Archive of Our Own

“How do you figure only the one person gets Hanahaki?” Freddie blurts over the dull tones of the narrator, “considering the feelings are always returned in the end, in the stories at least.”

Brian shifts slightly, not quite awake but craving the company. He nuzzles further against Freddie’s thigh and lets out a tiny sigh before settling in that space between sleep and awareness.

“It’s probably a genetic thing,” John says.

“I have always heard they had a seed in their lungs.”

“Then why don’t they just remove it?”

“Maybe it only gets bigger once the feelings start?”

“It’s a convenient disease.”

“Boys,” Freddie lets out a sigh, scratching at Brian’s scalp lightly, “taking the romance out of everything.”

“I don’t see how choking on plants is romantic,” John says.

Brian hums and leans slightly into Freddie’s touch.

“What do you think, Brimi?”

“S’ strange,” he slurs.

“Outstanding, the entire thing has been solved,” Roger says dryly.

“But you think we’d have more knowledge,” John pauses, “it all sounds fake.”

“There are about 150 cases per year.”

Freddie’s hand skims down from his hair to his throat, before poking him in the cheek. Brian wrinkles his nose and rolls way from the hand trying to get comfortable again.

“Go to bed.”

“Dun wanna.”

Freddie laughs and the vibrations sink through Brian’s skin and settle somewhere in his lungs. The poking stops and Brian rolls back and presses his shoulders against the body behind him. He hears John and Roger continue their bickering and feels Freddie interject more than he hears him.

They have had more nights like this since Brian got out of the hospital with hepatitis. He grimaces as his liver twitches in a reminder.

Eventually, the conversation drops off and the narration fills the room. Brian rolls over, trying to block out the questions now spinning in his head. Hanahaki seems impossible, flowers and roots growing in the lungs until they kill a person. What do they feed off? How do they even manage to grow? If there are 150 cases, how many die of it?

More importantly, how do the flowers know that the person you love doesn’t love you back? A chemical reaction, but again –

“Oh, we turned on your brain,” Freddie is petting his hair again, “sorry.”

Brian cracks open an eye and glares tiredly at Freddie. The singer is grinning at him, his dark eyes filled with mirth. He doubts that Freddie is very apologetic at all.

“Anyway,” Roger leans back with an exaggerated groan.

The interruption startles him out of his Freddie-daze. Brian flushes and turns enough to look at Roger. There is no use in staring when he knows that it will make his feelings worse. Freddie thinks him a friend first.

“We’ll be halfway across the country this time tomorrow. I think I’ll go to bed early.”

Brian pushes himself up from Freddie’s lap, rubbing his palms over his eyes and trying to wake his body up. Roger extends his hand and Brian takes it before leaning heavily against him.

“Taking Bri with me.”

“Night,” John calls, settling something against the table.

“See you two tomorrow,” Freddie says, “good night Brian. Roger.”

Roger drops him against his bed before crawling up next to him. Brian nuzzles into the blond’s shoulder.

“Don’t have a show tomorrow,” a yawn cuts him off and cuts his thought off.

“Travel, close enough.”

Brian laughs, “you think we are born with a seed in our lungs?”

“We’re all born with the ability to love,” he feels Roger’s chest lift in a shrug, “makes as much sense as choking on a rose.”

“Not always roses,” Brian murmurs.

Roger chuckles and pulls on a curl. Brian smiles softly and stretches out his legs to tangle with Roger. He opens an eye to pout at his bedmate as Roger wiggles an arm underneath his head.

“Why does everyone play with my curls,” he whines when Roger spends a few minutes separating them.

“Because they’re fun.”

Brian huffs and closes his eyes again, dramatically dropping his head against Roger’s arm. He knows that this position won’t last long, Roger hates when any part of his body falls asleep including his brain.

“I don’t get it,” Roger whispers.

He drops his head against Roger’s head in protest of being woken up.

“If you’re going to die for a person that doesn’t love you, why?”

“Because you love them,” Brian replies.

“That’s dumb.”

“Yes, love is dumb. Sleep is smart.”

Roger laughs, “alright, alright, we can sleep.”

“It was your idea.”

“Sleep, Brian.”

He kicks at Roger’s shins before sticking his leg in between them. Roger lets out a tiny grumble of discomfort before he rests his forehead against Brian’s. Their breath mingles together.

“Second world tour,” Roger says breathlessly, he is already dropping off the cliff of sleep, “we’re going to make it through this one.”

Brian smiles, glad that his grimace is hidden by Roger’s closed eyes. He frees his hand and rubs against his side, picturing the seed-sized lump just centimeters below his skin. The x-ray showed the first curls of roots climbing up from his bottom lobe.

He had been told to be thankful it was only one lung. They said it wouldn’t be as painful of a death, and that if he does the surgery now, he has a good chance of living with no side effects – aside from the obvious. Brian declined and they sent him home with pamphlets of information, about the disease and disease management and end of life care.

He regrets that he doesn’t know how long he has, the disease changes depending on the person – and since he didn’t know the exact moment he fell in love they can only give estimates.

The doctor gave him a year at the optimistic end but told him that he should have his affairs settled within the next six months. Brian didn’t bother telling him that he was going to travel the world in a rock band. His bag rattles with pills and he has drunk more water this past month than his entire life.

“Brian, sleep,” Roger reaches up and slaps his hand over Brian’s cheek.

“Right, right. Sorry.”

They’re in Gothenburg. Brian has fallen in love with Sweden, the clean air, and the general atmosphere he has spent the last few days of the tour trying to memorize the 100 most commonly used phrases in Swedish. Roger has spent the time he is glued to his hips making fun of his pronunciation.

Brian roams around the streets by himself, Roger taking off with John to browse for Swedish beers and delicacies. Freddie spent last night enjoying the nightlife and so he is sleeping in today. He shoves his hands in his pockets and kicks at the cobblestones.

There is a tickle in his throat, and he clears it before stopping to sniff a flower vendor. He smiles at her and plucks a daisy from the stand and tugs out of a coin, she gives him the change and then winks at him.

Brian winks and then checks the street sign, frowning when he realizes that he has no idea where he is at. His brain wandered and so did his feet but not in the same direction. He turns back to the vendor, struggling to recall any of the phrases he studied so diligently.

“Hej,” he rubs the back of his neck.

“Hej,” the vendor responds with a bemused smile, “hur mår du?”

“Jag pratar,” Brian clears his throat, knowing it sounds as broken as it feels in his mouth, “inte Svenska. Talar du Engelska?”

He blushes fiercely at the fact that he had pronounced it much like the English J and made the V a hard F. The vendor smiles.

“I do, very little,” the woman says.

“Er, great,” he mumbles, “how do I get to the Haga district?”

“Have you a map?”

Brian digs around his pocket for the crumpled map he has stolen from the tour docket, then slaps around his pockets for one of his pens that he keeps around in case he needs to write down song lyrics.

The woman draws a few lines and then hands it back, “follow that.”

“Tack.”

Brian tries to orientate himself and once he does, he smiles when in relief. He is only about three blocks away from where he wanted to be. Quickly the stone buildings turn to wood and his nose is overwhelmed with the smell of fresh bread and cinnamon. He kicks around trying to figure out where the busiest but cheapest café is.

It takes him an hour to finally find a place where he can sit and dig into the Hagabulle, which he thinks is just a cinnamon roll with a fancy name so they can sell it for more. A few people stare at him as they pass, murmuring something that sounds distinctively like “hippie.” He frowns because they’re saying it in English.

The tickle in his throat is back. He clears it, but the sensation only aggravates it further and he is setting the pastry down next to him as he desperately tries to clear whatever is stuck. Brian turns his head and starts to cough into his arm. The coughs feel thick like they would if he were bringing up phlegm. Brian wheezes and air isn’t going past the blockage in this throat, but finally, finally, the phlegm dislodges and he hacks it into his shirt.

Which. Gross.

Brian turns to grab a napkin and turns only to see a petal sticking to his elbow. He bites down on his lip and pulls the daisy from where he has it tangled in the curls. There doesn’t appear to be one missing and he clears his throat. Something sticks to his tongue and he plucks it from his mouth. Another white petal.

That makes two. They’re smaller than the ones of the flower in his other hand, as though they were torn from a young sprout. Brian closes his hand over them briefly before tossing them and the daisy down next to them. He grabs his Hagabulle and tosses it into the rubbish bin as he passes.

Then he dips into an alley not too far from the park that he had been resting in. He leans his head against the wall and stares up and the sky. It’s the same as the London sky from back home.

He will get to see that sky one more time at least. They are in Spain last and then they’re home for the holidays. America in February and Brian tries to shove the guilt down to the roots of the flower. The tour would take them to America (again), but then Brian had to fall in love with someone that he knows won’t love him back.

Freddie is the sun. His sun. Brian is the night that cradles him, but they would never be able to make it work properly. But god, does he want that. Maybe that can be his dying wish, to know what a kiss from Freddie feels like.

Then he shakes his head because that would be too telling about who he died for.  He doesn’t want Roger to hate his best friend and for Freddie to hold any sort of guilt on his shoulders and for his death to be that much more painful for John because he doesn’t need to lose more than one friend.

He pushes off the wall and navigates his way back using the map the flower vendor gave him and then he tries to remember how to get back to the hotel.

Roger and John stumble into him when he thinks that he is about five or so blocks away. John’s eyes are glassy and there is a slight red tinge to his cheeks and Roger has a cigarette hanging from his lips, partly burned down.

“Find your wood houses?” Roger says.

“Yeah, thinking about moving here,” Brian jokes.

Then he clears his throat and pushes the thought about the flowers from his brain. Looks like he is going to be coughing up daisies, which is strange because he would have thought Freddie would get a stronger flower – but Brian should be happy it isn’t roses.

They kill you faster, or so he has heard.

“Well, Fred should be up,” John slurs, “and I want dinner.”

“You always want dinner,” Roger remarks absently.

“I need to make a call when we get back to the hotel,” Brian says, “but that should be enough time to sober up a little.”

Roger watches him.

“I told Mum I’d call her when I had one of those pastries.”

“How was it?”

“Expensive.”

John snorts.

Roger holds him tightly in Munich. Brian had been spitting up petals all day, but he hides it under the guise of bad sausage, John had been living in the bathroom for that reason most of the day, so it is not unbelievable.

Multiple petals mean that the flowers are blooming, and he can feel them. It's so weird to feel something as you breathe, it’s like long grass tickling his calf. The crew is noticing a cough and some nights his voice goes hoarse halfway through the show.

Now Roger holds him tightly as he sits up in bed sputtering petals into the rubbish bin. His hand is shaking as it rubs up and down Brian’s back.

“Feeling any better?” Roger frowns, “I don’t think there is anything left in you.”

Brian shrugs and rubs his head against the edge of the bin. The pain helps, but it is mostly behind his nose and throat. He wants to hide the petals as best he can. It’s hard. So hard.

How has Roger not seen it is beyond him. Maybe he doesn’t want to.

“I suppose,” Brian replies, “hard to say.”

Brian closes his eyes and thinks about Freddie under the hot lights of their last concert. How he owned the stage with his presence and enthralled the audience with simple a wave of his hand. They had a good show.

Incredible. Brian falls more in love with Freddie on the stage, but he can’t go deeper for Freddie when they’re hanging out on the tour bus. Freddie had won scrabble with superstitious last round and then denies cheating.

Roger’s breath carries the deep scent of cigarette and it tickles Brian’s nose and now he is back over the bin coughing up what feels like a shard of glass but is realistically three more petals.

“Can you shower?”

“Why?”

“Cigarette smoke, s’making me feel worse.”

“Fuck. Brain. Shoulda said something earlier.”

Roger moves away from him and then scratches his head before heading to the shower. Brian doesn’t know that it was the smoke, but now that someone else isn’t sharing the air with him, he thinks that he can breathe easier. There are two knocks on his door, followed by what sounds like seventeen more.

He kicks the rubbish bin to the side, hoping that the petals stay inside of it and that whoever it is doesn’t want to do random room checks. Hotels don’t do that, but hey, he doesn’t know that for a fact. Different country.

Brian opens the door after he peers through the peephole and sees Freddie dressed in an imperial jumper. It is his and that makes his chest feel too full. The collar has been stretched out and shows a little too much of Freddie’s shoulder and the sleeves cover his hands.

Brian is sure if he weren’t already dying of Hanahaki, the seed would have been planted at this moment as he stares at Freddie’s wide dark eyes.

He opens the door, hoping his smile just looks tired.

“Hey, Freddikins,” Brian says.

“Don’t call me that,” Freddie sniffs and then tilts his head, “you have company?”

“Just Rog, we were talking.”

“Oh, I can come back. Or talk to you in the morning.”

Freddie shifts from foot to foot and then nibbles on his bottom lip. Brian flushes and holds out his hand, wrapping around Freddie’s arm.

“Hey,” Brian says quietly, “come in.”

Freddie doesn’t need much more than that and Brian doesn’t know how Freddie can’t see how incredible he is, how he is such a wonderful person, that Brian is completely gone for him – so much so that he is choking on flower buds.

“I just, well I know how you miss me.”

“Sure. I’m not still mad about the scrabble game,” Brian says lightly.

“Well, now I know you are,” Freddie crosses his arms.

