This chapter is dedicated to lisayager! Thank you for the support! Hope you all are having an amazing summer! 💖
"Isn't it great?".
"What?", Belle Taylor asks, eyebrows furrowed.
"That you're having another little girl," John Deacon clarifies.
"Oh, yeah."
Belle's apathetic answer takes the four men around her aback, all of them frowning discreetly, looking at each other with confusion. They look perplexed but Belle is also perplexed at something:
The sight in front of her.
Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon are all together in the same room. Belle doesn't think that it's ever happened before, at least not in this way, because they obviously were at her wedding and Alice's christening. What she means is that it's never happened in such an intimate way, all five of them sitting together, chatting happily. It's a small feeling of joy in such troubling times — having the most important men in her life with her.
"What do your children think about their future new little sister?", Brian May asks Roger Taylor with a big smile plastered on his face, putting away the stereo camera he always carries with him. Roger thinks it's weird how Brian's job isn't being a professional photographer, or a professional guitarist, he's incredibly good at both activities and Roger cannot simply understand how he ended up being an astrophysicist.
"They're very delighted," Roger answers cheerfully, resting his head on Belle's left shoulder. "Well, only Victoria and Matilda are delighted. Damian is still hoping for a brother. And I'm just trying to let him know that the fact she only has sisters doesn't mean they cannot play with him."
"Well, that's true, and he should be happy about the fact that he has siblings at all," Brian giggles. "I'm an only child, and believe me when I say it gets really boring."
"It does," Freddie intervenes, nodding his head vigorously. "I'm six years older than Kashmira, so I do remember having to play on my own. It was boring. I would have loved to give Belle a sibling but I'm not straight, darling!", Freddie covers his mouth while he smiles.
Everyone in the room laughs, including Belle, but noticing that her smile was fake wasn't rocket science, which means everyone noticed it, which means it made her stepfather worry about her. John stares at her with a worried expression, looks around to see if anyone else notices it.
They seem to do.
"Are you okay?", John Deacon asks Belle Taylor hours after everyone, including Freddie, have left Garden Lodge. She is waiting for Roger, who had left minutes earlier to pick up Damian from his horseback riding lessons.
"Why does everyone keep asking me that?", Belle bristles, she doesn't yell at her stepfather but the impression is similar. John, unfazed, takes a step closer to her, shoves his hands inside his pockets and meets Belle's gaze dead-on.
"Because you've been acting weird."
"Do I really look so dejected?", Belle asks as she tries not to break down in tears. "Tell me the truth."
"Honestly? You look like you're in pain," John answers with downcast eyes. "Belle, we're worried about you. Even your father has expressed his concerns to me. There's something wrong and you're not telling any of us."
It's ridiculous, the thought that crosses Belle's mind is completely ridiculous, but John Deacon is the right person to be the first to know about her unborn daughter's non-paternity event. Of course it should have been Freddie, she knows it should be Freddie. But telling Freddie first would require that Belle explains the entire situation to him, which means Belle should talk about Ben and that's exactly what she doesn't want to do. She knows that the way she talks about Ben is the same way people talk about people they love.
But Belle doesn't love Ben the way people would think she does.
The difference between John and Freddie is that John has seen Belle and Ben interact with each other, knows how close they are but also knows that she's set boundaries between them.
"There's a chance this baby isn't Roger's daughter."
Only then does John's expression fracture from the genial, everyday easiness the entire world associates him with. He feels not too unlike the way his stepdaughter feels:
Horrible.
"What?".
---------------------
Daisy Newton met Rami Malek years ago when she was at a staff meeting with the rest of the Taylor Enterprises workforce and has liked him since the first time she laid her eyes on him. Love at first sight would be an accurate description of what Daisy felt when she met him except love is such a strong word for a relationship that is purely professional. Sure, Daisy does know personal things about him but she knows she only knows them because she's his secretary. It occurs to her that she wouldn't have such knowledge about Rami had they met in different circumstances.
The point is, Daisy Newton has had a crush on Rami Malek since forever, which is probably the reason why she cares so much about him, and her care for him is also the reason why she's been so worried lately:
Rami Malek's been acting weird.
