Warnings: swearing, drinking
Historical Inaccuracies:
- Again, I'm sure Bri's eyesight really was absolutely fine haha
Word Count: 5.8k
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Thursday night, it was raining. Again.
Always raining, were the skies above London, and the house was big and empty once more, the echoes of conversation long since departed the halls of your residence— everyone else was working.
But you were reading, always reading. You thought perhaps that you should play guitar, but you still had yet to fix that broken string, and the thought of balancing an instructional book on one knee and your guitar on the other made you feel further discouraged.
Then there was a knock at the door, and a flutter touched your sides.
Trying to calm whatever sensation of nervousness that had swept through your core and settled in your stomach, you took a deep breath and put your book aside.
You hurried toward the door, then mitigated your pace after you slipped and nearly fell to the hardwood floor in your fluffy socks.
You paused at the door, oddly hesitant about opening it.
The knock came again and you jumped. No way you could feign calm now, with the little hairs along your arms raised, with your breath so short. But you resolved to try.
You unlocked the door and pulled it open.
"Oh, thank goodness. I was starting to wish I'd have stolen your umbrella."
Brian stood in the rain, one arm holding a puffer jacket over his head. Under the other arm he carried a book, and in his hand he clutched the handle of his guitar case.
He blinked up at you from the bottom of the two steps that raised the door above the ground. The ends of his hair were sodden, and he had once again neglected to wear proper boots, opting for his classic white clogs, now speckled with muddy rain.
But what drew your attention was that he was wearing glasses.
Classic wayfarers with a thinner rim added to his already delicate yet sophisticated manner, and his poise, despite the jacket he held aloft, brought forth in him a regality. Queen indeed.
"You're wearing glasses!" you exclaimed, as it was the first thing that popped into your head.
"Yes, lovely. Mind if I come in?"
The endearment caught you off-guard. The incline of his head and the curve of his mouth even more so.
"Uh, yes," you blundered, "of course." You stepped aside and held the door open for him.
"Ta."
You closed the door behind him. He stopped to remove his shoes and to hang his jacket on one of the many coat pegs by the entranceway.
You waited, then gestured in the direction of the hall to your room. "This way."
He nodded and followed you.
You walked slowly down the hall so as to not slip again and Brian padded along behind you, soft footsteps not characterising his height.
"Welcome to my humble abode," you said comically as the two of you entered the small room.
You tried to see it through Bri's eyes, observing the white sheets and mound of cushions, the Jimi Hendrix and Beatles posters, the rickety bookshelves you had put up above your bed one late, insomnia-driven night, taking in the sight of books and records and plants scattered atop the furnishings. The window let in a little light from the street, and you had to say that you were quite pleased with the atmospheric cosiness that your multitude of fairylights provided the room with. Of course, that was your side of the room. Heather's side was a mess of posters and trinkets and concert tickets.
His eyes flitted about the place, taking in his surroundings, and a small smile graced his lips as he spotted the guitar on your bed.
"Very chic," he said of the room.
"My side or Heather's?"
"Yours. Freddie would call it cosy. I think I'd get lost over there," he nodded at Heather's side.
"Ha, cosy seems to be Freddie's favourite word."
"Mm, no, I think it'd be darling," Bri drawled, and you stiffened. For one startling heartbeat, you had thought he was calling you darling.
You recovered quickly upon realising your mistake, though perhaps not as quickly as you might have liked, because Brian spoke again.
"So," he said, "derivatives first, or guitar first?"
You rested your hands on your hips. "Think it'll have to be derivations. We should prioritise you passing Carmichael's tests."
"I think really our priority is making you the next Jimi Hendrix," Brian argued.
You shook your head. "Put down the guitar, Brimi."
His narrowed eyes challenged you. "You know why people call me that?"
"Why?"
"Because it's a combination of my name and Jimi's. You saying that... that is definitely a sign that we should leave off the calculus for later."
You shook your head again. "You'll just get carried away."
"With calculus or the guitar?"