“Maybe a little, Rog and I are going to put itching powder in your suitcase.”

“It doesn’t work if you tell me.”

Brian raises an eyebrow, “doesn’t it?”

Freddie laughs and touches Brian’s arm. Brian’s cheeks turn red and he clears his throat, turning around and realizing that the room doesn’t look like he and Roger were just talking, and the bed is wrinkled and now he is in the shower. Brian’s lips are puffy and there are a hundred different things that Freddie might be thinking that is happening.

“Anyway,” Freddie spins and drops on the bed.

Brian sits down gently, rubbing at his chest and clearing his throat again. He loves hot showers when he has a head cold, but there is a part of him that wonders if the water makes the flowers grow.

“You haven’t been swimming much,” Freddie looks at the ceiling.

“It’s December.”

“But we have an indoor pool, I thought you’d be impossible to pull from it.”

“Just too tired from the tour.”

He lays down next to Freddie and looks at him in the eyes. They stare at each other and the world falls away. Brian’s confession sits on the tip of his tongue, but Roger is charging through the door.

Roger stares at them, a little too intently and his hair is wrapped up in a towel, but he takes it down so he can shake it over them as he passes the bed.

“Roger, you bastard,” Freddie screeches.

“You took my spot.”

“There’s plenty of room.”

Roger looks between them, the gaze is still sharp and Brian is reminded that Roger isn’t just another pretty drummer, smart enough to keep up with him but carefree enough that it doesn’t bother him to not be the smartest in the room.

“Is there?”

Freddie hums and then groans as Roger lays on top of them. They giggle at each other and Brian can feel the world close around them as they wrestle and tug at each other. Brian watches their smile and drinks in the laughter. He tries to remember this moment so that he has something happy out of these days instead of the looming feeling of death.

He rolls away when Roger’s elbow comes a little too close to his groin for comfort. It makes them settle though, and Roger rolls off him, hooking Brian by the waist and dragging him back over.

Brian sucks in the heat. His fingertips have been cold lately. Sometimes in the right look, they look like they are turning blue.

“So, what brings you to Brian’s room?” Roger asks after a moment.

“I could ask you the same.”

“Brian and I were planning our revenge for scrabble.”

“So, he said,” Freddie eyes them warily.

“Well?” Roger prompts, “I promise it isn’t itching powder.”

Brian snorts because Freddie pulls at his jumper before worrying at the skin around his nail. Eventually, Freddie reaches over to hold Brian’s hand over Roger’s hip. Roger huffs and mumbles something about hating to be in the middle.

“I had a dream.”

“Is this another weird song dream?” Roger yawns, “because I am too tired to try and make sense of that.”

“No. I dreamt – well it doesn’t matter much but it wasn’t a pleasant dream and Brian’s face always makes me feel better.”

Roger tenses and huffs, “Oi.”

Brian hides his blush behind his hair. He feels Roger’s eyes on him, and he truly hopes that the blond doesn’t figure it out. Their friendship – or whatever they call it, Roger and Freddie hardly act like a normal friendship – will save each other when dies. If they don’t fall apart, then John won’t and maybe they can still have Queen.

He can’t deny the blood-soaked petals that drift down his shirt and in between them. Blood always makes things worse; Brian thinks. With blood, you can’t deny you’re running out of sand in your hourglass. Roger hasn’t said anything, despite one of the petals resting on the back of his hand, Brian flicks it off and it kickstarts time.

Roger is up on his feet pacing.

Brian watches him with some fond exhaustion, he can see the gears turning in his head, probably thinking about everything he knows from the few times he paid attention in biology, any helpful tidbits that might make this easier. He clears his throat, wincing as he feels shifting in his lungs. There is a rod in his lung, rigid and even without an x-ray Brian can picture the roots invading the lower lobe of his lungs.

“It’s still early,” Roger moves so that he is straddling Brian and pulls him forward so that he is against his chest. He sighs and there is the tiniest wheeze to the edge of it. Brian is getting really fucking tired of seeing daisy petals.

“When did you cough up your first one?”

“Do you want to talk about this?”

“The thing killing you?” Roger challenges and then drops his head against Brian’s shoulder, “no. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Then let’s not.”

“Sure, let’s ignore it. That’s fixed so many things before.”

Roger tenses at Brian’s silence and moves his head back like he has been struck by lightning, “you aren’t doing the surgery.”

He looks up, confused, but then he sees the pained pinch of Roger’s brow and the twist to his lips. Brian can count on one hand the number of times he has seen the blond upset enough to cry. The sun catches properly on his hair, the sunlight kissing his skin golden. Brian has always known Roger was pretty, but now he feels it.

“Roger,” he starts to say but those wide blue eyes are making his throat close.

It could be the daisies too.

“I’m not,” Brian confirms quietly.

“Fuck,” Roger sits back on the bed.

He is playing with the ends of his hair, running his hands down the same strand until its shine is dulled with oil.  Roger is falling against his chest, his knees resting on top of Brian’s thighs as he tugs on his shirt.

“Fuck,” he repeats.

Brian holds Roger against him, he focuses on his breathing, trying to keep it even and deep and not the quick shallow breaths he has gotten used to as the days have passed.

“It’s only in one lung.”

“Oh,” Roger says with watery bitterness, “that’s alright then. Carry on.”

He sighs which causes him to cough. His head is turned away from Roger, but he knows that the spasming in his lung is no longer unknown. Firm hands rest against his side, his fingers digging into the skin as though he can rip the flower from the roots himself. Brian doesn’t think he needs to tell Roger that he is afraid the stems have gotten stronger.

“And it isn’t me?” Roger asks softly almost desperate.

Brian shakes his head and Roger deflates, confusion flutters in his heart (it might be the leaves in his chest), Roger didn’t love him? At least not in the way that would give him a cure to Hanahaki.

“I’d love you in any way I could have you, Bri, you know that.”

“Close friendship doesn’t count,” he wheezes.

Their foreheads get pressed together in a too familiar embrace, where their breath tangles together. Roger rubs their heads together. The broken edge of Roger’s voice cuts him, Brian keeps his eyes away from Roger’s.

“I wish it were me,” Roger plays with his curls, “at least then I could save you.”

“I’m sorry.”

Roger closes his eyes and Brian reaches up to rub the tears away from under his eyes. They sit like this for several minutes before he feels Roger shift and now his head is buried in Brian’s neck. Brian drags them backward; it is easier for him to breathe if he can fully expand his chest. There isn’t any pressure on his chest (at least no external pressure) as Roger lets his body weight drop to the bed beside them.

“Can I know who?”

“It’s fine.”

“You’re dying.”

“Yeah.”

That makes Roger sit up, the grief swallowed by the bright anger in his eyes. Brian watches him drag his bottom lip between his teeth before letting out a long sigh. And he wishes that he could focus on the grief instead of Roger’s lips. Falling in love with Roger when they’d only have a few months? Now that would be cruel, and it wouldn’t happen. Roger might promise to love him now, but he could never love Brian like that.

“Just like that. You’re going to die?”

“What can I do?”

“Have the surgery? Confess? Anything is better than just accepting it.”

Brian looks away, Roger’s waves of emotion are too much for him right now. He had spent hours staring at the walls of various hotel rooms during this tour. They are going to America in barely two months and he knows this is the last new year that he is going to live through.

“The surgery removes all love for that person,” Brian rolls over, “and there is a chance that it completely takes your ability to love, romantically.”

“So?” Roger drops down behind him, pressing his knees in the creases of Brian’s.

“Rog…”

“I know, I know,” he hooks his chin against Brian’s shoulder, “but when it’s between love and your life, not even all love, it seems like an easy choice to make.”

Brian lets out a long sigh. He knows it doesn’t make sense, but he feels so deeply that he is afraid of what would happen to him if he can’t feel like that.

“I can’t explain it,” Brian mumbles.

Roger sighs, his breath tickles Brian’s neck and he shivers as he leans back in Roger's embrace. Hands play with the hem of his shirt; Roger’s hands slip underneath and stroke his belly lightly.

“Okay,” Roger breathes, “okay. We can – we can figure this out.”

Brian covers Roger’s hands with his own, “can we?”

“I don’t know,” he feels Roger’s head drop against his shoulder, “but I’ll be with you this entire time.”

“You don’t have to put yourself through this.”

“I’m not going to let you die alone.”

“You –”

“You’re sitting here, telling me I have, that I’m running out of,” lets out a sigh, and it sounds like the fight is leaving him, “you’re in front of me and telling me that you’re going to die – and that there’s nothing that can stop it and you want me to what? Pretend like nothing is wrong.”

“When you put it like that…”

“You!” Roger doesn’t finish the thought.

Brian tangles his fingers into Roger’s hair and lets out a long breath, it cracks in the middle and ends with a strained wheeze. Roger gives a full-bodied wince and Brian is certain that there is a stem in his heart now because it feels like something is stabbing it.

“Please let me have this.”

And what can Brian do but agree?

Brian gets a full daisy flower for Christmas. He woke up feeling dizzy and for once it's not the eggnog that Freddie had spiked too heavily making him feel like it. His room spins around him, and it feels like he is being squeezed, but only on one side.

Roger has an arm hanging limply over his stomach, blowing puffs of hot air against his throat. His breath is tinged with the sourness of morning and state booze. He wrinkles his nose as Brian rolls onto his feet but quickly settles in the warmth that Brian is leaving behind.

The walk to the bathroom feels like a marathon, and by the time he is diving towards the toilet, he doesn’t know that he isn’t collapsing. Brian coughs and spits into the basin. When he opens his water-blurred eyes he sees the singular flower drifting aimlessly on top of the water, with red spiraling out of it.

Brian spreads his hands out against the wall behind him, digging his fingers nails into the wood paneling. He leans against it and bites down on his lip. Flowers aren’t good. The petals weren’t good. This whole damn disease is a death sentence and now he is surprised when it's killing him.

He closes the lid and flushes away the evidence. Brian pulls himself up and stares at himself in the mirror for a second, hoping that he is imaging the blueish tinge on his lips. His chest spasms as he takes in a deep breath. It's so strange, feeling one lung work as normal and then feeling the full and crunchy part of the other one.

Brian wipes the staining from his lips and spits up a few more petals before stumbling back to the bedroom. He drops back to the bed, more than content to sleep. The doctors had said that sleeping is the easiest thing for him to do. Since breathing is automatic and respirations are triggered by activity, sleeping is the least harmless.

Roger wraps around him again, cracking one eye open and mumbling something that isn’t anywhere close to words.

“I’m fine,” Brian responds, “just had to use the loo.”

The second daisy comes later that afternoon when he is dressing himself up to go to another Christmas party. He is visiting his parents in a few days; they had gone up to Scotland to spend time with his mum’s family and it didn’t work out. At least he will get to spend the new year with them.

He can’t stop the sudden urge to cough, dropping himself against the wall to keep himself upright. Roger turns his head to the sound and then there’s a bucket under him. Brian coughs and coughs until he swears he can feel his lung ripping, and another blood-soaked daisy is in the bin.

Roger looks up at him, “shit.”

Brian shrugs, “doesn’t have a stem yet.”

He had hoped that his voice wouldn’t be so raspy, and he hopes he can figure something out for their coming concerts because people are going to notice. Brian doubts that he will be able to finish a line.

“Come sit down,” Roger whispers.

“Okay.”

He sits down and then falls back to the bed with his arms over his head. It is easier to breathe.

“So, when are you going to the doctor?”

“I’ve got an appointment in January, already.”

The appointment had been a longshot, to his doctor, at least thinking that Brian might be gone by December. If there aren’t any stems, then there are still a few months left of this disease.

Fuck. Months sound like years, and it doesn’t feel like he will be able to use that time the best that he can. He rubs one hand down his face and turns to Roger who is watching him with those wide blue eyes again.

“I’ll be okay,” Brian closes his eyes as the words rub his exhausted throat.

“You won’t be.”

He opens his eyes again to see Roger resting his head on his palm, one leg under him as he stares at the bin across the room. Brian pushes himself up, hiding the wince to reach out a shaky hand to Roger. There is a rough sort of beauty to him, and Brian would have liked to capture it on film.

“Let's not go tonight,” he offers.

Roger twists his head around and stares at the offered hand before he pulls it to his chest. Brian feels the steadiness of his heartbeat, uninhibited, and slightly fast. Roger’s heart has always been strong, Brian knows it from the number of times he has been pulled into a hug after a show.

“Yeah?” Roger lies beside him.

“Yeah,” Brian whispers, “I sort of feel like shit, maybe we can find something on TV.”

“We have some leftovers too.”

“I feel like we should be doing this with Freddie and John.”

Brian closes his eyes and lets out a shaky breath.

“It’ll be our last one then?” Roger doesn’t seem like he is asking for an answer, “I’ll go call them, then, see if they want.”

“Thank you.”

Roger scratches his head before trailing his fingertips down Brian’s stubble. He hadn’t realized how long it had gotten during the break from touring, but somedays he got too breathless to stand for more than a few moments, and shaving seemed secondary to everything.

Brian rolls onto his side, the side free of flowers and steps, and tries to regulate his breathing. He feels better when he can have long and deep breaths, but oftentimes they end up choking him, but fast and quick breaths make him pass out.

