Open Up Your Mind

Open Up Your Mind Part One: Don't Ask Don't Tell

'Guys, this is Belle, my new girlfriend.'

Freddie looked up from the TV in total boredom to face yet another date of Brian's, and he had to oppress the tendency to roll his eyes when his eyes caught the happy new couple. Whilst John and Roger got up to greet the newcomer, he took his time to let his eyes travel up and down the girl; a petite young woman with a snow white skin, that seemed to be even paler in contrast to her bright red lipstick and naturally red curls, that fell from her head in bouncy ringlets. For some reason, these characteristics seemed to go together very well. She was quite beautiful , but that wasn't the reason why Freddie was jealous.

'Freddie, you haven't said hi to her yet,' Roger reminded him after a moment, and Freddie blinked at this sudden interruption of his thoughts.

'Oh, excuse me, dear. Hello,' he said, and he wasn't even surprised to find that he had forgotten her name already. Not that that mattered: She looked like a very nice girl, but that was exactly the problem with Brian's date. She was a girl. And therefore, he knew this relationship, if you even wanted to call it so, wasn't going to last longer than three weeks before they would break up. After which Brian would haul another woman into their house, just to discover after a couple of weeks that they weren't going to work out either. But for now, with Brian's arm draped around her hip, he had a reason to be jealous at her because she was getting all his attention, even though he knew it would only last weeks. As he looked into her dark green eyes, her shy yet confident smile, he tried not to blame her for the situation, tried his very hard to remember the two things he told himself every time Brian dragged a new girl into his life.

She can't help it that he doesn't want to admit that he's gay.

And she certainly can't help it that I think he should be mine.

It wasn't like it had struck Freddie immediately that Brian was into guys when he had first met him all those years ago. By the time, the guitarist was single, and he was very reserved about his love life. Freddie just though he was shy, a characteristic that seemed to fit his personality quite well. Time passed, Brian still tried to avoid every subject around his sexual preferences, but the idea that Brian might not be into girls only popped up in Freddie's mind when he came out himself and when Brian had started blushing and told him that it was fine – as expected, but he had that certain look upon his face. A shy yet hopeful one, as if he was waiting for this confirmation to come.

But his shyness took the best of him and he introduced a random girl as 'his girlfriend' only days later. And especially since Roger and John got into a relationship, Brian had started dating every single female habitant of London. But Freddie could see right through the fake smile he smiled every time he introduced his new girlfriend to the band, he could see the way he would glance over at John and Roger with a sad, desirable sparkle in his eyes, as if he was missing something. And what he was missing was a person he could actually fall in love with. And he wasn't going to find that person in a girl, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much relationships he would start. If he would only just give in to his desires and start dating me, Freddie thought, but he knew that if he had to wait for Brian to come up to him, he could wait until eternity. Brian somehow seemed to choose worthless relationships over getting out of the closet, and this insecurity and prudency and most of all sadness Brian seemed to carry around like a heavy weight on his shoulders was starting to break Freddie up.

Though Brian seemed to be sad when he and his girlfriend broke up, Freddie knew the real reason why he was feeling miserable. It was because he didn't want to give in to his actual sexual orientation, but it became painfully clear to himself that he was never going to fall in love with a girl when yet another relationship failed. He probably understood that he wasn't going to be able to pretend to be straight for the rest of his life, yet was holding Brian back from just coming out and find himself a nice boyfriend.