Long Away

Chapter 4

Brian agreed to meet the three of them at the studio Smile had been renting for practice. They went there in the afternoon. Brian suggested to order pizza. While they were waiting for their lunch to be delivered, Freddie and Brian tried to come up with a new band name. Roger was playing his drums and made sure to tell them their ideas sucked every now and again. Ben had brought some paper and was now sitting at a small table, pretending to work on the lyrics to Seven Seas Of Rhye. He had no idea how long he should drag out the process. Surely it would be suspicious if he finished it in one day, but he also needed to prove himself valuable to the band. Not that he was actually bringing anything to the table. A feeling of guilt overcame him. He put his pencil aside and sat down on the floor with Freddie and Brian, hoping they would be able to distract him.

"What if we call ourselves 'princes of the universe'?", Brian suggested.
"No one else cares about space, nerd!", Roger shouted over the noise of his own drumming. Brian rolled his eyes.
"It is a bit long, don't you think? But I like the prince part," Freddie said.
"What about you two, do you have any ideas?" Brian looked from Roger to Ben.
"Oh I'm not sure," Ben said. Roger put his drumsticks away to come sit with them.
"Do we have to settle on anything right now? We don't even have a bassist yet."
"That's true," Brian admitted.
"I'll hang up some flyers on campus," Freddie said. "It can't be that hard to find someone."
"Be careful though. That's how I got stuck with this one," Brian said, pointing at Roger. It earned him a middle finger.
"Please, get yourselves a room," Ben teased. Freddie burst out laughing. Even Brian and Roger couldn't help but crack a smile.

The doorbell rang. Freddie grabbed the money they had put aside earlier to pay for their food and went to get the door.
"Say Ben, how long will you be staying with Fred and Rog?", Brian asked. Ben fiddled with the hem of his shirt.
"That is a good question," he uttered.
"What was your plan originally when you came here?," Roger wanted to know. Ben looked down uncomfortably. He had already decided what he was going to tell them. He made up a story that was at least partially true, but he hated the fact that he had to lie to them at all after everything they did for him. He waited for Freddie to come back with the pizza cartons so he wouldn't have to tell the story twice.

"There you go." Freddie placed them in the middle of the circle they were sitting in before opening them to see which one was whose.
"Okay so this one's mine. Ben, Roger, you had the same one, right? And Brian gets his boring vegetarian junk."
"Thank you Fred. I'm going to enjoy my boring junk," Brian said.
Roger shook his head.
"I could never go without meat."
"Personally, I don't really enjoy the idea of eating a corpse," Brian remarked.
"Children, please, can we not have this conversation again?", Freddie sighed.
"You started it!"
"Okay, whatever," Roger interrupted, "Ben was just going to tell us something."
Brian smiled apologetically.
"Right, sorry. Why did you come here?"
Ben cringed. Now his acting skills would come in handy. He already knew they wouldn't have a bad reaction, but he avoided their gazes and chewed his lip as though he was nervous.
"I had to leave my family over night," he began.
"I had this... friend. Joe. My parents were not happy about how fond I was of him, if you know what I mean." He paused, still not looking up.
"Joe did not reciprocate my feelings, but I still couldn't hide who I was anymore. But when I told my father, he disowned me."

It was silent for a while. Freddie scooted over and put an arm around Ben's shoulders.
"That is just terrible, dear. You can stay with us for as long as you need, right Rog?"
"Of course," Roger agreed, his voice heavy with sympathy.
"None of us are going to judge you for this," Brian joined in.
"In fact," Freddie said, "Brian is the only straight person in this room."
Ben looked up in surprise.
"Really?" He didn't even have to pretend this time. He had always thought that Roger was the straightest man on earth.
"Really," Freddie assured him. Roger nodded in agreement.
"So does that mean," a smirk spread on Ben's face, "that Brian is the only one staying off the meat in more than one way?" All four of them broke out in laughter.
"Yeah, I suppose it does," Brian chuckled. Freddie patted Ben's shoulder.
"I like you, kid. You make a great addition to our group of queens."
Ben locked eyes with Freddie.
"Queens?"
Freddie snapped his fingers.
"That's it! Queen!"
"I like it," Roger said. "Bri?"
"Sounds good to me."
"Great. Can we finally eat then?", Roger asked. Freddie laughed.
"Sure, do that. Ben, can I just look at what you wrote so far? I'm dying to see it!"
Ben nodded with a mouthful of pizza. Freddie grabbed the sheet of paper from the table. Ben watched his expression change with suspense as he read the lyrics. He looked surprised.
"You wrote that just now?", he asked. Ben swallowed.
"Yeah." Technically that wasn't even a lie, he told himself. He did write it, he just didn't come up with it.
"Alright, that's it. We're keeping him." Freddie handed the paper to Brian so he could read it aswell.
"Welcome to Queen, Ben."

***

Aayo!

How are y'all doing? I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Next time things will start to get a little more exciting, so look forward to that!

Tay