He can survive hiding this for a few hours, there hasn’t been a case of someone dying of Hanahaki before the stems form. At least none that have been reported, but Brian has nothing more than faith that it won’t happen to him. He opens his eyes and another urge to cough runs through his body. As the coughing grows more intense, he is barely able to sit upright, but he spits a handful of petals into his hands.

There must be no more flowers today, but he coughs one more time, and blood dribbles down the front of his shirt, only to darken the black fabric more. He drags the back of his hand over his lips and stares at the streaking of red.

“They’re on their way,” Roger says as he enters the room.

He bends down to grab the bin and sets it between Brian’s parted feet before he runs at warm washcloth over his lips.

“I’m sorry,” Brian says when Roger folds over the rag to the clean side.

Roger gently swipes it over his brow before running it down the back of his neck. Brian leans forward and presses his head into the soft of Roger’s belly.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Roger says finally, “I agreed to help you with this.”

“Why?”

“You’re asking me that?”

“Yes.”

Roger swipes the rag down his neck again before cupping Brian’s face. The rag slops to the bed before sliding onto the floor. Brian closes his eyes as his throat is straightened out and he struggles to breathe through the pain. The grip eases enough.

“It’s because – you’re my best friend, and sure there about a million other things I’d rather do on Christmas night…”

Brian laughs because Roger’s honesty is relaxing.

“But if this is the last one I’m going to have with you because if this is the last one then I don’t mind if I have to clean you up and hold your hand through the worst of it.”

He knows Roger wants to argue about the surgery again, but since that night in Barcelona, Roger hasn’t brought it up again.

“You’re my best friend, Brian,” Roger tugs on his curls, and it takes him a second to realize that Roger is gathering them into a ponytail.

“If I’m going to have to live fifty years without you, I want as many memories as I can have.”

“Roggie…”

Roger tilts his head and smiles, it's still a little cheeky but a lot sad and Brian knows that the pain in his chest this time has nothing to with the flowers. He reaches his arms up and hugs Roger around the waist.

“You’re my best friend too.”

“So, it isn’t me,” Roger lets out a long breath – almost in relief.

“I told you…”

“I know, but sometimes you say something, it is twelve steps removed from what you were thinking.”

“I don’t lie to you.”

Roger pats his cheek once more, “I think I hear the door. Get yourself a little more breath and come join us.”

Brian smiles as Roger steps away.

He can hear someone talking in the distance and Roger responding. Brian keeps his eyes closed as he spends a few moments making his breathing into something that he thinks other people aren’t going to notice as off. There is something to be said about breathing being an automatic process, thinking about it is exhausting.

Freddie and Roger are already wrestling with each other when he steps into their view.

“Hey, careful,” he whispers.

The pair breaks apart and Freddie’s eyes meet his, his lips falling into a frown, and Brian hates being the cause of it. Freddie should only ever be smiling.

“Oh, you do look dreadful.”

“Thanks,” he laughs.

“Well when Rog said you were sick, I thought it was the hungover kind, you looked rather unsteady when you two left last night.”

“Nope, it’s the natural kind of sick. Body hates me.”

“And I’m sure you’ve been ignoring it for days.”

Brian ignores Roger’s look and lets Freddie guide him to the couch. He understands why they don’t exactly trust him when it comes to his health. They settle down with his head on Freddie’s chest, feeling how effortlessly he breathes. He knows Roger’s eyes watch him and if he looks at the blond, he knows that he will see the gears turning.

“John has to his church thing, but he will be over after,” Roger clears his throat.

Freddie’s hands sink into his curls and Roger picks up his feet. He closes his eyes at the slightly offbeat sensations of them rubbing.

“You’re cold,” Freddie says and twists around.

The knitted blanket drops onto his face but after a few seconds it's wrapped around him and Brian lets out a tired smile.

Brian stays in the taxi long enough that it annoys the driver. His hands are shaking and his lungs rasp with each breath he takes, but he pulls the lightly packed bag and drags it up this chest as he stares at his childhood home. It wouldn’t be so bad if his lips hadn’t taken a permanently blue tinge and he didn’t look like every breath hurt.

Roger had tried to tag along, but Brian shot that down. This will be hard enough without anyone else here. He lets out a wheezing sigh as he steps forward. As he moves to the front door, he bites down on his cheek hard enough to make it bleed.

How do you tell your parents that you’re dying?

Brian raises his fist and knocks on the door, shifting from foot to foot and trying to make his breathing as normal as he can manage. The doctor will tell him out bad it is in a few weeks.

“Brian!” His mother smiles as she throws open the door.

The front of her hair is grayer than the dark brown of his childhood, and there are more wrinkles in her face, but she’s still beautiful. Brian has always been impressed by his mother’s beauty. He wishes that he had gotten some of it, but for the first time, he notices how old she is getting.

Her smile drops as she stops her hug by wrapping her hands around his upper arms.

“Brian, darling?”

He offers a shrug, “is dad home?”

“Yes, yes, we were just setting out tea for your arrival,” she pulls him in and starts fretting over him, smoothing down his shirt and trying to tame his curls.

They’re led into the living room where Harold May is sitting in his chair with the newspaper folded over the arms. Brian winces when his eyes land on him, the words barely contained by his lips pressing together. His mom sits him down on the couch and folds a cup of tea into his hands.

He closes his eyes at the warmth and drinks the too-hot liquid as he struggles to find the words. Maybe he should have written out a speech. Something to answer all the questions on the tip of their tongues.

“Brian, dear, what’s happened?”

He sets the cup down on the table and starts playing with his hands. Brian doesn’t miss the sharp look from his father, and he stops his fidgeting.

“The doctors are working on it,” Brian starts with because it's easier.

“Are you ill again?”

“Yes,” Brian says and his voice breaks.

He doesn’t cry, but he sees his mother’s eyes start to glimmer with tears and he wants to, but he will never get through this explanation if he starts to cry.

“Oh, my boy,” his mom pulls him into a tight hug, her manicured hands scratching the back of his neck and he turns just enough.

Harold is staring at him with a deep frown and Brian flinches.

“I told you that band would lead to nothing good. Last year you collapsed and this year, what?”

“It isn’t because of the band,” Brian says weakly.

“You were healthy, and now you galivant across Europe and come back looking like,” Harold lets out a long breath and takes a drag of his coffee.

“This isn’t because of the band,” Brian repeats.

Harold’s frown is firm and Brian whimpers. He loves his dad, but the sternness is something he has always struggled to handle. His mother indulged him, let him hide behind her skirt when they met the neighbors, and gave him warm drinks every time, he found a hurt animal that he could do nothing to save.

His father had told him that all things die after he sprayed the bumblebee and then made him watch as his cat was buried in the backyard. He wanted Brian to be strong, Brian knows that. Maybe he would be proud that Brian hasn’t cried about this.

But now he is looking at that firm frown and his mother is holding him against her breast, and he knows he is dying. Will die before his parents, die before he is thirty even. Brian sniffles and catches his father’s eyes.

“Daddy,” and he hasn’t called him that since he was six years old and got lost in a market, “please.”

Harold gets up from the chair and sets the cup down on the table before gently pulling Brian away from his mother. The last time his father had hugged him was somewhere around nine years old, trying to toughen Brian up or something but now he sinks into the strong arms of his father.

His mother’s hand still runs up his back. Brian is too scared to say what is killing him because he knows it would hurt them worse. He is glad that he hasn’t had to say that he is going to die because he doesn’t know how to say it, but parents always know he thinks.

“Are you happy?” His father asks him.

The deep voice is muffled by his hair but Brian nods and then the tears start to fall.

“Yes. I don’t regret a second of it.”

He feels his mom pat his back and his father squeezes him tighter. Brian wishes that they could have a happier day together, but he knows that there wasn’t a single way that his mother wasn’t going to notice something was off with him.

He sobs into his father’s chest, sucking in that deep pipe smoke smell, and twists his arms behind him to catch his mother’s hand. Brian hasn’t cried about dying since he went to that doctor – had been too much in shock to cry after. Then he promised to not waste the time feeling sorry for himself because they got a world tour and an album that’s selling (thought their bank accounts couldn’t tell anyone).

He didn’t want this to be about ‘Poor Brian.’

But now he is breaking his parents’ hearts and he doesn’t know what else to do but cry.

His father holds him tighter and his mother soothes him with the words that she used when he was young and shaking from a nightmare.

“You’re so brave, star.”

It is an old old nickname. Like everything else this day, it hasn’t been thought about since he decided that it was too “girly” of a nickname and made his mother stop using it when she picked him up from school.

“Do we,” he hiccups and coughs slightly, “do we still have that old telescope?”

“Yes. Is that what you want to do?”

Brian nods. The telescope had been made for a child, low powered but enough that he could make the moon so much bigger. He had spent hours figuring it all out and then yelling when he managed to get it in perfect frame the first time.

His father had rubbed his head and his mother had excited clapped her hands before asking him to show her.

Brian just sobs harder, for once winning the fight to keep himself from coughing.

He feels like he is buzzing out of his skin when he steps into the doctor’s office. Roger had promised that he would be over at his flat the second he calls, and he thinks that Freddie and John are catching on.

His parents call him daily now, when before they called him once every two weeks. He makes a mental note to make sure all their royalties go them – or the ones he is entitled too.

Brian slumps against the wall. Fuck he must write up a will. He lets out a breath, coughs petals into his hand, which he shoves into his pocket in case the doctor needs them for something and puts one foot in front of the other as he walks to the front desk.

Later. He can deal with that later. They have lawyers – no he will have to hire an outside one otherwise they are going to talk and then the whole damn label is going to know. Including Freddie and John, and he thinks the hardest was telling his parents, but he imagines that any damage that he managed to heal from that conversation will have the scabs pulled from it.

At least Freddie won’t know that it's him killing Brian. And even then, that’s not entirely the right phrasing, it is Brian killing Brian because he fell in love with Freddie.

Maybe he should have brought Roger with him. For the kick in the ass to go through those doors at least.

“I have an appointment,” he manages quietly.

The receptionist gives him an unamused look as if to say, ‘why else would you be here?’

“Name and doctor?”

“May, Brian,” he turns his head and coughs into his elbow, “Erikson.”

The receptionist's face goes from annoyed to pitying. He doesn’t know if it’s because Erikson is one of ten doctors in London that has any qualifications to treat Hanahaki or if it is the daisy petals clinging to his elbows. Probably both, he decides, and then she gestures for him to take a seat.

He taps on his thighs, a nervous jittery rhythm that would have Roger dropping a hand over his with a dry remark like ‘I’m the drummer here, aren’t I?’

“Brian May?” The nurse calls out.

Brian stands coughs again, prays that he isn’t going to cough up a full flower and when he doesn’t, walks towards her. The flowers had been coming every other day, and only one aside from the first day that happened. It is getting more frequent and Brian dreads the day that it happens every day.

Still better than the stems he supposes. If it was just the flowers, he can still hide it. He still has time.

“We’re getting an x-ray right away,” the nurse says, “and then I’ll take you to the room.”

“Chest?” Brian asks needlessly.

“Yes, he says here he wants to see how far it has progressed.”

Brian nods. She asks him to swap into a hospital gown before she takes him into a room that under a normal circumstance he would hate to enter. It is dark and there’s a giant tube in the middle of the room. The table has straps, and well if he gets murdered then he doesn’t have to worry about stems and flowers and lying.

“This is the machine designed specifically for your disease,” the nurse says when he pauses in taking his shoe off, “we’ll be able to get a much clearer picture of your lungs and see what the flowers are doing without having the ribs in the way.”

“Yeah, those pesky ribs,” he wheezes.

The nurse isn’t amused, and Brian knows that he can’t be a comedian, but he thought he would at least get a little smile out of the deal.

He gets strapped down. His lungs twitch with the room to expand as his arms are held above him and he sucks in the air. Brian hates how he doesn’t know that he doesn’t have the oxygen until he is in a position like this. It explains the blue lips and occasionally blue fingertips.

“Take a breath, and hold.”

The urge to cough is strong. He manages to hold it, but just barely. It is like he can feel the flowers in him moving and crawling in the spaces they haven’t found in his lungs. Brian coughs again and then starts choking as he feels a flower as it starts to climb up his throat.

He can’t suck in any air and he can’t turn his head but suddenly he is being slid out of the tub and unfastened and a bin is being shoved under his mouth. Brian digs his fingers into the table for purchase and after a few more terrifying minutes the flower lads with a plop.

“The first one is good enough,” the nurse says, “I’m going to take you to the room once you catch your breath and then get you a drink.”

Brian smiles gratefully and then closes his lips when he sees the blood on the flower.

When he can breathe with only a sporadic cough the nurse helps him swing his legs off to the side and stand up. She keeps the bin, which isn’t a surprise. He had the same thought with the petals.

Brian must stop several times in the short walk to the exam room to catch his breath. The nurse pats his back with a cupped hand, which helps him breathe a little easier and clearer. Brian can still hear the unmistakable wheeze and rasp to his voice.

The water is nice, and he presses the bottle to his forehead and now he feels like he is fevering.

“Doctor Erikson will be in shortly.”

About fifteen minutes, and Brian standing up so he can lean his forehead on the bed, Doctor Erikson turns up.

“Mr. May, how are you doing?”

He turns his head and gives an exhausted look, “you know, breathing.”
Doctor Erikson gives him a sad smile, “well, that is something.”

