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pedros-mustache-main · 4 years

Text

i want your last name

summary: it’s only a year...

word count: 16k+ (holy crap i’m sorry)

warnings: idiot-strangers to lovers, suggestive moments (not 18+ but be mindful), frightening situations & suspense, alcohol consumption and drunkenness, language, innuendo, timeline inaccuracies

a/n: please bear with me as this is my first time writing rog and i’m relatively unsure about it. anyway, have a vaguely spooky fic just in time for halloween! xoxo! also: big thank you to @ineloqueent for helping with this fic! y’all, she literally held my hand and walked me through every paragraph what a saint

january, 1982.

“you’re off your rocker if you think i’m going to go through with this, jim.”

from his place on the couch, john snorts. “what? afraid she won’t be pretty enough for you, rog?”

roger levels john an uncharacteristically dark look, jabbing his finger through the air like a knight brandishing his sword or a cowboy his gun. “watch your mouth, deacon.” john holds his hands upwards in surrender, and roger returns his piercing gaze to jim. “i’m not getting married. that’s absolutely out of the question.”

long-suffering band manger and unofficial rockstar wrangler, jim beach drops his face to his hands with a harsh groan. roger cringes in his seat, shifting uncomfortably. he knows what this is about; they all know what this is about.

the end-of-tour party in montreal.

god, he’d gotten so wasted. even now, two months later, he can barely remember that night.

brian, ever the diplomatic, is the first to break the tense silence. he leans forward from his place on the couch beside john and offers roger his most sympathetic look. it does nothing to ease the growing knot of dread in roger’s stomach. “maybe we should leave you and jim to talk, rog.”

jim lifts his head. “i think that might be best, yes.”

roger huffs and falls slack against his chair. he drops his head back, and the ceiling turns topsy-turvy. if jim and the rest of management get their way, his life is bound to feel the same: flipped upside down, all that he knows turned on its head.

john squeezes roger’s shoulder as he slides by, a silent expression of solidarity, but it doesn’t feel like much. john’s got a wife, a parcel of kids. he’s happy at home. roger—he’s never been that way, never seen the point in all the domestics. he isn’t about to join the bloody women’s institute just because a little fun upset a few highbrow jackasses who can’t tell a party from a funeral.

the door to jim’s office shuts with a soft click, and roger imagines the lid of his coffin closing with the same resolute noise. he sits up and runs a hand through his hair. from behind his tinted shades, jim stares across the expanse of his desk. he drums his fingers, worrying his lower lip. roger’s nose twitches to the side. jim isn’t playing around. the proposal typed and printed in the manila folder under jim’s hand is serious, deadly so.

roger removes his sunglasses.

“it was just a party, jim.”

there’s a heavy beat of silence. jim blinks once. “roger, you went streaking through a group of nuns and priests.”

roger squeezes his eyes shut against the words, thankful, for once, that he has no memory of the event. “did i?” he lifts a hand to rub the back of his neck. “honestly couldn’t tell you what i did or didn’t do that night.”

“you did.” jim opens the manila folder and reads from a crumbled newspaper article. “queen’s roger taylor bared all this evening after the explosive conclusion to the game tour, filmed before thousands in montreal’s biggest arena. in a rare display of vulnerability, taylor stripped naked and exposed himself in the hotel lobby where queen resided. he stood on a table and beat his chest like a wild gorilla, chanting about the success of the evening’s filmed concert. lookers-on included none other than a group of nuns and priests recently arrived to canada on special assignment from the vatican. john deacon, bassist for queen, could also be seen laughing in the background.”

jim’s hand thumps against the desk as he drops the article, his stare decidedly unimpressed. “do you have anything to say for yourself?”

running his tongue over his teeth, roger hesitates. not his best moment, he would give jim that. but if he remembers anything about that party, it’s that he wasn’t the only sinner present that evening. john had gotten into his fair share of antics; crystal, too. it seems arbitrary that he should be the one singled out for punishment—and with a strange, archaic, probably-unethical punishment at that.

he shrugs, tossing his hands up in defeat. “i’m not going to be able to say what you want me to say. it was just a party. it got a little out of control. that’s all. i’m sorry if i gave the nuns a little show. i’ll—i dunno—write a letter if you want me to.”

jim scoffs. “write a letter if you think it’ll make me feel better—which it won’t—but that’s not the issue here.”

“then what is the issue? and where the hell does marriage come into it? because i’m not seeing the connection.”

jim sighs. his desk chair creaks as he leans back. taking off his glasses, he pinches the bridge of his nose before meeting roger’s eyes again. “this isn’t the first time something like this has happened, rog. remember new orleans?”

roger holds up an accusatory finger. “you were in new orleans too, jim, so you can’t attack me on that front.”

jim leans forward, his glasses between his hands. he runs his finger back and forth across the top of the frames. “i’ll be blunt. some other people in the office think you’re becoming too—how shall i say it?—explicit for the band. you’re not twenty any more, and raucous parties don’t fit queen’s image. they’re concerned that if more incidents like this hit the press, there will be a drop in sales or concert attendance because nice, suburban families don’t want to go to a concert with a drummer who flashes nuns. do you get what i’m saying?”

roger itches his temple and pushes against the sudden pain behind his left eye. “yeah. yeah, i do.”

“the marriage thing—that was barnaby potter’s idea. if you have beef with it, take it up with him.”

it’s roger’s turn to scoff. he throws his head back on the sound and curls his hands against the cool wooden arms of his chair. when he looks back at jim, he is surprised to see the older man rifling through a filing cabinet in the corner, his back turned.

roger surges forward with his ire anyway. “of course i have beef with it! slap my ass and scold me, sure, but hitch me to a woman i don’t even know for publicity? you’ve got to be joking.”

“personally, i think it’s an idea that will work if you give it a chance.” jim returns to chair and hands roger a sealed packet. “we’ve already got it all lined up, picked the lass and everything. it’s just for a year or so, until the tabloids calm down. then you can get divorced and go your separate ways.”

“wait, hold on—you picked her? without telling me? before even approaching me with the idea?”

“roger—” jim’s tone borders on a warning, but roger ignores his better judgement and cuts the other man off.

“you won’t even give me the option to choose the woman i have to shack up with? god, jim, i’m getting fuckin’ railroaded here!”

jim clenches his jaw. “i’m sure it feels that way, and i’m sorry for that. but it’s this—well, to be frank, it’s this or you’re out. the montreal party was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.”

roger can’t be sure but he thinks he sees red. never in his life has he so badly wanted to wring someone’s neck. it takes every fiber of his being, every molecule in his body, to keep from lunging across the room and tackling jim to the floor. he bites his tongue hard enough to draw a thin line of blood. it coats his mouth in a metallic taste, but it’s nothing compared to the rage boiling in his stomach.

still, he knows what his answer must be. it’s this—a sham marriage, a year of hell—or losing the life he’s worked so hard to build.

he rips the envelope from jim’s hand as roughly as he can when he stands from his chair. he hopes he gave the man a papercut.

“i’ll do it, you bastard,” he mutters. “but i damn well won’t be happy about it.”

“you look beautiful, [y/n].”

with a playful roll of your eyes, you offer ivy a smile. “thanks, love, but you and i both know this is just part of the job.”

ivy laughs and steps closer to adjust the puffed sleeves of your dress. “it might be a job, but damn, if it isn’t a comfortable one. i just about fell out of my seat when you told me you were quitting the agency to marry roger fucking taylor.”

you slide ivy a bemused smirk in the reflection of the long, oval mirror before you. “we’re not really getting married, ivy. you know that, right?”

ivy frowns and jabs her thumb over her shoulder, confusion awash on her round face. “unless i’m mistaken, we’re at a church, you’re in a wedding dress, roger taylor is the groom, and there’s a priest waiting for you right outside. did you read the memo wrong or something? feels like a wedding to me.”

sighing, you turn away from the mirror and reach for your bouquet of flowers. the white roses interspersed with springs of green leaves smell sweet, their stems tied together with a long white ribbon. you adjust one of the wayward petals then sit on the edge of a cushioned chair to slip on your heels. ivy leans against the door, her arms crossed over her chest.

“are you happy?” she asks, her voice soft.

you look up and pause. the heel of your white mary janes squeezes around your achilles’ tendon, and you wince as you shove your foot into the shoe. “what do you mean—am i happy?”

“i dunno.” ivy shrugs. she picks at an invisible piece of lint on the shoulder of her blue bridesmaid gown. “when we were kids, you always used to talk about your wedding day. now it’s here and—”

“ivy.” you rise from the chair and cross the floor to grab her arm. when you speak, you keep your tone firm and stare into her wide, brown eyes. “i’m doing this for the money and nothing else. it’s not a big deal. i don’t even consider today my wedding day. when roger and i get divorced i’ll find some other chap and make my childhood dreams come true, but that’s not today, and i’m okay with it. so yes, i am happy. this is what i want.”

ivy doesn’t appear convinced what with the way she continues to gnaw at her lower lip and shift her concerned look about your face. but she relents when someone knocks on the door, moving to allow you to grab the doorknob.

“wait, [y/n].” you turn at the door, eyebrows lifted in expectation. “how much are you getting paid?”

you press your pointer finger to your lips. “handsomely,” you whisper, dipping your head as though you are about to spill a secret. ivy leans in. her eyes sparkle with interest, and you inwardly smirk. she’s always been a sucker for drama and intrigue, your cousin. “but,” you continue. “that’s for me to know and you not to know.”

before ivy can respond, you pull open the door to see none other than your future husband waiting for you in the vestibule of the chapel.

he stands poised to flee the premises. he’s half-turned toward the closed chapel door, his hands worrying before his waist, his gaze hinged on the flurry of life outside the chapel, visible through the windows on either side of the door. you realize he’s fiddling with an unlit cigarette, not merely rubbing his hands together in an external sign of nervousness. you can’t make out whether or not his eyes are wild with fear or anger or some other emotion; the black tint of his sunglasses obscures the majority of his eyes. he’s handsome in his suit, but, then again, he’s roger taylor. you would be surprised to find a time in which he isn’t handsome.

when you clear your throat, his head whips to face you, and his fingers stop fidgeting. “sorry,” he mutters. “i was just—” he rubs a hand across the back of his neck and sighs. “they’re ready for you.”

“okay.” you nod with a smile and hope the gesture will ease whatever consternation plagues him. “i’ll be up in a moment.”

“right.” he nods once.

from behind his shades, you see his eyes trail from the top of your head to the soles of your shoes. it’s not sexual, not lewd; he’s just inspecting you, and you don’t blame him. who are you to him other than the model pulled out of a catalog, prepared and willing to be his wife until his time served is complete? you’ve spoken only once before this moment, and that phone-call was terse at best. roger made it perfectly clear his opinions on the arrangement, and he wanted to be sure—no, he needed to be sure—you understood his feelings on the matter. you assured him you had heard him loud and clear; your ear had rung for the next hour if only to remind you of his extreme distaste.

“roger,” you say, pulling his attention back from wherever his mind has drifted off to, his stare gone vacant but hardly serene.

his eyelashes flutter as he struggles to focus. “hm?”

“i said i’ll be up in a moment. you can go in now.”

he nods again, this time his chin smacking his collarbone in his urgency. he rubs his jaw, mutters something unintelligible beneath his breath, and turns on his heel, slipping back into the chapel sanctuary with heavy footfalls. your brows rise on your forehead in the wake of his exit. ivy hovers behind your shoulder.

“that’s him?” she squeaks. “that’s roger taylor?”

“yes.” your mouth twists in pity. “poor dear. he really doesn’t want this.” after waiting the appropriate amount of time to be sure roger has made his way to the front of the church, you step towards the entryway, but not before you can ask ivy one last question. “do i look okay? the pictures taken today are bound to be published in the papers.”

ivy chuckles and shakes her head as she lightly pushes your shoulder. “you look gorgeous and you know it. now go get married to a rockstar, you lucky bitch.”

the actual wedding ceremony itself is a formality. truly, it cannot be called a ceremony. there’s no wedding march, no attendees gently dabbing their tear-filled eyes, no heartfelt vows or kiss to signal the joining of two souls. instead, there’s you and there’s roger and there’s a red-faced, balding priest who points to the solid lines on which you must affix your signature to make the marriage certificate valid. roger signs first, and his knuckles are white against the ballpoint pen. you sign second, and the pen feels overly-warm against your cool palms. the priest blesses you with a sign of the cross and promises the certificate will be notarized and sent to your home address within the week.

then it’s done. you’re married. you feel largely the same as you did this morning. if it weren’t for the giant rock on your ring finger and the recent transfer of seventy-five-thousand pounds into your bank account, you might wonder if this was all a product of your over-active imagination, run away with a plot stolen from a b-list film.

the most vital part of the day, the reason you’re here and dressed in a gown with your hair crimped and nails painted, comes right after the priest scurries away to tend to his more important duties. jim beach stands from his place in one of the pews and ushers a photographer forward. he points between you and roger.

“all right, get snug, you two.” jim chews on a large wad of gum, and his words are slurred with an excess of saliva. “just a few pictures and then we’ll go eat. we all know that’s the only reason john showed up today.”

lounged against a pew, john raises his finger in agreement, and his wife elbows him in the chest. he sputters, doubling over in pain, while freddie laughs in amusement. beside you, roger watches the interaction with a back as straight as the pew benches, his jaw tight. you push your arm around his elbow and tug lightly. he inhales before turning to meet your eyes.

