Time Passages (Queen or Freddie Mercury Fanfic)

40. Alone With You

Julia

Suddenly a high, shrill tone pierced the air.

Finally.

I shut off the timer before it could drone on too long, slid on my oven mitts, and drew out the round, golden brown rum cake, a tasty holiday tradition in the Samuels household. This was the second one I'd baked this dreary, rainy day; however, neither of them were meant for us. The one I was just now tipping over and setting down to cool belonged to the Adamses, while the other I had baked for our dear Cousin Roxie, as small tokens of gratitude for all their help.

Mom makes one every time we head down there for Christmas anyway, I told myself. In the meantime, we have the gingerbread men to keep us busy.

Putting my hands on my hips, I looked around me and sighed with satisfaction. The aforementioned cookies had been put in the pantry, chores that had been neglected over the past few days were nearly all taken care of, and the kitchen no longer resembled an absolute disaster zone. If nothing else, Freddie's "hangover" had given me a splendid excuse to get caught up with housekeeping.

"Hey, Modo," I whispered, "any emails to my work address in the past couple of hours?"

Just before Modo could give an equally soft run-down of my inbox's contents, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. My eyes, now clear with contacts, glazed over, and the only sound I heard was that of a clear, silken voice drifting up from below.

Freddie was singing again.

Not really singing, mind you. It was more along the lines of vocalization, nonsense syllables instead of words- but it was music nonetheless. Then again, any sound that emanated from that golden throat, I considered music. He could be reading off the name list of a graduating senior class, and I'd still listen to it over any of Beethoven's symphonies, Verdi's arias, or Chopin's preludes.

It was really a wonder I'd accomplished anything at all today. When I wasn't standing there, mesmerized by the maestro noodling around at the piano (although from the sound of it, Freddie had indeed made a lot of progress the day before, as the music seemed much more deliberate, much more coherent, like raw cuts of full-blown songs as opposed to simpler, fluctuating pieces of melody), those three words rang in my head as clearly as if he was whispering them to me all over again:

"My stray kitten."

He remembers, I kept saying to myself, the blood rushing to my cheeks. He remembers that name.

Those three words were enough to clear my soul of the wretched darkness that had begun enclosing it. Really, it was just as well he didn't use my other nickname. If he had, this stalemate of ours would have ended much sooner- and quite, shall we say, passionately, at that. Fortunately, he didn't, and I was able to keep it together for that much longer. There was, after all, Stuart to consider.

But Stuart was the furthest thing from my mind at present. All I could think about was how much I wanted to go downstairs to be closer to Freddie, to hear the music better- but I couldn't, not at the risk of distracting him. His focus over the past couple of hours was practically nonexistent; every little thing I did seemed to wreck his concentration.

Wait a second, I reminded myself. It's not my fault he stayed here when he could have hotfooted it back up to the radio station if he's feeling so much better. And anyway, I've just missed everything Modo said about my work emails, and it never provides any useful details anyhow. So I still need to go downstairs regardless.

And if it disturbed Freddie?

Well, he'll just have to suck it up, I told myself in playful defiance. I live here, too. This is MY house, after all.