Brian turns around and hops onto the exam table holding his hands over his head and giving his lungs that room. It wouldn’t help if he were to have another fit now.

The x-rays get placed in the hooks of the lightbox and Brian drops his hands to his laps. Doctor Erikson straightens one before turning to him.

“Well, the disease is progressing as expected.”

Brian hums.

“The flowering stage has come a little faster than estimated, but there still isn’t any sign of a stem attached, and...” Doctor Erikson trails off.

“And…” Brian asks with a wheeze.

“I think it would be best to show you,” Doctor Erikson turns around and clicks the lightbox on.

Brian would think it’s beautiful if it weren’t currently killing him. The shadows are a strange mix of bright white and gray. There are several branches of a stem going through his lungs, all ending with a bud or a flower. One is barely touching near his heart. The flower looks strong, healthy even.

“It’s starting to get to your heart, which is an uncommon complication, but not unheard of.”

Brian ignores the rest of the explanation in favor of staring at the sprouted seed in his other lung. This one has a singular stem growing from it and he can see the bud.

“We call it a secondary infection,” Doctor Erikson follows were his gaze has gone, “what air you were able to manage, and to keep working as normal, is going to be hindered by it.”

There are thorns on the stem.

“It’s a rose, it’s a different flower.”

“That is also a concern, those thorns are going to cause a lot more pain, and since it is a second type, is it possible that you’ve fallen in love with a second person?”

Brian shakes his head.

Doctor Erikson lets out a long breath, “have you reconsidered having the surgery?”

“I don’t want it,” Brian says, “I don’t think I can’t live with that.”

“You would live a long fulfilling –” Doctor Erikson pauses, “I understand your choice, and you still have time. We can’t do much once you start coughing up the stems.”

“So, what do we do?”

Doctor Erikson pulls out several pages and hands them to Brian, “these discuss what to expect as you enter the final stages, places to go to for legal matters any facilities.”

Brian tucks them behind him and kicks his feet slightly.

“And I’m going to prescribe some different medication. Antibiotics to fight off any infections that the rose thorns may cause, painkillers, an inhaler, and an oxygen tank.”

“I don’t want the tank.”

Doctor Erikson holds his pen over the prescription pad, “just fill in the date if you want it later.”

Brian takes the stack of papers, “thank you.”

“I wish there was more that I could do,” Doctor Erikson says.

“I know,” Brian coughs, “and how long are we looking at?”

Doctor Erikson looks at the x-ray. The gears are turning in his head before shifting back to Brian, “I think it would be best if everything was in order by March.”

“That’s not…” Brian looks away.

“I’m sorry, from the flowering stage it usually progresses very quickly. The entire disease progresses quickly.”

Brian closes his eyes and suddenly he remembers the exact moment he fell in love with Freddie. They had been celebrating his birthday, Roger had successfully managed to cover Freddie’s face in cake – twice – and John was laughing so hard he was snorting. Freddie had run to him for protection and when Brian locked eyes, he had seen the depths of the universe and he had wanted to drown in them forever.

His face turned red, but it was quickly covered by Roger’s drunken aim as a cake smacked against his face and then fell to the ground with a slop. Brian couldn’t even get mad because Freddie was laughing too hard and the I love him was as damning as it was sweet.

A week later they found the start of the disease.

“September,” Brian murmurs, “that’s when…”

“We found it, yes, and it’s been progressing as expected since. It was quick to take root.”

“Because I wasn’t expecting to be in love.”

Doctor Erikson shrugs, “the stages are different for everyone, but the length of the full disease is very consistent. No one gets more than a year.”

And Brian gets six months.

“Thank you for your time,” Brian smiles and stands up. He covers his mouth and more petals cling to his hand.

The doctor lets him wash them off in the exam room before guiding him to the exit. Brian keeps his hands in his pockets, wrapped tightly around the prescription pads.

He doesn’t call for a car this time, instead, he wants to spend the time walking down the smog-filled London streets, which isn’t probably his brightest idea in the world, but there is a good chance that this is his last month that he will get to see his home.

Freddie is on his steps. Brian raises an eyebrow, “Freddie?”

“There you are! I have something I wanted to show you! But you weren’t home.”

“Sorry, errands,” Brian feels breathless at Freddie’s energy, and this time he knows it isn’t because of the disease.

“I should have called but come I need you and Red!”

Brian climbs the steps and unlocks the door only for Freddie to burst through it and drag him by the hand until they reached his bedroom where Red is. He turns around and shoves a paper in Brian’s face before gesturing excitedly to the guitar.

He blinks and pulls the paper down; he stares until he can make sense of the stanzas Freddie has drawn on a napkin. There are a few weird gaps, but as he starts to think about the notes compared to his guitar, they start filling in.

“It’s good, a good riff,” Brian says setting the paper to the side as he picks up Red.

“It’s not as good as you could make it.”

Freddie has this soft sort of smile and for a second Brian can convince himself that the fondness in his eyes is affection and maybe he’ll confess before Brian dies. Then he shakes his head. It’s easier to die knowing that he isn’t leaving a potential lover behind.

His mind flickers to Roger, holding him tightly as they sleep and then waking up before in the morning just to make sure he is still breathing. Well, Roger has never said it, but Brian can’t explain the look in his eyes as anything other than grief.

He shakes his head and twists the tuner before strumming. His A likes sliding out of tune more than the rest of the strings, but now that they are in perfect harmony he rests the body on his thigh and does a quick warm-up before he jumps into Freddie’s song.

Brian rarely looks up from the paper when he plays for the first time, fumbling through transitions that should be easy for him, but sight-reading has never been his strongest skill but this time he looks up and Freddie.

Freddie is leaning towards him, face in his hands, and smiling the softest smile that Brian has ever seen. His heart sores, ignoring the leaves that are trying to clog the valve and he breathes a little easier.

“S’really good,” Brian says quietly.

“Yes, incredible,” but Freddie isn’t looking at the guitar or his hands but his eyes.

Brian ducks his head and condemns himself for leaving them without a guitarist. They had beaten it into his head that they didn’t want to go on without him last year and now they aren’t going to have a choice.

“What are the lyrics going to be about?”

“The love of my life,” Freddie says a little breathily, “or perhaps my love of cats. I do hope you know how to play the harp.”

“What?” Brian gasps and then sputters.

“Oh, don’t be such a baby, you’ll look lovely with a harp between your legs.”

Brian flushes, “that’s not – you’re with someone?”

Although he will be coming back to the harp thing once his heart stops spasming.

“In love with someone,” Freddie corrects, “do you think this will sound better on acoustic? No offense to your lady.”

“It might,” Brian blinks his eyes and shoves the tears away, “certainly it would be good in a show, slow things down a bit.

“Yes! Just you and me and thousands of other people.”

He always knew that the moment this seed sprouted Freddie would be the death of him, he just thought it might hurt less.

“Hello America,” John says as they step through the terminal gate.

Brian yawns and ends up coughing, Roger pats his back twice and John turns around with a worried frown. He waves away the concern, remembering in quick flashes being held between Roger and John as they navigate customs while he had a fever of a hundred and three and had collapsed the previous night.

He sets his guitar case on the ground as he lets out a long breath. The others had laughed at him purchasing a ticket for her, but he feels less naked with her in his hands.

“Brian?” John raises a brow.

“I’m okay, promise,” he smiles.

Roger turns his head away from them both, but Freddie is struggling with his carry on and his sunglasses are slightly skewed on his face. He wishes Roger didn’t know, but at the same time he is glad for the silent support.

“I think you might just be allergic to America,” John says with a strained smile.

“Must be.”

Roger helps Freddie right his bag and ends up being the one that has to carry it as Freddie strides passed them with a confident swagger to his steps. Brian and John fall in step behind him.

“We’re going straight to the venue,” Freddie turns around, righting his glasses.

Brian lets out another yawn and blinks his eyes trying to clear the tears from his eyes.

“Bri, don’t fall asleep on us already. The American plains are for us to tame.”

“He is an old man, read all those old man books on the plane, needs his afternoon tea.”

John does the math in his head, “it would be about that time back home.”

“We’ve had a good break, no time for sleep,” Freddie huffs.

“Give us some time to adjust,” Roger grumbles.

Brian turns around him and sends him a sharp look and Roger shrugs. They will have to talk about, he can’t have Roger hovering over him the entire time or the others are going to notice.

“Well, we get to the venue and then we get food and then soundcheck, sleep after that,” Freddie faces forward.

He sticks his hands in his pocket and strides forward. Brian can already feel the exhaustion seeping into his bones and as they step outside to their waiting car the air is sapped from his lung and he leans against one of the pillars to catch his breath.

“Brian?” John asks again.

“Sorry, sorry, still a bit of a bug I’m fighting off.”

“Eat some of the oranges on the roadie buffet.”

“Yeah,” Brian nods and then tosses his bag in the trunk and then tilts his head as he tries to figure out how to slide his guitar into the seat without making anyone else have no space.

“Here,” John says as he slides into the seat and reaches his hands out.

Brian bites his bottom lip but hands her over, they navigate her through the door before settling her in the middle. He slides down and presses her against John’s thigh. Roger sits across from John and they start kicking at each other like children and that leaves Freddie to slide across from Brian.

He feels something get stuck in his throat and he clears it and hopes that he doesn’t end up coughing anything up now. The entire flight he had been stumbling back and forth from his seat to the bathroom, enough that the flight attendant had asked if he was alright. Brian had bitten back the retort that at least he could make it to the bathroom under his power.

The car pulls away from the airport and now they’re starting their journey through Columbus. He watches the gray buildings pass and the few fluffy clouds. There is always something about the energy in America. Brian closes his eyes and tries to bring that into his exhausted body.

“Wake up, darling.”

Brian jumps when Freddie’s hand comes down on his shoulder. He peels his head away from the window and rubs his sleeve on the window to clear the oil. Freddie is staring at him in concern. It’s always Freddie’s eyes that draw him back. He blinks.

“We’re outside the building.”

Brian turns to stare at the surprisingly bland venue. White brick on a street that one might drive down on a regular day.

“Oh.”

He reaches for the handle, wondering where Roger and John have gone. Freddie’s hand covers his and Brian looks up to him with a frown.

“You’re okay, right?”

“I am,” the lie is heavy on his tongue.

“Brian…”

“Freddie, I’m truly here to tour. I want to tour,” Brian wraps his hands around Freddie’s.

“And you can?”

“Absolutely, you’ll get my 100 percent every night.”

Freddie stares at him before letting their hands drop and he opens the door and slides out, taking in a deep breath and absorbing the atmosphere. Brian can feel the energy of Freddie starting to amp up for the show tonight. By the time they call half an hour he knows that Freddie is going to go through his warm-ups with Roger screaming in tandem.

“Bri? Do you have your camera?”

“It's in my suitcase,” Brian says, “should keep it with me.”

He can give them the memories of him at least once he leaves this behind. Brian unfolds himself out of the car and turns to bring Red with him. The tour pacing is brutal, and even though he can feel the prickle of thorns in one lung and the tickling of leaves in the other, Brian is going to give everything he can.

“Let’s not keep the boys waiting, who knows what they’ve already done.”

“John probably has already redone the lighting.”

Freddie pushes open the doors in a great entrance and Brian turns his head to cough and a single petal clings to his shoulder. He stares at it, and then reaches up to brush it off. There isn’t any time to dwell on it – and everything that he needed to take care of had been. Now all he must do is leave his heart and soul on the stage.

Because every show could be his last and he doesn’t want to leave this world with more regrets than he has.

They had five shows in a row. Everyone is exhausted, the flight from Ohio to Connecticut they spend sleeping, Brian is glad they are resting as he once again takes over the bathroom on the flight. The past three days he has been spending more time gasping for breath and his voice is bordering on going.

Their next show is small, considering Boston and New York follow it. Brian wonders if he can get away with resting on his laurels while he recovers.

And there are two days that he must recoup on his own without having to worry that his performance is going to be affected. Brian nudges John with his elbow as they start their descent.

“Huh?” John blinks.

“Fifteen until we land,” Brian says.

John rubs his head, almost trying to rub away the hangover he likely has. Brian looks back out of the window, watching the sun finally peak over the horizon, steadying Red as they bobble in the air. This flight had been too early, and he has a suspicion this was their label’s revenge for forcing them to buy plane tickets instead of dragging the bus from the Midwest to the East Coast.

There is a grumble from Roger as John leans over the aisle and smacks Roger in the thigh. The blond rolls over onto his side, which only makes John poke at him.

“I’m up. I’m up,” Roger waves the hand away.

“How are you feeling?”

Brian glances at the bassist, there is some concern in the glazed look but no more than he would expect, “feel like I could sleep for a week.”

“I think I’m getting into the hotel room and not leaving until its time for a soundcheck.”

“Not even for some Valentine’s fun?” Brian wiggles his eyebrow.

John rolls his eyes, “considering my wife is across the ocean? Besides we’re playing the fourteenth.”

“Ah, yeah,” Brian squeezes his nose, “guess we’ll have to make the air romantic.”

He laughs at John’s wrinkled nose and tightly pressed lips. John shakes his head, “no thanks. Don’t need that again.”

“What, you didn’t like walking in on Ratty and some groupie?”

“Absolutely not.”