“what?” his voice is not cruel or unkind; it’s just tired.

“try and look happy, yeah?” you say, offering him a gentle smile similar to the one you’d given him in the vestibule. it’s the only thing you have to give him other than your hand in marriage and a chance to salvage his reputation; yet, again, it does not alleviate the tension pinching his brow. “the faster we smile the faster we can eat.”

roger shifts, as though he wants to pull away from you, but knows he shouldn’t. his feet dance back and forth on the carpeted stairs leading to the sanctuary state. “i should be telling you to try and look happy. this is just as much an inconvenience for you.”

you shake your head with a chuckle. “hardly. i make my living pretending to be happy, or moody, or sultry. whatever the director wants. i’m a pro at this. and besides,” you add. “it’s my job to make you look good. though, to be honest, that’s not very hard. you look good all on your own.”

roger sniffs and rubs the underside of his nose. he ignores your compliment and keeps his eyes trained on the photographer setting up his equipment at the base of the stairs. “maybe i could use some tips…”

he’s being glib but you take the opportunity to try and break the ice—the rock solid, absolutely frigid, polar ice-cap style ice—between you both. holding up a finger to the photographer, you slide to stand in front of roger. he’s taller than you, not by much, but enough that you have to tilt your head slightly to maintain eye-contact. his blue eyes very much resemble the ice with which he’s surrounded himself. you can feel the chill on his shoulders, even as you smooth the wrinkles on his tailored dress-shirt.

“whenever i have to fake a smile,” you say, adjusting his thin tie. “i always think about the thing that makes me happiest.” he doesn’t ask you to expand, but you do anyway. “for me, it’s when my cousin ivy moved in with my mother and me. i was seven and she was six and it’s been one giant slumber party ever since.”

“is that your cousin?” roger’s eyes flick to the girl sitting across the aisle from the band and management. ivy has her hands beneath her thighs, her head dipped, her dark black hair covering a curtain over her face.

you nod. “mhmm.”

“she doesn’t look like you.”

you lift an eyebrow. “she’s adopted.”

“right, sorry.” roger exhales deeply, and the weight of the world slips from one of his shoulders to the other, tilting his body in a stiff hunch. “i’m feeling out of sorts today, as you can probably imagine.”

“just think about what makes you happy, roger.” you dare to lift a hand and press it against his cheek. his skin is smooth beneath your fingers. he must have shaved his morning. he looks boyish up close, and you wonder if, like you, he had ever dreamt of what his wedding day might look like. you wonder if, like you, he had given up those dreams to make today a reality.

the photographer takes a picture of your hand against roger’s cheek, and the sudden flash of light has you blinking in surprise. you look over your shoulder, mouth slightly parted and eyelashes fluttering to clear the white spots over your vision.

the photographer just shrugs. “ready now?”

the shrill of a ringing telephone wakes you the morning after the wedding, and you groan, pulled from a heavy slumber by the incessant and high-pitched tone. there’s a dull ache at the base of your skull, and your tongue feels like it’s coated with a fine layer of sand. beside you, a man snores softly, his face pink and eyelashes soft on his cheekbones.

oh yes, that’s right. you’re married to roger taylor, aren’t you? you’d drunk so much at the celebration supper that you’d nearly forgotten. the evening itself is but a hazy memory, but you think you recall freddie imitating a russian style jig atop a table, and phoebe going into great detail about all the fabulous dress-up parties you’ll be expected to attend now.

one thing you can’t remember is how you ended up in roger’s bed, dressed in one of his oversized t-shirts. your hair is still stiff with sticky hairspray, your legs still encased in a pair of nylon tights, and you don’t feel… sated, for lack of a better word. it’s probably safe to assume that you did not sleep with roger; you merely slept beside him. why you didn’t take up residence in his guest room will be the first question out of your mouth once his day starts.

you might be his wife and he might be your husband, but you don’t want him getting any funny ideas about the nature of your relationship.

this is a job for you. nothing more.

the phone continues ringing and, lest roger wake before he is ready, you move to reach across him for the phone on his bedside table. you speak into the receiver on a whisper, adjusting your fist on the mattress to keep from falling flat on roger’s stomach.

“hello?”

“uh—hi.” there’s a pause, as if the speaker is uncertain how to react to your voice on roger’s line. “is this [y/n]?”

“yes. who is this?”

“it’s brian. we met yesterday.”

you bite your lip to keep from laughing. “yes, i know who you are, brian.”

he chuckles softly. “sorry—i can’t remember much of last evening. it’s probably best i make a second introduction if i can’t recall the first.”

“well then, i’m [y/n] [y/l/n]. [y/n] taylor now, i suppose. pleased to meet you.”

“brian may. the pleasure is all mine. ours, really—me and the guys. what you’re doing is—we appreciate it, truly. you’ve saved the band, in a way.”

“that’s kind of you, brian.” you glance at roger out of the corner of your eye. he hasn’t moved a muscle, and his face is the most serene you’ve ever seen it. saved the band? you doubt it. smoothed a few ruffled feathers? that’s certainly more likely. “it’s no trouble, though. it’s just my job. what was it you called for?”

“roger was supposed to be at the studio an hour ago. we have a recording session today.”

“shit, really?” pressing the receiver to your shoulder, you twist your wrist upwards, but find your watch missing. you scan the unfamiliar room. a digital clock glows red on a built-in bookshelf. “is it really nearly one o’clock?!”

“afraid so.”

“shit, i’m sorry. i only just woke up. yesterday was hectic—to say the very least. i’ll have roger out the door in half an hour.”

“thanks, [y/n]. you’ll find this happens a lot after a night out. but, hey, at least you’re not shouting at me like rog does.”

after passing pleasantries a moment more—brian asks you about ivy, who you are surprised he remembers, and you ask him about his stargazing habits—you reassure brian that roger will be on his way as soon as possible. you drop the receiver on its base with more force than necessary, but the crack of plastic on plastic and the slight ring of the internal bell gets roger moving.

he grunts, twisting his head away from the noise.

you shake his shoulder gently. “wakey wakey, sleeping beauty. the day is already half gone.”

roger yawns as his eyes blink open. he rubs a hand down his face and arches his back like a cat as he stretches. slumping back against his pillows, he stares at you for a moment, his eyes roaming your face.

“are you an angel?”

you laugh at this, and he winces, holding the heel of his hand to his forehead. “no. i’m your wife. are you still drunk?”

“maybe a little.” his eyelashes flutter rapidly as he adjusts to the sunlight streaming through the bedroom window. he waves his hand around your head, and you lean back slightly, away from the exposed skin of his chest and striking collarbones. “you look like an angel with the sun all around your head. ‘s like a halo.”

“that’s kind of you.”

he shrugs, shaking his head. “just sayin’.”

“i think you’re still drunk.”

as if to prove your point, he hiccups then falls to his side on the bed. “maybe.” his cheek is pressed firmly against the mattress, smushing half of his face flat. soft, steady breaths filter in and out of his parted lips, and his eyelids begin to grow heavy as he is dragged back to his dream world. he looks more tired child than grown man, but the sight is endearing. still, your current job is getting him out the door and on his way to the studio. you can’t let him be any later than he already is.

“oh no, you don’t.” grabbing his arm, you pull as you slide from the bed. roger resists your strength and moves to push his entire face against the mattress. he mumbles something against the sheets, but you can’t make out the words. “brian already called. you’re late, pretty boy.”

roger rolls over onto his back, and the movement causes you to lose your grip on his wrist. you stumble backwards then plant your hands on your hips.

“come on, roger. you’ve got to get up.”

“i don’t want to. yesterday was shit, and all i want to do is stay in bed.”

with a sigh, you gather your wedding dress from its heap on the floor. you lay it over your forearm and pull open the closet door. “nice to know you thought our wedding day was shit,” you say.

you mean it only as a joke, but roger sits up fast, swaying slightly with the movement. he catches your eye as you exit the walk-in closet, and you pause, turning the light off slowly, held by his angry stare.

“fuck off,” he says. “i don’t want this. i don’t want you.”

to say his words don’t sting would be a falsehood. no one wants to hear such a thing, least of all from their spouse. the words make your heart clench painfully in your chest, and you wonder what he sees when he looks at you. he doesn’t look at you, though; he cradles his forehead in his hands, his back hunched where he sits on the edge of the bed.

inhaling deeply, you reach up and begin to remove some of the pins lost in your hair. you head for the bedroom door. “well, while you sit and sulk, i’ll pack you a lunch. you’d better shower, though. you reek.”

from your place puttering about the kitchen, you hear the shower start up a few moments later. good—at least he’s moving. you haven’t the foggiest idea where anything is in his kitchen, but you make do with what you can find in the poorly stocked fridge, and pack him a light lunch. you start a pot of coffee, too, and lean against the counter as you wait for the pot to fill.

the ancient coffee pot takes too long, and you can hear roger humming in the shower down the hall.

your nails tap against the counter.

you’re antsy, unsure of what to do with yourself now that the wedding is over. how do you be a wife to someone who doesn’t want a wife? how do you be a friend to someone who doesn’t want a friend?

it’s too big of a problem to solve in the span of time it takes for roger to finish his shower, so you slip into the bedroom and peel off your stockings and his tee-shirt. you put on a sweater, some jeans, and wipe the day-old makeup from your face with a wet-wipe. the movements are tried and true, and they calm your racing thoughts.

you have an entire year to figure out how to live with roger taylor. you don’t need to have it all figured out this morning.

the coffee pot dings, its job complete, just as you and roger both enter the kitchen.

but he hesitates before taking another step, and so do you.

his hair is wet from the shower. a white sweatshirt swallows his torso. part of the hem is tucked into his white-washed jeans, and you’re struck by the narrowness of his hips. the weariness is gone from his face, replaced with a youthful sort of glow and stubborn cheekiness. you aren’t sure how he’s managed it, but he looks well-rested.

you lift a hand to your cheek. you must look a state. it takes a lot longer for you to put yourself back together after a night out.

he stares at you for a moment, then shakes his head and crosses the kitchen to fill a travel mug with hot coffee. gnawing on your lower lip, you lean your hip bones against the kitchen island as he putters about the room, quiet as the grave.

it’s only your first day as husband and wife, and under such unique circumstances, you shouldn’t expect him to—what? make conversation? ask about you and your life?

“so… what do you think you’ll work on today? in the studio, i mean.”

he glances over his shoulder then shrugs. “not sure. probably something related to the rest of the tour.” bending at the waist, he pulls a drawer out from beneath the sink. his ass looks good in those jeans, but you doubt he’d like you staring, so you look away, mouth screwed to the side. “do you know where the sugar packets are?”

you frown and push away from the island, rounding it to stand beside him. “no?” he turns at the sound of your confused voice, and his head jolts backward to see you standing so close. “i don’t live here, remember?”

“well, you do now.” he swivels on his heel and pulls a small white jar across the counter. lifting the lid, he sighs. “i can’t find the sugar.”

“actually, about living here now...” you follow as he starts for the door, grabbing his keys from a small table in the foyer. “the bedroom situation? i figured we’d have separate bedrooms but last night—”

roger opens the front door and silences you with a hard stare. “the only other bedroom is my practice room.”

your shoulders slump. “oh.”

“i wasn’t going to make it a guest room if you’ll be gone in a year.”

“but where will i—”

“fuck it all, [y/n].” he curls his hand around the doorframe, hanging his head. a cold winter breeze sweeps through the hall, and you pull your jumper tight around your waist. “just sleep in my bed, okay? i don’t fuckin’ care.”

you swallow hard, nod. you’d been prepared for some measure of hostility, some measure of resentment. what you hadn’t been prepared for is the way his rebuffs settle like dead weight in your stomach. he alone can be blamed for this; it was his actions that drove management to force you upon him. yet, he seems to look at you with nothing more than dread and disgust. perhaps it is because you are the physical embodiment of his wrongdoing. his antics created you, and he is powerless to wipe you from his eyesight as he might a clump of dirt. you are a permanent stain—at least for the next year.

maybe you can’t begrudge him his disdainful attitude, then.

you come to when a car horn blares outside.

roger is gone, the door open, void of his claustrophobic presence. leaning around the frame, you catch sight of him and his blond hair as he reaches his car parked on the side of the road. spinning on your heel, you grab his sacked lunch from the fridge and race after him.

“roger!”

he looks up from his car door, and you can’t help but note the way his shoulders lift, tensing at the sight of you running barefoot down the sidewalk. the winter air quickens your steps, and you’re out of breath and huffing when you reach his side. white plumes escape your mouth and drift towards the gray sky.

“you forgot this,” you say, pushing the brown paper sack against his chest. you curl your toes against the frigid bricks beneath your feet.

his brow pinches. “what is it?”

“a lunch. you haven’t eaten yet.”

for the first time since meeting him, the ghost of a true smile lifts the corners of his mouth as he stares down at the sacked lunch. he lifts a hand, and you are surprised by its warmth when he covers your knuckles with his palm. his eyes flick upwards, meeting yours.

“thanks, [y/n].” he tilts his head to the side. “i’m sorry i’ve been a prick. this is all… really new for me.”

you slip your hand from his grasp, sure that your smile is somewhere between girlish and shy. a sharp wind whips through the stitching of your sweater, and you shiver.

“we’ll figure it out,” you say, and it’s a message to both him and yourself. you will figure this out.