"Very funny. Sit down." You pushed him toward the desk that sat between the two diverse sides of the room.
"As you wish." He fluttered his eyelashes at you over the brim of his glasses, and alongside his eyes, your insides fluttered too.
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"Oh, but it must be impossible," Brian groaned, running his hands through his hair and staring down the exercise book in frustration.
It had been an hour and a half since you'd begun, and you'd made it through what felt like a thousand rules and definitions, and seven rather complex derivations, but this eighth problem had taken up the majority of the last thirty minutes. You'd started out by doing a problem for Bri, then going through one with him, then letting him do a few and only prompting him when he chewed his lip or the end of his pencil. But now, you figured, you had better let him do one completely on his own. The only trouble was, he kept forgetting the same rule, so every time he rubbed his pretty, looping scroll from the paper and began anew, he was no further enlightened when he reached the same point as before.
"We can't possibly be expected to understand something so complicated, can we?" He rubbed his eyes under his glasses. "I'm absolutely hopeless."
You were seated beside him on a stool, and you leaned your elbows on the desk next to the exercise book.
"It's just the one rule, Brian," you said. "It's not impossible and you're not hopeless, and this whole self-deprecating thing isn't really you." In fact, he seemed rather out-of-sorts this evening, impatient and finicky where he was normally quite the opposite. Something was bothering him.
He smiled at you blearily, "Oh but it is. I've just tried to spare you of it."
"Really?" you folded your arms. "Should I not have befriended you?"
He wrinkled his nose. "No, you shouldn't have. Now you're stuck with this self-deprecating scientist."
"Astrophysicist," you reminded him of his own convictions concerning the technicality. "And who's to say I won't run screaming out of here any moment now?"
His eyes focused on something behind you. You followed his gaze and saw your guitar.
"I think we both know that you won't." Then he slammed the exercise book shut with a thunk. "Hendrix time."
You swivelled on your stool and leant over to pick up your guitar, a second-hand Fender strat in an ombre of orange and black. Dismay tightened your jaw as you eyed the snapped string.
Brian had opened his guitar case and taken out the beautiful red guitar that had resided between the velvet. He'd taken off his glasses and placed them on your desk, and he now sat strumming softly with a coin on the strings, a cord already running from the body of his guitar to your amp on the floor.
He glanced up. "Ready for your first lesson?" His smile was friendly, but fucking hell it was intimidating to be sitting across from someone so experienced while you yourself floundered at changing a string. And speaking of strings...
"I, uh, I have a broken string," you couldn't look at him. "I don't know how to fit the new one."
"Oh, yeah, I almost forgot," he said brightly, reassuringly. "Well, that's a good thing to learn too. Do you have a replacement string?"
You nodded, holding up the little packet that contained six replacement strings you had bought a few days ago. At least you'd managed to get as far as buying them.
"Did you snap the high E?" Brian continued, seemingly oblivious to your embarrassment at not knowing how to change a string.
You nodded, unpacking the strings. Brian set down his guitar.
"I did that during a concert once, and just bloody launched myself toward some poor stagehand, in a sort of wild panic," he chuckled at the memory. "Had to play a Gibson for the rest of the concert. Not the same sound, really."
His banter was comforting; you felt at ease when he spoke in that level, melodious voice of his.
"This might be easier if you sit next to me," he said.
Understanding his meaning, you left the stool and sat down on your bed. The bed dipped beside you as he sat down. He held out his hands, you passed him your guitar, and he positioned it so that it lay across his lap with the headstock pointed toward you.
"Since your strings don't look too worn, we'll just change the one." He took the string winder that you also grasped and loosened the tuning peg of the high E. "So just remove the string from the bridge," he slipped the string out from the far end of the guitar, "and then unwind it from the tuning peg." He then went through a series of uncomplicated motions, aligning the tuning peg properly and attaching the replacement string accordingly.
"There," he said, not two minutes later. "Easy." His smile was easy too, though his eyes were strangely dim on this occasion. You wondered how he could smile so easily when he'd been gone for a week without telling anyone where he'd gone to, and presently neglected to explain where he'd been.