“What if it was Roger?”

“How is that any better? It’d be like walking in on my brother,” John looks to the ceiling, “actually it’d be worse. Ratty works for us so he has to be embarrassed.”

Brian snorts as Roger peers at John.

“Oy!”

“Oh, you are awake now? Make sure Freddie doesn’t get left on the tarmac.”

Roger mimes John’s words with high-pitched nonsense words. Brian laughs a little harder, only to make himself start coughing as a petal tries to go back down his throat. He leans forward and has John patting his back as he struggles to get his breath back.

“Sorry, choked a bit.”

“More than a bit, you were turning red,” John frowns, “are you sure you’re alright? That bug is hanging around.”

“I did just choke John,” Brian swipes his sleeves over his watery eyes.

John blinks once and then removes his hand, “if you say so.”

At least Roger isn’t openly staring at him now. Brian hasn’t quite worked up the courage to discuss his problem with him. He knows that it would better for them to know, but Brian doesn’t want to be babied or for shows to get canceled on his behalf. Having that happen to him once in his lifetime is enough.

Something bumps against his headrest as Paul leans between them, he sighs when he sees that Freddie isn’t awake but then turns to John.

“We’re landing twenty minutes ahead of schedule, so the car isn’t going to be there.”

“Okay,” John hums.

“You can get a cab if you’d like or don’t want to wait, but it’s on your dime.”

Brian doesn’t know what hotel they’re staying at, but he doesn’t mind waiting around. Maybe if he was feeling worse – he checks his watch or if he were hungrier. He clears his throat.

Paul looks between them and then shrugs and scurries off to his seat.

“That couldn’t wait?” Roger frowns.

Brian shrugs, “probably wanted to see if Fred was up.”

Roger rolls his eyes. As the ground becomes clearer, Brian’s ears pop and he yawns response to the sharp pain. He grabs the case as they touch down on the runway, he rolls forward with the momentum and stares at John who has gone white-knuckled on the armrests.

He covers John’s hands with his which eases some of the tension in his jaw.

“Hey, just a few more seconds.”

John lets out a shaky breath, “I don’t mind flying.”

“Just the landing?” Brian adds with a smile.

Both John and Freddie were nervous fliers and this time Brian had leaped at the chance of sitting away from Roger because Freddie had been particularly bad this morning and John hadn’t wanted it to feed his nerves. Roger didn’t miss it and Brian suspects the second they’re alone he is going to get an earful.

Once they’re off the plane, Paul guides them to a spot where they can wait for the car to arrive or call a cab should they choose.

“Is it weird he keeps offering it?” Roger raises a brow.

“Maybe he just doesn’t want us calling up his boss saying he is doing a bad job.” John laughs.

“I mean Freddie has no complaints,” Brian shrugs his shoulder to bounce Roger off of his perch, “and he isn’t bad.”

“Pushy,” Roger pouts and then leans against John.

Freddie had woken up long enough to walk from the plane to this table and had fallen right back asleep, moaning about his hangover the entire time he had been coherent.

Brian feels a twist in his chest, and he stands abruptly, “I’ll be right back.”

He faintly hears John say, “now that is weird.”

The nearest restroom feels like it is a mile away and so Brian ducks into a mostly empty hallway where he grips the rim of a rubbish bin – ignoring how many germs are probably on it – and spits into it. He keeps clearing his throat, trying to dislodge the bud. It feels stuck and he keeps coughing until his stomach hurts, but it won’t move.

A sharp blow between his shoulders makes him bend over and the daisy falls into the bin and a beautiful red petal. Brian sucks in deep breaths, or as deep breath as he can take. Once he doesn’t feel like he is going to pass out he turns to see who has their hands on his back.

“Thanks, Rog,” Brian coughs.

Roger nods, “sure. Is that… done now?”

“Think so.”

“Has it gotten worse?”

Brian shrugs, “somedays are worse than others.”

“There is a second flower.”

“Just a latent infection.”

Roger’s hand trails down to Brian’s hand and squeezes, “how are you doing?”

“I’m surviving,” Brian sucks in another deep breath.

He sees Roger’s eyes flicking to the rubbish bin and Brian decides that he owes Roger something – if the blond is going to keep his secret, then maybe there should be more trust on his part.

“In my guitar case, I have an inhaler. It’s supposed to help during these spells.”

Roger nods, “okay. Okay. I’ll bring it next time.”

Brian clears his throat and gives Roger a tight smile, “thanks.”

“Let’s head back before we get left.”

Brian wants to ask why Roger hasn’t let go of his hand yet.

The fever hits him in the middle of the night. Brian rolls over so he doesn’t wake Freddie up with his coughing. He should be used to wet and cold, but his lungs have been sticking since they pulled into Maine and it won’t be long before he knows that a wet cough will accompany the wheeze.

Brian rolls over and swings his legs onto the floor as he fights a dizzy spell. He runs fingers through his hair and then he stands up, leaning against the window and staring out and the heavy clouds over the night sky.

Hands wrap around his waist and Freddie rests his forehead between Brian’s shoulders. He thinks about Roger a few days ago when it was his hand.

“Brimi?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Brian murmurs.

“You feel warm.”

“Think I might have a fever.”

The hands tighten and then slip underneath his shirt. Brian covers Freddie’s hands with his.

“Can you perform?” Freddie asks.

Brian leans his head against the wall, enjoying the cool feeling, “should be able to. Don’t feel bad.”

“Come back to bed.”

He lets Freddie drag him back away from the window. They flop backward on the bed only for Freddie to pop up on his elbow, his hand settling on Brian’s stomach.

“Do you need me to get you a rag? Any medicine? Do you have medicine?”

“I’m fine, Fred,” Brian rolls over so that he is looking straight at the singer, “I promise. It won’t be like last time.”

“I’m not worried about the tour – well I am – but I don’t want you pushing yourself again. How long did it take you to recover?”

“Believe me, if I couldn’t do it, I’d say something. I don’t want to be carted around like I was.”

Freddie wrinkles his nose and taps on Brian’s stomach, his thumb strokes over his right side after a moment before pulling out from underneath his shirt and rest it on top of his chest.

“We’re in this for the long haul,” Freddie rolls onto his back but keeps his palm over Brian’s heart.

Brian taps it and then they tangle their hands together. He lifts it to his mouth, watching the lights roll over Freddie’s white polish, and presses a tiny kiss on his knuckles. It is a rare show of direct affection from him but he feels the nervous energy from Freddie settle.

“I’m in it for life.”

Freddie laughs and this time he is the one bringing Brian’s hand to his lips. There Brian feels soft skin press against his promise fingers. At least he can cover his cheeks turning red with the excuse of his fever.

“Yeah?”

“Absolutely, Fred,” Brian rolls over and smiles, a tiny cough escapes, “Queen is more than just a rock band.”

“It’s a family first,” Freddie agrees.

Brian closes his eyes, “but sleep before anything else.”

“Says the one that woke us up.”

He crosses his eyes when Freddie bops his nose. Brian uses his free hand to wave it away and Freddie giggles.

A few moments have passed, and Freddie hasn’t gotten up to go back to his bed. He opens his eyes to meet Freddie’s dark eyes. Brian raises a brow only to get his nose tapped again, he catches the hand and holds it against the bed.

“Well, aren’t we sleeping?” Freddie asks.

“You’re still in my bed.”

Freddie shuffles a little, “well that’s fine, yes?”

No. “Yeah.”

Freddie grins and brushes Brian’s curls out of his face, “mm, you’re still rather warm.”

“It’ll go away.”

Freddie clicks his tongue.

“I promise

“I’ll be quite cross if it doesn’t.”

Brian rolls his eyes and then rubs his face against the bed and tries to settle down only for a pillow to smack against his face. He grumbles and folds it under his head, the slight elevation eases the tickle in his lungs.

After that, he is quick to fall into a light sleep. He is too uncomfortable to fall into true sleep, the fever is creeping back to the front of his mind and he feels the tackiness in his lungs  - and he is truly surprised that he hasn’t had a fit yet – and Freddie is only a few centimeters away and he is very aware of his feelings.

“Oh, my poor, Brimi,” Freddie whispers, “no wonder Rog has been in such a state.”

Brian had wanted to room with Freddie for selfish reasons, but also because he needed Roger to sleep through the night. He knows Roger watches him in his sleep, which is slightly disconcerting, but he knows that Roger doesn’t want to wake up next to Brian’s cold body.

Freddie’s hand stills after that and the quiet snores fill the room. He gently turns away so that his face is away from Freddie, but he does regret having to let the singer’s hand go, but he can’t wake up with Freddie’s eyes being the first thing he sees. Not right now, not when he knows his first half an hour is going to be spent hiding in the bathroom and trying to clear his lungs.

His eyes shoot open, tomorrow is their Valentine’s Day show. Brian grimaces and tries to push any thoughts about waking up with Freddie’ on Valentine’s Day must be a sign.

Roger’s hand is around his wrist as he drags him out of the dingey bar and into the clear air. Brian finally starts desperately gasping for air and places his back against the wall. He keeps trying to clear his throat, but whatever is stuck is stuck low. There is a second where he thinks that this is it, this one is going to come up with a stem and he’ll be out of time.

Four days until the end of February, and he would rather not be so dramatic as to die on the first of March.

His inhaler is being pressed into his hand – cap off – and he automatically raises it to his lips. The stored air leaves a chemical taste on his mouth that he fights the urge to wipe off. After a few seconds, he can feel his lungs opening and the ease of breathing is coming back. Well, as easy as his breathing has been.

They have noticed how bad his voice has gotten during shows and while Brian has never been on to hold notes, he leaves them unfinished often.

He breathes out and the stuck feeling his lessened and he wonders if he should read the brochures he has tucked away in his suitcase.

Roger takes the inhaler and sticks it back into his pocket. Brian closes his eyes; he is an adult he should be able to remember to bring his inhaler with him. It isn’t Roger’s responsibility, yet the blond had somehow taken Brian’s reveal of where it is as his duty.

“How are you feeling?” Roger asks after a few minutes.

“Better,” Brian coughs once, “what are we going to tell the others?”

“John is doing his best to ferment his liver before he is thirty and Freddie left ten minutes ago with some bloke.”

Brian grimaces and closes his eyes, “ah.”

“I’m going to grab John, might as well call it a night.”

He reaches out desperately to grab Roger’s wrist and tug him back, “I’m sorry.”

Roger’s lips flatten out, “if you were you wouldn’t be giving up.”

“Roger!”

“No, Brian,” Roger pulls his wrist away, “we can talk about this later – if you want to talk about it.”

He nods and leans back against the wall as he thinks about Roger’s words. Brian isn’t changing his mind about the surgery and it would be impossible to schedule it now.

He wonders how he can make it up to Roger if he can. Brian doubts it, out of all the things that he asked of Roger, asking him to accept his death with a simple gesture is going too far. Brian rubs a hand down his face wishing he could just rip these flowers from his lungs.

There is a curl of jealousy at the person Freddie has taken home. They don’t know how lucky they are – and they’re not going to have thorns tear up their lungs just to keep loving him. Brian lets out a tiny sigh but perks up when he hears Roger’s annoyed voice dragging John from the door.

John stumbles and Brian reaches out to steady him. It makes John wrap around his neck and take a deep breath against his throat.

“Brian! I missed you.”

He laughs and helps to position John between them, “yes, yes.”

John’s eyes turn alert as he stares at Brian’s face, he looks away unsure of what John is seeing.

“Think we might need a cab,” Roger rubs his shoulder, “I’ll go in and call one.”

“Why?” Brian struggles to stay steady as all of John’s weight gets laid on his.

“Because I don’t remember how to get to the hotel from here.”

Brian hums and then looks up at the dark sky, Roger had been drinking too. Only a few pints of whatever the bar had on tap instead of his routine of shot after shot. John drops his arms so that he is hugging Brian, the gaze still a little too aware for someone that had an unknown number of tequila shots.

“I really appreciate you Bri,” John says.

He wrinkles his nose at the strong wafting of alcohol from John’s breath. His voice is pitchy and slurred but Brian can’t help but smile fondly.

“I appreciate you too, John.”

“S’weird when you act weird.”

Brian raises an eyebrow, “you always call me odd.”

“But you’re acting weird for how you act oddly.”

He blinks and tries to puzzle the sentence out in his head. John tilts forward and Brian catches him and decides that it is easier to keep John pressed to his chest than to worry about the looks that he gets from people passing by.

“You’re sad,” John hiccups, “sad like you were before the hospital.”

Brian sighs, ignoring the curl of a wheeze at the end of it. John tightens his hand around the hem of Brian’s shirt, and he can’t help but run a hand down his hair.

“Please don’t be sick.”

“John…” Brian looks away.

“You’re my brother, and I don’t want you to be sick.”

He closes his eyes at the sharp burn and then looks back at John who is leaning heavier against him, his eyes are half-lidded and glossy again. Brian laughs, John has always been a wonder, blurting out profound things and then pretending like nothing has happened in the next breath.

“Cab will be here in ten,” Roger says, “I can take him if you need me too.”

“Nah, I’ve got him. We’re just standing here.”

“Bri?”

“It’s nothing Rog.”

Roger raises an eyebrow and he files the strange exchange with John away for something that he must talk about when he finally works up the courage to talk to Roger. Brian shifts slightly and wishes that the D.C. night had more stars in the sky.