“yeah.” he slides his key into the slot on the car door. “yeah, we will.”

“oh. rog, wait.” you stop him by putting a hand on his shoulder. when he twists at the waist, you wind your arms around his neck before he has time to react. you squeeze tight, your toes skimming the ground. he feels firm, stiff like a board. “hug me back,” you whisper against his ear. “there’s someone across the street taking photos.”

the sound he makes in your ear—a grumble, a low growl—sends your blood pumping into overdrive. he’s angry, but he dutifully embraces you as any newlywed husband might. his arms are strong around your lower back, and you melt into him.

god, he feels good. you can’t remember the last time you were held like this. he smells like the soap from his shower, and his sweatshirt is soft. his hair brushes against your cheek, and your eyelashes flutter in response. you should pull away; you’ve hugged him long enough to appear the besotted wife, desperate for her husband to stay home the day after their wedding. the paparazzi surely got what they wanted.

so, why is it so hard for you to let go?

you shake yourself free of the feeling, whether it be longing or desire or something else entirely.

sliding your hands across roger’s shoulders, you drop from your raised stance. you press a kiss to the corner of his mouth, quick and without hesitation. just in case.

“go on.” you hurry to step back, to allow him the space the leave. “you don’t want to keep the boys waiting any longer.”

roger’s eyes linger a moment more, his stare somewhere between searching and assessing. then he mumbles an oath beneath his breath, wrenches open his car door, and slips inside. the door slams behind him, and the engine roars to life. you retreat further at the sound, wrapping your arms around your stomach when the car tires squeal against gravel in his haste to get away.

some blissfully wed husband he makes.

biting the inside of your lip, you turn back to the house. the front door remains open wide, and it’s likely the heat has long since left the warmth of the halls. you pause long enough to lift the paper from the front stoop. what you see beneath the fold makes you hesitate all the longer.

there’s a photo of you and roger on the left side of the page beneath the headline, roger taylor marries model. the grainy, black and white image of your wedding day presents you, the smiling bride, and roger, the smiling husband, joined hand-in-hand beneath a heavy wooden cross. to the untrained eye, all is joy in the taylor household. the article describes the ceremony, though the details are patchy and entirely false, as intimate and “drenched with love.”

you scoff before you can stop yourself. clearly, the author of the article has encountered roger taylor under duress.

but it’s not the article which holds you frozen to the front stoop, your exposed toes and fingers sticking like icicles to the newspaper. rather, it’s the smear of red paint slashed over your picture. it’s the word slag scrawled over the article, an arrow pointed in the direction of the wedding photo.

still, in a one-on-one meeting you’d had with jim beach prior to the wedding, he’d warned you of something like this. though all four queen members are undeniably attractive, it is roger who makes the fans go gaga.

maybe it’s his boyish good looks contrasted with his raspy voice. maybe it’s the frenzy with which he plays, his easy charm and sunkissed skin. whatever it is—roger’s fans are a possessive lot.

jim had told you to prepared for a few nasty letters or scathing criticism in the papers. he had told you it wouldn’t last long, just until the initial shock of the marriage wore off, just until roger’s fans accepted the reality that they were not be his lawfully wedded wife.

so, truly, the first incident does not scare you. you just hadn’t realized the scrutiny would begin so soon. if anything, the painted paper makes you chuckle. roger’s fans certainly don’t like to waste time.

you toss the paper in the bin beside the stoop, and it’s forgotten before the day is over.

a week bleeds into a month, and you find yourself falling into some semblance of a life with roger.

you cohabitate for the most part. he does not outright rebuff your attempts at friendship, nor does he accept any olive branch you extend.

conversation is stilted, his contributions terse and monosyllabic. he prefers your home-cooked meals be eaten before the television, and not at the dinner table, where he would be forced to engage with you. he doesn’t even give in when you ask if there’s anything he’d like to rant about. he just shakes his head and bangs on his drums well into the evening, despite having banged on them the whole day at the studio.

yet he sleeps beside you, allows you to sleep beside him.

without fail, he appears more at ease come nightfall. he sheds whatever protective shell he wears throughout the day in favor of something softer, something more tender. you’re not sure what changes him when he walks over the threshold of the bedroom, but something does. perhaps it’s the soft lamplight or the hum of the fan he insists be kept on despite the chill of winter.

there’s a part of you that wonders if it might be your very presence that softens him, but you’ve taken to silencing that part as of late. he’s long-since proven that you hold no sway over him whatsoever, and that’s okay. your job is to be a buffer between his antics and the all-seeing eyes of the public. nothing more.

two months to the day after your wedding, you’re stood in the hallway, slipping on a pair of earrings, and brushing away roger’s hurried attempts to get you through the door. he has one hand on the doorknob, the other wrist tilted to expose his watch face.

“[y/n], please!”

“roger, the party doesn’t start until queen arrives. give me just a minute more.”

tonight, the savoy hotel, the first music industry party you’ll attend by roger’s side as his wife.

you’re nervous.

your hands shake as you press the earrings into your ears, and you rub your lips back and forth, feeling the slick lipstick rub over the flesh. you’re thankful the dress you chose is a gauzy sort of chiffon. if you sweat, no one will be able to tell, thanks to the pale blue of the fabric.

impatient as ever, roger drags himself from the door to stand behind you, as though prepared to throw you over his shoulder. however, a smirk pulls at your mouth when he pauses in his frustration long enough to primp and preen his hair in the mirror. you catch his eye, your fingers paused in snapping your clutch closed. he sees your smirk, and his own lips pull on a wry smile.

the moment hangs in the air, thick with—what? tension? no. something else. camaraderie comes to mind.

your eyes remain locked with his, and his grin spreads until he is shaking his head with amusement. he pushes your shoulder, but the touch is friendly, almost brotherly in nature.

“come on,” he says. “i don’t want to miss all the good wine.”

nodding, you start for the door, trailing behind him to flick the lights off. darkness engulfs the house, the only light the white glow of the moon spilling through the window above the kitchen sink and a night light plugged in along the hallway baseboard.

but then the phone rings.

roger stamps his foot against the floor, the door already half-open. “fuckin’ hell!”

“let me get it.” you’re halfway down the hall before he can stop you. “i’ll tell them to buzz off. hold on!”

“i’m going to get the car started,” he says. his voice echoes through the hall to meet you where the phone hangs in the kitchen. “you have two minutes, [y/n]. two minutes!”

lifting the phone from the receiver, you press it against your ear. “hello?”

at first, you hear nothing on the other end.

but you’re sure you heard the phone ring, so you lean closer to the receiver and plug your opposite ear in a piss poor attempt to hear better. “hello? this is [y/n] taylor speaking.”

the sound of heavy breathing—deep inhales, hard exhales—meets your ear. deep inhale, hard exhale. over and over and over.

your throat tightens, but you push past the lump. “hello? who’s there?”

a stuttering of breath on the inhale, a shaky exhale. a croak, voice poised to speak.

only you slam the phone back on the receiver before the person on the other end can say a word.

for a moment, you stand still, eyes glued to the phone, mouth parted in shock.

but then roger honks the car horn, and you shake yourself free of the unsettling feeling. a missed connection, you tell yourself. a wrong number. a mistake. that’s all it was—a mistake.

still, you are shaking when you slide into the passenger seat of roger’s car. he glances at you before pulling into the busy street.

“are you cold?” he asks. he turns the heat up, blasting the air against your face. “you’re shaking.”

“no,” you say, and, truly, you aren’t. he loaned you an ostentatious fur coat for the occasion, lined with a smooth brown fabric, and you are comfortably warm beneath the heavy material. “just nervous.”

roger snorts, his eyes sliding to you. “nervous? surely you’ve been to parties before. you’re a model, for god’s sake.”

“i’m not sure what kind of model you think i was, rog. i did mostly print, never runway. parties were never a part of my nine-to-five.”

“oh.” his mouth screws to the side. “i guess—well, to be honest, i kinda thought models all did the same kind of work.”

“most people do. that’s in the past now, though.” you shift, glance out the window, and watch the streetlights blur in a hazy streak of orange and yellow. he’s driving fast, and you grip the side of the door, willing your heart to stop racing.

the car slows to a stop beneath a red light. roger taps his fingers on the steering wheel, and the silence in the car is deafening.

you should strike up a conversation. he seems willing tonight, and maybe that’s due to the cramped nature of the car, but it’s an opportunity nonetheless.

only you can’t stop thinking about the phone call, about the heavy breathing and the unanswered questions. you shut your eyes and find yourself mirroring the caller’s breathing patterns.

deep inhale, hard exhale.

“so, you’re done with modeling?”

you open your eyes and turn to look at his profile. why he insists on wearing sunglasses in the dead of night you will never understand, but the sight alone makes you smirk. he knows he’s attractive; you have to give him credit for embracing it.

“that’s why i married you,” you say.

roger laughs—and you realize it’s probably the first time you’ve heard the sound. his laugh aligns with the light timbre of his voice, and the anxiety in your chest eases to hear him sound something other than malcontent.

“i knew you were a gold digger!” it’s a joke—you can tell by the quirk of his mouth and the lines around his eyes—but you rush to defend yourself all the same.

“no, i’m not!” you hesitate before shrugging with a rueful chuckle. “well… maybe a little. i won’t deny that the money i get from this arrangement really helps. i was looking for a way out of modeling, anyway.”

“really?” roger’s eyebrow arches, and, as the car turns into the savoy, the wrap-around drive clogged with limousines, sport cars, and photographers jostling for a good spot, you catch a glimpse of admiration on his face. “what do you want to do now?”

“i’m not sure. go back to school. i’ve got a head for maths, so maybe accounting or something.”

roger twists his head to meet your eyes, and his smile is earnest. it steals the breath from your lungs.

deep inhale, hard exhale.

“you don’t strike me as an accountant, dove.”

“why not?”

“accountants are stuffy, greasy men. you’re… you know…” he waves a hand, inches the car forward as the line moves. camera bulbs flash in the world outside, but within the car, all you can focus on is roger and his next words.

“i’m…?” you’re fishing, but this is the first time he’s given you more than the time of day, and you’re eager to get something, anything, out of your husband.

he shrugs, and his hands curl around the steering wheel. a muscle in his jaw ticks. “you’re too nice.”

you look away. “ah—nice.” not what you’d been expecting him to say.

he pulls the car to a stop along the hotel’s entrance, and a sharply dressed attendant opens the door. sliding out after roger, you instinctively reach for his hand. he spares you a short glance and squeezes your fingers together in a gesture of encouragement.

a black—not red—carpet lines the walkway from the drive to the open hotel doors. velvet ropes hold back the crowd of photographers, reporters, and fans lucky enough to have squeezed their way to such a prime viewing spot. camera flashes paint the inside of your eyelids with bright, white spots. despite the chill of winter, the air is hot, heady with glitz and glamor. it’s hard to distinguish any one voice over the plethora of people vying for attention, and your head swims in the chaos of it all.

roger moves easily from one side of the rope to another. he is in his element, grinning for the cameras and joking with reporters who grab him long enough for a quote. his moments with the press are short, few and far between. he much prefers the fans—their simpering smiles, tear-stained cheeks, and waving slips of paper begging for a signature. you don’t blame him. who could ever resist such unfettered adoration?

near the end of the carpet, a reporter snags roger’s attention with his waving arm. palm still clasped in roger’s, you trail behind your husband, hovering just behind his shoulder. the cool smile you perfected in your modeling days remains fixed on your face, even as the reporter acknowledges you with a tilt of his head.

“is this your wife, roger?”

the reporter has to shout to be heard over the sudden surge of excitement as a new celebrity takes their first step on the carpet. it’s kate bush, if you aren’t mistaken. you could be wrong, though. the reporter’s query pricks your ears, dividing your focus between the cacophony around you and the question at hand. thus far, you’ve remained nameless by roger’s side. no one—fan or press alike—has asked after you, and you’re happy for it.

roger turns to look at you, and his grin spreads. he goes so far as to slip his arm around your waist, tugging you against his side, keeping his gaze on your profile. a sudden rush of blood floods your cheeks, and you duck your head beneath his watchful eyes. yet you find your own smile widening. the action is not one you have to force or fake, though. it’s easy to smile when roger is smiling.

“yes, this is my bride,” roger says. “[y/n].”

the hand he’s placed on your waist squeezes the flesh of your hip, pushing you further against him. to keep from tripping over your own legs, you press a hand against his chest to steady yourself. you can feel his heartbeat beneath your fingers; his heart pulses to a steady rhythm. your own heart beats twice as fast.

the reporter checks something on his small pad of paper. “is it true that you used to be a model, [y/n]? there are rumors that this marriage is a publicity stunt.” he hesitates, glancing over his shoulder as someone bumps his back, pushing him against the velvet rope. once righted, he continues. “there are rumors that you were hired to get the press to stop talking negatively about the montreal incident.”

you open your mouth to speak, but roger jumps in before you can utter a single syllable.

“are you joking?” he tosses his head back in an easy laugh and pulls you even tighter against his side. you’re afraid if he draws you any nearer you will absorb into him completely. but with the way the lights dance off his eyelashes and his hair looks perfectly tousled and his body feels strong against yours, you aren’t sure that would be a bad thing.