"Easy for you to say, pro-guitarist," you teased.
"Ah, I wouldn't say pro," he eased the restored guitar back into your grip.
"I would."
"Flattery won't help you when you're so mean about my derivative abilities," he sniffed.
"You can retaliate by telling me how awful I am at guitar."
"Somehow," Brian took his guitar back into his lap, "I don't think that's true."
You snorted. "Watch and learn."
"I thought that was your job, now?"
You rolled your eyes. "Where do we start?"
"Well," Brian ran a hand through his curls, "play me what you can play."
You had just the song. It wasn't really meant for guitar, but it hadn't been a hard one to transcribe from its original piano format.
"Alright, then."
"Whenever you're ready," Brian shifted so as to give you room to play, and you took a breath.
You began strumming.
"I was dreaming of the past," you sang softly, "and my heart was beating fast..."
You chanced a look up at Bri, and his expression was not what you had expected— he was slack-jawed and wide-eyed. You couldn't fathom why he was looking at you this way; you'd barely played anything yet, so he couldn't have been flummoxed at how bad you were, or even at how good you were. His expression nearly threw you off of your chords entirely.
Shaking your head for your hair to fall across your eyes and shelter you from the burn of his gaze, you continued to play.
You began to sing more loudly as you reached the chorus, because despite your reservations about playing for anyone, this song, this ballad, had to be done justice.
When the song finished, you tucked your hair behind your ears again.
Brian was sitting completely still, his hands clasped in his lap over his guitar.
You smirked. "Terrible, was I?"
"When did you learn to play that?" he didn't bother to answer your question, simply stared at you with warm golden eyes.
"Over the weekend. It's from one of Freddie's records."
"Yes, I know. That's John Lennon," said Brian.
"I can't have been all bad, then, seeing as you recognised it."
He shook his head adamantly, "It's just— that's the record I picked."
"What are the chances—" you began, but Brian cut you off.
"No, you don't understand. That's my favourite John Lennon song."
Oh.
Oh.
Well, shit. You'd just ruined one of his favourite songs for him. You grimaced, leaning your arms on the body of your guitar.
"I'm sorry, this is awkward," you trained your eyes on the window, though it was now far too dark to see beyond the glass. You pretended to see something, anyhow. Anything to not have to look at Bri and his expressive face and its delicate features and how his mouth twisted in obvious disappointment as he tried to figure out how to tell you that you were the hopeless one, you were the lost cause, you were the one not worth saving, you—
His fingers skimmed your knee, featherlight but nonetheless eliciting response from your skin, goosebumps along your leg, a shiver down your spine.
Your eyes flew to his.
"That was beautiful," he said earnestly.
You were flummoxed. You were enraptured by the way his body seemed to lean toward yours, toward you. If you had been standing, your legs would have felt weak.
"I honestly don't know where to start," said Bri, drawing back, and the tension you had felt before dissipated. "You're definitely more knowledgeable than you give yourself credit for. And you have a lovely voice," he smiled warmly. That weak-legged feeling returned to you as suddenly as it had gone away.
"So what now, then, pro-guitarist?" you dared yourself to say. He chuckled, tossing his curls.
"Do you like David Bowie?" he said then.
"Are short-period comets superior to long-period comets?" you grinned.
"A stellar response."
"Oh ha ha," you rolled your eyes.
"Do you know 'The Width of a Circle'?" You nodded and Bri continued, "Well, that's what you're about to learn how to play."
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"Dammit, Bri, why did I agree to this?" Your fingers ached from stretching up and down the fretboard of your guitar.
Brian laughed, letting his arms fall to his sides. "Because I'm so persuasive," he winked.
Your cheeks coloured. "I mean, I suppose."
"You suppose?" scoffed Brian. "I spent school years writing painful argumentative essay upon painful argumentative essay, and you say that you suppose?"
"Pfft, you'll have to try harder to get me than that," you replied, and the way he tilted his head at you made you wonder if he was considering the ambiguity of your words. "That's not what I meant," you said quickly.