“We’re heading into the long stretch,” Roger shoves his hands in his pockets.

“One every night for a week,” Brian nods.

“It’s a lot for anyone.”

Brian sends a look to John who is giggling to himself about who knows what. He rubs John’s shoulder.

“We’ve got this,” Brian says with a smile.

Roger rolls his shoulder before reaching up and twisting a strand of his hair around his finger. Brian is worried about March, and he is worried about having so many shows together in one grouping. Mostly he knows that he is rooming with John for the first three days as they tour across Wisconsin and he knows now that John is figuring out that there is something wrong with him.

“Yeah,” Roger says, his voice wavers, “we do.”

Brian is saved from answering as their cab pulls up to them.

He wakes up with a slap to his face. Brian covers the stinging skin to glare at Roger but the anger fades as he stares at the wide eyes and trembling lips. As he opens his mouth to ask what the hell Roger he is pushed back to the bed. He wraps his arms around Roger automatically and notices that the trembling just isn’t in his lips but his entire body.

“Christ,” Roger forces out, “you weren’t waking up and then you weren’t breathing but you were I guess because you weren’t turning any more blue but –”

Brian tunes out Roger’s frantic speech as he tries to put the pieces together. His chest hurts, more than normal and his head is foggy like it sometimes is if he exercises too much. He lifts one hand away from Roger’s frame to stare at his nails which do have a slightly purple tinge to them.

“I stopped breathing?”

Roger whimpers and pulls his head from where he had it buried in Brian’s chest, “yes. I couldn’t wake you up. Moving around like you had a nightmare then… nothing.”

It hits him that it’s the morning, which explains why he can see things so clearly, but it seems like its late morning.

“Rog! We have a show tonight, we need to be getting ready!”

Or at least that’s what he tries to say because after gets Roger’s name out his lungs seize and he rockets up, knocking Roger off, and starts to cough. He bends forward, digging his fingers into the wood. A bin appears between his legs and then a hand is smacking against his back.

Two flowers fall into the bin along with an assortment of petals, including three deep red ones. The rose must be blooming.

“Bri…” Roger breathes.

He does the math in his head. In some cases, a step before the stems is having more than one fully formed flower come up. Either way, he knows it isn’t good and it’s March, and while Roger knows everything else about his life, he doesn’t know Brian’s deadline.

“You have to tell them, Bri,” Roger whispers, “both.”

He reaches up and their fingers barely touch. Brian hadn’t wanted to tell them. It seems cruel knowing that there was nothing they could do while their friend wasted away.

“It’s only one.”

Roger’s chin digs into his shoulder, “its kinder. It hurts but its kinder.”

“I told you.”

“Freddie and John.”

“Oh. Why?”

“They’ll have more memories of you.”

“Sick and dying?”

“Alive.”

They’re playing in Fort Wayne tomorrow and then there’s a break as they drive down to Atlanta.

“I’ll tell them tomorrow, after the show.”

Roger tightens his grip, “okay. Okay.”

Brian turns around and knocks their foreheads together. There are hundreds of things that he wants to say to Roger to make this better somehow, but he bites his tongue and breathes through his nose, dimly aware that his sense of smell has gone somewhere in the past week because he can’t smell the cigarettes on Roger’s skin or even in their room.

“I hate you,” Roger mumbles.

Brian lets out a tiny laugh.

“I do. Completely. You’re a bastard.”

He reaches up to playfully tug at Roger’s hair, “I’m unbearable.”

“Yes. Have you ever spent ten minutes with yourself?”

“You’re a saint.”

“Don’t you forget it.”

Brian laughs a little harder and Roger tangles them together as they sit facing each other. He gives a helpless little smile and Roger gives a little shake of his head.

“I would never,” Brian says.

Roger looks a little like a scared deer but after a moment of conflict on his face, he stretches his legs out a little more and digs his toes into Brian’s thighs.

“Good.”

For a moment, Brian thinks about spilling everything to Roger. The way his smile makes him smile and how this endless chill from being without oxygen is bearable next to him. There is a second where his will cracks, and he wants to let him know who Brian is dying for. Then he bites down on his tongue.

Brian doesn’t think there will be anything harder than telling his parents that he is sick. That there is a chance the doctors can’t fix him. But as he stares at Freddie and John sitting on the bed looking increasingly worried as Brian says nothing, this is a close second.

Roger is sitting on the bed opposite of them picking at his nails. Brian decided against sitting down, it makes his chest feel too crowded, and this way he can pace. If he paces, he doesn’t have to see everyone’s face.

The room is silent save for the rattling of the air conditioner. Brian wipes his hands down the front of his shirt and grimaces. He had a speech, written in his head during the bus ride, and even had jotted down a few phrases, but as he turns to start another lap he catches the eyes of his bandmates and a sob bubbles out of his throat.

Brian stumbles over to a bed, blurry-eyed. He looks around the room trying to focus on anything but the tears in his eyes and the fact that he needs to cough. There is a part of the wall where the molding is peeling off – he wonders how that happened. Is it age or had someone been desperate to destroy something?

Would leaving this room in a mess help him? He certainly would still be stealing time, but would he feel better.

“Brian?” Freddie’s voice is soft against his ear.

He swallows and shuts his eyes at the shiver that runs down his spine. Brian takes a second to bury his head in his hands, he takes a deep breath and blinks away the last of the tears. As he lets out another shuddering breath, he feels a swell of courage.

Although he must keep his eyes trained on the wallpaper.

“I –” Brian starts with and then closes his mouth.

“You’re sick again. That’s what this is, the fever and the coughing and the tiredness,” John says flatly.

Brian shrinks in with each listing of the symptom, but he is grateful that John broke the ice that he couldn’t, “yes. But I guess a little worse than sick.”

“You guess?” John’s voice is even flatter.

At least he can’t see the look on the bassist’s face, he doesn’t think that he would have been able to survive that pure loathing. Brian was hiding his health again and he doesn’t want that to be how they think of it.

He pressed his hand to his lips and struggles to breathe and of course, the simplest explanation is if he could cough up a damned flower.

“Brian, just tell us,” Freddie says and his voice wavers.

“I’m trying to figure out how.”

After that, they leave him alone to sort through his thoughts. Maybe he should have written out the entire speech and just photocopied and handed it out. Would that have been too impersonal? He scrubs a hand down his face. Words spin around his hand and he grasps for them.

“I am… dying…” he says slowly, the words sticking on his tongue.

“What do you mean?” John clears his throat, “I mean, what is…”

Brian’s lips quirk up at John’s unsureness in his speech. He coughs once.

“Hanahaki,” he replies.

“Who?” Is Freddie’s first question, quickly followed by, “when?”

“I’m not telling,” Brian says and then lifts one shoulder, “and awhile.”

“The entire tour.”

He nods.

“Brian,” John sighs.

“And we’ve been running you ragged…”

“No. I wanted this. If I’m going to die I wanted to be doing something I loved until the last minute,” Brian turns around finally, “and I’m not that exhausted from it – maybe more than normal but not terribly so.”

“And how long until?” John asks.

Brian can see his eyes darting across the patterned quilt, his fingers are tapping out a flighty rhythm.

“Does it matter?” Brian crosses his legs.

He doesn’t have anything to support his back and he feels a little like he is going to tip over. Brian doesn’t’ look at Freddie, afraid that he would give the game away. Instead, his eyes meet Roger whose skin is nearly translucent in the dim lighting. The shadows highlight the darkened skin under his eyes.

“So, what, we pretend this isn’t happening?” John crosses his arms and then turns to Roger, “and you knew.”

“Accidentally.”

“And yes, we continue touring,” Brian says, “if I need anything, I’ll let you know.”

He looks at Roger and doesn’t add the or Roger will. Brian lets out a soft sigh again and then he has arms wrapped around his throat. Freddie’s shoulder is digging into his throat and he feels tears being rubbed off against his skin.

Brian reaches up and digs his fingers into Freddie’s shirt. A second pair of arms wrap around him and he a quiet little whine he knows John uses to signal displeasure. He closes his eyes and sucks in the warmth from their bodies and that they handled the news so well.

“Did you tell them?” Freddie asks.

They must have drifted off from the exhaustion of the emotion. Roger is somewhere else in the hotel room and John is barely clinging to the bed, wrapped tightly in the blankets. Freddie’s fingers drift along his skin and Brian shivers.

“No. I can’t.”

“Is she married?”

“Not interested,” Brian says instead.

“In you? Not possible.”

Brian chuckles and then sits up when coughs rattle his lungs, “it very much is.”

He rolls away from Freddie in time to see Roger walk back in. His shoulders are pulled tightly to his body and he holds a crushed pack of cigarettes, but he tosses it into the bin before dropping back against his bed.

“You should still tell them; you might be surprised.”

“I don’t want them to have the guilt that I still died.”

Freddie clicks his tongue, “if you think that’s what best.”

Brian will take this secret to his grave.

They are in San Francisco and it is nearly the last day of March. Brian might have thought getting through his expect death month might bring a sort of peace to him, but instead, he wakes up struggling to breathe and fumbling around for his inhaler until he slumps against the bed with it grasped weakly in his hands.

He had never been more grateful that he shared a room than when he hears John return to the hotel room, apparently finished with his private call to Veronica.

His name is shouted and then the inhaler is being shoved past his lips. The chemical lands on his tongue and seconds later the seizing stops and he can take tiny breaths without fear of them getting lost. He slumps to the side, which he realizes might not have been his smartest call at John’s cry of shock.

“Helps, breathe,” Brian squeezes out.

John scoots away and Brian can lay fully flat – which he supposes isn’t the brightest idea that he has had considering he doesn’t know how well they clean the floors. But he stays and lifts his hands above his head.

“Is this the first time it’s happened?”

Brian shakes his head, “can usually handle it.”

John covers his hands with his own, they are clammy but strangely warm. Brian focuses on taking the deepest drags of breaths that he can without choking himself. He feels a spasm and then he is forcing himself upright on his knees and hands and finally the petals that were causing so much trouble are landing on the floor.

White daisy petals and soft red rose petals scatter as he lets out one last clear cough. John’s hand is patting his back, and he wonders how long he had been coughing. He shifts slightly and gathers the petals in his hands and crushes them.

Brian gets pulled into John’s chest. John rocks them back and forth and Brian doesn’t mention how shaky his hands are.

“Sorry,” Brian says when they don’t talk for several minutes.

“It means it is getting worse, right? If you used to –”

Brian offers a shrug because there’s nothing else to say, it is getting worse but that’s what diseases like this do they get worse and worse until the end, and then that’s it. John’s arm tightens and Brian reaches behind him to squeeze John’s knee.

“We can get the show canceled tonight.”

“No,” Brian shakes his head, “I never wanted this to interfere with this tour. I’m fine now.”

“We still have Japan,” John adds shakily and quiet, “that’s still another full month.”

“No stems,” Brian says lightly.

“No stems,” John repeats with a disbelieving laugh.

“That’s the last…” Brian swallows, “so as long as I don’t have that everything else, I can work around.”

“You shouldn’t have to work around it; you can take a break if you need it. We won’t care.”

“I want to,” Brian replies, “I want to do this.”

John sighs and they shift so that their backs are against the bed. Brian stretches out his legs and rolls his fingers against the petals in his hand. It is a bit strange considering they had been inside him, but John is comfortable, and the bin is across the room.

He has the overwhelming need to say something – anything but the words aren’t coming. John lives in silence, speaking only when he needs to the most. Brian is usually never lost for words; he can write pages and pages of lyrics and on zodiacal light – he spends the time making sure that he is never misunderstood. Now he doesn’t know how to explain why he is still going down this path, he knows why but it's more of a feeling than a tangible line of thought.

It bothers him more than it should. They deserve a better answer.

Brian knows that John is fine in the quiet that he doesn’t need novel-length explanations, but he still opens his mouth, “I don’t want to do the surgery – and it wasn’t because of the band.”

John hums.

“I don’t really have a good explanation – I know that it's throwing my life away – and I know that I can live without romantic love and its probably better that I don’t feel the attraction to this person I mean it’s killing me and the risk of it taking the ability for all romantic love is slim – so it doesn’t make sense why I’m sitting on this floor and dying. But I am afraid that if I did the surgery I would be different than it would change too many things and maybe I’ve loved this person longer than I thought that it’s become a part of me –”

John’s hand covers his mouth, “Brian hush.”

He licks the palm, John squawks and rubs his hand down his shirt, flicking him in revenge. Brian chuckles which earns him a pinch on his arm.

“Ow!” He whines, rubbing at the skin.

“I don’t get it,” John says, “but I know what it’s like to be in love. And I’d probably do the same if I thought Ronnie didn’t love me back because being in love is a great feeling.”

Brian sighs, “probably better when the feelings are returned.”

“Probably,” John agrees.

“You should be madder at me or begging me to change my mind or… I don’t know not just sitting there.”

“I don’t think I have the time for all of that, after, I might be.”

Brian winces. John is right, he doesn’t have much time left.

“So, if it’s what you want then we’ll go out and play the shows and finish the tour, but don’t make us – make me pretend like this is normal.”

He closes his eyes and nods, “deal.”