“i’m crazy about my wife!” he says, and the words go straight to your heart like a wildfire. “you should get yourself one, mate.” he playfully slaps the reporter’s upper arm. “they’re great fun!”

the reporter arches an eyebrow. “it’s just that i know you’ve gone on record as not exactly believing in marriage and—”

“what do you want me to do? kiss ‘er? would that make you happy?” a shit-eating grin rises on his face, indignant and cocky all at once. he shoots you a look out of the corner of his eye; you bite your lip. “will that get you off my back?”

“that’s not really—”

“here.” he taps the wrist of a bystanding photographer then points to you, twisting his body so that you stand face to face. “put this in your bloody paper!”

grabbing either side of your face, roger dips his head to capture your lips with his. for a moment, you remain unsure. you hold fast to his wrists, your mouth unmoving. the blood in your veins stands frozen in shock, and your heart presses painfully against your ribcage. somewhere in the back of your mind, your conscious screams for you to react, to play along, but it’s not until roger slides one hand from your cheek to the small of your back that you register what part you must play.

thank god it’s not a difficult role.

with a tilt of your head, you wrap your arms around his neck and hold tight. he tastes faintly of cigarettes and the mints he uses to freshen his breath. his lips are soft, softer than you’d anticipated. you can hear the clicking of cameras, feel the blinding light of flashbulbs pierce your eyelids, sense the growing interest in your display of affection, but none of it penetrates the bubble—the bubble of you and roger, of his lips and your lips, of his arms holding you close, his very air becoming yours.

he pulls away entirely too soon, and his smile is all the more cheeky. you press your fingertips to your lips, lower your face, and draw in a sharp breath.

“there! that could enough for you?”

roger steers you away from the reporters and into the sanctuary of the hotel at last. a rush of cool air meets you and, though it is mid-winter, you sweat beneath roger’s fur coat. the gentle whoosh of air-conditioning is a blessing against your hot skin.

as you enter the ballroom transformed for the event, roger lowers his mouth to your ear. “sorry about that, poppet.” the low register of his voice and the feeling of his breath against the back of your neck sends a shiver down your spine. “i’ve dealt with that tosser before, and he really grinds my gears.”

“‘s fine, roger,” you manage to say through your tight throat. “it’s what i’m here for, yeah?”

he stops walking, and his hand moves from your back to your wrist. his eyes drift over your face, calculating, searching. you let him look. you aren’t sure what he’s looking for, but you get the feeling that he’s truly seeing you for the first time. even in the manufactured blue light of the room, even with the myriad of tables surrounded by producers and singers and agents alike, his face visibly softens and his hand curls around your wrist.

“roger! [y/n]! over here!”

three tables away, freddie waves his hand, beckoning you over. roger drags you along, his fingers intertwining with yours as you sidestep people already lounging at their seats. once at the table set aside for queen and guests, roger pulls out your chair, and you sit, smoothing your hands over your skirt. he sits beside you and leans to his side to whisper something to john. on your right sits chrissie may, and you offer her a smile in greeting.

the function—a charity benefit organized to bring awareness to the falklands disagreement—comes and goes without issue. the dinner is bland, but the wine is good. chrissie is pleasant, and it’s your first chance to speak to another band member’s wife since the wedding. you appreciate her advice, laugh at her stories, and enjoy yourself without restraint. it doesn’t hurt that as roger drinks more, he more pays attention to you. you really shouldn’t encourage him, but when he slings an arm around your chair and pulls you closer, when he turns his head to whisper a joke in your ear at brian’s expense, when he plays with a loose lock of your hair, twirling it around his finger, it’s all you can do not to melt like the ice-sculpture in the center of the room.

come the end of the event, you find yourself walking between chrissie and veronica, your steps slow as the boys stumble through the hall. roger and john cannot stop laughing, though no one has said anything remotely funny for the last few minutes. they cling to one another like koalas to trees, as though the other might drop to the ground if released. brian and freddie aren’t any better. they sing off-key, their voices bouncing off the empty walls and laminate floors. you aren’t sure what part of the hotel you’ve wound up in, but it’s certainly less plush than the ballroom. still, you smile when roger slides his sunglasses over his eyes and snorts at one of john’s inane comments.

your smile falters when the sound of veronica’s labored breathing, pregnant as she is, reaches your ears.

deep inhale, hard exhale.

in the flurry of the evening—amidst the kiss and the dinner and the joking and the drinking—you’d forgotten about the phone call.

chrissie reaches out to grab your arm when your steps stutter. “are you okay?” she asks.

you stop walking. if the boys get into trouble around the corner, you’ll surely hear it.

meeting chrissie’s wide eyes, you frown. you hate the put a damper on the evening’s chipper mood, but the memory of the phone call crashes to the surface, bringing with it anxiety and unease. roger doesn’t need to know, but perhaps the other wives experienced a similar phenomenon. perhaps it’s all in your head. either way, you’d like a second opinion.

“this is going to sound weird, but… have either of you ever gotten a strange phone call?”

“phone call?” veronica rubs a hand over her swollen stomach. “what do you mean?”

you explain the events prior to your departure earlier in the evening, and the concerned looks that settle on chrissie and veronica’s faces stir the uncertainty in your stomach.

“that doesn’t sound good, [y/n],” chrissie says.

you gnaw at your lower lip. “no, i suppose it doesn’t.”

“have you told rog?”

you shake your head. “i don’t want to trouble him. not if it’s just some practical joke. it very well could be our kid neighbor having a lark.”

another memory drifts to the surface: the newspaper, the red paint dripping across your photograph. slag, they’d written.

you’d forgotten about that too.

veronica pulls you back to the present with her even tone. “i think you should tell him. if someone is harassing you, even if it’s just the once, don’t you think he should know?”

“i guess but—”

“hey, party people!” john sticks his head around the corner, breaking the conversation with his over-loud voice. “guess what we found?”

“judging by your wet trousers, i’d say a pool.”

john trips down the hall to grab veronica’s arm. “have i ever told you that you’re brilliant?” he presses a noisy kiss to her cheek, and even veronica isn’t capable of remaining firm under such affection.

like a child who has found an interesting twig, john crooks his arm in a follow-me motion, tugging his wife toward the pool. “come on. come see!”

veronica follows john around the corner, but before you can follow, chrissie presses her palm to your shoulder.

“you should tell roger,” she says. “before it gets serious.”

you nod, promise her you will, then make your way to the indoor swimming pool, knowing full well roger won’t hear a word of the incident.

the savoy’s pool room is understated in comparison with the rest of the hotel. though the ceiling stretches high, skylights allowing moonlight to shimmer over the undisturbed water, the room is just as hot, just as stuffy, as any other hotel pool. you drop your coat and rog’s to a plastic lounge chair as soon as you enter, swamped as you are by the thick air.

all nerves, all worries about the phone call, fade away as you slip your shoes off and watch roger and john’s poor poolside rendition of abbott and costello’s “who’s on first” routine. roger can’t keep up with john no matter how hard he tries, but their combined effort is valiant.

laughing, you clap as they take their theatrical bows and only laugh harder when john trips over the edge of the pool mid-bow. he lands belly-first in the clear water, rising a sputtering, drenched mess, his hair and clothes sodden to the bone, though his eyes are bright with mischief. he swims to where veronica sits with her ankles in the water and, before she can sternly admonish him, has her pulled into the churning pool beside him.

brian is next in. he cannonballs in the deep end, and chrissie follows of her own volition. the impact of their jump launches a tidal wave of water in your direction, and you screech, nearly falling in your attempt to avoid getting wet.

but then a pair of arms wrap around your waist, lifting you from the cool, albeit slippery, floor.

“roger, no!” you twist in his tight hold. “no, roger, don’t!”

your voice echoes in the room, bouncing off the windows and walls; yet roger ignores your pleas for release. he shuffles to the edge of the pool at the behest and cheering of his friends, each treading water, watching as you struggle to break free.

the water beneath your feet rises and falls, sloshing this way and that. you can see the bottom of the pool from where roger holds you, and there’s a delicate, inlaid design of a turtle twelve feet down on the pool’s stone foundation.

you curl your nails in roger’s arm. “roger, i can’t—”

he tosses you in before you can finish the sentence.

you fall through the air with a scream, land on your back, and sink beneath the surface of the water. chemically-laced water fills your mouth, your nose, and your lungs scream for air.

for a moment, fear grips you, not unlike the way it gripped you in the hallway of your own home, the phone cradled against your ear. only this time, you know exactly what will happen if you don’t get help.

this is not a battle you can win yourself.

kicking to the top, you break through the water and cough, shaking your head. tears cloud your vision when you open your eyes, but the liquid that’s caught in your eyelashes disguises them, and for that you’re thankful. roger bobs beside you, a grin on his face, looking much too pleased with himself and his antics. without a second thought, you reach for him.

“roger, i can’t swim,” you say.

his face falls. “oh.” he blinks then, realization striking as you grab onto his shoulders. “fuck, [y/n]. i’m sorry.”

clinging to him, you wrap your arms around his chest, your legs around his waist. you rest your cheek against the back of his neck and sigh, inhaling deeply. “i tried to tell you,” you whisper.

beneath the water, his hand curls around the skin of your ankle. he squeezes, and it’s all the apology you need.

the band stays in the pool for entirely too long. freddie starts talking about the next album, and the other boys chime in, clamoring for their opinions to be heard over the others. despite their drunken state, music brings a sense of clarity to their speech and thought. it’s their life’s work and something about which they care deeply. there’s no denying that. even when brian tries his hand at a backwards flip and freddie challenges john to a diving contest, they are always thinking, always working, toward their next goal. you admire them for that.

roger remains steady where he stands. you cling to him like a barnacle, even though you just as easily could remove yourself and find a place where your feet touch solid ground. he feels nice, though. his body is a comfort against yours, and as the business talk continues, your head lolls to the side on his shoulder, a gentle smile on your lips.

you could get used to this.

at some point, veronica complains about her aching back and drags john from the pool. they are the first to leave, but brian and chrissie soon follow. you aren’t sure if you want to go, if you want the evening to end. if it means roger will go back to ignoring you, shoving you aside, you think you could stay in this pool until your skin wilted and dripped off your bones.

“we’d better go, love,” roger whispers.

you know he’s right.

“yeah.” you try to keep the disappointment from your voice.

he moves to the side of the pool, and you heave yourself over the edge. your dress is heavy, weighed down by the absorbed water. you wring out the skirt as best you can, but until you can give it a proper wash and dry, it’s really no use. gooseflesh breaks out on your arms where the cool air hits, and you shiver.

roger appears behind you, turns you gently with a hand to the shoulder, and lifts a fluffy white towel. “here. i found these.”

“oh!” you move to take the towel from his grasp. “thank you.”

“i’ve got it.” with a smile—a boyish, gentle sort of smile—roger unfurls the towel and wraps it around your shoulders. he tugs the corners beneath your chin and laughs through a short breath. “comfy?”

you nod, pressing your face against the warm fabric.

“you look like a marshmallow.”

lifting your mouth from behind the towel, you tilt your head with an impish grin. “you once told me i looked like an angel. so, which is it? angel or marshmallow?”

“oh, angel for sure.” he thumbs a finger over the end of your nose. “you always look like an angel.”

you roll your eyes and hope the action does not expose the sudden flutter in your chest. “you’re just saying that ‘cause you’re drunk.”

he shakes his head. “no. i mean it.”

he looks at you for a long time. you look at him for just as long. the unease cadence of your breath, the way his breath whistles through his nose, the lap of the pool against the tiled walls—it all sounds so loud to your ears, though nothing can compare to the beating of your heart. it fills your entire body: bump bump, bump bump, bump bump. your cheeks feel hot with blush, and you finally look away, casting your eyes to the floor. you wiggle your bare feet against the tiled floor; roger wiggles his toes back.

“we should go home,” you say.

“yeah.”

roger pays an attendant to ferry you home, and the drive leaves your entire body close to overheating.

the back seat of his car feels strangely intimate compared to the front seat, but that might just be your imagination. surely, roger didn’t sit so close to you on purpose. surely, his hand isn’t pressed against your leg because he wants it to be. his car is just… cramped.

“did you have fun tonight?” you break the silence, but when you do, your voice sounds strange—slightly strangled, nervous, earthy—and you wish you’d remained quiet. you continue toying with a loose thread on your coat, ignoring the way roger’s eyes traverse your profile.

“mhm. did you?”

you nod, but don’t look up.

from the driver’s seat, the attendant coughs, and your gaze shifts.

deep inhale, hard exhale.

chrissie’s words of earlier surface in your mind: you should tell him about the phone call. it’s only right.

twisting, you look to your right, meet roger’s eyes, and promptly lose all sense of direction. his face is so near, his mouth parted, eyes hooded, cheeks flushed. your throat runs dry, but you can’t look away.

“roger–”

“hmm?” his lips tighten, but his smile is just as sly as it had been the moment before he kissed you in front of the reporters. the touch still lingers on your mouth, but you will the memory away.

“there’s something i should—”

his fingers sift through a lock of your hair, and he moves his head almost in a nuzzling sort of gesture. you swallow hard. “i was wrong about you,” he whispers. when did his voice get so raspy?

“what?”

“i was wrong to judge you,” he says. his hand moves from your hair to the side of your neck, one long finger tracing the lines of your skin. “to be honest, i thought you were some cheap girl looking for a way into my bed, but i was wrong. you’re more than that.”