"Oh, I know what you meant," said Bri, but with a twinkle in his eye. Your flush deepened. You lifted your chin defiantly before bending over your guitar again.
"How the hell do you get your pointer on the first fret of the first string and your pinky on the fourth of the same?!"
Brian laughed. "You need to stretch your fingers more. They're not flexible enough yet."
"Just one more thing I'm not yet good at."
"But that doesn't mean you can't learn to be."
"Oh, what?" you let your guitar strap hold the instrument for you, crossing your arms. "Your magnificence didn't happen overnight?" you mocked.
He held up his hands. "Your words, not mine."
You narrowed your eyes. "Why does it feel like we've had this conversation before?"
Brian sighed, "Because we have. Sometime in the past hour."
"And before that, too," you grumbled, irritated by your own incompetence.
"Here, crossing your arms won't help. Stand up." Brian stood and you followed him reluctantly. "There's an exercise that'll help. Straighten your back, and now place your first finger on the eighth fret of the first string." You obeyed, and he nodded. He began to go through the movements on his own guitar. "Okay, now without moving that finger, put your middle finger on the next fret, and your ring finger on the next, and then your pinky. Now move the first finger down a string and let the others follow, one by one."
Bri had already gone through the exercise and repeated it faster and faster again down the strings, humming the notes as he played them, unperturbed by the world around him.
But you hadn't even gotten your pinky to fret the first string. The stretch was too far; your hand simply twitched and you could hardly bend your pinky into the correct, curved shape.
You huffed loudly, melodramatically, and Brian looked up in surprise.
"My," he said, "I never took you for a drama queen, but I see now why you're such good friends Freddie and Roger and John."
"Nice of you to exclude yourself from that back-handed compliment," you responded dryly.
Bri said nothing, only slung his guitar over his curly crown and laid it on your bed.
His eyes ran over you, and for a moment you felt utterly exposed. What was he looking at, what had he seen?
"You need to straighten up, and then relax."
You said tiredly, "Those two things are complete opposites, Brian." It must have been around eleven o'clock now, and your shoulders were starting to ache with the weight of a long day and your distorted sleep schedule.
"No, Y/N," he went on, tone calm and unpatronising. His patience was seemingly infinite. "Straighten your posture, relax your hand. Relax your wrist."
You made a valiant attempt, but your hand spasmed again.
Immediately, you glared at Bri, warning him not to laugh— you felt pathetic enough as it was.
But he didn't laugh. Instead, he embodied that serenity you sometimes found in him, the one that existed in the corners of the universe that did not pale beside the stars, but instead thrived in their light.
"Here," he said again, though softer this time. He took a couple of tentative steps toward you, eyes locked upon yours, and then walked behind you.
You didn't have time to question what he was doing, and barely enough to startle when his right hand curved over yours, and the fingers of his left curved around your wrist.
You could barely think as he moved closer still, with his chin hovering above your shoulder and his soft breath on your ear. His thigh brushed against yours, and you felt hyper aware that only velvet and suede was between skin and warmth.
"You just," he murmured, "relax. Easy wrist." His fingers ran along the line of your pulse and you inhaled sharply. "Just slightly... softer." His words became a breathless whisper as he nudged your fingers along the fretboard, guiding your other hand to pick the strings.
He hummed the beginning of the riff he'd been teaching you, leading you through playing it.
It felt effortless to play when his curls pressed against the side of your face, when his fingers wrapped around yours. But breathing was another matter— you could not do it at all. Your lower lip between your teeth, you leaned into his tender touch, feeling the warmth of his chest seep into your back.
His hands stopped moving and where they enveloped yours, your skin tingled. He released a shaky sigh that hovered in the air like smoke above your tensed shoulders.
"Y/N," he hummed your name beneath the course of a sigh, and his hands tightened around yours.
It was then that the phone rang.
Brian's hands slipped from your skin in an instant, and he stepped away, lowering his head as though ashamed, his pretty angles hidden away behind his mass of hair.
