Chapter Text
The day had started off pretty well for a Monday.
Firstly, for the first time in months Roger had gone to bed fairly early the night before, and consequently had gotten seven full hours of sleep. Seven! He couldn't even remember the last time he'd slept more than the usual three or four hours. And no alcohol, weed or any other kind of sleep inducing substances had been involved either, so it was a nothing short of a miracle.
Secondly, and as a consequence of getting a healthy amount of sleep in, he hadn't ignored the alarm in favour of a few more minutes of slumber. He had gotten out of bed with enough time to take a long, hot shower, and he'd even had some spare time to have breakfast! Admittedly, one could argue that a cup of tea and a toast with the leftover ham from last night's dinner is not a commendable breakfast, but to Roger, who usually only had time for a long sip of cold coffee before rushing out the door, it was an improvement. A very big improvement, even if it would only be a one time thing.
With a satisfied smile on his face and a content belly, Roger was more than ready to start the day. He left his apartment careful not to wake his roommate, Tim, and headed to the bus stop, shielded from the wind by his brand new jacket. Well, "brand new" wasn't an exactly accurate term since he'd had that jacket for a couple of months now, pathetically waiting to be used in his closet. He'd been waiting for an special occasion to present itself, something that would warrant a display of his impeccable fashion sense, but nothing had come up ever since.
However, that morning everything had gone by so smoothly that he'd considered that to be a very good day, a special day, a day worthy of that jacket. Nevermind it was a Monday! He was feeling good. A good night's sleep and a full breakfast will do that to a man (who would have guessed? Fullfilling the basic human needs was actually good for the body). To complete the outfit, a tight pair of jeans and a nice blue shirt— with, of course, the first two buttons unbuttoned. Who cares about the cold when you’ve got fashion? (Commit to the titties out rebellion, Rog!, is what Freddie used to say.)
For what felt like the first time in forever he wasn’t on a rush to get to school, and so he allowed himself to actually enjoy the bus ride. It was crowded, yes, and he still missed some personal space— but he wasn’t feeling murderous every time the driver made a stop or didn’t press the accelerator as much as he wanted him to, and that was also an improvement. He stared out the window, hummed some catchy song he'd heard the night before, relaxed against the glass.
Once he got out of the bus, which conveniently dropped him right in front of the school, he started looking for Freddie. He found him near the campus café, probably waiting for him like the good friend he was. As always, he looked tired but stylish in a perfect display of what made Freddie's style so personal— a perfect balance between femenine and masculine and elegancy and defiance. When Freddie lifted his gaze from his phone and spotted Roger, he gave him a crooked smile and a flirty whistle.
“Look at you!” he squealed, clapping his hands together and shamelessly checking his friend out. He asked for a turn with a move of his fingers and Roger obliged, laughing cheerfully as he turned slowly so that Freddie could appreciate his whole outfit. “Looking good today, Taylor.”
“I know. I look amazing, don’t I?” Roger smiled, finally stopping in front of his friend and standing straight.
“You do, darling, you do. I see this time you dragged yourself out of bed with enough time to actually pay attention to the rags you covered your body with," he joked, accepting Roger's punch in the shoulder as a fair payback. “What’s the occasion?” he asked while touching the soft texture of the jacket and letting out an appreciative hum.
“Nothing, really. I just felt like today was going to be a great day. I've even had breakfast!” he let on, proud.
Freddie gasped and brought a hand to his chest. “You? Having breakfast? That’s rather impossible. The Roger I know would never give up a few extra minutes in bed for some trivial nutrients.”
“I’m a new man,” he grinned. He flipped his hair back elegntly and lifted his chin. "I've improved so much since you last saw me, you'd never believe the changes I've made within mysel—"
“Yes, sure, sure. It's not that hard to improve when the bar is so low. Shall we?” Freddie asked with a smile before giving Roger the time to process his latest jab, gesturing towards the building. “I still have to print my project, so we’ll make a tiny little stop before going to class, yes?”
Roger was in a way too good mood to complain about the detour, so he simply intertwined his arm with Freddie’s and started walking. In no time they were in front of the copy room, reserved for all those students who were too busy, lazy or poor to afford making their own impressions. Freddie was all of them.
“And when exactly are you going to talk to him?” Roger asked while leaning against the wall next to the copy room. The door was closed, which meant all the printers were being used at the moment and that they had to wait. It was an unspoken rule respected by mostly every student, since the room was so small and it was so cramped with printers that one or two extra people could easily ruin the natural yet delicate rythm created after years of use. Think about pressing the wrong button, accidentally dropping your pen drive and someone stepping on it— that was enough to encourage everyone into respecting the closed door rule.
