A Man For All Seasons (Queen or Freddie Mercury Fanfic)

40. Kindred Spirits

Julia

Freddie leaned towards my mother. "Beg your pardon, darling, but where is the ashtray?"

"It's- outside, on the patio," she answered, still struggling to make the words come naturally.

"Mm, so I guess smoking indoors is out then?"

Dad nodded. "Yeah, I'm sorry."

"No, no! It's quite alright; I tell you, it's a lot better here than in New York, you're not going to freeze to death doing it."

"Think I'll join you, actually, I could use one myself," John chimed in.

"Oh, that reminds me," Dad said, "we should probably get the fire pit going. Do you think it's too early, honey?"

"U-up to you," Mom stammered as she tore her eyes away from Freddie and forced them down on the salad she was tossing. "Dinner's about ten minutes from being ready."

"I'll get it primed, then, that way all we'll have to do is light it."

Neither Scott nor Danny bothered with excuses, and instead just joined the parade leading out of the house with Freddie as its grand marshal. I wanted very much to follow, but I remembered that just like us girls, guys sometimes needed a little space to talk and play in a way they were less likely to do in mixed company. So instead I stayed put and watched them go, cocktails in hand (except for Danny of course, who was nursing a sizable mug of marshmallows and hot cocoa).

Just before Freddie slipped out the door, however, he glanced over his shoulder at me and winked. What could I do but grin, heart surging with pride and love, Look at that smirk. The cocky bastard. He knows no one can resist him.

We had been at my parents' house for about an hour and a half, and things were going... well. They seemed to be, anyway, for what we could see within our limited view. Since Freddie had apparently left Rudy's phone somewhere in the hotel room, we had no means to communicate with him and thus no way, besides joining him in person, to discover whether all was calm at that gravel road junction where we saw him last.

So far, however, no lab rats had crawled out of the woodwork, Freddie had experienced no seizures or headaches (at least, none that he admitted to), and my family had fallen head over heels in love with the best half of Queen. By this point my parents had shown Freddie and John around the house, even asking their opinions on décor for the one guest bedroom they were still struggling to put together, and Freddie had indulged my dad with a few rounds of ping-pong in which he handily claimed undefeated victory.

Several times I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming, never had I imagined them all getting along so smoothly so fast. But again, I owed that credit to Freddie- and, believe it or not, his kiss.

Although I fully expected the opposite result, Freddie's kiss took a machete to the tension, the awkwardness, the forced and uneven conversations that framed our first moments together with my family. No one verbally addressed it, but I could see in their wide eyes and barely stifled smiles that they now understood just what kind of "friends" they were dealing with. Coupled with Freddie's revelation to Danny, that one wild, ridiculously theatrical kiss freed us up to stand a little too close to each other, stare a little too long into one another's eyes, and maybe even let our hands clasp with a little more abandon than we would have otherwise.

As for Danny, he made absolutely no effort to conceal his joy, now that he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Freddie was his father. He forgot to be embarrassed about his shorter hair and zigzagged ecstatically around the yard while Cleo gave chase, whooping and cheering as he went.