Who the hell calls at eleven o'clock at night, anyway?!
You discarded your guitar at the foot of your bed, then traipsed into the hallway and picked up the phone, leaning against the doorframe to your room. "Hello?"
"Y/N!" cried a giggly voice over music with heavy bass. "It's Kate. Katie. Katie-Kate."
You covered your eyes with one hand. "I... I thought you were here, at home, asleep?"
"Naaaaah, I got peckish and nipped out for a bit."
"Peckish?"
You glanced over at Brian, who seemed for the life of him to be holding back a smile. You rolled your eyes in the direction of the phone and his lips curved properly before he fluttered his eyelashes and looked away.
"Mmmm, maybe a tad thirsty too." Her voice had been sing-songy before, but now it turned serious. "I'm sorry, Y/N. I don't do this, normally, but could you possibly come pick me up? I mean, I'm taking the tube back, obviously, but I'm not here with anybody and you know it's not the best idea to go walking alone at night in our lovely city when you're slightly—" and here she hiccuped, "—tipsy."
Your resolve softened. Kate really wasn't normally like this, and in her place, you would have been terrified to make your way home, your senses dulled by alcohol and a night spent out on the town.
"Of course, Katie. I'll be right... right where?"
"The little pub on the Southwark side of Tower Bridge."
"Ah, okay," you said, knowing the place she met. "I'll be there in twenty. Stay inside, okay?"
"Okay, thank you Y/N." She hung up without another word.
You turned to Brian who glanced up at you, almost frightenedly. No, not frightenedly, but startled, like you'd disturbed his thoughts. You'd have to ask him about those later. Many mysteries of the past week remained unsolved, and he was a major player in all of them.
You smiled as brightly as you could manage at this late hour. "Fancy some hot chips?"
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The tube ride from Camden to Tower Bridge was mostly silent, at least on the parts of you and Brian. The noise which did exist was generated by late partygoers, heading home from a rave in the city, or leaving a party on one side of London to attend a party on the other side of London.
Hanging onto a pole to stabilise yourself as the train shot through the network of tunnels that made up the London Underground, you looked up at Brian, who stood across from you, fingers wrapped around a handle hanging from the ceiling.
He smiled when his gaze fell on yours, and reached out an arm to tug the end of your scarf— his scarf.
You rolled your eyes in response, then tapped your shoe to the tip of his clog, silently mocking his fashion choices.
He wrinkled his nose at you. "Shut up."
"I didn't say anything!"
"You wanted to." He mussed his hair sleepily, and you felt a shard of guilt pierce your side. It was late, and you'd dragged him along on an adventure he hadn't asked for.
"Thank you for coming with me," you said, your voice softened by the same tiredness that Brian embodied in his movements. "I just thought that it was silly to go off alone so late when the very reason I was leaving the house was to make sure someone else didn't go off alone."
"I wouldn't have let you go alone anyway," he told you, and warmth spread in your chest.
"Thank you," you said again.
He simply inclined his head in that regal way of his.
The tube soon reached Tower Bridge station, and the two of you disembarked. The walk from the station to the pub was short, and it took even less time to find Kate; she was waiting in a chair by the door.
"Y/N, thank goodness!" she leapt up, before sinking her volume to a whisper. "There's a creep who's been watching me for the past half hour and I've been struggling to shake 'im off."
You clenched your jaw. Why could people not just fuck off and keep to themselves? It was pretty obvious to you when you weren't wanted around, so why could creepy men not take a hint?
"I'm sorry, Katie," you frowned, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. "Let's go home."
She nodded, then stopped when she saw Brian standing behind you.
"Oh, Kate, this is Brian, Brian this is Kate. He's a friend," you said to Kate.
"Hello," Brian extended his hand to Kate and she shook it.
"So you're the person who gets Y/N out of bed in the morning," Kate said.
"I'm— sorry?" Brian balked, colour rising in his cheeks.
"She's drunk," you dismissed Kate's words with a shake of your head, ignoring the clench beneath your ribcage at Brian's blush.