“what—” deep inhale. “what am i, then?”

his lips quirk upward. “my wife.”

hard exhale.

his mouth claims yours, and you don’t fight him. you melt against him, his chest pressed against yours in the narrow space of the car. you’re vaguely aware that a driver sits not two feet away, more than able to hear the way roger pulls a soft whimper from behind your lips and the rustle of clothes as you both scrabble for any exposed skin. but you don’t really care. you’re drunk off of roger, and have been since you met him. it’s his looks, yes, but tonight—tonight you saw him in his element. you heard him laugh and saw him smile and preened under his attention. you would go to hades and back to live in a world shaped just like tonight, every bit of it.

roger can’t keep his hands off you as you make your way from the sidewalk to the front stoop. his hands roam your body, skimming every inch, squeezing the parts he seems to like most. you giggle like young lovers experiencing one another for the first time, and maybe that’s because you are.

when you drop the front door key because you’re too focused on returning roger’s eager kiss, it doesn’t seem to matter. you just stand on the stoop and kiss beneath the light of the moon a little longer.

when you finally get the door open and his palm hits your ass at the same time, you squeal, and he dissolves into laughter.

when he fumbles with the hallway light because he’s too focused on getting your coat off, you tell him to forget it. you don’t need the light anyway.

halfway down the hall, limbs and lips tangled, the phone rings.

you laugh as you peel yourself from his grasp. he puckers his lower lip in protest.

“i’ll be just a minute,” you say, lifting the phone from the receiver. he sticks his tongue out, but then sheds his shirt, leaving it on the kitchen floor as he slips into the bedroom. you bite the edge of your thumb as you watch him go, your head as muddled as creamy soup.

someone clears their throat on the other end of the line.

“oh, sorry. hello?”

“what’s it like to kiss roger taylor?”

cold dread extinguishes any joy lingering in your chest at the sound of the sickeningly smooth voice.

your fingers curl tight around the phone. “who is this?”

“what’s it like to kiss roger taylor?”

angry tears spring to your eyes as you scoot to stare out the window over the sink. nothing but darkness meets your eyes, but still you try in vain to search for an answer in the inky blackness. “i said: who is this?” your voice cracks, but you push forward. “how did you get this number?”

“what’s it like to kiss roger taylor?”

“i swear i calling the fucking police if you keep this up!”

a beat of hesitation then: “what’s it like to kiss roger taylor?”

with a helpless groan, you slam the phone down for the second time in one day. your fingers creak as you let go and step back, chest heaving. your skin feels slimy—slimy with roger’s lingering touch, slimy with the possibility that someone had been watching you kiss your husband, slimy with the possibility that someone could be watching you now.

you don’t stop and admire roger, clad only in his boxers, as you make your way to the en suite bathroom. you can’t stand to look at him, to know that somewhere someone cares for him so much they would take to harassing you. god, it makes you want to vomit.

you don’t bother with the bathroom door so intent are you at getting in the shower and scrubbing your slimy skin raw. you struggle with the zipper at the top of your spine, the tears hovering over your eyes threatening to spill over if you can’t be rid of your soaked clothing. you stamp your foot with a grunt and drop your hands, hanging your head in defeat.

roger’s soft chuckle sounds from the doorway. you don’t turn to look at him.

your back stiffens when he undoes the zipper, the pads of his fingers pressing along your shoulder blades, your ribs, the small of your back.

“that eager, huh?” he presses a wet kiss to the curve of your shoulder.

you want him; you really do. there’s some part of you that wants to drag him into the shower and work out your fears with the aid of his body against yours. but you won’t do that. you won’t use him, not when he confessed he thinks you better than that.

you twist to face him, holding the dress against your chest. “rog, i…” you place your hand on his smooth chest, feel the small hairs peppering his collarbone. “you’re drunk,” you finally say. “you’re drunk and you should go to bed.”

he smirks and pushes his hips against yours. “so? you’re drunk too.”

you shake your head. “no, not anymore.” you push him away gently. “believe me, roger, i want nothing more than to go to bed with you but—”

he plays with a lock of hair beside your face, and your desire to resist him weakens. “but?”

“i won’t do it while you’re drunk. besides, you’ll be over this by morning. you’ll go back to not wanting me. so i won’t do it—not while you’re drunk.”

with a huff, he lets you go, but not without kissing you once more. a traitorous tear slides down your cheek, and your throat seizes with emotion. somewhere in the back of your clouded mind, you wonder if you love him. or, if at least you are on the edge of loving him.

but it doesn’t matter. you’ll be gone in a year, and he will move on to someone else, someone strong enough to withstand his rabid fans.

he pulls away first and kisses your temple. “goodnight, angel,” he whispers.

you wrap your arms around your stomach and, once stood beneath the hot water of the shower, let the sound of the creaking pipes drown out the sound of your crying.

roger is gone before you wake the next morning.

he leaves you a note on the kitchen island, scrawled in his plain script: “angel, i’m hungover now, not drunk. i’d still like you in my bed. – rog”

the note should send a thrill to your stomach, but it manifests itself in a ball of dread instead.

what’s it like to kiss roger taylor?

it’s heaven, but the price is hell.

you crumple the note and toss it in the bin, jumping when the phone rings. you hesitate, your gaze locked on the inanimate object that has come to haunt your dreams.

eventually, the phone stops ringing, but the shrill sound echoes in your head as you go about the day.

after the second phone call, tension becomes your constant companion. the days pass, and you withdraw into yourself, scared by the slightest sound, the never-ending line of cars outside the front window, and roger’s growing interest.

he seems to like you now that he knows you. he makes you laugh, asks you questions, even goes so far as to help you research university entrance exams.

but when he comes home from the studio, your stomach takes to twisting with apprehension as you wonder if your faceless friend watched him drive home and wonder further if your faceless friend can see roger kiss the side of your neck.

you try not to push him away. his attention is what you’ve wanted all along, and, though the romantic turn of events was certainly unplanned, he does make your knees weak and your head giddy like a schoolgirl’s.

still, the phone calls persist. it’s not every night and every day. you can’t trace the caller’s pattern because there is none. you never know who will be on the other end of the line. it could be roger calling during his lunch break as he is wont to do; it could be the university to which you’ve applied; or it could be them, the phantom who chills the blood in your veins.

there’s a pad of paper tucked beneath your side of the bed. the words of your faceless friend are scrawled across the page in frenzied handwriting, the handwriting of a madwoman.

what’s it like to kiss roger taylor?

did he buy you those earrings?

will he ask john to help you study for the maths entrance exam?

you should stop answering the phone; you know you should. but each time the phone rings, you respond like a pavlovian dog. you rush to answer, to frantically write down the day’s comment just in case there’s some sliver of information that might shed light on your faceless friend’s identity.

the caller is a woman; that much you know. her voice is deep and gravelly, but she’d referenced herself as the better woman for roger before. she seems to cling to the idea that you will leave him and the position of roger taylor’s wife will fall to her. if only to spite her, you will remain married to roger until your dying day.

you should tell roger too; you know you should.

but he’s happy.

when you first met him, he was sullen, dragging his tail between his legs like a scolded pup after the montreal debacle. it took a while, but you see him now for his true self. he’s carefree in a grounded sort of way, sold out for his music and the lifestyle it affords him. he’s gentle and kind and surprisingly considerate. he picks up the groceries when you ask it of him; he cleans the dishes from supper without complaint. he doesn’t pressure you for anything more than a make-out session on the couch when the lights are low and a record spins on the turntable. you would go further, but you can’t—not right now. he doesn’t ask any questions.

it would break you to tell him about the phone calls, and you can’t bring yourself to do it. each morning, you imagine his crestfallen face. you imagine the anger and the shouting and him calling the authorities and—

it’s easier for him—for everybody—if you just stay quiet.

besides, you’ll be gone in six months.

one evening, after dinner at an expensive restaurant, you let roger to take you to bed. he’d looked so pretty in the candlelight, and he’d listened to you talk about your hopes and dreams for the future. you think you fall in love with him when he drags you onto the bed and whispers sweet praises in your ear the whole night long.

when you wake the next morning, he is still there, and you snuggle into his chest. you breathe him in, and it’s bar soap from the shower and dried sweat and lingering cologne. his arms circle your back, squeezing you tighter.

“mornin’, angel,” he mumbles.

for a moment, you don’t respond. you keep your eyes closed and think back to yesterday.

there’d been no phone call. a blessed reprieve from three days in a row of randomly timed messages. roger had held you, and he holds you still. he is a comfort amidst your turbulent sea.

you should tell him. he can handle it. you’re tired of running from him.

rising to your palm, you meet roger’s gaze. he stares at you through his lashes, a sleepy smile on his mouth. he lifts a hand to cradle your face, and his thumb skims your cheekbone.

“how come you get a halo every morning and i don’t?”

you ignore his compliment before the bravery rushing through your veins dissipates. “rog, there’s something i haven’t told you.”

“yeah? is it about the freckle by your left ass-check?”

gasping, you slap roger’s chest. though he laughs, a red handprint remains in the center of his sternum, and he clutches his skin in pain. once settled, he apologizes and promises to behave.

deep inhale.

“about a month or two ago, i started—”

the phone on the bedside table cuts you off with its sharp bell-like ring.

your stomach plummets to your feet.

your eyes widen as roger holds up a finger and reaches for the earpiece.

he lifts it to his ear. “hello?”

some part of you hopes it’s your faceless friend. roger could deal with her himself. the other part of you prays it’s just a wrong number or john or—

“yes, fred, i know.”

hard exhale.

you slump to the side, leaning your weight against roger’s hip. thank heaven.

roger’s eyes slide to you, and he grins, winking. he squeezes the point of your chin between his forefinger and thumb, his eyes locked on yours as he nods and hums in response to freddie on the other end of the line.

“no, we won’t be late,” roger says. “yes, she’s coming. i promise i won’t forget.” he leans closer to the bedside table in his effort to end the conversation. “okay, fred. yes, i will.” finally, he heaves a sigh. “oh, for fuck’s sake, fuck off! i’m trying to woo my wife, so scram!”

“now,” he says, once the earpiece is on the base. “where were we?”

tugging on the back of your neck, he closes the distance between his mouth and yours. even with a hint of morning breath, you dissolve in his capable hands. he kisses you earnestly, and you struggle to remember what it was you wanted to tell him. he has this way with his mouth and his tongue and his hands that makes you forget everything but the feeling of him.

pulling back a moment later, he mumbles against your mouth: “what was it you wanted to tell me?”

you blink rapidly. “i—” damn, he looks so happy, glowing with youth and perhaps an inkling of love. you press your palm to his cheek then shake your head. “never mind. it can wait.”

he cocks his head to the side. “you sure?”

“mhm.”

“you remember the movie thing tonight, right?” he asks as he slides from the bed, drawing up his sweats from the floor and padding to the window. “that’s what fred called about.”

he throws the curtains open. the morning sun shines through, piercing every hidden corner, and your heart trips in your chest. your hands shake as you lift one of the bed sheets to cover your naked chest.

someone could be watching.

roger grimaces. “oh, shit, sorry, angel.” he tosses you his shirt from the floor, which you gratefully tug over your head. “anyway, tron, you know? we’re supposed to go to the premiere. something about flash gordon and—”

“i remember.”

“good. wear something nice because i don’t give a fuck about this movie, and i’d rather be looking at you anyway.” he smirks as he presses his palms against the mattress and leans in for another kiss.

you oblige him without hesitation.

“gotta go,” he says, pulling away only to firmly kiss you once more. “be ready by six, okay?”

you nod, and he leaves.

the majority of the day, you putter about the house. there’s chores to do—laundry and bills to catch up on and research for university admissions. it’s domestic work, mind-numbingly dull and repetitive. it leaves far too much space for your thoughts to run wild.

you admonish yourself for once more failing to tell roger of your faceless friend. you’d had the moment, and you’d blown it. with his unreliable schedule, there is no telling when you’ll have the chance to sit him down for a serious conversation again. you consider going to jim beach for help, but know once roger hears wind of it, he will fly off the handle because you didn’t come to him first. perhaps rightfully so, too.

you resolve that until you can find another peaceful moment, you will continue to suffer through it. it’s a step in the right direction, though. at least now, you have plans to tell him.

by five-forty-five, you are ready for the event. you sit in the living room, gnawing at your lower-lip as your leg bounces in anticipation. you haven’t gone anywhere with roger since the charity function earlier in the year. your faceless friend will surely be watching tonight, and already you feel sweat gather along your underarms.

roger unlocks the door and sticks his head into the living room upon his arrival. “car’s running. ready to go?”

you lift your handbag from the floor, nodding as you make your way to his side. roger stops you with a flat hand against your stomach. he bends to catch your eyes.

“you okay?”

“yes,” you say, but your voice sounds too rushed and eager even to your own ears.

he doesn’t hassle you for a more illuminative response. he just leads you to the car, opens your door, and makes his way to the theater, foot hard on the gas pedal.

as soon as you see the carpet—red this time—stretched along the sidewalk leading to the movie theater, bile rises in your throat. you reach for roger’s arm and squeeze tight. his head whips to the side.

“roger, i don’t think i can do this,” you breathe.

he frowns. “what do you mean?”

“it’s just that i’ve been—”

he pulls the car to the side. an usher opens the door, sound and light and chaos breaking the comforting quiet of the ride. your eyes flutter shut; you grit your teeth.