"Are you all right, Rami?", Daisy asks before she steps out of her boss' office, carrying her bag on her shoulder, her uniform dirty with coffee stains. She's tired beyond words, but she cannot simply leave without having this conversation with him. It's enough, it doesn't matter what Rami answers: she know he's not all right.
"I'm fine. Why do you ask?", Alice's father answers while looking unconcerned, drinking what seemed to be the fiftieth shot of vodka he took that night.
"You may look fine on the outside, but I know you're not actually okay. I won't be leaving this building until you tell me what's going on." Daisy decided to sit on the edge of his desk.
It's slightly frustrating because that's the kind of conversations Rami likes to reserve for close friends but something about Daisy tends to steal heartfelt confessions out of him either way, which leaves Rami thinking that Daisy is so much more than just his secretary. There is a pregnant silence, Rami seems to have something to say but he doesn't say it, he just breathes heavily, pauses.
"You know what, Daisy?", Rami speaks with a slight frown on his face. "I don't think I have ever thanked you."
"For what?", Daisy squints her eyes.
"For everything."
Daisy's heart stops for a minute.
"Without you.. I would be nothing," Rami chuckles. "I'm not talking only about the professional stuff. I owe you a lot personally, too. Alice wouldn't exist without you."
She's never thought about it this way before, but Rami is right - Alice wouldn't have been born if she had never agreed to follow Catherine's instructions. It takes her aback, it's impressing — how she indirectly had something to do with bringing a human into the world.
"Well, that's right," Daisy chuckles nervously. "Thank you, but that still doesn't explain why you've been so out of your mind lately."
"I'm under pressure."
"Whose?".
"No one's. I'm at war with myself."
"Why?", Daisy lovingly places her hand on Rami's back, trying to make him understand she's there for him.
"Regret," Rami responds with a pained expression. "Regret is what is happening to me."
"Explain."
"The possibilities of what Belle and I could have been keep me up at night," Rami's voice immediately weakens, making Daisy not know how to handle what was happening. His eyes well up, but he does not cry, focuses all of his anguish on his voice instead. "Letting her go was such a mistake, Daisy. What could have been of us? We could have stayed together, raise our daughter together, have more children, we could have been so much more. But no—," Rami pauses because the knot in his throat won't let him speak, and now his voice was hollow. He turned away, hiding his face so Daisy wouldn't see how devastated he was. "I had to be the stupid man I am. I cheated on her. I treated her badly. And now I'm here, unable to get her out of my head, unable to get the possibilities of a life with her out of my head. It hurts Daisy, you know that, right? I just wanted us to live our vows. I don't know how to make the pain go away."
"Do—does she know you regret it?".
"No, would that change anything?".
Daisy's gaze drops to the floor, working out what to say. She wasn't expecting him to say what he said. She has things to say, but doesn't know how to say them, which makes everything more painful, makes everything more difficult. Daisy thinks she cannot formulate anything else that wasn't the truth, so she decides to speak it.
"Rami...," Daisy is terrified to say what she's about to say. "I understand how you feel, but I don't think Belle would have stayed with you no matter what you did. She loves Roger. Always has loved him. I don't think there was a lot you could do for yourself."
Rami feels fury fill his guts in seconds, making him loudly throw the almost empty vodka bottle next to him at the wall. Was Daisy trying to say Belle didn't love him enough to stay with him? Of course she did. Belle loved Rami. What was she thinking?
"Go away, Daisy. Leave, that's what you should do," Rami turns to face Daisy, leering at her as he speaks to her in an abrupt, almost harsh tone, trying to grab her by the elbow just to literally walk her out of his office. Daisy grimaced, starting to shake immediately, it was the first time she had seen him lose his cool like that.
"Bu-but Ra-Rami, that wasn't my
intention—," Daisy can see Rami's chest raising and falling, shivering just by looking at the expression on his face. "Please listen to me, Ra—
"Shut up, Daisy, just shut up!", Rami yells at his secretary so furiously and with such incandescent anger that she decides to obey him and runs out of his office as fast as she could, just as if she was running for her life, trying not to step over the broken pieces of glass on the floor. Right after Daisy leaves, his headache from earlier comes back and it's somehow too much for him to handle. He locks himself in his office and lays on a couch, feeling a throbbing pain extend from the front of his head all the way down to his browbones.
It sucks, he thinks.
It sucks being under pressure.