"Tipsy!" she cried, as though this proved her point rather than disproved it. "Y/N hates mornings—"
"Doesn't everyone?" Brian answered with a slight laugh.
"Yes, well, not if you're waking up beside someone you love, no," Kate babbled, "and lately, Y/N's been okay in the mornings, so I'd like to thank you."
Realisation dawned.
"Oh no—" you began as Brian said "We're not—"
You glanced at Bri, hoping he'd finish his sentence so you didn't have to. This was awkward enough already.
But he didn't. He just stared at you, and something in the way he stood made you think he was holding his breath.
Your eyes couldn't leave his. "We're not together," you said, slowly.
Kate made a face in your peripheral vision, pushing open the door and stepping outside. You followed her.
"Shame," she sighed. "Thought you looked good together."
You could feel Bri's eyes on you as you left the pub.
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You'd gotten Kate home without too much trouble, aside from the fact that she was wearing stilettos and was rather unsteady on her feet.
Now you leaned against your bedroom doorway, staring at nothing as Brian packed away his guitar.
He snapped his guitar case closed. "Hang on," he said.
"Hm?"
"I thought you promised there would be hot chips."
You smiled. "You look tired, Brian."
"I think now's a good time to confess I'm an insomniac."
You let out a laugh.
"Honestly, I am," he professed, then regarded you with folded arms. "And you did promise food."
Truthfully, you didn't feel like you could sleep right now, even though your shoulders thrummed with a dull pain and you knew it would be ill-advised to stay up any later than you already had.
But it was a few minutes past midnight, and the late night felt magical as the streets dimmed and the world shuffled off to sleep, while you still held the power of consciousness in your hands. It thrilled you. Midnight always had.
"And where do you expect we'll find hot chips at this hour?" you crossed your arms too.
Brian grinned, then looped his arm through yours. "I know a place."
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"How come you know my area better than I do?" you said, stealing a chip from the cardboard carton Brian now carried.
The two of you were walking through Camden Market along the canal. Bare lightbulbs that were strung up along fences lit the path in little galaxies, and trees hung low over the water, as though they had once been men and women who had lost their loves to the river.
Brian shrugged. "Roger's sort of quite fascinated by a lot of different subcultures, and all of London's seem to coexist in Camden Lock, so he and Freddie and John and I come here often. Rog says it inspires him. And who would we be to deny him his muse?"
"Huh," you said. "I thought cars were his muse."
"Right?!" Brian agreed. "He never stops talking about them. Even in his sleep."
"Maybe he should write a song about them."
Brian nodded thoughtfully as he munched on chips.
"What about you?" you asked. "What's your inspiration? There must be something behind that 'White Queen' song of yours."
Brian suddenly choked. Reflexively, you hit his back in alarm.
He coughed, "Sorry. Too many chips at once, I think," he muttered sheepishly.
You handed him the bottle of water you'd bought, and he thanked you.
Clearing his throat, he said, "Well, isn't it obvious?"
You blinked at him.
"Stars," he said. "I'm in love with the stars, remember?"
You nodded, quoting, "The white queen walks and the night grows pale, stars of lovingness in her hair. Makes sense."
But Brian had a strange look on his face. "Yeah," he responded slowly. "I suppose it does."
"For the chap who has his bedroom ceiling covered in plastic glow-in-the-dark stars, it does make sense," you nudged his shoulder.
"I should never have let you be on gathering duty instead of bird duty," he shook his head. "The endless teasing." Then his eyes widened. "You didn't touch my guitar, did you?"
"Speaking of endless teasing," you said, "you have quite the attachment to that guitar. Kind of like Rog and his cars, really. What's her name, the Red—"
"The Red Special."
"And you two are exclusive, or..?"
"We've always been a pair."
"Yes, but you have a Fender and that acoustic as well. I mean, doesn't she get jealous when you—"
"My dad and I made her."
You almost spat out the chip you'd just snagged. "You... you made her? Like, from scratch?"