“[y/n], what is it?” roger’s voice is low, on the edge of irritation.

this is not the time. yet why do you feel like you’re going to pass out if you don’t—

“mr. taylor?” the usher prompts.

purging the emotions clawing at the front of your mind, you push roger’s shoulder and avoid his searching gaze. “nothing. go on! i’m right behind you.”

roger huffs as he slides from the car, but he dutifully offers his hand to aid you onto the red carpet. as he did before, he leads you toward the theater doors, stopping at the appropriate moments to pose for photographs. you hold on to the back of his jacket so tightly your knuckles crack. your eyes scan the crowd in search of your faceless friend. you will know her when you see her. she is a part of you now, like a demon on your shoulder.

roger rubs his hand up and down your back in a comforting gesture and leans to whisper in your ear. “you feel a stiff as a board,” he says. “what is it?”

you shake your head and nudge him further down the carpet. “we can talk about it later.”

“is it something i’ve—”

“no, roger. it’s not you.”

he studies your face a moment longer before nodding and returning his smile to the crowd.

near the entrance to the theater, a gaggle of girls wave their hands in an attempt to grab roger’s attention. he glances at you, and you nod, backing away to allow him one of the moments he so enjoys.

but one of the girls calls out your name. you lift your eyes to stop tracing the intricate weaving of the red carpet and stare at the girl in question until roger has to drag you over with a laugh. the girl shoves a newspaper in your face, your wedding announcement crinkled with affectionate wear-and-tear. she asks for your autograph, and you chuckle, feeling rather ridiculous as you scrawl your name across the page with a fat green marker.

it happens before you have time to react.

your head is bent as you sign the girl’s newspaper, your attention diverted from scanning the crowd for your faceless friend. but you feel her when she arrives, sense her eyes on your neck, and her fingers reaching for the sleeve of your dress. you have time enough to turn and catch sight of her long fingernails descending upon your cheek, but not time enough to stop her.

you scream more out of fear than pain as her nails scrape your face. truly, it does not hurt, though blood does begin to trickle down your chin and along the column of your throat.

it’s just that she’s there, before your very eyes, and she’s much smaller than you imagined. yet her eyes are dark with envy, and her nails are sharp. you recognize her labored breathing—deep inhale, sharp exhale—as she tries to move backwards and disappear within the crowd before she can be seen. you cannot look away from her, even when roger grabs your shoulders and wrenches you away from the iron gate. he’s shouting in your ear, cradling your uninjured cheek, but everything sounds like you’re underwater.

her face—round and childlike in its innocence—does not match the picture you’d created of her in your mind. she does not resemble the evil witch of your childhood fairy tales. she’s just a child, a little girl with a heart full of love for someone she cannot have.

your faceless friend is pointed out by the girl with the newspaper, and someone—maybe theater security, maybe queen security, maybe a good samaritan—drags her away.

roger grips your chin harder than he should considering the circumstances, but it brings your attention back to him. his eyes are ablaze with fury, and you suddenly feel the urge to cry.

“are you all right?” he demands. “are you hurt anywhere else?”

only my pride, you think.

“no,” you manage with a shake of your head. “no.”

“come on.” he slips his arm around your waist and pushes your head into the curve of his neck, away from prying eyes and flashing cameras. “we’re going home.”

the trip home is silent. your head moves back and forth across the passenger window, in time with the bumps and dips and curves of the road. there’s a fast-food napkin pressed against your cheek to stem the blood. you aren’t sure if it helps. roger keeps his hand firm on your thigh.

once inside the house, he forces you to sit in the middle of the bed as he scurries to retrieve the first aid kit. while he roots around in the bathroom, muttering to himself when he can’t find what he’s looking for fast enough, you strip yourself of your dress and return his old t-shirt over your head. you lift the collar to your nose and inhale his scent. when you draw the collar away, crimson blood and fresh tears stain the fabric. you sigh.

“fuckin’ hell.” roger drops to sit in front of you, his legs skewed to the side. a white, plastic box sits in his lap, and when he opens it, the contexts spill onto the bed sheets. “i’ve had this thing for ages. i think brian got it for me when i moved in.”

his hand returns to your chin; only his touch is gentle now. he looks over your wound, frowning at the sight.

“this is gonna sting, angel,” he warns.

it does. the antiseptic hurts, and you wince, but he keeps you from drawing away, his grip on your chin firm. he unwraps a butterfly bandage and presses it over the shallow scratch on your face. then he shakes his head, his face drawn tight.

“what is it you weren’t telling me?”

“there is—was this girl… and she kept calling, saying things.” you twist and unearth the pad of paper from under the bed. rubbing your eye, you hand it to him and watch his face darken as he reads the words.

he looks up, and you can’t bear to see the anger—the anger directed at you—in his gaze. “why didn’t you tell me?”

your first instinct is to shrug, to obfuscate, but he deserves the truth.

“you never wanted a wife,” you say. “you certainly didn’t want a wife who brought a stalker into the house. i figured—” deep inhale. “i figured i could live with it until our year was up.”

“oh, baby.” roger presses his forehead to yours. he cups your untainted cheek. “fucking up in montreal was the best thing that ever happened to me. it brought you to me, didn’t it?”

“you’re just saying that ‘cause—”

“no.” he draws back and grabs both shoulders in his hands. “i mean it. i never was one for marriage. didn’t make sense. but i get it now. it’s about partnership, yeah, but it’s about more than that. it’s about trust, too.” he smiles softly, pressing his thumb against your lip. “it’s about affection.”

he goes quiet then removes his hands from your shoulders.

“i wish you would have trusted me.”

“i’m—”

“don’t apologize. this whole arrangement is weird, and i don’t blame you for keeping quiet. i just wish you would have told me so i could help you.”

you sigh, dropping your head. “what do you want, roger?”

he lifts your chin, and you are struck by the love so firmly etched in his eyes. it knocks the wind from your lungs, leaves you breathless.

“i want you to keep my last name,” he says.

“what?”

“you heard me: i want you keep my last name.”

tears flood your vision, but not for fear or worry or regret.

you begin to smile, but the skin of your cheek pulls tight, and you wince, touching your injury. “ow,” you mutter.

roger laughs and pulls your fingers away from the bandage. he kisses each knuckle then rubs the wedding band along your ring finger. “can we give each other another chance?” he asks. “can we forget all the assumptions and just be us? i think we started on the wrong foot and somewhere along the way we switched—”

“yes.”

he stops mid-sentence, his brows drawing together in confusion. “what?”

“i said yes. i’ll keep your last name. i want your last name, roger taylor.”

he grins, and the happiness in every line on his face outshines even the sun’s rays. “god, you’re perfect.” he kisses you hard, and you laugh as you drop against the pillows, pulling him with you. he stops attacking your neck with his lips long enough to prop himself up and stare down at you. “but don’t you ever pull something like that again! if someone starts nagging you, tell me first thing. promise?”

you nod, stunned by his firm tone.

“say it.”

“i promise.”

he smooths the hair on your forehead, and your stomach somersaults to watch him examine you so openly “good girl,” he mumbles before lowering his mouth to yours again.

you lose yourself in him. he loses himself in you. somewhere along the way, you find one another, and all is bliss.

in the morning, legs tangled in the sheets and steady rain pelting the window, roger adjusts his hold on your waist. he’s still asleep, his chest rising and falling in time with his gentle breath. you pull his arm tight around you and smile into your pillow.

your cheek is still sore, and you’re sure there’s some poor nun who remains scarred for life after witnessing roger’s montreal incident.

but this morning you cannot find it within yourself to feel bothered by your faceless friend, nor by the scarred nun. indeed, you think, you should write them each a thank you card, because in a funny sort of way, they brought you to your husband. in a funny sort of way, they gave you love of your life. and for that, you are indebted to them.

you twist at the sound of roger’s yawn. taking his face in your hands, you smile at him. “good morning, husband,” you whisper.

he grins back. “good morning, wife.”

now this—this you could get used to.

taglist (italicized handles wouldn’t work): @im-an-adult-ish @bluewillowmom @deakygurl @aprilaady @dancingdiscofloof @six-bloodyminutes

#roger taylor #roger taylor x reader #queen #queen fic #j writes

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entomancy · 3 years

Text

(Fic) Daywalkin’ in Vegas

...let’s be honest, this ‘short backstory fics’ thing has done what my writing tends to do, and Escalted. So let’s escalate.

Title: Daywalkin’ in Vegas (Wattpad) Setting: Increasingly not even serial-numbers-off-VTM. VTM infact exists in-world as a gaming system, which really annoys Fancy Vampires. Warnings: Gore; depictions of violence/ death against a child. Words: 6537 Summary: A failed siring gets the attention of two very different parts of Vegas Below; and a young blooded nosferatu puts herself in the centre of a dangerous balance.

Beep.

Twenty-eight forty.

Beep.

Thirty-one seventy.

Beep.

Nox watched the till display tick up, comparing the total to her mental tally. She had enough; she knew she did. It might have been in tattered bills, tarnished coin rolls and bits of change so old they were chipped like gears around the edges, but she was always real careful to plan these trips down to the grubby dime. In and out, as unobtrusive as possible.

Beep.

A final bag passed, the green-yellow numbers flickering one final time. The cashier smiled in customer service plastic as she read out the total, then followed it with a look of awkward concern.

“That’s all for you? We - er – we have some good specials,” she said hesitantly, nodding towards the little stack of brightly-labelled packages beside the register. It was mostly sweets and tampons, and Nox bit back on a grin at the sight. Nice thought, but that hadn’t been her ‘bloody’ problem for a while now.

“That’s it,” she replied, adding: “Thanks, though.” Sure, it was an upsell, but a kind one. The girl even managed to keep back any disgust at the state of some of the cash; it had been cleaned up, but people didn’t tend to drop crisp ones into a cup on the sidewalk.

Nox carried everything out to the repurposed shopping cart that she’d left just inside the little bodega’s doors. The thing was unbalanced and took corners like a drunk, but it was better than playing pack mule herself. The new bags settled down on top of the day’s earlier buys: bulk discount batches of toilet roll, bleach and superglue, along with cheap fabric for bandages. Plus, now, thirty-eight dollars and eighty-six cents’ worth of the cheapest mince and frozen shrimp available within a four-mile radius.

There had been a time when she’d had to worry about dietary fibre. Or vitamins.

The cart’s wheels creaked and rasped on sidewalk dirt as she headed it away, hunching down over the handle as she pushed; partly for more control, mostly to keep her face in shade. Her battered baseball cap and hoodie did a pretty good job – accompanied by garish plastic sunglasses and a stained bike mask – but every little helped. It also added to the overall ‘bag lady out on an afternoon shuffle’ aesthetic she was going for. The trick was to inspire just enough awkward pity to be invisible, but not enough to be a target.

Apparently, her act was off today. She’d just turned a laborious corner, distracted by trying to keep the bags all stacked, when she felt a hand clamp down onto the top of her head and yank hard. She didn’t move, but the hood pulled away and she heard a yelp of disgust even before she swivelled around. Two young men stood behind her, gawking in revulsion at the revealed state of Nox’s scalp, in all its piebald, peeling, erratically-thickened glory. A thin braid slithered down her face, torn too-easily free along with the hood.

She gave the scene one more heartbeat to really settle in, before grinning widely. Faced with a mouthful of teeth like broken ivory, the youths managed to look even more horrified.

“Aye, that’s how I caught it too!” Nox cackled theatrically, before snatching the hat back from now-unresisting fingers and jamming it back into place. “Don’t go scratching yerself anywhere pretty fer a bit, eh?”

The lad – and his already-retreating backup – hesitated, then let out a string of bravado-born obscenities. Freak – gross – blah blah blah I-have-a-tiny-dick blah. He kicked at the cart as he started follow his friend, and Nox let just enough spill out to sate the petty spite.

Once they had gone, she picked up the packets again and began to fix her hood. The exposed skin was stinging and smarting already, a poison-ivy prickle that calamine wouldn’t touch. At least it was late enough in the afternoon that she probably wouldn’t blister from the exposure. More annoying was the missing chunk of hair, and she probed at it gingerly. No deep wound, thankfully; which probably meant that the straggly braid had been almost ready to fall out anyway. She tended to keep about half a head of hair going, on average; so it’d grow back.

The lads were long gone by the time she was ready to set off again. With any luck she’d be nothing more than an awkward moment in a day of shoving their weight around; quickly forgotten. Being gross in the eyes of idiots wasn’t a Breech, after all.

The rest of the trip back was uneventful. Streets gave way to alleys, sidewalks to cracked paving, to rotting asphalt, and even the graffiti began to wane as she got closer to home. The main occupants of this ass-end of nowhere – a ghetto’s dumpster of a place – didn’t exactly make it their business to advertise where they were. Those that needed to know; knew. Those that knew, generally didn’t care – which was honestly a hell of a lot better than the alternative. Nox had heard the stories of what it had been like only twenty years ago. It was strange to feel that there was any sort of luck to her history, but six years wasn’t twenty.

Reaching a gap in an otherwise unremarkable wall, she glanced around quickly, making sure that no one was watching. Then she straightened up, gripped either side of the overloaded cart, and hefted it up through the broken brickwork in one smooth movement. She vaulted in after it, dropping down into cool shade, and let out a sigh of relief as the accepting touch of Karloff’s Invitation washed across her. The sense was like a door opening in welcome; like taking the first familiar turn towards home after a long day’s drive. It also meant no more unwanted attention – without that explicit permission, you’d never be able to recognise the entrance, or even keep your attention on what you were looking for. She was as invisible now to all other turned-aside eyes as everything else within the Invitation’s borders.

