Blinded by the Light: Drabbles

Drabble Three: Games

After having cleaned around all the rooms that were part of their small London residence, Brian finally allowed himself to put the dust cloth down on some random side table he passed on his way to the sofa, after which he let himself fall down on the couch with a heavy thud. He sighed in relief when the action of making himself comfortable on the sofa marked the end of a whole day of work; he had been busy with the household – cleaning, vacuuming, doing the laundry, changing the bed sheets – for hours and hours, so he was glad that it was finally all done for the upcoming week. It was a rainy Sunday afternoon, which was one of the only moments he ever had the time to get such tasks done; all other days were occupied with studio work, practicing music, Roger's braille classes, and either Roger's or his family randomly showing up, which was always well-meant, but which left little to no time for Brian to tackle the accumulation of dust and dirty laundry in their house. He therefore always made sure there were no appointments and that there was no one coming over on Sundays, so Roger could finally have a well-deserved day off and so that he could do some chores around the house.

But God, after having washed up an enormous stack of dishes that had built up over the course of at least three days, having washed and ironed and folded a week's load of laundry, and having vacuumed and dusted all the rooms, Brian was starting to feel the tiredness sink in. Especially now that he was comfortably lying on the sofa, hands tucked under his head, and most of all, with no Roger – who was sitting at the kitchen table – buzzing around him, it seemed to Brian that it was getting more difficulty to keep his eyes open with every passing second. Maybe this unusually quiet moment made the perfect opportunity for the guitarist to just shortly close his eyes; perhaps he could just take a bit of a nap before Roger would even notice that he had fallen asleep.

To make sure Roger was indeed still sitting where Brian had last seen him, Brian propped himself up on his elbows and sat upright to peer through the small gap of space between the doorpost and the door that lead to the kitchen. He always left the door ajar if Roger was in another room than he was, so he could see what the drummer was doing. Right now, Roger was, as expected, sitting at the kitchen table; he had his fingers tightly clenched around the stylus in the palm of his left hand, his right index finger was slowly travelling along the lines of embossed printing, indicating that he was very concentrated on his homework. Way too busy with his homework to notice that I drifted off, Brian convinced himself as he soundlessly lay down again, curled his body up on the sofa and peacefully closed his eyes...

Of course, Brian should have known right away that these last couple of actions were too much to have asked for. As soon as he had shut his eyes and snuggled into the soft decorative pillows of their sofa, he heard the legs of a chair scratching along the tiled kitchen floor, followed by the sound of soft footsteps and the cracking noise of the doors of the pantry opening. Brian pressed his eyelids tighter together in an attempt to deny the activities that were currently going on in the kitchen, but when he heard the footstep nearing, he knew it was useless; Roger was coming towards the living room, to ask him something or to show something or to do anything else that would undoubtedly disturb Brian's short moment of peace and quietness.

'Brian, we should play a game!' Roger chanted excitedly as he made his way into the living room, whereas the guitarist hardly managed to oppress a groan the moment he heard the word 'game'. Ever since Roger had gotten blind, one of his main source of entertainment had been playing games – and though he knew Roger loved those, Brian was at the moment not exactly in the mood to play one of those daily recurring parlor games. Since there was only a limited range of games available in braille or that were in other ways adapted to the visually impaired, they always ended up playing the same ones: domino with raised dots, card games with numbers in braille, monopoly that had been altered to make every street, every building, every action and amount of money tangible, and so on. Right now, Roger was standing at the other side of the table with a medium-sized wooden box in his hand, announcing that he had already picked one of the games. Brian knew he could never say no to him in the end if Roger really wanted to do something with him, but he gave it a weak shot anyway.