Freddie sighed as if he was already tired of the conversation, which, to be fair, was understandable. They had talked so much about his latest heartthrob that the subject was close to getting boring. “It’s not so easy, Rog. He could be my soulmate. The one and only. I have to think very carefully what my first words will be, I don't want to say something stupid and miss my one shot at finding true love,” Freddie answered while crossing his arms.
The blond rolled his eyes and smirked. “Yeah, right. It’s like, the third time you say a pretty bloke could be your soulmate in two years.”
Freddie uncrossed his arms and spread them to his sides. “But this time it’s different! I swear to god, Rog, I feel like… Like he could be him. Everytime I look at him I think This is it. This is what I’ve been waiting for. And then…”
“And then he looks your way and your legs turn into jelly and you feel like fainting. Yeah. I know, Fred,” he shot a knowing look at Freddie, who let out a little laugh, just slightly embarrassed. “It just feels like you obsess too much over this soulmate thing, you know? I’m not saying he’s not the one, I’m saying maybe you should, I don’t know… Take it easy. Chill a little bit. Let your hair down. Be breezy. Be cool,” he stopped for a second to think of more ways to say the same thing, but he'd gone through all the synonyms for "relax" that he knew. “Anyway. Whatever your first words will be, he must have read them a thousand times by now. They are already written in stone, like, almost literally. Except it's not stone, but flesh."
“Ew. Gross."
“Yeah, well, I don't make the rules. You got any complaints, talk to the universe about it,” he shrugged. “Anyway, my point is... If you're really gonna fuck up your first words, you could say you fucked them up the moment you were born. So why worry?”
Freddie sighed again. “I can’t help it. I have to worry, it’s in my DNA. Probaby on my mother's side. Deadlines and projects never stress me, but this…” he took a deep breath, a worried look on his face. It wasn't hard to see just how much the thought of loosing his soulmate stressed him out.
“I know, buddy. It’s okay,” Roger gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. Freddie lifted his gaze and used the distraction to forget about his own worries, placing the focus of the conversation on Roger instead.
“What about you, blondie? How come you don’t worry about it? You have a soulmate as well, you know. What makes you think your first words won’t be horrible?”
Roger gave gim a nonchalant grin and shook his head lightly. “Nah. My first words to my soulmate will be perfect, I know it. She’ll fall in love with me just by the sound of my voice.”
“What, your dog wistle pitched voice?”
“Excuse me, you bit—”
Roger was interrupted by the door of the copy room being carefully opened and, a second later, a very cheerful “Hi guys!”. Both men turned to look at Mary, who was holding a folder and smiling fondly at them.
“Mary, my love,” Freddie greeted before wrapping his left arm around her waist and giving her a peck on the cheek. “I've missed you terribly. We haven’t seen each other in a lifetime! How are you? What's going on in your life? Tell me everything.”
“We had lunch together on sunday, Fred,” she laughed, but did nothing to reject his pampering.
“Like I said, a lifetime.”
“Oh my God, Freddie, you’re gross. Excuse me while I throw up real quick,” Roger gagged, causing both of his friends to laugh and Freddie to give him a slight smack on the chest. “Give me the pen drive and I'll print your project while you guys are gross together,” he offered, stretching his hand.
Freddie smiled and reached into his pocket to give him the frog-shaped flash drive. “Thank you, Rog, you’re a darling!”
He waved his hand. “Yeah, yeah, just don’t get used to it. I’m having a good day.”
Freddie winked at him and he rolled his eyes before turning to the door of the copy room. Before he could touch the knob, though, the door opened with a very quick and violent swing. He barely had time to take a step back and avoid getting his face struck by it.
He huffed, mildly offended, and stared at the guy who had opened it. Tall, very tall, equally lanky, curly and soft-looking hair and apparently no experience opening doors whatsoever.
“What the hell, man? Did you want to kill someone or do you have a personal vendetta against that door?” he frowned. He was halfway expecting an apology or an equally offensive comeback (it wasn’t totally unusual for sleep deprived students to completely erase basic manners from their internal hard drive in order to make space for the finals), but instead the guy just stared at him with wide eyes. He looked like a deer in headlights. Roger raised an eyebrow. “What’s your problem? You could have knocked me out with that swing of yours, mate. Aren’t you going to apologise or something?”