Brian nodded, and you stopped walking. He nodded like it was nothing that he and his father had crafted the prized instrument, the one which Bri had used to compose so many songs for Queen. Like it was something average, not worthy of praise but simply something done over the weekend with a couple of hours to spare. Nothing impressive.
"From an old mantlepiece, pieces from my bike, buttons, bits of a table... Took forever," he chuckled, a fondness softening his eyes in the glow of lamplight. "Worth it, though."
Your lips had fallen open, and when Brian saw this, he laughed. "Alright, Y/N? Earth to Y/N?" He shook the carton of chips in front of you, trying to glean a reaction. "Houston, we've had a problem."
You shook your head slowly. "I just... That's amazing, I can't fathom how much work that must have taken, and from everyday bits and pieces..."
"You see why I love her?"
"Now I'm wondering why we tease you in the first place. That's bloody impressive, Brian."
"Thank you," he said humbly. He draped his arm around yours as you began walking again.
You liked walking with Brian. Despite the fact that his legs were ridiculously long and that his steps matched his legs, he was lithe and his gait had a swaying quality to it, as though he permanently wandered around with his eyes up to the stars and was swept away in a dream. His side was soft and always flush against your own, and his warmth became yours and rushed through your veins as surely as your blood when he leaned closer or spoke more softly. Your thoughts strayed frequently when he walked with you this way, but never far from him— only to stars and the universe and things that were already his.
You remembered the full moon that had risen in the sky a few nights ago, remembered how you'd wondered if he'd seen it too. The idea of staring up at the same heavens as the rest of the world was a favourite musing of yours because it gave you the feeling of not being alone in the world; everyone and everything was bound together by the stars.
But maybe Bri hadn't seen the moon last Tuesday. Maybe he'd been too busy, with whatever it was he had been doing. You had to admit, it hurt a little that he didn't trust you enough to tell you where he had disappeared off to.
"Brian," you murmured.
"Mm?" Now, of all times, he had his head in the stars. You wanted to take his face in your hands and make him look at you, let your resolve be swallowed by amber-flecked irises and barely pouted lips, to forget what your skin felt like and to replace it with the memory of his. You almost did. Almost.
"Where have you been?"
"As a spaceman, I went travelling."
"Brian."
"I was visiting my aunt."
"You were visiting your aunt. And you couldn't have called?" You took hold of his hand, and his eyes flicked to you.
"She was dying," he said bluntly.
Any relief you might have felt previously now disappeared as abruptly as light does in a solar eclipse. The light seemed to be eclipsed from Brian, too.
"I'm sorry," you whispered, heart heavy in your chest. "I shouldn't have asked."
"Well, how else would you have found out?" he muttered grimly.
"You could have told me."
He ignored your question. Then he pulled his hand from your grasp. "I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong idea," he said.
Tendrils of cold wrapped around your heart as he let you go and his expression became closed off. How dearly you wished you'd never asked your stupid question and instead had let him explain in his own time.
"I'll just collect my guitar, if that's alright." No emotion coloured his words in any way, and in being neither positive nor negative, his demeanour was unsettling.
"Yes, yes that's fine," you responded.
You and Brian walked back to your place in silence, and the space between you was heavy. A feeling of dizziness clouded your mind, rattling your thoughts with tremors like earthquakes.
As Bri stepped out into the early morning, an urgency gripped you. Everything hung in the balance, and it fell to you to tip the scales. Equilibrium would not be good enough for you, not today, not ever. You'd said that you'd be damned if you let one of your best friends suffer in silence, and Brian was no exception. In fact, he was the rule.
"Brian," you spoke his name in a sigh, a breath that ran along your skin in sparks and a name that tingled on your lips. "I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to pry."
He didn't move and said even less. The moon lit his sharp angles and the round ringlets of his hair and held her breath alongside you.
Then, mercifully, he nodded. "I know."
But he left you with only those words, and without another glance at you.
The clouds obscured the stars and the light left as he disappeared into the night.
You covered your face with your hands.
⁺˚*·༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