A few more rattling corners later, Nox finally turned into the Homestead grounds. The whole area had once been a crammed-in mess of squat apartment blocks, copy-paste civic solutions built without charm to fill the need for cheap rooms. The Homestead was the only one of its kin still standing, now surrounded by an opened-out area of recent amateur demolition and scrap-built fencing. Bright splashes of street art cut across sagging concrete and the blacked-out eyes of the windows, although the tags and themes chosen indicated the difference between these creators and the more standard ones of the world outside. Most of this had been painted at night, for example, with rather more variety on the theme of ‘hands’ grasping the tins.

There was a lot more inside, and below, but she felt a particular warmth at these murals. Out here, on the surface. Bright in sunshine that most of them could never see. The Nosferatu might be Vegas Below’s crusty little secret, but they were damn well there.

Bits of cracked paving clicked and skittered beneath the cart’s wheels as Nox made her way through the fences and to the big, bolted main doors. There was a rough porch built around the frame, mostly to give extra shadows, and she looked up at the tiny glints of watchful glass sunk into the surrounding wall. She waved.

“Dimestore-Blade’s grocery delivery,” she announced, and listened to the familiar rattle of bolts start on the other side of the door. A few moments later it swung open and a hunched figure peered out, wincing back from even the thick porch shade. This was Max; an older woman than Nox in both kinds of age, who managed her marks via a combination of extensive bandaging and even more extensive needlepoint. Watery black eyes looked past her, squinting through a gap in the heavily-embroidered scarf wrapped around her head.

“All okay?”

Nox nodded and lifted the trolley over the threshold.

“Fine.” She didn’t mention the youths. Didn’t seem a lot of point. “Let’s get this lot into the freezer before it can walk on its own, yeah?”

Safely inside the slightly-fetid gloom of the entrance, Nox took the opportunity shed her bag-lady layers. True, she couldn’t actually overheat, even on a Nevada afternoon, but being swathed in that many layers was still claustrophobic. Beneath the mismatched fabric strata was an increasingly-threadbare pair of yoga pants and a dark vest, and Nox gave a small sigh of relief as she folded up the rest of her daylight-drag, shoving it onto a shelf nearby.

“Right,” she muttered, as much to fill the air as anything else, and turned back to the trolley. Max had already transferred much of it into precarious piles in her own arms. Her scarf had slipped down, revealing a hairless head webbed with splitting skin; much of it made whole again with patterned patches of colourful thread. The fabric discoloured over time, of course, but it reduced the leaking.

Balancing their burdens, the pair made their way further into the Homestead. Closest to the entrance was the most decrepit part, occupied mostly by shelves and old furniture crammed full of clothes and patched umbrellas for venturing out, and with years of dumped debris building up in corners. Rooms with windows – even those as thoroughly blacked out or bricked up as these were – mostly housed the rat runs or storage, because no one wanted to spend a lot of time somewhere where crap mortar could result in dayburns. Similarly, the roof and most of the top floor was given over to pigeon roosts and No avoided them whenever possible. She’d never much liked pigeons before this, and she still held that even their vitae tasted of garbage, somehow. Still, they were much dumber than rats, and they did lay eggs, so that helped.

The really lived-in part of the Homestead was underground. Everybody knew Nosferatu lived in the sewers, right? Okay, so Nox would admit she hadn’t much understood the difference between ‘sewer’ and ‘storm drain’ before her life had taken its scabby turn, but she sure did now. Vegas had extensive storm drains – large concrete tunnels that lay under much of the city, designed to quickly shift heavy rain away from the tarmacked surface above – and they were ideal: underground, dark, not monitored.

And not actually full of shit.

The arrangement used to be… messier, Karloff had told her. When they hadn’t been so organised; when they’d lived closer together with others who had slipped through the cracks Above. Some of the Family had started off as those same ‘unfortunates’ after all; those who were aftermath-sired in a broken frenzy, or from the bloody jaunt of some fuckfang cutting through the ranks of those who wouldn’t be missed. Splitting their claimed tunnels off from the main circuit and establishing the Homestead proper had happened later, after the Vegas Accord had given the Nosferatu a Clan-status, and hunting them for sport stopped being an acceptable weekend activity.

Six years sure ain’t twenty.

Max chatted away as they walked; an idle litany of gossip, social media tidbits and reports from watchers all over the city, woven together into what Nox tended to think of as ‘Radio Max’. Spying on people was apparently another nos stereotype; but honestly when you didn’t really sleep, were functionally invisible to large portions of society, and had worked out how to divert half-decent broadband from badly-secured leisure networks overhead, it wasn’t difficult to get ahead on current events.

Plus the rats, of course.

Information was power, and they had precious little of any other. Although Nox sometimes wondered how much of those scant threads of power that Karloff put such value on would diminish if Clanpires in general figured out how to just Google things.

They had reached what she thought of as ‘mainstreet’ of the Homestead tunnels – a long space with concrete pillars linking floor to ceiling every thirty feet or so, quite cheerfully lit by a mishmash web of light fittings rigged up overhead – when yelling broke out further down. Nox and Max shared a look of alarm at the commotion, but it was when her name became suddenly clear in the shouts that Nox’s stomach dropped.

“Get this stuff away, will you?” she muttered, carefully setting her packages down beside Max, and turned to meet the oncoming figures. Even wrapped in a heavy coat and thick gloves, she knew the loping form of Skaad instantly.

With features which sagged so violently that his bruise-yellow skin frequently tore at the edges, and a mouth like a lipless sharps bucket, Skaad was nonetheless gifted with some of the keenest senses in the clan, plus a damn-near eidetic memory. Which meant he spent most of his time skulking in hidden places, listening to things he shouldn’t, and following people who thought they were alone in their secret business. Having him sprinting towards you, so fast his eyelids were visibly flapping, wasn’t a great sign.

Back in the world Above – before her life had gone to hell in a weirdly specific way – Nox had been a paramedic. It was useful in the day-to-day, being the closest thing this bunch of ragged immortals had to a resident doctor, but there was only really one sort of actual emergency left down here.

Skaad skidded to a halt, and grabbed her arm with a worrying urgency.

“Got a phresh one. Get yer kit!”

Fuck. A fresh one meant one thing: someone had found a dumped fledgeling, one who’d been showing signs of the Change going wrong and been tossed aside by their disgusted sire. Intervening quickly could help, particularly getting a pigeon smoothie down them fast, but the panic on Skaad’s drooping face didn’t line up with -

“What’s so – ?” she started, but he shook his head, steering her towards the plastic-covered tunnel they used as a makeshift clinic. He leaned in to shove her again, but lowered his voice and muttered just before he did – and the words sent ice down her spine.

“It’sh a kid.”

Oh no.

Oh fuck.

You didn’t turn kids.

When your working knowledge of vampires had been a general pop-culture miasma and some blurry memories of teenage Buffy marathons, finding yourself on the other side of the supernatural coin came as a shock in various ways. One of which was the weird sensation that you should have studied it all harder, somehow. Nox had certainly felt stupid, in her early days, as a man with a face like a charred wasps’ nest listened to her stutter her way through half-remembered fiction and worse-remembered reality. But she’d apparently got a few things right, and somewhere in that muddle had been the idea that you shouldn’t turn kids.

There were all kinds of theories as to why – from the debauched to the practical – but she found that in many ways it didn’t matter. Whatever fucked-up intention you had, it wouldn’t work. Too young just… didn’t take. And when a siring didn’t work, there was every chance the result would end up on her table.

She scrabbled through the assortment of old drawers and boxes that stored her gear, pulling out anything she thought might work. Bandages, thread, craft superglue, repurposed bottles of hard spirits that would do in a pinch for sterilising. The best-case scenario things. And the rest. Old herb pots of fine powders; thrift-store silver cutlery hammered and polished and changed into a very different set of tools. Sharpie-labelled bottles of liquids that moved weirdly in the light, and a range of refillable lighters that definitely didn’t contain hydrocarbons anymore. All the things she’d picked up in the last six years that fitted in with other sort of medicine.

The plastic curtain behind her was yanked back and a sound she had been trying not to hear finally demanded her attention. It wasn’t even a scream, and Nox hated, hated hated hated that she recognised the cadence there perfectly: raw, animal agony of sound torn from a throat that was violently reforming around it. She turned to see Skaad forcing flailing limbs down, looping thick restraints around rippling flesh, and finally allowed her full attention to turn down to the spasming form.

Gore looked different through vampire eyes. It was hard to describe exactly how – partly because wordsmithery had never been one of her strong points, but more because trying to compare feelings from now and then was always going to have a huge fucking hurdle of shifted species in the way. She’d still probably seen more human blood in nine years on the ambulances than during the half-dozen in and out of Vegas’ shadows, and but everything afterwards had been… different. Displaced. Detached. Just didn’t seem as visceral as it used to do.

But this did.

Acid tightened in Nox’s throat as she stared down at the shuddering mess in front of her. Blanched skin bubbled and writhed, tearing as it pulled away from the muscles beneath; themselves little more than contorting ropes of livid tissue that pulsed under dying heartbeats and spilled black fluid from ever-widening rents. The throat was gone, now a bubbling pit of desperate breaths, sucked past exposed tendons that wriggled like furious worms. Half-clotted ichor was pooling from gashes along the arms, down the stomach and further: the marks of peri-sire wounds, those that had been still fresh as the invading blood forced itself into collapsing veins. The eyes were side-to-side a sickly crimson-yellow, bloating out from a face that was collapsing in on itself, and throughout it all, the kid screamed.

It was revolting. Nox had to bite down on the vicious spikes of fight-flight that were going off in her mind, so violently she could feel her hands trembling from the horror and her disgust at her own reaction. It was an instinct, an unbidden response to a failing siring – she knew that – but understanding it didn’t make it easier. Everyone down here had ‘gone nozz’ during their own Turn. Hell, a few of those brought to her were walking around now, not seeming any weirder than any of them, but she’d still felt that awful surge of fundamental wrongness about them before they stabilised.

Nox gritted – all of – her teeth, and slammed her kit down on the table.

Instincts can fucking blow me.

“Let’s see what we can do.”

It turned out what they could do, wasn’t much. Cleaning, sewing, cutting, sealing – nothing held. Stitches fell from uncertain skin, or tore great new holes as fresh spasms pulled at the edges. Wet rags soon littered the floor, sodden with black and yellow fluids that turned the rough concrete into a slippery, stinking mess. The bleeding wasn’t slowing, even as the body seemed to be crumpling in on itself, gradually liquefying around the bones.

The sound had gone quieter, if not softer, and Nox didn’t have much hope it would stop soon. It might be days yet, before the final sparks of vitae or life or cruel continuation finally went out.

Too young. The kid – the girl, most likely, going by anatomy – had been just… too young.

They had to have known that.

“I’m outa tricks,” she said, although the words felt thick and sharp in her mouth. She wanted to keep going. She wanted to, so fucking much. But somebody had done this. Somebody who knew this would happen.

“I’m gonna make her comfy,” she continued, then hesitated even as she pulled out the frankly-horrific cocktail of morphine and street drugs that might make a dent in a system caught somewhere between undead and alive. Skaad looked at her, and held out a clawed hand.

“Want me…?”

“Nah.” Nox shook her head, and swallowed. “You can get the others outta upstairs, though. I need to – to make a call.”

Skaad stiffened, his jaundiced eyes flicking between her and the table for a moment, before he let out a low hiss and ducked away through the curtain. Nox administered the mix and tried to convince herself it would have any sort of palliative effect. Then she went back to the drawers and rummaged again, right at the back, until her fingers closed on the ridged plastic of an old nokia.

There weren’t many numbers in the phone, but it was the first one she selected, under B.

- SUMFCK SIRED KID. ITS BAD -

She threw the phone back into the drawer and hurried out, past the plastic sheet and into the tunnels, leaving sticky footprints in her wake. Not a great look, but everyone would already know what was happening. Nosferatu gossiped like – well, like a society of insomniac, semi-immortal shut-ins.

Overhead, an erratic cluster of repurposed pipes trailed down through the domed roof, emanating from the rat runs above. Drainpipes, corrugated plastic, bits of plumbing, and all of them shaking slightly with the constant pass of tiny feet within. They opened out onto tiny highways of shelving that lined the walls, all heading in the same direction as she was. Pairs of black-beady eyes glanced at her as they passed, and with so many concentrated here, she could feel the faintest flick of Attention in each one. They were all headed to a squat metal door at the end of an offshoot passageway. The rats passed freely back and forth narrow holes punched in either side of the door; but Nox knocked. She knew she was already expected and entered after a respectful moment.

Karloff’s chamber was bigger than it looked like it would be from the doorway. Nox wasn’t sure what the space had originally been – some kind of maintenance room? – but it was now dark, and warm, and smelled less of rats than might be expected given the constant rodent tide. Shelves lined the walls, full of books and occasional pieces of recycled pet furniture. One floor-ceiling tower was filled entirely with old radios, police scanners, walkie talkies and the like.