To his dismay, the tall, lanky and potentially brain dead guy just kept staring. His lips were slightly parted and his eyes read amazement, as if he had seen Roger grow a second head.
Roger wasn’t particularly known for his patience. “Hello? Are you going to say something at all?” he asked, going slightly mad with every second that passed. Brow furrowed, he lifted a hand and snapped his fingers in front of the guy's face. Or close to it, anyway.
Finally, Mr. No Thoughts Head Empty seemed to get back to Earth from whatever galaxy he was visiting in his mind and blinked as if he had just gotten out of a shock. He swallowed and quickly licked his lips, his eyes never leaving Roger.
“I’m sorry, I— I wasn’t expecting you today,” he said in a soft, awed voice.
Before Roger could ask what the fuck did he mean by that and inform him that that was in no way an acceptable apology, he felt a strange and warm tingle on his hip. It wasn’t unpleasant, just a bit weird and increasingly warm warm warm, and it spread to the rest of his body and he didn’t know what was going on until—
Until it clicked.
I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you today.
Those were the words that had been engraved in his skin from the day he was born. The words he had been waiting to hear, preferably after saying something nice and remarkable to… to his soulmate.
His soulmate.
His soulmate who was supposed to be the person he would spend the rest of his days with, who was supposed to be his other half, the love of his life, the one and only.
His soulmate who he had been, deep down, incredibly excited to meet.
His soulmate who was a bloke. A very tall, lanky, curly, dumb-faced bloke.
His soulmate, who was most definitely not a woman.
His soulmate.
Right.
No.
Roger opened his mouth, tried to say something but no sound came out. He swallowed, took a deep breath through his nostrils until his lungs were at full capacity, turned around and walked away.
As he walked towards the end of the hall, he started accelerating his pace until he was running more than walking. He kept running and running and running until he was out of breath, and then he finally stopped and took a look around. He spotted a bathroom and made a run for it, checking it was empty before closing the door behind him. He locked himself in one of the stalls and took a moment to catch his breath. Then, with trembling hands he unbuttoned his jeans and clumsily got them down enough to check the black sentence carved on the skin of his left hip.
Only it wasn’t black anymore— it was golden.
“Oh no,” he whispered, clutching his mouth with a hand and steadying himself with the other. Eventually his knees gave up and he pressed his back to the cold tiles, slowly sliding downwards until he was sitting on the bathroom floor. “Oh, no, no, no, no…”
He closed his eyes tightly and pressed his knees against his chest before burying his face between them. He could only hear his own breathing— fast, shaky, ineffective, panicked. He was panicking. He was panicking because he had met his soulmate, who was a man, and he didn’t want a man, he was straight, he liked women, he shouldn’t have a man because he didn’t like men, he never had, but now his soulmate was a man and…
“Rog? Are you in here?”
His breathing got caught in his throat when he heard Freddie’s voice. He hugged his legs even tightly, pressing his lips together and shutting his eyes closed as if that would make him disappear.
Disappear, that sounds nice, he thought.
“I hear a breathing, is that you?”
He didn’t answer, hoping Freddie would just leave. He was in for a big disappointment, though, because Jer Bulsara hadn't raised a quitter. He heard him sigh and close the bathroom door before taking a few steps to the only closed stall.
“I know it’s you, darling,” he said in a soft, comforting voice. “May I come in?”
Roger shook his head, and Freddie couldn’t see him but he guessed his silence was enough of an answer because he heard him sigh again.
“What happened, baby? Talk to me.”
Freddie knew Roger didn’t like it when he called him baby on a normal basis, mostly because he was constantly fighting against that baby boy look he was born with; he knew that Roger was self conscious about his image, about what the rest of the world thought of him, and that he sometimes worried too much about his looks.
But he also knew that when he was feeling down he didn’t mind it, or at least he never commented anything about it. Deep down, Freddie thought Roger actually liked it, but didn’t allow himself to publically like it in fear of what the others would think.
Roger sniffled —turns out he had started crying at some point— and shuffled closer to the door, where Freddie was pressed. He could see his shoes.
“I met him,” he murmured.
Freddie didn’t reply for a moment. “You met who, darling?”
“My soulmate. The guy from the copy room. The one who opened the door. He’s my soulmate,” Roger cleared out, and just as those last three words left his lips, he started crying uncontrollably.
Freddie let out a pained sound. “Oh, Roger, let me in, please, I need to— okay, hold on.”