As Brian leans against one of the equipment crates he stares out to the stage, watching Roger direct his kit set up with sharp critiques and he has no idea where John has buried himself – other than hearing something about a mess of wires he hasn’t seen John in an hour at least.

The Stampede Corral is a strange place for a show, and he does wonder about the two random dates in Canada. It makes some sense; he supposes with them ending the tour in Seattle before launching their tour in Japan two weeks later.

Then again, they’d be flying back to London the day after Seattle so he supposes it doesn’t make as much sense as he thought originally.

Freddie appears from the refreshment tables, something clear in his cup, and Brian wonders if its water or vodka or one of those clear sodas. He frowns and leans his head back. When was the last time he and Freddie had spoken about anything other than band things?

Strangely the date coincides with him telling him about the Hanahaki. Brian reaches for the water bottle beside him and sips at it. This morning Roger had slammed his hand between Brian’s shoulders during a coughing fit and he can feel the bruise forming, but no flowers had come up. Which he supposes is odd.

He stopped caring about comparing what is happening to him with the other cases in the world. No use in counting down the days until he dies because he is already living on borrowed time. It is April finally, and he is excited about the warm weather.

“Freddiekins!” He yells.

It earns him the scowl that he expected and then Freddie is striding towards him.

“Can I help you Brimi?”

Brian arches a brow, after all, he likes the nickname – then grins because he has won that exchange.

“Did you just call me over to be annoying?”

He snorts, “no, anything worth it on the table?”

“Is there ever? Peanut butter sandwiches for days.”

Brian smacks his lips together and then shoves his hands in his pockets, lifting out his left arm to stare at his watch.

“Do you want to sneak out and get something?”

Freddie’s eyes flicker away towards Roger, where he has taken over setting up his kit and is moving the stand around with annoyed grunts and John hasn’t resurfaced. Brian presses his lips together behind the water bottle, so Freddie doesn’t want to be alone with him. Interesting.

Brian’s first thought is that he somehow found out about his feelings, but it doesn’t send a panic in him like he thought it would because he just wants to end this limbo.

“Did you have a place in mind?”

“Not particularly,” Brian closes the bottle, “figured we could walk around a bit and see if there was anything.”

Freddie grabs the bottle and finishes the last swallow of water before tossing it away. Brian is surprised to find that the cup is already empty, and since he knows that Freddie doesn’t drink fast that it was vodka.

“Let’s go.”

Brian stumbles over his feet as Freddie wraps around his arm and drags him out. They are met with the brisk early April air. It's much colder than he thought, and he wishes he had time to grab a muffler or something to stop himself from breathing in such cold dry air.

They end up a couple of blocks away at a tiny pizzeria which looks more authentic than what the Americans had called pizza. Brian orders a slice of cheese and Freddie gets the same. He watches Freddie cut the piece up – which is odd because he has seen Freddie eat pizza before, but he shrugs and picks up his own piece.

He finishes his quickly, hungrier than he thought he was – because these days it hurts to eat so its rare for him to get a full meal, but Freddie seems to only be pushing things around his plate.

“Freddie, is there something wrong?”

The look Brian gets is surprisingly icy from Freddie, he has a corner turned down and a sharpness to his gaze that he has only seen when someone has decided to play a dangerous game with digging into Freddie’s personal life a bit too much.

“You’re asking me that?”

Brian looks away and rubs the back of his neck before biting down on a hangnail. Butterflies beat against his stomach and he tries to ignore them with a drink of water.

“Sorry,” Freddie says, “that came out harsher than I meant.”

“No, it’s a fair response.”

Freddie pushes the plate to the side so he can rest his hands in his palms. He closes his eyes briefly and Brian leans forward with his arms crossed in front of him. Under the table, Freddie kicks against his shins and Brian has to fight the urge to stop from trapping it.

“Who else knows?” Freddie says.

He starts to pick off the chipping nail polish. Brian looks at his, which he has forgotten to reapply and see only a speech of color on his thumbs.

“My parents, the doctors, er I hired a lawyer to write a will,” Brian sighs.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, I got everything settled before the tour.”

Freddie manages to flick a piece of the polish off and it lands in the middle of the table.

“I see.”

Brian looks away and frowns when he notices that they’re the only ones in the restaurant. He hopes its just because it’s the middle of the day on Thursday and not because they walked into the front of the Italian Mafia.

Would they need a branch of the Italian Mafia in Alberta, Canada?

Freddie laughs and Brian turns towards him, furrowing his brows deeper.

“What were you thinking about?”

“If the Italian Mafia is hiding behind those doors,” Brian raises his hand to chew on the nail of his thumb.

“You suddenly got your thinking face on,” Freddie says, “I thought it might have been something important. It’s cute when you look confused.”

Brian flushes and clears his throat; his heart is beating hard in his chest and the feeling is slightly jerky. As though something was blocking his heart.

“I just… was wondering…” Brian mumbles.

Freddie reaches over the table and grabs Brian’s hand away from his mouth, “you’re always curious. It’s one of my favorite things about you.”

“Why have you been so distant?” Brian shifts the subject into a safer territory.

“Trying to figure out how it is going to feel without you at my side,” Freddie squeezes his hand, “but I suppose that can wait.”

Brian nods, “hate to say it.”

“I did want you to play the harp for that song, I thought it would be lovely.”

“It’s a good song. Maybe find a harpist.”

“I think its best if the song goes in a drawer for a while.”

“Freddie, that song is beautiful there’s no need to hide it.”

“I think there is.”

Brian sighs and rolls his eyes. Freddie’s eccentricities about music are why Brian was drawn to him as a singer and a musician but sometimes they’re beyond his understanding

“It’ll be hard without your rewrites.”

“Roger is a decent songwriter.”

“What is she like?”

He stares and tilts his head; his brain feels like he is being jerked around in a car at the sudden change in tone and topic.

“Who?”

“The woman that you’re in love with.”

“Freddie…”

This is something he doesn’t want to talk about. He doesn’t want to discuss it and he wants there to be no hints as to the identity of the person he loves. Brian is certain he is going to say something that will lead to the correct conclusion of Freddie.

“Well? She is killing one of my best friends I think I deserve to know something about her.”

“Who says it’s a she?” Brian drops his head against his hands, his folded fingers digging into his cheeks.

“It isn’t?”

Brian lifts a shoulder, “I haven’t said anything about who it is.”

“Why not tell anything?”

“I don’t want them to be hated.”

“How can they not love you?” Freddie says softly but with an edge of anger.

Brian stands abruptly, coughing into his elbow and shoving his hands into his pockets after he swipes the petals from the fabric of his jacket, “we should get back.”

He hears Freddie call after him as he rushes to the outside of the store. Brian rubs at his chest, trying to ease the beating of his heart. That is exactly why he wants this to stay quiet. Freddie hates this unidentified person – and he already has so many doubts eating at him, what is he going to do if he finds out it's him.

“I’m sorry,” Freddie says when he catches up to Brian.

“I don’t want to talk about them,” Brian clicks his teeth together.

“Just answer me this one question and my lips are sealed forever.”

“Did you steal that line from somewhere it sounds familiar?”

Freddie stops in the sidewalk and grabs Brian’s arm to spin him around. They stand only a meter apart, Freddie catching his eye and Brian closing his in acceptance.

“What is the question?”

“Are they worth this?”

Brian bites his cheeks and then looks Freddie in the eye. He thinks about how close he was to saying everything each time he met those warm brown eyes, and now the way that they catch the sun makes him feel warm down to his very core.

The words fall off his tongue without him having enough thought to stop them, “yes. They’re – they’re the most incredible person I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. When they smile the whole world is brighter and warmer and they do need to smile more. And their eyes, I could stare at them for ages and still find something new.”

Freddie looks away, his cheeks darkening before he shakes his head. Brian watches him pull his shoulders tighter against his body and hang his head low – it is like the night after they had a bad gig how Freddie is blaming himself and Brian grimaces. He gave too much away and now he has broken Freddie’s heart because Freddie knows that he can’t love Brian the way that would fix this disease.

The wind picks up, whipping Brian’s hair into his face and stealing his breath. He turns around to cough into his arm and use a mailbox as support. Each cough hurts worse and worse until he is forced to put his hand over his mouth, and instead of petals, he feels wetness against his palm. When he pulls his hand away he sees splatters of red.

Freddie’s hand is on his shoulder. Brian wipes the blood onto his pants, which he gets to change out of for the show anyway.

“I’m good now.”

“Bri, that went on for five minutes.”

“And it’s over.”

He doesn’t want to spend another second alone with Freddie afraid that both of their hearts are going to shatter into nothingness.

They get their own rooms in Japan. Mostly because the rooms are too small for two grown adult males. Brian drops onto his bed, grateful for the privacy as it feels like his body finally gives out.

Whatever time he earned in March is quickly ending. At first, it had been petals with tiny tinges of red and now he coughs, and the petals are saturated with blood. He must carry around several handkerchiefs to cover it up. More people know, the roadies were made aware because of arrangements having to be made involving ambulances and hospitals. People know but Brian doesn’t want them to know how bad things have gotten.

His head throbs and he climbs up to his pillows. He breathes with a constant wheeze now and his throat feels like there is a petal constantly stuck to it. Three days until their first show. They were supposed to be doing some press conferences and photo ops for fans.

The other three are out enjoying the afternoon, but Brian had to tap out. If he stayed on his feet any longer, he would have passed out from sheer exhaustion and that isn’t exactly a situation he wants to repeat.

He closes his eyes and shoves his face in the pillow, only to regret it a few seconds later when he has to turn again and let out a few shallow coughs. Everything hurts.

John had been sending him increasingly worried looks and when he is out Roger is pressed right against his side. Since their lunch in Canada, Freddie has been distant. They spend that time together and they still get along but there feels like a wall has been built between them. Brian grimaces, he knows giving any sort of hints would be a mistake.

He doesn’t know if he should take comfort in the fact that Freddie hadn’t flat rejected him or if he should hate the tiny swell of hope that maybe Freddie didn’t understand the confession to mean him – that maybe he won’t be dying because like the movies Freddie will come in with a last-minute confession.

Brian rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. His lungs stick together with each breath and with each breath he can feel the thorns of the rose digging into his lung.

“Wonder what the x-rays would show?” Brian mumbles, his voice has a rasp to it.

Probably that there were two fully formed flowers in his lungs and maybe a third trying to take up space in his heart with how hard he feels it beating in his chest. Brian looks at his fingers which look as though they have been stained blue. He must wear lipstick to hide the blue on his lips from photos.

He sucks in a deep breath, or as deep of a breath as he dares, but the petal seems to trigger his gag reflex and he is up and moving to the closest receptacle that he can find, which happens to be a pot that once held a plant.

Brian balances himself on the rim and he gags and convulses, making himself cough harder to get the sensation away and then making it dig back down when he tries to get air into his body. It feels like hours and his arms are shaking from the effort to keep him from going face-first into the ceramic. He closes his eyes as it feels like a white-hot needle scrapes up his throat.

Finally, with an overwhelming copper taste, he spits the flower into the pot – rose petals scattered around it. He reaches up to cover his mouth, ignoring how slick it felt but he doesn’t want to cause more of a mess than he already has. Brian’s legs shake and he can’t get his feet under him enough to push himself up from the ground. So, he has to spit the blood into the pot covering the singular flower.

Brian frowns through the confusion. Flowers usually don’t cause him much trouble anymore – he has gotten used to their choking sensation and the dizziness that they cause, but they don’t hurt as bad as that.

He moves one arm to lift it, careful to not damage any of the petals of the daisy. It’s tangled and ruined where the others had been pristine Brian turns it over and drops it back into the pot. There had been a stem on the flower, no longer than a few centimeters, but there.

Stems grow quick, he is told. One day they are small and then the next – Brian shakes his head and rolls onto his hands and knees and crawls onto the bed and then up on it. He doesn’t have the energy to make it up to the pillows or to drag the pillows down to him. He lays curled up until it bothers his chest to be so cramped and then he rolls onto his front. The pressure makes it more apparent that there is something in his lungs, tearing it up and making him count each breath as precious.

It isn’t long before he is falling into a light sleep, he can’t sleep deeply any longer too afraid that he’ll sleep through his body’s desperate craving of air (although there is a part of him that knows its impossible that he wouldn’t wake up). All he can think about is that he is grateful that they had finished the American tour. Japan loves them though, but it is unlikely he will make it to May. He wishes he could give them the show that they deserve.

Brian doesn’t know how he makes it through the show. The light dances in front of his eyes blurring and dimming and becoming far too bright. Sweat makes his shirt cling to his spine, he regrets the fabric they chose for his wing outfit for the first time – usually, he is too cold.

Their music becomes ringing his ears before cutting off abruptly then it is back to sounding like music. Brian is sure to stay away from the microphone stand, afraid that his labored breathing would be picked up, or worse his unsteady footing would send him forward into the stand.

Freddie takes longer in between their songs, engaging the crowd and wooing them, and Brian takes the breaks with grateful nods and he sucks in whatever air he can. He mouths the words, hoping that people will just think that he’s poorly positioned and not that he can’t speak.

His hands are moving disconnected from his brain, but he knows enough that they’re playing the songs and they’re playing them right.

Brian bows when Freddie wishes them a good night and tries to casually make his way off the stage. He bumps into John who reaches out to steady him.