The old man himself lay where he usually did, propped up in a nest of pillows and blankets in a box-like bed in the centre of the room. He presented an impossibly gaunt figure: papery-brown skin layered like peeling paint across sharp bones, with eyes so thickly clouded they sat like grey-milk marbles in unclosing sockets. His face looked scorched, blackened at the edges of the old dry wounds that had taken his nose, torn away most of his lips, and presumably shattered the broken fangs that jutted from his mouth. There was – as usual – a huge white rat lazing across his chest, nearly the size of a terrier and wearing a dark silken ribbon, and its sharp crimson eyes fixed on Nox as she entered.

She bowed her head, and tried not to leave bloody footprints on the rug.

“I need a temporary Invitation,” she said. It was blunt, but there was no point in dancing around it. He’d already know anyway. As she spoke, the huge rat sat up. It’s pale paws were clasped in front of it, folded in a strangely human-like gesture, but Karloff himself turned his head only slightly.

“’Belton,” he said softly, in the throat-based hush of his voice, and Nox nodded. Her fingers twitched into fists, and she felt the sticky remnants of gore slide between them.

“I… I’m running out of options, and she – ” the words were sticker than her fingers, getting caught on her lips “ – she’s real bad.”

The rat cocked its head and Karloff drew a slow breath.

“You will not do it?” he asked. Nox’ throat tightened.

“If I gotta. But I want him to see her, cos I – I could do this, but I ain’t got a snowball’s chance of doing anything about it.”

Karloff’s head turned further, and the clouded eyes passed over her with an intensity that Nox could feel, as if they skipped sight entirely and went right into her heart instead. There was another stretched moment of silence, then the pressure dropped and the rat turned away, curling itself neatly under its master’s chin.

“It is done,” Karloff said. The long fingers on one hand twitched slightly, and the faintest hint of a frown dug into his face. “...take care with the old death. You have seen little of him.”

“Yeah, I know. Thank you,” Nox added before she headed out again; first to check that the cocktail of drugs had at least calmed the kid’s screams, then back into the upper house. A few rats followed her as she slid into the squeaking, busy dimness of the runs to use the sink that still stood in one corner, using brownish water to at least scrub some of the stains from her hands. Then she set to wait, pacing with nervous energy.

No one joined her. By now, everybody would know what was happening, and no one wanted to be around when he came calling.

The problem – okay, so one of the problems, in a dreadful, tangled ball of ever-more layered problems – was that it was very, very difficult to kill a fledgeling in any way that could be considered humane. A body already in the process of tearing itself apart was resistant to most damage for the same reasons that you couldn’t punch a fog. Getting any kind of drug to land in an even-partly vampiric system was difficult enough at the best of times, and this…

Well, there was sunlight, but everything about Nox’s very being baulked at the idea of using that method. She knew with personal, hellish intimacy that the agony from that would get through even a Change. Torturing someone to death with one of the few things worse than what they were going through was really not the point.

Plus, there was a tiny, tiny part of her mind that hoped she was wrong. She’d only been dealing with this stuff for a handful of years, and while rumours varied widely about how old Belton actually was, he’d seen a lot of shit. Maybe she’d missed something. Just maybe…

It seemed to take an eternity before the roar of an engine outside broke through Nox’ whirling thoughts. She hurried to the door, took a careful breath, and peered out through the little viewing slot. Not that anyone else would have been able to ride a motorcycle up to the Homestead without the permission of Karloff’s Invitation, but it never hurt to keep caution.

A huge bike was settled just beside the front steps. It was black, but in the way a magpie’s wings were black, with oil-slick iridescence hinting around the edges. The rider – dressed to match, in that seamless continuity of clothing that Nox had started to think of as ‘vampire sunscreen’ – had already dismounted and was stood beside his bike, the raven-sheen of his helmet turned towards the door. There was no visible gaze to meet, but the weight of his attention was like ice down her spine, and she opened the door as deliberately as she could.

“She’s downstairs,” she said, as the figure came up the steps. The sun was already going down, barely spilling dying light over the surrounding wall of buildings, and the porch shadow was very deep there. It only got deeper as the big man stepped into it – and then paused, right on the edge of the frame.

“May I enter?” His voice was never as heavy as she expected, with a melodic edge that absolutely did not match what she knew lay under that helmet. Nox rolled her eyes.

“I texted you, and you’re here, right?”

He was always so… old fashioned about this. It wasn’t like it was a general requirement. Nox stepped back, gesturing inwards.

“Come in already,” she added. The man might have been big – although ‘fucking enormous’ would be a better description, needing to visibly turn and duck to get through the doorframe – but he moved deceptively fast, and was well inside the hallway, starting to remove his helmet before she had had time to shut the door. She turned to look, not even pretending not to stare as he unclipped all the security bits and lifted it smoothly free. The dramatic effect was only slightly spoiled by the oddly-bulging balaclava he had on underneath – but Nox supposed that if her ears could meet at the back, she’d want to keep them restrained inside a helmet too.

Belton looked… well, he looked like Belton. There just plain wasn’t anyone else like that. The best description she had ever been able to come up with was that he looked like someone had tried very hard to make a bat in the character creation screen of a pro-wrestling computer game. It was as if the underlying architecture that should have made a human skull had been stretched and tweaked and twisted into something approaching Chiroptera from the other side.

It probably said something worrying about her own psyche that – somewhere in the mess of emotions that Belton inspired – a part of her really, really wanted to see an xray of his head.

No time for this.

“C’mon,” she nodded him to follow her back down the Homestead’s passageways. The rats watched them from every surface; their skittering highways unusually still as the majority of glinting little eyes were fixed on the visitor. They were the only visible watchers, and Nox tried not to notice how empty every space they passed through was. It added another level of eeriness, with the just-abandoned debris of life seeming like some extremely localised Rapture. Even Nox’ rapid explanation of the situation fell muted around them; for his part, Belton just listened and nodded every now and then. He didn’t look around.

How familiar was he, with this place? He’d come a few times since she’d been here – and of course, that first time meant he’d sure known where it was. Nox’ gaze slid sideways. Belton had removed his gloves by now, and the hands revealed couldn’t even remotely be thought of as human; the fingers were too long, bone and tendons standing stark beneath mottled grey skin; capped by black claws that curled from the nailbeds, polished to an obsidian gleam.

How many times had those hands run across the outer walls of the Homestead; at Karloff’s limits; searching for a way in? How many times had those claws torn into sagging flesh, or crushed furry watchers into broken blindness?

How many times had he come before he had brought her here; a crispy mess of fledgeling coated in sand and gravel and gore, spat out by the desert and into hands that immortals feared…?

The plastic curtain seemed to rise up like an exclamation, a cold shot of right now breaking her thoughts, and Nox came to a sharp halt. There was still sound from inside: a bubbling, slurred collage of moans that had made it past the drugs, and her hand froze halfway to the curtain. The swell of renewed, visceral revulsion felt like she’d choke on her own fucking hypocrisy, and she couldn’t suppress a slight hiss.

“It’s – ” she started, through gritted teeth, but cut out as Belton gently touched her shoulder.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Nox’ fingers twitched, then she turned away, moving until she could lean heavily against the nearest concrete pillar and rested her forehead against the pitted surface. The groan might as well have been coming out of the air. It pressed down around her and her skin crawled.

She hated this, and she hated that she hated it like this. Some depraved motherfucker had dragged a fucking child into very literal hell and she’d tried, she’d tried with every stupid, macguivered bullshit tool she’d put together out of garbage; she’d tried everything and it was never going to have meant a damn thing and all she could focus on, really really focus on right now was how fundamentally disgusting that fucking sound was –

And then it stopped.

Nox physically sagged against the pillar, relief and nausea chasing each other through a stomach that was dropping into her boots. There was only one reason for the sudden silence, and she let her eyes slide closed, muttering the same half-wordless prayer she’d always used when a case went bad, or a patient flatlined in the ambulance. Whatever that meant now, she’d never been sure, but it still sort of fit.

She’d known. She’d known when she picked up that damn phone.

But fuck me if hope isn’t a bitch.

It wasn’t long before there was the faint brush of plastic again and Nox opened her eyes to see Belton smoothing the curtain back behind him, covering the sudden stillness. There was a long moment of silence before he turned to her. His eyes were the most human-looking part of his face, and the grey gaze sought hers.

“I’ll be on my way, then.”

Nox nodded numbly. They went out the way they came; still alone, still watched at every step by a hundred rodent stares. Back up, back to the door and out into the thickening dusk of the evening – and it wasn’t until the porch steps were creaking under his boots that Nox’s nerve rose again.

“Hey – Belton?” she managed, and the big figure paused. He looked back at her and one curled brow raised, moving an ear with it. Nox pulled the Homestead door shut behind her as she sought the right words. “This… ain’t your job, right?”

“I don’t have a real tight specification,” he replied, then shrugged. “But broadly? No. To be honest with you, my boss couldn’t give a rat’s twat what happens with the Nosferatu.”

“So why’d you come?” Those words came fast, but Nox didn’t try to stop them. Belton paused again, then hung his helmet and balaclava over the big bike’s handlebars. He sat down on the steps, hunching a little in that strange shape his back took when he wasn’t standing, and Nox slid down beside him at the unspoken invitation.

Belton shook his head, what might have been a wry smile tugging at the edges of his too-wide lips. Glints of needle teeth flashed in the dusk.

“It’s a question of perspective, see,” he said quietly. “For someone like you? This’ll ruin your whole year. Getting all Lady Macbeth with the inevitable. But for me?” He held up a hand and slowly flexed the clawed fingers. Once; twice; and Nox couldn’t draw her gaze away from the mottled skin as it shifted over his bones. Belton sighed. It was an old sound, so old that any hint of what it might contain had worn away like stone under rain.

“What’s one drop in an ocean? Don’t get me wrong – ” he added, with the edge of smile falling away again “ – I’ll feel bad about it; but I’m not losing myself any sleep.”

She should have been angry. She wanted to be angry, at the casual way this bat-faced bastard just said it; as the so-recent feel of the kid’s crumbling flesh slammed against her thoughts and ghosted under her fingers, and bile she wasn’t even sure she had anymore swirled at the back of her throat. She should be angry.

“...thank you.”

“No need for that,” he replied – but Nox shook her head.

“Nah; there is. Things need saying.” She fidgeted with the hem of her pants for a silent moment, before continuing. “Don’t believe you actually sleep, though.”

This time there was no mistaking that Belton grinned; and the resulting expression was exactly as unpleasant as it sounded.

“No? Not even if I say I’ve got little bats on my pyjamas?”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Now that there’s uncalled for.”

Nox grinned, and even as she did she could almost hear Karloff’s voice in her head. Be wary of the old death.

And yet…

There was another long silence, although this one felt less tense.

…fuck it. When am I gonna get this chance again?

“They found her in the desert,” she said carefully, scuffing dust across the steps with one toe as she spoke; an idle motion to distract herself from the nerves inside. Belton nodded.

“Aye. Letting lady sun do the dirty work. It’s an almost foolproof method, really.”

Nox looked down at her own hands; where the patchwork of thickened tissue traced patterns like dry riverbeds over her pallid brown skin. The sun burned bits went blistered red, then dark and crackly, then sickly pale when that peeled; slowly edging back to her default. It sure as hell wasn’t pleasant; but it wasn’t the chemical-melting collapse of flesh that she’d seen on others.

“So, that make me a fool or an outlier?”

“I said almost.” Belton leaned back a little, looking up into the dark expanse of sky. “Always going to take a risk when you don’t stay to watch. Although I’ll admit it takes some big balls to stick around for that sort of disposal. What with the deeply ingrained phytophobia of your classic vampire, and everything.”

Nox raised her most intact eyebrow.

“This is more about your junk than I want to know.”

Belton laughed. Really laughed; the kind of melodic tone that bordered on a snatch of song and that was so very out of place coming from within that face.

“Oh, I’m not claiming that kind of testicular fortitude. Sunlight scares the piss out of me as much as it ever did. Don’t think it’s the kind of thing you can get over. Built-in, you know?”

“You ride about in the day,” Nox pointed out, and Belton waved a hand back towards his helmet.

“I’ve got some really bespoke protective gear, see. Amazing what’s been done with polymers in the last thirty years.”

Nox blinked.

“…you’ve got bike pleathers?”

“Technically I’ve got an integrated neo-polymer baselayer,” Belton stopped and his nose crinkled – which was quite an extensive expression. “…ah fuck, that sounds like I’ve got plastic pants, doesn’t it? Keep that one to yourself, will you?”

“Sure.” Nox’s shoulders sagged again as reality dropped back suddenly. She decided to just go for blunt. “With… the kid. Someone did that, and before that they – ” her words choked again, at the thought of where some of those peri-sire wounds had been.

“I know.” The amusement had gone from Belton’s voice as he stood up, heading back to his bike rather abruptly. The engine roared into life as he swung himself astride it, folding his ears into their cover, and Nox had to shout to be heard above the rumble.

“Do they… just get away with this?”

“There’s plenty that think they should,” he replied calmly; oddly easy to hear over the din, as he slid the helmet into place. “It was like that for a long time.”

Nox’s lips drew back, almost of their own accord, working to some defiant instinct she only had partial control over.

“And you?”

“Me? I’m a monster on a chain that I put there.” Belton looked up, and just before the visor snapped closed, there was a flicker of crimson in his eyes.

“But I’ll see what I can do.”

#Entofic #Vampire Nonsense #urban fantasy #The Vegas Masqerade #Nosferatu grocery shopping #terrible daywalkers #this WWE-manbat-looking mofo #I'm not warning for 'blood' on a vampire setting #help the plot keeps happening

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