for me, no sir. Not for anyone like me either. Just not ideal exactly in this line of work. Think I'll have to stick with being forever alone, eh? But congratulations (or something like that) to your brother and his... spouse.
Thank you again for brightening up my boring little day, and I hope you write again "as you wish",
Anon.
He didn't sign his name at the bottom - he thought perhaps it might be better to let her form her own opinions of him in her own time, instead of telling her straight away. It wouldn't let out his address, he promised himself as he slumped forwards against the table, head in his hands. Now that that was done, he suddenly felt so dreadfully tired, and he knew his sleep would only be plagued by thoughts of this mystery girl. For there was that smaller part of him, deep down in the pit of his chest where he thought his heart must be, that whispered to him that he did not want her to know who he was because for the first time in his life he had found someone who might like him for something other than that name. He found something that might stick around.
There were no envelopes in the van, and he made a quick promise to find one at the hotel the next morning, and send it out straight away, so she got the letter as quickly as possible. To send something to her boyfriend, he thought. And then, to send something to me. With a sigh and a shake of his head, he tucked the letter away in the pocket of his jeans, sleeping in his clothes as he had taken to doing on tour, and picked his way silently back to his bed.
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It was not hard to see that Roger Taylor had something to hide. Not when he broke away from the rest of the band the minute they had arrived at the hotel, not when he begged for half an hour in his room before they went out to check out the venue, and definitely not when out of the window John caught a glimpse of their drummer rushing off to the letter-box on the corner of the street, in his hand an envelope and in the envelope god knows what.
Taglist:
@rogertaylorsfalsettogivesmehives