At first, Roger didn’t register what his friend was doing. Then he noticed he had moved into the stall next to his, and was shimming under the wall that separated them. It took him a bit, but eventually he was kneeling in front of Roger.
“You see, you really should have opened the door, because I’ve just crawled across a disgusting floor full of filth and now I’m going to hug you.”
Roger let him. He let him hug him, and caress his hair, and kiss his forehead, and hold him tight and silently let him know he’d wait until he was ready to talk. Ten whole minutes would pass before Roger was finally capable of forming a sentence in his mind.
“What am I going to do?” he whispered, face hidden in Freddie’s shoulder, who was now sitting right next to Roger so that he could cuddle him more comfortably. He never stopped gently stroking his hair.
“What do you mean? You found your soulmate. What could you do other than get to know him?”
“But— but he’s a man, Fred. A man. And I’m straight. How is that even possible? Aren’t soulmates supposed to be made for you and only you, the perfect fit and all that stuff?” he asked, a hint of panic rising again in his voice.
“Well… Yes,” Freddie conceded. He thought for a few seconds before speaking again. “Now, Roger, I don’t want you to get all defensive, but… Are you sure you’re straight?”
The bond raised his head and looked at him as if he had said the Earth was a pentagon. “What are you talking about? Have you ever seen me with a bloke?”
“No, but—”
“Yeah, that’s because I don’t like guys! I like girls. Always have. Being with a man has never even been a possibility to me, it’s never… I've never even considered it. I’ve never even been curious about it. It’s always been girls for me, only girls.”
“I’m not saying you don’t like girls, Rog. I’m not saying you’re gay, either. All I’m saying is your soulmate is a man, and that might mean that maybe you could not be as straight as you thought,” Freddie explained calmly, still holding Roger close.
“That’s bollocks,” he muttered. “I don’t like guys. There’s nothing about them that I like. I like tits, not dicks, alright?”
“I don't know, baby. I thought I was straight as well, you know. Now look at me,” he winked, and Roger did try to avoid it, but ended up smiling a bit.
“Yeah, well— we’re different. I’m a hundred percent straight, no doubt.”
“That sounds exactly like the kind of things I said to myself.”
At that, Roger kept silent for a while. Freddie didn’t press the matter anymore, he just kept holding and cuddling him. After almost fifteen minutes, Roger went rigid. Freddie looked at him, suddenly pulling himself together (he had been thinking about his cats for the last ten minutes). “What’s wrong?”
“I— Fred. That was my soulmate. And I— I left,” Roger blurted out, apparently just realizing now.
“Yes, we noticed. Mary was pretty worried, you know? Not very nice of you,” he nodded, patting Roger on the head. “And, well, of course, you also left your soulmate there after you first met him. That’s not very nice either.”
Roger grunted and hid his face in his hands, whining. “What am I going to do?” he whispered.
Freddie looked at him as if he was dumb. “Are you having a blond moment? You’re going to go talk to him, of course,” he said in a matter-of-factly tone.
“No. Not that,” Roger shook his head, eyes blown wide and looking quite terrified.
“Yes, yes that. He’s your soulmate, you can’t just ignore him. Some people never get to meet their soulmates and you’re going to pretend yours doesn’t exist? Don’t be ungrateful, you little twat. Do it for the Universe, if not for yourself.”
“No, Fred, you don’t get it, I— I can’t. I really can’t. I need… I need time. Okay? I need time.”
“Time for what?”
“To accept it! To accept that my fucking soulmate is here, in my same school, and that he’s a man. Okay? I— I might consider the non-straight thing, I guess, what option do I have? He's here and he's very real. But I— I need time,” he pleaded, looking at his friend like he was an almighty god that could give him what he was asking for. In reality, he felt like he wouldn't be able to go through all that without his friend's support. Freddie sighed, but nodded.
“Okay, blondie. Take your time. But remember, we know nothing about him. He could be really patient and understanding or a stone cold bitch.”
Roger was silent for a moment. “He didn’t look like a stone cold bitch,” he then mumbled.
Freddie gave him a crooked smile and pretended to think about it. “You’re right. Plus, it would be a terrible idea from the Universe to get you a soulmate that’s exactly like you.”
Roger raised an eyebrow and grinned, too emotionally exhausted to come up with a comeback. “Give me a break, Farrokh.”
Freddie groaned. “See? That’s why I didn’t want to tell you my old name. I knew you’d use it against me. I trust you with my biggest secret and this is how you repay me?”
“Only because you called me stone cold bitch.”
“Yeah, well, you kind of proved my point, didn’t you?”