“Bit in the clouds?” John jokes.

His voice is like water on his burning skin, Brian desperately grasps onto it to steady himself.

“Hey, you’re burning up.”

He feels a flower pressing on the back of his throat and he knows that means, but he can’t be near people when it happens. It's disgusting and heartbreaking and he is sure it's as painful to watch as it is to be the one doubled over a basin. Last night he had made the mistake of digging it out before it came out naturally and he had passed out on the bathroom floor because he had moved it right in his trachea.

How he didn’t die could only be explained by the flower that was wilting next to his shoulder and the stem had been the length of his finger.

Brian nods at John’s question but keeps his moment up, if he stops then he knows whatever is going to happen will happen in public. He trips over cords, and Red smacks against his body and he has just enough clarity to set her on the couch before he is dropping to the floor and clawing at his throat.

His body curls up with the force of his coughs. The flower scrapes up his trachea, scraping it as it climbs, and he tries to force it out of his body. Brian hopes it isn’t the rose, and that the thorns are only cutting through his lungs. Not that it matters, Brian thinks as he rolls onto his knees and tries to use gravity to force the flower out.

He runs out of energy and collapses against the floor. Brian reaches out to grab anything to ground himself and he feels his stomach convulsing as he desperately sucks in air. The world had been spinning wildly during the performance but now he doesn’t know what he is looking at as it twists and blurs and spins. Tears sting his eyes and Brian reaches up with his hand and digs his nails into his throat.

A hand catches it. Brian opens his eyes and through the distortion, he can see blond and blue. He tries to squeeze the hand, but he thinks he only managed a slight twitch of the finger before dark spots start blotting out his vision. Brian feels the tension drop out of him and the struggle to breathe just – stops.

Waking up is more of a surprise than it should be. Brian is fully aware that he should have died in a way that makes each shaky breath uncomfortable. He would think that waking up after nearly suffocating to death would have him feeling as light as the air that he was denied. Instead, he feels like shit, worse than waking up after the surgery to fix his ulcer.

His throat hurts and the oxygen tubes in his nose make it burn, but he is thinking with some clarity that he didn’t realize that he was missing for the past several months. For a moment he thinks that he was saved by a late intervention surgery, they have a low success rate but are possible especially in Japan which is leading the research behind Hanahaki, but no his lungs still feel heavy and one hurts as the thorns of a rose dig into his chest.

Well, he supposes this is the best place as any to receive his end of life care.

He reaches up to press the button to call the nurse, wanting something to chase away the pain because he doesn’t have to deal with it anymore. Brian looks around the room and notes that it is like every other hospital room he has ever been on. White bordering on uncomfortable, impersonal, and lonely.

The nurse walks in with the doctor trailing behind her. She bows and steps to the side.

“How are you feeling?” The doctor asks and Brian has to speed a few seconds digging through the accent.

At least he doesn’t have to rely on his broken Japanese, “I hurt.”

Okay. Talking is a mistake. He reaches up to hold his throat, and he can feel tiny scabs under the pads of his fingers. Brian frowns, wondering how long he had been out of it.

“To be expected,” the doctor switches the hand he is holding the clipboard in and bows, “Doctor Kawabata.”

Brian inclines his head in greeting. Doctor Kawabata gives a curt nod, “I am sure you understand why you are here?”

He doesn’t want to move his head, but speaking had been the worst choice he could make so he nods his head again. His neck does ache but not as much as he would have thought.

“Two days ago, you were brought in. We were able to cut back the flower but that does not work for the long term.”

Brian looks away, he didn’t think it would. They’re trying out a series of trimming trials, but it damages the lungs and doesn’t change the life expectancy. Most doctors recommend just cutting it out completely.

“We understand it would be difficult to travel in your condition, and we are working on arrangements with your company.”

He closes his eyes.

“But perhaps the details can be discussed when you are more awake. Would you like your friends to visit? We can only allow one in at a time.”

“Please,” he rasps.

The nurse gives him the painkillers after the doctor leaves and he smiles gratefully and then settles down to swallow the panic at seeing his bandmates after what they witnessed. He looks at the ceiling – the last thing he remembers is dressing for the show and everything after that is like blurry camera shots.

Surprisingly, its Freddie that is first in the room. Brian raises an eyebrow but then tries to cover his shock at the singer’s appearance. Freddie is still his friend – unrequited love or not.

Freddie lets out a long breath and Brian chuckles. It makes him cough but the entire thing is so absurd that he doesn’t know what else to do.

“You’re alive,” Freddie says.

Brian nods.

“That’s good,” Freddie sits down in the plastic chair, “I wasn’t prepared for… I didn’t imagine that it would happen like that.”

Brian tilts his head.

“I thought it would be peaceful – it always is in the books and the movies if they let it happen at all.”

He shakes his head, and if this had been a peaceful disease then he imagines they wouldn’t be trying to perfect how to remove it at the last minute. Too many people try to accept death only to back out. Brian is starting to think that he might be in that category now.

“They’re worth this?”

He wonders how badly the oxygen deprivation had been clouding his thoughts because being able to be alive and still being able to love – even if it isn’t the same person – is much better than this sort of death. Brian doesn’t want to say that and then offers a shrug because he does still love Freddie and if he regrets it now then he doesn’t know what the point would have been.

“Not that it matters now I suppose,” Freddie adds, his gaze is strangely serious.

Brian entertains himself with the thought that Freddie is confessing, and he knows it’s a dream because Freddie’s lips are feather light against his and his voice is far away, as though it is being filtered through the water. He turns his head and thinks that he must be asleep because the painkillers finally kicked in.

It also feels like a dream because some of the pressure in his lungs is lifted.

“You’re a liar you know?”

Brian blinks his eyes open, and he finds it strange that its dark outside, and the hospital is clearly on its night cycle but Roger is sitting in the plastic chair with his socked feet on the edge of his bed.

He turns over, rubbing at the side of his chest that feels a little lighter.

“Can’t wait for Freddie to get back in here,” Roger tosses his head back, “can’t believe you didn’t say anything to Freddie. He has been borderline in love with you since Smile.”

“Has he?” Brian purses his lips; his throat doesn’t hurt as bad.

“Seriously?” Roger lets out a sigh, “by the way – he loves you too. Confessed as you fell asleep and something changed on your readings and one of the flowers has started to wilt.”

He fights down the giddy swell in his chest, “wait – only one of them?”

“Yes,” Roger crosses his arms, “which is why you’re a liar. You said there was no one else.”

“I didn’t think there was.”

He feels Roger’s exhaustion in the way he rubs a hand down his face. It’s odd watching his friend who is usually so full of energy and passion to be so listless. The dark circles that had been growing since Munich see to have sunken in even further. Roger runs a hand down his face and settles.

“How can you not know you’re in love with someone?”

He shrugs and then frowns at the far wall as he tries to remember if he felt love for anyone else other than Freddie – and isn’t that something he has to wrap his head around now that Freddie loves him romantically. Brian wonders if falling in love with a stranger would trigger it but then he doesn’t think that it could.

There aren’t many strangers that he could have fallen in love with, too busy suffering this entire tour to look at anyone else – ignoring the fact that he also loves Freddie which he has to sort out because how can he truly love Freddie and someone else some else he doesn’t even know.

“Didn’t you and Freddie have a thing?” Brian asks instead.

Roger shrugs, “we just love each other, sometimes that’s sexual it’s not. There’s not a word for it.”

So, Roger’s odd looks had been trying to puzzle out Brian and Freddie’s feelings instead of his jealousy at Brian and Freddie. He feels oddly dizzy at that thought and he closes his eyes.

“You truly don’t have any idea?”

“None.”

Roger leans forward which makes his legs drop from the end of the bed, “so what – we do all of that – I yelled at Freddie for him to confess and you don’t even know who else it is.”

Brian shrugs, “do you want it to be you?”

Roger presses his lips together and looks away. Brian leans forward, wondering at that reaction. It isn’t like Roger to hide from a conversation, but this almost seems like he is guilty. He narrows his eyes.

“Roger?”

“I told you already,” Roger shrugs, “so it can’t be me because you would know it's not unrequited.”

“I thought you meant it because you didn’t want to see me die.”

“I don’t want to see you die – that is the last thing on this Earth that I want to happen.”

“Then do you want it to be you?” Brian presses.

Roger presses his knuckles to his lips and bites down, Brian coughs and coughs and he spits up a single red rose. He tosses it to the floor and looks up at Roger’s face. There is a heaviness to the gaze, and it looks like something Brian might see on a man on his way to the gallows and not his best friend feeling upset.

“Mine were roses too,” Roger says.

Roger doesn’t say anything after that.

Roger doesn’t have to say anything after that.

Brian wakes up with a ringing in his ears and a bright light and he wonders if he is dead before he hears John chuckling next to him.

“No, you’re very much alive.”

He turns and sees that John is the only one awake, Roger has taken up most of the cot, and Freddie is curled up in the plastic chair next to his bed. Brian smiles fondly – because he can because Freddie loves him.

For the first time in months, he can breathe on his own and not feel the desperate curl of not needing more. There is a year of breathing therapy in front of him because his lung is heavily scarred from the thorns. He runs a hand down his chest and clothes his eyes and takes in a deep breath – he still coughs and it still hurts but he can breathe!

Roger jumps awake at the noise before stopping and smiling fondly at Brian. He rushes over to Brian and grabs his wrist. For a second, he wonders at the lack of temperature difference.

“You and anesthesia don’t get along,” Roger whispers.

“Sad it’s happened enough we can make that call,” Brian replies.

They’re both dancing around it, but Brian can’t help but laugh because he still loves Freddie and he still holds affection for Roger. It doesn’t feel like before – he doesn’t know how to compare it before, but it is sort of like changing tempos in the middle of the song. The song doesn’t change but it isn’t the same.

“So?” Roger rolls on his toes.

“Can’t stand you,” Brian chuckles.

“Oh good. I can’t stand you either.”

They laugh and Roger’s hands slide down until they’re tangled together, “you know when I said that I’d love you to make sure you didn’t die, I didn’t mean for you to fall in love with me.”

Brian quirks a brow, “you’re the one saying everyone should love you.”

“They should,” Roger nods but then his face softens, “but you shouldn’t die to love me.”

“I still want the story, Rog.”

“Of course, Bri,” Roger squeezes their hands, “but I think it’s better you and Freddie talk it out first.”

Brian turns his head and grimaces at the look Freddie is sending him, it’s a bit between hopelessly in love and hopeless. He shifts on the bed and pats the space next to him. Roger backs up and reaches to grab John.

But John moves past him and pulls Brian into a tight hug. Brian wheezes at the strength and awkwardly pats John on the back.

“Thank god you’re alive,” John whispers, “I’d kill you if you died because of something so stupid.”

“Hey, you said you agreed with my feelings!”

“I still think it’s stupid.”

They break apart and John smiles wide and gap-toothed before he steps back and then pulls Roger out – much to his offense as he hears Roger squawking about being manhandled.

Brian turns his attention to Freddie who is perched on the bed now. He lets his hand rest near Freddie, but it gets ignored.

“You thought that it would be okay if you died?”

“Never thought it’d be okay.”

Freddie lets out a long sigh, “how much do you remember?”

“Of your confession? None of it. I think you kissed me though.”

“Oh?”

Brian grins, bright and sharp, “although I might need another to confirm.”

Freddie laughs before bending down. His kiss leaves a sharp tingle on his cheek and Freddie pulls back.

“How is that?”

“Need more data,” Brian says sagely.

He closes his eyes when Freddie gives him a kiss on the lips, its firm and gentle at the same time. He can feel Freddie’s love through it. Brian reaches up and holds Freddie to him by the back of his head. Freddie nips at his lip which makes him reluctantly let go.

“Yea,” Brian says slowly, “you kissed me before. I remember it.”

“But you don’t remember me telling you how much I loved you?”

Brian shakes his head, “but I’ll have the time now to remember it.”

“Yes, about that…”

He swallows and pushes himself further up the bed, marveling at the ease in which he can move. Brian holds his hands in front of his face, and they’ve returned to the pale peach color of the properly oxygenated. Right now, he could run a marathon and not care and how had he gone his entire life without cherishing each breath.

“We’re going to talk about it when you aren’t surprised that you’re alive.”

Brian grimaces, “sorry Fred.”

“You know,” Freddie leans in to give him another kiss, “I’d rather have you alive and apologizing.”

“Oh, so you wanted me for more than my harp playing?”

He can’t stop, he is giddy with the ability to breathe. It’s like he has had just the right amount of one too many and he is ecstatic. Brian pulls off the cannula because he can and breathes deeply through his nose. The soft scent of freshly showered floats to his nose and he guesses that he must have been in the clear for a while because Freddie looks well-rested for someone in his situation.

“I want you for everything, Brian.”

“And you’ll have me for everything, for a long time.”

They press their heads together. Brian lets his mind wander to the long conversation he is going to have to have with Freddie and the hard conversation he is going to have to have with Roger and how he is going to have to make this up to John and how that they’re going to explain this to their fans – and has the tour been canceled or rescheduled.

Freddie cups his face, digging his fingers into his scalp, “hey, focus on the now. Focus on getting better. You have time for everything else.”

Brian laughs, breathless for a different reason, he has a future he can plan for again.